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THURSDAY, Oct. 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Despite a potential looming "twindemic" of influenza and COVID-19, about 2 in 5 U.S. adults do not plan to get a flu shot, a new survey shows. Only 59% of adults surveyed said they will get the influenza vaccine during the 2020-2021 flu season, according to results released Thursday by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. That's up slightly from the 52% who planned to get a flu shot in 2019, but nowhere near enough to stave off the potential for overlapping flu and COVID-19 epidemics, said Dr. William Schaffner, the NFID's medical director. "We in the infectious disease community have been talking about a potentially 'double-barreled' respiratory virus season, when flu and COVID-19 converge," Schaffner said. "There's a real risk...

THURSDAY, Oct. 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Doctors stress that it's a very rare occurrence, but one woman's pre-surgery COVID-19 nasal swab test appears to have triggered a release of cerebrospinal fluid into her upper nasal cavities. The incident was tied to a tiny gap in the bones of the woman's skull -- an encephalocele. "The [COVID-19 test] swab itself did not result in a violation of the bony skull base, but rather the invasive test caused trauma to the patient's preexisting encephalocele," reported a team led by Dr. Jarrett Walsh. He's with the department of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, in Iowa City. As the researchers explained, millions of people worldwide are enduring the discomfort of nasal swab tests for SARS-CoV-2...

THURSDAY, Oct. 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- A newly approved drug for the leading form of the number one cancer killer, lung cancer, does improve patient survival, a new study confirms. The immunotherapy drug Tecentriq (atezolizumab) was approved earlier this year by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat patients with newly diagnosed non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLC), which comprise up to 85% of all lung tumors. Tecentriq targets a protein known as PD-L1 that lies on the surface of tumor cells. Normally, this protein signals the body's immune system T cells not to attack. However, by targeting PD-L1, Tecentriq unleashes the body's natural T cells to target and destroy these cancer cells, researchers at Yale Cancer Center explained. Tecentriq "has already shown excellent...

THURSDAY, Oct. 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Delivering by cesarean section deprives babies from receiving mom's beneficial bacteria during the journey through the birth canal. Now researchers are studying an innovative way to counter that: Feeding newborns breast milk fortified with their mother's poop. There is, indeed, a yuck factor, the scientists acknowledge. But they also stress that the tactic, still under study, is done through a carefully controlled, hygienic process. And mothers seem to be all for it. The research, described in the Oct. 1 issue of Cell, is part of a growing interest in the microbiome -- the vast collection of bacteria and other microbes that naturally dwell in and on the body. Studies in recent years have been revealing just how important those bugs are to...