Medical specialties

A medical laboratory technician shows a test sample from someone suspected to have monkeypox.Image: Pablo Blazquez Dominguez (Getty Images)The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stepping up its guidance concerning monkeypox. While the risk of monkeypox is still thought to be low for the general public, the agency is now warning people to take more precautions while traveling. These precautions include avoiding contact with visibly sick people as well as wearing a mask.The CDC changed its language over the…

Patient samples being tested for monkeypox in Spain.Photo: Eduardo Parra/Europa Press via AP (AP)Health officials continue to report more outbreaks of monkeypox in the U.S. and elsewhere, while a new analysis suggests that at least two different lineages of the viral illness are circulating around the U.S. These findings make it increasingly less likely that the virus can be stopped completely.As of Friday afternoon, there have been 21 confirmed cases of monkeypox in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control…

The spongy moth (Lymantria dispar) in its caterpillar stage of life.Photo: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)A man’s suspected case of painful eczema on his left wrist turned out to be something much more unusual. Doctors in China discovered that their patient actually had caterpillar hairs lodged in his arm, likely caught while climbing an apple tree months earlier. Following a steroid injection, the man’s lesions cleared up.The tale of the embedded caterpillar hairs was detailed last month in BMJ Case Reports. The man, said to…

Surgeons performing the liver transplant in May 2021. Photo: USZA human liver deemed not viable for transplant has been repaired by an innovative perfusion machine and subsequently transplanted into a patient who continues to do well a year after the groundbreaking surgery. The technique, called “ex situ normothermic perfusion,” was developed by a team of researchers from University Hospital Zurich, ETH Zurich, Wyss Zurich, and the University of Zurich. A scientificpaper detailing the remarkable achievement was published…

Photo: sebra (Shutterstock)A man in the UK appears to be the first person to have gotten a double-hand transplant for his particular condition, known as scleroderma. Five months after the surgery, the patient and his new limbs are reportedly doing just fine.According to the BBC, 48-year-old Steven Gallagher developed the first signs of his scleroderma, a rare autoimmune disease that slowly tightens and scars the skin and other parts of the body, more than a decade ago. By his 40s, the condition had caused his hands to…

Photo: Hagen Hopkins (Getty Images)Evidence from the tragic death of a 5-year-old boy in 2008 may finally settle the debate over a mysterious polio-like condition that’s been paralyzing children for years. Researchers this week say they’ve found clear traces of enterovirus D68 in the nerve cells of the child, who likely died from acute flaccid myelitis. Many scientists have long suspected EV-D68 to be the root cause behind recent outbreaks of the rare illness.Acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) is characterized by inflammation…