medical

Jonathan Greig / The Record: Massachusetts-based Shields Health Care Group says hackers accessed databases containing personal data like SSNs and medical info of 2M patients in March 2022 — The sensitive information of two million people was accessed during a cyberattack on Shields Health Care Group … Jonathan Greig / The Record: Massachusetts-based Shields Health Care Group says hackers accessed databases containing personal data like SSNs and medical info of 2M patients in March…

Why did people think cannibalism was good for their health? The answer offers a glimpse into the zaniest crannies of European history, at a time when Europeans were obsessed with Egyptian mummies.  Driven first by the belief that ground-up and tinctured human remains could cure anything from bubonic plague to a headache, and then by the macabre ideas Victorian people had about after-dinner entertainment, the bandaged corpses of ancient Egyptians were the subject of fascination from the Middle Ages to the 19th…

Saudis want to live longer, healthier lives.Photo: Amr Nabil (AP)The obnoxiously affluent Saudi Arabia is trying to prove that maybe money can buy everything after all, pouring $1 billion a year into researching ways to slow down the effects of aging. The gulf state’s royal family started a non-profit organization that would grant funds to scientists to understand the underlying causes of aging, and how to mitigate them using drugs, according to the MIT Technology Review.The Hevolution Foundation will look into biotech…

Image: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)New preliminary research this week points to long term benefits from bariatric, or weight loss, surgery. The study found that people who underwent surgery were noticeably less likely to develop certain cancers over a ten-year period compared to similarly matched people with obesity who did not receive surgery. Those who did develop cancer were also less likely to die from it.The study was led by researchers at the Gundersen Lutheran Health System in Wisconsin. They examined the medical…

Photo: Patrick Sison (AP)New research suggests that kids are increasingly getting poisoned by supplements containing melatonin, an over-the-counter sleep aid. Reported pediatric poison control calls involving melatonin have skyrocketed over the past decade, as have reported hospitalizations and other serious outcomes, the study found. More needs to be done to keep young children safe from these products, the researcherssay.Melatonin is a hormone naturally produced by the body that helps regulate our sleep/wake cycle.…

Photo: Scott Olson (Getty Images)Another week, another coffee-is-good-for-you study that’s caught people’s attention. New researchfound a link between regular coffee consumption and a reduced risk of death. While the findings are the latest to suggest that coffee is perfectly fine to drink, they’re not necessarily strong proof that your daily cup of joe is life-saving.The study was conducted by researchers at Southern Medical University in China and was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. It looked at data from…

Years of alarm bells from cybersecurity experts about the vulnerabilities of medical devices are finally being heard by Congress. Senators proposed a new bill this week that would require the Food and Drug Administration to issue cybersecurity guidelines more regularly, and share information about vulnerable devices on its website. The legislation, first reported by CyberScoop, comes from Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.). The bill comes a few weeks after cybersecurity expert Joshua Corman testified…

Photo: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)In new research this week, an experimental treatment seems to have helped beat back a woman’s advanced pancreatic cancer. The woman’s tumors have since substantially shrunk in size and she has remained in stable health a year after the treatment—results that hold promise for a new approach to these kinds of often fatal cancers.The treatment is a form of immunotherapy, a recently developed method of fighting cancer. The premise is simple enough: teach the immune system to kill cancer cells…

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…