STAT
When CRISPR gene editing debuted ten years ago, almost nobody noticed
CRISPR/Cas9 is a transformative breakthrough for which two of its authors, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, were awarded the Nobel Prize ...
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 ...
How politics can impact health: ‘Stark partisan divide’ in premature death rates among Democrat and Republican voters
In an ideal world, public health would be independent of politics. Yet recent events in the U.S., such as the ...
Viewpoint: Redefining ‘medically necessary’ — Debate unfolds over how to cover ‘off label’ treatments for rare diseases
The term “medically necessary” is the yardstick by which insurance companies, including Medicare and Medicaid, decide if they will pay ...
Is monkeypox the next global viral scourge?
Monkeypox, a disease that rarely shows up outside a belt of countries across Central and West Africa, has exploded into ...
4,000 US children are born each year with mitochondrial disease. Why are there still blocks on replacement therapy?
Australia has become the second country in the world to explicitly authorize and regulate mitochondrial replacement therapies, offering hope to ...
Viewpoint: Ancestry and ‘race’ are not interchangeable. Here’s why that matters
Race, widely used as a variable across biomedical research and medicine, is an appropriate proxy for racism — but not ...
Medical advice switch: Daily aspirin to prevent heart disease offers no benefits — and could be harmful
Taking low-dose aspirin every day to prevent a heart attack or stroke provides little to no benefit to people without ...
Unraveling sex differences in vaccine response
Vaccines save lives, and the record time in which scientists developed Covid-19 vaccines is unprecedented. While debilitating side effects from ...
Why COVID ‘herd immunity’ never reached ‘sterilization immunity’ — and never will
Herd immunity was always our greatest asset for protecting vulnerable people, but public health failed to use it wisely. In ...
Reassessing what the US did right and wrong in managing the pandemic
As the nation exhales at the sight of descending curves of Covid-19 infections and deaths, top global health experts assessed ...
Many people carry severe disease genes that should be deadly — but they survive and are healthy. How?
The result didn’t make sense. The researcher kept scanning the mouse’s pregnant belly, back and forth, back and forth. They ...
Viewpoint: Why the FDA should ban laser-based ‘vaginal rejuvenation’
Laser procedures promising “vaginal rejuvenation” are being promoted to women in advertisements online, in spa windows, and even in some ...
1 in 7 breast cancer diagnoses are false alarms. How should that affect your decision to get a mammogram?
Catching cancer early in a mammogram can be life-saving — smaller tumors are easier to remove surgically, and therapy often ...
Genetic gold rush: Next generation CRISPR gene editing techniques poised to develop new wave of targeted drugs
In the 10 years leading up to 2012, 200 papers mentioned CRISPR. In 2020 alone, there were more than 6,000 ...
What’s behind the boom in diagnosed autism cases?
Is there an autism epidemic? No. The increase in the autism rate recently reported by the Centers for Disease Control ...
Why FDA efforts to get children under 5 vaccinated are raising questions among COVID-fighting medical professionals
The Food and Drug Administration’s willingness to consider authorizing a Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for children under ...
9/11 COVID commission? Bipartisan group of Senators propose overhaul of US pandemic preparations
A powerful, bipartisan duo of senators wants to empower Congress to ensure the government’s response to the next pandemic is ...
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 ...
Transplant of genetic modified pig heart into a human sparks ethical debate
Amedical team at the University of Maryland Medical Center announced [January 10] that it had accomplished a world-first: Its surgeons had ...
Will annual COVID boosters become a necessity? Experts are divided
With the world facing the latest in a seemingly endless stream of coronavirus variants — and with bullish talk from ...
Life span vs. health span: How physical activity wards off age-related disease
In a new review published [November 22] in PNAS, [evolutionary biologist Daniel] Lieberman and his Harvard co-authors grapple with the ...
Why the FDA hasn’t reined in experimental stem cell therapy cottage industry
In 2016, the Food and Drug Administration put the emerging stem cell cottage industry on notice. At the time, a ...
Fake COVID vaccines are spreading around the world — hindering global efforts to contain pandemic
Counterfeit vaccines and medicines, which include substandard and falsified products, can undermine the efforts to control the pandemic. These products ...
Pregnant women carrying male fetuses more susceptible to getting COVID, research finds
In two studies published [October 19] in Science Translational Medicine, the Boston-based research teams found that pregnant and lactating women ...
Superbugs: The next (inevitable) public health crisis could kill as many as 10 million people around the world
Covid-19 has demonstrated the catastrophic result of a virus catching the world unprepared. But over human history, bacteria have been ...
Brain pacemaker? Deep stimulation therapy shown shows promise in relieving severe depression
By mapping out a depressed patient’s brain circuitry, researchers were able to identify biological markers that told them [depression] symptoms ...
COVID shot grab bag? Here’s what we know about mixing Pfizer, J&J, and Moderna vaccines
So does getting a dose of Pfizer vaccine after getting a single dose of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine trigger production ...
