When I married my husband in 2014 he came with children and birds — two boys and three African Grey parrots. There are pet people and bird people and on the Venn diagram of those groups I am nowhere. “What if I can’t stand living with the birds?” I asked him. “Will you choose them…
Regulators have determined that North Carolina Children’s Hospital is in compliance with federal rules but markedly changed since doctors, department heads and a top administrator expressed concerns three years ago about patients undergoing heart surgery there. Inspection records released on Thursday cited no deficiencies with the hospital’s operations. But a spokesman for the Centers for…
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Saudi Arabia has freed a doctor with dual Saudi-American citizenship after he was detained for 21 months and reportedly tortured, two friends of the family said on Thursday. The Saudis first detained Dr. Walid Fitaihi in November 2017 amid what the government called a crackdown on corruption. Despite Dr. Fitaihi’s lengthy detention,…
I’m lucky enough to have made it well into adulthood without ever breaking a major bone or having serious surgery, so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I realized I’d be kicking off the summer of 2019 on crutches. At the beginning of May, I had a minor surgical treatment intended to put an…
For decades, researchers have sought a blood test for beta amyloid, the protein that is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. Several groups and companies have made progress, and onThursday, scientists at Washington University in St. Louis reported that they had devised the most sensitive blood test yet. The test will not be available for clinical…
Vas Narasimhan was drawn to work in public health. He pursued degrees in medicine, worked to combat disease in India and Africa and studied with Paul Farmer, the renowned physician. But after a brief stint at the World Health Organization, he became disillusioned with public-sector bureaucracy. “I found there to be a dearth of real…
The Endocrine Society have revised their clinical practice guideline on identifying adults at higher risk for heart disease and type 2 diabetes. New guidelines recommend that older adults should undergo regular screening for metabolic risk. The previous edition of the guideline was in 2008. The recent revision looks at metabolic risk in the light of…
New research analyzes the effect of cigarette smoke on MRSA strains and finds that it makes the bacteria more persistent, more invasive, and more resistant to certain antibiotics. Researchers call for smokers to quit as they reveal the harmful effects of cigarette smoke on drug resistant bacteria. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death…
KINSHASA, Congo — Rwanda closed its border with Congo on Thursday in response to the deadly Ebola outbreak, while the Congolese Health Ministry said the 1-year-old daughter of a man who had died of the disease in the border city of Goma had Ebola. The man was Goma’s second confirmed Ebola case, and he died…
I’ve been a runner for 25 years and have been practicing yoga for 10. So why do I find it so much less painful to run for an hour than stand for an hour? Even the thought of standing for extended periods makes my back ache, especially during the summer, where standing is part of…