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Category: Health

23andMe is on the brink. What happens to all its DNA data?

23andMe is on the brink. What happens to all its DNA data?

NPR reports: Last month, Chenedy Wiles finally got around to it. The 27-year-old traveling nurse spit into a tube and mailed it to 23andMe, where the genetic testing company’s lab examined her DNA and generated a glimpse of her ancestry. “One of the reasons I decided to get the test is that as an African American, it’s very common for our heritage to get lost,” said Wiles, who lives in Chicago. Once her results arrived in the mail, it revealed…

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Hurricanes like Helene are deadly when they strike and keep killing for years to come

Hurricanes like Helene are deadly when they strike and keep killing for years to come

The Associated Press reports: Hurricanes in the United States end up hundreds of times deadlier than the government calculates, contributing to more American deaths than car accidents or all the nation’s wars, a new study said. The average storm hitting the U.S. contributes to the early deaths of 7,000 to 11,000 people over a 15-year period, which dwarfs the average of 24 immediate and direct deaths that the government counts in a hurricane’s aftermath, the study in Wednesday’s journal Nature…

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A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas after abortion ban

A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas after abortion ban

NBC News reports: The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion care — far outpacing a slower rise in maternal mortality across the nation, a new investigation of federal public health data finds. From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period, according to an analysis by the…

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Abortion bans have delayed emergency medical care. In Georgia, experts say this mother’s death was preventable

Abortion bans have delayed emergency medical care. In Georgia, experts say this mother’s death was preventable

By Kavitha Surana This story was originally published by ProPublica In her final hours, Amber Nicole Thurman suffered from a grave infection that her suburban Atlanta hospital was well-equipped to treat. She’d taken abortion pills and encountered a rare complication; she had not expelled all of the fetal tissue from her body. She showed up at Piedmont Henry Hospital in need of a routine procedure to clear it from her uterus, called a dilation and curettage, or D&C. But just…

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‘Beyond catastrophic’: UN issues dire warning on Gaza as Israel hinders polio vaccination drive

‘Beyond catastrophic’: UN issues dire warning on Gaza as Israel hinders polio vaccination drive

  The United Nations is warning the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains “beyond catastrophic” as more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza did not receive any food rations in August amid Israel’s relentless assault. Israel’s 11-month campaign has killed more than 15,000 children and enabled the besieged territory’s first polio outbreak in a quarter-century. INARA founder Arwa Damon just got back from spending two weeks in Gaza, where the nonprofit currently provides medical and mental healthcare to Palestinian children. “Israel…

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Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death and disease in Gaza

Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death and disease in Gaza

Devi Sridhar writes: In August, a 10-month-old baby in Gaza was partly paralysed from polio, the first confirmed case there in 25 years. The paralysis is probably permanent, and there are no treatments for polio. We have a safe and effective vaccine to prevent serious disease, but the ongoing war in the region has meant vaccination campaigns have stopped. A polio outbreak seems inevitable given that the disease spreads through dirty water and rubbish, which surrounds those living in tents…

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New study shows gut microbiome could play role in preventing cognitive decline

New study shows gut microbiome could play role in preventing cognitive decline

PsyPost reports: A new study published in Nature Communications suggests that a daily fiber supplement could improve brain function in older adults. Researchers found that in just 12 weeks, participants who took the supplement showed better performance in memory tests that are often used to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease. This placebo-controlled, double-blind trial was conducted on twins over the age of 65, offering insight into how gut microbiome interventions could benefit cognitive health in older adults. As the…

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Humanity’s newest brain gains are most at risk from ageing

Humanity’s newest brain gains are most at risk from ageing

Nature reports:In the more than six million years since people and chimpanzees split from their common ancestor, human brains have rapidly amassed tissue that helps decision-making and self-control. But the same regions are also the most at risk of deterioration during ageing, finds a study that compared images of chimp brains with scans of human brains. Previous studies have shown that regions of the human brain that are the last to mature, such as parts of the frontal lobe, are…

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What I saw was ‘unfathomable’: Doctor who worked in Gaza speaks out against U.S. arming of Israel

What I saw was ‘unfathomable’: Doctor who worked in Gaza speaks out against U.S. arming of Israel

  A group of American doctors who treated patients in Gaza held a press conference in Chicago on Tuesday to describe the suffering they saw among Palestinians injured and killed in Israel’s war on the territory. The press conference, taking place during the Democratic National Convention, was organized by the Uncommitted National Movement, which is pressuring Democrats for an end to blanket U.S. support for Israel. Among those who spoke was Dr. Ahmed Yousaf, who returned from Gaza just weeks…

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Abortion takes center stage

Abortion takes center stage

Helen Lewis writes: The most emotional moment of last night’s Democratic National Convention was supposed to be Joe Biden’s farewell, after his party’s power brokers made clear he could not run again. And true, his address showed a graciousness in defeat that Donald Trump could never hope to understand. But the most moving speech of the evening was only a few minutes long, and it was given by a young woman from Kentucky. Her name was Hadley Duvall, and she…

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Inside conservative activist Leonard Leo’s long campaign to gut Planned Parenthood

Inside conservative activist Leonard Leo’s long campaign to gut Planned Parenthood

KFF Health News reports: A federal lawsuit in Texas against Planned Parenthood has a web of ties to conservative activist Leonard Leo, whose decades-long effort to steer the U.S. court system to the right overturned Roe v. Wade, yielding the biggest rollback of reproductive health access in half a century. Brought by an anonymous whistleblower and later joined by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the suit alleges the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and three Planned Parenthood affiliates defrauded the…

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The phageome: A hidden kingdom within your gut

The phageome: A hidden kingdom within your gut

By Amber Dance, Knowable Magazine You’ve probably heard of the microbiome — the hordes of bacteria and other tiny life forms that live in our guts. Well, it turns out those bacteria have viruses that exist in and around them — with important consequences for both them and us. Meet the phageome. There are billions, perhaps even trillions of these viruses, known as bacteriophages (“bacteria eaters” in Greek) or just “phages” to their friends, inside the human digestive system. Phageome…

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Dozens of pregnant women, some bleeding or in labor, are turned away from ERs despite federal law

Dozens of pregnant women, some bleeding or in labor, are turned away from ERs despite federal law

The Associated Press reports: Bleeding and in pain, Kyleigh Thurman didn’t know her doomed pregnancy could kill her. Emergency room doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas handed her a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to “let nature take its course” before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy. When the 25-year-old returned three days later, still bleeding, doctors finally agreed to give her an injection to end the pregnancy. It was too late. The fertilized egg growing…

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Long COVID is a $1 trillion problem with no cure. Experts plead for governments to wake up

Long COVID is a $1 trillion problem with no cure. Experts plead for governments to wake up

Fortune reports: For months, governmental officials around the world have appeared to want to forgo discussing the specter of long COVID. As a new review makes clear, that is wishful thinking—and the latest COVID variants may well kick long COVID into overdrive, a scenario that researchers and experts have been warning about for some time. “I think they (government agencies) are itching to pretend that COVID is over and that long COVID does not exist,” says Ziyad Al-Aly, director of…

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Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

Cells across the body talk to each other about aging

Viviane Callier writes: Aging can seem like an unregulated process: As time marches along, our cells and bodies inevitably accumulate dings and dents that cause dysfunctions, failures and ultimately death. However, in 1993 a discovery upended that interpretation of events. Researchers found a mutation in a single gene that doubled a worm’s life span; subsequent work showed that related genes, all involved in the response to insulin, are key regulators of aging in a host of animals, from worms and…

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Links between pathogens and Alzheimer’s spur new projects searching for causal evidence

Links between pathogens and Alzheimer’s spur new projects searching for causal evidence

Science reports: This week, thousands of researchers are flocking to downtown Philadelphia for what’s billed as the largest international conference dedicated to Alzheimer’s disease. But several kilometers away a much smaller group congregated for an alternative meetup: a daylong dive into whether and how pathogens might cause the fatal dementia. Saturday’s gathering of about 80 scientists on the city’s periphery is something of a metaphor for where the idea sits in the larger Alzheimer’s community, long dominated by the view…

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