A Pill That Kills Ticks Is a Promising New Weapon Against Lyme Disease

If you have a dog or cat, chances are you’ve given your pet a flavored chewable tablet for tick prevention at some point. What if you could take a similar pill to protect yourself from getting Lyme disease? Tarsus Pharmaceuticals is developing such a pill for humans—minus the tasty flavoring—that could provide protection against the […]

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All That Rain Is Driving Up Cases of a Deadly Fungal Disease in California

This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Last week, a long, narrow section of the Earth’s atmosphere funneled trillions of gallons of water eastward from the Pacific tropics and unleashed it on California. This weather event, known as an atmospheric river, broke rainfall records, dumped more than a […]

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Apple to Pay iPhone 7 Users in U.S. Who Experienced ‘Loop Disease’ Audio Issues

Apple last year agreed to pay $35 million to settle a U.S. class action lawsuit alleging that the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus were prone to audio issues due to a defective chip in the devices, and it has now started notifying eligible customers by email. You may be eligible for a payment from […]

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New Malaria Vaccines Offer a Real Shot at Fighting the Disease

Though homegrown malaria recently flared in the US, “there’s no high-income market for this product,” says Aurélia Nguyen, the chief program officer of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which has made an initial commitment of $155 million to bring the new formulas to market and is beginning work on what it calls an African vaccine manufacturer […]

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A Crucial Early Warning System for Disease Outbreaks Is in Jeopardy

Internal dissent within the mostly volunteer disease-news network known as ProMED—which alerted the world to the earliest cases of Covid, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and SARS—has broken out into the open and threatens to take down the internationally treasured network unless an external sponsor can be found. The struggle for the future of the […]

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Apple Watch Could Help Treat Sickle Cell Disease Symptoms, Study Suggests

The Apple Watch can help treat a key symptom of sickle cell disease and changes to Apple’s speech recognition algorithm could help people with a stutter, new studies propose. According to a study conducted by researchers at Duke University’s Day Hospital (via MyHealthyApple), the Apple Watch could help treat vaso-occlusive crises (VOCs), a key complication […]

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Samsung Galaxy Tab S8+ helps Bottneuro fight Alzheimer’s disease

The Samsung Knox suite is one of the most secure platforms in the mobile industry, and the Korean tech giant revealed today that Knox is helping Bottneuro AG with its work on stopping the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Samsung and Bottneuro partnered when Bottneuro AG spun off from the University of Basel in 2021. Although […]

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A Little-Known Inflammatory Disease Is Hiding in Plain Sight

Vexas would have been discovered a long time ago if it were a garden variety genetic disease, caused by an inherited genetic mutation. For instance, the single gene responsible for familial Mediterranean fever, also an inflammatory disease, was identified in 1997 by screening the DNA of families that carried the disease. But Vexas can’t run […]

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This Gulp of Engineered Bacteria Is Meant to Treat Disease

In the muddy trenches of World War I, thousands of soldiers on both sides fell ill with dysentery, a diarrheal disease often spread by contaminated water. Curiously, one German soldier deployed in the Balkans didn’t become sick when the rest of his comrades did. When scientist Alfred Nissle isolated a strain of E. coli from […]

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How a ‘Living Drug’ Could Treat Autoimmune Disease

In lupus, a type of autoimmune disease, the body’s natural defense system can’t tell the difference between its own cells and foreign ones, so it mistakenly attacks its own tissues and organs. The attackers are molecules called autoantibodies, which turn against the body instead of protecting it from invaders, like normal antibodies do. They trigger […]

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Extreme Heat Is a Disease for Cities. Treat It That Way

Matt Simon is a science journalist at WIRED, where he covers biology, robotics, cannabis, and the environment. He’s also the author of Plight of the Living Dead: What Real-Life Zombies Reveal About Our World—And Ourselves, and The Wasp That Brainwashed the Caterpillar, which won an Alex Award.

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The Pandemic Revolutionized Disease Surveillance. Now What?

For the past two years, the hottest data set in the United Kingdom has dropped every Friday. Scientists, journalists, and amateur data sleuths all dial up one specific website: The Covid-19 Infection Survey, run by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), an independent government agency. With 180,000 participants who are swabbed every fortnight, it is […]

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