WINNIFRED ‘MS PEARL’ Stern lived to the remarkable age of 108 years. When asked the age-old question about the secret to a long life, her answer was always succinct: “God.” A wife, mother, and the oldest member of the Golden Designs programme, Ms...

ROBOT-ASSISTED CARDIAC surgery is heart surgery done through very small incisions in the chest. The surgeons use tiny instruments and robot-controlled tools to do heart surgery in a way that is much less invasive than open-heart surgery. This...

The findings, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, offer vital insights into the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and underscore the need to address social determinants of health in efforts to combat long COVID.

Long COVID refers to a broad spectrum of symptoms that persist for three months or more following a SARS-CoV-2 infection. While scientific understanding of the condition has grown through the National Institutes of Health’s RECOVER (Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery) Initiative, the influence of social factors has remained less clear—until now.

To better understand this relationship, researchers analyzed data from 3,700 participants in the RECOVER-Adult cohort. These individuals had contracted COVID-19 during the Omicron variant surge and completed comprehensive surveys at the time of infection and again six months later to assess for long COVID symptoms. Participants came from 33 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and enrolled between October 2021 and November 2023.

The researchers assessed four major categories of social risk: economic instability, education and language barriers, healthcare access and quality, and lack of community support. They also used ZIP code-level data to measure factors like household crowding.

After accounting for variables such as vaccination status, hospitalization, age, sex, and race, the study found that nearly all individual-level social risk factors were strongly associated with a two- to three-fold increase in the likelihood of developing long COVID. Living in more crowded areas further raised the risk. The burden of these risk factors was higher among racially and ethnically minoritized groups, but their impact on long COVID risk was consistent across all racial categories.

"While rates of COVID-19 have decreased, long COVID is a chronic disease that many people still suffer from," said senior author Dr. Elizabeth Karlson. "Future interventions must address these factors to effectively reduce adverse outcomes among people with high burden of social risk factors."

Researchers plan to expand the study to assess whether these trends hold for children and explore long COVID symptoms lasting a year or more.

References: Candace H. Feldman, Leah Santacroce, Ingrid V. Bassett, et al. Social Determinants of Health and Risk for Long COVID in the U.S. RECOVER-Adult Cohort. Ann Intern Med. [Epub 29 July 2025]. doi:10.7326/ANNALS-24-01971

On Wednesday 30 July 2025, the Healthy Caribbean Coalition, in partnership with the Pan American Health Organisation, convened a virtual Caribbean Regional Stakeholder Meeting in support of the 4th UN High-Level Meeting (HLM4) on Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) including Mental Health. This timely discussion also marked the 18th anniversary of the landmark 2007 Port of Spain Declaration on NCDs.

With over 200 participants from civil society, government, regional institutions, and global partners, the webinar fostered rich dialogue around the Caribbean’s progress in tackling NCDs, and the urgent need for renewed leadership and bold action to meet 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

The webinar covered the following objectives:

• Reflect on progress on NCDs in the Caribbean since the 2007 Port of Spain Declaration, including key achievements, challenges, and lessons learned.
• Explored NCD priorities and strategies needed within CARICOM to accelerate meaningful action on NCDs – actions which prevent new NCDs and improve the lives of people living with NCDs in lead up to and beyond the HLM4.

Presenters and Panellists

Panellist Quotes

1 of 15

Visit our HLM4 dedicated webpage.

The post appeared first on Healthy Caribbean Coalition.

Healthy Choices for Healthy Living Guidelines is a vital national tool designed to promote nutrition, wellness, and active living across our communities

View the full post Let’s re-engage Grenada’s healthy guidelines on NOW Grenada.

Basel: Roche has announced new, five-year efficacy, safety and durability data from the Phase III Portal study, a long-term extension of the Phase III Archway study, of Susvimo (ranibizumab injection) for the treatment of people with neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD).

Results show that Susvimo’s immediate and predictable durability was sustained over five years, with approximately 95% of people receiving treatment every six months requiring no supplemental treatment before each refill. The data were presented at the American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS) 2025 Annual Meeting in Long Beach, California, United States.

“These long-term results reinforce Susvimo’s ability to maintain vision and retinal drying over a long period of time for people with nAMD, the leading cause of vision loss in people over age 60,” said Levi Garraway, MD, PhD, Roche’s chief medical officer and head of Global Product Development. “These robust data reinforce our confidence in Susvimo's unique therapeutic approach, providing an effective alternative to regular eye injections while preserving vision in a sustained manner.”

“People with nAMD often experience suboptimal outcomes with real-world anti-VEGF treatment, largely due to the frequency of injections,” said study investigator John Kitchens, M.D., Retina Associates of Kentucky, who presented the data at ASRS. “Continuous delivery of treatment with Susvimo may preserve vision in patients with nAMD for longer in real-world clinical use than IVT injections.”

In the Portal study (n = 352), people originally treated with Susvimo in Archway continued to receive Susvimo refills every six months (Susvimo cohort; n = 220), while those originally treated with monthly intravitreal (IVT) ranibizumab injections in Archway received Susvimo and then refills every six months (IVT-Susvimo cohort; n = 132).

Five-year results showed consistent and sustained disease control and retinal drying in a population who entered Archway with vision at or near peak levels after receiving an average of five intravitreal injections per standard of care. In the Susvimo cohort, best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) was 74.4 letters at baseline and 67.6 letters at 5 years. In the IVT-Susvimo cohort, BCVA was 76.3 letters at baseline and 68.6 at 5 years. Half of all patients had better than 20/40 vision at five years (Snellen visual acuity test). Average central subfield thickness (CST) remained stable, with a 1.0 (95% CI: -13.1, 11.1) µm reduction from baseline in the Susvimo cohort, and a 10.3 (95% CI: -25.7, 5.0) µm reduction in the IVT-Susvimo cohort.

The cohort of people who entered the Portal study from Archway is the largest cohort of people with nAMD to be followed prospectively and continuously for five years in a clinical study.

Susvimo provides continuous delivery of a customised formulation of ranibizumab via the Port Delivery Platform, while other currently approved treatments may require eye injections as often as once per month. The Port Delivery Platform is a refillable eye implant surgically inserted into the eye during a one-time, outpatient procedure, which introduces medicine directly into the eye, addressing certain retinal conditions that can cause vision loss.

Approved in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for nAMD, diabetic macular edema (DME) and diabetic retinopathy (DR), Susvimo is a refillable eye implant surgically inserted into the eye during a one-time, outpatient procedure.8,9 Susvimo continuously delivers a customised formulation of ranibizumab over time. Ranibizumab is a VEGF inhibitor designed to bind to and inhibit VEGF-A, a protein that has been shown to play a critical role in the formation of new blood vessels and the leakiness of the vessels.

The customised formulation of ranibizumab delivered by Susvimo is different from the ranibizumab IVT injection, a medicine marketed as Lucentis (ranibizumab injection), which is approved to treat nAMD and other retinal diseases.