Health & Fitness

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Invasive species The future isn’t female, at least not for the invasive Aedes aegypti: the altered males are engineered to produce only male offspring Genetically modified male mosquitoes may soon be buzzing across areas of California, in an experiment to stop the spread of invasive species in a warming climate.Earlier this month, the EPA cleared the UK-based biotech company Oxitec to release a maximum of roughly 2.4bn of its genetically modified mosquitoes through 2024, expand its existing trial in Florida and start a new pilot project in California’s Central Valley, where mosquito numbers are on the rise. Oxitec’s modified mosquitoes are male, and therefore don’t bite. They were developed with a special protein so that when they pair with a female mosquito the only viable offspring the...

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Doctors often recommend "power naps" as a way to compensate for a poor night's sleep and help keep alert until bedtime. But for older adults, extensive power naps could be an early sign of dementia.   Research on how napping affects cognition in adults has had mixed results. Some studies on younger adults suggest that napping is beneficial to cognition, while others on older adults suggest it may be linked to cognitive impairment. However, many studies are based on just a single self-reported nap assessment. This methodology may not be accurate for people with cognitive impairment who may not be able to reliably report when or how long they napped. As an epidemiologist who studies sleep and neurodegeneration in older adults, I wanted to find out if changes in napping habits foreshado...

More than one in four new H.I.V. infections in Ukraine occur among the country’s roughly 350,000 injecting drug users. Before the war, Ukraine’s policies on harm reduction enabled more than 17,000 of its citizens to receive so-called opioid substitution therapy. The demand for treatment has increased as access to street drugs has decreased during the conflict. But now stocks of the opioid substitution drugs methadone and buprenorphine are unlikely to last beyond one to two weeks, experts said. So the W.H.O. and other nonprofit organizations are requesting drug donations from the Czech Republic, Austria and other countries. The Global Fund, an enormous global health organization, has made more than $3 million available to purchase these treatments over the next year. Some experts worried t...

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Breakthrough infections are the bane of the world of vaccines; no inoculation, regardless of its effectiveness, can ever stop all infections 100% of the time. The good news is that, when someone who is vaccinated gets a breakthrough infection, the symptoms are almost always much more mild. Now a new study reinforces the good news about vaccines and breakthrough infections. According to an article published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, fewer than 1 out of 1,000 people who were either vaccinated or had natural immunity required hospitalization if they suffered from a breakthrough infection. The rates of hospitalization between different groups was statistically insignificant: 6 out of every 10,000 vaccinated patients, 3 out of every 10,000 previously infected but unvaccinate...

Women have many choices for birth control, ranging from pills to patches to intrauterine devices, and partly as a result, they bear most of the burden of preventing pregnancy. But men’s birth control options — and, therefore, responsibilities — could soon be expanding. Today, scientists report a non-hormonal male contraceptive that effectively prevents pregnancy in mice, without obvious side effects. The researchers presented their results this week at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Spring 2022 is a hybrid meeting that was held virtually and in-person March 20-24, with on-demand access available March 21-April 8. The meeting features more than 12,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics. Currently, men have only two effective options ...

Early COVID-19 indicators hint that the virus’ transmission is growing in San Diego. Viral load in local wastewater typically goes up before the number of cases start to rise. Recent data from water treatment plants shows the amount of COVID is beginning to rise again. "I don't think people should be overly alarmed about this early uptick," said UC San Diego Health's chief medical officer Christopher Longhurst. "We’re keeping an eye on it and as a health system we’re taking precautions." Longhurst said up until about a week ago the viral load from Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant samples was steadily falling, even dipping under 1,000,000 copies per liter. The peak during the omicron surge was 47,000,000 copies per liter, officials are see...

Forbes is slammed for referring to 'pregnant people' - not women - in a story about how having covid can increase the chances of serious complications during pregnancy On Thursday Forbes tweeted a link to an article about how Covid-19 doubled the risk of serious complications during pregnancy 'Pregnant people who contracted Covid-19 were more than twice as likely to experience significant complications as those who did not have the virus during the first year of the pandemic, according to a new study.' the tweet said  The use of the term 'pregnant people' instead of 'pregnant women' has some people on social media in an uproar and garnered intense backlash Someone tweeted in response: 'Pregnant WOMEN. This is a risk factor that only women can have. It's a women's health iss...