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Category: Health

How Republican state politics are shaving years off American lives

How Republican state politics are shaving years off American lives

The Washington Post reports: Mike Czup unspooled the hose to wash his hearse. It was time to pick up the body of yet another neighbor who had died in the prime of life. Since he started working at 15 in the funeral business, Czup has seen plenty of tragedies. But the 52-year-old said he’s still coming to grips with a disturbing fact about the bodies he washes, embalms and entombs: About a quarter of the people he buries are younger…

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Progress in the long fight against mosquito-borne disease

Progress in the long fight against mosquito-borne disease

The New York Times reports: Five decades ago, entomologists confronting the many kinds of suffering that mosquitoes inflict on humans began to consider a new idea: What if, instead of killing the mosquitoes (a losing proposition in most places), you could disarm them? Even if you couldn’t keep them from biting people, what if you could block them from passing on disease? What if, in fact, you could use one infectious microbe to stop another? These scientists began to consider…

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Merck’s COVID treatment drug may be creating transmissible mutated viruses

Merck’s COVID treatment drug may be creating transmissible mutated viruses

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports: A drug used to treat patients at risk of severe COVID-19 infection may have led to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 viruses bearing a distinct pattern of mutations, researchers reported Monday in Nature. The new paper raises the stakes over concerns about whether molnupiravir use could lead to the emergence of new dangerous variants and extend the pandemic. Molnupiravir, which is sold as Lagevrio, works by mutating SARS-CoV-2 and causing changes that should knock out…

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Why sewage may hold the key to tracking diseases far beyond COVID-19

Why sewage may hold the key to tracking diseases far beyond COVID-19

Betsy Ladyzhets writes: The future of disease tracking is going down the drain — literally. Flushed with success over detecting coronavirus in wastewater, and even specific variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, researchers are now eyeing our collective poop to monitor a wide variety of health threats. Before the pandemic, wastewater surveillance was a smaller field, primarily focused on testing for drugs or mapping microbial ecosystems. But these researchers were tracking specific health threats in specific places —…

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Cheese consumption might be linked to better cognitive health, study suggests

Cheese consumption might be linked to better cognitive health, study suggests

PsyPost reports: A recent scientific publication by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)’s Nutrients journal suggests there might be a correlation between regular cheese consumption and better cognitive health in the elderly population. Over the years, the nexus between dietary habits and their impact on physical well-being has been firmly established. However, the realm of cognitive health and its relation to food intake is an area that’s still being actively explored. Dairy products, especially milk and cheese, have previously been…

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The ‘Hispanic Paradox’ intrigues a new generation of researchers determined to unravel it

The ‘Hispanic Paradox’ intrigues a new generation of researchers determined to unravel it

Usha Lee McFarling reports: For 40 years, researchers have unsuccessfully tried to explain — or debunk — the “Hispanic Paradox,” the finding that Hispanic Americans live several years longer than white Americans on average, despite having far less income and health care and higher rates of diabetes and obesity. Now, armed with more comprehensive data, powerful genomic tools, and a rich cultural awareness of the communities they study, a new generation of scientists is finally making headway. These researchers, many…

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MDMA as PTSD treatment moves closer to U.S. approval

MDMA as PTSD treatment moves closer to U.S. approval

Nature reports: The psychedelic drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, has passed another key hurdle on its way to regulatory approval as a treatment for mental illness. A second large clinical trial has found that the drug — in combination with psychotherapy — is effective at treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The results allow the trial’s sponsor to now seek approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for MDMA’s use as a PTSD treatment for the…

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Threads blocks searches related to covid and vaccines as cases rise

Threads blocks searches related to covid and vaccines as cases rise

The Washington Post reports: Instagram’s text-based social platform Threads last week rolled out its new search function, a crucial step toward the platform’s expansion and one that would give it more parity with X, formerly known as Twitter. Tech is not your friend. We are. Sign up for The Tech Friend newsletter. Not even 24 hours later, the company was embroiled in controversy. When users went to Threads to search for content related to “covid” and “long covid,” they were…

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Amid another rise in cases, Covid’s new normal has set in

Amid another rise in cases, Covid’s new normal has set in

Helen Branswell writes: Among people who are still paying attention to Covid-19, there’s been a recent surge — not just in viral activity but in the concern once again being paid to Covid. Headlines announce that transmission is surging and hospitalizations for Covid are rising by alarming percentages. There’s debate in some places about whether or not to resume wearing masks. People are worrying about whether the latest subvariant, BA.2.86, spells bad news for our fall and winter, and whether…

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Climate-linked ills threaten humanity

Climate-linked ills threaten humanity

The Washington Post reports: The floods came, and then the sickness. Muhammad Yaqoob stood on his concrete porch and watched the black, angry water swirl around the acacia trees and rush toward his village [Bagh Yusuf, in Sindh province, Pakistan] last September, the deluge making a sound that was like nothing he had ever heard. “It was like thousands of snakes sighing all at once,” he recalled. At first, he thought villagers’ impromptu sandbags, made from rice and fertilizer sacks,…

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America’s surprising partisan divide on life expectancy

America’s surprising partisan divide on life expectancy

Colin Woodard writes: Where you live in America can have a major effect on how young you die. On paper, Lexington County, S.C., and Placer County, Calif., have a lot in common. They’re both big, wealthy, suburban counties with white supermajorities that border on their respective state’s capital cities. They both were at the vanguard of their states’ 20th century Republican advances — Lexington in the 1960s when it pivoted from the racist Dixiecrats; Placer with the Reagan Revolution in…

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Cats with bird flu? The threat grows

Cats with bird flu? The threat grows

Zeynep Tufekci writes: The global H5N1 avian flu outbreak, already devastating wild birds and poultry, keeps spreading to mammals, bringing it one step closer to a potential human outbreak. Of course, since the coronavirus pandemic taught us the importance of responding early and aggressively to outbreaks … Sorry, I’m joking. We don’t seem to have learned much from the Covid outbreak, and it’s not funny. Not enough has been done about an out-of-control H5N1 outbreak at fur farms in Finland or…

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Mitch McConnell may be experiencing focal seizures, doctors suggest

Mitch McConnell may be experiencing focal seizures, doctors suggest

The New York Times reports: A four-line letter, signed by the attending physician of Congress and released by Senator Mitch McConnell on Thursday, suggested that his recent spells of speechlessness were linked to “occasional lightheadedness” perhaps brought on by his recovery from a concussion last winter or “dehydration.” But seven neurologists, relying on what they described as unusually revealing video of Mr. McConnell freezing up in public twice recently, said in interviews Thursday and Friday that the episodes captured in…

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Prescriptions for fruits and vegetables can improve the health of people with diabetes and other ailments, new study finds

Prescriptions for fruits and vegetables can improve the health of people with diabetes and other ailments, new study finds

“Food is medicine” programs recognize the vital importance of fresh produce in a person’s overall health. fcafotodigital/E+ via Getty Images By Kurt Hager, UMass Chan Medical School and Fang Fang Zhang, Tufts University The health of people with diabetes, hypertension and obesity improved when they could get free fruits and vegetables with a prescription from their doctors and other health professionals. We found that these patients’ blood sugar levels, blood pressure and weight improved in our new study published in…

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Postponing death by prolonging illness

Postponing death by prolonging illness

Robert S Gable writes: Everyone dies sometime. But when and how? Those questions become more salient as birthdays roll by. It has been said that wherever old people gather there is an ‘organ recital’ of malfunctioning body organs and parts. I, too, have a recital. Last year, at age 88, I woke up in a San Francisco hospital room after having my aortic heart valve replaced by one made of a metal spring and some cow tissue (an ‘Edwards Sapien…

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It may be time to break out the masks against Covid, some experts say

It may be time to break out the masks against Covid, some experts say

CNN reports: If you’re at high risk of serious illness or death from Covid-19, it’s time to dust off those N95 masks and place them snugly over your nose and mouth to protect yourself from a recent uptick of the virus, according to a growing number of experts. That advice should go all the way up to 80-year-old President Joe Biden, said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist. “Octogenarians comprise the highest-risk group for complications following Covid infection,” Reiner said. “At…

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