Health - Resources and discussion for everything health-related

study in Nature Cell Biology finds that they play a previously little known role in gene regulation—a role that may influence some cancer cells’ responsiveness to different treatment types.

Prior to this study, some researchers thought the speckles—first discovered in the early 1900s—were “just kind of hanging out” in the nucleus, says lead author Katherine Alexander, a molecular and cell biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, New York. Speckles were known to contain RNA splicing machinery and other components needed for transcription and translation, but their behavior in the nucleus was not well understood. Alexander’s initial question was whether speckles are all the same from cell to cell or if there’s some variation—and what that may mean.

Insurance at my last company was so low, I'm not certain what it cost. $50mo. I think? When I started it was $35.

Let's do math. $20 every 3-months for a copay to get the doctor to re-up my prescription, $10 for the pills, $30 total. Add in whatever my employer paid for my part over 3-months, add in the doctor's cash-price difference. You get the idea.

And I probably could have found a way to cut the prescription price in half, or less. Ideas? That company Mark Cuban started? (Looks like it's $8.23/90-days there, haven't dug in on total price.)

Just learned about direct primary care, may jump on that if my new job doesn't cover insurance, or it isn't worth it. Thoughts on that?

Obviously I'm an American. You don't know how sad that made me to type. It's humiliating.

Summary

5 years after the U.S. declared COVID-19 a public health emergency, the virus remains a persistent threat, continuing to claim thousands of lives.

COVID-19 is now integrated into daily life, with predictable seasonal peaks and ongoing high rates of illness and hospitalization.

Low vaccination rates, particularly for updated vaccines, contribute to severe outcomes, including the development of long COVID, which affects a portion of survivors.

Ongoing virus mutations necessitate annual vaccine updates and public health measures, as experts warn COVID-19 may become more severe in future outbreaks.

Summary

Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs), once limited to diabetics, are now available over-the-counter, sparking interest among non-diabetics tracking wellness.

These devices provide real-time blood sugar data, helping users understand how diet, sleep, and stress affect glucose levels.

While some claim CGMs aid weight loss and prevent diabetes, experts caution that normal fluctuations are expected, and there's limited research on benefits for healthy individuals.

CGMs may help those with prediabetes or PCOS manage blood sugar. However, overuse could cause unnecessary anxiety about natural glucose variations.

Summary

The growing popularity of GLP-1 weight loss drugs like Ozempic has led to a surge in “natural alternatives” such as berberine, taurine, and green tea extract.

While these supplements may offer mild metabolic benefits, experts stress they lack the proven efficacy, regulation, and safety profile of prescription drugs.

Some ingredients, like berberine, can help with blood sugar control but do not directly mimic GLP-1 pathways.

Doctors warn consumers to consult healthcare providers before use, as supplements are unregulated and may interact with medications or cause side effects.

Summary

Texas has reported four measles cases in two weeks, including two in Lubbock—the first there in over 20 years. All cases involved unvaccinated individuals.

The outbreak coincides with a drop in Texas' kindergarten measles vaccination rate from 97% in 2020 to 94.3% in 2024. Health officials urge vaccinations to prevent further spread.

The trend reflects a broader decline in immunization rates, fueled by political debates over vaccine mandates. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination as HHS secretary has further energized the vaccine choice movement.

Summary

A study found significantly higher levels of microplastics in placentas from premature births compared to full-term births, suggesting possible links between plastic pollution and preterm deliveries.

Researchers detected 50% more plastic in preterm placentas, with PET and PVC being the most prevalent.

While the study shows an association, not causation, microplastics are known to cause inflammation, which can trigger labor.

Experts call for further research and urgent measures to reduce human exposure to microplastics due to potential health risks.

Having difficulty getting pregnant? A new study shows air pollution may play a role.

A new study finds that those who limit coffee drinking to the morning have a lower risk of dying of heart disease and a lower overall mortality risk than those who drink coffee throughout the day.

Taken during the height of COVID-19. Rotech is a supplier of oxygen and respiratory equipment.

Highlighting is mine.

A movement to provide hospital-level care for sick patients in their own beds, in the comfort of familiar surroundings, is growing in the United States — a trend already embraced in some other countries

Recent blog posts by contrarian physicians have tried to defend Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr) as someone who will improve public health if confirmed as Health and Human Services Secretary. They claim United States COVID19 policies and the mainstream media created the poor public health situation in the US, including vaccine hesitancy. These authors seem to think antivaccine sentiment did not exist before 2020, and that vaccine hesitancy has nothing to do with RFK Jr’s antivaccine nonprofit, which grew significantly during the pandemic.

On Sensible Medicine Dr. Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer, a Danish vaccine researcher, states that the high US mortality compared to other wealthy countries is possibly explained by “the higher use of pesticides such as glyphosate, additives in processed foods…ultra processed foods, seed oils, unequal access to health care, and overconsumption of medicines and vaccines.” He cites zero evidence to support this speculation but goes on to elaborate about vaccines as a possible explanation for poor health outcomes in the US.

Intentional deception

The crux of the piece centers on vaccines with Dr. Schaltz-Buchholzer claiming Danish children only receive 11 shots whereas American children receive 72 injections. This is a classic antivaccine trope and borders on intentionally deceptive. He is counting the Danish combination vaccines such as DTaP/IPV/Hib as one shot but counting the same US vaccines that are almost always given as a combination shot as individual shots — DTaP/IPV/Hib = 3 shots. He is counting oral rotavirus as an injection which it isn’t.

But best of all, he criticizes the inclusion of yearly COVID & flu vaccines for children in the US schedule, which are not required by schools and generally have less uptake. He makes a point to say the flu vaccine is completely unnecessary for children, which is not an accurate reflection of what studies show. Meanwhile he neglects to include that the Danish Pediatric Society and Danish Health Authority now recommend a yearly flu shot for children aged 2-6. He has such high praise for the Danish vaccine schedule but ignores many of the recommendations as we will find out later.

Summary

Medicaid payment portals across all 50 states are down following Trump’s freeze on federal funding, sparking fears of disrupted healthcare for 79 million Americans, including children and low-income families.

Senator Ron Wyden called the freeze a "blatant attempt" to strip healthcare access, warning of deadly consequences.

The Trump administration claims payments to providers are ongoing but has not explained the outages.

Critics, including healthcare experts, fear significant harm as broader funding freezes impact key programs like Head Start and research grants overseen by HHS.

Summary

The U.S. has reported its first outbreak of the rare H5N9 bird flu strain at a duck farm in Merced County, California, where nearly 119,000 birds were culled by December 2.

Authorities also detected the more common H5N1 strain on the same farm. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) has been spreading globally, impacting poultry, mammals, and even causing human fatalities.

The USDA is conducting investigations and heightened surveillance in response to this outbreak, which marks a significant development in U.S. poultry health.

Slashdot Summary:

CERN's particle accelerator is being used in a pioneering cancer treatment called Flash radiotherapy. This method delivers ultra-high radiation doses in less than a second, minimizes side effects while targeting tumors more effectively than conventional radiotherapy. The BBC reports:

In a series of vast underground caverns on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland, experiments are taking place which may one day lead to new generation of radiotherapy machines. The hope is that these devices could make it possible to cure complex brain tumors (PDF), eliminate cancers that have metastasized to distant organs, and generally limit the toll which cancer treatment exerts on the human body. The home of these experiments is the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (Cern), best known to the world as the particle physics hub that developed the Large Hadron Collider, a 27 kilometer (16.7 mile)-long ring of superconducting magnets capable of accelerating particles to near the speed of light.

Arguably Cern's crowning achievement was the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, the so-called "God Particle" which gives other particles their mass and in doing so lays the foundation for everything that exists in the universe. But in recent years, the centre's unique expertise in accelerating high-energy particles has found a new niche -- the world of cancer radiotherapy. Eleven years ago, Marie-Catherine Vozenin, a radiobiologist now working at Geneva University Hospitals (Hug), and others published a paper outlining a paradigm-shifting approach to traditional radiotherapy treatment which they called Flash. By delivering radiation at ultra-high dose rates, with exposures of less than a second, they showed that it was possible to destroy tumors in rodents while sparing healthy tissue. Its impact was immediate. International experts described it as a seminal breakthrough, and it galvanized fellow radiobiologists around the world to conduct their own experiments using the Flash approach to treat a wide variety of tumors in rodents, household pets, and now humans.

In recent years, animal studies have repeatedly shown that Flash makes it possible to markedly increase the amount of radiation delivered to the body while minimizing the impact that it has on surrounding healthy tissue. In one experiment, healthy lab mice which were given two rounds of radiation via Flash did not develop the typical side effects which would be expected during the second round. In another study, animals treated with Flash for head and neck cancers experienced fewer side effects, such as reduced saliva production or difficulty swallowing. Loo is cautiously optimistic that going forwards, such benefits may also translate to human patients. "Flash produces less normal tissue injury than conventional irradiation, without compromising anti-tumor efficacy -- which could be game-changing," he says. An additional hope is that this could then reduce the risk of secondary cancers (PDF), resulting from radiation-induced damage later in life, although it is still too early to know if that will be the case. [...] But the next phase of research is not only about testing whether Flash works in people. It's also about identifying which kind of radiation is the best one to use.