Climate Warming is Leading to Earlier Spring Feeding by Blacklegged Ticks
April 27th 2015The month of May brings many things, among them Mother's Day, tulips, and Lyme Disease Awareness campaigns. But according to Dr. Richard S. Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., if we want to get a leg up on tickborne illness we need to become vigilant earlier in the season.
Getting Back to the Heart of Healthcare
April 27th 2015Today’s healthcare industry has seen dramatic changes in the patient experience. The success of our advancements in healthcare and technology has created far more complex, chaotic interactions. From simple check-ups to operating room procedures, some might argue that today’s patient has become more of a number as opposed to a human being with personal preferences, feelings and emotions. Patient Experience Week (April 27-May 1, 2015) helps us to take a moment and center ourselves back to what is truly the heart of healthcare – care and compassion.
Study Finds Hospitals are Not Doing All They Can to Prevent C. diff Infections
April 24th 2015Nearly half of American hospitals aren't taking key steps to prevent a kind of gut infection that kills nearly 30,000 people annually and sickens hundreds of thousands more - despite strong evidence that such steps work, according to a new study. While nearly all of the 398 hospitals in the study use a variety of measures to protect their patients from Clostridium difficile infections, 48 percent haven't adopted strict limits on the use of antibiotics and other drugs that can allow the dangerous bug to flourish, the researchers report.
UTMB Researchers Develop Ebola Treatment Effective Three Days After Infection
April 23rd 2015Researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp., have successfully developed a post-exposure treatment that is effective against a specific strain of the Ebola virus that killed thousands of people in West Africa.
Researchers Say HIV Prevention Messages for High-Risk Groups Should Target Bars, Street Corners
April 22nd 2015Bars and street corners are ideal venues for broad dissemination of HIV prevention information among drug-using male sex workers and other at-risk populations, according to researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). The research was published last week in the American Journal of Public Health.