A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to restore access to public health websites that were removed or modified in response to a Trump administration executive order on gender. The order, issued Feb. 11 by U.S. District Judge John Bates, grants a temporary restraining order requested by Doctors for America, a nonprofit group that sued the administration over the website removals. The affected sites, some of which have been online for decades, contain public health information on HIV prevention, youth health risks, fertility treatments and more. The ruling states that the two health agencies removed the sites without explanation and likely violated federal law. “By removing long relied upon medical resources without explanation, it is likely that … each agency failed to ‘examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action,’ ” Bates wrote. He ordered the CDC and FDA to restore access by the day’s end Tuesday, a process that staff members were scrambling to complete. “It was a double waste for us because we took them offline, put some of them back, edited others and now are putting it back again,” a federal health official who wanted to remain anonymous told The Washington Post. The removed sites included: The CDC’s guidelines for HIV and PrEP, a medication…  read on >  read on >

More than 800,000 U.S. children have what’s called “high threshold” peanut allergy, meaning they can tolerate about half a peanut daily before symptoms arise. New research suggests that exposing these kids to tiny but gradually increasing levels of store-bought peanut butter might help ease the allergy for good.  “Our study results suggest a safe, inexpensive and effective pathway for allergists to treat children with peanut allergy who can already tolerate the equivalent of at least half a peanut, considered a high-threshold peanut allergy,”  said study lead author Dr. Scott Sicherer, chief of allergy and immunology at Mount Sinai in New York City. He believes the findings could have implications for food allergies in general. “Our findings open the gateway to personalized threshold-based treatments of food allergy,” Sicherer said in a Mount Sinai news release, adding that the approach could “be a game-changer for the majority of people with food allergies.” The new trial was funded by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and published Feb. 10 in NEJM Evidence. For some children and adults, even minuscule amounts of peanut can trigger severe reactions, including life-threatening anaphylaxis. These cases — in which the amount of exposure needed is under half a peanut — are deemed to be “low-threshold” allergies.   The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved treatments, such as an injected…  read on >  read on >

It’s long been known that certain complications of pregnancy can raise a woman’s risk for heart trouble years later. But new research shows that even the sisters of these women can be at higher heart risk — suggesting risks may be genetically shared within families. “It may be important to identify [all of] these women early to offer preventive treatment for pregnancy complications as well as lifestyle counseling and follow-up for cardiovascular disease risk,” study lead author Ängla Mantel said. She’s an associate professor in clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden. Conditions such as premature delivery and preeclampsia — spikes in blood pressure — are common but dangerous complications of pregnancy. And numerous studies have shown that experiencing these issues places a woman at higher risk of heart disease later in life. Mantel’s team wondered what the role of genetics might be in this predisposition. To find out, they looked at the medical records of more than 1.2 million Swedish women, all of who were free of heart disease when the study began.   Most had never had any complication of pregnancy, but the study also included nearly 166,000 women who did have a history of such issues, as well as about 61,000 of their sisters who had never had pregnancy complications. The team looked at medical records for a median 14…  read on >  read on >

Set, hut! Super Bowl Sunday is almost here. But it’s not just about big plays and bad calls, it’s also a sodium tsunami. On average, foods advertised during NFL games contain 40% of the daily recommended sodium intake, researchers reported recently in JAMA Network Open. “We proved what probably a lot of people have long suspected, and that is that foods advertised during NFL games … are frequently high in sodium and calories and fat content,” senior study author Dr. Paul Hauptman, dean of the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine and chief academic officer for Renown Health, told CNN. His team analyzed 10 NFL games from September to November 2023 and found that 10% of commercials featured food products. And the sodium content in those foods ranged from 220 mg to 1,872 mg — nearly half the recommended daily limit, CNN reported. The median was 910 mg, meaning half had more sodium, half had less. Fast food ranked No. 1 in sodium, researchers noted. Eating too much salt is linked to high blood pressure, heart failure and stroke. “Blood pressure is directly related to stroke, cardiovascular disease — even to death from cardiovascular disease and heart failure,” Dr. Stephen Juraschek told CNN. He’s a hypertension specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and associate professor of nutrition at Harvard Medical School…  read on >  read on >

The cholesterol that’s good for your heart health might be bad for your eye health, and vice versa, a new study says. “Good” HDL cholesterol appears to increase risk of glaucoma in people older than 55, researchers reported Feb. 4 in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. Conversely, “bad” LDL cholesterol might be associated with a lower risk of glaucoma, researchers report. “HDL cholesterol has been regarded as the ‘good cholesterol’ for seven decades. However, this study demonstrates that high levels of HDL cholesterol are not consistently associated with a favorable prognostic outcome,” concluded the research team led by senior investigator Zhenzhen Liu, an associate professor with the Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdon, China. LDL cholesterol contributes to plaque build-up in the arteries, which can eventually lead to heart disease, heart attack or stroke, according to the American Heart Association. On the other hand, HDL cholesterol helps heart health by carrying some LDL cholesterol away from the arteries and back to the liver, where the LDL cholesterol is broken down and excreted, the AHA says. Abnormally high levels of fats in the bloodstream have previously been linked to eye conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, researchers said in background notes. But findings related to glaucoma have been inconsistent. Glaucoma causes fluid to build up within the eye, with the increasing pressure…  read on >  read on >

Drugs like blood thinners, cholesterol-lowering statins and blood pressure meds can protect the health and extend the lives of people with heart disease. But only if patients take the drugs — and many around the world aren’t, a new study says. Overall, fewer than half of heart patients from 17 countries who could benefit from these meds are taking them, researchers reported in a new study published Feb. 3 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. “Our research indicates that there continues to be substantial under-utilization of these medications with little improvement over time,” lead researcher Dr. Philip Joseph, a scientist at the Population Health Research Institute, a joint institute of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences in Canada, said in a news release. As a result, many people are likely dying earlier from heart disease or leading sicker lives than need be, researchers said. “Our findings suggest that current secondary prevention strategies continue to leave the majority of people with cardiovascular disease either untreated or undertreated and highlight the general lack of progress being made to increase the use of secondary cardiovascular prevention medications in most parts of the world,” Joseph said. For the study, researchers tracked more than 11,000 people diagnosed with heart disease, heart attack or stroke ranging in age from 30 to 70. Participants entered the study between 2003…  read on >  read on >

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Journavx, a new pain reliever without the risks of addiction or overdose linked to drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin. The new pill, developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals, is intended for short-term pain relief following surgery or injury, the Associated Press reported. While it provides a long-awaited alternative to opioids and over-the-counter painkillers like ibuprofen, research suggests its effectiveness is modest compared to standard opioid treatments. Unlike opioids, which bind to brain receptors to reduce pain but often lead to dependence and addiction, Journavx works differently. The medication blocks specific proteins that trigger pain signals before they reach the brain. “In trying to develop medicines that don’t have the addictive risks of opioid medicines, a key factor is working to block pain signaling before it gets to the brain,” Dr. David Altshuler, Vertex’s executive vice president and chief scientific officer, previously told the Associated Press. Studies of more than 870 patients who took Journavx after foot and abdominal surgery showed that the drug provided more relief than a placebo but was not more effective than a common opioid-acetaminophen combination pill. “It’s not a slam dunk on effectiveness,” Michael Schuh of the Mayo Clinic, a pharmacist who was not involved in the research, told the Associated Press. “But it is a slam dunk in that it’s a very different…  read on >  read on >