Health & Fitness

The cost to UNICEF of Paxlovid — including Pfizer’s insistence that UNICEF keep how much it pays confidential — remains a sticking point, said Dr. Philippe Duneton, who runs the therapeutics arm of the W.H.O. consortium. In announcing its “strong recommendation” for Paxlovid, the W.H.O. took the highly unusual step of publicly scolding Pfizer for a “lack of transparency,” which makes it difficult to know which countries have the drug and what they are paying. “We need to have better visibility in terms of price,” Dr. Duneton said. Manufacturers often prefer that the details of their sales agreements be secret so as not to weaken their hand with other potential buyers. Pfizer’s chief executive, Albert Bourla, reported last week that Paxlovid had been a “key growth driver” for the company, ...

Absent that option, emergency rooms have taken up the slack. A recent study of 88 pediatric hospitals around the country found that 87 of them regularly board children and adolescents overnight in the E.R. On average, any given hospital saw four boarders per day, with an average stay of 48 hours. “There is a pediatric pandemic of mental health boarding,” said Dr. JoAnna K. Leyenaar, a pediatrician at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and the study’s lead author. In an interview, she extrapolated from her research and other data to estimate that at least 1,000 young people, and perhaps as many as 5,000, board each night in the nation’s 4,000 emergency departments. “We have a national crisis,” Dr. Leyenaar said. This trend runs far afoul of the recommended best practices established by the...

According to a team of scientists, cognitive impairment as a result of severe COVID-19 is similar to that sustained from the 20 years of aging between 50 and 70 and is the equivalent of losing 10 IQ points. Cognitive impairment as a result of severe COVID-19 is similar to that sustained between 50 and 70 years of age and is the equivalent to losing 10 IQ points, say a team of scientists from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London. The findings, published recently in the journal eClinicalMedicine, emerge from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) COVID-19 BioResource. The results of the study suggest the effects are still detectable more than six months after the acute illness, and that any recovery is at best gradual. “Cognitive impair...

"Are you even listening to me?" It's a question that discouraged parents often throw at their distracted teenagers, and the truthful answer is probably, "No." It's hard to really blame them. New research on adolescent brains suggests the reaction we have to certain voices naturally shifts with time, making our mother's voice feel less valuable.   When scanning the brains of children, those 12 years and under showed an explosive neural response to their mother's voice, activating reward centers and emotion-processing centers in the brain.  Yet sometime around a kid's 13th birthday, a change occurs. The mother's voice no longer generates the same neurological reaction. Instead, a teenager's brain, regardless of their sex, appears more responsive to all voices in general, whether new or...

What should people know about these new subvariants, especially as many are gathering for celebrations such as Mother's Day and graduations? What kinds of precautions should they take? How can people gauge their own risk, and are there some gatherings people need to skip? Dr. Leana Wen: We know that the original Omicron variant was already more transmissible than previous variants like the Delta variant. Individuals infected with Omicron tended to have milder disease than those infected with Delta. And though the vaccines are less effective against Omicron than against some previous variants, vaccines and boosters still provide excellent protection against severe disease due to Omicron. The same seems to be the case with these new Omicron subvariants. There is no evidence that they ca...

Since Fitbits and Apple Watches revolutionized widespread health monitoring through the use of wearable sensors, a plethora of new studies has sought to push the bounds of wearable sensors’ abilities. Now, a team of bioengineers from the University of Texas at Dallas has collaborated with EnLiSense LLC to create a wearable sensor that can identify the prevalence of infections through sweat. Their study, published in Advanced Materials Technologies, found that the sweat sensor can detect two important biomarkers– one known as gamma-inducible protein (IP-10) and the other known as tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL). If the wearable sensor detects elevated levels of either biomarker in your sweat, then there is likely a cytokine storm occurring in your ...

The number of COVID-positive patients in Los Angeles County hospitals has risen by 19 people to 258, according to the latest state data out Saturday. The number of those patients being treated in intensive care was 33, down from 36 on Friday. Those numbers come one day after local health officials reported more than 3,200 new infections, while warning again of the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on Black and Latino/a residents. The county reported 3,270 new infections Friday, lifting its overall total throughout the pandemic to 2,888,408. Six more virus-related fatalities were also reported, raising the death toll to 31,991, according to the Los Angeles Department of Public Health. The average daily rate of people testing positive for the viru...

U.S. health officials are now looking into more than 100 possible cases of a mysterious and severe liver disease in children, including five deaths. (Steve Allen, Alamy) Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes NEW YORK — U.S. health officials are looking into more than 100 possible cases of a mysterious and severe liver disease in children, including five deaths. About two dozen states reported suspected cases after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out a call for doctors to be on the lookout for surprising cases of hepatitis. The cases date back to late October in children under 10. So far, only nine cases in Alabama have been confirmed...

LANSING, MI – Two Michigan children are suspected of having a severe and rare form of hepatitis that is under investigation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. One case was reported in Oakland County and the other in the city of Detroit, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services confirmed. “MDHHS has provided this data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of their Health Alert Network Health Advisory to notify clinicians and public health authorities of a cluster of children identified with hepatitis and adenovirus infection,” state health officials said in a statement. Neither of the Michigan children previously had COVID-19. Related: Hepatitis outbreak in children, CDC sends out nationwide alert The CDC is currently investigating cases of 109...

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