Important news about Paps and 💩

Here are a few recent articles that I found important, interesting, or funny.

But first…

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Édouard Manet, Reclining Young Woman in Spanish Costume (Yale Art Gallery)

Holiday humor…

To snooze, schmooze, peruse, booze, or learn new views: a rejected Christmas Issue research study. “Self-reported conference behavior including frequency of falling asleep (snoozing), interacting with other attendees (schmoozing), and multi-tasking (perusing) during presentations, as well as drinking (boozing) at the conference.” (Preprint, 2022)

Discontinuing screening, one of the trickiest medical interventions…

Why Many Older Women Are Getting Pap Tests They Don’t Need. “All screening involves harms as well as benefits.” (New York Times, 12/18/22)

Fecal transplants: hype vs reality…

Effectiveness of Fecal Microbiota Transplantation for Weight Loss in Patients With Obesity Undergoing Bariatric Surgery. “In this study, fecal microbiota transplantation did not reduce the body weight of patients undergoing bariatric surgery.” (JAMA Network Open, 2022)

More evidence of changes in other infections during the pandemic…

Sustained reductions in life-threatening invasive bacterial diseases during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic: analyses of prospective surveillance data from 30 countries participating in the IRIS Consortium. “COVID-19 containment measures were associated with a sustained decrease in the incidence of invasive disease caused by S pneumoniae, H influenzae and N meningitidis during the first two years of the pandemic, but cases began to increase in some countries as pandemic restrictions were lifted.” (Preprint, 2022)

An important randomized trial…

Higher dose corticosteroids in hospitalised COVID-19 patients with hypoxia but not requiring ventilatory support (RECOVERY): a randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial. The UK RECOVERY trial showed us that low-dose steroids help many patients with severe COVID. The latest results from this group show that high-dose steroids can actually harm some patients. (Preprint, 2022)