Four cougars. Four bobcats. Two lynx. Even a Bengal tiger.

Bird flu has taken a terrible toll at the Wild Felid Advocacy Center, a sanctuary for wildcats and their hybrids on Harstine Island, Washington, killing 20 cats — half the animals in its care.

"The only thing I can compare it to, as a veteran, is being in a war zone," director Mark ...Read more

It’s that time of year, when families and friends come together to share their holiday cheer and a few circulating pathogens.

Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at UC San Francisco, said people should be on the lookout for the “Big Four”: three respiratory viruses currently moving through the U.S. — influenza, COVID-19 ...Read more

BOSTON — Boston will have four vending machines and eight indoor kiosks distributing life-saving Narcan and other harm reduction supplies in another step toward preventing overdose deaths, Mayor Michelle Wu and the Boston Public Health Commission announced.

“Unfortunately, many people living with substance use disorder don’t use harm ...Read more

ERWIN, Tenn. — April Boyd texted her husband before she boarded the helicopter.

“So, I don’t want to be dramatic,” she wrote on Sept. 27, “but we are gonna fly and rescue patients from the rooftop of Unicoi hospital.”

Earlier that day, Hurricane Helene roared into the Southern Appalachian Mountains after moving north through ...Read more

DEAR MAYO CLINIC: Finding the time to exercise with my busy work schedule seems impossible. How much exercise do I need to benefit my heart, and what kind? If I like to play pickleball, is that a better form of exercise than say, weightlifting?

ANSWER: Finding time within busy schedules can feel difficult, but if you dedicate at least 30 ...Read more

Faced with the rapid spread of avian flu through California dairies, health officials are now doing weekly testing of every dairy farm in the state — expanding initial efforts amid new evidence that some infections are going undetected and there may be unknown paths of transmission.

But farmworkers are not being vaccinated, unlike workers at ...Read more

Some infectious diseases saw a huge surge in 2024, with the spread attributed in part to climate change, declining vaccination rates and the advent of new pathogen variants.

The findings, part of a preliminary analysis by London-based disease forecasting firm Airfinity Ltd., seek to renew the focus on the rise of preventable and climate-...Read more

Tis the season to wash your hands and watch what you eat.

Norovirus, a vomit- and diarrhea-inducing stomach bug, is sickening Floridians through tainted surfaces and contaminated shellfish.

The Sunshine State is one of 12 in the U.S. with a high number of confirmed outbreaks of the virus. Anyone suffering from a bout of the nasty, extremely ...Read more

Many of President-elect Donald Trump’s candidates for federal health agencies have promoted policies and goals that put them at odds with one another or with Trump’s choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., setting the stage for internal friction over public health initiatives.

The picks hold ...Read more

You may be familiar with a range of tips for living a healthy life: Watch your weight, exercise, eat nutritious food and don’t smoke, for example.

What if you could combine these lifestyle factors with a host of other variables to learn your risk of developing specific diseases, to help catch and treat them early or prevent them altogether? ...Read more

Keith Poulsen’s jaw dropped when farmers showed him images on their cellphones at the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin in October. A livestock veterinarian at the University of Wisconsin, Poulsen had seen sick cows before, with their noses dripping and udders slack.

But the scale of the farmers’ efforts to treat the sick cows stunned him. They...Read more

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Tis the season to wash your hands and watch what you eat.

Norovirus, a vomit- and diarrhea-inducing stomach bug, is sickening Floridians through tainted surfaces and contaminated shellfish.

The Sunshine State is one of 12 in the U.S. with a high number of confirmed outbreaks of the virus. Anyone suffering from a bout ...Read more

It seems simple: Require hospitals and insurers to post their negotiated prices for most health care services and — bingo — competition follows, yielding lower costs for consumers.

But nearly four years after the first Trump administration’s regulations forced hospitals to post massive amounts of pricing information online, the effect on ...Read more

ATLANTA — Physicians at Emory University Hospital performed the first-ever surgical implantation in the United States of a brand-new type of heart pump designed to help save patients with heart failure, using a smaller, more comfortable device.

“It’s exciting to see innovation is still happening,” said Dr. Mani Daneshmand, an Emory ...Read more

The “choking game” has potentially deadly consequences, as players are challenged to temporarily strangle themselves by restricting oxygen to the brain. It sounds terrifying, but rough estimates suggest that about 10% of U.S. teenagers may have played this type of game at least once.

There’s more, unfortunately: The Skullbreaker...Read more

A recent study that recommended toxic chemicals in black plastic products be immediately thrown away included a math error that significantly overstated the risks of contamination, but its authors are standing by their conclusions and warn against using such products.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Chemosphere, experts from the ...Read more