A report published today highlights major gaps in community service provision to children exposed to domestic violence and their survivor parents across Texas. The report, released by the University of Texas Medical Branch, Center for Violence Prevention and the Texas Institute Child & Family Wellbeing at UT Austin (TXICFW), shows domestic violence and child welfare agencies do not have the resources to provide survivors with consistent housing, childcare, and counseling services.

New research looks into the growing divide in rural-urban life expectancy. Americans in urban areas are living longer, on average, than Americans in rural areas, and that divide is growing wider, new research from the University of Texas Medical Branch shows.

A new study published in Science Translational Medicine reports on the Ebola vaccine-mediated protection of five mucosal vaccine vectors based on the human and avian paramyxoviruses. The study comprehensively characterized the antibody response to each vaccine, identifying features and functions that were elevated in survivors and that could serve as vaccine correlates of protection.

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch have found SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in the testes of infected hamsters. The findings, published in the journal Microorganisms, could help explain symptoms that some men with COVID-19 have reported and have important implications for men’s health.

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston looked at over 10,000 COVID-19 patients and found that significantly more former smokers ended up in the hospital and died from COVID-19 than those who still smoked or had never smoked at all.

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have been awarded an $11.3 Million, multi-year grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to study immunopathogenesis of Ebola, and in particular to determine why cells infected with Ebola develop “immune system paralysis,” which inhibits immune response leads to hyper inflammation and allows the deadly infection to spread. The research will be led by Co-Principal Investigators Alexander Bukreyev, PhD., of UTMB’s Department of Pathology, and Mariano Garcia-Blanco, MD, PhD, Chair of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department.

There is a lot we do not know about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, including how it may interact with human milk. However, researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch are trying to figure out if breast milk has any innate ability to stop the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, or if an infected mother can pass antibodies to her breastfeeding child.