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Q&A: Ashley Abel Is On a Mission to End Endometriosis
Read More: Q&A: Ashley Abel Is On a Mission to End EndometriosisMarch is Endometriosis Awareness Month. In 2022, Ashley Abel was working on her doctorate at Yale when she realized most of the studies she read involved mice. And the lab research she was doing on early embryos involved mice, too. No shade to lab mice, but they donโt menstruate. So, when considering endometrial conditions like…
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Antimicrobial Resistance and Women: The Time to Act Is Now
Read More: Antimicrobial Resistance and Women: The Time to Act Is Now+ Flipbook text 1: Why is AMR a dangerous public health crisis? When you take medication for an infection, sometimes whatever is making you sick has been exposed to the medication enough that it has found a way to survive the drug.ย That process is antimicrobial resistance (AMR).ย Some parasites, viruses, bacteria and fungi are…
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Biomarkers 101
Read More: Biomarkers 101If youโve ever been diagnosed with a health condition, a biomarker is at play, even if youโve never heard the word. Biomarkers help healthcare providers identify, monitor and determine risk for disease โ including heart disease, the leading cause of death for women in the U.S. Biomarkers also play a big role in the development…
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Meet 6 Black Women Who Changed Healthcare History
Read More: Meet 6 Black Women Who Changed Healthcare HistoryFebruary is Black History Month. Black women have made many inventions and discoveries that have improved public health and advanced technology. Thanks to the vision, determination and dedication of Black female scientists and inventors, healthcare providers can better identify, treat and even prevent potentially deadly health conditions. Technological achievements arenโt limited to Black women with…
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15 Minutes With: Cindy Eckert Talks About the First FDA-Approved Pink Pill for Low Libido in Women
Read More: 15 Minutes With: Cindy Eckert Talks About the First FDA-Approved Pink Pill for Low Libido in WomenCindy Eckert is passionate about a lot of things. Near the top of her list is your sex drive. Eckert is the founder and CEO of Sprout Pharmaceuticals โ the company behind the first and only FDA-approved pill for female hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), or low sex drive. Eckert made history when the drug…
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The Promise of Prescription Digital Therapeutics
Read More: The Promise of Prescription Digital TherapeuticsIf youโre sick of hearing about all the ways technology is bad for us, hereโs some good news to consider: Prescription digital therapeutics (PDTs) are among the latest digital health products helping to increase access to quality healthcare. PDTs and digital therapeutics in general are used to help prevent, treat and manage a range of…
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Breast cancer, Breast cancer policy, Breast health, Medical tests, Prevention, Preventive health, Science
โBRCA โTesting 101
Read More: โBRCA โTesting 101If you’ve heard people talking about “breast cancer genes,” they probably were referring to BRCA โ but they were only partly right. Everyone has BRCA (BReast CAncer) genes. And they protect you when they work correctly. “We all have two copies of the BRCA1 and 2 genes, and we want them to be functioning properly,”…
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Biosimilars Basics
Read More: Biosimilars Basics+ Infographic text What is a biosimilar? Biosimilars are drugs made from living material, such as bacteria or plant cells. They are modeled after another type of drug called a biologic that is also made from living material.ย The biologic that a biosimilar is modeled after is called the reference product.ย Why do people use…
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How Are Biosimilars Made?
Read More: How Are Biosimilars Made?Many people struggling with chronic, hard-to-manage health conditions have found relief with a type of drug called a biologic. You may be taking a biologic and donโt even know it. Some common biologics you may have heard of are adalimumab (brand name: Humira), infliximab (brand name: Remicade) and trastuzumab (brand name: Herceptin). Biologics can be…
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Biologics, Biosimilars and Generics: Whatโs the Difference?
Read More: Biologics, Biosimilars and Generics: Whatโs the Difference?+ Infographic text What are biologics? A biologic is a medication made from living materials. These sources include: Plant cells Animal cells Microorganisms such as bacteria and yeast Biologics are used to treat many different health problems, including: Diabetes Arthritis Multiple sclerosis Psoriasis and other chronic skin diseases Crohnโs disease, colitis and other chronic bowel…
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Barriers to Biosimilars in the US
Read More: Barriers to Biosimilars in the USWomen in the United States can expect to spend nearly 50 years of their lives taking prescription drugs. And the cost of those drugs can be painful. In fact, 4 in 10 (43%) women havenโt been able to fill a prescription and nearly 1 in 10 havenโt taken their medicine as prescribed because of cost…
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Questions to Ask Your Healthcare Provider About Biosimilars
Read More: Questions to Ask Your Healthcare Provider About BiosimilarsBiosimilars are drugs modeled after another type of drug called biologics. Both can be used to treat a variety of health issues, including autoimmune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and some types of cancer. Biologics are made from a natural source, such as plant or human cells, and biosimilars are made in the same…
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Gene & Cell Therapy 101
Read More: Gene & Cell Therapy 101Once the stuff of science fiction, gene and cell therapies are now saving and prolonging the lives of people with serious and fatal diseases. These cutting-edge treatments let doctors give patients a chance at a biological โdo-over.โ Cell therapies โresetโ patientsโ immune systems, while gene therapies change or delete genes that cause disease. Hereโs what…
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Obesity Puts You at Higher Risk for Severe Illness from Covid-19
Read More: Obesity Puts You at Higher Risk for Severe Illness from Covid-19Anne Dixon, a lung specialist in Vermont, vividly remembers the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, recalling a particularly upsetting patient death. โWe had someone who was very young, had obesity and died from Covid. It was quite devastating,โ said Dixon, professor of medicine at the University of Vermont Medical Center. It was a wake-up…
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I Was the First Living Kidney Donor with HIV
Read More: I Was the First Living Kidney Donor with HIVAs told to Erica Rimlinger Iโm living with HIV, and Iโm perfectly healthy. That statement would have sounded impossible to my childhood self. When I was 8 years old in 1991, I needed corrective eye surgery, and routine pre-op blood work revealed that I had HIV. It was not routine back then to test children…
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Infertility Treatment Options
Read More: Infertility Treatment OptionsMedically reviewed by Rashmi Kudesia, M.D., M.Sc. April 23-29, 2023, is National Infertility Awareness Week. For Monica Wunderman, the road to parenthood hasnโt been easy. Wunderman has always wanted to have children, but when she struggled to get pregnant she wasnโt sure what to do. Wunderman has two uteruses โ which unfortunately does not mean…
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Menopause Got You Down? Thereโs an App For That.
Read More: Menopause Got You Down? Thereโs an App For That.Brittany Barreto, Ph.D., is a podcaster, an entrepreneur and a molecular and human geneticist. (In other words, sheโs really smart.) Read her column here each month to learn about whatโs happening in the world of technology and innovation in womenโs health. As if spontaneous hot flashes and unexpected weight gain arenโt enough for women who…
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Preparing for the Next Pandemic
Read More: Preparing for the Next PandemicOver three years and more than 6.5 million deaths later, the Covid-19 pandemic is not over yet. As people around the world work to bring the current pandemic to an end, we must also ask ourselves: How do we prepare for the next one? Reframing the conversation around Covid In spite of the fact that…
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How Do Genes Affect Your Health?
Read More: How Do Genes Affect Your Health?It was a Facebook post that caught Angelaโs* attention. The 36-year-old had been thinking about genetic testing for years โ ever since her sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and tested positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation more than a decade earlier. Her sister had encouraged the family to get tested โ the BRCA1 and…
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Understanding Monoclonal Antibodies
Read More: Understanding Monoclonal AntibodiesGretchen Klee Musa, 50, is a special education teacher in Wheaton, Illinois. Sheโs also a transplant recipient who has been taking immunosuppressants โ drugs that weaken the immune system โ to prevent her body from rejecting the transplant for more than seven years. โThey make it harder to fight infections such as Covid,โ Musa said,…
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Q&A: How Fighting Superbugs Could Help Prevent the Next Pandemic
Read More: Q&A: How Fighting Superbugs Could Help Prevent the Next PandemicAntimicrobial resistance (AMR) happens when microbes โ or tiny germs such as bacteria, viruses or fungi โ evolve in ways that make the medicines used to treat them stop working. AMR is a serious looming problem. It can complicate other health conditions and puts some people and communities at greater risk than others. Before the…
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You, Too, Can Fight AMR!
Read More: You, Too, Can Fight AMR!This resource has been created with support from Pfizer.
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Food Expiration Dates Donโt Have Much Science Behind Them โ a Food Safety Researcher Explains Another Way to Know Whatโs Too Old to Eat
Read More: Food Expiration Dates Donโt Have Much Science Behind Them โ a Food Safety Researcher Explains Another Way to Know Whatโs Too Old to EatBy Jill Roberts, University of South Florida Floridaโs outbreak of listeria has so far led to at least one death, 22 hospitalizations and an ice cream recall since January. Humans get sick with listeria infections, or listeriosis, from eating soil-contaminated food, undercooked meat or dairy products that are raw, or unpasteurized. Listeria can cause convulsions,…
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Medication safety, Online pharmacy, Opioids, Otc medication safety, Otc medicine safety, Prescription drugs, Research, Science
Dangerous Counterfeit Drugs Are Putting Millions of US Consumers at Risk, According to a New Study
Read More: Dangerous Counterfeit Drugs Are Putting Millions of US Consumers at Risk, According to a New StudyBy C. Michael White, University of Connecticut The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea The Food and Drug Administration took 130 enforcement actions against counterfeit medication rings from 2016 through 2021, according to my new study published in the journal Annals of Pharmacotherapy. Such actions might involve arrests,…
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Should You Worry About Data From Your Period-Tracking App Being Used Against You?
Read More: Should You Worry About Data From Your Period-Tracking App Being Used Against You?By Hannah Norman, Kaiser Health News and Victoria Knight Itโs estimated that millions of people in the U.S. use period-tracking apps to plan ahead, track when they are ovulating, and monitor other health effects. The apps can help signal when a period is late. After Politico published on May 2 a draft opinion from the…
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Rick Bright Talks to HealthyWomen About Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)
Read More: Rick Bright Talks to HealthyWomen About Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)Rick Bright, Ph.D., is an immunologist who has been working to address emerging infectious diseases for decades. Among his many accomplishments, Bright led and coordinated the U.S. and global medical countermeasure development for the 2014 MERS outbreak (another coronavirus). In 2020, Bright made headlines when he resigned from government service in protest over the Trump…
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Access, Access to health care, Amr, Antimicrobial resistance, Health disparities, Medication safety, Preventive health, Science
Antimicrobial Resistance Is Bad News for Everyone, but May Hurt Some Communities More Than Others
Read More: Antimicrobial Resistance Is Bad News for Everyone, but May Hurt Some Communities More Than OthersWhen Terry Bravo had a urinary tract infection in 2018, she took her motherโs unused antibiotics, left over from a prescription her mom had never finished four years before. Bravo said it was the only antibiotic she could get. Although Bravo has health insurance, she said it costs a lot and barely covers anything. โI…
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I Contracted a Superbug Thatโs a Top Public Health Threat โ And Itโs More Common Than You Think
Read More: I Contracted a Superbug Thatโs a Top Public Health Threat โ And Itโs More Common Than You ThinkEight years ago, I was a healthy 54-year-old woman. I often joked that I was too healthy โ I rarely had a cold and never had the flu. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the term for germs that no longer respond to medication so medications become ineffective, wasnโt really on my radar even though I was a…
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Clinically Speaking: Questions and Answers About Avoiding Infection When Having Outpatient Surgery
Read More: Clinically Speaking: Questions and Answers About Avoiding Infection When Having Outpatient SurgeryHaving to get any type of surgery, no matter how simple the procedure may seem, can be scary. The Covid-19 pandemic, with its new health risks and protocols to follow, makes it even more stressful for patients. While the pandemic initially decreased the number of outpatient surgeries being performed, they are back to pre-pandemic levels,…
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Pollen Season Is Getting Longer and More Intense With Climate Change โ Hereโs What Allergy Sufferers Can Expect in the Future
Read More: Pollen Season Is Getting Longer and More Intense With Climate Change โ Hereโs What Allergy Sufferers Can Expect in the FutureBy Cones on a Norway Spruce in Virginia release pollen.Famartin/Wikimedia, CC BY-ND Pollen changes will vary by region We looked at 15 different pollen types, rather than treating all pollen the same as many past studies have. Typically, pollination starts with leafy deciduous trees in late winter and spring. Alder, birch and oak are the…
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The Sex of Your Cells Matters When It Comes to Heart Disease
Read More: The Sex of Your Cells Matters When It Comes to Heart DiseaseBy Heart tissue with XX chromosomes has a higher concentration of cells (colored green, with blue nuclei) that promote scarring than do cells with XY chromosomes.Brian Aguado, CC BY-NC-ND We found that the cells we grew on our hydrogel models were able to replicate the sex differences seen in valve tissue โ namely, valve cells…
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How Medical Technology Is Changing Health Care
Read More: How Medical Technology Is Changing Health CareGrace Fernandez’s biggest fear is dying in her sleep. It’s a fear that could easily become a reality for the 33-year-old and the approximately 1.6 million other Americans living with Type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease where the pancreas produces little or no insulin, a hormone needed to allow sugar (glucose)…
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In Research Studies and in Real Life, Placebos Have a Powerful Healing Effect on the Body and Mind
Read More: In Research Studies and in Real Life, Placebos Have a Powerful Healing Effect on the Body and MindBy Elissa H. Patterson, University of Michigan and Hans Schroder, University of Michigan Did you ever feel your own shoulders relax when you saw a friend receive a shoulder massage? For those of you who said โyes,โ congratulations, your brain is using its power to create a โplacebo effect.โ For those who said โno,โ youโre…
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How mRNA and DNA Vaccines Could Soon Treat Cancers, HIV, Autoimmune Disorders and Genetic Diseases
Read More: How mRNA and DNA Vaccines Could Soon Treat Cancers, HIV, Autoimmune Disorders and Genetic DiseasesBy DNA and mRNA vaccines are much better at producing T cells than are normal vaccines.NIAID/NIH via Flickr What makes nucleic acid vaccines different from traditional vaccines? Most vaccines induce antibody responses. Antibodies are the primary immune mechanism that blocks infections. As we began to study nucleic acid vaccines, we discovered that because these vaccines…
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The Truth About Vaccines
Read More: The Truth About VaccinesMedically reviewed by Mary Koslap-Petraco, DNP, PPCNP-BC, CPNP, FAANP To turn captions on, click the “CCโ icon.
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Whatโs the Difference Between Sugar, Other Natural Sweeteners and Artificial Sweeteners? A Food Chemist Explains Sweet Science
Read More: Whatโs the Difference Between Sugar, Other Natural Sweeteners and Artificial Sweeteners? A Food Chemist Explains Sweet ScienceBy Glucose is the simplest of sugars and is a circle of carbon atoms with oxygen and hydrogen atoms attached to the ring. A chemical in the stevia plant also produces sweet flavors. Chemists have developed a number of lab-made chemicals that taste sweet and are sold as no-sugar sweeteners.Evan Amos/WikimediaCommons Artificial sweeteners The third…
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Cรณmo los proveedores de atenciรณn mรฉdica y los pacientes pueden limitar la propagaciรณn de la resistencia a los antimicrobianos
Read More: Cรณmo los proveedores de atenciรณn mรฉdica y los pacientes pueden limitar la propagaciรณn de la resistencia a los antimicrobianosKorin Reid sabรญa sobre la resistencia a los antibiรณticos desde que era pequeรฑa. Desde los siete aรฑos, recuerda haber leรญdo sobre eso en uno de los libros de sus padres, asรญ que cuando contrajo su primera infecciรณn resistente a los antibiรณticos (una infecciรณn bacteriana que algunos antibiรณticos no pueden tratar), “estaba un poco molesta”, dijo…
