Bemotrizinol, a broad-spectrum chemical sunscreen ingredient, has long been used abroad. Experts say it offers better protection against both UVA and UVB rays.

The Food and Drug Administration announced a proposal Thursday to make another sunscreen ingredient available to U.S. manufacturers.

The ingredient — a UV light filter called bemotrizinol — has long been available in Europe, Australia and some Asian countries. On social media, skin care enthusiasts share their sunscreen hauls from abroad.

It’s a broad-spectrum chemical sunscreen that’s far more stable. “It would not degrade upon exposure to sunlight,” Lim said.

The Free Birth Society (FBS) is a multimillion-dollar business that promotes an extreme version of free birth, meaning women giving birth without medical assistance.

The Guardian can now reveal that the organisation has been linked to dozens of cases of maternal harm and baby deaths around the world.

After a year-long investigation, Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne explain why some women they interviewed found FBS’s views so appealing, and why medical professionals say their claims about birth are dangerous

Researchers have found Porphyomonas gingivalis, a bacteria linked to gum disease, present in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. The international team of researchers also found that treating mice who have an oral P. gingivalis infection with a drug targeting the toxic substances released by the bacteria could prevent the build-up of the hallmark Alzheimer’s protein, amyloid. The results are published today (Wednesday 24 January) in the scientific journal Science Advances.

The measles outbreak in South Carolina is “accelerating” with no end in sight following Thanksgiving and other large gatherings, state health officials said Wednesday.

As of Wednesday, 111 measles cases had been reported in what’s known as upstate South Carolina — an area in the northwest of the state that includes Greenville and Spartanburg.

“We are faced with ongoing transmission that we anticipate will go on for many more weeks,” Dr. Linda Bell, state epidemiologist for the South Carolina Department of Public Health, said during a news briefing Wednesday.

Study cites case of otherwise fit and healthy man in his 50s who had a stroke after eight-drink-a-day habit

Millions of people worldwide regularly drink the products, which are non-alcoholic and typically contain more than 150mg of caffeine per litre, very high glucose-based sugar content and varying quantities of other chemicals.

Doctors in Nottingham, England, sounded the alarm after an otherwise fit and healthy man in his 50s had a stroke and was left with permanent numbness in his hands and feet. On questioning, he said he drank an average of eight energy drinks a day.

The case, reported in the medical journal BMJ Case Reports, also prompted doctors to call for tighter regulation of sales and advertising of energy drinks.

Republicans keep saying they are about to release a healthcare plan. But they never release anything remotely adequate to meet the American people’s needs. That’s because they don’t want to say their real plan out loud: Take healthcare away from as many Americans as possible, all to give giant tax cuts to billionaires.

This week, the Senate is scheduled to vote on healthcare

Michigan man received kidney transplant from donor who had fought off a skunk and was later found unresponsive

A Michigan man has died of rabies after receiving a kidney from another man who died of the disease when he was scratched by a skunk while defending a kitten, in what officials are describing as an “exceptionally rare event”.

According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Michigan patient received a kidney transplant at an Ohio hospital in December 2024.

Around five weeks later, he began experiencing tremors, lower extremity weakness, confusion and urinary incontinence. He was soon hospitalized and ventilated, then died. Postmortem testing confirmed rabies, the CDC report said, baffling authorities because the recipient’s family had said he had not had any exposure to animals.

Doctors say the class of medications that includes Ozempic and Zepbound still offers health benefits for people with diabetes and obesity.

Despite previous excitement around a potential link between GLP-1 drugs and a reduced risk of cancer, new research suggests the popular medications “probably have little or no effect” on a person’s risk of developing one of the 13 obesity-related cancers.

The findings, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, may seem counterintuitive, said co-author Dr. Cho-Han Chiang, who conducted the study earlier this year as an internal medicine resident at Mount Auburn Hospital, a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“GLP-1 can make people lose weight, and so, if obesity increases the risk of cancer, then, hypothetically speaking, losing weight through GLP-1 may actually reduce the risk of developing cancer,” said Chiang, now a medical oncology fellow at the Northwell Health Cancer Institute in New York. “That was the excitement in this whole research of GLP-1 and cancer risk.”

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Unsurprisingly, those with faster gut transit times tended to have microbiomes dominated by faster-growing species that thrive on a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet. Slower transit times, meanwhile, were sometimes dominated by species that thrive on protein.

Each of these extremes also had lower gut microbiome diversity than people with average gut transit times, suggesting that fast and slow movement creates environments where specialist species come out on top.

That would then create a feedback loop in which the dominant species in each environment releases metabolites that maintain the status quo.

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This may also help explain why the same gut health advice may not work for everyone. Two people can eat the exact same meal and get two very different results, depending on how fast their poop usually moves.

Transit times may even influence how your body responds to probiotics and certain supplements or medications that interact with the gut. This suggests that recognizing the individual gut rhythm of the patient could help tailor treatments and dietary advice that precisely matches their body.

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Certain glucose monitors from Abbott Diabetes Care are providing users with incorrect glucose readings, an error that has been linked with the deaths of at least seven people and more than 700 serious injuries worldwide, according to an alert from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Incorrect glucose readings can lead to improper treatment. Abbott warned that about 3 million FreeStyle Libre 3 and FreeStyle Libre 3 Plus sensors are affected, but no other Libre products. Patients can visit FreeStyleCheck.com to see if their sensors are affected and to get a replacement for free.

The FDA has also published specific information about the affected products in its alert. The agency considers this to be a “potentially high-risk issue” and will continue to update its website as information becomes available.

A new study suggests the shingles vaccine may lower the likelihood of developing dementia as well as slow its progression in people who have already been diagnosed with the disease.

Researchers are finding more evidence that certain herpes viruses, such as shingles, which can infect the nervous system, might play a role in causing dementia.

An initial study published in Nature and a follow-up study conducted by Stanford Medicine, published in the journal Cell on Dec. 2, show the shingles vaccination may also have therapeutic benefits against dementia by reducing the disease's progression and lowering the chance of dying from it.

Many of Kennedy’s most ardent chiropractic supporters are now at the forefront of his Make America Healthy Again movement, posting on social media and finding TikTok virality in a bid to spread his agenda to a larger audience and recruit more disciples. Their passion for Kennedy is palpable.

“People that graduated with me in 2017, probably out of 100 people … around 70 or 80 of them were Kennedy freaks,” says Gabe Padilla, who once studied and worked as a chiropractor but has since left the field. “And I’m talking about, wow, they lived and breathed this man. They would drink his bath water if they could.”

In return, Kennedy has made sure to show his appreciation. He’s been interviewed by chiropractors, sold “Chiropractors for Kennedy” bumper stickers and appeared on chiropractic college campuses. There’s a chiropractic liaison for MAHA now, whose job is to keep chiropractic organizations connected to the larger movement.

Pediatricians say panel’s decision will create confusion and access issues, and condemn ‘parody of public health’

The entire US childhood vaccine schedule is now open for scrutiny, experts say, after government vaccine advisers took up discussions of the safety and efficacy of the vaccines and their components and changed its recommendations on one crucial prevention.

Several of the vaccine advisers are longtime anti-vaccine activists, and they were all chosen by Donald Trump’s controversial health secretary Robert F. Kennedy after he fired the previous advisers in an unprecedented move to enact dramatic changes to US vaccination policy. Kennedy has been a frequent critic of vaccines.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) makes recommendations to the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who decides whether to change official policy. The recommendations also have sweeping effects on state-level policies and insurance coverage. Some states have laws based on recommendations made by the ACIP.

Move from CDC advisers mirrors Trump team’s regressive approach to longstanding vaccine guidance

Vaccine advisers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted on Friday morning to limit hepatitis B vaccines in a major move signaling the Trump administration’s regressive approach to vaccines that have been given safely and effectively for decades.

The panel of advisers, hand-picked by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, decided to remove the well-established and far-reaching recommendation that all newborns in the US receive a hepatitis B vaccine.

The committee voted to recommend that parents of infants whose mothers test negative for hepatitis should decide when – or if – their child should receive the vaccine series, in consultation with a healthcare professional. Consulting with doctors was already a standard part of vaccination.