Author: Claudinne Miller
RFK Jr. is completely reshaping vaccine policy. This is the man helping him do it.
NBC “Who is Stuart Burns?” a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention texted me from the organization’s all-hands meeting in June, attaching a photo of a man seated in front of his name card. The 60-year-old conservative with a stout build and a boyish haircut was mostly unknown to the doctors, epidemiologists […]
Jul 30, 2025
Mainer hospitalized with tick-borne disease
Bangor Daily News A Hancock County resident has been hospitalized with the first human case of Powassan virus infection recorded by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention this year. The adult was experiencing neurologic symptoms, according to the Maine CDC. The Powassan virus is spread through deer or woodchuck tick bites, and can […]
Jul 30, 2025
How conspiracy theories about COVID’s origins are hampering our ability to prevent the next pandemic
The Conversation In late June, the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a group of independent experts convened by the World Health Organization (WHO), published an assessment of the origins of COVID. The report concluded that although we don’t know conclusively where the virus that caused the pandemic came from: a zoonotic origin […]
Jul 30, 2025
Accelerated brain ageing during the COVID-19 pandemic
Nature The impact of SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 pandemic on brain health is recognised, yet specific effects remain understudied. We investigate the pandemic’s impact on brain ageing using longitudinal neuroimaging data from the UK Biobank. Brain age prediction models are trained from hundreds of multi-modal imaging features using a cohort of 15,334 healthy participants. These […]
Jul 30, 2025
The Pandemic Appears to Have Accelerated Brain Aging, Even in People Who Never Got Covid
Wired More than five years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are still discovering the after-effects of not only the virus but also the prolonged period of stress, isolation, loss, and uncertainty that the pandemic caused. A new scientific study, published this month in Nature Communications, has revealed that the pandemic may have accelerated brain aging […]
Jul 30, 2025
Is Bird Flu Gone for Good?
Johns Hopkins U.S. bird flu infections have declined in both birds and mammals, prompting CDC to shift from weekly to monthly reporting. But is the outbreak really over? It’s not unusual for wild birds to be infected by influenza viruses. But the strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza that began causing outbreaks in the U.S. in […]
Jul 23, 2025
New study advances theory on why most U.S. bird flu cases have so far been mild
STAT Researchers believe immunity to an earlier virus may play a role, but not everyone agrees. The H5N1 bird flu virus has historically extracted a heavy toll when it infects humans, with nearly half of confirmed cases ending in death over the past three decades. But of the 70 cases reported in the United States over the […]
Jul 23, 2025
Cambodia reports 13th human case of H5N1 bird flu this year
BNO Cambodia has confirmed a new human case of H5N1 bird flu in a 6-year-old boy who is currently in intensive care, according to health officials. It is the country’s 13th confirmed human case in 2025. The child, from Bos Russey village in Tbong Khmum province, tested positive for H5N1 avian influenza on Monday. He […]
Jul 23, 2025
A genetic tweak could prevent mosquitoes from transmitting malaria
NPR Each year, 263 million people get malaria. But from the parasite’s perspective, infecting humans is harder than you might think, and requires completing an epic journey within the tiny body of a mosquito. First, the mosquito must suck the blood of an individual infected with malaria — bringing the Plasmodium parasite into the insect’s gut. Then […]
Jul 23, 2025