Author: healthadmin

The president appears to have had a harder time cleaning the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool than he did cleaning up the sewage-tainted Tijuana River, even though he hired the same contractor to do both. The New York Times revealed over the weekend that Green Water Services was awarded a $1.7 million no-bid contract to install a water purification system at a pool on the National Mall earlier this spring. But now the research has come under scrutiny after algae blooms turned the pools a bright shade of green. Meanwhile, Green Water executives maintain that the Tijuana River treatment has been…

Bisphenol A (BPA) is an industrial chemical that is banned in the EU for use in baby bottles and thermal paper receipts. In the future, it will also be banned from food packaging. From July 2026, food wrappers and containers made with BPA or other bisphenols will no longer be sold in the EU. Bisphenol A is a chemical used in the production of polycarbonate and epoxy resins, which are hard, transparent plastics. Such resins are found, for example, in the internal coatings of food or beverage cans. Designed to prevent metal from rusting and leaching into food. BPA is…

People who exhibit psychopathic traits have significant deficits in their ability to empathize, but these deficits vary widely depending on a person’s specific personality profile. A new study reveals that highly insensitive people have a hard time feeling the emotions of others, while highly antisocial people primarily have a hard time understanding other people’s points of view. The study was recently published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. To understand these nuances, it is helpful to first analyze the concept of psychopathy. In popular culture, psychopathy is often portrayed as a single extreme condition. In fact, psychology considers psychopathic…

Online portal messages sent to healthcare providers more than doubled between 2020 and 2025 as patients gained direct access to their doctors. But rather than replacing face-to-face care, digital medicine is increasing the burden on clinicians without a corresponding reduction in visits, a new study finds. At least 12% of Americans now communicate with their health care providers about appointments, test results, and ongoing treatment through secure online patient portals or health apps, according to a study led by researchers at New York University Langone Health and published online today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Online…

For children diagnosed with neuroblastoma, the most common infant cancer that occurs when early nerve cells grow out of control, the path to treatment is not easy. Some types of neuroblastoma may heal on their own, while others require aggressive intervention. Researchers have tried to tailor treatments to patients based on a single gene mutation, but with limited success. This is because patient outcomes depend on the entire molecular background, which includes millions or even billions of features, such as DNA and RNA from tissues and blood. It’s much more than just one gene, everything that’s happening inside a…

Genital herpes is a lifelong infection. Available treatments can manage symptoms but cannot cure or prevent infection. Now, researchers at Yale School of Medicine have taken an important step toward developing a genital herpes vaccine that prevents infection in preclinical models. In a study published June 19 in Science Immunology, researchers evaluated a two-part vaccination against genital herpes. In this technique, nanoparticles are introduced into the vagina, where a woman’s herpes infection occurs, following an initial part (a typical intramuscular injection, such as the one you receive with a flu shot). The idea is that the first injection “stimulates” the…

Theodore Scott Nowicki, MD, a physician-scientist and assistant professor of pediatric hematology/oncology, microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, was awarded a Hero Grant from MIB Agents, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving outcomes for children and adolescents with osteosarcoma. The award provides $100,000, the highest funding level awarded through the OutSmarting Osteosarcoma Program, and will support Nowicki’s research into developing next-generation CAR-T cell therapies for osteosarcoma, the most common osteosarcoma in children and adolescents. CAR-T cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy that uses a patient’s own…

A predictive framework that measures how voters evaluate candidates’ future leadership and policy expertise accurately predicted the outcome of a close 2024 US presidential election. This approach provides an alternative to traditional models that rely on past economic performance and provides election strategists with specific guidance for shaping public perceptions. The study was published in the journal Research and Politics. Election prediction has a long history in political science and often relies on a concept known as retroactive voting. This theory posits that the public acts as an auditor for incumbent political parties, punishing or rewarding candidates based on recent…

Many conditions that cause vision loss have common characteristics. It is the gradual destruction of the retina, the light-sensing tissue at the back of the eye. Although scientists know some of the structural changes that occur as this damage progresses, little is understood about the molecular signals that shape how the retina copes with the disease. Now, a team at the Scripps Research Institute, in collaboration with the University of California, San Diego and the Lowy Medical Institute, has discovered that a naturally occurring molecule called erucamide plays a role in communication between cells in the retina.. Their research is…

The body’s organs are constantly communicating. Adipose tissue tells the liver when to store or release energy, the immune system sends signals for local inflammation, and thousands of proteins relay these messages to organs throughout the body. But while scientists have long known that such conversations exist, they have struggled to pinpoint exactly which cells are sending which messages. Now researchers have discovered a way to listen. By refining an existing protein tagging technique called “proximity labeling” and applying it to genetically engineered mice, the team developed a platform to trace proteins back to their cells of origin and track…