Author: healthadmin
Democrats have increasingly negative feelings toward Republicans because they perceive the opposition to actively oppose policies aimed at reducing racial inequality. This perception operates independently of how voters feel about the racial statistics of the opposition party itself. These findings were published in The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. Political scientists have tracked a growing trend in American politics in which voters not only disagree with the opposing party but actively despise its members. Researchers call this phenomenon emotional polarization. Over the past few decades, voters have come to view members of the opposing party as a stigmatized outgroup.…
Amazon has named digital health executive Roy Schoenberg, M.D., to lead its healthcare business as Neil Lindsay plans to retire from the company after 15 years. Lindsay, who led global marketing for Kindle and was a top executive for Amazon’s Prime business, moved to the online retail giant’s healthcare business in late 2021. At the time, Amazon selected Lindsay to oversee the company’s comprehensive health efforts, including Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Care, and diagnostics. Amazon Worldwide Stores CEO Doug Herrington said in a company news post that Lindsay is stepping back from her job at Amazon to pursue personal projects and…
The heart cannot heal itself. After a heart attack or other cardiovascular disorder, the heart is unable to regenerate weakened muscles, reducing its ability to pump blood throughout the body. Although drug treatments to manage symptoms of heart failure, including new obesity drugs, continue to improve outcomes, many people ultimately face only two solutions: heart transplant or cardiac device implantation. Now, a small new study is reporting progress with new methods. After people were given heart muscle patches made from induced pluripotent stem cells, their remuscularized heart walls thickened, their pumping ability was restored, and their quality of life improved…
A new paper has been published in a magazine current biology The complex pair of eyes of humans and other vertebrates suggests that they evolved from a single central eye on the top of the head of our ancient ancestors. The authors propose that the light-sensing tissue inside our eyes is older than the eyes themselves, and that remnants of this original visual system are still functioning deep within the human brain. This study provides evidence that vision in vertebrates has followed a fundamentally different evolutionary path compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. Animal eyes generally rely on…
JMIR Publications today published a report on evolving evidence gaps in drug safety during pregnancy in its News and Outlook section. In “How Machine Learning Can Help Fill the Evidence Gaps on Drug Safety in Pregnant Women,” health writer Michelle Falci interviews the principal investigators of two projects that use machine learning to analyze large datasets on drug exposures and outcomes to identify and evaluate possible associations. Pregnant participants will be excluded from clinical trials Falci reports that medical research has a serious problem of underestimation. Only 4% of clinical trials over the past decade included pregnant women as participants.…
A drug combination widely studied for its anti-aging potential may have significant downsides. Researchers at the University of Connecticut report that the treatment caused significant brain damage in mice, raising concerns about its increasing use in longevity research and off-label anti-aging therapies. The survey results are PNASshowed that the drug combination dasatinib + quercetin (D+Q) damaged myelin, the protective coating that surrounds nerve fibers and helps electrical signals travel efficiently between the brain and body. “When you give this cocktail to animals, both young and old, it damages myelin and causes myelin to disappear, even more so in young animals…
The move to low carbon inhalers will help Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH) reduce its carbon emissions, supporting the wider NHS ambition to reach net zero and reduce the environmental impact of care. We are helping to reduce the carbon footprint of inhaler use across the Trust by changing prescribing practices, increasing staff training and improving support for patients to use and dispose of their inhalers correctly. Carbon emissions associated with pressurized metered dose inhalers (pMDIs) administered to patients across the Trust’s four hospitals decreased by 18% in 2025/26 compared to the previous year (2024/25) and by 22%…
California regulators have taken the first step to ban the production of engineered quartz countertops in an effort to curb the spread of silicosis, which has killed more than 30 stone fabricators and sickened hundreds more. The state Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board voted last week to adopt a petition to ban engineered stone containing more than 1% crystalline silica, marking a victory for workers who cut, grind and polish quartz and are at risk of contracting an incurable lung disease. But the decision is just the first step in a long rulemaking process, and public health experts warn…
Recent research published in journals Alzheimer’s disease and dementia: the behavior and socio-economics of aging provide evidence that long-term exposure to particulate air pollution can negatively impact certain types of memory in older Black adults. This study suggests that breathing polluted air for more than a decade tends to negatively impact semantic memory, the brain’s ability to recall common knowledge and facts. These findings highlight the importance of environmental factors in brain health and point to potential reasons behind racial differences in dementia risk. In the United States, black adults are 1.5 to 2.0 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s…
A new species of sea slug smaller than a grain of rice has been discovered off the coast of Keelung in northern Taiwan. The translucent marine creature covered in distinctive black and yellow markings has been officially named Tecasera Sesama By researchers from National Taiwan Ocean University, National Museum of Natural Science, and National Taipei University of Education. This unusual name comes from the slug’s resemblance to a sesame seed. “Taiwanese divers call it ‘sesame’ in Chinese, and it got this name because it is small like a sesame seed,” the research team explained. The tiny sea slug, less than…