UTHSC In the Media


New CDC study shows COVID-19 rapid tests aren’t as accurate for asymptotic patients

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COVID-19 rapid tests are quick, easy and give you results in minutes, but they may not be as accurate if you don’t have symptoms. “You can’t just take a rapid test and say ‘Oh I don’t have COVID.” said Dean Scott Strome, UTHSC College of Medicine.  


UTHSC researchers play role in supporting development of COVID-19 vaccines

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Researchers at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center have played a supporting role in the development of COVID-19 vaccines. To examine the efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine during development, the company needed a way to test the inhibitory effects of the antibodies generated after vaccination on virus infection. However, to work with SARS-CoV-2 requires… Read More


Graduates of UTHSC accelerated nursing program enter front lines of pandemic

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An accelerated nursing program that started in 2019 is now producing nurses who have started their careers in the middle of a pandemic. WMC Action News 5 spoke with the director of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center program. Earning a BSN in a year, that’s what UTHSC’s current round of applicants will do… Read More


Researchers identify three drugs as possible therapeutics for COVID-19

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Based on virtual and in vitro antiviral screening that began in the earlier months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers led at UTHSC by Colleen Jonsson, PhD, identified zuclopenthixol, nebivolol, and amodiaquine as promising therapeutics for the virus in its early stages. Dr. Jonsson is a professor and the Endowed Van Vleet Chair of Excellence… Read More


COVID’s toll on smell and taste: Mid-South doctors weigh in on what we know

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One of the most common symptoms of the coronavirus is loss of taste and smell. Health experts estimate more than 80 percent of COVID patients lose at least some of those senses after contracting the virus.


UTHSC widens opioid study to add focus in Frayser

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The pandemic has muted what the public hears about the still-raging opioid crisis, its desperation and deaths hovering like a silent virus. In Shelby County, 416 people died of opioid overdoses in 2020, 73 more than in 2019, itself a record year.  


Poverty-health connection the focus of UTHSC nationally funded research

The Memphis Business Journal

A local health economist, with decades of experience examining health disparities, has received national funding to explore the effects of poverty on physical and mental well-being. Shelley White-Means, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), will lead an 18-month, approximately $300,000 project at Cherokee Health Systems to test if the… Read More


McGowen on COVID vaccine: ‘Send us as much as you can’

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When it’s time to vaccinate school-age children and their teachers across Shelby County for the COVID-19 virus, teachers will be the first to get the vaccine.