Avoid Long Delays in Instrument Decontamination, Reprocessing
January 24th 2017Q: There has been a question from the staff here about leaving instruments overnight with an enzyme foam product on them. If we are here and a case comes in where the instruments were treated with the enzyme foam and we have time to wash them but will not be here long enough to run the load of instruments through the washer, is it best to leave them with the enzyme foam overnight or hand wash them and have ready to be put in the washer in the morning?
UMD Study Explores Race as a Factor in Getting Vaccinated
January 24th 2017African-American adults are less likely than Caucasians to get an annual flu shot (39 percent versus 47 percent), and public health efforts to address this racial disparity have had little impact on increasing vaccination rates to date. A study led by professor Sandra Crouse Quinn in the University of Maryland School of Public Health is the first to explore racial factors and how they may influence vaccine attitudes and behaviors. The findings are published in the journal Vaccine
Sepsis Trumps Four Medical Conditions Tracked by CMS for Hospital Readmission Rates
January 23rd 2017Sepsis accounts for considerably more hospital readmissions and associated costs than any of the four medical conditions tracked by the federal government to measure quality of care and guide pay-for-performance reimbursements, according to an analysis led by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System.
Team Discovers How Bacteria Exploit a Chink in the Body's Armor
January 20th 2017Scientists have discovered how a unique bacterial enzyme can blunt the body's key weapons in its fight against infection. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Newcastle University in the U.K. are investigating how infectious microbes can survive attacks by the body's immune system. By better understanding the bacteria's defenses, new strategies can be developed to cure infections that are currently resistant to treatments, the researchers said.
Biophysics Plays Key Role in Immune System Signaling and Response
January 19th 2017How big you are may be as important as what you look like, at least to immune system cells watching for dangerous bacteria and viruses. The size of pathogenic particles and the density of the molecular information stored on them provides additional danger signals to the body's immune system and helps guide the resulting immune response, suggests cellular and animal research published this week in the journal Cell Reports. Understanding these biophysical cues may help vaccine developers fine tune the signals they already knew were being transmitted by the molecular information presented to the immune system.