Sarah Okonkwo
325 stories · Page 8 of 14
Lupus Hits Nine Women for Every Man, and the Reason May Be Hiding in DNA Both Sexes Share
Scientists sequenced more than 1.25 million immune cells and found over 1,000 genetic switches set differently in men and women, with the female side tuned for stronger inflammation. It may help explain why lupus hits nine women for every man.
Nutrition & FoodCut the Fiber and Your Gut Bacteria Start Eating Your Own Gut Lining
Princeton isotope tracing found that when fiber runs short, gut bacteria strip protein off the mucus wall and churn out the same toxins that pile up in failing kidneys. Feed them whole plants and the chemistry flips.
Brain & AgingBanned in 1979, 'Legacy' PCBs Are Now Tied to Shorter Telomeres in Children
Dioxin-like PCBs left American factories decades ago and never left children's bodies. New research traces how they may erode the protective caps on kids' chromosomes, and may help explain lower cognitive scores.
Brain & AgingThe Marmoset Under Salk's Claim That Brain Waves Build the Reality You See
A Salk lab says the electrical waves rolling across your cortex are a generative engine that builds what you see. The catch: the splashy new paper is a review, and the experiments under it are marmosets squinting at faint dots.
Metabolic & WeightHow 244 People Cut 357 Calories a Day Without Eating Less Food
The people on the low-fat vegan diet didn't count calories or shrink portions. They ate the same weight of food and took in hundreds fewer calories a day. The group that ran the trial also has a stake in what you conclude.
InvestigationsCanada Went Looking for the Forever Chemicals Nobody Tracks and Found a Dozen of Them in Women's Blood
Scientists went hunting for the replacement and precursor PFAS almost nobody measures. In Canadian women's blood they found a dozen of them, riding alongside the 'banned' legacy chemicals that still turn up in nearly everyone.
InvestigationsA JAMA Essay Says the Doctor Makes Your Care Worse. Three of Its Four Authors Sell the AI.
The Viewpoint predicts autonomous AI will run much of primary care by 2030, and that adding a human doctor can make the care worse. Its evidence is trained actors chatting over text, and three of its four authors sell or bankroll the AI.
Nutrition & FoodThousands of Genes, 20 Volunteers, No Control Group: The Viral Orange Juice Study
The juice came from a citrus-growers' group, the study had no comparison drink, and 'thousands of genes' rests on 20 people, arriving the same summer the FDA loosened what counts as orange juice.
Drugs & FDATakeda Fixed the Narcolepsy Drug That Was Poisoning Livers. Now You Can't Buy It.
Oveporexton is the first drug to replace the orexin signal narcolepsy destroys, instead of stimulating around a tired brain. At the higher dose it leaves 60 percent of patients newly insomniac, and it still has to clear DEA scheduling before it reaches a pharmacy shelf.
Autoimmune & InflammationA Lung Atlas Found 1,000 Autoimmune-Risk Genes That Blood Studies Missed
For two decades, geneticists mapped thousands of autoimmune-risk variants that sat silent in blood cells. A 1.1-million-cell lung atlas shows the effects switch on only in immune cells lodged in tissue.
Brain & AgingAny Amount of Midlife Movement Tracked With Slower Brain Decline, Most Clearly in Mexican American Adults
In a San Antonio cohort followed since 1979, any physical activity in midlife tracked with slower brain decline, and the link showed up most clearly in the Mexican American adults Alzheimer's research keeps leaving out.
Brain & AgingThe Craving Brake Nobody Mapped: How GLP-1 Drugs Quiet Cravings From the Lateral Septum
The anti-craving effect pushing people to use a diabetes shot off-label against drinking traces to a brain region built to inhibit, not to reward, and the human evidence is still just two small trials deep.
Metabolic & WeightA Study Blames the Rising Atmosphere for Your Blood Chemistry. Your Own Breath Overwhelms It.
Blood bicarbonate climbed about 7 percent since 1999, and two researchers blame the rising atmosphere. But convert that 51 ppm into the pressure that reaches your lungs and it moves your blood by about 0.04 millimeters of mercury, roughly a thousand times too small to matter.
Infectious DiseaseFor Thirty Years, Doctors Here Were Taught North Carolina Had No Lyme. The Ticks Disagree.
Nearly 40 percent of the adult blacklegged ticks sampled in one western North Carolina town carried the Lyme bacterium, in a state where doctors were trained for thirty years that the disease barely exists.
Metabolic & WeightA Brain Protein Made Female Mice Overeat Fat, and the $441,000 Obesity Drug Worked Weakest on Them
Dietary fat switches on an appetite-protecting brain protein in male mice but not females. Delete it and the females overeat fat, gain more weight, and setmelanotide, the $441,000-a-year MC4R obesity drug, loses much of its appetite-suppressing punch on them.
Infectious DiseaseYour Antibodies Are Still Fighting the 2020 Virus
For two years the message was that another ancestral booster would keep pace with the virus. The immunology says the opposite can happen: repeated shots against the 2020 strain can lock your antibodies onto a version of SARS-CoV-2 that stopped circulating, and in 2023 the WHO named immune imprinting
Infectious DiseaseWarmer, Saltier, Fed on Sewage: Why a Flesh-Eating Bacterium Is Getting Meaner as It Moves North
Vibrio vulnificus kills roughly one in five people it infects, and its northern edge has climbed about 30 miles a year since 1998. The big paper this week reached instead for grief and eco-anxiety.
Metabolic & WeightThe Peptide Boom Hides One Divide: Human Trials on a Few, Rodent Data and Case Reports on the Rest
Semaglutide and tirzepatide erased up to 22 percent of body weight in trials with thousands of patients. The research-only peptides sold beside them, like BPC-157, have not completed a single published human efficacy trial. A popular 2026 guide lists them as equals.
Nutrition & FoodFor Forty Years They Said Skim the Fat. This Trial Fed People Full-Fat Dairy and the Cholesterol Held.
In a 74-adult trial, the group assigned three servings of full-fat dairy a day for twelve weeks held steady on weight, body fat, cholesterol and insulin resistance, and their blood pressure improved, against advice the guidelines have pushed since 1980.
Autoimmune & InflammationWhy Anti-TNF Keeps Failing So Many Crohn's Patients: The Drug Never Reached the Cell Holding the Disease Open
Anti-TNF biologics have muzzled the immune system for 25 years, and up to 46 percent of Crohn's patients still fail them. A single-cell atlas points at the structural cells of the gut wall, epigenetically rewired into a state the drugs were never built to reach.
InvestigationsThe Checklist Drove ICU Infections to Zero. The Federal Ethics Office Halted the Study.
A five-step checklist cut central-line infections 66 percent and was credited with 1,500 lives saved in Michigan ICUs. Then the federal office that guards research ethics ordered it halted, because the hospitals had never run it past an institutional review board.
Infectious DiseaseA Sauna Floods Your Blood With Immune Cells. It's a Flush, Not a Boost.
Fifty-one Finns sat in a 73°C sauna for half an hour, and every white blood cell type poured into their blood. Half an hour later the neutrophils and lymphocytes were back to baseline, and the immune system's chemical alarm had barely rung.
Brain & AgingThey Measured the Forever Chemicals in the Umbilical Cord Itself. The Babies With the Most Scored Lower at Two.
Scientists skipped the usual stand-in and measured the forever chemicals in the umbilical cord blood itself. By age two, the babies carrying more of them scored lower on communication and motor development, and the companies that made these chemicals knew the risk for decades.
Brain & AgingThe Stress Hormone Was Already High Before Daily Cannabis Users Woke Up
Oregon State measured the morning stress hormone in 39 daily users and 43 non-users. The people reaching for cannabis to unwind started every day with cortisol already running higher, and it tracked with the cannabis-related consequences they reported.