Medical News Bulletin - Daily Medical News, Health News, Clinical Trials And Clinical Research, Medical Technology, Fitness And Nutrition News–In One Place

How did the virus that causes COVID-19 get from bats to people so easily? What is it about some viruses, like Ebola, coronaviruses and influenza, that helps them adapt to a human host and spread fast? Scientists say they have figured out an evolutionary adaptation that may have helped the SARS-CoV-2 virus quietly switch from […]

The post Scientists might have figured out why some viruses jump so easily from bats to humans appeared first on Medical News Bulletin.

PHOENIX — David L. Parker, OD, an optometric practice owner and former state senator in Mississippi, was named optometrist of the year at Optometry’s Meeting.
Other winners of AOA Excellence Awards included Douglas Morrow, OD, who received the Distinguished Service Award, and the nonprofit group iSee Ohio, which received the Apollo Award for distinguished service to the visual welfare of the public.
Parker told Healio he was “deeply honored” to be named optometrist of the year. He is the owner of Olive Branch Eyecare and Horn Lake Eyecare in Mississippi and served as a Mississippi state senator

The FDA has expanded the approval of Merck’s 21-valent pneumococcal vaccine to include children at increased risk for pneumococcal disease, the drug maker announced Thursday.
Capvaxive (PCV21), which was initially approved for adults in 2024, is now also approved for children and teens aged 2 through 17 years who have completed a primary pediatric pneumococcal vaccine series but remain at increased risk for pneumococcal disease due to a chronic medical condition, Merck said.
It is the first pneumococcal vaccine specifically indicated for this population, Merck noted in a press release

WASHINGTON — Cyclodialysis performed with modern ab interno approaches should not be discounted as a treatment option for glaucoma, according to a speaker.
“The original surgery was abandoned when trabeculectomy and glaucoma drainage devices came in, in part because the results were not always predictable,” Robert L. Stamper, MD, ABO, told Healio at the American Society of Cataract and Refractive surgery meeting. “But with newer techniques — perhaps going from ab interno using structures or materials to keep the cyclodialysis cleft open — I think we may be able to get more reproducible

Guideline-concordant surveillance imaging has a significant association with improved survival for patients with non-small cell lung cancer, but specialties do not appear to provide survivorship care equally, study results showed.
Patients who received follow-up care from medical oncologists had a 42% higher likelihood of receiving guideline-recommended chest CT 120 to 270 days after the conclusion of definitive treatment. Radiation oncologists, surgical teams and primary care frequently chose other imaging, including X-ray and PET-CT, and had higher rates of not imaging at all.
Overall,

PHOENIX — Patients diagnosed with retinal venous malformations should always undergo additional imaging to rule out microvascular or cerebral changes, according to a poster here.
“Retinal venous malformations are an abnormal vessel, typically a vein, which crosses the horizontal raphe and passes through the macula,” Brittney Brady, OD, FAAO, associate professor at Illinois College of Optometry, told Healio. “While considered benign and likely underreported, vision loss secondary to retinal venous malformations may occur. ... More importantly, patients with retinal venous malformations have a

PHOENIX — Infuse for Astigmatism lenses were comfortable and provided consistently clear vision throughout the day in patients who had dryness with their habitual lenses, according to a study presented at Optometry’s Meeting.
“Astigmatism patients have traditionally been the ones who are most cognizant of their lenses, the reason being that the lenses are typically larger, and they typically need to be balanced on the eye,” Mile Brujic, OD, FAAO, who practices at Premier Vision Group in Ohio and is a consultant for Bausch + Lomb, told Healio. “So, Bausch + Lomb essentially said, ‘All right,

PHOENIX — Overhead and non-overhead athletes who underwent Bankart repair experienced similar recurrence and return to sport rates as well as patient-reported outcomes, according to results presented here.
“Studies like this are important in how surgeons counsel their patients. What we showed here is that, if you are an overhead athlete, you can expect a favorable chance of returning to sport and a slightly lower chance of returning to sport at the same level, but not different than if you were a non-overhead athlete,” Ryan Gilbert, BA, of the department of orthopedic surgery at the University

A new rule will dramatically change how medical students can pay for their education, according to an expert.
On May 1, the U.S. Department of Education released the Reimagining and Improving Student Education-Federal Student Loan Program Final Regulations (RISE) rule, which goes into effect July 1. The regulations for federal student loan programs will implement statutory changes included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed last July. Those changes include phasing out the Graduate PLUS program and establishing new loan limits for professional students, graduate students and

Two new reports showed that even small amounts of alcohol daily raise the risk for death and a dozen other adverse health outcomes.
And while one analysis suggested that lower alcohol intake potentially reduced the risks for diseases like diabetes, the strength of these associations — which were reversed at higher levels of consumption — were small.
The findings expand evidence on the health effects of alcohol consumption, which remains divisive as recent reports from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and an HHS committee clashed on whether low amounts of