Resources & Information

Nature
Our brains allow us to do all sorts of things unique to humans: use sarcasm, solve crossword puzzles, envision our future. Their complexity also leaves us susceptible to conditions we don’t see in animals, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. An avalanche of data has started to reveal key differences between human and animal brains, but exactly what gives rise to our unique cognitive skills still isn’t totally clear.

STATNews
October 16, 2024
If you’re aware of the H5N1 bird flu outbreak in U.S. dairy cattle — you may have seen some headlines or read something on social media — perhaps you are wondering what the fuss is about. Yes, there have been nearly a couple dozen human cases, but all have had mild symptoms. The virus does not decimate herds in the way it does poultry flocks; most — though not all — of the infected cows come through the illness OK.

If, however, you are more familiar with the history of this form of bird flu, you might be getting anxious. You might be worried that no one has figured out how one of the infected individuals, who lives in Missouri, contracted H5N1. Or you might recall that the virus has killed half of the 900-plus people known to have been infected with it over the past 27 years. Above all, you might fret that the virus is now circulating in thousands of cows in the U.S., exposing itself to some unknowable portion of the more than 100,000 dairy farmworkers in this country —  the consequences of which could be, well, disastrous.

KFF Health News
October 15, 2024
Sociologist Elena Portacolone was taken aback. Many of the older adults in San Francisco she visited at home for a research project were confused when she came to the door. They’d forgotten the appointment or couldn’t remember speaking to her. It seemed clear they had some type of cognitive impairment. Yet they were living alone. Portacolone, an associate professor at the University of California-San Francisco, wondered how common this was. Had anyone examined this group? How were they managing? When she reviewed the research literature more than a decade ago, there was little there. “I realized this is a largely invisible population,” she said.

NPR
September 21, 2024
“It’s [from] your soda can, your plastic cooking utensils, your nonstick frying pan, the cardboard box that your fries come in,” says Jane Muncke, a toxicologist based in Zurich. “It’s retail food packaging, but also the processing equipment, and your [kitchenware] and tableware at home.” Recent use of hair and skin care products have been linked to higher levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in kids. More than 3,600 chemicals found in food packaging are also found in human bodies, according to a paper published Tuesday in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology. The research was led by Muncke and her colleagues at the Food Packaging Forum Foundation, a nonprofit research group focused on hazardous chemicals in food packaging.

NBC News
September 19, 2024
Jennifer White, a New York state epidemiologist, has a reminder as summer’s end approaches: “It may be pumpkin spice season, but it’s not the end of mosquito season.”

August and September are the peak months for mosquito-borne illnesses in the U.S. That’s because populations of the insects — which prefer warm temperatures and high humidity — have had time to grow and transmit more virus by the end of the summer.

Indeed, new cases of the three most common diseases spread locally by mosquitoes within the U.S. — dengue fever, eastern equine encephalitis and West Nile virus — are still being reported in many states. This week, California health officials issued a warning about three locally acquired dengue cases in Los Angeles County, two of which were announced Wednesday.

NPR
September 15, 2024
About three years ago, Soumya Rangarajan struggled day after day with exhaustion, headaches, and heart palpitations. As a front-line hospital doctor during the COVID-19 pandemic, she first attributed her symptoms to the demands of an unprecedented health care crisis.

But a social media post got Rangarajan thinking about the possibility that she might actually be the victim of something more mundane: an iron deficiency. She requested a blood test from her doctor, and the results determined she had anemia, a condition caused by lower-than-normal levels of iron in the blood.

It was the first step toward relief, recalled Rangarajan, who is a geriatrician at the University of Michigan. Her symptoms, she added, had made it so she “had difficulty getting through a full week at work.”