Health

More adults are using melatonin to get to sleep at night. Unfortunately, that means more young children are finding their parents' tablets and gummies and taking them by accident.A new analysis in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which is published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, finds that melatonin was responsible for a surprisingly large share of emergency-department visits—7%—among infants and young kids who accidentally ingested a medication from 2019 to 2022. During that time span, melatonin caused about 11,000 such incidents.Past research shows that from 2009 to 2020, emergency department visits of this type spiked by 420% among this age group. In 2022, other research found a 530% increase in accidental melatonin poisonings from 2012 to 2021 among p...

Hand sanitizers were tainted by benzene. Sunscreens and dry shampoos too. Now acne treatments are joining the list of widely used consumer products found to contain high levels of the chemical linked to cancer.Acne products from brands including Proactiv, Target Corp.’s Up & Up and Clinique have elevated levels of the carcinogen, an independent testing laboratory said in a petition filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration late Tuesday. The lab asked the FDA to recall the affected treatments—all of which contain the active ingredient benzoyl peroxide—while regulators investigate. Benzene is a natural component of gasoline and tobacco smoke and can cause leukemia in high amounts, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over the past three years it’s been...

With loneliness at epidemic levels in the U.S., many people could use a few more friends to lean on. Survey data suggest that many U.S. adults want to make new friends—perhaps because strong relationships are one of the best predictors of happiness and well-being—but struggle to do so. About 8% of U.S. adults say they don’t have any close friends at all.Enter the apps. Bumble for Friends, Hey! VINA, Wink, and plenty more promise to help people make friends online. Many work just like dating apps: you build a profile that includes photos and a bio, then swipe through other people’s profiles until you find someone who seems like a potential match. If you pick each other, you can start chatting.Despite their similarities, friendship apps haven’t taken off in quite the way dating apps have. On...

Brain experts have a pretty good handle on some of the major risk factors that contribute to Alzheimer’s—from a person's genes to their physical activity levels, how much formal education they've received, and how socially engaged they are. But one promise of AI in medicine is that it can spot less obvious links that humans can't always see. Could AI help uncover conditions linked to Alzheimer's that have so far been overlooked? To find out, Marina Sirota and her team at University of California San Francisco (UCSF) ran a machine-learning program on a database of anonymous electronic health records from patients. The AI algorithm was trained to pull out any common features shared by people who were ultimately diagnosed with Alzheimer’s over a period of seven years. The database includes cl...

Not so long ago, Juul was seen as the new Marlboro. Smoking wasn’t that cool anymore—rates had plummeted among U.S. adults and teens—but then came Juul, a sleek, addictive product with flashy advertising tactics that took off like wildfire. It soon became clear that e-cigarettes were hooking teens who otherwise wouldn’t have gone near nicotine.Now, Juul is out and Zyn is in. It’s even more discreet than Juul, with no plumes of vapor. A user simply tucks a small pouch of nicotine, additives, and flavorings under their lip for up to an hour. Over that time, it releases a steady hit of nicotine—more than that in a cigarette, but delivered much more slowly. Like Juul, it contains no tobacco.You're not alone if you're just hearing of Zyn, but it's been for sale in the U.S. since 2014. Like othe...

The first birth control pill that people can buy without a prescription, called Opill, is shipping to stores this week.Perrigo, the Ireland-based company that makes Opill, said the pills should be available to purchase at retail pharmacies and online by the end of March. The pills are designed to be taken daily at about the same time each day, and they will be sold in one-month packs for $19.99 and three-month packs for $49.99.A spokesperson for CVS, one pharmacy that will be stocking the pill, said the pills will be in more than 7,500 of its stores nationwide and will be available to order on the store's app. People can opt for same-day delivery or pick-up in store to preserve their privacy.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the over-the-counter use of the oral contraceptive l...

March 4, 2024 10:14 AM ESTNEW YORK — More than 61,000 pounds of steamed chicken soup dumplings sold at Trader Joe's are being recalled for possibly containing hard plastic, U.S. regulators announced Saturday.The Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service noted that the now-recalled dumplings, which are produced by the California-based CJ Foods Manufacturing Beaumont Corp., may be contaminated with foreign materials—“specifically hard plastic from a permanent marker pen.”The recall arrives after consumers reported finding hard plastic in the Trader Joe's-branded products, FSIS said. To date, no related illnesses or injures have been reported.FSIS urged consumers to check their freezers. The 6-ounce “Trader Joe's Steamed Chicken Soup Dumplings” under recall were produced on ...

Climate change kills. Since 2000, nearly four million people worldwide have lost their lives due to floods, wildfires, heat waves, droughts, and other extreme weather events that have been linked to a steadily warming planet, according to a recent estimate in the journal Nature. That sweeping number can make it hard for any of us to grasp how the problem is touching health in our own small part of the world. Now, a new study in Nature Medicine provides some of that granular insight for people living in the U.S., exploring how climate-linked disasters affect visits to hospital emergency departments in counties nationwide, as well as related deaths in the aftermath of the disasters. The numbers, the researchers found, are troubling, with the hardest-hit communities showing mortality rates as...

Cases of norovirus, a nasty stomach bug that spreads easily, are climbing in the Northeastern U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.Nationwide, about 12% of most recent norovirus tests sent to the CDC were positive, but the proportion was about 16% in the Northeast, the agency said. That compares with nearly 10% of norovirus tests in the Midwest and South and nearly 13% in the West.Characterized by the sudden onset of vomiting, diarrhea, and general feelings of misery, norovirus outbreaks are notorious on cruise ships, nursing homes, jails, schools, and other places where people are in close contact.Here's what you need to know about this wily germ.What is norovirus?Norovirus infections are caused by a group of viruses that spread remarkably easily. It can ...

NEW YORK — Health officials are investigating whether there's a link between two new RSV vaccines and cases of a rare nervous system disorder in older U.S. adults.The inquiry is based on fewer than two dozen cases seen among more than 9.5 million vaccine recipients, health officials said Thursday. And the available information is too limited to establish whether the shots caused the illnesses, they added.But the numbers are higher than expected and officials are gathering more information to determine if the vaccines are causing the problem. The data was presented at a meeting of an expert panel that provides vaccine policy advice to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Officials said they were investigating more than 20 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare illness in which a...