Remember those 43 monkeys that escaped from a U.S. research lab? They've caught 35 of them — but haven't yet caught the other eight. But even worse... The Independent reports that now another animal escape has led to "reports of two large emus running riot..." The birds' owner, Sam Morace, took to social media to plead with locals for their patience, saying: "For everyone that keeps seeing an emu, yes it is mine. There are 2 of them out." Morace said their two flightless birds broke loose three months ago.... "They are feral and not trained like the ones we have at the house." This provoked some discussion on Facebook. ("Does nobody learn to lasso anymore?") But Morace responded that you "can't lasso a bird you have to grab them by their feet. Their necks are super long and fragile." In another post Morace detailed efforts to capture their birds. "Local law enforcement has already been at my house, we are trying to get a tranquilizer approved so we can bring them home. "Thank you for all the concerns and questions. But if the emus were that easy to catch they would be home already. If you're wondering how the escaped monkeys are doing out in the wild, someone who photographed them earlier this week said they appeared "playful, curious and jumping from tree to tree." The Guardian reports local officials have now "requested that the public avoid using drones near the facility. Earlier in the week, they reported that a drone incident 'spooked' the monkeys, increasing their stress levels and complicating efforts to recapture them." Their article also notes reports that the facility houses 7,000 monkeys. And this isn't the first time some have escaped... In 2016, 19 monkeys escaped from the same facility, according to the Post and Courier newspaper, but were returned after six hours. Earlier, in 2014, 26 macaques reportedly escaped and were captured within two days. Documents from federal regulators from previous years revealed other incidents at the facility, as reported by the New York Times. One involved a primate escaping while being transported to the medical clinic and subsequently disappearing into the woods. Another involved two monkeys breaking out of their outdoor chain-link enclosure, which reportedly resulted in one monkey being lured back inside and the other dying shortly after being recaptured. In 2017, the Department of Agriculture fined the company more than $12,000 partly due to failures to contain the animals, according to the New York Times. The Guardian also links to a related read from February: "Plan for US 'mini-city' of 30,000 monkeys for medical research faces backlash." Over the next 20 years, the facility will assemble a mega-troop of about 30,000 long-tailed macaques, a species native to south-east Asia, in vast barn-like structures in Bainbridge, Georgia, which has a human population of just 14,000... But the plan faces fierce opposition, with some Bainbridge residents calling on local authorities to block the construction of the proposed primate manse. "They're an invasive species and 30,000 of them, we'd just be overrun with monkeys," claimed Ted Lee, a local man. "I don't think anybody would want 30,000 monkeys next door," added David Barber, who would live just 400ft from the new facility.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has discontinued its secretive "Encore" project to develop an at-home fertility tracker, resulting in layoffs for around 100 employees. The project, part of Amazon's Grand Challenge division, aimed to launch a device and app that would predict fertility through saliva testing but was ultimately terminated to control costs. CNBC reports: The project was born out of the company's 2020 acquisition of Wisconsin-based startup bluDiagnostics, the sources said. BluDiagnostics was founded in 2015 by Weibel, Katie Brenner and Jodi Schroll, all of whom joined Grand Challenge. The startup had developed a thermometer-like device, called FertilityFinder, to help women track their fertility from home by testing their saliva and measuring two key hormones, estradiol and progesterone. The results of the test were viewable through a corresponding app. Business Insider reported on aspects of the fertility device in 2022, when its codename was Project Tiberius. The team was working to develop its own saliva collection device and mobile app, which could predict when a user might be in the fertile window. Users could also log their period symptoms, sexual activity and other data to assist with tracking their fertility. There are similar offerings on the market from companies including Inne, Oova, Ava and Mira, along with fertility and ovulation tracking apps such as Flo, Clue and Max Levchin's Glow. Amazon initially aimed to release the product this year, but the timing was pushed out after the team encountered technical issues with the device, one of the people said. It was a costly endeavor and required significant upfront investments for lab research and development, in addition to the high salaries for scientists and engineers, the sources said, adding that the team's weekly overhead was roughly $1.5 million. Amazon didn't comment on the figure. Only one project now remains active within Grand Challenge. Its focus is on health tech, the people said. "We regularly review our businesses to ensure we focus on areas where we can make the biggest difference for customers," said Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan. "Following a recent review, we've decided to discontinue this project within Grand Challenge, and we're working directly with employees whose roles are impacted to support them through the transition and help them find other opportunities within Amazon."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The majority of strokes could be prevented," reports the Associated Press, according to the first new guidelines in 10 years from the American Stroke Association, which are "aimed at helping people and their doctors do just that." Stroke was the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than half a million Americans have a stroke every year. But up to 80% of strokes may be preventable with better nutrition, exercise and identification of risk factors... The good news is that the best way to reduce your risk for stroke is also the best way to reduce your risk for a whole host of health problems — eat a healthy diet, move your body and don't smoke... Eating healthy can help control several factors that increase your risk for stroke, including high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and obesity, according to the heart association. The group recommends foods in the so-called Mediterranean diet such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and olive oil, which can help keep cholesterol levels down. It suggests limiting red meat and other sources of saturated fat. Instead, get your protein from beans, nuts, poultry, fish and seafood. Limit highly processed foods and foods and drinks with a lot of added sugar. This can also reduce your calorie intake, which helps keep weight in check. Getting up and walking around for at least 10 minutes a day can "drastically" reduce your risk, said Dr. Cheryl Bushnell, a neurologist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine who was part of the group that came up with the new guidelines. Among the many benefits: Regular exercise can help reduce blood pressure, a major risk factor for stroke. Of course, more is better: The heart association recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic or 75 minutes of vigorous activity — or some combination — per week. How you do it doesn't matter so much, experts said: Go to the gym, take a walk or run in your neighborhood or use treadmills or stepper machines at home. Diet and exercise can help control weight, another important risk factor for strokes. But in addition, the guidelines now recommend that doctors consider new weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound for people with obesity or diabetes. (Though "people still need to eat well and get exercise, cautions Dr. Fadi Nahab, a stroke expert at Emory University Hospital.")

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: More than 50 US lawmakers are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to join dozens of other countries in banning a widely used weedkiller linked to Parkinson's disease and other health dangers. In a October 31 letter (PDF) to the agency, seven US senators said that paraquat, a weedkiller commonly applied on US farms, was a "highly toxic pesticide whose continued use cannot be justified given its harms to farmworkers and rural communities". The call for a ban from the senators came after 47 members of the US House of Representatives sent a similar letter (PDF) to the EPA calling for a ban earlier in October. The lawmakers cite scientific links between paraquat use and development of Parkinson's and other "life threatening diseases" as well as "grave impacts on the environment". "Health risks include a higher risk of Parkinson's disease, with some studies finding a 64% increase in the likelihood of developing Parkinson's, non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, thyroid cancer, and other thyroid issues," they wrote. The New Jersey senator Cory Booker, organizer of the Senate letter, said the risks of paraquat exposure were "well documented" and that it was "irresponsible" for the EPA to continue to allow its use. "I hope the EPA will follow the science and ban paraquat," Booker said. The EPA has long maintained that there is no "clear link" between paraquat exposure and Parkinson's disease, though the agency does have a number of restrictions on use of the chemical due to its acute toxicity. The agency issued a draft report earlier this year affirming its position. Still, the agency said at that time that it would be reviewing more scientific studies and would issue a final report by January 17, 2025.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study examining a large sample of privately insured patients with obesity found that use of drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy as anti-obesity medications more than doubled from 2022 to 2023. During that same period, there was a 25.6% decrease in patients undergoing metabolic bariatric surgery to treat obesity. From a report: The study, by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, in collaboration with researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Brown School of Public Health, is published in JAMA Network Open. "Our study provides one of the first national estimates of the decline in utilization of bariatric metabolic surgery among privately insured patients corresponding to the rising use of blockbuster GLP-1 RA drugs," said senior author Thomas C. Tsai, a metabolic bariatric surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Using a national sample of medical insurance claims data from more than 17 million privately insured adults, the researchers identified patients with a diagnosis of obesity without diabetes in 2022-2023. The study found a sharp increase in the share of patients who received glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, or GLP-1 RAs, during the study period, with GLP-1 RA use increasing 132.6% from the last six months of 2022 to the last six months of 2023 (from 1.89 to 4.41 patients per 1,000 patients). Meanwhile, there was a 25.6% decrease in use of bariatric metabolic surgery during the same period (from 0.22 to 0.16 patients per 1,000 patients). Among the sample of patients with obesity, 94.7% received neither form of treatment during the study period (while 5% received GLP-1 RAs and 0.3% received surgery). Compared to patients who were prescribed GLP-1 RAs, patients who underwent surgery tended to be more medically complex.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from the Associated Press: Tech behemoth OpenAI has touted its artificial intelligence-powered transcription tool Whisper as having near "human level robustness and accuracy." But Whisper has a major flaw: It is prone to making up chunks of text or even entire sentences, according to interviews with more than a dozen software engineers, developers and academic researchers. Those experts said some of the invented text -- known in the industry as hallucinations -- can include racial commentary, violent rhetoric and even imagined medical treatments. Experts said that such fabrications are problematic because Whisper is being used in a slew of industries worldwide to translate and transcribe interviews, generate text in popular consumer technologies and create subtitles for videos. The full extent of the problem is difficult to discern, but researchers and engineers said they frequently have come across Whisper's hallucinations in their work. A University of Michigan researcher conducting a study of public meetings, for example, said he found hallucinations in eight out of every 10 audio transcriptions he inspected, before he started trying to improve the model. A machine learning engineer said he initially discovered hallucinations in about half of the over 100 hours of Whisper transcriptions he analyzed. A third developer said he found hallucinations in nearly every one of the 26,000 transcripts he created with Whisper. The problems persist even in well-recorded, short audio samples. A recent study by computer scientists uncovered 187 hallucinations in more than 13,000 clear audio snippets they examined. That trend would lead to tens of thousands of faulty transcriptions over millions of recordings, researchers said. Further reading: AI Tool Cuts Unexpected Deaths In Hospital By 26%, Canadian Study Finds

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Egypt was declared malaria-free by the World Health Organization, after nearly a century of work to eradicate the disease in the country. From a report: Egypt saw 3 million cases a year in the 1940s, and the Aswan Dam's development in the 1960s created new bodies of standing water for the mosquitoes to breed in, but by 2001 the disease was "firmly under control," according to the WHO. "The disease that plagued pharaohs now belongs to [Egypt's] history," the WHO's chief said. It's the 44th country to be certified, but the wider battle against malaria goes on: The mosquito-borne disease still kills around 600,000 people a year, the large majority of them children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Getting sick feels bad in the moment," reports the Washington Post, "and may affect your brain in the longer term." A new study published in Nature Aging adds to growing evidence that severe infections, including flu, herpes and respiratory tract infections, are linked to accelerated brain atrophy and increased risk of dementia years later. It also hints at the biological drivers that may contribute to neurodegenerative disease. The current research is a "leap beyond previous studies that had already associated infection with susceptibility to Alzheimer's disease" and provides a "useful dataset," said Rudy Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and the director of the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. Other recent studies have found that the flu shot and the shingles vaccine reduce the risk of subsequent dementia in those who get them. Severe infections have also been linked to subsequent strokes and heart attacks. "Big infection, big immune response — not good for the brain," said one of the study's co-authors (Keenan Walker, a tenure-track investigator and the director of the Multimodal Imaging of Neurodegenerative Disease Unit at the National Institute on Aging). And the article also includes this quote from Kristen Funk, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (who studies neuroinflammation in neuroinfectious and neurodegenerative diseases). "They really found that there's a range of infections that are associated with this brain atrophy, associated with this cognitive decline." In turn, most of these infections associated with brain atrophy seem to be risk factors for dementia, according to the researchers' analyses of the UK Biobank data of 495,896 subjects and a Finnish dataset of 273,132 subjects. They found that having a history of infections was associated with an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease years later. The increased risk was even higher for vascular dementia, which is the second-most-common dementia diagnosis after Alzheimer's disease and caused by restriction of blood to the brain... More-minor infections are not cause for alarm since the data was drawn from patients who had a hospital record of their infections, indicating more-severe cases, experts say. And speaking of infections, the Post also published an interesting guest column by Dr. Mikkael A. Sekeres, division chief for hematology and medicine professor at the University of Miami's cancer center: A recent report from the American Association for Cancer Research attributed 13 percent of cancer cases worldwide to infections. Some estimates run as high as 20 percent, with particularly high rates of infection-related cancers in developing countries. Infectious agents linked to cancer include bacteria, such as Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), and viruses, such as human papillomavirus (HPV), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), and hepatitis B and C. But keep in mind that an exceedingly small percentage of infected people develop cancer...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A US startup company is offering to help wealthy couples screen their embryos for IQ using controversial technology that raises questions about the ethics of genetic enhancement. The company, Heliospect Genomics, has worked with more than a dozen couples undergoing IVF, according to undercover video footage. The recordings show the company marketing its services at up to $50,000 for clients seeking to test 100 embryos, and claiming to have helped some parents select future children based on genetic predictions of intelligence. Managers boasted their methods could produce a gain of more than six IQ points. [...] The footage appears to show experimental genetic selection techniques being advertised to prospective parents. A Heliospect employee, who has been helping the company recruit clients, outlined how couples could rank up to 100 embryos based on "IQ and the other naughty traits that everybody wants," including sex, height, risk of obesity and risk of mental illness. The startup says its prediction tools were built using data provided by UK Biobank, a taxpayer-funded store of genetic material donated by half a million British volunteers, which aims to only share data for projects that are "in the public interest". Selecting embryos on the basis of predicted high IQ is not permitted under UK law. While it is legal in the US, where embryology is more loosely regulated, IQ screening is not yet commercially available there. Asked for comment, managers at Heliospect said the company, which is incorporated in the US, operated within all applicable law and regulations. They said Heliospect was in "stealth mode" before a planned public launch and was still developing its service. They added that clients who screened fewer embryos were charged about $4,000, and that pricing on launch would be in line with competitors. Leading geneticists and bioethicists said the project raised a host of moral and medical issues.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study counters the widely held belief that standing desks are good for your health, discovering that it does not reduce the risk of diseases such as stroke and heart failure. In fact, it "found that being on your feet for more than two hours a day may increase the risk of developing problems such as deep vein thrombosis and varicose veins," reports The Guardian. The findings have been published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. From the report: To establish if standing provided any health benefits, the researchers studied data from 83,013 adults who are part of the UK Biobank health records database. These people did not have heart disease at the start of the study and wore devices on their wrists to track movement. The team found that for every extra 30 minutes spent standing beyond two hours, the risk of circulatory disease increased by 11%. Standing was not found to reduce the risk of heart conditions such as stroke, heart failure and coronary heart disease, the researchers said. "The key takeaway is that standing for too long will not offset an otherwise sedentary lifestyle and could be risky for some people in terms of circulatory health," said Dr Matthew Ahmadi, of the University of Sydney's faculty of medicine and health. "We found that standing more does not improve cardiovascular health over the long-term and increases the risk of circulatory issues."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study reveals that the human sense of smell is far more sensitive than previously thought, capable of distinguishing odors and their sequences within just 60 milliseconds. CNN reports: In a single sniff, the human sense of smell can distinguish odors within a fraction of a second, working at a level of sensitivity that is "on par" with how our brains perceive color, "refuting the widely held belief that olfaction is our slow sense," a new study finds. Humans also can discern between various sequences of odors -- distinguishing a sequence of "A" before "B" from sequence "B" before "A" -- when the interval between odorant A and odorant B is merely 60 milliseconds, according to the study, published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior. [...] The new findings challenge previous research in which the timing it took to discriminate between odor sequences was around 1,200 milliseconds, Dr. Dmitry Rinberg, a professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology at NYU Langone Health in New York, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in Nature Human Behavior. "The timing of individual notes in music is essential for conveying meaning and beauty in a melody, and the human ear is very sensitive to this. However, temporal sensitivity is not limited to hearing: our sense of smell can also perceive small temporal changes in odor presentations," he wrote. "Similar to how timing affects the perception of notes in a melody, the timing of individual components in a complex odor mixture that reaches the nose may be crucial for our perception of the olfactory world." The ability to tell apart odors within a single sniff might be an important way in which animals detect both what a smell is and where it might be in space, said Dr. Sandeep Robert Datta, a professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the new study. "The demonstration that humans can tell apart smells as they change within a sniff is a powerful demonstration that timing is important for smell across species, and therefore is a general principle underlying olfactory function. In addition, this study sheds important light on the mysterious mechanisms that support human odor perception," Datta wrote in an email. "The study of human olfaction has historically lagged that of vision and hearing, because as humans we think of ourselves as visual creatures that largely use speech to communicate," he said, adding that the new study helps "fill a critical gap in our understanding of how we as humans smell."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Neuroscience News: Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder -- also known as ADHD -- is typically thought of as a childhood condition. But more adults are realizing that their struggles with attention, focus and restlessness could in fact be undiagnosed ADHD, thanks in large part to trending social media videos racking up millions of views. A new national survey of 1,000 American adults commissioned by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine finds that 25% of adults now suspect they may have undiagnosed ADHD. But what worries mental health experts is that only 13% of survey respondents have shared their suspicions with their doctor. That's raising concerns about the consequences of self-diagnosis leading to incorrect treatment. "Anxiety, depression and ADHD -- all these things can look a lot alike, but the wrong treatment can make things worse instead of helping that person feel better and improving their functioning," said psychologist Justin Barterian, PhD, clinical assistant professor in Ohio State's Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health. An estimated 4.4% of people ages 18 to 44 have ADHD, and some people aren't diagnosed until they're older, Barterian said. "There's definitely more awareness of how it can continue to affect folks into adulthood and a lot of people who are realizing, once their kids have been diagnosed, that they fit these symptoms as well, given that it's a genetic disorder," Barterian said. The survey found that younger adults are more likely to believe they have undiagnosed ADHD than older generations, and they're also more likely to do something about it. Barterian said that should include seeing a medical professional, usually their primary care provider, to receive a referral to a mental health expert to be thoroughly evaluated, accurately diagnosed and effectively treated.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are leading efforts to curb the sale of compounded GLP-1 medications. Lilly has issued hundreds of cease-and-desist letters to entities selling compounded tirzepatide, following the end of its FDA-declared shortage. Novo Nordisk, whose semaglutide drugs remain in shortage, is taking a different approach. The company published a peer-reviewed study in Pharmaceutical Research, highlighting quality concerns in compounded semaglutide samples, including lower-than-claimed strength and banned ingredients. These actions signal a broader industry pushback against compounders who entered the market during drug shortages. Wired adds: With mounting evidence that GLP-1s like tirzepatide are an effective treatment for other ailments beyond obesity and diabetes -- including addiction and Parkinson's disease -- demand is only expected to increase. It remains to be seen whether the pharmaceutical companies will be able to keep pace with the demand or if the meds will go back into shortage and compounders will be able to bound back into the market.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The rapid increases in life expectancy seen in the 20th century have slowed significantly, according to a new analysis published in the journal Nature. The Guardian reports: According to the study, children born recently in regions with the oldest people are far from likely to become centenarians. At best, the researchers predict 15% of females and 5% of males in the oldest-living areas will reach 100 this century. "If you're planning for retirement, it's probably not a good idea to assume you're going to make it to 100," said Jay Olshansky, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "You'd probably have to work for at least 10 years longer than you'd think. And you want to enjoy the last phase of your life, you don't necessarily want to spend it working to save for time you're not going to experience." Advances in public health and medicine sparked a longevity revolution in the 20th century. In the previous 2,000 years, life expectancy crept up, on average, one year every century or two. In the 20th century, average life expectancy rocketed, with people gaining an extra three years every decade. For the latest study, Olshansky delved into national statistics from the US and nine regions with the highest life expectancies, focusing on 1990 to 2019, before the Covid pandemic struck. The data from Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Australia, France, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Spain showed that rises in life expectancy had slowed dramatically. In the US, life expectancy fell [T]he researchers describe how on average, life expectancy in the longest-living regions rose only 6.5 years between 1990 and 2019. They predict that girls born recently in the regions have only a 5.3% chance of reaching 100 years old, while boys have a 1.8% chance. "In the modern era we have, through public health and medicine, manufactured decades of life that otherwise would not exist," Olshansky said. "These gains must slow down. The longevity game we're playing today is different to the longevity game we played a century ago when we were saving infants and children and women of child-bearing age and the gains in life expectancy were large. Now the gains are small because we're saving people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s." Olshansky said it would take radical new treatments that slow ageing, the greatest risk factor for many diseases, to achieve another longevity revolution. Research in the field is afoot with a dozen or so drugs shown to increase the lifespan of mice.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Concern over potential human-to-human transmission of bird flu has risen after six Missouri healthcare workers developed mild respiratory symptoms following contact with a patient infected with H5N1. The CDC reports only the original patient has tested positive for the virus. Scientists are ramping up efforts to develop mRNA vaccines against H5N1, with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and major pharmaceutical companies like Moderna, Pfizer, and GSK leading the charge. While mRNA technology offers rapid vaccine production, clinical trials have shown mixed results, particularly against influenza B strains. Wired adds: [...] Traditionally, flu vaccines contain inactivated viruses that are grown in hens' eggs. This works reasonably well, but it takes a long time to make such jabs, which means health authorities have to publish their predictions about which strains of flu will be circulating during the upcoming winter well in advance. If you could manufacture vaccines more quickly, you could make more accurate predictions nearer to flu season. Not only that, researchers hope that a single mRNA shot could one day target 20 or more strains of flu at once, relieving the need for some of this guesswork. Scher's colleagues are working on such a "universal" flu vaccine. With clinical trials ongoing, it's still early days. Sheena Cruickshank, an immunologist at the University of Manchester, has watched reports about emerging mRNA flu jabs with interest but says that questions remain. "We don't yet know how long-lasting the immunity they produce is," she says. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, concurs, though he notes that all flu jabs, regardless of how they are made, have a waning immunity problem -- your protection could decline by around 10 percent every month following injection.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers have discovered that a popular food dye used in Cheetos "alters the optical qualities of skin, allowing light to pass through (Source paywalled; alternative source)," according to the Wall Street Journal. Larger doses of the dye used on humans could make searching veins for blood draw easier. From a report: Tartrazine, the yellowing agent for the "dangerously cheesy" snack, was tested on the stomachs and heads of mice -- with surprising results. Researchers were even able to see muscle pulsations and blood vessels in their brains, the Wall Street Journal reported. How does this ultimate magic trick work? It has to do with how cells are comprised of membranes that hold fats in a watery style, the outlet stated. The fats and water manage light differently. In this case, when the dye is applied, it causes light to pass through when it hits their cells. Thus, ta-da! the transparent opacity of invisible mice skin. The findings have been published in the journal Science.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thursday America's Food and Drug Administration approved Cobenfy, "the first new drug to treat people with schizophrenia in more than 30 years," reports ABC News: Most schizophrenia medications, broadly known as antipsychotics, work by changing dopamine levels, a brain chemical that affects mood, motivation, and thinking [according to Jelena Kunovac, MD, a board-certified psychiatrist and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in the Department of Psychiatry]. Cobenfy takes a different approach by adjusting acetylcholine, another brain chemical that aids memory, learning and attention, she said. By focusing on acetylcholine instead of dopamine, Cobenfy may reduce schizophrenia symptoms while avoiding common side effects like weight gain, drowsiness and movement disorders, clinical trials suggest. These side effects often become so severe and unpleasant that, in some studies mirroring real-world challenges, many patients stopped treatment within 18 months of starting it. In clinical trials, only 6% of patients stopped taking Cobenfy due to side effects, noted Dr. Samit Hirawat, chief medical officer at Bristol Myers Squibb. "That's a significant improvement over the 20-30% seen with older antipsychotic drugs," he added... Schizophrenia is a mental health disorder that affects about 24 million people worldwide, or roughly one in 300 people, according to the World Health Organization. "Studies for additional therapeutic uses, including the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and bipolar disorder, are also underway."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The world's oldest and largest cancer research association "found excessive levels of alcohol consumption increase the risk for six different types of cancer," reports CBS News: "Some of this is happening through chronic inflammation. We also know that alcohol changes the microbiome, so those are the bacteria that live in your gut, and that can also increase the risk," Dr. Céline Gounder, CBS News medical contributor and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News, recently said on "CBS Mornings." But how much is too much when it comes to drinking? We asked experts what to know. "Excessive levels of alcohol" equates to about three or more drinks per day for women and four or more drinks per day for men, Gounder said... Other studies have shown, however, there is no "safe amount" of alcohol, Gounder said, particularly if you have underlying medical conditions. "If you don't drink, don't start drinking. If you do drink, really try to keep it within moderation," she said. Dr. Amy Commander, medical director of the Mass General Cancer Center specializing in breast cancer, told CBS News alcohol is the third leading modifiable risk factor that can increase cancer risk after accounting for cigarette smoking and excess body weight. [Other factors include physical inactivity — and diet]. "There really isn't a safe amount of alcohol for consumption," she said. "In fact, it's best to not drink alcohol at all, but that is obviously hard for many people. So I think it's really important for individuals to just be mindful of their alcohol consumption and certainly drink less." The article also includes an interesting statistic from the association's latest Cancer Progress Report: from 1991 to 2021 there's been a 33% reduction in overall cancer deaths in the U.S. That's 4.1 million lives saved — roughly 136,667 lives saved each year. "So that is hopeful," Commander said, adding that when it comes to preventing cancer, alcohol is just "one piece of the puzzle."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Friday America's Federal Trade Commission brought action against three companies for "anticompetitive and unfair" practices "that have artificially inflated the list price of insulin." For years, many of the millions of Americans who need insulin to survive "have been forced to pay exorbitant prices for a product that's inexpensive to make," writes NPR. "Now, the federal government is targeting one part of the system behind high insulin prices." While out-of-pocket costs have gone down for many people to $35 a month, questions remain on how the drug became so expensive in the first place. In a new lawsuit filed Friday, the Federal Trade Commission said it's going after one link in the chain: pharmacy benefit managers. The FTC brought action against the top pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) — CVS Health's Caremark Rx, Cigna's Express Scripts, and United Health Group's OptumRx — saying the companies created a "perverse drug rebate system" that artificially inflates the cost of insulin. If the suit is successful, it could further drive down costs for patients at the pharmacy counter. PBMs are essentially the middlemen between drug manufacturers and insurance providers. Their job is to reduce drug prices. But the process is complex and opaque, and critics say they're actually driving prices up for patients. The FTC said a big issue is that PBMs' revenue is tied to rebates and fees — which are based on a percentage of a drug's list price. Essentially, in the case of insulin, when the drug costed more, it generated higher rebates and fees for PBMs. "Even when lower list price insulins became available that could have been more affordable for vulnerable patients, the PBMs systemically excluded them in favor of high list price, highly rebated insulin products," the FTC said in a press release on Friday. The three PBMs named in the FTC lawsuit make up about 80% of the market. According to the suit, the PBMs collected billions of dollars in rebates and fees while insulin became increasingly unaffordable. Over the last two decades, the cost of the lifesaving drug shot up 600% — forcing many Americans with diabetes to ration their medication and jeopardize their health. In 2019, one 1 of 4 insulin patients was unable to afford their medication, according to the FTC. Some people have died. The FTC's statement says the companies "have abused their economic power by rigging pharmaceutical supply chain competition in their favor, forcing patients to pay more for life-saving medication... While PBM respondents collected billions in rebates and associated fees according to the complaint, by 2019 one out of every four insulin patients was unable to afford their medication..." "[A]ll drug manufacturers should be on notice that their participation in the type of conduct challenged here raises serious concerns, and that the Bureau of Competition may recommend suing drug manufacturers in any future enforcement actions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.