Author: healthadmin

Embargoed from 4/16 7:30 ET Progyny, a women’s health and fertility treatment company, announced a new full insurance benefits option that it says will make it easier for small and medium-sized employers to offer fertility treatment coverage to their employees. The service, called Progyny Select, provides a comprehensive end-to-end patient experience when employees choose to embark on fertility treatment, while making it easy for employers to track and manage costs and outcomes. According to an announcement first provided to Fierce Healthcare, the plan features a fixed premium model with predictable monthly per-member pricing. Melissa Cummings, Progyny’s chief operating officer, told…

Recent research published in PNAS Nexus Politicians who frequently use personal insults receive significant media attention but show evidence that they are less successful legislatively and electorally than policy-oriented politicians. This suggests a shift in political strategy, with some lawmakers prioritizing national visibility and celebrity status over traditional legislative duties. These findings highlight a growing trend in American politics in which the pursuit of media spotlight sustains toxic forms of public debate. Research consistently shows that American voters dislike political incivility and prefer that lawmakers focus on substantive policy discussions. Despite this clear public preference, hostile rhetoric, including slurs and…

WASHINGTON — Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a delicate mission ahead of him as he heads to the U.S. Capitol to testify on his fiscal year 2027 budget request. The idea is that following the White House’s playbook of “bringing America back to health” while avoiding politically divisive topics like vaccines will be a “win.” How she responds to questions from lawmakers over at least seven hearings will be a test of whether she can continue to get her message across before embarking on a midterm campaign trip to shore up support for the MAHA movement and…

Researchers analyzed registry data covering the entire Swedish adult population to explore new ways to identify melanoma risk. The dataset includes information such as age, gender, medical diagnosis, medication use, and socio-economic status. A total of 6,036,186 people were included, and 38,582 (0.64%) developed melanoma during the 5-year study period. Much of the analysis was done by Martin Gillstedt. “Our study shows that data already available within the healthcare system can be used to identify individuals at high risk of melanoma,” says Martin Gilstedt, PhD student at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg and statistician at the Department of Dermatology and…

New research reveals how stress, weight and hormonal patterns interact to influence when puberty begins, providing new insights into long-term health risks and opportunities for early intervention. Research: Steroids, stress, and BMI interact to promote female pubertal development. Image credit: Viktoriia Patapova/Shutterstock.com recent diary Clinical endocrinology and metabolism In this study, we identified steroid metabolomic patterns associated with early pubertal timing and tested whether BMI and stress markers alter this relationship. Pubertal timing, stress, and steroid metabolome Menarche, the beginning of the first menstrual period, marks the social transition to adulthood as well as an important biological milestone in adolescence.…

Recent research from General Brigham suggests that aiming for more aggressive blood pressure management may have greater health benefits than previously thought. The results of this study indicate that the benefits of more intensive blood pressure lowering may outweigh concerns about overtreatment of hypertensive patients. This result is Annual report of internal medicine. To better understand the impact of different treatment goals, researchers analyzed data from the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT), the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), and other published studies. They used this information to model lifetime health outcomes such as heart attack, stroke, and…

CIgarette’s butt. Gatorade bottle cap. Part of the Clif Bar wrapper. cigarette butts. fake nails. Pieces of Styrofoam. Drink through a straw. Pieces of Styrofoam. cigarette butts. Mallory Willem uses her gloved hands to quickly and efficiently separate trash from storm drains in Cedar Key, an island town off Florida’s Gulf Coast. She paused to examine her nails, painted a chalky lavender color. “We have a lot of fake nails,” she says, tossing them onto a dull mosaic of broken trash. Volunteers separate and record the types of trash collected in storm drain traps in Cedar Key, Florida. Credit: Monica…

Daria Egereva was scheduled to come to New York next week. The indigenous Selkup climate change advocate is expected to return to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, where he spoke two years ago about how indigenous peoples face environmental degradation and climate change. Instead, she faces up to 20 years in prison on terrorism charges this year and is being held in a Russian prison. Egereva was arrested on December 17, along with another Russian indigenous activist, Natalia Leongart, whose name was not made public until last week. Both are accused of joining a terrorist group, stemming…

A new clinical trial led by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research suggests that metformin, a widely used and inexpensive type 2 diabetes drug, may help people with type 1 diabetes reduce the amount of insulin they need. The findings point to potential new ways to manage symptoms more effectively. For years, doctors have prescribed metformin to some type 1 diabetics in hopes of improving insulin resistance. That approach is mostly based on limited evidence. The results of this controlled clinical trial show that while metformin does not improve insulin resistance in type 1 diabetes, it does help lower the…

Ammonia pollution hotspots have been identified in areas with the highest concentration of pig and poultry farms in the UK, a study has found.New maps reveal for the first time that the worst ammonia emissions levels are concentrated in Lincolnshire, Herefordshire and Norfolk. According to researchers from Compassion in World Farming (CiWF) and Sustain, these regions all have high densities of intensive poultry and pig farms that emit dangerous levels of ammonia.The study comes as the government seeks to rewrite planning rules to make it easier to build intensive livestock farms, despite concerns over water pollution, air quality and local…