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Bits of inactive bird flu virus have been discovered in samples of pasteurized milk from across the United States, health officials said Tuesday, although they stressed the viral fragments don’t threaten humans. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration did note that testing suggests that bird flu has likely infected far more dairy cows than officials realized. Still, “to date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the agency stressed in a statement updating the investigation. Over the last month, a bird flu virus known as H5N1 has been detected in dairy herds in nine states. The virus is also known to have infected one farmworker, whose sole symptom was pink eye. The viral fragments pose little risk to consumers who drink milk, David O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the New York Times. “The risk of getting infected from milk that has viral fragments in it should be nil,” he explained. “The genetic material can’t replicate on its own.” FDA officials didn’t elaborate on how many milk samples had tested positive or exactly where the samples came from, the Times reported. If the fragments surfaced in samples throughout the commercial milk supply, it would suggest far more cows have been infected than believed, experts said. “The problem in dairy cows might be much… read on > read on >

Anne Helms is one busy mom, constantly juggling the demands of working from home with parenting two young children. Despite that whirl of activity, Helms says she often feels isolated and lonely. “I work from home full time and I actually have a job where I’m on camera a lot and I’m Zoom calling people very often,” Helms, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, said in a news release. “However, you don’t get the small talk, so you don’t get the, ‘How are your children? How’s it going?’ And you don’t get a lot of genuine answers when you do ask, ‘How is it going?’” Helms added. “There are some days where the most chit-chat or idle talk that I get is with my dog because I work alone,” she said. Helms isn’t the only parent to struggle with busy loneliness, according to a new national survey from Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center. A broad majority of parents experience isolation, loneliness and burnout as a result of the demands of parenthood, the survey reveals: About two-thirds of parents (66%) said the demands of parenthood sometimes or frequently feel isolating and lonely Nearly as many, 62%, feel burned out by their responsibilities as a parent Nearly two in five (38%) feel they have no one to support them in their parenting About four in five (79%)… read on > read on >

A budget-busting 3.6 million Medicare recipients could now be eligible for coverage of the weight-loss drug Wegovy, a new KFF analysis says. That’s because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of Wegovy (semaglutide) to reduce the risk of heart attacks and stroke in certain patients, the study says. The FDA’s ruling potentially allows Wegovy prescription coverage for more than a quarter of 13.7 million Medicare patients who’ve been diagnosed with obesity or excess weight, KFF says. Those 3.6 million people — about 7% of all beneficiaries — have established heart disease as well as excess weight, and thus could be eligible for coverage of Wegovy. However, KFF notes that among this group 1.9 million also have diabetes and therefore are already eligible for coverage of weight-loss drugs like Wegovy or Zepbound. “Although Wegovy already had FDA approval as an anti-obesity medication, Medicare is prohibited by law from covering drugs when prescribed for obesity,” KFF said in a news release. How the FDA’s change affects Medicare spending will depend in part on how many Part D plans add coverage for Wegovy, and the extent to which plans will restrict coverage, researchers said. Assuming just 10% of eligible Medicare patients use Wegovy in a given year, and assuming a 50% rebate on the list price, the program would still incur nearly $3 billion… read on > read on >

“Dream it, be it” might sound like a cliche, but a new study says there’s something to the notion. Teenagers who set ambitious goals for themselves tend to be more successful as young adults, researchers reported recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Teens who set higher educational and career goals “tended to have higher educational attainment, income, occupational creativity, occupational prestige and job complexity after 12 years,” said researcher Rodica Damian, an associate professor of psychology with the University of Houston. That doesn’t mean that a person’s goals won’t change, researchers said. Some dreams fall away, while other goals remain strong and new ones come to the fore. But setting early goals related to education and accomplishment appeared to consistently predict better income, and tweaks in these goals tended to predict having a challenging, higher-prestige career, results show. For the study, researchers tracked two national groups of Icelandic youth across 12 years, from their late teenage years into young adulthood. Researchers examined how life goals developed with age, and how the goals set by teenagers related to their accomplishments in education and career. “For educational attainment, the strongest effects were found for education goals. Both initial levels and slopes of education goals were positively associated with educational attainment in both samples,” Damian said. “This indicates that adolescents with higher education goals, and… read on > read on >

Many people with tough-to-treat depression may be trying psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, as an alternative to antidepressants. Thinking that it’s a “natural” drug, folks might assume it comes without side effects. That assumption would be wrong. People in a new study who took psilocybin often experienced headache, nausea, anxiety, dizziness and elevated blood pressure — side effects similar to those seen with regular antidepressants, according to a team from the University of Georgia in Athens (UGA). The good news: Such side effects were only temporary. It’s less clear if longer-term side effects might emerge with time, the researchers noted. The short-term side effects “are what we may expect from your traditional antidepressants because those medications work in a similar fashion to psilocybin. They both target serotonin receptors,” explained senior study author Dr. Joshua Caballero, an associate professor in UGA’s College of Pharmacy. “It’s very encouraging,” he added in a university news release, “because the studies we examined consist of just one or two doses per patient, and we’re finding that the beneficial effects of psilocybin may stay for months when treating depression.” Psilocybin was shunned by the medical community for decades because, at higher doses, it can have hallucinatory properties. But used under the guidance and supervision of a therapist, the drug is having a comeback as a new form of antidepressant. But… read on > read on >

Acne, psoriasis, eczema, vitiligo, alopecia: Any one of these common skin ailments can render a child vulnerable to stigma and bullying at school, new research confirms. “These chronic skin conditions can be tremendously life-altering, including shaping psychosocial development,” noted study corresponding author Dr. Amy Paller. She’s chair of dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “These painful experiences can shape a child’s personality into adulthood and erode self-confidence,” Paller added in a Northwestern news release. “Children may underestimate their abilities and worry about taking social risks. They don’t feel good enough, and this shame may affect them lifelong.” The new study of nearly 1,700 kids over the age of 7 was published April 24 in the journal JAMA Dermatology. Paller’s team used standard psychological scores measuring stigma, depression, anxiety and poor peer relationships among the children involved in the study. They found that nearly three-quarters (73%) experienced stigma from their skin condition that was severe enough to lower their quality of life. Most of the stigma and bullying they experienced occurred at school, and it could often be cruel. “Stigma, which is when something false and negative is attached to an individual, can have a profound effect on children’s and teens’ mental health,” Paller noted. “For example, a child with dark scales on the body can be called ‘dirty’ by other kids or… read on > read on >

Long-term daily use of aspirin has been known to prevent colon cancer, but up to now it’s been unclear why that is. Now, researchers think they understand how aspirin acts against colon cancer, a new study says. Aspirin appears to boost aspects of the body’s immune response against cancer cells, according to findings published April 22 in the journal Cancer. “Our study shows a complementary mechanism of cancer prevention or therapy with aspirin besides its classical drug mechanism involving inhibition of inflammation,” said lead researcher Dr. Marco Scarpa, a general surgeon with the University of Padova in Italy. For the study, researchers obtained tissue samples from 238 patients who underwent surgery for colon cancer between 2015 and 2019. Of those, about 12% were aspirin users. Tissue samples from aspirin users showed less cancer spread to the lymph nodes, and more aggressive activity of immune cells against tumors, the researchers said. In the lab, they discovered that exposing colon cancer cells to aspirin enhanced the ability of immune cells to alert each other to the presence of tumors. Specifically, immune cells started expressing more of a protein called CD80. In patients with rectal cancer, aspirin users had higher CD80 expression in healthy tissue, suggesting that aspirin enhances the ability of the immune system to seek out and destroy cancer cells, researchers said. The next step will be to… read on > read on >

Want to prevent a respiratory infection? A fingerful of Neosporin antibiotic swabbed inside your nose might help you fight off a range of invading respiratory viruses, a new study claims. Lab animals whose noses were treated using neomycin — the main ingredient in over-the-counter Neosporin ointment — mounted a robust immune defense against both the COVID virus and a highly virulent strain of influenza, researchers found. The same nasal approach also appeared to work in humans, this time with Neosporin itself. The ointment triggered a swift immune response from genes in the human nose that serve as a first line of defense against invading viruses, researchers reported April 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “This is an exciting finding, that a cheap over-the-counter antibiotic ointment can stimulate the human body to activate an antiviral response,” said Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology and dermatology at Yale School of Medicine, in New Haven, Conn. Neosporin contains neomycin, bacitracin and polymyxin B, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Medicine. The COVID-19 virus has infected more than 774 million people and killed nearly 7 million, researchers said in background notes. Meanwhile, flu viruses cause up to 5 million cases of severe disease and a half-million deaths annually. Against these threats, humans deploy treatments that are typically taken orally or intravenously, researchers said. These… read on > read on >

Many people dogged by depression are turning to the psilocybin found in “magic mushrooms” to ease the condition, and often reporting success. Now, new research suggests much of the credit for that success lies in the relationship between the patient and his or her therapist. It’s the magic of what researchers at Ohio State University (OSU) described as a trust-filled “therapeutic alliance.” In their study of psilocybin for depression, “what persisted the most was the connection between the therapeutic alliance and long-term outcomes, which indicates the importance of a strong relationship,” said lead researcher Adam Levin. He’s a psychiatry and behavioral health resident at OSU’s college of medicine. The findings are based on a re-analysis of data from a 2021 study involving 24 adults with depression. All received two doses of psilocybin plus 11 hours of psychotherapy. The participants also completed a questionnaire that assessed the strength of the therapist-participant relationship. They filled out this therapeutic alliance checklist three times: After eight hours of “preparation therapy” prior to getting the psilocybin, and then one week after each drug treatment. The patient-therapist “alliance score” tended to rise over time, and it correlated with what the researchers called “acute mystical and/or psychologically insightful experiences from the drug treatment.” The stronger these mystical experiences, the better the results when it came to lowered depression — at least over… read on > read on >

Active military service appears to increase a woman’s risk of having a low birthweight baby, a new review finds. Nearly two-thirds of studies (63%) conclude that women on active service could be at higher risk of having a baby with low birth weight, researchers reported April 22 in the journal BMJ Military Health. However, there was no clear evidence of an increased risk of stillbirth or premature birth among military women. “This review highlights a need for more female-specific research in armed forces, beyond the U.S. military setting, to inform military maternity pathways and policies in ways that safeguard mothers and their babies,” concluded the research team led by Dr. Kirsten Morris, with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the U.K. Increasing evidence has shown that stress during pregnancy is associated with birth complications, such as preterm delivery and low birth weight, researchers said in background notes. To assess the evidence, researchers pooled data from 21 studies involving more than 650,000 women in the U.S. military, all published between 1979 and 2023. Four out of five studies that compared active personnel to a control group — usually the wives of male soldiers — indicated an increased risk of low birthweight for the newborns of female service members, researchers said. The study shows the need for more research into the effects of military… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Fragments of Bird Flu Virus Found in U.S. Milk Supply

There’s an ‘Epidemic’ of Loneliness Among U.S. Parents, Poll Finds

New Rules Mean 3.6 Million Americans Could Get Wegovy Via Medicare, Costing Billions

‘Dream It, Be It?’ Study Finds Teens Who Focus on Life Goals Often Succeed

Trying ‘Magic Mushroom’ Drug to Ease Depression? It Has Side Effects

Kids With Common Skin Conditions Face Stigma, Bullying

Science Reveals How Aspirin Prevents Colon Cancer

Neosporin Ointment in the Nose Might Be Potent Antibiotic

Taking Psilocybin for Depression? Relationship With Therapist Is Key

Women in the Military at Risk for Low-Weight Babies