1. Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas identified a family of proteins, called interferon regulatory factor 3, that signals the immune system to defend itself against viruses, bacteria, parasites and tumors.
2. A clinical trial involving roughly 20,000 young women found that Cervarix, the HPV vaccine, was extremely effective against the two HPV types that cause the vast majority (70 percent) of all cases, as well as other strains of HPV that can cause the precancerous transformation of cervical cells.
3. In a controlled trial, pregnant women who use peanut-shaped exercise balls during delivery experienced significantly reduced labor time and were less likely to undergo a cesarean section than women who did not use the exercise ball (10 percent versus 21 percent, respectively).
4. Comparing the number of predicted heart attacks generated by five risk calculators to the number of actual heart attacks and strokes among a group of more than 4,200 individuals, researchers discovered four out of five of the calculators generated scores that overestimated the risk of heart attack or stoke.
5. Researchers in Sweden observed a hand hygiene compliance rate of just 8.1 percent among more than 2,300 hand hygiene opportunities in 16 operating rooms during 94 surgeries.
6. One study indicated that patients undergoing longer surgeries had a 1.27-fold increase in odds of developing venous thromboembolism, while the shortest procedures had an odds ratio of 0.86.
7. Roughly 96 percent of physicians believe medication adherence is a critical factor in clinical outcomes for patients with chronic conditions, yet fewer than half include medication adherence counseling when prescribing new drugs, according to one survey.
8. Treatment failure in patients with severe community-acquired pneumonia and high inflammatory response may be reduced when patients also receive corticosteroid treatment.
9. Patients are less likely to report excellent quality of care when decisions regarding cancer treatment are made entirely by physicians, even when the patients indicated they preferred not to be involved in the decision-making process.
10. Researchers from the University of Warwick’s School of Life Sciences and the University of Exeter Medical School discovered rivers and streams carry many antibiotics and actually contribute to the rise in antibiotic resistance in the environment.
11. A team of scientists at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor examined the effect of Clostridium difficile on mice and found it took only about 24 hours for C. diff to go from hard spores to toxin-producing, diarrhea-inducing cells in the digestive tract.
12. An observational study found hand hygiene compliance was significantly higher among groups of healthcare workers whose leaders and mentors practiced hand hygiene (71 percent) than among groups whose leaders did not (29 percent).
13. Scientists from the University of Chicago and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City noticed the antibodies in a seasonal flu shot reacted against H7 virus strains, even neutralizing the H7N9 avian flu strain completely in some cases.
