news 2020

Wales faces a "wave? of mental health problems in the wake of COVID-19, with younger adults, women and people from deprived areas suffering the most, new research has suggested. That is the warning in a study, led by Cardiff University's Professor Robert Snowden and Swansea University's Professor Nicola Gray, which has examined the pandemic's impact on the mental wellbeing of the Welsh population.

A national study in England has revealed the extent of incidents of significant avoidable harm in primary care. Thirteen GPs reviewed case notes of more than 90,000 patients in three regions across England over a 12-month period as part of the study. They found the main causes of avoidable harm were diagnostic error (more than 60%), medication incidents (more than 25%) and delayed referrals (nearly 11%), and that 80% of incidents could have been identified sooner or prevented if action had been taken.

Extensive clinical evaluation from Public Health England and the University of Oxford show Lateral Flow Tests are accurate and sensitive enough to be used in the community, including for asymptomatic people. Lateral Flow Tests are rapid turnaround tests that can process COVID-19 samples on site without the need for laboratory equipment, with most generating results in under half an hour.

People across the Global South living with cardiovascular diseases and their risk factors may be missing potentially life-saving treatments because measures used to gauge their quality of healthcare are inadequate, a new study reveals. Conditions such as diabetes and hypertension, along with their risk factors, are major causes of death and disability, especially in Lowand Middle-income Countries (LMIC).

People with low aerobic and muscular fitness are nearly twice as likely to experience depression, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. Low fitness levels also predicted a 60% greater chance of anxiety, over a seven-year follow-up, according to the findings published in BMC Medicine .

More than two-thirds of patients hospitalised due to COVID-19 continue to suffer from debilitating symptoms more than seven weeks after being discharged, according to a new study co-led by UCL researchers. The study, carried out in collaboration with clinicians at the Royal Free London (RFL) and University College London Hospitals NHS Trust (UCLH), shows that 54 days after discharge, 69% of patients were still experiencing fatigue, 53% were suffering from persistent breathlessness, 34% still had a cough and 15% reported depression.

An international study into the costs and outcomes of informal end of life care has found that in the UK, Ireland and the US, care provided by informal carers, meaning family and friends, accounted for more than half of total care costs in the last three months of life.

Children of the 90s, a health study based at the University of Bristol, has today [10 November] published results from a study testing almost 5,000 participants for COVID-19 antibodies. The results found 4.3 per cent reported a positive result, of which a quarter were asymptomatic and did not report any symptoms in previous questionnaires.

A new study suggests that having COVID-19 increases a person's risk of developing psychiatric disorders, and that having a psychiatric disorder increases the chance of getting COVID-19.

Loneliness is responsible for 18% of depression among people over 50 in England, according to a new study led by UCL researchers. The findings, published in The Lancet Psychiatry , suggest that almost one in five depression cases among older adults could be prevented if loneliness were eliminated. The researchers found that people's subjective experiences of loneliness contributed to depression up to 12 years later, independent of more objective measures of social isolation.

Scientists at UCL have invented a new experimental drug that aims to harness the full power of the immune system, launching a two-pronged response against cancer. The pioneering study in mice has been co-funded by Cancer Research UK. The innovative immunotherapy drug, developed by researchers at UCL Cancer Institute, targets suppressive 'regulatory' immune cells inside a tumour.

A major new study examining the relative safety of medicines for the treatment of gout will be presented at the American College of Rheumatology Convergence conference and will be published in The Lancet. The FAST Study finds no increased risk of cardiovascular events with febuxostat as compared with allopurinol.

Primary care networks need to increase the engagement of GP practices and wider primary care teams, and strengthen their leadership and management, to become firmly established to meet the challenges ahead, says a new study by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) BRACE Rapid Evaluation Centre undertaken by researchers at the University of Birmingham and RAND Europe.

People who experience strokes while infected with COVID-19 appear to be left with greater disability after the stroke, according a study led by UCL and UCLH researchers. Having COVID-19 at stroke onset was also associated with more than double the mortality rate of other stroke patients, according to the findings published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry .

Some antibodies created by the immune system during infection with common cold coronaviruses can also target and provide a degree of protection against COVID-19, finds new research by scientists at UCL and the Francis Crick Institute. In response to infection with a virus, the immune system creates antibodies to help fight it.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with Justus-Liebig University, Germany, have uncovered how the genome of SARS-CoV-2 - the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 - uses genome origami to infect and replicate successfully inside host cells. This could inform the development of effective drugs that target specific parts of the virus genome, in the fight against COVID-19.

Many of us rely on public transport to get to work, school, and to meet friends and family. But in the time of Covid-19, Dr Lena Ciric (UCL Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering) asks: is it safe to use these vehicles and is there a difference between them? Transport has contributed to the spread of coronavirus - locally, regionally and internationally.

Brain cells called astrocytes play a vital role in preventing acidification of the brain, according to a new study in mice led by UCL researchers. The researchers hope their findings, published , could help further understanding of several common brain diseases that involve disturbances of pH balance, such as stroke and epilepsy, and may support research into the development of new treatment options.

Scientists have used gene therapy to regenerate damaged nerve fibres in the eye, in a discovery that could aid the development of new treatments for glaucoma, one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide. It's possible our treatment could be further developed as a way of protecting retinal neurons from death, as well as stimulating their axons to regrow Veselina Petrova Axons - nerve fibres - in the adult central nervous system (CNS) do not normally regenerate after injury and disease, meaning that damage is often irreversible.

A new study suggests that it is possible to design drugs that can target a type of shape-shifting protein involved in Alzheimer's disease, which was previously thought to be undruggable. We hope that we can extend this understanding to also target disordered proteins involved in other diseases Gabriella Heller A team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, have identified a new mechanism of targeting amyloid-beta, a protein fragment that clumps together and kills healthy brain cells in people with Alzheimer's disease.