News & Updates

Reinfection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) is low among people receiving opioid agonist therapy (OAT) but appears to be at its peak during the first 24 weeks following treatment completion and among those with ongoing injecting drug use and needle‒syringe sharing, a study has found.

Hope springs yet again in the field of HIV treatment, as another HIV patient (reportedly the fourth in the world) goes into remission 3 decades following diagnosis. The patient stopped antiretroviral therapy (ART) after receiving allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT) of CCR5-Δ32/Δ32 donor cells for acute myelogenous leukaemia (AML).

Immunizations with mRNA-based vaccines are strongly effective against symptomatic and severe COVID-19 disease associated with the virus’ Delta variant, according to a recent Singapore study.

Patients with abnormalities in coagulation parameters such as prothrombin concentration (PC) and D-dimer (DD) levels are at greater risk of more severe COVID-19 infection and subsequent death, reports a recent study.

Temporarily discontinuing methotrexate treatment for 1 week appears to induce satisfactory response to a seasonal influenza vaccine in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), with a similar effect as a 2-week interruption schedule, according to a study.

Surrogates of SARS-CoV-2* – a lipid enveloped RNA bacteriophage (Phi6) and two animal coronaviruses (CoVs; MHV and TGEV**) – survived in cold-storage temperatures for 30 days, a study finds, highlighting the risk of viral survival on food products and potential transmission on humans upon consumption.

There appears to be a twin-peak prevalence profile (TPP) for diseases of the stomach, including Helicobacter pylori (Hp) infection, gastric cancer (GC), gastric intraepithelial neoplasia (GIN), and gastritis, according to a recent China study. The first peak typically occurs during middle-adulthood while the second peak happens in late life.