The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week issued a warning about a disease known as acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), an illness it says it knows very little about but can cause arm or leg weakness and paralysis, particularly in children. According to a Tuesday press briefing, there have been 62 confirmed…
The end of summer is fast approaching, though the fun in the sun is coming to an even swifter conclusion for some of us: Take the tale of Paul Ceglia, the man who allegedly used forged documents naming him as a Facebook co-owner to try and rip off CEO Mark Zuckerberg in court. This week, police reportedly arrested…
Humans have been producing and consuming cheese for a very long time, as the recent discovery of 3,200-year-old cheese in an ancient Egyptian tomb attests. Delicious though this cheese may have been, it was also a potential source of disease.
Americans who opened the newspaper on January 5, 1961, were greeted with an article by Associated Press science writer John Barbour. He described the futuristic world of the year 2000 and the great medical advances that would be achieved by then. And quite frankly, reading about all of the medical miracles we were…
Given their current popularity, you might assume that probiotics—capsules containing a mix of “good” bacteria that are said to rebalance our gut’s bacterial content—would be perfectly harmless. But a team of gastroenterologists from Augusta University in Georgia is challenging that assumption. Their recent study is…
At the peak of summer, when just walking to and from the corner store necessitates a shower and a change of clothes, air-conditioning can seem almost too good to be true. It is one of the few staples of modernity without severe and readily apparent downsides: all it does, or all it seems to do, is make things cooler,…
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.
Over the last several years, a deadly fungal disease has killed hundreds of thousands of native Hawaiian ʻōhiʻa trees. Before now, the disease—Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death—was limited to Hawaiʻi Island. But the disease-causing fungus has now been found on the island of Kauaʻi. And that’s a big problem, considering that ʻōhiʻa…
The origin of the world’s deadliest amphibian disease has remained elusive for decades, but not anymore. New research has pinned down where the infamous fungal plague “Bd” got its start and how it began infiltrating habitats across the globe. Unsurprisingly, humans are largely responsible for its 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.
2017 has brought a seemingly endless string of natural disasters, from devastating hurricanes in the Caribbean to raging wildfires out West to destructive earthquakes in Mexico. And if the fallout from one of last year’s worst natural disasters—the 2016 Ecuadorean earthquake—is any indicator, health officials need to…
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…
