Tag Archives: your-feed-science

Most American parents hardly give thought to polio beyond the instant their child is immunized against the disease. But there was a time in this country when polio paralyzed 20,000 people in a year, killing many of them. Vaccines turned the tide against the virus. Over the past decade, there has been only one case in the United States, related …

You may be among the millions of people who have seen a surprisingly specific warning like this on the labels of drugs you take: Avoid eating grapefruit or drinking grapefruit juice while using this medication. Such warnings are issued for dozens of substances, including docetaxel, a cancer drug; erythromycin, an antibiotic; and some statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs prescribed to more …

Water fluoridation is widely seen as one of the great public health achievements of the 20th century, credited with widely reducing tooth decay. But there has been growing controversy among scientists about whether fluoride may be linked to lower I.Q. scores in children. A comprehensive federal analysis of scores of previous studies, published this week in JAMA Pediatrics, has added …

Mark Sutton, an Imperial College London paleontologist, is not a punk. “I’m more of a folk and country person,” he said. But when Dr. Sutton pieced together 3-D renderings of a tiny fossil mollusk, he was struck by the spikes that covered its wormlike body. “This is like a classic punk hairstyle, the way it’s sticking up,” he thought. He …

Reports of a surge in cases of a respiratory virus in China have evoked dark echoes of the start of the Covid-19 pandemic almost exactly five years ago. But despite the surface similarities, this situation is very different, and far less worrisome, medical experts say. The Chinese cases are reported to be infections with human metapneumovirus, known to doctors as …

A Louisiana patient who had been hospitalized with severe bird flu has died, the first such fatality in the United States, state health officials reported on Monday. The patient was older than 65 and had underlying medical conditions, the officials said. The individual became infected with the bird flu virus, H5N1, after exposure to a backyard flock and wild birds. …

Snakes like these are giants. Black mambas can stretch to 14 feet, and the longest king cobra ever recorded was 19 feet. Puff adders are petite by contrast, as short as six inches and no longer than six feet, but very thick. They have long, retractable fangs that can deliver poison into muscle. Their venom destroys blood-clotting factors, and victims …

Snakes like these are giants. Black mambas can stretch to 14 feet, and the longest king cobra ever recorded was 19 feet. Puff adders are petite by contrast, as short as six inches and no longer than six feet, but very thick. They have long, retractable fangs that can deliver poison into muscle. Their venom destroys blood-clotting factors, and victims …

Can Paxlovid treat long Covid? A new report suggests it might help some patients, but which patients might benefit remains unclear. The report, published Monday in the journal Communications Medicine, describes the cases of 13 long Covid patients who took extended courses of the antiviral drug. Results were decidedly mixed: Nine patients reported some improvement, but only five said it …

For such a tiny fish, the snail darter has haunted Tennessee. It was the endangered species that swam its way to the Supreme Court in a vitriolic battle during the 1970s that temporarily blocked the construction of a dam. On Friday, a team of researchers argued that the fish was a phantom all along. “There is, technically, no snail darter,” …