FRIDAY, Nov. 22, 2024 -- A 57-year-old woman with COPD has received the world's first fully robotic double lung transplant. The breakthrough surgery was performed in October at NYU Langone Health in New York City by Dr. Stephanie Chang . Just a month before, Chang performed a fully robotic single lung transplant — the nation's first. "This latest innovation is a watershed moment in lung transplantation surgery worldwide and just the beginning of a new era in patient care," said Dr. Ralph Mosca

FRIDAY, Nov. 22, 2024 -- Younger and middle-aged patients seem to be disproportionately affected by neurologic manifestations of postacute sequelae of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection (Neuro-PASC), according to a study published online Nov. 22 in the Annals of Neurology . Natasha A. Choudhury, M.D., from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional study of the first consecutive 200 posthospitalization Ne

FRIDAY, Nov. 22, 2024 -- Worn down by pandemic-era vaccine overload, many Americans are ignoring pleas by health officials to get immunized against the flu and COVID-19, new data shows. According to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data for immunizations as of Nov. 9, only about a third (34.7%) of U.S. adults say they've gotten the influenza vaccine, while just 17.9% say they've received the latest COVID-19 booster. The data could still be a bit early, however: According to the

FRIDAY, Nov. 22, 2024 -- More than half of all U.S. adults are eligible for semaglutide therapy, according to a research letter published online Nov. 18 in JAMA Cardiology to coincide with the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2024, held from Nov. 16 to 18 in Chicago. Ivy Shi, M.D., from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and colleagues used data from 25,531 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2015 to March 2020) to quantify the nu

FRIDAY, Nov. 22, 2024 — Two conditions common during women's childbearing years may increase their odds for serious illness and premature death, a large study shows. Drawing on data from close to 111,000 women and three decades of monitoring, researchers linked endometriosis and uterine fibroids to a greater likelihood of dying early, especially from cancer. "These findings highlight the importance for primary care providers to consider these gynecological disorders in their assessment of women

FRIDAY, Nov. 22, 2024 -- America's kitchen trash bins are receiving more unwanted food as appetites falter among people taking GLP-1 weight-loss meds, a new study shows. GLP-1s like Ozempic , Wegovy , Mounjaro and Zepbound all work by making food less desirable, and it's showing up in more food wasted at dinner tables, said a team led by Brian Roe , of Ohio State University. The study surveyed 505 new GLP-1 users. It found 25% agreeing that they had wasted more food since taking the drugs, comp

Protein-making AI models have fueled the launch of a $1 billion startup and a Nobel Prize win in 2024, but are they ready to actually make drugs? Leaders of some of the largest startups working on that question say the technology is promising but not yet ready. But a tiny startup called Nabla Bio is far more bullish, posting a preprint Thursday highlighting its progress in creating antibodies from scratch that look therapeutically viable against some hard-to-drug targets in what it’s calling a f

FRIDAY, Nov. 22, 2024 -- Semaglutide and liraglutide are associated with a reduced risk for hospitalization due to alcohol use disorder (AUD), according to a study published online Nov. 13 in JAMA Psychiatry . Markku Lähteenvuo, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio, and colleagues conducted an observational study in Sweden using data from January 2006 to December 2023 to examine whether the risk for hospitalization due to AUD is decreased during use of glucagon-like pep

FRIDAY, Nov. 22, 2024 -- A daily dose of vitamin B3 reduced inflammation in the lungs of patients with COPD , Danish researchers report. "This is significant, because inflammation can lead to reduced lung function in these patients," said researcher Morten Scheibye-Knudsen , of the University of Copenhagen. Patients with COPD -- the full name of which is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease -- are more likely to get pneumonia, influenza and other serious respiratory infections, which can be fa

FRIDAY, Nov. 22, 2024 -- There are considerable differences in life expectancy between different groups within the U.S. population, according to a study published online Nov. 21 in The Lancet . Laura Dwyer-Lindgren, Ph.D., from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues partitioned the U.S. population into 10 groups (eight from a previous study plus two additional groups comprising the U.S. Latino population) and examined trends in