Disease

Following calls from global experts, the WHO has announced it will assign a new disease name to monkeypox. Opening the process to the public for the first time, early suggestions for the new disease include Poxy McPox, Mpox, MOVID-22 and Banepox.

A new Lyme disease vaccine is about to enter its final phase of human trialling. If all goes well it could be available by 2025, making it the first vaccine for Lyme disease to reach the market in nearly a quarter of a century.

For decades, doctors have noticed men seem more likely to develop cancers compared to women, and while it was often waved away as due to lifestyle, a new study suggests biological factors may be the biggest player in the different cancer risk.

MIT scientists have uncovered a mechanism for how a common genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s contributes to the disease. It centers on lipid metabolism, and early investigations suggest it could eventually lead to new treatments for the disease.

Promising results from a Phase 1 human trial testing a novel monoclonal antibody treatment designed to prevent malaria infection reveal almost every volunteer resisted infection after being deliberately exposed to malaria.

Following recent reports of the first polio case in the US in almost a decade, the CDC reported the virus has been detected in wastewater samples as far back as June in Rockland County, a region north of New York City known for low vaccination rates.

A huge new study looking at the symptoms of long COVID in non-hospitalized patients has identified a diverse set of symptoms, including reduced libido and hair loss, and suggested reclassifying the condition into three distinct groups.

Researchers have found strong evidence exposure to a common group of household chemicals can be associated with 13 different health conditions. The related economic costs have been estimated at between US$5 billion and $60 billion annually in the US.

Scientists have demonstrated an intriguing new variation on the CRISPR gene-editing system, which involves fixing a mutation on one chromosome by copying a healthy version from the other. “Nicking” the DNA also seemed to work better than cutting it.

Human balance is known to decline with age, and an international team of researchers has provided new evidence around whether this particular ability can serve as an indicator for risk of disease and death.

A new review article has discovered females are much more likely to suffer from long COVID than males. The findings are curiously distinct from earlier studies that show men more often experience severe acute disease from COVID-19 compared to women.

A comprehensive genetic analysis has found that one in 500 men have an extra sex chromosome, with most unaware. That’s much higher than previously thought, and it seems to increase their risk of diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular problems.