Safe, effective new procedure to surgically treat common arrhythmia
Called pulsed field ablation, the technique uses electrical pulses to create tiny holes in the membranes of heart muscle cells, causing the cells to die.
Public health & disease
From disease eradication efforts to advances in vaccination and maternal health, this archive tracks real progress in public health. Stories here focus on what’s working — policies, interventions, and research that are improving and extending lives around the world.
Novo Nordisk to slash U.S. insulin prices, following move by Eli Lilly
The Danish drugmaker will reduce the list price of its NovoLog insulin by 75%, and for Novolin and Levemir by 65%.
Breakthrough drug works against all the main types of primary bone cancer
Bone cancer research has taken a meaningful step forward, with scientists identifying a single drug candidate that shows activity across all the major types of primary bone cancer — a group of diseases that have long resisted a unified treatment approach. Because these cancers disproportionately affect children and young people, the stakes are especially high. The compound appears to target something the different subtypes share biologically, which could open new research directions well beyond this one discovery. For pediatric cancer medicine, that kind of insight builds the foundation treatments are eventually made from.\n\nWord count: 88
Remnants of two banned insecticides nearly eliminated in Great Lakes region
In 2006, the U.S. EPA banned the agricultural use of lindane, linked to anemia, lung cancer, and lymphoma. In 2010, it began to phase out endosulfan, which experts say may damage the liver and kidneys.
Researchers cure toddler of deadly metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) for first time in history
Gene therapy has cured 19-month-old Teddi Shaw of metachromatic leukodystrophy, making her the first NHS patient treated for this rare, fatal nervous system disease. After a single infusion of Libmeldy at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, she’s now running around, chattering away, and showing no signs of the illness that typically kills children before age eight. The treatment works by correcting a faulty gene in the child’s own stem cells, eliminating the disease at its root rather than managing it. Her family’s joy is tempered by grief — Teddi’s older sister was diagnosed too late for the therapy to help, fueling calls for newborn screening. It’s a glimpse of medicine’s next era: one-time cures for inherited conditions, if access and early detection can keep pace.
Eli Lilly caps the cost of insulin in the U.S. at $35 a month
Insulin costs in the U.S. are notoriously high compared to the costs in other countries; the Rand Corporation, a public policy think tank, estimated that in 2018, the average list price for one vial of insulin in the U.S. was $98.70.
REI to stop selling clothes, cookware with ‘forever chemicals’
REI aims to have all cookware and apparel sold in its stores free of PFAS by fall of 2024. PFAS have been linked to cancer and other health problems.
Brazil moves to oust illegal miners from Indigenous lands in the Amazon
The invasion of miners has contributed to the spread of malaria among the Yanomami, with devastating consequences
German man becomes third human to be completely cured of HIV
Like the “Berlin patient” and the “London patient” before him, the “Düsseldorf patient” received treatment for an acute blood disease and, in the process, was cured of HIV infection.
Guinea worm is on the brink of becoming the second human disease in history to be eradicated
A painful, parasitic disease that once infected 3.5 million people per year is tantalizingly In 2022, just 12 cases were record worldwide.