Half of America’s adults are now fully vaccinated against the new coronavirus, U.S. officials announced Tuesday. “This is a major milestone in our country’s vaccination efforts,” White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt said during a White House media briefing, noting that only 1% of Americans were vaccinated when President Joe Biden entered office in…  read on >  read on >

(HealthDay News) – – Teenage girls who use over-the-counter diet pills and laxatives to lose weight run a very high risk of developing eating disorders, researchers say. In a new U.S. study, girls who used diet pills had a 258% greater risk of being diagnosed with an eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia within five…  read on >  read on >

Moderate use of hair relaxers doesn’t increase a Black woman’s risk of breast cancer, according to a new study. “While there is biologic plausibility that exposure to some components contained in hair relaxers might increase breast cancer risk, the evidence from epidemiologic studies to date continues to be inconsistent,” said lead author Kimberly Bertrand, an…  read on >  read on >

Newfangled marijuana products — edibles, concentrates, vapes — are driving an overall increase in pot-related calls to U.S. poison control centers, a new study shows. There were more than 11,100 calls related to marijuana use in 2019, up from about 8,200 in 2017, researchers said. More and more of those calls are related to manufactured…  read on >  read on >

Comedian and commentator Bill Maher recently made news of his own when he contracted COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated. But such breakthrough COVID-19 cases among the vaccinated are rare, according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Case Investigations Team. Nearly 10,300 SARS-CoV-2 infections have occurred in…  read on >  read on >

Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine fully protects children aged 12 to 17, the company announced Tuesday. In a clinical trial that included more than 3,700 young volunteers, there were no cases of symptomatic COVID-19 infection in the two-thirds of participants who received both doses of the vaccine, which translates into an efficacy rate of 100%. That’s the…  read on >  read on >

Too much fat around your heart could increase your risk of heart failure, especially if you’re a woman, researchers warn. They looked at nearly 7,000 45- to 84-year-olds across the United States who had no evidence of heart disease on initial CT scans. Over more than 17 years of followup, nearly 400 developed heart failure.…  read on >  read on >