Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
The blood holds clues to understanding long COVID
A growing cadre of labs are sketching out some of the molecular and cellular characters at play in long COVID, a once-seemingly inscrutable disease.
- Health & Medicine
Here’s why pain might last after persistent urinary tract infections
Experiments in mice reveal that the immune response to a UTI spurs nerve growth in the bladder and lowers the pain threshold.
- Health & Medicine
More than 1 billion people worldwide are now estimated to have obesity
A new analysis suggests that the prevalence of obesity has doubled in women, tripled in men and quadrupled in children and adolescents from 1990 to 2022.
- Genetics
A genetic parasite may explain why humans and other apes lack tails
Around 25 million years ago, a stretch of DNA inserted itself into an ancestral ape’s genome, an event that might have taken our tails away.
- Health & Medicine
Snake venom toxins can be neutralized by a new synthetic antibody
A lab-made protein protected mice from lethal doses of paralyzing toxins found in a variety of snakes, a new study reports.
- Health & Medicine
50 years ago, computers helped speed up drug discovery
In 1974, a computer program helped researchers search for promising cancer drugs. Today, AI is helping speed up drug discovery.
- Health & Medicine
The United States was on course to eliminate syphilis. Now it’s surging
Science News spoke with expert Allison Agwu about what’s driving the surge and how we can better prevent the disease.
- Health & Medicine
Messed-up metabolism during development may lead guts to coil the wrong way
Tadpoles exposed to a metabolism-disrupting herbicide had malformed intestines, providing clues to a human condition called intestinal malrotation.
- Health & Medicine
Taking a weight-loss drug reduced a craving for opioids
Early results from 20 people with opioid use disorder raise hopes that popular weight-loss drugs like Wegovy can tackle opioid addiction, too.
- Health & Medicine
Newfound immune cells are responsible for long-lasting allergies
A specialized type of immune cell appears primed to make the type of antibodies that lead to allergies, two research groups report.
- Archaeology
These South American cave paintings reveal a surprisingly old tradition
Radiocarbon dates point to an artistic design practice that began in Patagonia almost 8,200 years ago, several millennia earlier than previously recorded.
- Health & Medicine
U.S. opioid deaths are out of control. Can safe injection sites help?
A new NIH study will evalute the only two officially sanctioned sites, in New York City, and a future site in Providence, R.I.
