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A rare but deadly disease spread by mosquitoes has one town in Massachusetts closing its parks and fields each evening. Four other towns are urging people to avoid going outdoors at night. 

They’re concerned about eastern equine encephalitis. State health officials announced last week a man in his 80s had caught the disease, the first human case found in Massachusetts since 2020.

Doctors have begun trialling the world’s first mRNA lung cancer vaccine in patients, as experts hailed its “groundbreaking” potential to save thousands of lives.

Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, accounting for about 1.8m deaths every year. Survival rates in those with advanced forms of the disease, where tumours have spread, are particularly poor.

Now experts are testing a new jab that instructs the body to hunt down and kill cancer cells – then prevents them ever coming back. Known as BNT116 and made by BioNTech, the vaccine is designed to treat non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease.

The phase 1 clinical trial, the first human study of BNT116, has launched across 34 research sites in seven countries: the UK, US, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain and Turkey.

Scientists have long considered that the world’s most common sexually transmitted infection, human papillomavirus, or HPV, may be a driver of infertility.

Most research about HPV’s potential impact on fertility has focused on women. But in recent years, researchers have increasingly expanded their focus to include the infection’s association with male fertility.

A new study from Argentinian researchers has found that the strains of HPV considered high risk because of their links to cancer were not only more common than low-risk strains in a small study population of men, they also appeared to pose a greater threat to sperm quality.

The study, published Friday in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology, found that high-risk HPV appears to suppress key components of the immune system in the male genital tract. This could hamper the body’s ability to clear HPV, a process that typically takes about six months to a year after infection, while raising the risk of other infections that may also compromise male fertility.

Ever since red and processed meat was linked to an increased risk of cancer a decade ago, people have been advised to limit their daily consumption of these to a maximum of 70g. But while the “five a day” fruit and vegetables campaign turns 21 this year, and warnings about excess sugar abound, other government guidelines on food remain vague. While they specify two weekly portions of fish, one of which should be oily, about meat they say only “eat some”. There are no recommendations as to how much white meat should be consumed.

This is unhelpful, but also revealing. The national food strategy, commissioned by ministers in 2021, warned that a significant section of the public feel strongly about meat-based meals. Drawing on research with a focus group, its authors observed that there is “something culturally sacred” about staples such as a plate of bangers and the Sunday roast. For this reason, the strategy rejected the idea of a meat tax as a means of incentivising lower-carbon diets, on the grounds of its likely unpopularity. But meat-eating has gone down all the same. In 2022, people in the UK ate less meat at home than at any time since records began in the 1970s – and 14% less than in 2012. Part of this decline is due to cost of living pressures, and proof of the difficulties that households face in affording food bills. But this is not the whole story, since richer households have cut back as well as poorer ones, and veganism has gained in popularity.

The number of women going through pregnancy without prenatal care is growing — even though the overall number of babies born in the U.S. is falling, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The lopsided trend, published Tuesday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, may reflect, in part, a growing number of women unable to access OB/GYN care after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Twenty-four brain samples collected in early 2024 measured on average about 0.5% plastic by weight

A growing body of scientific evidence shows that microplastics are accumulating in critical human organs, including the brain, leading researchers to call for more urgent actions to rein in plastic pollution.

Studies have detected tiny shards and specks of plastics in human lungs, placentas, reproductive organs, livers, kidneys, knee and elbow joints, blood vessels and bone marrow.

Given the research findings, “it is now imperative to declare a global emergency” to deal with plastic pollution, said Sedat Gündoğdu, who studies microplastics at Cukurova University in Turkey.

Cambridge-led study of 2m people globally is most comprehensive evidence yet of red meat link to diabetes

Eating processed or red meat increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, with just two slices of ham a day raising the danger by 15%, the largest study of its kind suggests.

Research led by the University of Cambridge and involving 2 million people worldwide provides the most comprehensive evidence yet of a link between meat and the disease that presents one of the most pressing dangers to global health.

More than 400 million people have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, which is a leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, strokes and lower limb amputation. As well as maintaining a healthy weight and moving more, evidence suggests one of the main ways to lower the risk of the disease is improving diet.

In a cohort of over 600,000 hospitalized patients, each day of low RN staffing was associated with an increased risk of death within 30 days of admission (adjusted HR 1.08, 95% CI 1.07-1.09), as was each day of low nurse support staffing (aHR 1.07, 95% CI 1.06-1.08), reported Peter Griffiths, RN, PhD, of the University of Southampton, and co-authors in JAMA Network Open.

While these findings aren't novel, knowing the level of nurse staffing for every single day of a patient's stay makes it more likely that the findings are causal, Griffiths told MedPage Today. Of note, when low staffing was prevented with the use of temporary staff, the risk of patient death was reduced but remained elevated compared with the baseline, the authors said.