Andrew Joseph
New COVID Omicron variants become dominant strains in US, especially in South
The United States appears to be in the midst of another biological baton pass between Covid-19 variants. The Omicron lineage ...
Hospitals are refusing transplants for unvaccinated patients. Is that ethical?
A Boston hospital’s denial of a heart transplant to a man who is unvaccinated for Covid-19 has generated national attention, but ...
‘This was the first time nobody voted for approval of a drug’: Neurologist on FDA panel that negatively evaluated controversial Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab resigns after agency pushes through approval
Neurologist Joel Perlmutter of Washington University in St. Louis, a member of the FDA’s expert panel for nervous system therapies, ...
COVID evolution: ‘What other variants might be out there?’
Tracking the subtle changes to the virus’ RNA is like global detective work, requiring health officials around the world to ...
Why the US pandemic death rate might be 50 percent more than what is being reported
[E]xperts know that the official [COVID-19] death tally is going to be an undercount by some extent. Some people who ...
What our COVID world might look like over the next year
Now — with health authorities saying it may not be until at least the end of 2021 before there’s a ...
$10 COVID saliva test with results in three hours approved for rollout
[A] new test, which is called SalivaDirect and was developed by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health, allows ...
How we are developing a coronavirus vaccine so quickly
Just six months ago, when the death toll from the coronavirus stood at one and neither it nor the disease it caused had ...
COVID-19 undercount: CDC now says as many as 24 times more people in the US infected
[A] study, published [July 21] in JAMA Internal Medicine [determined that the true number of U.S. coronavirus cases could be ...
Lancet medical journal retracts much-questioned COVID-19 ‘observational study’ that raised safety alarms about hydroxychloroquine
The Lancet, one of the world’s top medical journals, on [June 4] retracted an influential study that raised alarms about ...
Seeking new momentum in Alzheimer’s research after decades of slow progress
5.8 million Americans have Alzheimer’s, with a new person developing the condition about every minute of every day. There is still ...
Unconventional drug ‘lottery’ will hand out 50 doses of Zolgensma, world’s most expensive gene therapy
The lottery that began [recently] was not about money, or about choosing a school, or about obtaining a visa. It ...
‘Proteomic clock’ could measure our true biological age through a blood test
A few hundred of the thousands of proteins circulating in our blood turn out to be a fairly accurate forecaster ...
China’s new seaweed-based Alzheimer’s therapy raises hopes—and questions about safety, effectiveness
Chinese regulators have granted conditional approval to an Alzheimer’s drug that is derived from seaweed, potentially shaking up the field ...
‘Marsupial-enabled time machine’: How a Koala virus is giving researchers insights into the human genome
A koala retrovirus, or KoRV, has been rolling through koala populations in Australia from the north to south. It’s passed among the ...
CRISPR could save the lives of sick children by tweaking the embryos of their siblings
[Tweaking an embryo’s DNA can] help save someone who is already alive. Take the case of Jessica and Keith, a ...
How a combination of rare mutations created devastating heart problems for this family
Heritable diseases — say Huntington’s, sickle cell anemia, or cystic fibrosis — are typically thought of as the result of ...
Making a case against ‘aggressive’ restrictions on opioid prescriptions
[Stefan] Kertesz, a primary care physician who also specializes in addiction medicine, had not spent his career investigating long-term opioid ...
Congress renews ban on editing human embryos, despite calls from scientists touting research benefits
A House committee on Tuesday [June 4] restored to pending legislation a ban on altering the genomes of human embryos ...
Can we rejuvenate brain function by disabling this protein? It worked with older mice.
Scientists have shown that delivering blood from an old mouse into a young mouse or vice versa prompts a sort ...
Patients react after failure of promising Alzheimer drug trial: ‘Like the rug was pulled out from under us’
When Biogen and its partner Eisai announced that they were stopping two phase 3 trials of the Alzheimer’s treatment aducanumab because the ...
Is it OK to take sperm from the dead?
[A] New York judge earlier this month ordered a medical center to save the sperm of Peter Zhu, a 21-year-old cadet ...
Shortcomings of new cystic fibrosis treatments illustrate the complexity of some genetic diseases
Josh Hillman, a 23-year-old Harvard Law student from Alabama, has cystic fibrosis, the progressive genetic disease that causes frequent lung ...
Using machine learning to hunt for the origins of new viruses
When a new virus crops up in people, health authorities face an urgent question: Where did it come from? Thousands of viruses ...
Cancer advocacy: How one man and his family have coped with glioblastoma
[Adam and Whitney Hayden] waited to find out if today was the day they would learn that the cancer had ...
First marijuana-based drug gets nod from FDA for 2 forms of epilepsy
The Food and Drug Administration on Monday [June 25] approved the country’s first drug derived from marijuana, a medication that ...
Autism test that appears to work for monkeys may open research doors for humans
Researchers have been left empty-handed so far in their quest to uncover some measurable biological signal that could be used ...
This may explain why women are more likely to develop lupus
Every year, 16,000 cases of lupus are reported in the United States — 9 out of 10 of them in women. Scientists ...
