October is painted in shades of pink, symbolizing a global unity that isn’t tied to any celebration but is centered on creating awareness: Breast Cancer Awareness Month (1). This month-long observance aims to raise consciousness about breast cancer, its prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and the importance of early detection. In today’s age of information, it’s pivotal… Read More »
Obesity Puts You at Higher Risk for Severe Covid-19
Anne Dixon, a lung specialist in Vermont, vividly remembers the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, recalling a particularly upsetting patient death. “We had someone who was very young, had obesity and died from Covid. It was quite devastating,” said Dixon, professor of medicine at the University of Vermont Medical Center. It was a wake-up… Read More »
Preparing for the Next Pandemic
Over three years and more than 6.5 million deaths later, the Covid-19 pandemic is not over yet. As people around the world work to bring the current pandemic to an end, we must also ask ourselves: How do we prepare for the next one? Reframing the conversation around Covid In spite of the fact that… Read More »
Understanding Monoclonal Antibodies – HealthyWomen
Gretchen Klee Musa, 50, is a special education teacher in Wheaton, Illinois. She’s also a transplant recipient who has been taking immunosuppressants — drugs that weaken the immune system — to prevent her body from rejecting the transplant for more than seven years. “They make it harder to fight infections such as Covid,” Musa said,… Read More »
Why Don’t We Have a Cure for Alzheimer’s?
In November of 1901, a young German psychiatrist and neuroanatomist, Alois Alzheimer, found what appeared to be misfolded proteins forming sticky clumps, or plaques, between the neurons in the brain tissue of a patient who had died from dementia. Inside the neurons he found threadlike twists, called neurofibrillary tangles, of another protein. Eventually these plaques and… Read More »