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Total 27 results found since Jan 2013.

A big data COVID train wreck
BY ANISH KOKA If there was any doubt the academic research enterprise is completely broken, we have an absolute train wreck of a study in one of the many specialty journals of the Journal of the American Medical Association — JAMA Health. I had no idea the journal even existed until today, but I now know to approach the words printed in this journal to the words printed in supermarket tabloids. You should too! The paper that was brought to my attention is one that purports to examine the deleterious health effects of Long COVID. A sizable group of intellectuals who are still socially distancing and wearing n95s ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 13, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Anish Koka Covid research COVID-19 Long Covid Source Type: blogs

Myocarditis update from Sweden
BY ANISH KOKA The COVID19/vaccine myocarditis debate continues in large part because our public health institutions are grossly mischaracterizing the risks and benefits of vaccines to young people. A snapshot of what the establishment says as it relates to the particular area of concern: college vaccine mandates: Dr. Arthur Reingold, an epidemiology professor at UC-Berkeley, notes that UC also requires immunizations for measles and chickenpox, and people still are dying from COVID at rates that exceed those for influenza. As of Feb. 1, there were more than 400 COVID deaths a day across the U.S. “The arg...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 27, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Medical Practice Anish Koka covid19 myocarditis Sweden Source Type: blogs

COVID-19 myocarditis illusions: A new cardiac MRI study raises questions about the diagnosis
BY ANISH KOKA One of the hallmarks of the last two years has been the distance that frequently exists between published research and reality. I’m a cardiologist, and the first disconnect that became glaringly obvious very quickly was the impact COVID was having on the heart. As I walked through COVID rooms in the Spring of 2020 trying to hold my breath, I waited for a COVID cardiac tsunami. After all social media had been full of videos from Wuhan and Iran of people suddenly dropping in the streets. My hyperventilating colleagues made me hyperventilate. Could it be that Sars-COV2 had some predilection for heart...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 7, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Medical Practice Anish Koka COVID-19 Misinformation myocarditis Vaccine Source Type: blogs

Cardiology update: Should mRNA vaccine myocarditis be a contraindication to future COVID-19 vaccinations ?
BY ANISH KOKA Myopericarditis is a now a well reported complication associated with Sars-Cov-2 (COVID-19) vaccinations. This has been particularly common with the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines (BNT162b2 and mrna-1273), with a particular predilection for young males. Current guidance by the Australian government “technical advisory groups” as well as the Australian Cardiology Society suggest patients who have experienced myocarditis after an mRNA vaccine may consider a non-mRNA vaccine once “symptom free for at least 6 weeks”. A just published report of 2 cases from Australia that document myopericarditi...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 26, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Anish Koka mRNA vaccine myocarditis Source Type: blogs

The college football fans that beat COVID and the experts that couldn ’t
BY ANISH KOKA The COVID pandemic was supposed to herald the end of the idea that a smaller government is a better government. The experts who desperately seek to be in charge of a sprawling bureaucratic state told us that it was only a powerful central authority that could do what was needed to safeguard individual liberties at a time when a highly contagious respiratory virus was spreading across the globe. New Zealand may have imposed draconian policies that did not even allow its own citizens to return, but scenes of cheering unmasked New Zealanders stood in sharp contrast to empty seats in American stadiums when ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - October 12, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy College Football New Zealand Source Type: blogs

Why mandating boosters for college kids is a no good, very bad, dumb idea 
This study reinforced prior research that measured these responses up to 12 months. The stimulation of an immune response after a mild infection can even be demonstrated in the absence of actual seroconversion (detectable prior infection by antibodies) at the level of T-cells. The presence of effective immune memory, both humoral (antibody) and cellular components, after even a mild SARS-CoV-2 infection is no longer a matter of debate. One might be tempted to argue that repeated boosting can permanently suppress infection. Unfortunately, all available evidence suggests that this increased protection from infection is ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 14, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy Anish Koka COVID-19 vaccine Viral Myalgia Source Type: blogs

Pharmacists Can Now Prescribe Paxlovid. Good idea?
BY ANISH KOKA Apparently, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), that has long been charged with the safety and efficacy of drugs and devices now also controls who can prescribe drugs. I was under the mistaken impression that in our highly rule based society you would need to pass a law to allow that to happen. Passing laws , of course, can be a long, messy, process that involves having to convince constituencies, and ruling by executive order is just way more efficient apparently. So by decree of the FDA patients can now get Paxlovid, an anti-viral for the virus that causes COVID19, “directly from...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 22, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Medical Practice Physicians Primary Care COVID-19 FDA Paxlovid Source Type: blogs

Long COVID cardiac studies: More questions than answers.
BY ANISH KOKA The NIH recently announced $1.2 billion dollars in funding for research on Long COVID. This is in part because of a faction of scientists that have mined electronic health record databases to find evidence that the long term impacts of COVID on a variety of different organ systems is significant. I have some concerns when it comes to the cardiac complications discussed related to Long COVID. One of Dr. Al-Aly’s long COVID papers illustrates the issues with using large datasets to differentiate signal from noise. The authors used the US Department of Veterans Affairs national healthcare datab...
Source: The Health Care Blog - August 15, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy cardiac long covid studies NIH Source Type: blogs

Modified Red Blood Cells for COVID-19 Vaccination
Researchers at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada created engineered red blood cells to act as a new COVID-19 vaccine technology. The cell membranes have been studded with the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and in experiments the researchers have cond...
Source: Medgadget - March 15, 2022 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Cardiology Materials Medicine Nanomedicine Source Type: blogs

Vaccine associated myocarditis revisited with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines
When I had reviewed the topic of vaccine associated myocarditis for an editorial in the BMH Medical Journal in 2017, most of the cases were associated with small pox vaccination [1]. There were also reports of streptococcal pneumonia vaccine and influenza vaccine associated myocarditis. Autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA) used in the vaccine were also implicated in some cases [2,3]. While the large scale vaccination for small pox in an attempt to prepare for potential bioterrorism was the association in 2003 [4], COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are currently in the limelight for vaccine induced myocarditis...
Source: Cardiophile MD - July 22, 2021 Category: Cardiology Authors: Prof. Dr. Johnson Francis Tags: Cardiology Source Type: blogs

Correlative Adventures with COVID
By ANISH KOKA “The patient in room 1 should be a quick one, its an addon, they just need a prescription for ivermectin” I’m a bit puzzled by this sentence from my assistant doing his best to help me through a very busy day in the clinic that I’m already behind in. I walk into the room, a script pad stuffed into my hand as I enter the room, to meet a very nice couple.  The wife sits patiently with hands crossed on the exam table.  “So, you’re here for Ivermectin?”, I ask. Why yes, a trip to Texas is planned.. COVID is in the air, the internet, and some important people who have ‘inside ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - March 5, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy Anish Koka COVID vaccine COVID-19 vaccine Ivermectin Source Type: blogs

3 simple steps to jump-start your heart health this year
In 2020, the terrible toll of the COVID-19 pandemic largely overshadowed the affliction that remains the leading cause of death in this country: heart disease. In the United States last year, at least twice as many people died from cardiovascular causes as those who died from complications from SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus. While the challenges from the virus are new, experts have been studying heart disease for decades — and everyone can benefit from that knowledge. “The lifestyle habits that keep your heart healthy may also leave you less vulnerable to serious complications from infections such as COVID-19 and i...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - January 12, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Julie Corliss Tags: Exercise and Fitness Health Healthy Eating Heart Health Source Type: blogs

Extreme shock and cardiac arrest in COVID patient
This is a 30-something healthy patient presented with COVID pneumonia who presented to the ED.  He was moderately hypoxic.  He had the following EKG recorded:Low voltage, suggests effusion.(see Ken ' s discussion of low voltage below)There is a QS-wave in V2.There is minimal, probably normal STE in V2-V6.A bedside cardiac ultrasound was normal, with no effusion. He had troponins ordered, and the first returned at 72 ng/L (Abbott Architect hs cTnI; URL for males = 34 ng/L).  An elevated troponin in a COVID patient confers about 4x the risk of mortality than a normal one.He was admitted on oxygen and was&...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - November 12, 2020 Category: Cardiology Authors: Steve Smith Source Type: blogs

EchoNous KOSMOS 3-in-1 Ultrasound, Electronic Stethoscope, and ECG Helps with COVID-19
EchoNous, a developer of novel ultrasounds, has found a way to leverage multiple critical clinical technologies within a single device. The result is KOSMOS, a handheld 3-in-1 device consisting of an ultrasound, electronic stethoscope, and an ECG, al...
Source: Medgadget - September 21, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Alice Ferng Tags: Cardiology Critical Care Diagnostics Exclusive Informatics Medicine Public Health Source Type: blogs

COVID herd immunity: At hand or forever elusive?
By MICHEL ACCAD, MD With cases of COVID-19 either disappeared or rapidly diminishing from places like Wuhan, Italy, New York, and Sweden, many voices are speculating that herd immunity may have been reached in those areas and that it may be at hand in the remaining parts of the world that are still struggling with the pandemic.  Lockdowns should end—or may not have been needed to begin with, they conclude. Adding plausibility to their speculation is the discovery of biological evidence suggesting that prior exposure to other coronaviruses may confer some degree of immunity against SARS-CoV2, a...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 30, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy immunity MICHEL ACCAD Pandemic Source Type: blogs