Weekly COVID-19 testing, coupled with a two-week isolation period for positive cases, may be the most cost-effective strategy to tackle the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the USA when transmission is high until vaccines are widely available, a modelling study published in The Lancet Public Health journal suggests.
E-Mail Study using surveys of more than 1.1 million 13-15-year-olds from 140 countries between 1999 and 2018, finds that the prevalence of smoking cigarettes on at least one day during the past 30 days decreased in 80 countries (57%) but was unchanged or increased in 60 countries (43%). However, during the same time period, the prevalence of using other tobacco products, such as chewing tobacco, snuff, dip, cigars, cigarillos, pipe, or electronic cigarettes, levelled off or increased in 81 (59%) of 137 countries with available data. Surveys of more than 530,000 adolescents from 143 countries between 2010 and 2018, finds that 17.9% of boys and 11.5% of girls used any tobacco product on at least one day during the past month.
Peer-reviewed / Simulation or Modelling / People
A new modelling study has estimated that from 2000 to 2030 vaccination against 10 major pathogens - including measles, rotavirus, HPV and hepatitis B - will have prevented 69 million deaths in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs).
The study estimated that, as a result of vaccination programmes, those born in 2019 will experience 72% lower mortality from the 10 diseases over their lifetime than if there was no immunisation.
The greatest impact of vaccination was estimated to occur in children under five - mortality from the 10 diseases in this age group would be 45% higher than currently observed in the absence of vaccination, according to the research.
In 15 out of 17 minority ethnic groups, health-related quality of life in older age (over 55 year-olds) was worse on average for either men, women, or both, than for White British people according to an observational study published in The Lancet Public Health journal.
New research finds that millions of UK patients could benefit from genetic screening (cheek swab) before being prescribed common medications including antidepressants, stomach ulcer treatments and painkillers.
More than 95 per cent of the population carry a genetic marker that predicts an atypical response to at least one medicine.
The study looked at nine of these genetic markers, affecting 56 medicines where there are known drug-gene interactions.