Dr. Vincent S. Sierpina wrote about the lack of black men entering medical school. While 33 percent of our U.S. population come from under-represented minority groups, only 7.7 percent of full-time medical school faculty come from these groups. “This is a shocking mismatch of future physicians to serve a population that looks like them with the same cultural roots, especially in a state like Texas where around 50 percent of our population is now non-white,” Sierpina wrote.

Comirnaty, better known as the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for children ages 5 through 11. Many parents have been waiting for this as they wish to protect their children from COVID-19. Drs. Megan Berman and Richard Rupp answer common questions they hear from parents.

Ground-breaking research from Heriot-Watt University and the University of Texas Medical Branch is set to be commercialized following a funding award from Scottish Enterprise’s High Growth Spinout Programme. The new research has identified a way of targeting an enzyme called EPAC1, which is involved in the inflammation process and is responsible for many of the most serious yet common chronic diseases.

While a reduction in the number of infections is good news, scientists and doctors are beginning to understand the chronic illness that lingers after COVID infection, called long-haul syndrome. Long-haul patients were infected and appeared to recover, but then chronic symptoms began and remained months after the infection. Extreme fatigue and debilitating brain fog are common symptoms, write Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel of UTMB.

For months, Pearland realtor Gerald Hatter anxiously waitied on news that her 11-year-old daughter Bella Hatter would be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine. On Wednesday, one day after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for emergency use for children ages 5-11, Bella received her first dose. She is one of 2.9 million children in that younger age group now eligible for the vaccine in Texas. In Galveston, UTMB opened its system for appointments Wednesday afternoon. Within 24 hours, 575 appointments had been scheduled, Jenny Lanier, UTMB’s director of ambulatory operations said. UTMB has as many as 6,000 of the pediatric vaccines available this week, Lanier said, with more coming.

About 54,000 Galveston County children are younger than age 12 and were ineligible to receive vaccines before the approval. Most now can be inoculated, although studies are still being conducted on the vaccines for children younger than age 5. UTMB, the largest health care provider in the county, said it would begin administering vaccines to younger children.

The complex relationship between environmental stressors, extracellular vesicles (EVs), and adverse health outcomes was the focus of an NIEHS workshop held Sept. 27-28. Experts discussing the topic included Dr. Ramkumar Menon, from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, who described his work analyzing exosomes in the context of premature birth. He used an organ-on-chip device that mimics human biological interactions between fetus and mother. Menon showed that fetal exosomes shuttling the protein HMGBI functioned as a signal to trigger early labor.

The radio program explored the appeal of scary movies and the psychology of fear with Dr. Jeff Temple, psychologist and director of the Center for Violence Prevention at UTMB.

Media outlet Newsmax had no choice on Tuesday but to issue two statements that COVID vaccinations are safe and do not contain luciferase after a now-deleted tweet from the company’s White House correspondent. The enzyme is not in the vaccination, but researchers have used luciferase for bioluminescence tracking to study COVID. In July 2020, a report stated that scientists at UTMB were using luciferase to “develop faster and more accurate diagnostic tests for COVID-19 as well as to analyze potential therapies and gain a clearer understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself.”

The National Institutes of Health has launched a study looking at the long-term effects of COVID-19 in pregnancy. Researchers will recruit 1,500 pregnant patients with COVID-19 and their children and follow them for four years. A recent study from UTMB found babies born to symptomatic mothers were more likely to need respiratory support or be admitted to neonatal intensive care units.