Week in Review: September 2

By Samantha Rossi • September 2, 2022

Share this:

The Week in Review provides an overview of the past week’s top health care content, including industry news and trends, Mayo Clinic and Mayo Clinic Laboratories news, and upcoming events.

Industry News

Texas reports death tied to monkeypox, a first in the U.S.

Texas health officials on Tuesday reported the death of a person with monkeypox — what appears to be the first fatal case in the United States during the unprecedented global outbreak of the virus. The unidentified person was a resident of Harris County, which is home to Houston, and was “severely immunocompromised,” according to the state health department. The agency released few other details — including the person’s sex and age — but said it was an adult. Harris County authorities said the person had “various severe illnesses” and died Sunday at a hospital in the county. Source: STAT

Read article.

As the BA.5 variant spreads, the risk of coronavirus reinfection grows

The latest omicron offshoot, BA.5, has quickly become dominant in the United States, and thanks to its elusiveness when encountering the human immune system, is driving a wave of cases across the country. The size of that wave is unclear because most people are testing at home or not testing at all. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the past week has reported a little more than 100,000 new cases a day on average. But infectious-disease experts know that wildly underestimates the true number, which may be as many as a million, said Eric Topol, a professor at Scripps Research who closely tracks pandemic trends. Antibodies from vaccines and previous coronavirus infections offer limited protection against BA.5, leading Topol to call it “the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.” Source: Washington Post

Read article.

Twitter’s medical information problem

Many people get medical information from social media, particularly since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and last week Twitter acknowledged that its efforts to prevent the spread of misinformation have sometimes gone wrong. Source: Axios

Read article.

Mayo Clinic News

Mayo Clinic working to commercialize molecular analyzer technology

Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic has entered into a know-how license agreement and stock purchase agreement with tech company Genomadix. As part of the agreement, Mayo Clinic will help the company advance its point of care molecular analyzer technology dubbed the Genomadix Cube, according to an Aug. 29 press release. The Genomadix Cube uses polymerase chain reaction technology in a portable footprint to generate timely test results. Source: Becker's Hospital Review

Read article.

Putting patients' needs at the heart of a care model

Before becoming executive director for Mayo Clinic Asia-Pacific, Royston Lek had been involved in work around direct patient care. He was a former COO of an integrated healthcare services company in China and the managing director in Singapore for a similar company that operates across Asia…Mayo Clinic, a non-profit organisation, is driven by its core foundation of putting the needs of patients first.  Through partnerships, it shares its values, knowledge and expertise across its three “shields” – education, research, and practice – to help elevate care to patients. Right now, it is building the Mayo Clinic Care Network, an integrated global health care network that enables care locally while providing access to its resources and skills to care for patients with serious or complex conditions. Source: Healthcare IT News

Read article.

Mayo Clinic expert provides tips for reducing dementia risk

More than 55 million people worldwide are believed to be living with dementia, according to the World Health Organization. Ronald Petersen, M.D., a neurologist and director of Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, says you can’t prevent dementia, but you can reduce your risk. Source: South Florida Reporter

Read article.

Samantha Rossi

Samantha Rossi is a Digital Marketing Manager at Mayo Clinic Laboratories. She supports marketing strategies for product management and specialty testing. Samantha has worked at Mayo Clinic since 2019.