Addressing plastic pollution: a call to action on World Environment Day

Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have developed a gene therapy for Alzheimer's disease that could help protect the brain from damage and preserve cognitive function. Unlike existing treatments for Alzheimer's that target unhealthy protein deposits in the brain, the new approach could help address the root cause of Alzheimer's disease by influencing the behavior of brain cells themselves.

A small region of the brain, known as the ventral tegmental area (VTA), plays a key role in how we process rewards. It produces dopamine, a neuromodulator that helps predict future rewards based on contextual cues. A team from the universities of Geneva (UNIGE), Harvard, and McGill has shown that the VTA goes even further: It encodes not only the anticipated reward but also the precise moment it is expected.

Researchers estimate that there are at least 5.4 million U.S. children who provide care to an adult in their home. As state officials eye federal Medicaid funding cuts that could drastically reduce home care services for those who are disabled or have chronic health conditions, many predict that number will rise.

A Denver resident is the seventh Coloradan to get measles from a passenger on a Turkish Airlines flight last month—and they may have passed the highly contagious virus on to people at three stores along the Front Range.

New research shows that weight stigma—and not weight itself—has the biggest impact on mental health and healthy behaviors in the years after weight-loss surgery.

Navajo Nation leaders took turns talking with the U.S. government's top health official as they hiked along a sandstone ridge overlooking their rural, high-desert town before the morning sun grew too hot.

A major international study presented at the 62nd ERA Congress reveals that the long-accepted survival advantage of deceased-donor kidney transplantation does not extend equally to every patient and every donor organ.

Jail time has a huge effect on both an individual's and a community's long-term health, even after their release, a new study says.

GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) therapies can be powerful tools in managing obesity, with patients taking these medications seeing weight reductions of 5%–18% in clinical trials, along with increased metabolism and benefits to their overall heart health. However, GLP-1s can come with challenges, including gastrointestinal side effects, risk of micronutrient deficiencies, muscle and bone loss, poor long-term follow-through with weight regain if stopped, and high costs.

The sodium glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT-2) inhibitor drug dapagliflozin, widely used to treat type 2 diabetes, also shows improvements for patients with progressive liver disease, finds a clinical trial from China published by The BMJ.

A study of almost 1,000 pregnant women in Zimbabwe found that a daily dose of a commonly used, safe and inexpensive antibiotic may have led to fewer babies being born early. Among women living with HIV, those who received the antibiotic had larger babies who were less likely to be preterm.

From 2014 to 2023, there was an increase in the percentage of infants delivered preterm, according to a report published in the June Health E-Stats, a publication of the National Center for Health Statistics.

On April 8, 2024, a once-in-a-lifetime total solar eclipse kept the eyes of millions of Quebecers riveted on the sky. But the experience left at least two among them—a 34-year-old man and a 17-year-old woman—with permanent retinal damage. They'd been gazing directly at the sun without wearing any protective eyewear.

A 1-unit increase in lead levels is associated with worse academic performance throughout school grades, according to a study published online May 28 in JAMA Network Open.

A new study conducted by researchers from Reichman University and other Israeli institutions explored the psychological aftermath of the deadly terrorist attack at the Nova Festival in southern Israel. The attack, which took place on October 7, 2023, claimed the lives of nearly 400 people and left hundreds more physically and psychologically wounded.

What you eat after a colon cancer diagnosis could do more than affect your energy or digestion—it might impact your chance of survival.

Adolescence is a time of intense emotional and social transformation when many young people face significant psychological challenges, including social isolation and self-harm—the practice of intentionally harming oneself without suicidal intent. It is estimated that one in seven adolescents suffers from a mental illness, with around half of these cases beginning before the age of 14. In addition, it is estimated that 14% of adolescents have self-harmed at least once in their lives, using this behavior as an attempt to cope with internal distress, such as depression, anxiety, or trauma.

Researchers at the Helmholtz Munich and the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich have investigated a possible association between exposure to road traffic noise and the risk of metabolic diseases. Therefore, they used imaging data from MRI examinations of over 11,000 German National Cohort (NAKO) participants and combined this with road traffic noise data from Germany.