An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBS News: Richard "Rick" Slayman, the first human to receive a genetically modified pig kidney transplant, has died almost two months after the procedure. Slayman, who had end-stage kidney disease, underwent the transplant in March at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston at age 62. The hospital said in a statement on Saturday that there was "no indication" that his death was the result of the transplant. The transplant surgeon had said he hoped the transplant would function for at least two years. "The Mass General transplant team is deeply saddened at the sudden passing of Mr. Rick Slayman," read the hospital statement. "Mr. Slayman will forever be seen as a beacon of hope to countless transplant patients worldwide and we are deeply grateful for his trust and willingness to advance the field of xenotransplantation." The surgery was a milestone for the field of xenotransplantation -- the transplant of organs from one species to another -- as a way to alleviate the organ shortage for people who need transplants. The effort to genetically modify animal organs is in hopes that the human body will not reject the foreign tissue. NPR notes that there are more than 100,000 people in the U.S. on the waitlist for organs.

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Brian Shelton's type 1 diabetes was treated with an infusion of insulin-producing pancreas cells (grown from stem cells). In 2021, the New York Times reported: Now his body automatically controls its insulin and blood sugar levels. Shelton, now 64, may be the first person cured of the disease with a new treatment that has experts daring to hope that help may be coming for many of the 1.5 million Americans suffering from Type 1 diabetes. "It's a whole new life," Shelton said. Diabetes experts were astonished but urged caution. The study is continuing and will take five years, involving 17 people with Type 1 diabetes. "By fall 2023, three patients, including Shelton, had achieved insulin independence by day 180 post-transplant," MedScape reported (in January of 2024): In the phase 1/2 study, 14 patients with type 1 diabetes and impaired hypoglycemia awareness or recurrent hypoglycemia received portal vein infusions of VX-880 [Vertex Pharmaceutical's pancreatic islet cell replacement therapy] along with standard immunosuppression. As of the last data cut, all 14 patients demonstrated islet cell engraftment and production of endogenous insulin. After more than 90 days of follow-up, 13 of the patients have achieved A1c levels

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: Imagine exploring the intricate world within a single cubic millimeter of human brain tissue. It might seem insignificant, but within that tiny space lies a universe of complexity -- 57,000 individual cells, 230 millimeters of blood vessels, and a staggering 150 million synapses, the junctions where neurons communicate. All this information translates to a mind-boggling 1,400 terabytes of data. That's the kind of groundbreaking achievement researchers from Harvard and Google have just accomplished. Leading the charge at Harvard is Professor Jeff Lichtman, a renowned expert in brain structure. Partnering with Google AI, Lichtman's team has co-created the most detailed 3D reconstruction of a human brain fragment to date. This intricate map, published in Science, offers an unprecedented view of the human temporal cortex, the region responsible for memory and other higher functions. Envision a piece of brain tissue roughly half the size of a rice grain but magnified to reveal every cell and its web of neural connections in vivid detail. This remarkable feat is the culmination of nearly a decade of collaboration between Harvard and Google. Lichtman's expertise in electron microscopy imaging is combined with Google's cutting-edge AI algorithms. [...] The newly published map in Science reveals previously unseen details of brain structure. One such discovery is a rare but powerful set of axons, each connected by up to 50 synapses, potentially influencing a significant number of neighboring neurons. The team also encountered unexpected structures, like a small number of axons forming intricate whorls. Since the sample came from a patient with epilepsy, it's unclear if these formations are specific to the condition or simply uncommon occurrences.

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Ancient Slashdot reader jd shares a report from The Guardian: Neuralink's first attempt at implanting its chip in a human being's skull hit an unexpected setback after the device began to detach from the patient's brain, the company revealed on Wednesday. The patient, Noland Arbaugh, underwent surgery in February to attach a Neuralink chip to his brain, but the device's functionality began to decrease within the month after his implant. Some of the device's threads, which connect the miniature computer to the brain, had begun to retract. Neuralink did not disclose why the device partly retracted from Arbaugh's brain, but stated in a blog post that its engineers had refined the implant and restored functionality. The decreased capabilities did not appear to endanger Arbaugh, and he could still use the implant to play a game of chess on a computer using his thoughts, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first broke the news of the issue with the chip. The possibility of removing the implant was considered after the detachment came to light, the Journal reported. [...] Arbaugh praised the implant during a demonstration in March and said that it had "already changed his life," while also stating that it had not been perfect and they "have run into some issues."

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AstraZeneca said on Tuesday it had initiated the worldwide withdrawal of its COVID-19 vaccine due to a "surplus of available updated vaccines" since the pandemic. From a report: The company also said it would proceed to withdraw the vaccine Vaxzevria's marketing authorizations within Europe. "As multiple, variant COVID-19 vaccines have since been developed there is a surplus of available updated vaccines," the company said, adding that this had led to a decline in demand for Vaxzevria, which is no longer being manufactured or supplied. According to media reports, the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker has previously admitted in court documents that the vaccine causes side-effects such as blood clots and low blood platelet counts.

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Pam Belluck reports via the New York Times: Scientists are proposing a new way of understanding the genetics of Alzheimer's that would mean that up to a fifth of patients would be considered to have a genetically caused form of the disease. Currently, the vast majority of Alzheimer's cases do not have a clearly identified cause. The new designation, proposed in a study published Monday, could broaden the scope of efforts to develop treatments, including gene therapy, and affect the design of clinical trials. It could also mean that hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone could, if they chose, receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer's before developing any symptoms of cognitive decline, although there currently are no treatments for people at that stage. The new classification would make this type of Alzheimer's one of the most common genetic disorders in the world, medical experts said. "This reconceptualization that we're proposing affects not a small minority of people," said Dr. Juan Fortea, an author of the study and the director of the Sant Pau Memory Unit in Barcelona, Spain. "Sometimes we say that we don't know the cause of Alzheimer's disease," but, he said, this would mean that about 15 to 20 percent of cases "can be tracked back to a cause, and the cause is in the genes." The idea involves a gene variant called APOE4. Scientists have long known that inheriting one copy of the variant increases the risk of developing Alzheimer's, and that people with two copies, inherited from each parent, have vastly increased risk. The new study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, analyzed data from over 500 people with two copies of APOE4, a significantly larger pool than in previous studies. The researchers found that almost all of those patients developed the biological pathology of Alzheimer's, and the authors say that two copies of APOE4 should now be considered a cause of Alzheimer's -- not simply a risk factor. The patients also developed Alzheimer's pathology relatively young, the study found. By age 55, over 95 percent had biological markers associated with the disease. By 65, almost all had abnormal levels of a protein called amyloid that forms plaques in the brain, a hallmark of Alzheimer's. And many started developing symptoms of cognitive decline at age 65, younger than most people without the APOE4 variant.

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In a first for "digital health technology," the Apple Watch's atrial fibrillation (AFib) history feature has been approved by the FDA to join the FDA's Medical Device Development Tools (MDDT) program. This means the wearable is now usable in clinical studies. The Verge reports: The FDA announcement describes using it as a noninvasive way to collect the data both before and after treatment: "Designed to be used as a biomarker test to help evaluate estimates of AFib burden as a secondary effectiveness endpoint within clinical studies intended to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of cardiac ablation devices to treat."

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New submitter berghem shares a report from The Guardian: For the first time, researchers have formally shown that exposure to toxic PFAS increases the likelihood of death by cardiovascular disease, adding a new level of concern to the controversial chemicals' wide use. The findings are especially significant because proving an association with death by chemical exposure is difficult, but researchers were able to establish it by reviewing death records from northern Italy's Veneto region, where many residents for decades drank water highly contaminated with PFAS, also called "forever chemicals." Records further showed an increased likelihood of death from several cancers, but stopped short of establishing a formal association because of other factors. [...] Veneto's drinking water was widely contaminated by a PFAS-production plant between 1985 and 2018. Researchers first found an excess of about 4,000 deaths during this period, or about one every three days. Part of the region was supplied with water from a different source, giving researchers the opportunity to compare records for tens of thousands of people who drank contaminated water and lived near those who did not. Though PFAS can affect the cardiovascular system in different ways, it is largely a problem because it produces stubbornly high and dangerous levels of cholesterol. The levels are difficult to control because they aren't caused by dietary or lifestyle choices that can be addressed with adjustments, but hormonal changes that affect the metabolism and the body's ability to control plaque in arteries. The study's authors suspect that post-traumatic stress disorder caused by the environmental disaster, which upended lives across the region, may also be contributing to circulatory disease. The evidence of a jump in kidney cancer was also "very clear," [said Annibale Biggeri, the peer-reviewed study's lead author, and a researcher with the University of Padua]. In the study's first five years, 16 cases were recorded, while 65 were recorded in the last five years. It also found elevated levels of testicular cancer during some time periods. The records "showed clearly" that earlier life exposures led to higher levels of mortality, except for women who have multiple children. Previous research has found levels were higher in women with only one child. The chemicals accumulate in placentas and are passed on to children during pregnancy, which reduces levels in the body. Mortality levels among women who were of child-bearing age were generally lower, but increased in older women. The chemicals will be passed down to children for generations, said Laura Facciolo, a Veneto resident who drank contaminated water. She said the findings underscore the need to ban PFAS, and the disaster's injustice. The findings have been published in the journal Environmental Health.

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Walmart isn't making enough money off its new health centers, so it decided to close up shop. From a report: The retail giant announced today that it'll shutter all 51 health centers it opened up across five states since 2019. Walmart is also getting rid of its virtual care program after acquiring telehealth provider MeMD in 2021. "We determined there is not a sustainable business model for us to continue," Walmart said in an announcement today. "This is a difficult decision, and like others, the challenging reimbursement environment and escalating operating costs create a lack of profitability that make the care business unsustainable for us at this time," Walmart said today. It's an about-face from last year when Walmart said it planned to double its number of health clinics and expand into two new states in 2024.

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Abstract of a paper on National Bureau of Economic Research: Physicians commonly receive marketing-related transfers from drug firms. We examine the impact of these relationships on the prescribing of physician-administered cancer drugs in Medicare. We find that prescribing of the associated drug increases 4\% in the twelve months after a payment is received, with the increase beginning sharply in the month of payment and fading out within a year. A marketing payment also leads physicians to begin treating cancer patients with lower expected mortality. While payments result in greater expenditure on cancer drugs, there are no associated improvements in patient mortality.

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SonicSpike shares a report from Scientific American: A day after the American Astronomical Society (AAS) announced that there were no signs of unsafe eclipse glasses or other solar viewers on the market in early March, astronomer and science communicator Rick Fienberg received an alarming call. Fienberg is project manager of the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force, which is busy preparing for the total eclipse over North America on April 8. He's the creator of a list of vetted solar filters and viewers that will protect wearers' eyes as they watch the moon move in front of the sun. When a solar eclipse last crossed a major swath of the U.S. in 2017, Fienberg and his team spotted some counterfeit glasses entering the marketplace -- imitations that distributors claimed were manufactured by vetted companies. Testing at accredited labs indicated that many counterfeits were actually safe to use, however. This led the task force to describe such eclipse glasses as "misleading" but not "dangerous" in a March 11 statement meant to reassure the public. But then Fienberg's phone rang. The caller was "a guy who had bought thousands of eclipse glasses from a distributor who had been on our list at one point," Fienberg says. "Those glasses were not safe. They were no darker than ordinary sunglasses." Legitimate eclipse glasses are at least 1,000 times darker than the darkest sunglasses you can buy. Fienberg contacted Cangnan County Qiwei Craft, a Chinese factory that he knew manufactured safe glasses and had -- in the past -- sold them to the distributor in question. But this time, Fienberg says, factory representatives told him they hadn't sold to that distributor in a long while. "That's when we switched from being concerned about only counterfeits to being concerned about actual fakes," Fienberg says. The AAS does not have a confident estimate of how many fake or counterfeit glasses are for sale out there. And though Fienberg doesn't think this is a widespread problem, the situation is an "iceberg kind of concern," he says, because there are likely more examples than the ones he knows about. While counterfeit glasses may still be safe to use, completely fake glasses could put wearers in serious danger. [...] While lab tests are the best way to determine whether glasses meet the ISO standard, Fienberg says there is a three-part test people can do at home if they're concerned their eclipse viewers aren't up to the task. First, put your glasses on indoors and look around. The only things you should be able to see are very bright lights, such as a halogen bulb or a smartphone flashlight. Then, if the glasses pass the indoor test, bring them outside -- but don't look at the sun just yet. Look around: it should be too dark to see distant hills, trees or even the ground. If that second test is passed, keep the glasses on and quickly glance at the sun. You should comfortably see a bright, sharp-edged round disk. If your glasses pass all three tests, they are probably safe to wear. Still, Fienberg points out that it's best to use them for only a few seconds every minute or so during the eclipse; this cautious approach is how they're intended to be used. And if you don't trust your glasses for April's celestial event, you could try to find a reliable pair in the next two decades. "You only have to wait 20 years for another really good eclipse year in the [United] States," Fienberg says.

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An anonymous reader quotes an opinion piece from the Washington Post, published by the Editorial Board: A just-published investigation by Russian, American and German journalists has unearthed startling new information about the so-called Havana syndrome, or "Anomalous Health Incidents," as the government calls the unexplained bouts of painful disorientation that U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers have suffered in recent years. The new information suggests but does not prove that Russia's military intelligence agency is responsible. Earlier, agencies in the U.S. intelligence community had concluded that "it is very unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible." They need to look again. [...] [T]he new investigation by the Insider, a Russian investigative news outlet, in collaboration with CBS's "60 Minutes" and Germany's Der Spiegel, paints a different picture. It identifies the possible culprit as Unit 29155, a "notorious assassination and sabotage squad" of the GRU, Moscow's military intelligence service. Senior members of the unit received "awards and political promotions for work related to the development of 'non-lethal acoustic weapons'" -- a term used in the Russian military-scientific literature to describe both sound- and radiofrequency-based directed energy devices. The investigation found documentary evidence that Unit 29155 "has been experimenting with exactly the kind of weaponized technology" experts suggest is a plausible cause. Moreover, the Insider reported, geolocation data shows that operators attached to Unit 29155, traveling undercover, were present in places where Havana syndrome struck, just before the incidents took place. Even more concerning, the investigation found that a commonality among the Americans targeted was their work history on Russia issues. This included CIA officers who were helping Ukraine build up its intelligence capabilities in the years before Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. One veteran of the CIA Kyiv station was named the new chief of station in Vietnam and was hit there. A second veteran of the CIA in Ukraine was hit in his apartment in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Both these intelligence officers had to be medevaced and were treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The wife of a third CIA officer who had served in Kyiv was hit in London. "Of all the cases" examined by the news organizations, they said, "the most well-documented involve U.S. intelligence and diplomatic personnel with subject matter expertise in Russia or operational experience in countries such as Georgia and Ukraine," both of which were the scene of popular pro-Western uprisings in the past two decades. The news organizations point out that Russian President Vladimir Putin has often blamed these "color revolutions" on the CIA and the State Department. They conclude, "Putin would have every interest in neutralizing scores of U.S. intelligence officers he deemed responsible for his loss of the former satellites." The Editorial Board is advocating for a thorough and aggressive investigation by the U.S. intelligence community that "takes into account all aspects of the incidents." "If the incidents are a deliberate attack, the perpetrator must be identified and held to account. Along with sending a message to those who might harm American personnel, the United States needs to show all those who might join the diplomatic and intelligence services that the government will protect them abroad and at home from foreign adversaries, no matter what."

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As a department of America's federal Health agency, the Food and Drug Administration is responsible for public health rules, including prescription medicines. And the FDA "has not changed its position that currently available clinical trial data do not demonstrate that ivermectin is effective against COVID-19," they confirmed to CNN this week. "The agency has not authorized or approved ivermectin for use in preventing or treating COVID-19." But there was also a lawsuit. In "one of its more popular pandemic-era social media campaigns," the agency tweeted out "You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it." The post attracted nearly 106,000 likes — and over 46,000 reposts, and was followed by another post on Instagram. "Stop it with the #ivermectin. It's not authorized for treating #COVID." Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik writes that the posts triggered a "groundless" lawsuit: It was those latter two lines that exercised three physicians who had been prescribing ivermectin for patients. They sued the FDA in 2022, asserting that its advisory illegally interfered with the practice of medicine — specifically with their ability to continue prescribing the drug. A federal judge in Texas threw out their case, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals — the source of a series of chuckleheaded antigovernment rulings in recent years — reinstated it last year, returning it to the original judge for reconsideration. Now the FDA has settled the case by agreeing to delete the horse post and two similar posts from its accounts on the social media platforms X, LinkedIn and Facebook. The agency also agreed to retire a consumer advisory titled "Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19." In defending its decision, the FDA said it "has chosen to resolve this lawsuit rather than continuing to litigate over statements that are between two and nearly four years old." That sounds reasonable enough, but it's a major blunder. It leaves on the books the 5th Circuit's adverse ruling, in which a panel of three judges found that the FDA's advisory crossed the line from informing consumers, which they said is all right, to recommending that consumers take some action, which they said is not all right... That's a misinterpretation of the law and the FDA's actions, according to Dorit Rubinstein Reiss of UC College of the Law in San Francisco. "The FDA will seek to make recommendations against the misuse of products in the future, and having that decision on the books will be used to litigate against it," she observed after the settlement. "A survey by Boston University and the University of Michigan estimated that Medicare and private insurers had wasted $130 million on ivermectin prescriptions for COVID in 2021 alone."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Thanks to the vaccination program that began in 1995, chickenpox is now relatively rare. Cases of the miserable, itchy condition have fallen more than 97 percent. But, while children have largely put the oatmeal baths and oven mitts behind them, doctors have apparently let their diagnostic skills get a little crusty. According to a study published Thursday, public health researchers in Minnesota found that 55 percent of people diagnosed with chickenpox based on their symptoms were actually negative for the varicella-zoster virus, the virus that causes chickenpox. The study noted that the people were all diagnosed in person by health care providers in medical facilities. But, instead of chickenpox, lab testing showed that some of the patients were actually infected with an enterovirus, which can cause a rash, or the herpes simplex virus 1, which causes cold sores. The study, published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, supports expanding laboratory testing for suspected chickenpox cases in the state's program and highlights that diagnoses based on symptoms are "unreliable." For one thing, doctors simply see far fewer chickenpox cases these days because of the protection from vaccines. While chickenpox cases in the US previously reached 4 million each year, with 10,500 to 13,500 hospitalizations and 100 to 150 deaths, there are now fewer than 150,000 cases,1,400 hospitalizations, and 30 deaths each year, the CDC reports. Vaccination is more than 90 percent effective at preventing the disease. In the rare cases where a vaccinated person contracts chickenpox, the muted rashes are challenging to identify by eye. But even in unvaccinated children, chickenpox can be tricky to pick out; it can easily be confused with measles, insect bites, enterovirus, skin infections such as scabies and impetigo, herpes viruses, and hand, foot, and mouth disease.

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Several readers shared the following report: Intermittent fasting, a diet pattern that involves alternating between periods of fasting and eating, can lower blood pressure and help some people lose weight, past research has indicated. But an analysis presented Monday at the American Heart Association's scientific sessions in Chicago challenges the notion that intermittent fasting is good for heart health. Instead, researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in China found that people who restricted food consumption to less than eight hours per day had a 91% higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease over a median period of eight years, relative to people who ate across 12 to 16 hours. It's some of the first research investigating the association between time-restricted eating (a type of intermittent fasting) and the risk of death from cardiovascular disease. The analysis -- which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal -- is based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey collected between 2003 and 2018. The researchers analyzed responses from around 20,000 adults who recorded what they ate for at least two days, then looked at who had died from cardiovascular disease after a median follow-up period of eight years. However, Victor Wenze Zhong, a co-author of the analysis, said it's too early to make specific recommendations about intermittent fasting based on his research alone.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: An array of advanced tests found no brain injuries or degeneration among U.S. diplomats and other government employees who suffer mysterious health problems once dubbed "Havana syndrome," researchers reported Monday. The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) nearly five-year study offers no explanation for symptoms including headaches, balance problems and difficulties with thinking and sleep that were first reported in Cuba in 2016 and later by hundreds of American personnel in multiple countries. But it did contradict some earlier findings that raised the spectre of brain injuries in people experiencing what the State Department now calls "anomalous health incidents." "These individuals have real symptoms and are going through a very tough time," said Dr. Leighton Chan, NIH's chief of rehabilitation medicine, who helped lead the research. "They can be quite profound, disabling and difficult to treat." Yet sophisticated MRI scans detected no significant differences in brain volume, structure or white matter -- signs of injury or degeneration -- when Havana syndrome patients were compared to healthy government workers with similar jobs, including some in the same embassy. Nor were there significant differences in cognitive and other tests, according to findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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