Delayed Treatments For Heart Conditions, Cancer During The Pandemic Worry Medical Experts – Kaiser Health News

Stay-at-home orders and safety concerns kept many people from seeking medical treatment during the past few months. Doctors voice particular concern for those with cardiac disease. And cancer patients and caretakers share the ways they had to adapt to continue their medical care. Developments related to potential cancer, alcoholism and Parkinsons disease treatments is also in the news today.

WBUR: Fear Of COVID-19 Kept Heart Attack Patients From Seeking Help. Doctors Fear It Cost Lives Heart attacks and other medical emergencies had not mysteriously disappeared, however. Doctors in Massachusetts and around the world believe that many patients were fearful they would contract the coronavirus at a doctors office or hospital, so they waited to seek care. For some patients with cardiac disease, that led to more severe complications and in some cases,doctors fear, evendeath. (Chen, 6/24)

Kaiser Health News: Fearing The Deadly Combo Of COVID-19 And Cancer Three Tuesdays each month, Katherine OBrien straps on her face mask and journeys about half an hour by Metra rail to Northwestern Universitys Lurie Cancer Center. What were once packed train cars rolling into Chicago are now eerily empty, as those usually commuting to towering skyscrapers weather the pandemic from home. But for OBrien, the excursion is mandatory. Shes one of millions of Americans battling cancer and depends on chemotherapy to treat the breast cancer that has spread to her bones and liver. (Norman, 6/25)

Stat: Engineering An Immunotherapy To Outwit Cancer And Launch A Biotech Tweaking an immune protein called interleukin-18 can overcome tumors that lure it into binding with a decoy receptor protein and render it harmless to cancer cells, new research in mice shows. In conjunction with the paper, published Wednesday in Nature, a company founded by senior author Aaron Ring announced $25 million in initial financing to create and commercialize a drug based on the discovery. (Cooney, 6/24)

Stat: A Pill To Fight Alcoholism Causes An Uproar In France Two years ago, French regulators made a surprising decision, overruling one of their own expert committees to approve a controversial drug for combating alcoholism. But the move has triggered an increasingly heated debate over a key clinical trial, which critics argue raises troubling questions about transparency, as well as the extent to which patient groups may have influenced the regulator. (Silverman, 6/25)

Stat: A Preliminary Method Could Restore The Brain Cells Parkinson's Patients Lost Researchers developed a new method for transforming brain cells that can completely eliminate Parkinsons disease in mice, though experts caution the potential treatment is still a long way from the clinic. The new method, which was detailed Wednesday in Nature, helps replace some of the brain cells that have disappeared in people with Parkinsons disease. It is the loss of those brain cells specifically, dopamine neurons that causes the severe motor symptoms associated with the condition, like tremors, speech changes, and slow movement. (Ortolano, 6/24)

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Delayed Treatments For Heart Conditions, Cancer During The Pandemic Worry Medical Experts - Kaiser Health News