Lyme disease shot might soon be a reality
(Janet Krajcsik/ Pennsylvania News) — Those who have had experiences with Lyme disease must be ecstatic. Because according to a report by WBUR (Boston’s NPR news station), a springtime shot to prevent Lyme disease could become available in 2023.
The shot has been developed by MassBiologics, the nonprofit unit …
This is your brain on pandemic: What chronic stress is doing to us
(Stephanie Hogan/ CBC News) — Back in the 1980s, there was a public service announcement on TV that you may remember — or may have seen on YouTube.
A guy in a kitchen held up an egg and said, “This is your brain.” Then he cracked the egg into a hot frying pan, and said, “This is your brain on drugs.”
One …
Hypertension symptoms often mistaken for menopause in older women
(Lisa Rapaport/ Everyday Health) — New research shows that many middle-aged women may be living with undiagnosed hypertension because symptoms of the condition — including chest pain, exhaustion, headaches, heart palpitations, and sleep disturbances — are mistakenly attributed to menopause.
Missed hypertension cases …
HPV vaccine is protecting even young women who haven’t been vaccinated
(Linda Carroll/ NBC News) — There’s growing evidence that the HPV vaccine can protect even young women and girls who haven’t been immunized.
A new government study finds human papillomavirus infections have declined dramatically in both vaccinated and unvaccinated teen girls and young women.
Data …
TikTok is ‘like a trap,’ health experts say as eating disorders among teens rise
(Bethany Ao/ The Detroit News) — While scrolling through TikTok during the early months of the pandemic, Haley Collins often encountered videos showing people’s exercise routines or the foods they ate throughout the day. Collins, a 19-year-old sophomore at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., has struggled with …
Sounding the alarm: How noise hurts the heart
(Cypress Hansen/ Knowable Magazine) — In 2011, Germany’s Frankfurt Airport — the country’s busiest — unveiled its fourth runway. The addition sparked major protests, with demonstrators returning to the airport every Monday for years. “It’s destroying my life,” one protester told Reuters a year later. “Every time I …
Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible
(Christie Aschwaden/ Nature) — As COVID-19 vaccination rates pick up around the world, people have reasonably begun to ask: how much longer will this pandemic last? It’s an issue surrounded with uncertainties. But the once-popular idea that enough people will eventually gain immunity to SARS-CoV-2 to block most transmission …
Could chronic inflammation be the key to Alzheimer’s disease?
(Esther Landhuis/ Knowable Magazine) — For nearly 30 years, the hunt for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease has focused on a protein called beta-amyloid. Amyloid, the hypothesis goes, builds up inside the brain to bring about this memory-robbing disorder, which afflicts some 47 million people worldwide.
Billions of dollars …
Friendly fire: How autoantibodies could drive severe Covid
(Amber Dance/ Knowable Magazine) — Some people get very sick with Covid-19; some die. Some have symptoms that last for months.
Yet others have only mild illness, or don’t even notice they’re infected. Last spring, as the pandemic got going, many immunologists began hunting, in patients’ blood samples, for the reason behind …