San Francisco News
Pollution from coal power plants contributes to far more deaths than scientists realized, study shows
Lucas Henneman, George Mason University Air pollution particles from coal-fired power plants are more harmful to human health than many experts realized, and it’s more than twice as likely to contribute to premature deaths as air pollution particles from other sources, new research demonstrates. In the study, published in the journal Science, colleagues and I mapped how U.S. coal power plant emissions traveled through the atmosphere, then linked each power plant’s emissions with death records of Americans over 65 years old on Medicare. Our results suggest that air pollutants released from coal power plants were associated with nearly half a
How do viruses get into cells? Their infection tactics determine whether they can jump species or set off a pandemic
Peter Kasson, University of Virginia COVID-19, flu, mpox, noroviral diarrhea: How do the viruses that cause these diseases actually infect you? Viruses cannot replicate on their own, so they must infect cells in your body to make more copies of themselves. The life cycle of a virus can thus be roughly described as: get inside a cell, make more virus, get out, repeat. Getting inside a cell, or viral entry, is the part of the cycle that most vaccines target, as well as a key barrier for viruses jumping from one species to another. My lab and many others study
Immune health is all about balance – an immunologist explains why both too strong and too weak an immune response can lead to illness
Aimee Pugh Bernard, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus For immune health, some influencers seem to think the Goldilocks philosophy of “just right” is overrated. Why settle for less immunity when you can have more? Many social media posts push supplements and other life hacks that “boost your immune system” to keep you healthy and fend off illness. However, these claims are not based on science and what is known about immune function. Healthy immune systems don’t need to be “boosted.” Instead, the immune system works best when it is perfectly balanced. Scientific experts on the immune system – immunologists
Pooling multiple models during COVID-19 pandemic provided more reliable projections about an uncertain future
Emily Howerton, Penn State; Cecile Viboud, National Institutes of Health, and Justin Lessler, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill How can anyone decide on the best course of action in a world full of unknowns? There are few better examples of this challenge than the COVID-19 pandemic, when officials fervently compared potential outcomes as they weighed options like whether to implement lockdowns or require masks in schools. The main tools they used to compare these futures were epidemic models. But often, models included numerous unstated assumptions and considered only one scenario – for instance, that lockdowns would continue. Chosen
What is fentanyl and why is it behind the deadly surge in US drug overdoses? A medical toxicologist explains
Kavita Babu, UMass Chan Medical School Buying drugs on the street is a game of Russian roulette. From Xanax to cocaine, drugs or counterfeit pills purchased in nonmedical settings may contain life-threatening amounts of fentanyl. Physicians like me have seen a rise in unintentional fentanyl use from people buying prescription opioids and other drugs laced, or adulterated, with fentanyl. Heroin users in my community in Massachusetts came to realize that fentanyl had entered the drug supply when overdose numbers exploded. In 2016, my colleagues and I found that patients who came to the emergency department reporting a heroin overdose often
Ketamine can rapidly reduce symptoms of PTSD and depression, new study finds
C. Michael White, University of Connecticut The drug ketamine can reduce the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and symptoms of depression in patients as early as a day after injection. That is the key finding of my team’s new meta-analysis, just published in the journal Annals of Pharmacotherapy. Ketamine is an anesthetic that is sometimes used as a substance of abuse but is increasingly being explored as a treatment for a range of mental health conditions. We analyzed six randomized controlled trials representing 259 patients with moderate to severe PTSD. In all trials, about half were injected with
Vampire viruses prey on other viruses to replicate themselves − and may hold the key to new antiviral therapies
Ivan Erill, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Have you ever wondered whether the virus that gave you a nasty cold can catch one itself? It may comfort you to know that, yes, viruses can actually get sick. Even better, as karmic justice would have it, the culprits turn out to be other viruses. Viruses can get sick in the sense that their normal function is impaired. When a virus enters a cell, it can either go dormant or start replicating right away. When replicating, the virus essentially commandeers the molecular factory of the cell to make lots of copies of
Why some people got blood clots after the AstraZeneca vaccine – new clues
Richard Buka, University of Birmingham and Samantha Montague, University of Birmingham AstraZeneca in partnership with the University of Oxford developed one of the first vaccines against COVID. The vaccine, which used an adenovirus to smuggle instructions into human cells to make antibodies against the novel coronavirus, saved countless lives. But a problem soon emerged. A tiny proportion – about one in 50,000 – of those vaccinated developed blood clots. This blood clot syndrome is known as vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT). In people with this condition, something goes wrong with the immune response and people make antibodies that can stick
New treatment for postpartum depression offers hope, but the stigma attached to the condition still lingers
Nicole Lynch, Purdue University and Shannon Pickett, Purdue University Postpartum depression can affect anyone, and it often sneaks in quietly, like a shadow in the corners of a new mother’s life. It presents significant challenges for around 1 in 7 new mothers, affecting their emotional well-being and overall quality of life and that of the newborn. Many – if not most – women experience the “baby blues,” or generalized feelings of sadness, worry, unhappiness and exhaustion, in the initial days after giving birth. In most cases, these mood changes are resolved in the first two weeks after having a baby.