Latest Clinical & Research News
Several cardiovascular complications have been associated with COVID-19, according to a recent multicenter, observational cohort study conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) each affect millions of people in the United States. So it’s not unexpected that a subset of patients would have both lung conditions. Yet surprisingly, little is known about the science of what’s called asthma-COPD overlap, or ACO. Experts at Brigham and Women’s Hospital are focused on changing that.
A recent study found that giving early-stage, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients immunotherapy in combination with traditional chemotherapy prior to surgery results in higher rates of elimination of their tumors. The study’s results were published in The Lancet and presented at the 2020 Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology in September.
For many men diagnosed with early-stage, localized prostate cancer, external-beam radiation therapy offers the best chance of a cure. But this form of treatment is not without side effects. Furthermore, the number of scheduled treatments—as many as 44 over nine weeks—can be a major inconvenience that can adversely affect overall quality of life during treatment.
In the summer of 2019, Paul Pezzote, 67, learned he had Stage 4 cancer. Pezzote, who has Parkinson’s disease, had undergone treatments in 2010 at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center (DF/BWCC). However, the cancer had returned and spread.
In March of 2020, Brigham and Women’s Hospital purchased four additional extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machines to prepare for a possible surge of COVID-19. It wasn’t yet clear if ECMO could support critically ill COVID-19 patients, but early reports from China had shown promise.
A late-stage clinical trial is now underway at Brigham and Women’s Hospital to test a vaccine candidate for preventing COVID-19. The Brigham is the only hospital in New England to serve as a clinical research site in the phase 3 COVE study. The study is designed to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine, mRNA-1273, and its ability to prevent COVID-19 illness.
At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine have a long history of caring for patients with complex health conditions that affect pregnant women, including placenta accreta and heart disease.
The COVID-19 pandemic has uniquely affected outpatient prenatal care, which depends on frequent assessment of a pregnant mother and her fetus. At the start of the pandemic, the outpatient prenatal care program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital increased the use of virtual visits, allowing patients to regularly meet with their providers safely.
Investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital led the first study that offers national data on the factors that may increase the risk of complications or death in critically ill COVID-19 patients. David E. Leaf, MD, MMSc and Shruti Gupta, MD, MPH, physicians in the Brigham’s Division of Renal Medicine, led a team of more than 300 investigators from over 65 hospitals across the U.S. to examine the demographics, comorbidities, organ dysfunction, treatment and outcomes of patients with COVID-19 admitted to intensive care units (ICUs). Read More