3rd International Conference on Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Infections and AIDS

Stem-cell transplantation  is an effective form of therapy to fight leukemia. In many cases, however, the transferred immune cells of the donor also attack the recipients' healthy tissue - often with fatal consequences. Researchers at the University of Zurich have now identified a molecule that plays a key role in this process. Blocking this molecule could significantly improve the outcome of patients receiving stem-cell transplants. Stem-cell therapy offers people suffering from leukemia or bone-marrow cancer the chance of full recovery. This requires eliminating the affected cells using chemo or  radiation therapy  and then replacing them with the blood stem cells from a healthy donor. The donor cells not only produce new blood cells, but also attack the other cancer cells in the patient's body and prevent them from suffering a relapse. However, this form of therapy is not without its risks: In 30% to 60% of cases, the donor cells also attack the...

Cases of endocarditis - infection of the heart valves - have risen dramatically in recent years as a result of the opioid crisis. In London, Ontario 55 per cent of people who experience heart valve infections are injection drug users. They are particularly vulnerable to the disease and a third die as a result. In an effort to improve outcomes, researchers at Lawson Health Research Institute and Western University are studying which clinical factors are associated with improved survival in this patient population. In a new study, they showed that both surgery and in-hospital addictions counseling are linked to significantly reduced mortality in injection drug users with first-episode endocarditis. Surgery was associated with a 56 per cent reduction in mortality, while in-hospital addictions counseling was associated with a 72 per cent reduction. The project was a retrospective cohort study that examined anonymous patient data from 2007 to 2016 at London Health Sciences Cent...

Researchers say knowledge of patient's sexual orientation and gender identity is important for every provider, even sub specialists University of Minnesota researchers recently published an opinion piece in  JAMA ( Journal of the American Medical Association )  Dermatology  focused on standardizing collection of sexual orientation and gender identity in dermatology clinical settings. This is one of the first published articles that advocates for standardizing SOGI ( S exual Orientation and Gender Identity ) , or sexual orientation and gender identity, data collection in a sub specialty clinical setting (i.e. outside of primary care settings such as general internal medicine, family medicine, or pediatrics). "These data collection efforts acknowledge the fact that a patient's many identities are really important to all providers because they empower physicians and other healthcare staff to provide higher quality care that is both evidence-based and cultur...