An advisory panel to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will meet on Wednesday to discuss which Americans, if any, should get Pfizer booster shots to rev up their immunity to COVID-19. Their recommendation will follow a decision by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration expert panel to only give booster shots to…  read on >  read on >

A new report from the Humane League claims that 99% of supermarket chicken has pockets of fat, called white stripes, running through it. The nonprofit group said its findings show how chickens are being raised with little concern for their welfare. But white striping can also deplete the nutritional value of meat, the group added.…  read on >  read on >

New research offers good news for women with an aggressive HER2-positive breast cancer. A targeted therapy, trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd), sold as Enhertu, triples the length of time that the cancer remains in check when compared with the current gold standard, trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1). Both of these drugs are second-line treatment options for HER2-positive breast cancer…  read on >  read on >

Millions of U.S. sleep apnea patients are scrambling to find ways to protect their nightly slumber, following a voluntary recall from one of the nation’s leading manufacturers of CPAP breathing machines. Philips Respironics agreed to a voluntary recall of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines in late June, over concerns that noise-dampening foam inside the…  read on >  read on >

Shedding excess weight does much more for the long-term heart health of young people than building muscle, new research suggests. It’s not that gaining muscle while young proved to be a cardiovascular problem. It’s just that losing fat offered bigger heart benefits. “We absolutely still encourage exercise,” said study lead author Joshua Bell, a senior…  read on >  read on >

Pfizer is expanding the recall of its anti-smoking drug Chantix (varenicline), the company announced Friday. The nationwide recall of all Chantix 0.5 mg and 1 mg tablets was prompted because they may contain levels of a nitrosamine, N-nitroso-varenicline, that are at or above levels approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Long-term ingestion of…  read on >  read on >

U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisors will meet Friday to consider whether it is safe and effective for Americans to receive a third “booster” dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. The FDA posted the materials it intends to use in the review on Wednesday. The advisory panel will review a variety of evidence, including new…  read on >  read on >

Childhood obesity was a worrisome issue before the pandemic, and now it’s alarmingly worse, new data shows. A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found a “profound increase in weight gain for kids” that is “substantial and alarming,” Dr. Alyson Goodman, one of the study’s authors, told the Associated Press. For the study,…  read on >  read on >