The study also shows that even though the rates of undernutrition have dropped, it is still a public health challenge in many places, particularly in South-East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Countries with the highest combined rates of underweight and obesity in 2022 were island nations in the Pacific and the Caribbean and those in the Middle East and North Africa.

Malnutrition, in all its forms, includes undernutrition (wasting, stunting, underweight), inadequate vitamins or minerals, overweight and obesity. Undernutrition is responsible for half of the deaths of children under 5 and obesity can cause noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and some cancers.

WHO has contributed to the data collection and analysis of this study. The full dataset is now also disseminated through the Global Health Observatory.

“This new study highlights the importance of preventing and managing obesity from early life to adulthood, through diet, physical activity, and adequate care, as needed,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “Getting back on track to meet the global targets for curbing obesity will take the work of governments and communities, supported by evidence-based policies from WHO and national public health agencies. Importantly, it requires the cooperation of the private sector, which must be accountable for the health impacts of their products”.

Obesity is a complex chronic disease. The causes are well understood, as are the interventions needed to contain the crisis, which are backed by strong evidence. However, they are not implemented. At the World Health Assembly in 2022 Member States adopted the WHO Acceleration plan to stop obesity, which supports country-level action through 2030. To date, 31 governments are now leading the way to curb the obesity epidemic by implementing the plan.

The core interventions are:

• actions to support healthy practices from day 1, including breastfeeding promotion, protection and support;
• regulations on the harmful marketing of food and beverages to children;
• school food and nutrition policies, including initiatives to regulate the sales of products high in fats, sugars and salt in proximity of schools;
• fiscal and pricing policies to promote healthy diets;
• nutrition labelling policies;
• public education and awareness campaigns for healthy diets and exercise;
• standards for physical activity in schools; and
• integration of obesity prevention and management services into primary health care.

“There are significant challenges in implementing policies aimed at ensuring affordable access to healthy diets for all and creating environments that promote physical activity and overall healthy lifestyles for everyone,” stated Dr Francesco Branca, Director of WHO’s Nutrition and Food Safety Department and one of the co-authors of the study. “Countries should also ensure that health systems integrate the prevention and management of obesity into the basic package of services.”

Addressing undernutrition requires multisectoral action in agriculture, social protection and health, to reduce food insecurity, improve access to clean water and sanitation and ensure universal access to essential nutrition interventions.

Source

They were part of nationwide efforts to curtail a surge in Brazil of the mosquito-borne illness of dengue fever during the country’s key tourist season that runs through the end of February.

Paulo Cesar Gomes, a 56-year-old entomologist, found some mosquito larvae swimming in shallow rainwater inside a car bumper.

“We call this type of location a strategic point” because of the high turnover in items converging from all over, he said. “It’s difficult not to have mosquitoes here.”

Earlier in the month, just days before Rio kicked of its world-famous Carnival festivities, the city joined several states and the country’s capital in declaring a public health epidemic over this year’s greater-than-normal number of cases of dengue.

“We had more cases in January than any other January,” Ethel Maciel, head of health surveillance at Brazil’s Health Ministry, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

So far this year, Brazil has recorded 512,000 cases nationwide, including both confirmed and likely cases — nearly four times more than those registered in the same period a year ago.

There have been 425 deaths under investigation for dengue so far this year, with 75 confirmed, as compared with just over 1,000 for all of 2023.

Dengue is a viral infection transmitted to humans through the bite of infected mosquitoes. Frequent rains and high temperatures, which accelerate the hatching of mosquito eggs and the development of larvae, make the famously hot city of Rio especially susceptible to outbreaks.

Many who are infected never develop symptoms, but dengue can cause high fever, headache, body aches, nausea and a rash, according to the World Health Organization. While most get better after a week or so, some develop a severe form that requires hospitalization and can be fatal.

Health workers like Gomes, equipped with masks and plastic gloves, meticulously combed the junkyard on a hot morning, gently kicking and shaking piled up auto parts looking for any trace of the Aedes aegypti mosquito that can spread dengue.

Whenever he saw standing water Gomes grabbed a hand pipette out of his bag and looked for larvae, which he collected in a white plastic container. Captured mosquitos and larvae are kept alive and brought to a city laboratory to be tested for dengue.

At locations with positive tests, health agents spray the walls with a product that kills mosquitos and then monitor the location for weeks.

Maciel, from the Health Ministry, said the first warning about a possible epidemic came in September.

Brazil’s leading research institute, the state-funded Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, or Fiocruz, came up with several scenarios indicating that Brazil could have as many as 4.2 million cases this year, up from 1.6 million in 2023.

Maciel said the surge is due to excessive heat and intense rain, both possible effects of climate change or El Niño, a natural, temporary and occasional warming of part of the Pacific that shifts weather patterns across the globe.

Maciel also cited the circulation of four dengue virus serotypes at the same time, one of which authorities had not seen in 15 years.

In Rio, more than 80% of mosquito breeding sites are located in residential properties, health officials say. So, efforts to combat dengue must start in homes, and raising awareness is key, said Mário Sérgio Ribeiro, a health surveillance official for Rio de Janeiro state.

State officials launched a “10 minutes that save lives” initiative to encourage residents to inspect their homes, offices and places of worship for any standing water.

Health workers and volunteers went door to door, pacing up and down the narrow streets of Rio’s Tabajara working-class neighborhood, or favela, to spread the word. They distributed leaflets and climbed on rooftops, looking for containers with rainwater.

One elderly woman, Vilza da Costa, told the AP she believes she contracted the disease.

“It started with a fever, then my body was itching all over, weakness, and a lot of pain. I was in a very bad way,” she said. “There are a lot of mosquitoes here.”

During Carnival, which ended Wednesday, health employees welcomed visitors with free repellent. A van with a giant crossed off mosquito and the words “Against Dengue Everyday” opened and closed the parades several nights, for millions of TV viewers to see.

Maciel said the effect of Carnival will not be known for another week. Even though dengue is not transmissible from person to person, increased tourism can boost the spread of the disease to locations that had not been affected.

It’s not clear if the cases have reached a peak and now “are going to start going down, or if the worst-case scenario is indeed happening,” Maciel said.

Source

The report on Biden’s handling of classified documents noted that the president hadn’t remembered the exact time frame that he served as vice president and was struggling to recall the period when his late son, Beau Biden, had passed away. Biden defiantly rejected the changes in a press conference late Thursday, saying “my memory’s fine.”

There’s also been scrutiny of other recent events when the 81-year-old president mixed up names of foreign leaders.

However, neurologists say blanking on the names of acquaintances or having difficulty remembering dates from the past, especially when under stress, can simply be part of normal aging.

“If you asked me when my mother passed away, I couldn’t necessarily tell you the exact year because it was many years ago,” Dr. Paul Newhouse, clinical core leader for the Vanderbilt Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, said.

Almost every older patient has trouble remembering people’s names, Newhouse said. 

“I think it’s by far the most universal complaint of every person as they age,” Newhouse said.

In Newhouse’s experience, this type of forgetfulness doesn’t actually predict who ends up having memory disorders. Only a person’s doctor or neurologist can make that diagnosis, not outside observers, brain experts say.

Dr. Dennis Selkoe, co-director of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, agreed that forgetting names doesn’t actually provide much insight into potential memory problems. In fact, stress and a lack of sleep, can interfere with memory, no matter how old someone is.

“Naming proper nouns is not an adequate basis to make a conclusion about whether an individual has a more consistent and more concerning substantive progressive memory disorder,” Selkoe said.

What are normal memory changes?

It’s normal for older brains to have more difficulty retaining new information and then retrieving the information, but mental processes like decision-making and judgment can actually improve with age, said Dr. Thomas Wisniewski, director of NYU Langone Health’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and its Center for Cognitive Neurology.

“Although the raw power of memory has some degree of decline, perhaps wisdom can increase because the individual has a greater backlog of experiences and different situations as to what is the best thing to do,” Wisniewski said.

The problem isn’t having trouble remembering names or calling someone by the wrong name, but when someone’s memory is fuzzy about recent or past experiences, said Newhouse. Issues with episodic memory — memory for events in time or if a person doesn’t remember going shopping, for example — can be a sign of a progressive disorder, but not always.

Wisniewski said he becomes concerned when people don’t even recognize that they are forgetting things.

“They forgot that they went shopping and they’re unaware that they’ve forgotten,” he said.

Overall, neurologists tend to worry less about a patient’s ability to remember remote memories from many years ago and more troubled by an inability to recall more recent events. That’s because dementia first affects the part of the brain that’s responsible for short-term memories, as opposed to long-term memories, said Newhouse.

“What I’m more concerned about is, can you remember what happened yesterday? Or an hour ago?” Newhouse said.

While the conversation surrounding aging is often framed around a person’s diminishing memory or executive functioning, there are cognitive benefits that come with growing older, Selkoe said.

“There is a type of emotional intelligence and ability to handle many different kinds of experiences in life that come with greater longevity,” he said. “People can make decisions more carefully and more rationally.”

Source

Airstrikes overnight and into Friday hit two residential buildings in Rafah, killing eight Palestinians, and a third strike targeted a kindergarten-turned-shelter for the displaced in central Gaza, killing at least four people, according to hospital officials and AP journalists who saw bodies arriving at hospitals.

U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday that Israel’s conduct in the war, ignited by a deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack, is “over the top,” the harshest U.S. criticism yet of its close ally and an expression of concern about a soaring civilian death toll in Gaza.

Israel’s stated intentions to expand its ground offensive to Rafah also prompted an unusual public backlash in Washington.

“We have yet to see any evidence of serious planning for such an operation,” Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, said Thursday. Going ahead with such an offensive now, “with no planning and little thought in an area where there is sheltering of a million people would be a disaster.”

John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesperson, said an Israel ground offensive in Rafah is “not something we would support.”

The comments signaled intensifying U.S. friction with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who pushed a message of “total victory” in the war this week, at a time when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Israel to press for a cease-fire deal in exchange for the release of dozens of Hamas-held hostages.

With the war now in its fifth month, Israeli ground forces are still focusing on the city of Khan Younis, just north of Rafah, but Netanyahu has repeatedly said Rafah will be next, creating panic among hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

Netanyahu’s words have also alarmed Egypt which has said that any ground operation in the Rafah area or mass displacement across the border would undermine its 40-year-old peace treaty with Israel. The mostly sealed Gaza-Egypt border is also the main entry point for humanitarian aid.

Shortly after midnight Friday, a residential building was struck near Rafah’s Kuwaiti Hospital, killing five people from the al-Sayed family, including three children and a woman. A second Rafah strike killed three more people.

In the central area of Gaza, a kindergarten-turned-shelter was bombed, leaving four dead and 30 wounded, most of them women and children. Witnesses said those in the shelter were sleeping when the building was struck.

A woman, carrying a small girl in her arms, shouted as she arrived at the local Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital: “There was a sudden explosion. What can we do? This is the work of the coward Zionist enemy that chooses innocent civilians. This girl is firing rockets at the Jews? May God help us.”

Some of the wounded children were treated while lying on the floor.

More than half of Gaza’s population has fled to Rafah, heeding Israeli evacuation orders ahead of the military’s continuously expanding ground offensive. Evacuation orders now cover two-thirds of the besieged territory, though an estimated 300,000 Palestinians remain in the northern half of Gaza, which civilians were ordered to leave early on in the war.

Even in areas of refuge, such as Rafah, Israel routinely launches air strikes against what it says are Hamas targets. It holds the militant group responsible for civilian casualties because it operates from civilian areas.

Israel’s 4-month-old air and ground offensive — among the most destructive in recent history — has killed over 27,700 Palestinians, driven most people from their homes and pushed a quarter of the population toward starvation.

Biden has said said he continues to work “tirelessly” to press Israel and Hamas to agree on an extended pause in fighting. A truce would be linked to the release of dozens of hostages, out of some 250 seized Oct. 7, and still believed to be in Hamas captivity.

Netanyahu has rejected Hamas’ demands for a hostage deal, which includes an end to the war and the release of hundreds of veteran Palestinian prisoners serving long sentences in Israel for deadly attacks carried out as part of the long-running conflict. Netanyahu dismissed Hamas’ demands as delusional, even as Blinken said he believes continued negotiations, through mediators Egypt and Qatar, are possible.

Israel’s war goals appear increasingly elusive, as Hamas reemerges in parts of northern Gaza, which was the first target of the offensive and has seen widespread destruction. Israel has only rescued one hostage, while Hamas says several have been killed in airstrikes or failed rescue missions.

Source

I

n many cultures, having an afternoon nap is a daily ritual. The Spanish are known to enjoy a daily siesta and some Japanese workers indulge in a lunchtime sleep, known as hirune, or “afternoon nap”.

Tech giants such as Google, Samsung and Facebook all have nap pods in their offices, allowing workers to catch some shuteye during the working day.

Power napping is a rising trend worldwide. But does a quick catnap during the day actually work? Does it leave you feeling refreshed and energised, or do you end up feeling more tired than you did to begin with? How long should a nap last? And what’s the best time of day to have one?

BBC Future looks at the latest science to explore whether daily naps are good for our health.What are the health benefits of napping?

Regular naps are good for the long-term health of our brain, research shows.

Habitual napping may help keep our brains bigger for longer and boost its overall health, according to a 2023 study by researchers at University College London (UCL) and the University of the Republic in Uruguay.

The researchers analysed data from 35,000 people, aged 40 to 69, who had taken part in a study by UK Biobank, a biomedical database ad research resource. They looked at previously identified DNA snippets associated with people who are habitual nappers.

The brains of people who napped several times a week were more than 15 cubic cm (0.9 cubic inches) larger than the brains of people who never had a daytime nap.

This equates to delaying ageing of the brain by between three to six years, says lead author Victoria Garfield, a senior research fellow at the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL.

“The big finding was that daytime napping is, quite robustly, causally linked to having a larger brain volume,” says Garfield. The brain naturally shrinks with age and a smaller brain volume has been linked to a wide range of diseases.

“People who have a smaller brain volume are more likely to have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, or a diagnosis of sleep apnea… many have cardiovascular disease,” says Garfield. “We also see substantial shrinkage of the brain in [people with] Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia.” (Read BBC Future’s story on why human brains were bigger 3,000 years ago.)

“Anything you can do to preserve your brain size for as long as possible is a good thing,” says Garfield. “It’s a really positive message that having a nap could help the brain.”

Napping has been shown to be critical for the cognitive development of babies, with trials showing that they were unable to remember new tasks if they did not have a long nap soon afterwards.

But the benefits of napping for adults are less well understood. The participants in Garfield’s study were aged between 40 and 69. “We tried to focus on that midlife point when people start to get diseases and [conditions] like diabetes and high blood pressure,” she says.

The long-term benefits are only seen in people who regularly nap, stresses Garfield. “It has to be cumulative.”

There are also short-term health benefits associated with napping. Short naps lasting five to 15 minutes can immediately improve how well we perform mentally. This mental stimulus can last up to three hours after we wake up.

“Napping is huge in sports science at the moment,” says Kevin Morgan, professor of psychology and a sleep expert at the University of Loughborough in the UK. “Anything that will improve an athletes’ performance by a tiny amount, known as incremental gains, is seized upon.

“Coaches want to bottle napping and give it to their athletes. They want to treat it as a sort of dietary supplement,” says Morgan.

Studies show that napping between 1pm and 4pm can benefit physical and cognitive performance as well as mood. “You consolidate memories, for sure. Your reaction times might improve and there may be some improvement in terms of coordinated performance,” says Morgan.

A study co-authored by Morgan found that elite athletes, who train up to 17 hours per week, fall asleep faster than non-athletes, despite reporting the same levels of sleepiness. Snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan, ultramarathon runner Camille Herron and premier league footballers at Real Madrid have all incorporated napping into their daily routines.
Should napping be part of our daily routine?

Given these health benefits, should we all start having a daily nap?

Experts say it is important that napping doesn’t become a substitute for getting a good night’s sleep.

“Napping is usually a sign that you’re not getting sufficient sleep,” says Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at the University of Oxford. If you feel that you frequently need a daytime nap, it’s important to ask yourself whether you are compensating for a sleep problem or a lifestyle choice preventing you from getting enough sleep at night, says Espie. “The main thing we should be trying to do is to protect nighttime sleep. We can’t just graze on sleep like some animals do.”

Some nesting penguins, for example, nap more than 10,000 times a day for an average of four seconds at a time.

Naps lasting 15 to 20 minutes don’t allow people to fall into deep sleep. This is when the body repairs and regrows tissues, builds muscle and strengthens the immune system and is important for the consolidation of long-term memory and processing newly acquired information.

“Sleep is nature’s medicine,” says Espie. “We’re highly evolved and we need a lot of brain power. That’s why we need a lot of sleep at night.”

People who struggle to get enough sleep at night, such as parents of young children or shift workers, “will probably benefit from a period of disciplined sleep during the day,” says Morgan.

But not everyone is able to drift off to sleep quickly, he adds. “Many people don’t nap because they don’t find it easy to,” he says.

“Napping is a bit like treating sleep as an on-demand resource and for the people who can nap, it works,” says Morgan. But that doesn’t mean we should all nap. “That would be like saying that it’s beneficial to write with your left hand.”How long should you nap for?

Timing is key for the perfect power nap.

If you are going to have a nap, make sure you do it in the mid-afternoon and don’t allow it to go on for longer than 20 minutes, says Morgan.

“Your body is going to be more accommodating of daytime sleep” between 2pm and 4pm as this is when there is a dip in the circadian rhythm and our body temperature drops, explains Morgan.

If you try to nap in the morning your body temperature is still rising, meaning you feel more alert, he says. If you leave it too late in the day, you will struggle to fall asleep at night.

If you nap for more than 20 minutes, you are likely to wake up feeling groggy and disoriented, known technically as sleep inertia, says Espie. “This is obviously counterproductive as you will struggle to get going afterwards,” says Espie.

You might also like:

• When the going gets tough, have a nap
• Why do some people feel tired all the time?
• Is it only humans that dream?

Sleep inertia relates to the depth of sleep and after 30 minutes you are drifting into slow wave sleep, also known as deep sleep, which is difficult to wake up from, says Morgan.

If you are going to start having naps, it is important to keep them brief and make them part of your lifestyle, like the tradition of the siesta in Spain, says Espie.

“Naps are common in many cultures in Mediterranean climates. But we do need to recognise that one effect of that is that people living there fall asleep much later and don’t fall asleep as easily because they’ve had a nap,” he says.

“Napping is not a choice, it’s a habit,” says Espie. “Once you get into the habit, your brain helps you stick with it.”

Source

The 10 months of clashes between the Sudanese military, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary group commanded by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has decimated vast swaths of the northeastern Africa country.

The conflict erupted last April in the capital, Khartoum, and quickly spread to other areas of the country, after months of simmering tensions between the two forces.

World Food Program said that some 18 million people across Sudan currently face acute hunger, with the most desperate trapped behind the front lines of the conflict.

The hotspots include Khartoum, the western Darfur region, and the provinces of Kordofan and Gezira — areas where roadblocks, taxation demands and security threats endanger supplies.

“Life-saving assistance is not reaching those who need it the most, and we are already receiving reports of people dying of starvation,” said Eddie Rowe, WFP’s director for Sudan.

The United Nations says at least 12,000 people have been killed in the conflict, although local doctors groups say the true toll is far higher. Over 10.7 million people have been displaced, according to the U.N. migration agency.

Dagalo’s paramilitary forces appear to have had the upper hand in the conflict over the past three months, with their fighters advancing to the east and north across Sudan’s central belt. Both sides have been accused of war crimes by rights groups.

Regional partners in Africa have been trying to mediate an end the conflict, along with Saudi Arabia and the United States, which facilitated several rounds of unsuccessful, indirect talks between the warring parties. Burhan and Dagalo are yet to meet in person since the conflict began.

Source

The report, published this week, found that the rate of preterm births — those before 39 to 40 weeks of gestation — rose 12% between 2014 and 2022, from 7.74% to 8.67%.

The increase was relatively consistent across the board, regardless of age or race, although Black and Hispanic mothers were more likely to give birth early than White people. Older mothers are also generally more likely to deliver early than mothers of a younger age.

Babies born prematurely can have short-term health issues like problems fighting off infection or breathing and stomach issues because they haven’t fully developed and will need to stay in the hospital longer. In the long-term, premature babies may develop asthma, dental issues, hearing loss, stomach problems and concerns like intellectual and developmental delays, according to the March of Dimes. Pregnant people can also develop health problems if they deliver early.

The CDC researchers looked at data from birth certificates that recorded single births registered in the United States from 2014 to 2022.

However, they did not speculate about what might be driving this trend. In general, doctors don’t really know why some people give birth earlier than their due date, although some conditions and factors seem to raise the risk.

“I really wish we did know. I think the increase is pretty striking,” said Dr. Kaitlyn Stanhope, an assistant professor at Emory University whose research focuses on the effects of stress on women’s health and pregnancy. “It’s a trend that’s been happening for a long time. The study goes to 2014, but preterm births have been going up in the US for a lot longer than that.”

Stanhope, who wasn’t involved with the new research, said that the trend of people having children later in life could have an impact on the numbers, as could the increase in the number of people having children through IVF, both factors that can be associated with a higher risk of preterm birth. But Stanhope doesn’t think that fully explains what’s going on.

It could be something environmental, she said, since an increase across race and age would involve something that everyone is experiencing. This may include exposure to particle pollution, which other studies have shown can increase preterm births.

Psychosocial stressors such as chronic stress, anxiety, lack of support, unstable housing and poor nutrition can also increase a person’s risk that they will give birth early.

“It’s certainly something that is multifactorial,” said Dr. Ellie Ragsdale, a specialist in ob/gyn-Maternal and Fetal Medicine at University Hospitals in Cleveland, who wasn’t involved with the CDC report. “My initial reaction to the study is that preterm birth rates continue to rise in this country because Americans globally, as a whole, are getting sicker.”

A growing number of people have obesity, Ragsdale noted, and that can lead to health problems that can increase the risk for preterm births. More than 1 in 4 women in the US is overweight, and more than 2 in 5 adults — 42.4% of the US population – have obesity, according to the National Institutes of Health. People with obesity are more likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes and other conditions such as preeclampsia that can prompt early delivery.

Dr. Manisha Gandhi, chair of the Committee on Clinical Practice Guidelines-Obstetrics for the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, does not think the trend is related to doctors inducing early. The medical guidelines strongly discourage the practice and those numbers have been declining over the years, she said. Gandhi also doesn’t think that it is due to some biological change that would shorten the length of time people are pregnant.

Rather, she says, the Covid-19 pandemic may have affected the rate.

People infected with Covid faced a higher risk of an early delivery, studies show. Many also put off medical appointments during the pandemic, and that can affect their overall health.

To lower the odds of early birth, Gandhi said, it is important for people to make their health a priority before they get pregnant.

“Pregnancy is not a time to start losing weight, controlling blood pressure or working on your diabetes,” she said. “Ideally, we will have these things in order before we get pregnant, because there’s not enough time to optimize our health once you’re already pregnant.”

Source

It’s the state’s first known outbreak of the fungus, called Candida auris, according to Seattle and King County health officials, though one locally acquired case was detected there in July.

The cluster comes as Candida auris continues to spread in the U.S.: Case numbers have risen every year since 2016.

The pathogen is resistant to some common antifungal medications, and it tends to infect people with weakened immune systems. It’s often detected among hospital patients who use catheters, breathing tubes or feeding tubes.

All four people in Washington who tested positive were patients at Kindred Hospital Seattle First Hill, a long-term acute care hospital. None have died, the public health department for Seattle and King County told NBC News.

The department announced Tuesday that it was notified of the first case on Jan. 10. The patient had recently been admitted to Kindred Hospital and was tested for Candida auris through a routine screening program that aims to identify infections before symptoms develop.

Two more cases were identified on Jan. 22, followed by a fourth on Friday, the department said. Those three patients had tested negative for Candida auris when they were admitted, suggesting they contracted the fungus at the hospital.

The Seattle and King County health department said one patient developed an infection, which means the fungus entered a part of the body where it would most likely cause symptoms (such as the bloodstream, the ears or an open wound).

The others were colonized with Candida auris — a term used for situations in which people carry the fungus on their bodies and could spread it to others but don’t necessarily get sick from it. People colonized with Candida auris are still at risk of developing infections.

Candida auris was first identified in Japan in 2009. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requested in 2016 that U.S. laboratories report it, and a review of records subsequently identified cases dating to 2013.

Since reporting began, the sharpest increase came from 2020 to 2021, when the number of Candida auris cases rose 94%.

As of December 2022, the fungus had been detected in 36 states. In total, the CDC recorded more than 5,600 Candida auris infections from 2013 to 2022, while more than 13,000 others identified through screenings didn’t have signs of infection.

The CDC attributes Candida auris’ rise to increased screening and poor infection control and prevention practices in health care facilities — a challenge most likely made worse by staffing shortages and lengthy patient stays during the Covid pandemic.

“It will reach into every corner of the country for sure,” said Dr. Peter Pappas, a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “The question is going to be how well can we control it?”

Around 90% of Candida auris strains in the U.S. are resistant to the medication most commonly used to treat other fungal infections. Most strains of Candida auris can be treated with drugs from one of the three main classes of antifungal medicines, but some are resistant to all three.

According to the Seattle and King County health department, Washington’s first case was in a Pierce County resident who had been admitted to a hospital there, then transferred to Kindred Hospital Seattle First Hill.

ScionHealth, which owns Kindred Hospital, didn’t provide comment in time for publication.

Kindred is the only facility in Washington that screens all new admitted patients for Candida auris — part of a state-led program launched in 2022. The tests involve swabbing the armpits and the groin, which are oily parts of skin that the fungus likes to colonize.

“This is the first time we’ve been able to identify multiple cases in one setting thanks to the screening program. But it’s difficult to say to what extent C. auris is circulating,” said Sharon Bogan, a spokesperson for the Seattle and King County health department.

Pappas said the four cases could be a sign that C. auris is spreading more widely in the Seattle area.

“By the time it shows up in a hospital, you know it’s been in the community for quite some time,” he said. “It’s just unclear how long that would be.”

Pappas added that most of the time, it’s easy to distinguish an infection from colonization, though “there are gray areas.”

“Those with invasive infections have infections that just have to be treated. Otherwise, the consequences could be pretty, pretty dramatic,” he said.

The mortality rate of a severe Candida auris infection in the U.S. is 30% to 60%, but healthy people usually don’t get infected.

Dr. Arturo Casadevall, the chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said people should actually be reassured when they hear of new cases picked up by active surveillance in their states.

“In a way, it’s disheartening to know that it’s there. But can you imagine if you didn’t have surveillance?” he said.

He added that “most people shouldn’t have to worry about getting it just because it’s in the community.”

People can get Candida auris through direct contact with a person carrying the fungus or by touching surfaces or objects that have been contaminated with it. Studies have shown that the fungus can live on surfaces for at least two weeks.

“Once this stuff gets into a hospital, it’s kind of hard to get it out,” Casadevall said.

Source

Neuralink says its goal is to help people living with debilitating conditions, including paralysis, communicate and control external devices with their thoughts.

The patient who received the implant is “recovering well,” Musk said in a post on X Tuesday.

Musk’s company is not alone in developing this type of technology. In recent years, research teams from across the globe have announced early but promising studies of brain-machine interface devices.

Here’s what else to know about Neuralink.

Neuralink’s implant

Neuralink was founded in 2016 by Musk and a team of scientists and engineers. The company says its mission is to “create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs,” according to its website.

The company says its device can interpret neural activity so a person can operate a computer or smartphone by simply thinking.

People paralyzed from a stroke, a traumatic brain injury or a spinal cord injury could see the benefits, the company says.

“This would be a major game changer if it could be proven to be safe and effective,” Dr. Leah Croll, a neurologist and assistant professor at Temple University, told ABC News.

Human trials after animal testing

The FDA approved Neuralink for human trials in May after years of testing on animals.

The company has previously demonstrated the ability of the implant to stimulate movement in pigs and monkeys, even demonstrating a monkey with a brain chip playing a video game.

Musk said the first human users will be those who lost the use of their limbs.

“Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer, that is the goal,” Musk said.

Science fiction into reality

Neuralink’s engineers aren’t the only ones exploring this emerging science.

Last year, Swiss researchers said they combined artificial intelligence and brain and spine implants to help a man paralyzed in a motorcycle accident walk again.

And a woman who had lost her voice to paralysis was able to have a conversation with her husband again, with the help of a mind-controlled avatar, the Swiss researchers said.

“I really do think that in my lifetime as a physician I’ll be able to use this type of technology to help my patients and I cannot wait for that day to come,” Croll said after Musk’s announcement Tuesday.

Source

Participants in the study recorded their mood, energy levels, sleep, and perceived sleep quality daily using electronic diaries. The study, published in the journal Neurology, involved 477 participants of varying ages and genders.

The findings revealed that participants who reported lower sleep quality were 22% more likely to experience a migraine attack the following morning. Interestingly, there was no significant connection between mood issues like anxiety or depression and migraine risk.

The study also highlighted the importance of circadian rhythms in migraine, with disruptions potentially contributing to headache patterns. Experts believe that understanding these patterns can aid in prevention and management strategies for individuals with migraines.

Dr. Mark Burish, a migraine specialist, emphasized the role of circadian rhythms in headache prevention and suggested aligning daily behaviors with individual circadian rhythms to reduce headache frequency.

Dr. Joey Gee, another neurologist, stressed the significance of maintaining good sleep hygiene, especially for individuals with migraine. He noted that encouraging patients to improve their sleep behavior could help in managing headache disorders effectively.