Daylight saving time has ended, and most Americans have turned their clocks back an hour. My sixth-grader is in heaven. At 6:50 a.m. these days, our once testy tween zombie…
Category: Health & Medicine
DNA is providing new clues to why COVID-19 hits people differently
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the mercurial nature of the coronavirus has been on display. Some people get mild, cold-like illnesses or even have no symptoms when infected, while…
This child was treated for a rare genetic disease while still in the womb
A toddler girl is flourishing after receiving treatment for a rare genetic disease. In a first for this disease, she received that treatment before she was even born. Sixteen-month-old Ayla…
Here’s how mysterious last-resort antibiotics kill bacteria
To kill drug-resistant bacteria, “last-resort” antibiotics borrow a tactic from Medusa’s playbook: petrification. New high-resolution microscope images show that a class of antibiotics called polymyxins crystallize the cell membranes of…
Cat allergies may be tamed by adding an asthma therapy to allergy shots
Adding lab-made antibodies to allergy shots may better groom the immune system against cat allergies than standard shots alone. The combination therapy also reduced allergy symptoms for a year after…
The U.S.’s alcohol-induced death rate rose sharply in the pandemic’s first year
The death rate from alcohol use rose sharply in the United States in the first year of the pandemic. From 2019 to 2020, the rate of alcohol-induced deaths climbed 26…
Where are the long COVID clinics?
For the millions of people in the United States with long COVID, getting help comes down to where they live. Long COVID clinics have been popping up, but their accessibility…
A major malaria outbreak in Ethiopia came from an invasive Asian mosquito
In early 2022, malaria cases in the Ethiopian city of Dire Dawa surged, with more than 2,400 people sickened. The spike in infections was the work of an invasive mosquito…
Need a fall read? ‘The Song of the Cell’ offers tales from biology and history
The Song of the CellSiddhartha MukherjeeScribner, $32.50 In the summer of 1960, doctors extracted “crimson sludge” from 6-year-old Barbara Lowry’s bones and gave it to her twin. That surgery, one…
What is long COVID and who’s at risk? This NIH project may find out
You may have heard the big long COVID news that came out recently: A Scottish study reported that about half of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 have not fully recovered six…
