Welcome back! This week we debate the ethics of a blood test that can reveal your baby’s sex at just seven weeks of pregnancy. Also: a big new study on how masturbation affects sexual development. Finally, science editor Jeffrey …
vaccine
A New Meningitis Vaccine on the Horizon
Bacterial meningitis is a nasty thing to catch. The disease may hit only about 1,500 Americans per year, but those who fall victim may suffer brain damage, learning disabilities, limb loss or death.
Family MattersPregnancy
Flu Season Prep: Pregnant Women Should Get Vaccinated
It’s summertime, which seems like a bit of an odd time to be publishing research about influenza. Who’s thinking about fever, chills and achiness when skies are sunny? Well, if you’re pregnant come fall when flu …
Dengue Fever Creeps Back Into the U.S. — and Climate Change Isn’t Helping
Dengue fever is nasty. Transmitted by the bite of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, dengue infects an estimated 220 million people a year — 2 million of whom develop a severe form called dengue haemorrhagic fever, which has no known …
U.S. Measles Caseload Hits a 15-Year High
So far this year, 118 cases of measles have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — the highest number for the January-to-May period since 1996 and double the median number of yearly cases …
One Stop Flu Shot: Hope for a Universal Influenza Vaccine
Perhaps there’s a silver lining to last year’s H1N1 pandemic flu outbreak: those who were infected and survived appear to have developed ‘super flu’ antibodies that may help researchers develop an influenza inoculation that could …
Family MattersVaccines
Daughters Care What their Moms Think, Especially Regarding the HPV Vaccine
Girls really do care what their moms think, even once they’re all grown up. That’s the message that a new study is conveying after researchers found that college-age women are more likely to report getting the human …
New Hope For An Anti-Cocaine Vaccine
OK, so maybe there’s not an epidemic of coke-snorting mice in your neighborhood, but if there were, a new finding at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City could help them. It could also help millions of humans addicted …
Family MattersPregnancy
Pregnant? Flu Shots Protect Moms — and Their Babies
Roll up your sleeves, moms-to-be. It’s flu-shot season, and new research released Monday shows that babies whose mothers were vaccinated during pregnancy were less likely to get the flu or to be hospitalized with respiratory …
Moving toward a breast cancer vaccine?
New research in mice may be a first step toward a breast cancer vaccine for humans. The findings, published online Sunday and scheduled to run in the June 10 issue of the journal Nature Medicine, found that mice who were genetically engineered to be at high risk for breast cancer were effectively immunized against the disease after being
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A breakthrough in vaccine preservation
Vaccines have dramatically impacted global health: by 1979, international vaccination campaigns had successfully led to the eradication of smallpox, which was once estimated to kill as many as 30% of people infected. And since the launch of the World Health Organization’s polio eradication campaign in 1988, widespread vaccination has
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For low-income women, hurdles to the HPV vaccine
Low-income women may have too little information about the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to make informed decisions about it, and, due to low rates of follow through with the three-shot series, even those who begin the vaccination process may not be reaping the full protective benefits, according to two studies presented this week
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HPV vaccine protection lasts more than 6 years
The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Cervarix, produced by GlaxoSmithKline, offers protection against the two major cancer-causing strains of HPV, (HPV-16 and HPV-18) for more than 6 years, according to research published online today in the British medical journal the Lancet. The analysis, led by Dr. Cosette Wheeler from the
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