Why the FDA Just Approved a Drug for Smallpox, Nearly 40 Years After the Disease Was Eradicated
Posted on June 14, 2023
| 2 minutes
| 339 words
| Arica Deslauriers
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just approved a drug for a disease that no longer exists...well, sort of.
Today (July 13), the agency announced it has approved TPOXX (generic name: tecovirimat), the first drug that specifically treats smallpox. Yes, smallpox, the disease that was eradicated from the world in 1980, thanks to a global vaccination campaign. (Eradication means that cases of the disease no longer occur naturally.)
However, despite global eradication, there remains a concern that the smallpox virus could be used as a bioweapon, the agency said.
[Read More]1st drug to treat genetic cause of dwarfism approved by FDA
Posted on June 13, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 547 words
| Trudie Dory
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first drug to treat the most common form of dwarfism, known as achondroplasia.
Achondroplasia is caused by mutations in the FGFR3 gene, which encodes instructions to build a protein involved in bone growth and development, according to the Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center. These mutations push the gene into overdrive, studies suggest, which impedes the process by which cartilage tissue gets replaced by bone; this leads to the development of short and abnormally-shaped bones and causes people with achondroplasia to be of short stature.
[Read More]Bigger is Better, Until You Go Extinct
Posted on June 13, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 762 words
| Arica Deslauriers
It's not easy being small, and it turns out for mammals there are more evolutionary pros than cons to being big, with species tending to develop larger body sizes over time.
Aaron Clauset of the Santa Fe Institute and Douglas Erwin of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., created the most accurate computer model yet to predict how mammal species' body sizes change over time. Using fossil data from up to 60 million years ago to specify the form of the model, they were able to accurately reproduce the distribution of 4,000 known mammal body sizes in the last 50,000 years.
[Read More]Dirt Eaters and Other Pica Cases Nearly Double in Decade
Posted on June 13, 2023
| 2 minutes
| 409 words
| Arica Deslauriers
The number of people hospitalized with pica, the disorder in which people eat non-edible substances including dirt and chalk, has nearly doubled within a decade, a new study finds.
Between 1999 and 2009, yearly hospitalizations in the United States for this disorder increased 93 percent, from 964 to 1,862, said the report from the government's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Pica is most commonly found in children, pregnant women and people with autism and other developmental disabilities.
[Read More]Does the New Hampshire Primary Always Predict a Winner?
Posted on June 13, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 450 words
| Patria Henriques
As is customary during presidential election cycles, today’s (Jan. 10) New Hampshire primary will be the first in the nation, and statistical analyses of past elections show that it will probably be a pivotal moment in the race.
"After controlling for everything else, a win in the New Hampshire primary increases a candidate's expected share of the total primary vote by a remarkable 26.8 percentage points," wrote political scientist William Mayer in "
[Read More]Drinking Alcohol Really Does Raise Your Cancer Risk, Doctors Warn
Posted on June 13, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 501 words
| Trudie Dory
Drinking alcohol, even a light or moderate amount, increases the risk of several common cancers, according to a leading group of cancer doctors.
This week, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) issued a statement identifying alcohol as a "definite" risk factor for cancer. The statement is intended to raise awareness about the strong link between alcohol and cancer.
"People typically don't associate drinking beer, wine and hard liquor with increasing their risk of developing cancer in their lifetimes,"
[Read More]Extinction threatens one in five reptile species, researchers say
Posted on June 13, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 566 words
| Patria Henriques
More than one-fifth of reptile species across the globe are threatened with extinction, with those living in forests found to be in far greater danger than those inhabiting arid areas, a new study reports.
In the most comprehensive extinction-risk assessment ever carried out on reptiles, researchers discovered that as many as 21.1% of all known species were at risk.
"It's just overwhelming the number of species that we see as being threatened,"
[Read More]Great Barrier Reef Again Hit by Severe Coral Bleaching
Posted on June 13, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 587 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Two-thirds of the length of the Great Barrier Reef is suffering from bleaching, a condition likely to cause mass coral die-offs.
The Australian Research Council (ARC) announced yesterday (April 10) that 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) of reef have bleached in 2017, meaning the symbiotic (and often colorful) algae within the coral's tissues are expelled. The most severe impacts were seen on the middle third of the reef's length; the entire reef stretches for 1,430 miles (2,300 km) off northeastern Australia.
[Read More]Incredible Technology: How Supercomputers Solve Giant Problems
Posted on June 13, 2023
| 4 minutes
| 826 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
Editor's Note: In this weekly series, LiveScience explores how technology drives scientific exploration and discovery. - See more at: http://www.livescience.com/37671-how-to-do-brain-surgery.html#sthash.NIJ821It.dpuf
Editor's Note: In this weekly series, LiveScience explores how technology drives scientific exploration and discovery. Today's supercomputers are marvels of computational power, and they are being used to tackle some of the world's biggest scientific problems.
Current models are tens of thousands of times faster than the average desktop computer. They achieve these lightning-fast speeds via parallel processing, in which many computer processors perform computations simultaneously.
[Read More]Newly Discovered 'Alien' Sea Worms Ride the Current
Posted on June 13, 2023
| 3 minutes
| 445 words
| Fernande Dalal
When certain species of deep-sea worms want to go for a trip, they dump ballast sand and sediment from their guts and catch a ride on an ocean current.
That is the conclusion of a new study of deep-sea worms called enteropneusts, a mysterious and little-understood group of organisms. These delicate, gelatinous worms were once thought to be mostly shallow-water animals, but the new observations reveal almost a dozen species living on the seafloor as deep as 12,972 feet (3,954 meters).
[Read More]