Health

Abortion restrictions affect women’s health in more ways than one. According to a new study published in JAMA, simply living in a state that limits access to abortion is linked to worsened symptoms of anxiety and depression in women of childbearing age. To find this pattern, a team at Johns Hopkins University analyzed responses from more than 700,000 people to the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey between Dec. 2021 and Jan. 2023. The survey asked people to rank their anxiety and depression symptoms on a scale of 0 to 4, allowing the research team to assign averages to various groups across the three time periods they looked at. They were primarily interested in what happened to the mental health of women ages 18 to 45—a window they defined as childbearing age—after the U.S. Supreme Court ...

When a young, healthy person in the U.S. catches COVID-19, there’s not much they can do except stay home and rest. The antiviral drug Paxlovid is widely available, but it’s only approved for people at high risk of severe disease, such as older adults and people with underlying conditions. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hasn’t approved any drugs that can treat COVID-19 among people who are unlikely to get very sick or die, but nonetheless would like some relief from their symptoms.These drugs do exist, though. Antivirals currently available overseas seem to be effective at shortening the length and treating the symptoms of mild-to-moderate cases of COVID-19—but it’s anyone’s guess if and when they’ll make the jump to the U.S. market.A study published in the New England Journal ...

January 25, 2024 11:55 AM ESTWASHINGTON — The maker of Robitussin cough syrup is recalling several lots of products containing honey due to contamination that could pose a serious risk to people with weakened immune systems.Haleon’s recall covers eight lots of Robitussin Honey CF Max Day Adult and Robitussin Honey CF Max Nighttime Adult, which were distributed to stores and pharmacy suppliers. The Food and Drug Administration posted the company's announcement to its website Wednesday.The products have the potential to cause “severe or life-threatening adverse events,” if taken by people with weakened immune systems, such as organ transplant recipients or those with HIV. Several million people in the U.S. have conditions that impair the immune system's ability to fight off infections. For m...

People who lose a significant amount of weight without dieting, exercise, or other lifestyle changes may also be at higher risk of some cancers, according to researchers who say a sudden drop may be an early indicator of the disease. Those who spontaneously shed more than 10% of their body weight developed cancer at a rate of about 1,362 per 100,000 over a 12-month period, according to a study released Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association, while the rate of diagnosis among people who hadn’t recently lost weight without explanation was 869 per 100,000. While often seen as a positive step toward better health, a large drop in weight sometimes precedes a cancer diagnosis. Treating weight as an important vital sign may help doctors spot cancer earlier, when it’s more li...

For those of us whose skin in the winter gets as scaly as a lizard’s, home humidifiers might sound essential. But humidifiers are more complicated to use and care for than some other household appliances—and doing so incorrectly can be worse for your health than not having one at all. Here’s what to know before diving in. The benefits of humid airHumidifiers do their best work on the parts of the body you use to breathe. When the air gets colder, the humidity in the environment goes down. Each breath of dry air sucks moisture from your airways, which can leave your nose and throat parched and more prone to irritation. Dryness can lead to issues like nosebleeds, persistent coughs, and discomfort, especially for people with lung diseases like asthma and COPD. “Having a humidifier, particula...

Eating healthier foods, getting more sleep, and reducing stress can all help you live longer. But researchers reporting in the Lancet Public Health say that there’s another healthy habit that we shouldn’t forget: getting an education. Analyzing data from hundreds of studies of people in 59 countries, the scientists studied the relationship between how many years of education people received and mortality. They found that people with more schooling tended to die later than those who had less. Every additional year of education reduced mortality by 2%. That translates to a 34% lower risk of dying early for people who complete high school and college—about 18 total years of schooling—compared to those who don’t. That's about as protective against early death as eating the recommended daily am...

Kathryn Clancy wrote an entire book about menstrual cycles. But even she was surprised by some of the pre-menopausal symptoms she recently began to experience at age 44.“A lot of things that have to do with my uterus, ovaries, and breasts, I have been massively underprepared for as a Ph.D.-level expert in this field,” says Clancy, a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “That should tell you how even more underprepared most people are.”Most people who menstruate will experience symptoms including hot flashes, brain fog, and changes to mood, sleep, and sexual function as they approach menopause, defined as the point in time a year after their last period. But that transition, which typically begins between the ages of 45 and 55, is so rarely discussed in society—and at t...

Your immune system may be getting smarter every time you encounter COVID-19, a new study suggests. After getting vaccinated and infected, the immune system generates broader defenses against the virus, including against new variants.In a paper published Jan. 19 in Science Immunology, researchers in South Korea compared immune cells in the lab from people with a variety of vaccine and infection histories throughout the different Omicron waves, which began in late 2021 with BA.1. People who had been vaccinated with the original Pfizer-BioNTech series and then got infected with any Omicron variant showed good levels of memory immune cells—called T cells—that defended not only against the variants causing the infection, but also related ones in the Omicron family that came later. For example, ...

Cameroon will be the first country to routinely give children a new malaria vaccine as the shots are rolled out in Africa.The campaign due to start Monday was described by officials as a milestone in the decades-long effort to curb the mosquito-spread disease on the continent, which accounts for 95% of the world’s malaria deaths.“The vaccination will save lives. It will provide major relief to families and the country’s health system," said Aurelia Nguyen, chief program officer at the Gavi vaccines alliance, which is helping Cameroon secure the shots.The Central Africa nation hopes to vaccinate about 250,000 children this year and next year. Gavi said it is working with 20 other African countries to help them get the vaccine and that those countries will hopefully immunize more than 6 mill...

Aging is inevitable, but that doesn’t stop us from trying to slow it down. And the easier the intervention, the better.In a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers report that taking a multivitamin that you can buy at the pharmacy can slow cognitive decline associated with aging by as much as two years.The trial is part of a series led by scientists at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital that compared people 60 years or older taking Centrum Silver to those taking a placebo. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health and Mars Edge—a branch of the food company Mars, Inc.—and Haleon, the maker of Centrum, donated the vitamins. None of the sponsors or funders were involved in the design of the study or analysis of the results.Two p...