UTMB News

  • How Houston hospitals are testing for omicron variant

    The first omicron variant case was confirmed Monday in Harris County, Judge Lina Hidalgo said. UTMB is one of the local hospitals performing genome sequencing in positive cases to identify the type of variant.

  • It doesn't matter which booster you get—just get one

    It’s important everyone get vaccinated and boosted, Drs. Meagan Berman and Richard Rupp wrote in their Vaccine Smarts column. Some may wish to be boosted with a different vaccine, but in the end, it’s just important to get whichever is available.

  • ‘Brain-To-Text’ could help those with disabilities to communicate better

    Even when disease or injury prevents a person from speaking, typing or walking, the brain remembers how to do these things. These memories of doing things are called neural processes. The trick is to tap into the neural processes to regain those functions, Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel wrote in their Medical Discovery News column.

  • Hiring full-time clinical staff a steadily growing trend in U.S. nursing homes

    Prior studies have shown that residents who receive care from full-time clinical staff have fewer avoidable hospitalizations and lower Medicare spending. Full-time providers also are better positioned to evaluate and intervene after a change in clinical status. “This has led some nursing homes to hire full-time nurse practitioners and to pay more for medical directors that are more present in the facility,” said researcher Dr. James S. Goodwin of the Sealy Center on Aging, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “In addition, nursing home residents and their families also prefer providers who are available.”

  • 6 Houston-area inventors named fellows in prestigious program

    The National Academy of Inventors has announced its annual set of NAI Fellows—and six Houstonians made the list of the 164 honorees from 116 research institutions worldwide. One is Pei-Yong Shi, University of Texas Medical Branch professor and John Sealy Distinguished Chair in Innovations in Molecular Biology, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. He's also the vice chair for Innovation and Commercialization.

  • Medical Bridges names Dacso one of its Global Health Heroes

    Dr. Matt Dacso, director of academic partnerships at the University of Texas Medical Branch Center for Global and Community Health, is one of seven people that Medical Bridges recently named Global Health Heroes.

  • Health and wellness with UTMB Health and Houston Moms

    Covid Vaccine and Kids 5+

    Dr. Elizabeth Rodriguez Lien shares what parents need to know about the COVID-19 vaccine and the 5+ population.

  • We get it to help #fightflu/ National Influenza Vaccination Week: December 5-11

    5 Myths About the Flu Vaccine

    This week (Dec. 5-11) is National Influenza Vaccination Week, which is an annual observance to remind everyone six months of age and older to get their annual flu vaccine. We hear many myths about the flu vaccine, and we’re here to bust them.

  • Scientists race to answer the question: Will vaccines protect us against omicron?

    There's hope that a third shot of an mRNA vaccine—a so-called booster—will work better than two shots, says virologist Pei-Yong Shi at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, who works with Pfizer. First off, he says, the third dose doesn't just return your antibody levels to what they were after the second shot. The level is even higher. On top of that, the booster can actually help broaden out your defenses so that you can fight off not just one variant of SARS-CoV-2 but many different versions of it. "The booster increases the level of antibodies that can push back against the variants," Shi says. "So that's another advantage to the booster."

  • Why some researchers think the omicron variant could be the most infectious one yet

    Over the past two weeks, omicron has spread to at least seven of South Africa's nine provinces, quickly overtaking the country's outbreak—and thus, it appears, outcompeting delta, says virologist Pei-Yong Shi of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “Based on the epidemiology data, it seems like the new variant has advantages in transmitting over the previous variants,” Shi said.

  • UTMB Galveston halts vaccine requirement after judge suspends federal mandate

    The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston will not enforce a vaccine requirement for its students and workforce, due to take effect Dec. 6, after a U.S. district judge granted a temporary injunction against a federal vaccine mandate for health care workers, UTMB announced Wednesday.

  • a person washing their hands

    Hand Hygiene 101: Preventing Disease

    National Handwashing Awareness Week (Dec. 1-7) serves as an annual reminder to practice proper hand hygiene to curb the spread of disease.

  • How Omicron Variant Rattled the World in One Week

    The speedy detection and the rapid response of global health authorities shows how the world’s fight against COVID-19 has evolved. Scientists are now focused on finding new variants. In the case of Omicron, one was beginning to spread in South Africa, a nation with the resources to identify it—and the political will to announce it to the world. Experiments using infectious virus or that tease out the effect of individual mutations on its behavior will take more time, but research that looks at the interactions between Omicron’s mutant spike and antibodies should yield some answers on the immune evasion question in as little as a week, said Vineet Menachery, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

  • Coronavirus variants: Here's what we know

    Omicron, the newest coronavirus variant, is also the quickest to be labeled a "variant of concern" by the World Health Organization because of its seemingly fast spread in South Africa and its many troubling mutations. It carries a mutation called N501Y, which gave both Alpha and Gamma their increased transmissibility. Just last week, Scott Weaver of the University of Texas Medical Branch and colleagues reported in the journal Nature that this particular mutation made the virus better at replicating in the upper airway—think in the nose and throat—and likely makes it more likely to spread when people breathe, sneeze and cough.

  • COVID cases stable, but it's 'hard to think' a wave won't come

    Dr. Gulshan Sharma, the chief medical officer at the University of Texas Medical Branch, said the county is in a much better place than it was exactly a year ago, when cases were on the rise, vaccines were yet to be approved and treatments, like monoclonal antibodies, weren’t yet widely available. “I’m cautiously optimistic,” Sharma said.