Dr. Nasia Safdar, a professor of infectious medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discusses why infection rates have gone up and how you can protect yourself as a hospital patient or visiting family member.
Continue reading
Bird Flu Cases Are Going Undetected, New Study Suggests. It’s a Problem for All of Us.
s bird flu cases go underreported, health officials risk being slow to notice if the virus were to become more contagious. A large surge of infections outside of farmworker communities would trigger the government’s flu surveillance system, but by then it might be too late to contain.
Continue reading
Older adults want to cut back on medication, but study shows need for caution
Many with heart issues or diabetes say they’d like to take less medication, but pharmacists and prescribers need to offer personalized guidance for deprescribing
Continue reading
Today’s health news
Covid activity rises – No survival benefit from double mastectomy – Trust in doctors crashes – Prevention could cut dementia rates by nearly half
Continue reading
FDA Approves HPV Tests That Allow for Self-Collection in a Health Care Setting
Women can now be offered the option to collect a vaginal sample themselves for HPV testing if they cannot have or do not want a pelvic exam. However, the collection, which involves a swab or brush, must be done in a health care setting, such as primary care offices, urgent care, pharmacies, and mobile clinics.
Continue reading
Looking for nursing home info?
Medicare.gov makes it easy to find and compare nursing homes in your area. Personalize your results by filtering for what matters most to you — like inspection results, location, quality ratings, and more.
Continue reading
Dental therapists, who can fill cavities and check teeth, get the OK in more states
Dental therapists are licensed to fill cavities, place temporary crowns, extract diseased teeth and provide other basic preventive dental care, working under a dentist’s supervision. They have more training than a hygienist but not the advanced degree of a dentist.
Continue reading
Audit finds cracks in Washington’s egg inspection program
Washington’s Department of Agriculture failed to complete hundreds of required inspections of egg production and packing facilities in recent years, raising food safety concerns, according to a new state audit.
Continue reading
The Fuzzy Science on Whether Fido Is Actually Good for You
Plenty of people believe there’s something salubrious about caring for a pet, similar to eating veggies or exercising regularly. But, psychologist Hal Herzog argues, the scientific evidence that pets can consistently make people healthier is, at best, inconclusive — and, at worst, has been used to mislead the American public.
Continue reading
Looking for Long Covid: A Clash of Definition and Study Design
Few experts dispute that long Covid can be debilitating, or that it warrants careful study. But in interviews with Undark, a number of experts said that it is misleading to frame long Covid as an increasing threat. The best data, they say, suggest that most people recover from the disorder and that long Covid rates will decline as people develop immunity.
Continue reading
Why Millions Are Trying FDA-Authorized Alternatives to Big Pharma’s Weight Loss Drugs
Dry industry officials estimate that several large compounding pharmacies are provisioning up to 2 million American patients with regular doses of semaglutide, the scientific name for Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, Ozempic, and Rybelsus formulations, or tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Mounjaro.
Continue reading
Conservatives push to declare fetuses as people, with far-reaching consequences
Fetal personhood, a longtime cornerstone of the anti-abortion movement, is the idea that a fetus, embryo or fertilized egg has the same legal rights as a person who has been born. If the law considers fetuses to be people, the thinking goes, then abortion would legally be considered murder.
Continue reading
Today’s Health News Headlines
Chatbots Crushed Medical Licensing Exam – More US Women Have Tried To Induce Their Own Abortion Since Fall Of Roe – Suicide rates in children have continued to climb
Continue reading
Why Many Nonprofit (Wink, Wink) Hospitals Are Rolling in Money
“Hospitals are some of the biggest businesses in the U.S. — nonprofit in name only,” said Martin Gaynor, an economics and public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University. “They realized they could own for-profit businesses and keep their not-for-profit status. So the parking lot is for-profit; the laundry service is for-profit; they open up for-profit entities in other countries that are expressly for making money. Great work if you can get it.”
Continue reading
Confusion, clinic closures may have caused big declines in contraception use, study shows
Among the 12 states with the most restrictive bans, the combined decline of emergency contraceptive prescriptions was 60%, and the decline for oral contraceptives was 24%.
Continue reading