A new blood test approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration can predict imminent preeclampsia, helping pregnant women who are at risk of this severe and sometimes deadly form of high blood pressure. The test can identify with 96% accuracy which women with sometimes-vague symptoms will develop preeclampsia within the following two weeks, The New York Times reported this week. “It’s groundbreaking. It’s revolutionary,” Dr. Douglas Woelkers, a professor of maternal-fetal medicine at the University of California, San Diego, said of the test. “It’s the first step forward in preeclampsia diagnostics since 1900, when the condition was first defined,” Woelkers added in the news report. The blood test was created by Thermo Fisher Scientific. It is meant for women in the 23rd to 35th weeks of pregnancy. Those who don’t test positive can be safely discharged from the hospital, while two-thirds of those with a positive result will advance to severe preeclampsia. Women who are positive may need to deliver their babies early. “We don’t have a therapy that reverses or cures preeclampsia other than delivery of the baby, which is more like a last resort,” Woelkers said in the news report. Black women are particularly at risk of preeclampsia, with much higher rates than white women. They are also more likely to experience kidney damage, death and to lose their babies, the Times…  read on >  read on >

The artificial sweetener aspartame is in the hot seat once more. Two separate committees made up of health experts from around the world will soon offer advice on consuming aspartame, a popular sugar substitute that is added to sodas, cough drops, desserts and gum. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is analyzing whether the ingredient is a carcinogen. Meanwhile, the WHO’s Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives will offer guidance on an acceptable daily intake of aspartame. Both are expected to issue their reports on July 14, according to leaked WHO documents, CNN reported. Aspartame continues to have approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a safe product. Not only that, but U.S. health officials are concerned that doing simultaneous, potentially conflicting, reviews will “seriously undermine” confidence in the scientific process and “inflame the current climate of public skepticism about the validity of science and scientific process,” according to a letter sent to the WHO last summer by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The WHO’s cancer research committee considers a broad range of items carcinogens, including mobile devices, Qi Sun, an associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told CNN. For aspartame to be ruled a carcinogen “boils down to what kind of evidence we have,” he added.…  read on >  read on >

Nearly 4 out of 10 girls and young women aren’t getting enough iron and they may have their periods to blame, a new U.S. study shows. Menstrual bleeding, especially when heavy, is a major risk factor for iron deficiency and iron-deficiency anemia, the researchers explained. There are health consequences associated with being low in iron, noted study author Dr. Angela Weyand, a pediatrician at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor. “Iron is important in the making of red blood cells, but also has multiple roles outside of this. We know that iron deficiency can cause many issues including problems with sleep, cognition, energy level and mood,” she said. In addition to blood loss from menstruation, many young women may not be getting enough iron in their diet, especially vegans and vegetarians. “Studies have shown that dietary iron intake in the U.S. has dropped over the past decade,” she said. “Meat, fish and poultry are high in heme iron, which is the most easily absorbed, but non-heme iron can be found in many fruits, vegetables and nuts.” For the new study, Weyand and her colleagues looked at data on the iron status of nearly 3,500 females aged 12 to 21 who were part of the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) in 2003 to 2010 and 2015 to 2020. Overall, just…  read on >  read on >

Coffee kickstarts many a sleepyhead’s day, but a new study argues that it’s not the caffeine alone that provides the morning wake-up. People who took a basic caffeine pill did not experience the same sort of brain boost they did from sipping a cup of coffee, according to brain scans. Caffeine alone does activate some regions of the brain associated with readiness to tackle tasks, the researchers said. But the act of drinking coffee produced a more comprehensive response in the brain, the results showed. “Taking into account that some of the effects that we found were reproduced by caffeine, we could expect other caffeinated drinks to share some of the effects,” said lead researcher Maria Picó-Pérez, a postdoctoral researcher with Jaume I University in Spain. “However, others were specific for coffee drinking, driven by factors such as the particular smell and taste of the drink, or the psychological expectation associated with consuming that drink.” For the study, researchers recruited a group of people who typically drink at least one cup of coffee daily. They asked these folks to refrain from eating or drinking caffeinated beverages for at least three hours before going into the lab. Researchers then performed two brief functional MRI (fMRI) scans, one before and another a half-hour after the participant took either a caffeine pill or drank a cup of coffee.…  read on >  read on >

Menopause, a natural stage in a woman’s life, brings a host of changes and challenges. One aspect that is crucial to consider is nutrition. Eating the right foods and avoiding others can help you navigate this change with vitality and optimal health. This article will discuss the key foods to eat and those to avoid so you can thrive during menopause and beyond. Diet and menopause During menopause, which is the end of a woman’s menstrual cycles, estrogen levels decrease and may lead to health issues. Rate of bone loss speeds up, increasing your risk of low bone density, osteopenia and osteoporosis, according to the Iowa Clinic. There’s also a higher chance of having a heart attack, stroke or other heart-related issues. Caffeine, sugar, salt, cigarettes and alcohol exacerbate these risks. Body composition also changes during menopause; your lean body mass decreases while your percentage of fat mass increases by 1.7% per year, according to a 2021 article in Nutrition in Menopausal Women: A Narrative Review, by Dr. Poli Mara Spritzer, of Hospital de Clinicas de Porto Alegre in Brazil, and colleagues. Menopause diet Fortunately, you’ll find help from a variety of common foods, from veggies to lean meats. Foods to eat during menopause For healthy bones, eat foods containing vitamin D and calcium: Broccoli Asparagus Cauliflower Brussels sprouts Sage Sesame seeds Dried figs Oily…  read on >  read on >

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the drug Elevidys, the first gene therapy for the treatment of children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The groundbreaking treatment will not be cheap: Drugmaker Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. said it would charge $3.2 million for the one-time IV treatment, the Associated Press reported. Like most medicines in the United States, the cost would be mostly paid by insurers. The drug will be used to treat children ages 4 through 5 who have a mutation in the DMD gene. “Today’s approval addresses an urgent unmet medical need and is an important advancement in the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a devastating condition with limited treatment options, that leads to a progressive deterioration of an individual’s health over time,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in an agency news release. “The approval of Elevidys is a watershed moment for the treatment of Duchenne. Elevidys is the first and only gene therapy approved for Duchenne, and this approval brings us closer to our goal of bringing forward a treatment that provides the potential to alter the trajectory of this degenerative disease,” Sarepta President and CEO Doug Ingram said in a company statement. Advocates welcomed the approval. “Today’s decision marks an important moment in gene therapy for patients living with Duchenne,” said…  read on >  read on >

(HealthDay News) – Americans could soon be eating “lab-grown” chicken at upscale restaurants after the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved products made by two companies on Wednesday. Upside Foods and Good Meat, both based in California, will be the first in the United States to sell meat that’s cultivated in a laboratory rather than from slaughtered animals. The meat is still actually meat, coming from animal cells, fertilized eggs or stored cells. “Instead of all of that land and all of that water that’s used to feed all of these animals that are slaughtered, we can do it in a different way,” Josh Tetrick, co-founder and chief executive of Eat Just, which operates Good Meat, told the Associated Press. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had already determined the products were safe to eat, the AP reported. Manufacturing company Joinn Biologics was given the go-ahead to make products, which will initially be sold at the restaurant Bar Crenn in San Francisco in the case of Upside products, and at restaurant in Washington, D.C., run by chef Jose Andrés in the case of Good Meat. Singapore was the first country to begin allowing cultivated meat, the AP reported. The meat is grown in steel tanks, coming out in large sheets and then cut into expected shapes. The Upside chicken looks slightly paler, but has the same…  read on >  read on >

Consuming omega-3 fatty acids like flaxseed oil and walnuts may help slow the decline in physical function related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), new research suggests. ALS (formerly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. People with ALS lose the ability to initiate and control muscle movement over time. The average life span after diagnosis is two to five years. A slower decline in symptoms may also slightly extend survival for people with ALS, the researchers noted. The new study findings were published online June 21 in the journal Neurology. “The link our study found between diet and ALS is intriguing and suggests, but does not prove, that people with ALS may benefit from incorporating more omega-3 fatty acids into their diet,” said Dr. Kjetil Bjornevik, an assistant professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston. “It will now be important to conduct additional research looking specifically at the plant-based omega-3 fatty acid alpha-linolenic acid in people with ALS to further explore this possibility,” Bjornevik said in a journal news release. Besides flaxseed oil and walnuts, good sources of omega-3 fatty acids include canola oil and pumpkin seeds. Consuming more omega-6 fatty acid could also be beneficial, the investigators found. To study the link between…  read on >  read on >