Архив рубрики: Здоровье Америка

TC, HDL, LDL: There’s an alphabet soup of cholesterol types to know about. Relatively new on the scene is Lp(a), or lipoprotein(a). Though it was first described by a Norwegian physician in 1963, this unique form of “bad” cholesterol remained under the radar until fairly recently. Now, it’s being discussed and measured in people’s bloodwork on a more widespread basis.

“Over the past decade, new scientific knowledge improved our understanding of the Lp(a) role in heart disease risk,” explains Dr. Ahmet Afsin Oktay, a cardiologist with the Rush University System for Health in Chicago. “As a result, providers have become more aware of how measuring Lp(a) levels can help form a more personalized risk assessment for heart disease.”

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Here’s what you need to know about Lp(a) and the new medical advances bringing us closer to treating elevated levels.

What is Lp(a), and why is it important?

It’s similar in structure to low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholest..

Dr. Jeffrey Hurless still remembers the young patient who showed up for a podiatry appointment complaining about a large blister on the bottom of his big toe. The sore spot was red, swollen, and painful—and the boy and his mother had no idea what had caused it. As the patient reclined in an exam chair, Hurless began to deroof the blister, which means removing its top layer of skin. Then the surprise hit. Literally.

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“I’m working on this boy’s foot pretty close to my face, probably a foot away, and I’m gently going a little deeper, and then a little deeper,” recalls Hurless, a podiatrist and foot and ankle surgeon at Neuhaus Foot & Ankle in Nashville. “All of a sudden, a plastic toothpick literally shot out of his foot under such pressure that it went over my right shoulder and hit the wall behind me.”

Everyone in the exam room erupted into cheers: Good riddance to the interloper! At first, the boy was stumped by the toothpick’s presence. Then he remem..

The Pandemic Agreement, just adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO), is a landmark for global public health. Had such an agreement been in place before 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic would have looked very different. The agreement now means that when the next pandemic begins brewing, the world will be much better equipped to mitigate or even prevent it.

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What exactly will the agreement do?

In a nutshell, 124 countries have pledged to prevent, prepare for, and respond to future pandemics. The countries that formally ratify the agreement will be bound to uphold a number of commitments including investing in health infrastructures, sharing intellectual property, and engaging in technology transfer.

One of the biggest benefits promises to be the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing System. This will require U.N. member states to share information and data about potential pandemic viruses, including sequencing of new viruses or variants, as well as sh..

On May 20, the federal government announced a major shift in how it plans to review and recommend COVID-19 vaccines for Americans. Among the changes: when manufacturers want to update the vaccine each year to target the latest variants, they will be required to conduct additional studies to show the effectiveness of the vaccine in people who are not at high risk of severe COVID-19.

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Since 2023, federal health officials have recommended an annual COVID-19 shot for most people, and vaccine makers have not needed to conduct additional tests on each year’s updated vaccine. It’s similar to the way the annual flu shot is updated to target the newest influenza strains, without new studies to re-confirm the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine.

Here’s how COVID-19 vaccine guidance is changing in the U.S.

For people at high risk of severe COVID-19

The process of reviewing and recommending yearly updates to the COVID-19 vaccine would remain essentially th..

If you’re like a lot of people, you’re finding it harder and harder to stomach climate change—literally. A warming world leads to all manner of health problems, including increased risk of cardiovascular disease, exacerbation of pulmonary conditions like asthma and COPD, and mental health problems including depression and anxiety. Increasingly, however, climate change is being implicated in a range of illnesses of the gut, such as diarrheal diseases, irritable bowel syndrome, intestinal infection, and more. While the mechanism behind the increase in pulmonary disease in a warmer world is more or less direct—breathing hot, dirty, sooty air isn’t good for anyone’s lungs—the gut connection is more nuanced and multifactorial, involving crop growth, contaminated water supplies, droughts, heat waves, malnutrition, and the microbiome of the soil. None of this is good for us; all of it can affect any of us. Here’s what you need to know about the climate-gut connection.

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A company can offer all the free snacks and on-site massages in the world—but if the people don’t make you feel supported, you’re probably still not happy at your job. To an increasing extent, “the corporate world is understanding that relationships and the culture of relationships at work is the new competitive edge,” says Esther Perel, a psychotherapist who hosts the popular couples’ therapy podcast Where Should We Begin?

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In May, Perel shifted her focus from improving relationships at home to bettering those at work. She released a 100-question card game with prompts designed to get people to open up and share stories, in hopes of improving team dynamics and fixing a workplace’s culture. Each prompt targets one of her four pillars of healthy workplace relationships—trust, belonging, recognition, and collective resilience—and it’s designed to be played at an off-site meeting, while onboarding a new employee, during a one-on-one check-in, or at an aft..

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will no longer recommend yearly COVID-19 vaccines for kids and most adults.

In an editorial article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Vinay Prasad, the newly appointed head of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and research at the FDA, and Dr. Martin Makary, FDA commissioner, explained their plan for how the FDA will evaluate and recommend COVID-19 vaccines going forward.

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Until now, federal guidance has recommended that everyone six months or older receive a COVID-19 vaccine targeting the latest circulating version of the virus to maximize their chances of avoiding severe disease.

The new FDA leadership still recommends that groups at higher risk of being hospitalized or dying from COVID-19 receive yearly COVID-19 shots. This includes seniors, adults with weakened immune systems, and people with underlying health conditions like cancer. Some people in these groups may even qualify for..

In a statement from his personal office on May 18, former President Joe Biden revealed he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. “While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” his office said in a statement. “The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.”

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Recent studies show that survival for men with prostate cancer that has spread to the bone is just under two years. But this form of cancer, though aggressive, can sometimes be controlled. Here’s what oncologists who treat prostate cancer say are the most common strategies for treating a cancer like Biden’s, and some of the challenges.

The latest ways to curb aggressive prostate cancer

“The good news is this: we have now entered an era of different treatments that I call therapy intensification where we are trying to attack cancer wit..

Vice President J.D. Vance questioned on Monday whether former President Joe Biden was “capable of doing the job” of Commander in Chief, following the news that Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

“Of course, we wish the best for the former President’s health. It sounds pretty serious, but hopefully he makes the right recovery,” Vance told reporters. “I will say, whether the right time to have this conversation is now or at some point in the future, we really do need to be honest about whether the former President was capable of doing the job.”

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“I don’t think he was able to do a good job for the American people,” Vance continued.

Biden’s office announced on Sunday that he had been diagnosed with cancer on Friday, after doctors found a nodule on his prostate. After additional tests, doctors determined that the cancer had spread to his bones. Biden’s Gleason score, which is used to grade the aggressiveness of prostate cancers, was 9, indic..

We all have cause to take climate change personally. Not only do higher temperatures lead to such mega-events as droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and floods, they also affect human health—exacerbating asthma, allergies, cardiovascular disease, the spread of water-borne pathogens, and more. Now, it appears that a warming world affects us in one other, potentially life-threatening way. That’s according to a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper presented May 18 at the 2025 gathering of the American Thoracic Society in San Francisco. Researchers found that as the heat increases, so too does the incidence and severity of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), increasing the risk of hypertension, heart attack, stroke, and death.

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“We were surprised at the magnitude of the association between ambient temperature and OSA severity,” said Bastien Lechat, the lead author of the paper and a senior research fellow at South Australia’s Flinders Health and Medicine Research In..