cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/53452632

This is a long and very thorough article. If you're using any particular brand of protein supplements, it might be worth searching the text for the name to catch all the relevant discussion (the measurements, whether the company is responding, etc.)

The state Department of Health said Tuesday that the virus, which has been spreading in China and elsewhere, was identified in a person living in Nassau County on Long Island.

A person living in New York has tested positive for the chikungunya virus in what state health officials say is the first reported transmission of the mosquito-borne illness within the United States in six years

The state Department of Health said Tuesday that the virus, which has been spreading in China and elsewhere, was identified in a person living in Nassau County on Long Island.

The county’s health department, in a separate statement, said the person began experiencing symptoms in August after having traveled outside of the region, but not out of the country.

Private equity acquisition of hospitals have led to an increase in deaths among emergency department patients receiving Medicare, according to a recent study published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

It's the latest in a series of recent studies illustrating that private equity acquisition of health facilities leads to worsening patient outcomes, including death.

"Each of them sort of comes up with the same result," said Martin Kenney, distinguished professor in the department of human ecology at the University of California, Davis and author of Private Equity and the Demise of the Local. "Private equity takes over things in the medical field, quality goes down, prices go up," Kenney explained.

Department of Health and Human Services rescinds more than half of the 1,300 termination notices it sent, reports say

The firings of hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have been reversed, according to several reports citing officials familiar with the matter, and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest union representing federal workers.

On Friday, the White House budget office announced that as a result of the ongoing government shutdown, reductions in force (RIFs) across agencies have begun.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which houses the CDC, initially said that all employees that received layoff notices “were designated non-essential by their respective divisions”.

However, over the weekend, the administration rescinded more than half of the 1,300 termination notices it sent to public health officials at the CDC, according to Axios and Reuters, citing sources familiar. Around 600 people at the agency remain fired.

Experts describe findings as deeply concerning and predict 70% increase in related deaths by 2050

Hospitals across the world have recorded an alarming rise in common infections that are resistant to antibiotics, with doctors saying the number of deaths driven by drug resistance will increase sharply in the years ahead.

One in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections were resistant to antibiotic treatments in 2023, with more than 40% of antibiotics losing potency against common blood, gut, urinary tract and sexually-transmitted infections between 2018 and 2023, records show.

The problem was most severe, and worsening, in low and middle-income countries and those with weaker healthcare systems, according to the World Health Organization’s Global Antibiotic Resistance Surveillance report, which gathered data on more than 23m bacterial infections from 104 countries.

The Trump administration has laid off more than 100 employees at the nation's main mental health agency, NPR has learned.

Current and former employees at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) told NPR about the layoffs, which were part of a government-wide reduction in force. The sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the agency, said the layoffs came late Friday, as the nation's government shutdown dragged on.

Employees were notified of a "Reduction in Force" shortly before 8 p.m. ET on Friday, according to a source within the agency who was not authorized to discuss the layoffs publicly. According to the source, administration officials offered no rationale for who lost their jobs:

"I think the general feeling today is shock — and not understanding why?" the source told NPR.

The debate over synthetic grass on sports fields has taken on more urgency with hundreds of turf athletic fields and playgrounds being installed in the U.S. every year.

The multibillion-dollar artificial turf industry has convinced local governments and school boards that turf fields are a way to save money and increase playing time for young people. As hundreds of synthetic fields and playgrounds are installed at schools, colleges, and public parks in the U.S. every year, stakeholders from lawmakers to school boards and soccer moms are debating claims like Silva’s about the safety of playing on such surfaces.

Boston and Westport, Connecticut, have effectively banned turf that contains rubber from recycled tires due to concerns about exposure to chemicals. Vermont has passed restrictions, and in California, a reversal of a previous decision now allows local communities to impose bans. 

Groups like the NFL Players Association, and physical therapists and other clinicians believe playing on turf increases the risk of torn ligaments, sprained ankles, and other injuries.

A study of NFL data released in 2024 found higher incidences of lower-extremity injuries on artificial turf than on natural grass. The odds of a serious injury requiring season-ending surgery were significantly higher, the study said.

Doctors say insurers are automatically downgrading their claims and paying less. Insurers say it’s their duty to prevent overbilling.

The practice of automatic downcoding seems to have taken off in the last few years, as health care costs soar and insurance companies use third party vendors and AI programs to reduce costs.

NBC News spoke to doctors’ offices across numerous specialties from around the country, all of whom rely heavily on office visits — rather than surgeries and procedures — for their revenue, and all of whom are experiencing downcoding from insurers.

The problem, doctors say, is that lower and lower reimbursements mean reliable community doctors, like Wagner, could have to make choices that are inherently bad for patients, like cramming more patient visits into a single day to make up for lost revenue, dropping patients on certain insurance plans, or selling their practices altogether.

The new book "The Big One" describes lessons learned from past pandemics and how they might be applied to mitigate the dangers of future outbreaks.

Drew Scanlon, a resident of San Francisco, said the case was close to him as a friend and his mother are affected

The man whose befuddled facial expression on a recorded video live stream in 2013 birthed what the internet collectively dubbed the Blinking White Guy meme has managed to convert his online notoriety into more than $300,000 for multiple sclerosis research, he said in a new interview.

Drew Scanlon explained to ABC News that donating to the US’s National Multiple Sclerosis Society is important to him because a friend of his and her mother both have the chronic, autoimmune disease that attacks people’s central nervous systems.

Scanlon, a San Francisco resident and video producer for the streaming platform Twitch, participates annually in a fundraising bicycle race supporting the MS Society. And once a year, on his rarely used X account, he posts the oft-deployed meme, writes “THIS IS MY FACE”, and requests that his more than 81,000 followers donate to the bicycle race at the online domain BlinkingGuy.com.

The technique, known as IORT, has numerous benefits, surgeons say, but it generates less money for hospitals and radiation oncologists.

The treatment is not as widely available in the United States as it once was, according to interviews with a dozen breast surgeons. They contend that is because it cuts into the revenue of doctors and hospitals that rely on the far larger sums of money generated by traditional radiation treatments.

Radiation oncologists who perform IORT receive about $525 per treatment, Medicare estimates from 2022 show, far less than the $1,300 they receive performing whole breast radiation with five sessions and the $1,730 generated by 15 sessions. Hospitals also benefit from repeated radiation sessions, which generate facility fees every time a patient returns for care.

Breast cancer surgeons receive the same amount regardless of whether a patient gets IORT, whole breast irradiation or partial breast irradiation.

The first comprehensive research on the growing IV hydration industry finds little oversight of invasive procedures like vitamin drips.

The booming IV hydration spa industry operates with virtually no oversight or data backing up its claims, according to the first comprehensive national analysis of hydration clinics. 

At clinics nationwide, people pay hundreds of dollars to have vitamins and minerals dripped directly into their veins as a detox, to ease headaches or boost immunity, "almost completely without evidence," said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and co-author of the study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine. "As a result, there's a real danger to consumers."

Hydration clinics, combined with the growing number of med spas offering intravenous vitamin drips, skin care and cosmetic procedures, have ballooned into a $15 billion wellness industry in recent years, according to the American Med Spa Association.

Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi will be awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for their instrumental work in improving our understanding of how the immune system functions.

The Nobel Prize in medicine for 2025 will be awarded jointly to Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell of the United States and Shimun Sakaguchi of Japan for "for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance," the Nobel Assembly of Sweden's Karolinska Institute announced on Monday.

"Their discoveries have laid the foundation for a new field of research and spurred the development of new treatments, for example for cancer and autoimmune diseases," the Assembly said in a statement.

The winners will receive a prize sum of 11 million Swedish crowns (€1 million, $1.2 million), as well as a gold medal from the King of Sweden.

In a newly funded federal study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers at Mass General Brigham demonstrated that their liquid biopsy test, called HPV-DeepSeek, can detect HPV-related head and neck cancers as early as 10 years before symptoms develop. According to the study’s authors, diagnosing these cancers earlier could increase treatment success rates and reduce the need for aggressive therapies.

Seniors living in places with the highest airborne levels of trichloroethylene showed a 10% higher risk for Parkinson's than those in areas with the lowest levels, researchers report in the journal Neurology.

Cross-posted from "Autism isn’t one disorder, a genetic analysis shows" by @StevenSaus@midwest.social in !autism@lemmy.autism.place

The new research reinforces how complex the neurodevelopmental disorder is and that there isn’t a single cause.

Story refers to this Nature article (paywalled): Features of autism can affect age of diagnosis – and so can genes (paywall; use reader mode): https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03180-8