Legionnaires' disease is named after 1976 outbreak in Philadelphia that sickened 221 people and killed 34. More often striking adults over the age of 50, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported two cases where newborns contracted the often fatal disease — at their moment of birth.
As summer mosquito season approaches, researchers are warning people with previous exposure to West Nile virus to take extra precautions against Zika. A new study found that animals with antibodies to West Nile in their blood have more dangerous infections with Zika than they would normally.
Viral infections have been the focus of attention in the development of autoimmune diseases—diseases where the body's immune system reacts to the body's own cells—because they trigger the immune system into action.
A new study confirms that antibiotics can prevent surgical intervention if your child's appendix becomes inflamed, potentially saving his or her life.
A recent pathogen outbreak in Illinois is just one of many outbreaks of an underappreciated, but serious, viral infection passed from rodents to humans. These hantaviruses have been cropping up more frequently in the last decade or so, giving us more reason to clean out our dusty attics, basements, and garages.
Transmitted by ticks, Lyme disease is a serious infection that is probably headed your way. A recent study confirms the pathogen that causes Lyme disease is now established in nine national parks in the East, including Acadia and Shenandoah National Parks.
Samsung Health has become one of the most comprehensive wellness apps thanks to features that cover everything from step counting to nutrition logging and symptom diagnosis. But because the app has so much to offer, it can be easy to overlook some smaller, but useful features.
You're minding your business when your Apple Watch taps you. To your surprise, the watch claims your heart rate dipped abnormally low. The news might come as a shock — especially if you have no history of a heart condition — but before you panic, you should take the time to fully understand what this alert is really saying and what you can and should do about it.
Regarding foodborne pathogens, eating fish is not as hazardous as it was a few years ago — but if fins are on the menu, it's good to have a heads-up about what's good and what's bad these days.
The number of Legionnaires' cases in New York over the last couple weeks has led to concern and recommendations of caution for those at risk.
In Indianapolis, two-year-old Kenley Ratliff has passed away from what is suspected to be Rocky Mountain spotted fever (RMSF), a tick-borne illness. The young girl fell ill with a fever, and just a week later, passed away. Now her family and doctors are looking into the cause of her death and warning others to check themselves for ticks this summer.
Sepsis is not only a gross sounding word but also a deceptively dangerous and fatal infection. Which is why more than 40 hospitals nationwide are coming together to a new collaboration to help reduce sepsis mortality, named Improving Pediatric Sepsis Outcomes (IPSO).
HIV-infected people who are treated long-term with antiviral drugs may have no detectable virus in their body, but scientists know there are pools of the virus hiding there, awaiting the chance to emerge and wreak havoc again. Since scientists discovered these latent pools, they have been trying to figure out if the remaining HIV is the cause of or caused by increased activation of the immune system.
Future mothers hoping to use donated semen might want to think twice before using any samples from the Miami-Dade Country area of Florida. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is warning that sperm from as far back as June 2016 may be infected with the Zika virus. Damn those mosquitoes.
When exercising at a high intensity, you know to expect some level of pain. That can make it difficult to identify when your body gives you a warning sign of injury. If you pay close attention, however, you can tell the good hurt from the bad. I talked to Dr. Brian Parr again, professor at the Dept. of Exercise and Sports Science at the University of South Carolina Aiken, who explained which symptoms of exercise are normal and which are bad:
Suzy Cohen tells us in this video how to lower our blood pressure naturally. Believe it or not, the urinary tract is connected with our blood pressure. A dietary supplement called "Asparagus extract" is recommended. Asparagus in vegetable form is delicious when served with a little butter or feta cheese. When you take it as a supplement, you get a bigger dose. It is a wonderful diuretic, which means it makes you pee a lot. You should take it in the morning, so that you do not find yourself ru...
Take a close look at the image above. These bugs spread a deadly parasite that infects thousands of people each year. They also live in the US, and it's important to know where they are and whether you need to worry that they're carrying a dangerous infection.
This Diet & Health how-to video explains what a urinary tract infection is, the symptoms and how to prevent the onset. UTI can be prevented by avoiding certain nutritional habits. However if urinary tract infection symptoms persist please contact your doctor.
Apple just released iOS 13.6, and while there aren't a ton of new features here, there are some pretty amazing ones to be on the lookout for.
Waking up your Apple Watch to see "your heart has shown signs of an irregular rhythm suggestive of atrial fibrillation" might come as a shock. While your watch can send you warnings if it detects a fast or low heart rate, those messages are pretty vague, while the abnormal arrhythmia alert can downright scary. So what should you do if you receive one of these AFib notifications?
A recent initiative by the Cherokee Nation American Indian Tribe delivers a success story for knocking out a silent killer — Hepatitis C.
On June 11, 2016, an Arizona woman died from what appeared to be several infections, including pneumonia. She likely caught at least one of these from her dog.
Blowing dust and fungal spores are creating a public health problem that could be just a slice of what's to come with climate change.
Crusty, itchy, red eyes? There is a decent chance you could have conjunctivitis, or pink eye, an infection of the thin lining around the eye and the eyelid, caused by bacteria, an allergen, virus, or even your contact lenses. Whatever the cause — you call up your doctor to get a prescription to clear it up, right? Not really.
An older man dies of Zika. A younger man who cares for him catches Zika — but doctors cannot pinpoint how the disease was transmitted. While proximity to the patient is sufficient explanation for the rest of us, for microbe hunters, it is a medical mystery. Why? Zika is not known to transmit from person-to-person casually.
The herpes simplex virus (HSV) can cause devastating complications for infected newborns whose mothers have genital herpes. Understanding risk and research can help you, and your baby, when the time comes.
A new medical development is going to change the way many of us look at getting the flu vaccine. A painless flu vaccine skin patch is making needles and vials a thing of the past. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University have shown that a flu vaccine can be administered safely and comfortably with this new patch, which delivers the vaccine through a matrix of tiny dissolving microneedles.
While no longer native to the United States, hospitalization from malaria occurs in this country more than most would believe. Why is that, and what can you do to protect yourself when you travel abroad to regions where malaria is active?
There could be a fresh outbreak of the Zika virus in the Americas as the weather heats up and the mosquito population blooms.
A sometimes serious disease spread by fleas is making inroads in Texas, quietly doubling case numbers since 2008, and beginning to encroach on larger metropolitan areas.
Somewhere around 600–800 million people in the world are infected with whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), an infection they got from ingesting soil or water contaminated with feces of infected animals or people containing the parasite's eggs.
Prion diseases are a group of infectious brain diseases that causes extensive tissue damage, resulting in sponge-like spaces in brain tissue. Prions include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (often called mad cow disease), and chronic wasting disease in hoofed ruminant mammals.
Despite the availability of a vaccine against it, almost 50% of men aged 18-59 in the US are infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV). Why?
You might feel the bite, you might not, but an infected mosquito has injected you with a parasite named Plasmodium falciparum, a single-cell protozoa that quickly takes up residence in your body.
Winter and the winter holidays in general are a time of joy, laughter, and love… but not for everyone. For some, the stress of preparing for parties, hosting family, traveling long distances in bad weather, and just keeping up with your daily routine can start to bring you down.
Learn how to reduce your risk of allergies. Transform your home into a sanctuary for your eyes, nose, and throat by reducing the risk of allergies.
For the first time, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved medication to treat children with a serious infection called Chagas disease, which stealthily infects and damages the hearts of millions of victims a year.
Gonorrhea infections reached a peak in 1975, then decreased until 2009, when infection rate started rising and has increased each year since. With the rise of antibiotic resistance, those numbers are only going to get worse — unless we find new treatments against the bacteria.
The intestinal parasite Cyclospora cayetanensis has a dramatically increased infection rate this summer, and the source is still unknown, the CDC advised today. 2017 is a good year for Cyclospora looking for homes to start their families and a bad year for those of us who don't like food-stealing tenants living in our bodies.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just reported some upsettingly high numbers of human papillomavirus (HPV) in adults. In data retrieved from 2013–2014, 22.7% of US adults in the 18–59 range were found to have the types of high-risk genital HPV that cause certain cancers.
