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TUESDAY, May 17, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Dogs' ultra-sensitive noses can detect illegal drugs and even cancer, and a new study suggests they may also be able to sniff out COVID-19 in airline passengers.Not only that, these trained canines can do so with an accuracy comparable to a PCR nose and throat swab test, the researchers noted."Our preliminary observations suggest that dogs primed with one virus type can in a few hours be retrained to detect its variants," Anu Kantele and colleagues reported in the May 16 issue of the journal BMJ Global Health. Kantele is a professor of infectious diseases at Helsinki University Hospital and Faculty of Medicine, Finland.Dogs have a superb sense of smell. They can detect a scent at levels as low as one part per trillion, far surpassing any...

TUESDAY, May 17, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Estrogen loss during menopause may worsen women's pain from a jaw disorder, a new study warns. Temporomandibular disorder (TMD) causes pain in the jaw joint and affects an estimated 4.8% of U.S. adults, or about 12 million people. Some estimates suggest that as many as 15% of U.S. adults have at least one symptom of TMD, which is the second most common type of musculoskeletal pain, after low back pain. Women are two times more likely than men to have TMD, which has led some experts to suggest that hormone changes play a role in the disorder. There is limited research on TMD during menopause, but a 2018 study found that TMD was more common and severe in premenopausal than postmenopausal women. In this new study, researchers in Brazil evaluated...

MONDAY, May 16, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Immunotherapy with nivolumab (Opdivo) after surgery for metastatic bladder cancer significantly reduces the odds for the tumor's return, a new clinical trial finds.Among 700 patients with urothelial cancer of the bladder or other parts of urinary tract that had spread to muscle, those treated with Opdivo were 30% less likely to have a recurrence over 11 months, compared with those who received a placebo, the phase 3 clinical trial found."This is the first immunotherapy to demonstrate a significant improvement in disease-free survival in patients with urothelial cancer — bladder cancer or urothelial cancer at other locations in the urinary tract," said researcher Dr. Matthew Galsky. He is director of genitourinary medical oncology at the Mount...

MONDAY, May 16, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- As the United States mourns one million deaths from COVID-19, a new study indicates the grim tally could have been worse. Use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine prevented more than 110,000 deaths and 690,000 hospitalizations in the United States in 2021, researchers report.The vaccine also prevented 8.7 million symptomatic cases of infection and saved more than $30 billion in health care costs and more than $40 billion in lost productivity, the study authors noted."The analyses show that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine contributed substantial public health impact in the U.S. in 2021, and had a deep effect on the trajectory of the pandemic," said Manuela Di Fusco, of Pfizer's health economics and outcomes research team.The Pfizer...