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…
Category: Health & Medicine
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…
A study questioning colonoscopy screening’s benefits has big caveats
A recent study reported a smaller-than-expected benefit from screening colonoscopies. But the study has important caveats, gastroenterologists say, making it ripe for misinterpretation if that context isn’t included. The study…
Black Death immunity came at a cost to modern-day health
A genetic variant that appears to have boosted medieval Europeans’ ability to survive the Black Death centuries ago may contribute — albeit in a small way — to an inflammatory…
