The tool will allow women to screen for HPV, which causes almost all cases of cervical cancer, without visiting a doctor. Excerpt – The Food and Drug Administration approved the United States’ first at-home cervical cancer screening tool on Friday, a decision that stands to give women an accessible alternative to Pap smears, which many find painful or traumatic. The new test, made by Teal Health, involves swabbing the vagina with a spongelike tool rather than inserting a speculum and scraping cells from the cervix, as health care providers do in Pap smears. [..] Cervical cancer experts told The New … Read More
Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd speaking to the New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro about injecting artificial intelligence into dating apps: “[Garcia-Navarro] How are you imagining A.I. functioning in this next iteration of the app? [Herd] Let’s say we could train A.I. on thousands of what we perceive as great profiles, and the A.I. can get so sophisticated at understanding: “Wow, this person has a thoughtful bio. This person has photos that are not blurry. They’re not all group photos. They’re not wearing sunglasses. We can see who they are clearly and we understand that they took time.” The A.I. can … Read More
“[David Wallace-Wells] Were you surprised by the cruelty? [Bill Gates] The reductions to U.S.A.I.D. are stunning. I thought there’d be, like, a 20 percent cut. Instead, right now, it’s like an 80 percent cut. And yes, I did not expect that. I don’t think anybody expected that. Nobody expected the executive branch to cut PEPFAR or polio money without the involvement of Congress. What’s going on with H.I.V. research and trial networks, I didn’t expect that either. We will do our best to get these things changed. I will be an advocate. But those are real headwinds. And what’s Congress … Read More
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“[Abstract] Efficacy of digital health (d-Health) interventions on workers’ physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior, and physiological outcomes remains unclear. This umbrella review searched PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar up to October 25, 2024. We identified 24 systematic reviews (SRs) and selected 130 individual studies from these SRs for analysis. The AMSTAR 2 tool rated the quality of most SRs as critically low. Narrative syntheses suggested that d-Health interventions could potentially improve all outcomes compared with no intervention. However, whether d-Health interventions outperform non-d-Health interventions remains uncertain. Meta-analyses showed a significantly small effect of d-Health interventions on step counts, sedentary/sitting … Read More
“Symptoms of hypothyroidism are nonspecific and poorly predict clinically significant thyroid dysfunction, especially in patients with underlying medical conditions and advanced age. Thus, it is essential to identify thyroid dysfunction before initiating therapy. Yet, it is estimated that about 30% of persons newly started on l-thyroxine treatment in the United States have normal thyroid function. When symptoms result in ordering thyroid function tests, an elevated thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) level should not trigger therapy without confirmatory TSH and free thyroxine (FT4) levels. Symptoms associated with overt hypothyroidism (elevated TSH, low FT4) usually resolve with l-thyroxine replacement, but therapy for subclinical hypothyroidism … Read More
“The chief risk of developing general AI [artificial intelligence] too rapidly is misalignment—when an AI system’s objectives diverge from human values. The AI research community has identified several considerations that increase misalignment risk, illustrated in the Box using neurology-specific examples. These illustrative cases might seem straightforward to detect and correct. However, if we succeed in developing a general AI that far exceeds human intelligence, the stakes become higher and intervention more difficult. In neurology, superintelligent AI could become essential for tasks like diagnosing conditions, personalizing treatments, managing hospitals, and making critical decisions. If a superintelligent AI conceals misalignment, however, it … Read More
“In the case of substance abuse, decades of research established a taxonomy that is more nuanced than simply alcohol abuse vs use. The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has established different usage patterns that have been studied both for their independent effects on functioning and how each might ultimately lead to the clinical entity of alcohol use disorder (Table). We propose an analogous taxonomy for digital media use that identifies patterns of use, irrespective of content, that could be problematic but, at a minimum, should be flagged as warranting further evaluation and potential remediation. Although in this Viewpoint … Read More
“To help put alcohol taxes in perspective: the federal tax on a pack of cigarettes is now approximately $1, and states and localities can layer on additional taxes. Customers in New York City, for instance, pay a $5.35 state tax and an additional $1.50 city tax for a combined total of $6.85 per pack — far beyond the average state tax of $1.93 nationally. Meanwhile, since the mid-20th century, relative alcohol tax rates have receded by roughly three quarters and have fallen well below those in other high-income countries, in contradistinction to trends in taxation of nicotine products. It has … Read More
“There were 26.4 deaths per 100,000 people from diabetes, according to early death certificate data for the third quarter of 2024 published this month by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Death rates from diabetes peaked in 2021, according to CDC figures, at 31.1 deaths per 100,000 people for that year. Diabetes was the eighth leading cause of death in 2021. The CDC says the link between COVID-19 and diabetes may be to blame for that increase. “Data show an increase in mortality rates for all people during the COVID-19 pandemic, and research shows that people with underlying conditions, … Read More