The Med & Mic™ 03.11.22
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MED NEWS blog post from Dr. Maria ON Speaking, LLC
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Flu Vaccine Mismatch
While the flu season has been unusually mild, this season’s vaccine was off-target. Based on data from 3,600 people who got the flu between October and mid-February, the effectiveness of the vaccine against infection appears to be only 16%. However, because of low enrollment in the study, this figure could be due to chance. “Assessing [vaccine effectiveness] when there has been little flu circulating in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic is complicated,” says the CDC’s Kristen Norlund in a CNN report.
Contaminated Champagne
In separate incidents in Germany and the Netherlands, 11 people were sickened and one person died after drinking champagne contaminated with MDMA. The compound is a stimulant and hallucinogen also known as ecstasy. It was present in the champagne at 1,000 times the usual dose. Some of the people who consumed the contaminated beverage developed seizures immediately. The champagne bottles of Moet & Chandon Ice Imperial were purchased from the same website. The liquid in contaminated bottles may have a reddish-brown color and have an anise scent. The Belgium Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain warned touching, tasting, or swallowing the tainted product could be life-threatening. How the drug got into the bottles is still under investigation. More from MedPage Today.
Early ECMO for Severe COVID
People with severe COVID who were treated with a heart-lung machine earlier in their illness had exceptional early survival, according to a report in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Doctors reviewed the records of 30 patients who received ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation from March to May 2020. They determined 90% were discharged from the hospital, and 87% were alive 11 months later. The researchers note limitations of the study, including the retrospective, observational, non-randomized design. More in Healio.
Possible Test for Pancreatic Cancer
Microbes found in stool samples could be a predictor of risk for pancreatic cancer. In a study, a panel of 27 microbes identified patients with pancreatic cancer with 84% accuracy. The accuracy increased to 94% when combined with a blood test for a protein released by pancreatic tumors. The new findings are a step toward screening. If this method gathers more validity it would be a non-invasive, fast, and relatively inexpensive tool. There is no early detection test for this type of malignancy which has a low survival. “Patients are often only diagnosed once they’ve already reached a late stage,” says Lynn Matrisian, PhD, the chief science officer at the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, in an article from MedicineNet.
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