Author: healthadmin

Electronic health records giant Epic has debuted a new feature that monitors county-level health trends and issues alerts when an increase in disease rates is detected. Developed by Epic Research, Health Alerts uses statistical models applied to actual medical records to detect when rates of health conditions in a county are higher than expected. Each alert is reviewed by the Epic research team, which includes clinicians and data scientists, before being published, Epic said in a blog post. This manual review step assesses whether the alert is clinically meaningful and appropriate for public reporting, the company said. Active health alerts…

Researchers have discovered and described an unusual form of superconductivity that only appears under very strong magnetic fields. The study, led in part by Rice University physicist Andriy Nevidomsky, science We then explain how uranium ditelluride (UTe2) forms a unique superconducting halo when exposed to strong magnetic conditions. Under normal circumstances, magnetic fields destroy superconductors. Even relatively mild magnetic fields tend to weaken superconductivity, but stronger fields usually cause superconductivity to disappear completely once a critical limit is reached. UTe2 breaks this rule. In 2019, scientists discovered that common materials can maintain a superconducting state hundreds of times stronger than…

Despite running into legal hurdles last month in his efforts to rebuild the U.S. vaccine infrastructure, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to reshape the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Advisory Committee in a way that alarms some experts.In the new charter for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the group’s focus, which helps advise the CDC on vaccine schedules and recommendations, appears to shift more toward concerns about vaccine safety and side effects. In particular, the panel will now work to identify “gaps in vaccine safety research, including post-vaccination side effects.” This…

People who experience symptoms of social anxiety tend to identify subtle expressions of sadness more accurately and scan moving faces with scattered gaze more quickly than people without symptoms. These results, published in Psychology & Neuroscience, show that incorporating video into research may improve our understanding of visual attention in social anxiety. This study highlights how small changes in experimental design can reveal behavioral patterns that are often missed in still images. Social anxiety disorder is characterized by an intense and persistent fear of being judged, evaluated, or rejected by others in social situations. This fear shapes how individuals perceive…

Researchers at the University of Chicago have discovered a surprising new role for zeaxanthin, a plant-based compound best known for supporting eye health. According to the survey results published in cell report medicinethis common carotenoid may also help the immune system fight cancer by increasing the activity of important immune cells. This finding indicates that zeaxanthin is a simple and widely available supplement that has the potential to improve the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy. “We were surprised to discover that zeaxanthin, which is already known for its role in eye health, has an entirely new function in enhancing antitumor immunity,”…

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego found that California’s local ban on flavored tobacco sales was associated with a decrease in youth e-cigarette intake over time, without increasing smoking. The findings were based on an analysis of more than 2.8 million middle school and high school students and were published in the journal April 10, 2026. JAMA Health Forum. Our findings suggest that local flavored tobacco bans can be an effective strategy to reduce e-cigarette use among youth. Importantly, we found no evidence that these policies led to young people switching to cigarettes, a major concern raised…

By using AI to analyze more than 400,000 Reddit posts, researchers in Pennsylvania identified patient-reported symptoms associated with GLP-1, the popular weight loss and diabetes drugs semaglutide and tirzepatide, that may not be fully captured in clinical trials or regulatory documents. New research published in natural healthcovers more than five years of posts from nearly 70,000 Reddit users and focuses on two main conditions that require further research: genital symptoms, including irregular menstrual cycles, and temperature-related complaints, such as chills and hot flashes. Some of the side effects we found, such as nausea, are well known, indicating that the…

The University of Cincinnati has enrolled the first patient in a new clinical trial testing the effectiveness of an investigational drug against prosthetic joint infections (PJI). T. Toan Le, MD, professor of orthopedics at the School of Medicine, has now enrolled two patients in Peptide Logix’s RETAIN trial. Approximately 5 million joint replacement surgeries are performed in the United States and Europe each year. Peptide Logix, a surgical therapeutics company, develops therapies to prevent and treat medical device-associated infections (MDRIs), such as prosthetic joint infections and other joint replacement infections. “In about 2% to 3% of these cases, the artificial…

The Caliber Skaggs Institute for Innovative Medicines, a drug discovery arm of Scripps Research, today announced that the FDA has approved its investigational new drug (IND) application to study switchable chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (sCAR-T) therapy (CLBR001 + SWI019) in patients with autoimmune diseases. Patient recruitment for the Phase 1 trial will begin soon (NCT06913608). A Phase 1 clinical trial will evaluate the safety and efficacy of CLBR001 + SWI019 in patients with myositis, systemic sclerosis, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis, with potential expansion to other indications in the future. Calibr-Skaggs’ new sCAR-T therapy is designed to reduce the side effects…

Lead halide perovskites are surprisingly effective at converting sunlight into electricity, even though they are packed with impurities and structural defects. Its performance is now approaching that of silicon-based solar cells, which have long dominated the industry. In a recent study published in nature communicationsresearchers at the Austrian Institute of Science and Technology (ISTA) have provided a detailed explanation for this unexpected efficiency, solving a mystery that has puzzled scientists for years. This raises an obvious question. How can a relatively simple, low-cost material compete with the highly refined silicon technology developed over decades? Over the past 15 years, lead…