HealthWatch

The Biden administration said Friday it would again delay a decision on a regulation aiming to ban menthol-flavored cigarettes, citing the “historic attention” and “immense amount of feedback” on the controversial proposal by the Food and Drug Administration. “This rule has garnered historic attention and the public comment period has yielded an immense amount of feedback, including from various elements …

Two dogs treated at a veterinary hospital in New Jersey last year have tested positive for a rare, drug-resistant strain of bacteria linked to a fatal outbreak blamed on now-recalledeye drops that had been used in humans, a CDC investigator said Friday. The animals were infected by a bacteria known as carbapenemase-producing carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa, found in swabs of the …

The pace of babies born each year in the U.S. has slowed to a new record low, according to an analysis of 2023 birth certificate data published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year’s slowdown marks an official end to the uptick in new babies that began during the COVID-19pandemic. At least 3,591,328 babies were born …

Brushing your teeth is good for you, right? Well, not all the time. According to experts, there are a few instances where you want to avoid brushing your teeth in order to protect the enamel. TikTok user@drshaadimanouchehri, a London-based dentist, raised eyebrows for posting about this in December, garnering over 12 million views on her video that advised people not …

The Agriculture Department is ordering the dairy industry to test milk-producing cows for infections from highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI H5N1, before they’re moved between states, federal officials announced Wednesday. USDA’s move to ramp up testing requirements for HPAI H5N1 comes after the Food and Drug Administration disclosed Tuesday that samples of pasteurized milk that had been sold on …

For the first time, surgeons at NYU Langone Health performed a combined mechanical heart pump and gene-edited pig kidney transplant, helping a 54-year-old woman with heart and kidney failure. Before the two procedures, which took place earlier this month, New Jersey native Lisa Pisano faced heart failure and end-stage kidney disease that required routine dialysis, and she was not a …

Grinnell, Iowa — A for-profit company has proposed turning a boarded-up former nursing home here into a psychiatric hospital, joining a national trend toward having such hospitals owned by investors instead of by state governments or nonprofit health systems. The companies see a business opportunity in the shortage of inpatient beds for people with severe mental illness. The scarcity of …

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arewarning about a rise in meningococcal disease, a rare bacterial illness that can lead to meningitis, a potentially fatal infection. In an alert to doctors on Thursday, the CDC noted an increase in cases of one type of invasive meningococcal disease, most of it due to a specific strain of bacteria. Last year, …

Making a plan for preventative care and screenings is a great way to put your health first. Whether it’s keeping up with recommended vaccines or scheduling screening tests to detect potential problems early, there are different guidelines to stay on top of at different ages throughout your life. “If everyone followed our preventative health screenings, we would catch disease earlier. …

Measles cases that turned up in at least three states this year were linked to visits to Florida, federal and state investigators concluded, shedding light on some of the early infections that have fueled an uptick of the highly contagious virus. Florida’s health department thinks families of the cases earlier this year from Indiana and Louisiana may have crossed paths …