A recent survey suggests that some people struggling with opioid addiction might be turning to a tragically desperate method to get more prescription painkillers: Hurting their own pets. And veterinarians themselves may be abusing opioids or helping to illegally sell them.
If you’re one of the billions of people worldwide to use mass public transit regularly, you’re sharing a lot more than a commute with your fellow passengers, suggests a new study published Tuesday in Cell Reports. You’re also sharing and swapping the teeming microbes that call our bodies home.
It’s getting a lot easier to avoid getting violently ill from food poisoning, and to see just how divey your favorite dive bar is.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is warning of the dangers of common additives found in foods and packaging. In a policy statement and accompanying report released Monday, the professional medical organization bluntly declared that many additives could have disastrous effects on health, especially for children. It…
Over the past few years, there’s been a steady rise in the rate of Americans who die by suicide and drugs each year. But while much of the attention surrounding these deaths has focused on the opioid crisis, a new study out Wednesday in the BMJ highlights a different aspect of that increase: More people, especially…
Federal prosecutors have charged hundreds of people with allegedly defrauding the US government’s health care system out of a combined $2 billion. And many of the charged are doctors who are also being accused of aiding the opioid crisis by illegally prescribing more than 13 million doses of powerful, addictive…
The death toll of the US opioid crisis has been seriously lowballed, suggests a new study published Wednesday in Public Health Reports. It found that many states have failed to identify fatal drug overdoses specifically caused by opioid use over the past two decades. Since 1999, there might have been as many as 70,000…
Nearly 30 workers at an e-cigarette plant in Salem, Massachusetts were hospitalized following a mysterious incident.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to become a shell of its former self under Scott Pruitt. The latest salvo: the agency’s rejiggered science advisory board stocked with industry types just killed three committees it has traditionally relied on.
It’s no secret that New Delhi has a serious air pollution problem. But this week, things went from regular bad to real life is now the Upside Down.
The wide assortment of flavorings used to spice up your vaping experience could be damaging your cardiovascular system, suggests new research released Thursday. The study, published in the journal of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, found that several common e-cigarette flavorings can directly harm…
On Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health revealed its new plan to tackle the opioid crisis, which it dubbed the Helping to End Addiction Long-term, or HEAL, initiative. Among the ideas presented are research programs devoted to better understanding chronic pain, developing new non-opioid painkillers and addiction…
The annual rate of death by suicide has steadily risen in the US since the turn of the millennium, according to a new report released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In many cases, those who died had not been diagnosed with any mental health condition—though the data does not specify…
It’s no secret that opioids kill more Americans annually than ever before. But a new study published Friday in JAMA Network Open highlights just how devastating the crisis has been to certain age groups. In 2016, it found, opioid overdoses were responsible for a fifth of all deaths among people in their mid-20s to…
As anyone who’s made a habit of ordering late-night delivery well knows, these meals typically aren’t too healthy. And when it comes to heaping amounts of salt in these foods, there’s perhaps no greater culprit than Chinese takeout. But a new study published Wednesday in Public Health Reports details a strategy that…
Certain aspects of a neighborhood, including its ethnic diversity and the availability of public transit, are associated with better reported well-being among residents, according to a study published Wednesday in PLOS One.
The Environmental Protection Agency cares more about its image than public health—and Republicans and Democrats ain’t having it. Emails released last week show the agency, along with the White House, intervened to block the release of a health study earlier this year that would have led to a “public relations…
An ongoing outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in Africa has become much more worrying, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported Thursday. While previous cases of the often fatal viral disease had been found in rural areas during this most recent outbreak, the first urban case of Ebola…
The World Health Organization has announced a comprehensive plan to eliminate industrially produced trans-fatty acids from the global food supply by 2023. It’s a good idea—but the five-year plan may be overly ambitious.
A new study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that it took more than $40 million over a 15-month period to screen nearly every blood donation sent to the American Red Cross for the mosquitoborne Zika virus. The report found that the massive effort—which went into effect following Zika…
