The five most-read stories on Scope this week were:
Biotech company founded by teens aims to use mosquitoes to transport vaccines: A recent piece in Fast Company profiles a biotech company created by high-school students and its project to develop “flying syringes,” which involves using mosquitoes to deliver vaccines.
Cool video of the intestinal immune system: Watch the human immune system launch a full-scale attack along 30 feet of intestinal tract at a microscopic level, pain free, thanks to this video by Nature: Immunology.
The mystery surrounding lung-transplant survival rates: An October article in the San Francisco Chronicle offered a look at the challenges facing lung transplant patients and explored why a significant number don’t live beyond the five-year mark, despite improvements in survival rates.
The road to diagnosis: How to be insistent, persistent and consistent: Inspire contributor and retired nurse Joan Jahnke shares her 2 ½-journey of seeking a definitive diagnosis for her heart disorder, cardiac endothelium dysfunction. As she explains in the piece, she considered the diagnosis a triumph because standard tests don’t always identify the disease.
Abraham Verghese discusses reconnecting to the patient at the bedside: In his latest podcast on the Heart.org radio, Robert Harrington, MD, chair of the Department of Medicine, discusses the humanistic aspects of health care and the training of medical students and residents in bedside medicine with Stanford physician and best-selling author Abraham Verghese, MD.
