A family of five is exposed to the flu virus, but only two of them get sick. A lifelong chain-smoker lives 100 years, while a professional athlete in their prime dies of an unexpected heart attack. A drug fails a clinical trial due to harmful side effects in a subset of patients despite showing good results in others.

Could any of ...Read more

Unregulated peptides for weight loss, muscle building, longevity and more are a roaring wellness fad – even though these substances have not been proved safe and effective and have not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Until now, consumers were getting wellness peptides online through the so-called gray market,...Read more

“This whole experience has me wondering (keeping me up at night, actually): Can we ever afford to have another child?”

— Grace Griffin, Calumet, Michigan

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Grace and Daniel Griffin, both 26, knew money would be tight once they had their first child. So, even before the Calumet, Michigan, couple tried to conceive, they began crunching...Read more

Earlier this year, Madison Harden-Stein and her colleagues at the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms posed as consumers interested in buying insurance as part of a secret shopper study.

They found that insurance brokers and sales representatives often pushed short-term health insurance plans with limited coverage, and used...Read more

Stomach cancer, also called gastric cancer, begins when cells grow abnormally in the stomach. More than 30,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with stomach cancer each year.

When stomach cancer is found early and has not spread, treatment can sometimes cure it. For cancer that has grown through the stomach wall or spread to other parts of the ...Read more

The Center for Disease Control released its yearly Antimicrobial Threats Report in October, detailing illnesses that are becoming resistant to treatment. It listed four drug-resistant illnesses as urgent public health threats.

Candida auris, Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter and Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales are urgent public health ...Read more

Imagine sitting down with your family at a restaurant. Conversations at your table overlap with those of patrons seated nearby. Utensils clink on plates. Waitstaff weave between tables. Music plays overhead.

Many people might find the bustle of such a scene a bit annoying. However, for veterans with chronic mild traumatic brain injury...Read more

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

Why do farts smell so bad? – Daisy, age 7, New York, New York

A healthy person farts about 14 to 20 times each day. All together, that’s enough gas to fill a super stinky...Read more

Cancer isn’t the leading cause of death in the United States; heart disease ranks first in that regard. But it’s cancer that strikes fear into the hearts of many Americans.

Cancer can take an excruciating toll on its millions of victims and their family members. Cancer treatments are often highly toxic, and the disease is ...Read more

MIAMI — More people are getting influenza earlier in the season this year than in previous years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But you can still get vaccinated as the numbers pick up.

“As temperatures drop and people spend more time indoors with their loved ones and coworkers, respiratory viruses like flu ...Read more

DEAR MAYO CLINIC: My doctor says I have a pituitary tumor. What is the pituitary gland, where is it located, and what does this diagnosis mean?

ANSWER: The pituitary gland is a small, pea-sized gland located behind the nose at the base of the brain, near the nerves involved in vision. It produces hormones and sends signals that help regulate ...Read more

As a parent, I know all too well the feeling of working hard on creating a meal that you think your children will enjoy, only to be let down by their refusal to eat more than a bite or two. With Thanksgiving being one of the most celebrated meals of the year, parents of picky eaters may have heightened apprehension about their kid’s response ...Read more

In the summer of 2022, Allison Mertzman and her wife, Leanne, asked their fertility clinic to destroy their embryos.

The married couple were living in California but storing their nine embryos for $3,000 per year at the clinic in Michigan, where Mertzman had resided before. After having two daughters through in vitro fertilization, the couple ...Read more

Hollywood legend Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, were found dead in their home in February 2025. Hackman had been living with Alzheimer’s and depended on Arakawa as his full-time caregiver.

Disturbingly, postmortem data suggests that Arakawa died of complications from pulmonary Hantavirus several days before her husband ...Read more

More than 5,000 people have been infected with measles in the United States this year, as the country faces the loss of its long-held elimination status later this month.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 5,182 measles infections on Friday, the highest since 1991. The public health agency has recognized just four ...Read more

Pennsylvania is experiencing its worst measles outbreak in more than three decades, with more than 1,400 confirmed cases and six measles-associated deaths so far in 2026, according to statistics compiled by the state.

Each new case brings a new warning of a measles exposure in that community. Exposures have occurred at hospitals and ...Read more

At a recent T-ball game, I was talking with another father who mentioned that his son had never played before. As we watched our children falling over trying to scoop up a ground ball, we laughed about how they were still figuring everything out. There was something refreshing about seeing kids learn a game without worrying about how well ...Read more

Federal leaders overseeing a $50 billion rural health fund missed a critical deadline to announce how much they’ll give states next year, alerting state leaders to the delay with a mass email.

A 12-sentence message from Alina Czekai, director of the federal Office of Rural Health Transformation, said officials “discovered an additional ...Read more

Chris McQueen finished treatment for leukemia a year and a half ago, but the ads for fake cures never stopped.

Juice cleanses to cure cancer, “natural” cancer treatments, clinics in Mexico promising full recovery with little chemotherapy — all appeared on McQueen’s mobile phone during routine oncologist visits and monthly bloodwork.

...Read more