The Texas Department of State Health Services recently recognized the University of Texas Medical Branch’s League City campus as a Level III trauma facility. “Our hospital continues to provide higher levels of care as it continues to grow,” administrator Christine Wade said. “We are proud to be the first trauma center to serve League City.”

League City registered nurse Nori Head is heading in new directions after retiring from her position as the nursing program manager and senior research nurse coordinator in the neuropathology and infectious disease division at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. She's acting in plays in local community theaters and working part-time as a nurse with a vaccine research group.

People with immunocompromising conditions might be unsure whether their COVID-19 vaccinations will protect them from severe disease. Many may also be unaware aware there’s now a treatment, Evusheld, that can protect and allow them to lead more normal lives. Drs. Meagan Berman and Richard Rupp explain in the latest Vaccine Smarts column.

“Now for the first time, artificial intelligence was used in conjunction with the standard colonoscopy to reduce the rate at which polyps are missed by nearly a third,” write Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel in the latest Medical Discovery News column.

Among older adults, such memory concerns represent a daily complaint in the primary care setting. Most patients fear that the slightest forgetfulness predicts progressive senility, dementia or even Alzheimer’s Disease. Drs. Victor S. Sierpina and Michelle Sierpina write that forgetting things once in a while can be healthy.

Pei-Yong Shi, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said omicron is really unique because it has an incredible ability to change or evolve in a way that allows it to just zoom past the immune system, and it does this very quickly. “In terms of the ability to evade antibodies, omicron is a master player,” Shi said. “It’s way more efficient than all the previous variants. Like, in this case, sometimes you just need one key mutation there that can totally flip things around.” But Shi emphasized that there's no sign this new variant causes more severe disease compared to the previous omicrons.

A Canadian researcher points to work led by Dr. Vineet Menachery at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston on the virus's nucleocapsid protein, which in animal models is a control on severity. There could be mutations happening outside of the spike protein, where the majority of mutations occur, that we have no idea what the functional consequences would be. That could make the virus potentially more transmissible, more infectious or more pathogenic. And that's really scary to think about.

A study published May 4 in The BMJ found substantial differences in care for heart attack patients across six high-income countries despite international agreement on how heart attacks should be treated. “From a U.S. perspective, our heart attack care is good, but the one-year mortality rate is concerning,” said Dr. Peter Cram, professor and chair of internal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Center at Galveston, who is one of the authors of the study. “If dying is one of the things we want to prevent, then we have work to do.” Physician’s Weekly and others also reported on the comparative study.