An unorthodox beauty treatment meant to rejuvenate the feet turned into a disturbing medical mystery for one young woman. According to a case report published by her doctor in JAMA Dermatology, the woman’s toenails stopped growing and started falling off soon after she received a so-called fish pedicure.
Hey, did you wash your hands recently? Well, you probably did it wrong. CNN pointed out a recent government study found that 97 percent of the time, people fail to properly wash their hands—a problem that can lead to all sorts of unnecessary illnesses being spread.
Traveling by plane greatly increases our chances of getting sick, or so many of us are wont to believe. To be fair, it’s not uncommon to come down with a nasty illness after we return from a vacation or business trip. But is flying the culprit? The latest research suggests the answer is no—but much of it depends on…
In a speech made to Congress Thursday, US Food and Drug Administration chief Scott Gottlieb took stock of how his agency handled the ongoing, record-breaking flu season this winter, as well as discussed the future of flu vaccination in the US. Among other tidbits, Gottlieb made clear that it’s going to be a long while…
Scientists announced that they have observed the structure of huntingtin, a large and essential protein in many animals’ bodies which, when produced by a mutated gene, causes Huntington’s disease in humans.
The National Institutes of Health has lifted a ban on “gain-of-function” research on Tuesday—the kind of research that requires genetically modifying viruses to make them more deadly or more contagious.
It’s never a nice feeling to watch a fly land on your next bite of food, but as new research shows, you may be justified in wanting to toss that delicious morsel in the garbage.
If the eyes are windows to the soul, they’re open windows, potentially letting in all kinds of unwelcome bugs. To ensure that doesn’t happen, our tears are loaded with microbe-killing compounds and immune cells. In fact, our eyes are so inhospitable that it was long thought they were the only part of our bodies which…
Chicken farmers in Tennessee are about to shed a lot of blood. After noticing an unusually high death rate in a flock, some Tyson Foods-suppliers discovered that they were dealing with a new bird flu outbreak. Don’t worry too much, though: The USDA says humans should be safe.
Gun violence moves through a city the way a virus moves the body: predictably, but with uncanny precision. New research suggests “virus” patterns can be spotted and possibly help predict and even prevent shootings. But questions remain of whether this can be done ethically, and, most crucially, who can be trusted with…
Hemophilia is a devastating genetic condition—without the ability to form blood clots, those who have it risk bleeding to death from even the slightest cut.
A sweeping analysis of current research shows that people who eat at least 20 grams of nuts each day are less likely to develop potentially fatal conditions such as cancer and heart disease.
And why not? Doctors are, after all, on the front lines of a pitched battle against an invisible enemy most of us are powerless to stop. Without them, our teeth would be falling out and we’d be losing limbs over minor scrapes. We’re so accustomed to the wonders of modern medicine we take for granted how wondrous it…
Doctors have this nasty habit of asking a lot of questions, many of which make us uncomfortable or self-conscious. So we bluff. A lot. Here are 10 typical lies we tell our doctors, and why these seemingly innocuous fibs are hazardous to our health.
Zika is officially here, with fifteen confirmed cases in the Miami neighborhood of Wynwood over the past week. On Monday, the CDC told pregnant women not to travel to this neighborhood, marking the first time the government agency has issued such a travel warning within the United States.
Rio’s water is vile—full of raw sewage and dead bodies—and later this week, humanity’s top athletes will plunge into this hellish stew for a jolly ol’ international sporting competition.
In a news report that could easily be the plot of a cult horror movie, an anthrax outbreak has swept the remote Yamalo-Nenets district of western Siberia, killing 1,500 reindeer since Sunday. According to NBC News, authorities think the outbreak began when some zombie anthrax thawed out of an infected reindeer corpse…
As the TV show Scrubs once said, “everything comes down to poo.” This is true in sitcom land, but also in science.
Doctors have discovered Zika virus in a stillborn infant with a severely under-developed brain, according to a chilling report published today in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.
