A child from a poorer neighborhood is more prone to severe illness once they develop multiple sclerosis (MS) compared to children growing up in more affluent areas, new research shows. The study of 138 MS patients who’d been diagnosed before the age of 18 revealed that kids from less advantaged neighborhoods showed larger volumes of…  read on >  read on >

Don’t let your surgeon toss your old heart pacemaker out with the trash.  Used pacemakers can be refurbished, researchers report, providing the potential for more people overseas to get the lifesaving devices. “Unlike in the United States, pacemaker therapy is often not available or affordable for people in low- and middle-income countries,” explained Dr. Thomas…  read on >  read on >

Certain hormone replacement therapy pills appear to increase the risk of heart disease and serious blood clots in women going through menopause, a new study says. Estrogen/progestin pills increased women’s risk of heart disease by 21% and risk of life-threatening blood clots by 61%, researchers found. Similarly, the synthetic hormone pill tibolone increased risk of…  read on >  read on >

Geoffrey Pointing says its hard to describe the distress of an asthma or COPD flare-up. “Honestly, when you’re having a flare up, it’s very difficult to tell anybody how you feel – you can hardly breathe,” Pointing, 77, of Banbury, England, said in a news release.  But an existing injectable drug might make these attacks…  read on >  read on >

Ultraprocessed foods have been linked to a myriad of health issues, and a new study suggests that the autoimmune skin disease psoriasis might be added to that list. “Results of this study showed an association between high ultraprocessed food intake and active psoriasis status,” concluded a team led by Dr. Emilie Sbidian, a dermatologist at…  read on >  read on >

President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford health economist and critic of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, to lead the nation’s largest medical research agency, the National Institutes of Health. In a statement late Tuesday, Trump said Bhattacharya will work under Robert F. Kennedy Jr., potential head of the Department of Health…  read on >  read on >

Folks with irregular sleep patterns might have an increased risk of a heart attack or stroke, a new study says. People who doze off and wake up at extremely varied times day by day have a 26% increased risk of a potentially fatal heart-related health emergency, results show. This elevated risk occurred whether or not…  read on >  read on >

Bouncing a soccer ball off the head during play could be doing real damage to the brain, a new study suggests. MRI brain scans of male and female soccer athletes suggests that lots of “heading” could damage areas of the brain already known to be linked to debilitating concussion-linked conditions, such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy…  read on >  read on >