Out of all the states in the U.S. that are endemic to Valley fever, Arizona is best equipped to handle the rise in cases of Coccidioides, cocci for short. The Valley Fever Center for Excellence, housed within the University of Arizona, helps facilitate collaboration between doctors and researchers across multiple counties within Arizona and develops strategies for diagnosing and treating Valley fever.

A new class of 23 medical students received full-tuition scholarships to the UArizona Colleges of Medicine in Tucson and Phoenix.

Novel molecular diagnostics technology to monitor four crew members during first all-civilian mission to orbit Earth.

For health care providers, increasing awareness and sensitivity to individual needs is key, say two Health Sciences aging experts.

Roberta Brinton, PhD, director of the Center for Innovation in Brain Science, received a $15.1 million grant from the National Institutes on Aging to investigate perimenopausal brain aging.

As interest grows around COVID-19 booster shots, there is still a lot of uncertainty around getting a third dose. People with weakened immune systems can already get a booster, but the benefit to everyone else is unclear. Deepta Bhattacharya, PhD, a professor of immunobiology at the College of Medicine – Tucson, said that it's clear a booster could be beneficial. A booster, he said, might reduce the chance that a person would get infected and develop symptoms. What's less clear is how much a national booster strategy would help control the spread of the coronavirus. "It just doesn't seem like vaccinated breakthrough infections are the major source of transmission," he said.

The complexity of the body’s immune system makes the impact of a booster shot difficult to assess. Antibody levels from any vaccine or natural infection will decline over time, says Deepta Bhattacharya, PhD, an immunologist at the College of Medicine – Tucson. Yet “the ones that are left tend to be of higher quality, so it takes far fewer of them to protect against disease,” Bhattacharya says, adding that it is difficult to tell exactly how much additional protection a booster shot would provide. This article was originally published in The Wall Street Journal.

Andrew Weil, MD, founder and director of the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, discusses his early life and career in integrative medicine.

One of the most common reasons Americans cite for not getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is that they're naturally protected by their past infection. Relying on previous infection alone as a means of protecting against COVID-19 is especially risky as coronavirus variants continue to emerge, according to Deepta Bhattacharya, PhD, an immunology professor at the College of Medicine – Tucson. "Antibody levels are really variable after recovering from infections, and those at the lower end of the spectrum might be more susceptible to reinfections. But after a single vaccine in people who have recovered from COVID-19, antibodies skyrocket up, including those that neutralize variants of concern," he said.