Tag Archives: medicine

Danielle Rosas had tried all the usual avenues to lose weight—modifying her diet, increasing her exercise—but the weight always came back. In 2020, she turned to Ozempic. She was 225 pounds at the time. “My weight has fluctuated a lot throughout my adulthood,” says Rosas, now 36. After three months …

In late March, a smoke shop in Dyersburg, Tennessee, announced the arrival of a new product in its store: a disposable nicotine vape with an LCD display that can be connected to a smartphone via Bluetooth. Marketed under the brand name RAMA, the strawberry- and kiwi-flavored vape looks more like …

“The statistics are frightening: Dementia is the biggest killer in the UK. It has been the leading cause of death for women since 2011,” says Hilary Evans, CEO of Alzheimer’s Research UK and cochair of the UK Dementia Mission. “One in two of us will be affected by dementia either …

The Supreme Court just handed down its most important ruling on reproductive rights since its 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that protected the national right to have an abortion. The court today affirmed the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. In …

Surgeons in New York have removed a pig kidney less than two months after transplanting it into Lisa Pisano, a 54-year-old woman with kidney failure who also needed a mechanical heart pump. The team behind the transplant says there were problems with the heart pump, not the pig kidney, and …

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 …

A large, long-term trial of the weight-loss medication Wegovy (semaglutide) found that people tended to lose weight over the first 65 weeks on the drug—about one year and three months—but then hit a plateau or “set point.” But that early weight loss was generally maintained for up to four years …

Depression runs hot. In the 1980s, psychiatrists began noticing that patients with depressive symptoms had higher body temperatures compared to people without, and that their body temperatures didn’t ebb and flow as much throughout the day. The more severe a patient’s depression, the higher their temperature tended to be. Researchers …

When donated blood is in low supply, platelets are even scarcer. These cell fragments, which are essential for blood clotting, have a short shelf life. Whereas whole blood can be refrigerated for up to a month, platelets last for just a week at most. “Even if you have a ton …

Richard “Rick” Slayman, the first person to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig, has died almost two months after the transplant. He was 62. The historic procedure was carried out on March 16 at Massachusetts General Hospital. In a statement released on May 11, the hospital said it …