Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators are leading a new study that examines the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, within households in Nashville.

Five faculty members of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine are among 80 physician-scientists who will be inducted this year into the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), an elite honor society of physician-scientists from the upper ranks of academic medicine and industry. They are:

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is leading a multicenter national study to evaluate the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine for preventing the flu’s most serious side effects — admission to an intensive care unit (ICU), organ failure and death.

Vanderbilt researchers have published findings indicating that regardless of whether a woman delivers a child by cesarean section or by vaginal birth, if they fill prescriptions for opioid pain medications early in the postpartum period, they are at increased risk of developing persistent opioid use.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been awarded a five-year federal grant to train investigators in Learning Healthcare Systems research, aimed at improving patient outcomes and the community’s overall health.

Opioid users have a significantly increased risk of infections severe enough to require treatment at the hospital, such as pneumonia and meningitis, as compared to people who don’t use opioids.

A combination of two antibiotics is often prescribed to treat community-acquired pneumonia in children, but a JAMA Pediatrics study is now showing that using just one of the two has the same benefit to patients in most cases.