More American teenagers now use the weight-loss drug Wegovy, as doctors and families grow more comfortable with the treatment.  But experts say access is still limited, and more research on its long-term safety in teens is needed, NBC News reported. Prescriptions of Wegovy to teens rose 50% in 2024, according to Truveta, a health data company. The drug was prescribed to 14.8 of every 100,000 adolescents, up from 9.9 in 2023. Wegovy was approved in late 2022 for kids 12 and older who struggle with obesity. In the first three months of 2025, the rate rose again — to 17.3 prescriptions per 100,000 teens. Still, that’s tiny fraction of the U.S. teens who are living with obesity. “It’s promising that more young people are using these medications, but it’s still a very small percentage of patients with severe obesity that are getting access to them,” Dr. Cate Varney, an obesity medicine specialist at the University of Virginia Health System, told NBC News. “When lifestyle changes alone are insufficient, we need these additional tools.” Truveta reviewed the health records of 1.3 million 12- to 17-year-olds. The data included 30 U.S. health systems, with more than 900 hospitals and 20,000 clinics. The study looked only at Wegovy, not other GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic or Zepbound, which are not approved for teen weight loss. About 8 million U.S.…  read on >  read on >

More American teenagers now use the weight-loss drug Wegovy, as doctors and families grow more comfortable with the treatment.  But experts say access is still limited, and more research on its long-term safety in teens is needed, NBC News reported. Prescriptions of Wegovy to teens rose 50% in 2024, according to Truveta, a health data company. The drug was prescribed to 14.8 of every 100,000 adolescents, up from 9.9 in 2023. Wegovy was approved in late 2022 for kids 12 and older who struggle with obesity. In the first three months of 2025, the rate rose again — to 17.3 prescriptions per 100,000 teens. Still, that’s tiny fraction of the U.S. teens who are living with obesity. “It’s promising that more young people are using these medications, but it’s still a very small percentage of patients with severe obesity that are getting access to them,” Dr. Cate Varney, an obesity medicine specialist at the University of Virginia Health System, told NBC News. “When lifestyle changes alone are insufficient, we need these additional tools.” Truveta reviewed the health records of 1.3 million 12- to 17-year-olds. The data included 30 U.S. health systems, with more than 900 hospitals and 20,000 clinics. The study looked only at Wegovy, not other GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic or Zepbound, which are not approved for teen weight loss. About 8 million U.S.…  read on >  read on >

Sweet! Synthetic sugars could be key to sussing out what type of snake venom is threatening a person’s life, researchers say. Specifically, researchers have developed a way to use these sugars to detect the venom of the Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, according to a paper published recently in ACS Biomacromolecules. “Snake venoms are complex and detecting the toxins at work is challenging but essential to save lives,” said senior researcher Alex Baker, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Warwick in the U.K. The new test “lays the foundations for the rapid and cheap detection of snakebite beyond antibody-based techniques, potentially improving improve patient outcomes,” Baker added in a news release. Every five minutes, 50 people are bitten by a snake worldwide, researchers said in background notes. Four will be permanently disabled by the venomous bite, and one will die. Identifying the snake venom coursing through a person’s body is vital to counteracting its effects, but most places are home to a variety of different snakes that could have caused any given bite, researchers said. Most tests use antibodies to diagnose snake venom, but they tend to be expensive, slow and inconsistent, researchers said. To come up with a better test, researchers noted that some snake venoms – like the Western Diamondback Rattlesnake — work by binding to specific sugar molecules called glycans that…  read on >  read on >

Sweet! Synthetic sugars could be key to sussing out what type of snake venom is threatening a person’s life, researchers say. Specifically, researchers have developed a way to use these sugars to detect the venom of the Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, according to a paper published recently in ACS Biomacromolecules. “Snake venoms are complex and detecting the toxins at work is challenging but essential to save lives,” said senior researcher Alex Baker, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Warwick in the U.K. The new test “lays the foundations for the rapid and cheap detection of snakebite beyond antibody-based techniques, potentially improving improve patient outcomes,” Baker added in a news release. Every five minutes, 50 people are bitten by a snake worldwide, researchers said in background notes. Four will be permanently disabled by the venomous bite, and one will die. Identifying the snake venom coursing through a person’s body is vital to counteracting its effects, but most places are home to a variety of different snakes that could have caused any given bite, researchers said. Most tests use antibodies to diagnose snake venom, but they tend to be expensive, slow and inconsistent, researchers said. To come up with a better test, researchers noted that some snake venoms – like the Western Diamondback Rattlesnake — work by binding to specific sugar molecules called glycans that…  read on >  read on >

When Eliana DeVos plays with her Ariel doll, her mom can’t help but get emotional. “I call her my little mermaid,” Krystal DeVos, who lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, told CNN. What makes that nickname extra special is the surprising way Eliana’s life was saved — through the use of fish skin. Eliana was born extremely premature, at just 23 weeks and weighing just one pound.  She spent 131 days in neonatal intensive care, where she developed a severe, fast-spreading infection on her neck that doctors say nearly took her life. “It was almost like a flesh-eating disease,” her mom said. “Her body was attacking something in her neck.” The infection led to sepsis, a dangerous condition that can shut down the organs. As her condition worsened, her family and doctors looked for anything that might help. That’s when doctors at Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, offered a new option: using fish skin to help her wound heal. Dr. Vanessa Dimas, a pediatric plastic surgeon at Driscoll, said Eliana was too fragile for surgery or a human skin graft. “She was a premature baby. The wound was very extensive. And she was pretty sick,” Dimas said. Instead, she and wound care nurse practitioner Roxana Reyna used a medical honey solution to clean the wound. Then they added fish skin, a medical product made…  read on >  read on >

When Eliana DeVos plays with her Ariel doll, her mom can’t help but get emotional. “I call her my little mermaid,” Krystal DeVos, who lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, told CNN. What makes that nickname extra special is the surprising way Eliana’s life was saved — through the use of fish skin. Eliana was born extremely premature, at just 23 weeks and weighing just one pound. She spent 131 days in neonatal intensive care, where she developed a severe, fast-spreading infection on her neck that doctors say nearly took her life. “It was almost like a flesh-eating disease,” her mom said. “Her body was attacking something in her neck.” The infection led to sepsis, a dangerous condition that can shut down the organs. As her condition worsened, her family and doctors looked for anything that might help. That’s when doctors at Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, offered a new option: using fish skin to help her wound heal. Dr. Vanessa Dimas, a pediatric plastic surgeon at Driscoll, said Eliana was too fragile for surgery or a human skin graft. “She was a premature baby. The wound was very extensive. And she was pretty sick,” Dimas said. Instead, she and wound care nurse practitioner Roxana Reyna used a medical honey solution to clean the wound. Then they added fish skin, a medical product made…  read on >  read on >

About 2 of 5 smokers in the U.S. suffer from some form of disability, a new study says. And in 1 of 7, their disability is so severe it interferes with their daily lives, researchers report. “The prevalence of disability among adults in the USA who currently smoke cigarettes was more than two times higher when compared with those who have never smoked,” concluded the research team led by Jeanette Novakovich, a writer-editor at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The most common disabilities among smokers were mobility and problems with thinking or memory, researchers reported May 29 in the journal Tobacco Control. For the study, researchers analyzed data gathered between 2019 and 2023 by the National Health Interview Survey, an in-person household survey conducted by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. The survey asks people whether they are current or former smokers, and also asks a series of questions designed to assess their disability. The research team compared reported disability among around 17,600 current smokers to 37,500 former smokers and just under 91,000 people who never smoked. Results showed that about 40% of the nation’s 25 million current smokers have “some difficulty,” “a lot of difficulty,” or “cannot do at all” when it comes to: Mobility, defined as difficulty walking or climbing up steps. Cognitive difficulty, or difficulty remembering or…  read on >  read on >

About 2 of 5 smokers in the U.S. suffer from some form of disability, a new study says. And in 1 of 7, their disability is so severe it interferes with their daily lives, researchers report. “The prevalence of disability among adults in the USA who currently smoke cigarettes was more than two times higher when compared with those who have never smoked,” concluded the research team led by Jeanette Novakovich, a writer-editor at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The most common disabilities among smokers were mobility and problems with thinking or memory, researchers reported May 29 in the journal Tobacco Control. For the study, researchers analyzed data gathered between 2019 and 2023 by the National Health Interview Survey, an in-person household survey conducted by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. The survey asks people whether they are current or former smokers, and also asks a series of questions designed to assess their disability. The research team compared reported disability among around 17,600 current smokers to 37,500 former smokers and just under 91,000 people who never smoked. Results showed that about 40% of the nation’s 25 million current smokers have “some difficulty,” “a lot of difficulty,” or “cannot do at all” when it comes to: Mobility, defined as difficulty walking or climbing up steps. Cognitive difficulty, or difficulty remembering or…  read on >  read on >