News by Subject Medicine & Health

Patients with a type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma had a widely variable response to COVID-19 vaccines--in some cases, no detectable response--pointing to the need for antibody testing and precautions for these patients after vaccination, according to a study published in Cancer Cell in June.

A gene variant that lowers white blood cell levels and is common in individuals with African ancestry contributes to unnecessary bone marrow biopsies, according to a study published June 28 in JAMA Internal Medicine. The findings from three institutions, led by investigators at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, provide an example of how using genetic data could reduce a health disparity.

Final results from a study of a blood test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer have shown that it is accurate enough to be rolled out as a multi-cancer screening test among people at higher risk of the disease, including patients aged 50 years or older, without symptoms. In a paper published in the leading cancer journal Annals of Oncology, researchers report that the test accurately detected cancer, often before any symptoms arose, while having a very low false positive rate.

What The Study Did: Researchers evaluated the association of convalescent plasma treatment with 30-day mortality in hospitalized adults with hematologic (blood) cancers and COVID-19.

Immune cells that normally repair tissues in the body can be fooled by tumors when cancer starts forming in the lungs and instead help the tumor become invasive, according to a surprising discovery reported by Mount Sinai scientists in Nature in June.

Scientists have identified how and why some Covid-19 patients can develop life-threatening clots, which could lead to targeted therapies that prevent this from happening.

Sickle cell disease leads to chronic pain, organ failure, and early death in patients worldwide. A team led by Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has demonstrated a gene editing approach that efficiently corrects the mutation underlying SCD in patient blood stem cells and in mice. This treatment rescued disease symptoms in animal models, enabling long-lasting production of healthy blood cells, and could inspire a therapeutic strategy for SCD.

Story tips from Johns Hopkins experts on COVID-19