An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Melted capsules. Cloudy insulin. Pills that may no longer work. Doctors and pharmacists say the scorching temperatures enveloping the country could be endangering people's health in an unexpected way: by overheating their medications. Millions of Americans now receive their prescription medications through mail-order shipments, either for convenience or because their health plans require it. But the temperatures inside the cargo areas of delivery trucks can reach 150 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, according to drivers -- far exceeding the range of 68 to 77 degrees recommended by the national organization that sets standards for drug handling.

Mail-order pharmacies say that their packaging is weather resistant and that they take special precautions when medication "requires specific temperature control." But in a study published last year, independent pharmaceutical researchers who embedded data-logging thermometers inside simulated shipments found that the packages had spent more than two-thirds of their transit time outside the appropriate temperature range, "regardless of the shipping method, carrier, or season." Extreme temperatures can alter the components in many medications, from pancreatic enzymes to the thyroid replacement drug levothyroxine to oral contraceptives, medical experts say.

Dr. Mike Ren, a primary care physician and an assistant professor in the department of family and community medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, said that liquid medications like insulin or AUVI-Q, the epinephrine injection for allergic reactions, are often at heightened risk of degradation because excessive heat exposure can cause the evaporation of liquid components that were compounded at precise ratios. Aerosolized medications, too, are uniquely vulnerable because of the risk of pressure changes in the canister. "Doctors recommend picking up your prescriptions at a local pharmacy whenever possible during hot summer months, particularly if your medication is liquid or aerosolized," notes the report. "If you are enrolled in an insurance program that requires using a mail-order pharmacy, ask for an exception during the summer or, at the very least, contact the on-call pharmacist at the mail-order company to get more information about shipping practices and to ask for temperature-controlled packaging. You should do this even if the drug does not require refrigeration."

Once you do get your medication, you should make sure to preserve it in a cool, dry environment, away from direct sunlight. If you're flying, your prescriptions should be stored in your carry-on bag. They should never be left in a parked car.

"Lenacapavir is not a new drug," reports NPR. "It's been approved by the FDA in the United States for multi-drug resistant HIV treatment since 2022."

But instead of treating HIV, what if it were used for preventing infections? The treatment consists of a twice-yearly injection... Early trial results were released in June and generated great excitement, indicating 100% efficacy. On Wednesday, July 24, the full peer-reviewed results were released at the AIDS 2024 conference, confirming the preliminary data... This treatment offers an alternative to the current standard of core for HIV prevention efforts for over a decade: taking a pill like Truvada every day...

Any eventual approval and widespread use would come with challenges... Lenacapavir's cost as HIV treatment in the United States in 2023 was $42,250 per new patient per year. Oral PrEP options, on the other hand, can cost less than $4 a month. "The biggest gap in prevention isn't medication, it's accessing medications," says Dr. Philip Grant, clinical associate professor and director of the HIV clinic at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Activists across Uganda and South Africa have urged Gilead Sciences to license lenacapavir to the Medicines Patent Pool — a United Nations-backed organization that partners with governments, industry and other organizations to license medications. This would allow for manufacturing of generic versions of the drug at a fraction of the cost... [A] group of Médecins Sans Frontières activists gathered at AIDS 2024 and called for an "immediate global action to break Gilead's monopoly on lenacapavir."
In a statement Gilead said they couldn't set a price because the drug had not yet been approved — but that Gilead "is committed to access pricing for high-incidence, resource-limited countries." Gilead will ensure dedicated supply of lenacapavir for HIV prevention in the countries where the need is greatest until voluntary licensing partners are able to supply high-quality, low-cost versions of lenacapavir.â

Gilead is developing a robust direct voluntary licensing program to expedite access to those versions of lenacapavir in high-incidence, resource-limited countries. We are moving with urgency to negotiate these contracts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: The image, as it happens, comes from dozens of brain scans produced by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who gave psilocybin, the compound in "magic mushrooms," to participants in a study before sending them into a functional M.R.I. scanner. The kaleidoscopic whirl of colors they recorded is essentially a heat map of brain changes, with the red, orange and yellow hues reflecting a significant departure from normal activity patterns. The blues and greens reflect normal brain activity that occurs in the so-called functional networks, the neural communication pathways that connect different regions of the brain.

The scans, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, offer a rare glimpse into the wild neural storm associated with mind-altering drugs. Researchers say they could provide a potential road map for understanding how psychedelic compounds like psilocybin, LSD and MDMA can lead to lasting relief from depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders. "Psilocybin, in contrast to any other drug we've tested, has this massive effect on the whole brain that was pretty unexpected," said Dr. Nico Dosenbach, a professor of neurology at Washington University and a senior author of the study. "It was quite shocking when we saw the effect size." Brian Mathur, a systems neuroscientist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, says these findings cannot show exactly what causes the therapeutic benefit of psilocybin, but "it's possible psilocybin is directly causing" the brain-network changes. That, or it is creating a psychedelic experience that in turn causes parts of the brain to behave differently.

The next step is to determine whether psilocybin's blood-flow changes in the brain or its direct effects on neurons, or both, are responsible for the brain-network disruptions. "The best part of this work is that it's going to provide a means forward for the field to develop further hypotheses that can and should be tested," Mathur says.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian: A team of researchers from the UK and US have found that pancreatic cancer is able to shut down molecules in one of the body's most important genes, helping the disease to grow and spread rapidly... Dr Maria Hatziapostolou, of Nottingham Trent University's John van Geest Cancer Research Centre, said: "This work, which has provided new understanding and knowledge of how the cancer behaves, will hopefully help pave the way for potential new treatments in the future...."

For the study, published in the journal Gastro Hep Advances, the researchers analysed healthy as well as pancreatic cancer tissue samples. They found pancreatic cancers triggered a process known as DNA methylation, causing molecules in the normally beneficial HNF4A gene to switch off, allowing tumours to grow extremely quickly. The HNF4A gene is crucial to human health because it helps many of the body's organs to function properly. But the researchers discovered pancreatic cancer can covertly disable the gene's benefits. Hatziapostolou said: "Loss of HNF4A drives pancreatic cancer development and aggressiveness and we now know correlates with poor patient survival."

Scientists from the University of Nottingham, Stanford University and the University of California and Cedars-Sinai medical centre, Los Angeles, were also involved in the project.
The published study calls the targeted HNF4A gene is "a novel tumor suppressor in pancreatic cancer, regulating cancer growth and aggressiveness."

And ultimately, according to the Guardian, pancreatic cancer "is the 12th most common cancer worldwide," according to the Guardian, "with more than half a million people diagnosed every year. It has the worst survival rates of all the most common forms of the disease."

The researchers paper ends with this conclusion. "HNF4A silencing... drives pancreatic cancer development and aggressiveness leading to poor patient survival."

"In a significant advancement for space technology, a team of UC Berkeley researchers, led by doctoral student Taylor Waddell, successfully launched a 3D printer into space," reports the university's student newspaper: As part of the Virgin Galactic 07 mission, the team sent a 3D printer named SpaceCAL to space to explore the potential of Computed Axial Lithography, or CAL, and additive manufacturing in space... During its 140-second flight in suborbital space, the SpaceCAL printer autonomously detected microgravity and printed four test parts: two space shuttles and two Benchies, or 3D-printed boats created to check the printer's accuracy, according to Sean Chu, a member of the team who worked on designing structures and mechanisms. Within the 140 seconds, the process involved multiple steps such as printing, post-washing, flushing with water and post-curing with light to fully solidify the parts.
But that's just the beginning, says the university's engineering department: To date, CAL has shown that it can successfully print with more than 60 different materials on Earth, such as silicones, glass composites and biomaterials. According to Waddell, this versatility could come in handy for both the cabin and the crew... "CAL is also capable of repairing the crew. We can print dental replacements, skin grafts or lenses, or things personalized in emergency medicine for astronauts, which is very important in these missions, too."

Someday, CAL may be used to print even more sophisticated parts, such as human organs. Lawrence Livermore National Lab has received a grant from NASA to test this technology on the International Space Station. "They're going to basically do bioprinting on the Space Station," said Waddell. "And the long, long-term goal is to print organs up in space with CAL, then bring them back down to Earth." Next, Waddell and his colleagues hope to begin work with NASA on developing and validating a single object that could support crew health and wellness, like a dental crown for an astronaut or a surgical wound closure tool...

This project was made possible through a $1.4 million grant and engineering support provided by NASA. In addition, Virgin Galactic played a pivotal role in taking this project to the next level.

Longtime Slashdot reader ArchieBunker shares a report from TIME Magazine: On an evening in December 2023, 43-year-old small business owner Sarah Rosenkranz collapsed in her home in Granbury, Texas and was rushed to the emergency room. Her heart pounded 200 beats per minute; her blood pressure spiked into hypertensive crisis; her skull throbbed. "It felt like my head was in a pressure vise being crushed," she says. "That pain was worse than childbirth." Rosenkranz's migraine lasted for five days. Doctors gave her several rounds of IV medication and painkiller shots, but nothing seemed to knock down the pain, she says. This was odd, especially because local doctors were similarly vexed when Indigo, Rosenkranz's 5-year-old daughter, was taken to urgent care earlier that year, screaming that she felt a "red beam behind her eardrums." It didn't occur to Sarah that these symptoms could be linked. But in January 2024, she walked into a town hall in Granbury and found a room full of people worn thin from strange, debilitating illnesses. A mother said her 8-year-old daughter was losing her hearing and fluids were leaking from her ears. Several women said they experienced fainting spells, including while driving on the highway. Others said they were wracked by debilitating vertigo and nausea, waking up in the middle of the night mid-vomit. None of them knew what, exactly, was causing these symptoms. But they all shared a singular grievance: a dull aural hum had crept into their lives, which growled or roared depending on the time of day, rattling their windows and rendering them unable to sleep. The hum, local law enforcement had learned, was emanating from a Bitcoin mining facility that had recently moved into the area -- and was exceeding legal noise ordinances on a daily basis.

Over the course of several months in 2024, TIME spoke to more than 40 people in the Granbury area who reported a medical ailment that they believe is connected to the arrival of the Bitcoin mine: hypertension, heart palpitations, chest pain, vertigo, tinnitus, migraines, panic attacks. At least 10 people went to urgent care or the emergency room with these symptoms. The development of large-scale Bitcoin mines and data centers is quite new, and most of them are housed in extremely remote places. There have been no major medical studies on the impacts of living near one. But there is an increasing body of scientific studies linking prolonged exposure to noise pollution with cardiovascular damage. And one local doctor -- ears, nose, and throat specialist Salim Bhaloo -- says he sees patients with symptoms potentially stemming from the Bitcoin mine's noise on an almost weekly basis. "I'm sure it increases their cortisol and sugar levels, so you're getting headaches, vertigo, and it snowballs from there," Bhaloo says. "This thing is definitely causing a tremendous amount of stress. Everyone is just miserable about it." "By the end of 2024, we intend to have replaced the majority of air-cooled containers with immersion cooling, with no expansion required," said a representative for Marathon Digital Holdings, the company that owns the mine. "Initial sound readings on immersion containers indicate favorable results in sound reduction and compliance with all relevant state noise ordinances." They did not answer questions about the health impacts their mining site was causing.

"We're living in a nightmare," said Rosenkranz. She clocked the hum at 72 decibels in Indigo's bedroom in the dead of night. "Indigo's room directly faces the mine, which sits about a mile and a half away," notes TIME. She had to be pulled from her school after she developed so many ear infections from the sound.

The report also said a resident's dog "started going bald and developed debilitating anxiety shortly after the Bitcoin mine began operating four blocks away." TIME added: "Directly next door, Tom Weeks' dog Jack Rabbit Slim started shaking and hyperventilating uncontrollably for hours on end; a vet placed him on the seizure medication Gabapentin. Rosenkranz's chickens stopped laying eggs for months. And Jerry and Patricia Campbell's centuries-old oak tree, which had served as the family's hub and protector for generations of backyard family reunions and even a wedding, died suddenly three months ago."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and businesswoman Arianna Huffington have announced they're working on an "AI health coach" via Thrive AI Health. According to a Time magazine op-ed, the two executives said that the bot will be trained on "the best peer-reviewed science" alongside "the personal biometric, lab, and other medical data you've chosen to share with it." The Verge reports: The company tapped DeCarlos Love, a former Google executive who previously worked on Fitbit and other wearables, to be CEO. Thrive AI Health also established research partnerships with several academic institutions and medical centers like Stanford Medicine, the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute at West Virginia University, and the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine. (The Alice L. Walton Foundation is also a strategic investor in Thrive AI Health.) Thrive AI Health's goal is to provide powerful insights to those who otherwise wouldn't have access -- like a single mother looking for quick meal ideas for her gluten-free child or an immunocompromised person in need of instant advice in between doctor's appointments. [...]

The bot is still in its early stages, adopting an Atomic Habits approach. Its goal is to gently encourage small changes in five key areas of your life: sleep, nutrition, fitness, stress management, and social connection. By making minor adjustments, such as suggesting a 10-minute walk after picking up your child from school, Thrive AI Health aims to positively impact people with chronic conditions like heart disease. It doesn't claim to be ready to provide real diagnosis like a doctor would but instead aims to guide users into a healthier lifestyle. "AI is already greatly accelerating the rate of scientific progress in medicine -- offering breakthroughs in drug development, diagnoses, and increasing the rate of scientific progress around diseases like cancer," the op-ed read.

Starting this fall, most students at Johns Hopkins' medical school will attend tuition-free thanks to a $1 billion donation from billionaire Mike Bloomberg. From a report: The generous gift is intended to address "twin challenges of declining levels of health and education," Bloomberg said in a letter Monday. The donation will cover the full cost of tuition for medical students from families earning less than $300,000, Bloomberg Industries announced Monday. It will also cover living expenses and other fees for students from families earning up to $175,000.

Currently, nearly two-thirds of medical students at the school qualify for financial aid. Johns Hopkins' medical students graduate with an average student loan debt of about $104,000. The donation will also increase financial aid at some of the university's other graduate schools, including the schools of nursing and public health.

A controversial organ retrieval technique is gaining traction across the U.S., promising to alleviate chronic organ shortages but also sparking intense ethical debates, NPR reports. Normothermic regional perfusion, now used by half of the nation's organ procurement organizations, restores blood flow to organs after cardiac death. Proponents argue it increases viable organ supply and improves transplant outcomes. Critics, however, question whether the procedure blurs the definition of death.

A Wall Street Journal analysis has revealed that private insurers in the government's Medicare Advantage program, including UnitedHealth Group, have made numerous questionable diagnoses leading to increased taxpayer-funded payments between 2018 and 2021.

The investigation found instances where patients were diagnosed with conditions they did not have, such as diabetic cataracts and HIV, often without their knowledge. These diagnoses resulted in higher payments from Medicare to the insurers. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said they are implementing changes to ensure "taxpayer dollars are appropriately spent." The story adds: In all, Medicare paid insurers about $50 billion for diagnoses added just by insurers in the three years ending in 2021, the Journal's analysis showed.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: The Food and Drug Administration will no longer allow the use of brominated vegetable oil (BVO) in food products and sodas due to concerns it poses a threat to people's health, the FDA announced Tuesday. The ban follows similar action in California against the food additive that's modified with bromine, which has been used in small quantities as a stabilizer in some citrus-flavored drinks and which is also found in fire retardants.

Jim Jones, the deputy commissioner for the FDA's Human Foods Program, said in a statement that "removal of the only authorized use of BVO from the food supply was based on a thorough review of current science and research findings that raised safety concerns." The FDA "concluded that the intended use of BVO in food is no longer considered safe after the results of studies conducted in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found the potential for adverse health effects in humans," per an agency statement. A 2022 FDA study found that oral exposure to the additive "is associated with increased tissue levels of bromine and that at high levels of exposure the thyroid is a target organ of potential negative health effects in rodents." The ban takes effect on August 2. Companies will have one year from then to "reformulate, relabel, and deplete the inventory of BVO-containing products before the FDA begins enforcing the final rule," according to the agency.

The Biden administration said Tuesday that it was providing $504 million in implementation grants for a dozen technology hubs in Ohio, Montana, Nevada and Florida, among other locations. From a report: The money would support the development of quantum computing, biomanufacturing, lithium batteries, computer chips, personal medicine and other technologies. The Democratic administration is trying to encourage more technological innovation across the country, instead of allowing it be concentrated in a few metro areas such as San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and New York City.

"The reality is there are smart people, great entrepreneurs, and leading-edge research institutions all across the country," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a call previewing the announcement. "We're leaving so much potential on the table if we don't give them the resources to compete and win in the tech sectors that will define the 21st century global economy."

An anonymous reader shares a report: When someone loses part of a leg, a prosthetic can make it easier to get around. But most prosthetics are static, cumbersome, and hard to move. A new neural interface connects a bionic limb to nerve endings in the thigh, allowing the limb to be controlled by the brain. The new device, which is described today in Nature Medicine, could help people with lower-leg amputations feel as if their prosthesis is part of them. "When you ask a patient 'What is your body?' They don't include the prosthesis," says MIT biophysicist Hugh Herr, one of the lead authors on the study. The work is personal for him: he lost both his lower legs in a climbing accident when he was 17. He says linking the brain to the prosthesis can make it feel more like part of someone's anatomy, which can have a positive emotional impact.

Getting the neural interface hooked up to a prosthetic takes two steps. First, patients undergo surgery. Following a lower leg amputation, portions of shin and calf muscle still remain. The operation connects shin muscle, which contracts to make the ankle flex upward, to calf muscle, which counteracts this movement. The prosthetic can also be fitted at this point. Reattaching the remnants of these muscles can enable the prosthetic to move more dynamically. It can also reduce phantom limb pain, and patients are less likely to trip and fall. "The surgery stands on its own," says Amy Pietrafitta, a para-athlete who received it in 2018. "I feel like I have my leg back." But natural movements are still limited when the prosthetic isn't connected to the nervous system.

In step two, surface electrodes measure nerve activity from the brain to the calf and shin muscles, indicating an intention to move the lower leg. A small computer in the bionic leg decodes those nerve signals and moves the leg accordingly, allowing the patient to move the limb more naturally. "If you have intact biological limbs, you can walk up and down steps, for example, and not even think about it. It's involuntary," says Herr. "That's the case with our patients, but their limb is made of titanium and silicone." The authors compared the mobility of seven patients using a neural interface with that of patients who had not received the surgery. Patients using the neural interface could walk 41% faster and climb sloped surfaces and steps. They could also dodge obstacles more nimbly and had better balance. And they described feeling that the prosthetic was truly a part of their body rather than just a tool that they used to get around.

A study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) analyzed data from nearly 400,000 healthy adults over 20 years and determined that "multivitamin use to improve longevity is not supported." The findings were published in JAMA Network Open. ABC News reports: The study found no evidence that daily multivitamin consumption reduced the risk of death from conditions such as heart disease or cancer. Rather than living longer, otherwise healthy people who took daily multivitamins were slightly more likely (4%) than non-users to die in the study period, according to researchers. Researchers reported nearly 165,000 deaths occurring during the follow-up period of the study, out of the initial group of 390,000 participants. The study, however, did not analyze data from people with pre-existing vitamin deficiencies. "What this study shows is that, generally, multivitamins aren't going to help you live longer," Dr. Jade A Cobern, MD, MPH, board-certified physician in pediatrics and general preventive medicine, told ABC News. "Even though the cost of many multivitamins isn't high, this is still an expense that many people can be spared from."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are displacing healthy diets "all over the world" despite growing evidence of the risks they pose and should be sold with tobacco-style warnings, according to the nutritional scientist who first coined the term. Prof Carlos Monteiro of the University of Sao Paulo will highlight the increasing danger UPFs present to children and adults at the International Congress on Obesity this week. "UPFs are increasing their share in and domination of global diets, despite the risk they represent to health in terms of increasing the risk of multiple chronic diseases," Monteiro told the Guardian ahead of the conference in Sao Paulo. "UPFs are displacing healthier, less processed foods all over the world, and also causing a deterioration in diet quality due to their several harmful attributes. Together, these foods are driving the pandemic of obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases, such as diabetes."

Monteiro and his colleagues first used the phrase UPF 15 years ago when designing the food classification system "Nova." This assesses not only nutritional content but also the processes food undergoes before it is consumed. The system places food and drink into four groups: minimally processed food, processed culinary ingredients, processed food and ultra-processed food. Monteiro told the Guardian he was now so concerned about the impact UPF was having on human health that studies and reviews were no longer sufficient to warn the public of the health hazards. "Public health campaigns are needed like those against tobacco to curb the dangers of UPFs," he told the Guardian in an email. "Such campaigns would include the health dangers of consumption of UPFs. Advertisements for UPFs should also be banned or heavily restricted, and front-of-pack warnings should be introduced similar to those used for cigarette packs."

He will tell delegates: "Sales of UPFs in schools and health facilities should be banned, and there should be heavy taxation of UPFs, with the revenue generated used to subsidize fresh foods." Monteiro will tell the conference that food giants marketing UPFs know that, in order to be competitive, their products must be more convenient, more affordable and tastier than freshly prepared meals. "To maximize profits, these UPFs must have lower cost of production and be overconsumed," he said. He will also draw parallels between UPF and tobacco companies. "Both tobacco and UPFs cause numerous serious illnesses and premature mortality; both are produced by transnational corporations that invest the enormous profits they obtain with their attractive/addictive products in aggressive marketing strategies, and in lobbying against regulation; and both are pathogenic (dangerous) by design, so reformulation is not a solution."

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: Gilead's experimental twice-yearly medicine to prevent HIV was 100% effective in a late-stage trial, the company said Thursday. None of the roughly 2,000 women in the trial who received the lenacapavir shot had contracted HIV by an interim analysis, prompting the independent data monitoring committee to recommend Gilead unblind the Phase 3 trial and offer the treatment to everyone in the study. Other participants had received standard daily pills.
The company expects to share more data by early next year, the article adds, and if its results are positive, the company could bring its drug to the market as soon as late 2025. (By Fridayt the company's stock price had risen nearly 12%.)

There's already other HIV-preventing options, the article points out, but they're taken by "only a little more than one-third of people in the U.S. who could benefit...according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." Part of the problem?

"Daily pills dominate the market, but drugmakers are now focusing on developing longer-acting shots... Health policymakers and advocates hope longer-acting options could reach people who can't or don't want to take a daily pill and better prevent the spread of a virus that caused about 1 million new infections globally in 2022."

Change Healthcare has confirmed a February ransomware attack on its systems, which brought widespread disruption to the U.S. healthcare system for weeks and resulted in the theft of medical records affecting a "substantial proportion of people in America." TechCrunch: In a statement Thursday, Change Healthcare said it has begun the process of notifying affected individuals whose information was stolen during the cyberattack. The health tech giant, owned by U.S. insurance conglomerate UnitedHealth Group, processes patient insurance and billing for thousands of hospitals, pharmacies and medical practices across the U.S. healthcare sector. As such, the company has access to massive amounts of health information on about a third of all Americans.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A vote against using MDMA as part of therapy for PTSD has provoked a powerful backlash among researchers who study psychedelic drugs. Some 13 million Americans struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Existing therapies only bring relief for a fraction of patients, and new treatments are sorely needed, according to psychiatrists wrestling with the scale of the problem. So, there was distinct disappointment when an advisory committee at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted earlier this month against a therapy that many had hoped could offer the first new treatment for PTSD in 25 years. A number of experts who study psychedelics have since spoken out in support of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD and have sharply criticized the recommendations of the FDA's Psychopharmacological Drugs Advisory Committee. But some are still optimistic that the treatment might be approved when the FDA delivers its final decision in August.

While MDMA, also commonly known as ecstasy or molly, is listed as a Schedule 1 controlled substance in the US and so is illegal to use outside research, there has been a growing number of studies suggesting that when used with psychotherapy it could have potential for treating PTSD and some other mental health conditions. Ahead of the meeting, FDA approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD seemed likely, says Sandeep Nayak, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, who investigates psychedelics as treatments for substance use and mood disorders. About two-thirds of people who received three sessions of MDMA and talk therapy no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis at the end of two Phase 3 clinical trials. It's an outcome that is "almost double that of existing medications", says Gul Dolen, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who researches the mechanisms of how psychedelics achieve therapeutic effects. "What's more, [the treatment] led to durable improvements in these patients lasting at least six months."

About half of people who enroll in current gold standard PTSD treatments drop out, which is "absurd," says Loree Sutton, a psychiatrist and retired Brigadier General in the US Army. She says new treatments are essential. "We have to do better." "Even if there are risks, we've got to figure this out, because we cannot not let this treatment be available," adds Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who has conducted studies on the effects of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. "Without it, we're just leaving too many people in suffering that they don't need to be in, and that is not right." The FDA is currently considering an application from California-based drug company Lykos Therapeutics for using MDMA capsules taken in conjunction with therapy in the treatment of PTSD. In the recent FDA advisory meeting, committee members cited apparent flaws in study design and data collection. The nine-hour hearing concluded with committee members voting 9-2 that the available data do not show "that the drug is effective" for PTSD, and voting 10-1 that the benefits of MDMA do not outweigh the risks.

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have found microplastics in human penises for the first time, as concerns over the tiny particles' proliferation and potential health effects mount. Seven different kinds of microplastics were found in four out of five samples of penis tissue taken from five different men as part of a study published in IJIR: Your Sexual Medicine Journal on Wednesday. Microplastics are polymer fragments that can range from less than 0.2 inch (5 millimeters) down to 1/25,000th of an inch (1 micrometer). Anything smaller is a nanoplastic that must be measured in billionths of a meter. They form when larger plastics break down, either by chemically degrading or physically wearing down into smaller pieces.

Some minuscule particles can invade individual cells and tissues in major organs, experts say, and evidence is mounting that they are increasingly present in our bodies. Study lead author Ranjith Ramasamy, an expert in reproductive urology who conducted the research while working at the University of Miami, told CNN that he used a previous study that found evidence of microplastics in the human heart as a basis for his research. Ramasamy said he wasn't surprised to find microplastics in the penis, as it is a "very vascular organ," like the heart.

"At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China's growing influence in the Philippines..." reports Reuters.

"It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found."

Reuters interviewed "more than two dozen current and former U.S officials, military contractors, social media analysts and academic researchers," and also reviewed posts on social media, technical data and documents about "a set of fake social media accounts used by the U.S. military" — some active for more than five years. Friday they reported the results of their investigation: Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military's propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines — China's Sinovac inoculation. Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus — Tagalog for China is the virus.

"COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don't trust China!" one typical tweet from July 2020 read in Tagalog. The words were next to a photo of a syringe beside a Chinese flag and a soaring chart of infections. Another post read: "From China — PPE, Face Mask, Vaccine: FAKE. But the Coronavirus is real." After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.

The U.S. military's anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China's vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China's shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law...

A senior Defense Department official acknowledged the U.S. military engaged in secret propaganda to disparage China's vaccine in the developing world, but the official declined to provide details. A Pentagon spokeswoman... also noted that China had started a "disinformation campaign to falsely blame the United States for the spread of COVID-19."
A senior U.S. military officer directly involved in the campaign told Reuters that "We didn't do a good job sharing vaccines with partners. So what was left to us was to throw shade on China's."

At least six senior State Department officials for the region objected, according to the article. But in 2019 U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper signed "a secret order" that "elevated the Pentagon's competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat, enabling commanders to sidestep the StateDepartment when conducting psyops against those adversaries."

[A senior defense official] said the Pentagon has rescinded parts of Esper's 2019 order that allowed military commanders to bypass the approval of U.S. ambassadors when waging psychological operations. The rules now mandate that military commanders work closely with U.S. diplomats in the country where they seek to have an impact. The policy also restricts psychological operations aimed at "broad population messaging," such as those used to promote vaccine hesitancy during COVID...

Nevertheless, the Pentagon's clandestine propaganda efforts are set to continue. In an unclassified strategy document last year, top Pentagon generals wrote that the U.S. military could undermine adversaries such as China and Russia using "disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities [to] weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government."

And in February, the contractor that worked on the anti-vax campaign — General Dynamics IT — won a $493 million contract. Its mission: to continue providing clandestine influence services for the military.