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Total 52 results found since Jan 2013.
Why Allergy Seasons Are Getting Worse
If you’ve been itchy, congested, and sneezy for months, you’re not alone. This year’s spring allergy season started early, broke pollen-count records in some parts of the country, and is still going strong in many areas.
Unfortunately, this year is unlikely to be a fluke. While pollen counts vary from year to year, recent trends suggest allergy seasons are, in general, getting longer and worse, says Dr. Kristine Vanijcharoenkarn, an assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine who specializes in allergies and immunology. Patients started filling her office early this year, around the beginni...
Source: TIME: Health - May 9, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Jamie Ducharme Tags: Uncategorized Environment healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Why It Took So Long to Finally Get an RSV Vaccine
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) can dangerously compromise breathing, especially for infants and the elderly. But there has been no vaccine to prevent it—until today. On May 3, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first vaccine against RSV, from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), to prevent respiratory disease in people ages 60 and older. The Centers for Disease Control’s vaccine committee will make formal recommendations in June about who should receive the vaccine, but GSK says it currently has enough doses to vaccinate eligible people beginning this fall.
In studies involving 25,000 people that GSK...
Source: TIME: Health - May 3, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized Drugs healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
AI Cough-Monitoring Can Change the Way We Diagnose Disease
How many times do you cough a day? Do you cough more when you’re indoors or outside? Or more often after you eat? Or at night?
Chances are, your cough memory might not be that accurate. But all of that information about your coughing patterns could be an untapped resource to better understand your health. Coughs may be benign ways to clear a little extra phlegm, or they could be early signs of more serious conditions such as asthma, GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), or even lung cancer.
“In the era of precision health, it’s ironic that such a problematic symptom is simply unmeasured,” says Pet...
Source: TIME: Health - April 3, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized healthscienceclimate Technology Source Type: news
Why You ’ re More Likely to Get Sick in the Winter, According to New Research
Fall and winter are traditionally boom times for respiratory viruses—a point well proven by this year’s confluence of influenza, RSV, and COVID-19. Almost 9 million people nationwide have been sickened by the flu already this season, RSV is surging among children, and COVID-19 continues to infect tens of thousands of people in the U.S. each day.
But why does cold weather typically translate to cold and flu season? Experts often point to changes in human behavior—namely that chilly temperatures force people inside, where it’s easier for germs to spread. But a new study published in The Journal of All...
Source: TIME: Health - December 6, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Jamie Ducharme Tags: Uncategorized Disease healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Why the U.S. Doesn ’t Have a Nasal Vaccine for COVID-19
The U.S. led the world in quickly developing COVID-19 vaccines—one of the few bright spots in the country’s otherwise criticized response. But while injectable vaccines are effective in protecting people from getting sick with COVID-19, they are less able to block infection. In order to put the pandemic behind us, the world will need a way to stop infections and spread of the virus. That’s where a different type of vaccine, one that works at the places where the virus gets into the body, will likely prove useful.
Here, though, the U.S. is losing its edge. In September, India approved a nasal COVID-19 vacc...
Source: TIME: Health - October 31, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
The Troubling Trends Pointing to a Severe Flu and RSV Season
Flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) season has just begun in the northern hemisphere, and the consensus among experts is that the 2022-2023 season is shaping up to be more severe than in the past few (relatively mild) years. It might even be worse than seasons before COVID-19.
Health data company IQVIA has been analyzing data from insurance claims filed by doctors’ offices, hospitals, and urgent care centers in the country for three decades, and focused on case trends over the previous year. The team found that diagnoses of flu are already tracking at record highs. Even before flu season began, back in spring 2...
Source: TIME: Health - October 25, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park and Charts by Emily Barone Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
The Current COVID-19 Booster-Shot Strategy is Not Sustainable, Says FDA ’s Expert Panel
While the currently available COVID-19 vaccines remain effective in protecting people from serious disease, public health experts still face a handful of important questions about the shots and their ability to continue to protect against the virus in coming years. Will a new version of the vaccine be more effective? How long does protection last? Are boosters the only way to extend that protection? Is there a better, more coordinated way to give vaccines and boosters to maximize immunity in the face of an ever-changing virus?
Those were the discussion topics that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and ...
Source: TIME: Health - April 7, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Nasal Vaccines Could Help Stop COVID-19 From Spreading —If Scientists Can Get Them Right
When SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, infiltrates the body, it typically enters through the nose or mouth, then takes root and begins replicating.
But what if it could never get a foothold in the upper airways? That’s the promise of nasal COVID-19 vaccines, which are meant to prevent infection by blocking the virus at its point of entry.
There is not yet a nasal COVID-19 vaccine available in the U.S.—and it’s not clear if or when there will be—but multiple research teams in the U.S., including the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and abroad are working on them. Russi...
Source: TIME: Health - February 15, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Jamie Ducharme Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
What We Learned About Genetic Sequencing During COVID-19 Could Revolutionize Public Health
You don’t want to be a virus in Dr. David Ho’s lab. Pretty much every day since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Ho and his team have done nothing but find ways to stress SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease. His goal: pressure the virus relentlessly enough that it mutates to survive, so drug developers can understand how the virus might respond to new treatments. As a virologist with decades of experience learning about another obstinate virus, HIV, Ho knows just how to apply that mutation-generating stress, whether by starving the virus, bathing it in antibodies that disrupt its ability to infect cells, ...
Source: TIME: Health - June 11, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 feature Genetics Magazine Source Type: news
Will You Need a Booster Shot of the COVID-19 Vaccine?
When the first COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna were authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2020, most people breathed a sigh of relief since both shots were shown to be between 94% and 95% effective in protecting from COVID-19 symptoms. But public health experts warned that nobody really knew how long the protection would last, since the longest clinical trials in people only went to a few months. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, suggested that additional booster ...
Source: TIME: Health - April 16, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news
We May Never Eliminate COVID-19. But We Can Learn to Live With It
When does a pandemic end? Is it when life regains a semblance of normality?
Is it when the world reaches herd immunity, the benchmark at which enough people are immune to an infectious disease to stop its widespread circulation? Or is it when the disease is defeated, the last patient cured and the pathogen retired to the history books?
The last scenario, in the case of COVID-19, is likely a ways off, if it ever arrives. The virus has infected more than 100 million people worldwide and killed more than 2 million. New viral variants even more contagious than those that started the pandemic are spreading across the world. And...
Source: TIME: Health - February 4, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Jamie Ducharme Tags: Uncategorized Cover Story COVID-19 feature Magazine Source Type: news
Moderna ’s COVID-19 Vaccine Works Against the New Mutant Strains. Is That Enough?
First, the good news: in a study published Jan. 25 on a preprint server, Moderna says its COVID-19 vaccine continues to protect against two of the major mutant strains of SARS-CoV-2 circulating around the world: one that was first identified in the U.K. (called B.1.1.7) and one first seen in South Africa (B.1.351).
Now, the not-so-good news. Blood from people vaccinated with the company’s shot did not generate as many immune antibodies against B.1.351 as they did against the non-mutant virus—in fact, this blood contained about six-fold lower levels of antibodies. However, in the study released on biorxiv by sci...
Source: TIME: Health - January 26, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news
mRNA Technology Gave Us the First COVID-19 Vaccines. It Could Also Upend the Drug Industry
“No!” The doctor snapped. “Look at me!”
I had been staring her in the eyes, as she had ordered, but when a doctor on my other side began jabbing me with a needle, I started to turn my head. “Don’t look at it,” the first doctor said. I obeyed.
This was in early August in New Orleans, where I had signed up to be a participant in the clinical trial for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. It was a blind study, which meant I was not supposed to know whether I had gotten the placebo or the real vaccine. I asked the doctor if I would really been able to tell by looking at the syringe. &...
Source: TIME: Health - January 11, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Walter Isaacson Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 feature Magazine Source Type: news
The COVID-19 Virus Is Mutating. What Does That Mean for Vaccines?
As we enter the second year of living with the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the virus is celebrating its invasion of the world’s population with yet more mutated forms that help it to spread more easily from person to person.
One, first detected in the U.K. in December, has already raised alarms about whether the COVID-19 virus is now escaping from the protection that vaccines just being rolled out now might provide. The variant has also been found in the U.S. Already, U.K. officials have tightened lockdowns in England, Scotland and Wales, and over the holidays, more than 40 countries banned travelers from the region ...
Source: TIME: Health - January 7, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news
Moderna ’s COVID-19 Vaccine Is 94.5% Effective. Here’s What That Really Means
It’s wasn’t a typical Sunday morning for Dr. Stephen Hoge, president of the biotech company Moderna, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. They were at their respective homes in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., waiting to to be let into a Zoom call to hear the results of the very first COVID-19 vaccine that was tested in people.
The hosts were members of the independent Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) that is reviewing data involving all the COVID-19 vaccine candidates supported by the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program, and Hoge a...
Source: TIME: Health - November 17, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news
