How does pressure on health services during the Corona pandemic threaten to delay diagnosis and treatment?
And how does a Spanish recoverer from Corona work to restore her sense of smell?
Will the patches soon allow vaccination against Covid-19?
We start with the first question, as a report by writer Marc Gozlan - published by the French newspaper "Le Monde" - revealed the story of a 61-year-old woman who was suffering from swelling in her navel, whose diagnosis was delayed, and it turned out to be cancer, and she died after only one month of treatment. chemist.
This swelling specialists call "Sister Mary Joseph nodule", and the clinical condition of this patient continued to deteriorate for 8 months.
On examination, it was found that this umbilical swelling is accompanied by ulceration and flatulence in the abdomen.
Ultrasound of the abdomen and pelvis revealed a cystic mass in the right ovary, abnormal thickening of the area below the navel, and fat leakage around the stomach.
A blood test showed an increase in tumor markers, and an ovarian biopsy showed the presence of metastatic cells.
At this stage, it is not yet known the location of the primary tumor from which the cancer cells have moved into the ovary, and the biopsy taken from the umbilical node has proven that the cancer cells come from the stomach, and indeed the gastroscopy showed the presence of a malignant tumor.
This patient suffered from stomach cancer with cancer metastases in the umbilicus and ovary.
She died just one month after chemotherapy, and her condition was reported last August in the journal Radiology Case Reports.
Inaccurate medical diagnosis
This woman has suffered from great discomfort since the Covid-19 epidemic, has remained isolated by herself in her home, and has not ventured out for more than 8 months, and ended up being examined by a psychiatrist for her deteriorating mental state and the possibility of developing a psychosomatic illness.
It was noted that she had a swelling in the navel associated with liquid secretions with an unpleasant odor.
During a series of remote doctor consultations, the supervising doctors attributed the damage to an infection or an umbilical hernia, so the patient did not visit the doctor's office in person, and this woman was not referred to the emergency room until 12 weeks later.
The authors of the report denounced the delayed diagnosis of this elderly patient, noting that “in light of this pressure on health care services due to Covid-19, the result has been a proportionate increase in telemedicine at the expense of direct consultations, and today the danger lies in the inability to see patients directly.”
According to a study published in the Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, patients with Sister Mary Joseph's node had a number of clinical symptoms consistent with intra-abdominal cancer, including:
Epigastric pain, which is pain in the upper abdomen.
flatulence;
Weight loss.
nausea;
Ascites (fluid accumulation in the abdomen).
Rectal bleeding.
How does a Spanish recovering from Corona work to restore her sense of smell?
Cristina Valdivia also contracted COVID-19 in March 2020, losing her sense of smell for 3 months before recovering, but badly.
The 47-year-old resident of Barcelona explains;
"I started to smell everything burning, as if my nose was on a frying pan," according to a report in Agence France-Presse.
After months of pain and consultations with many specialists, Cristina knocked on the door of the Clinic Hospital in Barcelona, where she was diagnosed with what is known as parosmia, a distorted perception of smell.
The good news is that misidentification of odors often occurs in recovering patients.
But to make sure she gets her sense of smell back, Christina sticks her nose twice a day into 6 different scent boxes, sniffing the contents of each one to rejuvenate her olfactory abilities.
Some scents, such as citrus, are imposing themselves, while others remain unapproachable.
"With coffee it's awful, it smells like a mixture of gasoline and something rotten," she said.
Despite the lack of attention to the sense of smell compared to other senses, smells - or rather their absence - complicates life more than thought.
Christina has not yet been able to get her son's scent back, and with other people it's even worse.
"I hug my mother-in-law and I smell bad smells," she says. "It's hard to deal with all of that."
The sense of smell "allows us to smell what we eat and drink, and to communicate with the outside world," explains Joachim Mullol, director of the department of olfactory medicine at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona.
He points out that smelling “allows us to monitor potentially dangerous things, such as gas leaks and spoiled food, and when a person is deprived of it, he is cut off from the world.” He spoke of patients suffering from depression or sudden weight loss.
Will the patches soon allow vaccination against Covid-19?
A study conducted on mice, and its results were published on Friday in the journal Science Advances, revealed promising results for the use of plasters to deliver a corona vaccine to the body.
The scientists used a square plastic sticker that extends one centimeter in length and width, and on its surface more than 5,000 pointed heads "too small to be seen," according to epidemiologist David Mueller, who participated in this study conducted by the University of Queensland in Australia, to the agency. French press.
These heads are covered with the vaccine, which is transmitted to the skin when the patch is applied.
The scientists used a vaccine that does not contain a complete virus, but rather one of its own proteins, known as skeletal proteins.
Mice were inoculated with plasters (which were placed on their skin for two minutes) and with needles.
In the first case, "a strong response was obtained from the antibodies, including in the lung area, which is essential to combating Covid-19," according to what the researcher revealed, stressing that "the results far exceeded those achieved by injection."
In a second stage, the effectiveness of a single dose given by patch was evaluated, and with the use of a drug that boosts the immune system, the mice "never got sick" with the disease.
A square plastic label that extends over one centimeter in length and width and has more than 5,000 pointed tips (University of Queensland, Australia)
What is the secret of this event?
Vaccines are usually given by injecting them into the muscle, but the muscles do not store "as many immune cells" for an effective response as the skin does, Mueller says.
The pointed heads also create minor injuries that alert the body to a problem and stimulate an immune response.
For the world, the benefits of this technology are obvious, including that the vaccine can remain stable for a month at an average temperature of 25 degrees Celsius and for a week in a temperature of 40 degrees, which limits the use of the cold chain, which is a “challenge for developing countries.”
It is also very easy to place the labels and there is no need to hire a trained team.