Researchers from Boston Children's Hospital Precision Vaccines Program have developed a new in vitro system that provides a nimbler way to predict vaccine responses in people of different ages, allowing multiple vaccine doses and vaccine adjuvants to be tested simultaneously in samples from the same person.

In an effort to make large-scale disease testing faster and more affordable, researchers have developed an optimized approach to pooled testing, which could transform public health screening for infectious diseases.

Researchers Dr. Md S. Warasi, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Radford University in Virginia and Dr. Kumer P. Das, Assistant Vice President for Research and Innovation at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, found that by strategically grouping specimens in pools, testing costs can be slashed without compromising accuracy—a breakthrough that comes as health systems grapple with high demand for screening across diseases like HIV, gonorrhea, and COVID-19.

Stressful periods such as COVID-19, hurricanes or infant formula shortages negatively impact racial groups differently

Researchers provide vital insights into social determinants such as government support, stable housing, and employment opportunities on postpartum health among Louisiana mothers during stressful periods including COVID-19, hurricanes and the infant formula shortage.

The study, "The role of government assistance, housing, and employment on postpartum maternal health across income and race: a mixed methods study," published in BMC Public Health, was led by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the Reproductive Endocrinology & Women’s Health Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical research Center, along with colleagues from Woman’s Hospital and Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.