Trending News: Gastrointestinal Symptoms May be New Focus for Novel Coronavirus

Gastrointestinal symptoms should be a new focus for clinicians testing for novel coronavirus (COVID-19), according to HCP Live. Although many clinicians were looking at fever and cough in patients, the new information suggests that gastrointestinal issues and stool samples could lead to a COVID-19 diagnosis. Additionally, the study suggested that preventing fecal-oral transmission should be taken into consideration to control the spread of the virus.

Researchers recently set out to determine whether some physicians’ preference to initiate neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in patients with breast cancer led to faster initiation of treatment and decreased the total length of treatment compared with adjuvant chemotherapy (AC), according to The American Journal of Managed Care. The results showed no significant benefit in time to treatment initiation with NAC compared with AC. The study authors noted that giving chemotherapy first as opposed to performing surgery first neither starts the treatment or completes the course of treatment faster.

New research has found that the introduction of a universal immunization program (UIP) in India was associated with improved school attainment, according to Contagion Live. The introduction of UIP in India was a substantial factor in reducing the number of deaths among children under 5 years of age in the country from 3.4 million to 1.2 million between 1990 and 2015. The UIP currently includes Bacille Calmette Guerin for tuberculosis, measles, diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine, inactivated polio vaccine, hepatitis B, and Hib-containing pentavalent vaccine.