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…

This past winter’s flu season was quickly recognized as one of the worst to come along in a long time. But new data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention highlights just destructive it was in the United States. According to new data, there were 80,000 flu-related deaths last season, the single highest…

Alcohol is responsible for over one in 20 of all deaths worldwide, according to the most recent edition of a World Health Organization (WHO) report that comes out every four years.

The devastation wrought by opioids in recent years is only part of a much larger drug crisis in the United States that stretches back four decades, according to a new study published Thursday in Science. Since 1979, the study found, the overdose death rate has been exponentially climbing, even as the deadly drugs of…

The obesity epidemic in America is only getting worse in some states, according to a new report out this week. No single state had its overall obesity rate decline in 2017, it found, while six states saw a increase. But there have seemingly been minor victories in lowering childhood obesity in some groups.

It’s long been suspected that hand dryers, especially those quick-drying ones that blast hot air known as jet dryers, are actually way worse at keeping our hands and bathrooms free of disease-causing germs. Worryingly, they could even be spreading illness in hospital bathrooms, new research suggests. 

Public health experts have been warning people since June to stay away from Kellogg’s Honey Smacks cereal, as it can possibly give you a nasty case of salmonella poisoning. But people are still eating the frog-branded cereal, and they are unfortunately getting sick.

New research identifies the various ways in which we’re most likely to come into contact with communicable diseases at airports. Turns out that toilets are surprisingly clean, but the same cannot be said for those plastic bins used at airport security, which are absolutely covered in viruses.

Sexually transmitted diseases are running rampant across the U.S., according to a new preliminary report released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It found there were more than 2 million cases of the three most commonly reported STDs—syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea—in 2017, making for the…

You don’t have to go far to find people, including doctors and researchers, who will argue that a little bit of alcohol can actually help you live a longer, healthier life. But an enormous new study published Thursday in the Lancet seems poised to rip that idea to shreds. Its findings not only reaffirm that alcohol is…

A disease that often causes no symptoms, but which can suddenly become fatal years after a person was infected, is receiving a big spotlight from the American Heart Association (AHA). On Monday, the organization published a scientific statement in its journal Circulation, urging heart doctors in the U.S. to start…

Not getting enough or the right kind of sleep is notoriously bad for physical health. But a new study out of the University of California, Berkeley suggests that poor sleep can be a nightmare for our social lives too. It just might turn us into lonely outcasts, capable of spreading our misery to others.

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…