Tag Archives: diseases

After 25 years as a pediatric infectious diseases specialist, Asunción Mejías is too familiar with the deadly unpredictability of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), an infection that hospitalizes up to 80,000 children under the age of 5 every year in the US. “It’s a disease which can change very quickly,” says …

This year in the United States, 14 people have tested positive for avian influenza, or bird flu. Nine of those became infected after coming into contact with poultry, and four got the virus from exposure to dairy cows. The source of the remaining, most recent case remains a mystery. The …

The global rise in antibiotic resistance is making bacterial infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and death. Once considered miracle drugs, antibiotics are now losing their effectiveness against ever-evolving bacteria. One company is aiming to treat infections with a different strategy: arming tiny …

As mpox continues to spread in Central Africa, a promising antiviral drug to treat the infection has failed to improve patients’ symptoms in a trial in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the epicenter of the outbreak. In the trial, the drug tecovirimat, also known as TPOXX, did not alleviate …

In May 2023, the World Health Organization released a statement declaring the end of mpox—formerly known as monkeypox—as a public health emergency. Just over a year later, the agency has been forced to backtrack, with a far more serious epidemic brewing across much of sub-Saharan Africa. Statistics show that more …

THIS STORY ORIGINALLY appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian. Pancreatic cancer turns off one of our most important genes in order to be able to grow and spread, new research published in the journal Gastro Hep Advances has found. The cancer is one of the most …

Since it was first identified in 1983, HIV has infected more than 85 million people and caused some 40 million deaths worldwide. While medication known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, can significantly reduce the risk of getting HIV, it has to be taken every day to be effective. A vaccine …

To drink raw milk at any time is to flirt with dangerous germs. But, amid an unprecedented outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in US dairy cows, the risks have ratcheted up considerably. Health experts have stepped up warnings against drinking raw milk during the outbreak, the scope of which is …

Are you experiencing unexplained memory lapses or brain fog? Ever considered that you may have a parasite in your brain? That apparently was the startling diagnosis received by independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 14 years ago from one of the top neurologists in the US, according to a …

Fungi are an indispensable part of your microbiome, keeping the body’s host of microorganisms healthy as part of a system of checks and balances. But when you’re hit by an infection, fungi can be thrown out of equilibrium with other organisms inside you, leading to a more severe infection and …