Congratulations Dr Harbinder Sandhu who has been selected as a finalist for the 2020 iPain Hero of Hope Healthcare Provider Award.

Care Companion, a Unit of Academic Primary Care project, benefits from a creative partnership award allowing artists to continue their work during the COVID-19 pandemic through collaboration with researchers from the social sciences, arts, science and medicine from across both the city’s universities.

WMS students are helping to develop antibody tests for Covid-19 by conducting tests for key workers recruited from the police and fire service in the West Midlands.

The term ‘morning sickness’ is misleading and should instead be described as nausea and sickness in pregnancy, argue researchers from WMS who have demonstrated that these symptoms can occur at any time of the day – not just the morning.

The Yvonne Carter Award for Outstanding Early Career Researcher has been awarded to Dr Sarah Mitchell. Sarah recently gained her PhD here at WMS, supervised by Prof Jeremy Dale. It is especially exciting that Sarah should receive this award, as Yvonne Carter was Dean of Warwick Medical School from 2004 to 2009.

The GibsonGroup's work, in collaboration with Iceni Diagnostics, developing a new approach to rapid coronavirus diagnostics has been featured on the BBC. On Thursday 25 June, BBC Midlands interviewed Professor Gibson and members of his team - a feature on this can be read on the BBC News web pages. 

We are very sad to have to tell you that 2019 MB ChB graduate, Joshua Burke died suddenly on Sunday 14 June.

An analysis by WMS and WMG researchers of national weekly mortality rates between December 2019 – March 2020, compared to the same period for the previous five years has shown that there have been fewer deaths registered this year during the lead up to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A new study by WMS researchers shows that sending discharge letters to patients as well as their GPs when they leave hospital could make a substantial difference to patient outcomes.

A new diagnostic tool for rapid detection of Coronavirus is being developed by Warwick researchers, led by the Gibson Lab. Learn more about the tool, its development and how it could help in the battle against the virus.

The role that online resources have played in supporting the wellbeing of unpaid carers and keeping them connected during the COVID-19 lockdown is being highlighted this week by the WMS team behind Care Companion.

Building connections between GP practices and local parkrun events could help to improve the health and wellbeing of patients and staff, finds a new study by Warwick Medical School.

Survey by WMS researchers shows most women’s healthcare units have adopted national guidance on COVID-19 but there are concerns that without greater planning there could be problems that may adversely affect women’s health in the future.

The second round of results from a three-survey study by a collaboration involving WMS highlights the ongoing concerns nurses and midwives in the UK have about Covid-19 and the risks it poses to their health.

WMS researchers have developed a way to create more crucial reagents for use in COVID-19 tests that could also provide enhancements to the use of, and production of, future tests.

A study led by WMS and the University of Birmingham has found people who have experienced maltreatment during childhood are significantly more likely to develop conditions such as heart disease in adulthood.

A new app designed to act as a bedside tool for junior doctors, GPs, nurses and other health professionals who are looking after patients with COVID-19 has been created by Clinical Lecturers from WMS.

Prof Franco Cappuccio from MHWB unit has letter published in the BMJ regarding CPR in Covid-19 patients

The Gibson Group are developing mimetics of anitfreeze proteins for various biomedical applications. In this work, they explore the use of X-ray scattering as a tool to help discover new materials and understand existing antifreeze proteins. Traditional tests of antifreeze function use microscopy and end-point assays, or require extensive image analysis of a relatively small number of crystals. Here, low-temperature x-ray scattering was used (with superb assistance from the X-Ray RTP at Warwick) to enable real-time profiling of ice growth rates, probing 100’s of crystals simultaneously. This work will help develop new more active antifreeze protein mimetics for biomedical and biotechnological applications. https://doi.org/10.1039/C9AN02141H

The Gibson Group have developed new nanoparticles capable of inhibiting ice growth, to mimic antifreeze proteins. Antifreeze proteins often show size-dependant activity - larger proteins are more active than small. In this work, the Gibsongroup used the tool of polymerization induced self assembly, PISA. PISA is a powerful, but typically cannot be conducted in saline, which can limit its application, especially for ice growth assays which require saline. The team developed an easy method to enable saline-stable PISA and exploited this to generate nanoparticles which were potent ice growth inhibitors, and were more active than the starting polymers. https://doi.org/10.1039/D0MH00354A

The Gibson Group has explored the use of gold nanoparticles as a tool to probe how influenza targets our cells. Influenza engages cells in our respiratory tracts by binding to glycans (sugars) and the pattern of sugars they bind is a key part of zoonosis - species hopping, for example avian to human influenza. The GibsonGroup used their polymer-stabilised nanoparticle technology to capture glycans onto the nanoparticles and probed how they interact with a components from a panel of influenza strains. This revealed key differences in the binding pattern compared to just using the glycans alone.
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.biomac.0c00179

WMS and KCL researchers have developed and implemented a training course with researchers at St Francis University College in Tanzania designed to equip healthcare leaders with the knowledge and skills to integrate remote consulting into their local service.

Results of a survey published on 21 April by a collaboration involving WMS have highlighted concerns nurses and midwives in the UK have about COVID-19.

New clinical trial co-led by Professor Gavin Perkins seeks to find alternatives to ventilators to treat patients who are critically ill with COVID-19.