In trial, 82% saw weight rebound and cardiovascular health reverse after withdrawal.

Tezepelumab treatment may mean asthmatics for whom inhalers are ineffective can reduce or stop taking steroids

monthly injection could allow people with severe asthma to stop taking daily steroid tablets, a clinical trial has found.

More than 260 million people are thought to have asthma worldwide. While most can control their asthma with inhalers to treat immediate symptoms and preventive ones to reduce inflammation, those with the most severe asthma often take daily doses of oral corticosteroids as well.

But long-term use is associated with serious health conditions, including osteoporosis, diabetes and increased vulnerability to infections.

Now an international clinical trial has found that participants who received injections of tezepelumab every four weeks were able to reduce or even stop taking their steroids entirely with no ill effects.

In trial, 82% saw weight rebound and cardiovascular health reverse after withdrawal.

The popularity of GLP-1 weight-loss medications continues to soar—and their uptake is helping to push down obesity rates on a national scale—but a safe, evidence-based way off the drugs isn’t yet in clear view.

An analysis published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine found that most participants in a clinical trial who were assigned to stop taking tirzepatide (Zepbound from Eli Lilly) not only regained significant amounts of the weight they had lost on the drug, but they also saw their cardiovascular and metabolic improvements slip away. Their blood pressure went back up, as did their cholesterol, hemoglobin A1c (used to assess glucose control levels), and fasting insulin.

In an accompanying editorial, two medical experts at the University of Pittsburgh, Elizabeth Oczypok and Timothy Anderson, suggest that this new class of drugs should be rebranded from “weight loss” drugs to “weight management” drugs, which people may need to take indefinitely.

Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham has spoken against Covid shots and ended mass vaccination campaigns. Now he's in a position to make national health decisions.

Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham — a vocal supporter of the "Make America Healthy Again" movement and a harsh critic of Covid shots — has been named principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The principal deputy director at the CDC is a high-level appointment. As second in command, Abraham would be in a position to act as a key adviser on a variety of public health issues.

A three-term Louisiana congressman, Abraham practiced for 10 years as a veterinarian before going to medical school. According to his biography on the Louisiana Department of Health website, Abraham was a “practicing family medicine physician” when he was appointed as state surgeon general in 2024. He described himself as a “country doctor” in an essay published in April.

Study suggests human brain development has four pivotal ‘turning points’ at around the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83

Scientists have identified five major “epochs” of human brain development in one of the most comprehensive studies to date of how neural wiring changes from infancy to old age.

The study, based on the brain scans of nearly 4,000 people aged under one to 90, mapped neural connections and how they evolve during our lives. This revealed five broad phases, split up by four pivotal “turning points” in which brain organisation moves on to a different trajectory, at around the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83 years.

“Looking back, many of us feel our lives have been characterised by different phases. It turns out that brains also go through these eras,” said Prof Duncan Astle, a researcher in neuroinformatics at Cambridge University and senior author of the study.

More than 25,000 cases of whooping cough have been recorded in the U.S. so far this year, updated federal data shows.

This marks the second year in a row with higher than usual cases, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). At the same time this year, around 33,000 cases reported.

Cases are well above pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, about 18,600 whooping cough cases were recorded, CDC data shows.

Excluding last year, the last time whooping cough cases were this high was in 2014 when more than 32,900 cases were recorded, according to the CDC.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/55796958

Researchers have identified five distinct phases of brain architecture that unfold from infancy to the late 80s.

The Euro News article is more accessible, if you want a quick summary of what the study showed.

You can also check out this Open Access link to the study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65974-8

Intro:

Our brain structure moves through five distinct phases marked by four turning points, at ages nine, 32, 66, and 83, according to the study

The research is the first to identify major phases of brain wiring across the lifespan, shedding new light on what our brains may be particularly vulnerable to during different life stages, for example, childhood learning disabilities and age-related conditions like dementia.

“Looking back, many of us feel our lives have been characterised by different phases,” said Duncan Astle, the study’s senior author and a professor of neuroinformatics at the University of Cambridge.

Astle’s team compared the brain scans of about 3,800 people aged zero to 90. The scans track how water molecules move through the brain, allowing the researchers to map neural connections and home in on key moments of developmental change across the lifespan.

While flu levels are still low, a strain that has wreaked havoc in the U.K. and Canada is behind most cases so far in the U.S., mostly affecting kids.

The flu has started spreading earlier than usual in some parts of the country, prompting concerns that cases could soon erupt as millions of Americans travel and gather for Thanksgiving and other upcoming holidays.

The warning signs come as a form of the virus, called H3N2 subclade K, has set off massive outbreaks in Canada and the U.K.

Dr. Cameron Wolfe, an infectious disease specialist at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, said he’s noted a sharp increase in flu cases over the past few weeks.

“Typically, I might see one or two cases a week at this point,” Wolfe said. “At the moment, we’ve had two, three, four per day coming in.”

The infection is responsible for 800,000 newborn deaths each year, but clinics in eight countries are working together to find new treatments

Just a few minutes from the turquoise waters of Kenya’s Kilifi Creek, a world away from the tourists enjoying their time on the estuary, a team of clinicians, technicians and microbiologists is helping to shape a new era of care for newborns.

NeoSep1 is a pioneering clinical trial that aims to identify effective and safe antibiotic combinations to treat sepsis in newborns. One of the centres leading the second phase of this study is the Kemri-Wellcome Trust Research Programme (KWTRP) in Kilifi.

Newborn babies are particularly vulnerable to sepsis, a life-threatening infection, because their underdeveloped immune systems struggle to fight off pathogens. Each year, neonatal sepsis is responsible for an estimated 800,000 deaths worldwide, while in Africa it accounts for 28% of all neonatal deaths.

Knock out 50 reps of anything. Push-ups, squats, curls. Spread across the day. Win stacked.

A common sleep disorder that leaves millions of Americans exhausted may also be quietly increasing their chances of developing Parkinson’s disease — unless they treat it.

That’s according to a new study led by Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland Veterans Affairs Health Care System, where researchers found that veterans with untreated obstructive sleep apnea were far more likely to later develop Parkinson’s than those without it.

But early use of a continuous positive airway pressure machine, or CPAP, to improve breathing during sleep was linked to noticeably lower rates of the disease, the researchers found.

The study, published Monday in JAMA Neurology, analyzed the electronic health records of more than 11 million U.S. military veterans who received care through the Department of Veterans Affairs between 1999 and 2022.

As more states legalize marijuana, use has become more normalized and products have become more potent. But fewer of those who are addicted seek help for it.

Pot use among young adults reached historic levels in recent years, according to a federally supported survey. Daily use even outpaced daily drinking, with nearly 18 million Americans reporting in 2022 that they use marijuana every day or nearly every day, up from less than 1 million three decades earlier.

Studies show a corresponding increase in cannabis use disorder — when people crave marijuana and spend lots of time using it even though it causes problems at home, school, work or in relationships. It’s a condition that researchers estimate affects about 3 in 10 pot users and can be mild, moderate or severe.

And it’s an addiction — despite the common misconception that that’s not possible with marijuana, said Dr. Smita Das, an addiction psychiatrist at Stanford University.

Physicians say FDA panel conflated two issues and made baseless claims about unproven health benefits

Estrogen-related medications for menopause will no longer carry broad black-box warnings, Marty Makary, commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), announced last week, bypassing the regulatory agency’s typical process and, according to experts, overstating the science behind the medications – with troubling implications for future drug decisions.

The decision to remove an ominous warning from 2003 about the risks of cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and dementia makes sense for local vaginal estrogen products, but systemic estrogen is more complicated, menopause experts said – and more than these nuances, they worried about the scientific process, or lack thereof, in making the decision.

Hormone therapy can ease symptoms of menopause, including hot flashes, insomnia and joint pain. But health officials took claims of the benefits a major step forward, indicating the therapy can also prevent heart disease, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease and death.