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Out of the electronic health records (EHRs) of patients seen at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, a team in the Department of Biomedical Informatics is creating a COVID-19 patient registry as a platform for research.

Tennessee parents take steps to safeguard opioids at home, an important concern when children are spending more time indoors due to COVID-19 social distancing recommendations. More than 50% of parents who filled a prescription for an opioid in the past five years kept leftover medication in the home, according to poll results.

by Jake Lowary: Tennessee parents take steps to safeguard opioids at home, an important concern when children are spending more time indoors due to COVID-19 social distancing recommendations. More than 50% of parents who filled a prescription for an opioid in the past five years kept leftover medication in the home, according to poll results. The Vanderbilt Child Health Poll asked a statewide sample of 1,100 Tennessee parents about their concerns related to children and prescription opioids, which include medications like Vicodin and Percocet. Seventy-eight percent of parents said they worry about children becoming addicted to prescription opioids, yet only 32% are concerned about their own children’s opioid use.

The Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction, and Survivorship (CIBS) Center is studying the cognitive function and physical outcomes of COVID-19 survivors to understand the relationship between COVID-19 and long-term health from the pandemic. It may be that the dementia seen after critical illness, that we already study, could be made worse for COVID-19 patients. Neurotropism of coronaviridae (CoVs) is known to have occurred in both the SARS and MERS epidemics. SARS-CoV-2 closely shares the viral structure and pathobiology of SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV.

The Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) recently named Christopher J. Lindsell, PhD, Professor of Biostatistics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, as its president for 2020-2021.

From VUMC Office of Research: "We are pleased to honor you with a VUMC Biomedical Science Impact Award in recognition of your high impact research contributions to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The award specifically recognizes your 2019 publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association titled “Association of Treatment With Metformin vs Sulfonylurea With Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events Among Patients With Diabetes and Reduced Kidney Function”. In addition, we will present you with a crystal award in honor of this achievement."   

A team including health economists, epidemiologists and a biostatistician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt University are amassing and processing data to develop a complex predictive model of the spread of COVID-19 within Tennessee, with region-specific projections, as well as a model of projected resource use during response to the pandemic.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is playing a key role in a national effort to establish a registry of U.S. health care workers and test whether the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) will protect them, their patients and their families from COVID-19. The Board of Governors of the non-profit Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) in Washington, D.C., today approved up to $50 million to fund the initiative, known as the Healthcare Worker Exposure Response and Outcomes (HERO) research program, to be led by the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DRCI). Co-chairs of the HERO Steering Committee are Russell Rothman, MD, MPP, VUMC Senior Vice President for Population and Public Health, and Judith Currier, MD, professor of Medicine and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica. Fellow steering committee member Sean Collins, MD, MSCI, professor and executive vice chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at VUMC, will lead VUMC’s engagement in the HERO study and will serve as the site’s principal investigator. He also is a member of the protocol advisory committee.

"ICU patients need "to have humans around to orient them, to calibrate them, to touch them, to look in their eyes, and make them understand what's happening," Dr. E. Wesley Ely, a professor of medicine and critical care at Vanderbilt University, said. "But that's exactly what the COVID patients won't get because they're all being isolated." Ely said physicians are learning about the specific impact of COVID-19 on post-ICU syndrome from countries that have already had large numbers of cases."