The headlines all imply that nearly all football players who make it to the NFL will develop CTE. That couldn't be further from the truth. Here are four major reasons why.
Disease
Does your blood type – specifically, your Rh factor (positive or negative) – matter in your daily life? Not in the slightest. But when pregnant your Rh status can matter, especially if it's negative.
Conventional wisdom suggests that occupations associated with low socioeconomic status – such as construction, extraction and maintenance jobs – would be linked to the greatest number of ALS and Parkinson's deaths because of workers' environmental exposures to chemicals. But the CDC found the opposite to be true.
Some medical diagnoses are like fad diets. Everyone you know has chronic Lyme disease or gluten intolerance, if not out-and-out celiac disease (whether a medical test confirms it or not). But many are just junk medicine, just as many fad diets are junk nutrition.
A new report supposedly gives credence to the idea that "endocrine disrupting chemicals" found in house dust can cause obesity. But the results weren't even found in animals, let alone humans.
One very sure means of contraception is vasectomy — a minor surgical operation that blocks the transfer of sperm from a man's testes to his urethra (and thus to his partner) by interrupting the tube leading from the testis. One concern has been that somehow this procedure might increase the risk of prostate cancer. But now a meta analysis has found that the risk is virtually non-existent.
A new review published in Trends in Cancer strongly suggests that African-Americans have a unique genetic susceptibility to cancer, both in terms of acquiring the disease and dying from it.
In the 1980s, a case of gonorrhea would have been easily treated with a course of antibiotics. Today, this is not the case. An announcement by the World Health Organization calls attention to the increasing problem of antibiotic resistance in Neiserria gonorrheae – the bacteria that causes this sexually transmitted disease.
Compared to warm winters, cold winters are likelier to land more people in the hospital, particularly the emergency room.
Rehabilitation for stroke patients after hospitalization is critical, can family help? Not so much on their own.
Sometimes the CDC really gets it right, and let's give 'em credit! That's certainly true in the case of "chronic" Lyme disease. The agency explains that the symptoms some people suffer after successful Lyme treatment may be due to other tick-borne disease. But the chronic administration of antibiotics isn't necessary to treat a non-existent illness.
The recent outbreak in New York City has already claimed a 90+ year old and sickened six others, four who remain hospitalized. It's caught by breathing in the bacteria in the form of water vapor – aerosols – so when an outbreak occurs, and the source of the bacteria contaminated aerosols is shut down, the outbreak is contained.