CNN – Health

By Raenu Charles, CNN Parents and caregivers should not use infant head-shaping pillows meant to change an infant’s head shape or that claim to treat a medical condition, the US Food and Drug Administration said Thursday. “The use of head shaping pillows can create an unsafe sleep environment for infants and may contribute to the

By Katia Hetter, CNN Welcome to this year’s flu season. This year’s flu strain has already begun spreading across the United States, according to new data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There have been at least 880,000 cases of influenza, nearly 7,000 hospitalizations and, tragically, 360 deaths from the flu this

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN For the first time since 2016, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its guidelines for clinicians and patients on the use of prescription opioids to treat short-term and long-term pain. The new guidelines from the CDC, published Thursday, include 12 recommendations for clinicians who are prescribing opioids

By Angela Duckworth, CNN Decades before George Takei became Mr. Sulu on the original “Star Trek” series, he was imprisoned for a crime he never committed. When he was a small child, he and his family, along with 120,000 other Japanese Americans, were sent to World War II internment camps on US soil. Decades later,

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN High levels of benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, have been detected in more brands and batches of dry shampoo products, according to a new report from Valisure, an independent laboratory. Just last month, certain aerosol dry shampoos — including some Dove, Nexxus, Suave, TIGI and TRESemmé products — were voluntarily recalled because

By Brenda Goodman, CNN More than half of monkeypox cases in the current outbreak may have been passed to others before symptoms appeared, according to a new modeling study from the United Kingdom. The study, which was led by disease modelers at the UK Health Security Agency, is contrary to current public health guidance about

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN A single dose of a synthetic version of the mind-altering component of magic mushrooms, psilocybin, improved depression in people with a treatment-resistant form of the disease, a new study found. The randomized, double-blind clinical trial, which authors called “the largest of its kind,” compared results of a 25-milligram dose to a

By Elizabeth Cohen and Justin Lape, CNN This summer, when the shocking news emerged that there was a case of polio in New York, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention immediately turned to Shoshana Bernstein. The agency urgently needed to increase polio vaccination rates in Rockland County, New York. And while Bernstein is

By Jen Christensen, CNN People in the US with high blood pressure saw their levels rise during the first eight months of the Covid-19 pandemic, a new study says. When someone has high blood pressure, the force of their blood pushes against the walls of their blood vessels, making their heart less efficient. Both vessels

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN The average travel time to an abortion facility increased significantly for women in the United States after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and revoked the federal right to an abortion, according to a new study published Tuesday in JAMA. More than a dozen states enacted complete or partial bans

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN As an emergency medicine physician, Dr. Owais Durrani sees this issue regularly first-hand: When he clamps a pulse oximeter onto a patient’s fingertip to measure their blood oxygen levels, the small device can yield less accurate readings in people with darker skin tones, reporting levels higher than what they actually are.

By Brenda Goodman, CNN Pfizer says it has enough promising data on its respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, vaccine designed to protect newborns that it will end enrollment in the study and submit for US Food and Drug Administration approval by the end of the year. RSV is a common respiratory virus that typically causes

By Brenda Goodman, CNN It’s shaping up to be a severe season for respiratory syncytial virus infections — one of the worst some doctors say they can remember. But even as babies struggling to breathe fill hospital beds across the United States, there may be a light ahead: After decades of disappointment, four new RSV

By Madeline Holcombe, CNN After nearly three years of the pandemic, national test scores for students aren’t where educators hoped they would be — does that mean it’s time to break out the math and vocabulary drills? Maybe not, experts say. The National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the US Department of Education,