Featured
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News Feature |
Why BMI is flawed — and how to redefine obesity
The main diagnostic test for obesity — the body mass index — accounts for only height and weight, leaving out a slew of factors that influence body fat and health.
- McKenzie Prillaman
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News & Views |
Learn from the past to predict viral pandemics
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need to understand the emergence of viral variants, given that these can have implications for vaccination success. A bioinformatics tool offers a way to predict viral evolution.
- Nash D. Rochman
- & Eugene V. Koonin
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Correspondence |
Collateral damage from accelerated drug approval
- Akihiko Ozaki
- , Kenji Gonda
- & Tetsuya Tanimoto
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World View |
Nipah virus is deadly — but smart policy changes can help quell pandemic risk
Repeated outbreaks increase the risk of a Nipah strain emerging that is better at spreading.
- Thekkumkara Surendran Anish
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News Explainer |
mRNA COVID vaccines saved lives and won a Nobel — what’s next for the technology?
Nature talks to experts about how messenger RNA is transforming medicine.
- Elie Dolgin
- & Heidi Ledford
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Outlook |
RSV treatments are here: now the work begins
Efforts to prevent infections and keep vulnerable people out of hospital are beginning to pay off, but deploying these strategies presents new challenges.
- Benjamin Plackett
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Nature Video |
The very first beat: how a heart starts to pulse
Hours of footage of zebrafish embryos let researchers capture and study this key moment in development.
- Shamini Bundell
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Outlook |
Tracking RSV in low- and middle-income countries
By surveilling respiratory syncytial virus, the World Health Organization is hoping to understand who the virus infects and the burden it has.
- Pratik Pawar
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Outlook |
For Indigenous infants, RSV prevention is better than a cure
Governments need to put remote communities at the forefront of strategies to prevent the respiratory disease.
- Anna Banerji
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Outlook |
Vaccines could offer fresh hope against respiratory syncytial virus
If deployed effectively and equitably, this latest generation of vaccines could help to prevent countless deaths and hospitalizations among the young and old.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Outlook |
Respiratory syncytial virus co-infections might conspire to worsen disease
Emerging evidence suggests that pathogens can pair up to work together against immune system defences.
- Katherine Bourzac
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Outlook |
The search for a connection between RSV and asthma
The consequences of respiratory syncytial virus infection sometimes linger for years — and scientists are trying to work out whether there’s a causal link.
- Sandy Ong
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Outlook |
Antibody therapies set to transform respiratory syncytial virus prevention for babies
Drugs that counter RSV infection can safeguard newborns, offering another mode of protection alongside vaccines.
- Elie Dolgin
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Outlook |
Research round-up: respiratory syncytial virus
Why monitoring sewers could help to detect outbreaks, how RSV and flu viruses can couple together and other highlights.
- Liam Drew
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Outlook |
Better awareness of RSV in older adults is needed to fight a growing burden
Respiratory syncytial virus is usually associated with babies, but the virus can also cause serious disease in older adults and people with chronic medical conditions.
- Rachel Nuwer
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Innovations In |
For Health Equity, Location Matters
A special package explores problems and solutions to the geography of injustice.
- Lauren Gravitz
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Innovations In |
Discrimination Has Trapped People of Color in Unhealthy Urban ‘Heat Islands’
People of color, more than other groups, live in neighborhoods prone to excess heat and the illnesses that go with it.
- Melba Newsome
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Innovations In |
The Father of Environmental Justice Exposes the Geography of Inequity
Robert Bullard reflects on the movement he created.
- Yessenia Funes
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Innovations In |
Valley Fever Is a Growing Fungal Threat to Outdoor Workers
The disease hits farmworkers and outdoor laborers disproportionately hard.
- Ashli Blow
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Innovations In |
People Who Are Changing the Environment One Community at a Time
These four researchers are highlighting environmental inequities and improving the health of their communities.
- Katherine Bourzac
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Innovations In |
Fixing Air Pollution Could Dramatically Improve Health Disparities
The most marginalized people are breathing the most polluted air, and improving it could improve health equity worldwide.
- Jyoti Madhusoodanan
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Innovations In |
More People Die From Venomous Snakebites Each Year Than Have Ever Died from Ebola
In low- and middle-income nations, snakebite envenoming is more deadly than almost any other neglected tropical disease.
- Cassandra Willyard
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Research Briefing |
Wildfires are worsening air quality in the United States
Air-pollution data from pollution-monitoring stations and satellites show that wildfire smoke has influenced trends in levels of fine particulate matter in nearly three-quarters of the contiguous United States, undoing around 25% of air-quality improvements made between 2000 and 2016. Wildfires are likely to further erode air quality in the country as the climate warms.
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News |
Nipah virus outbreak: what scientists know so far
India is taking urgent steps to halt the transmission of a rare but deadly virus that spreads from bats to humans.
- Gemma Conroy
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Editorial |
Why the pandemic treaty risks becoming COVID-19 groundhog day
Talks are stalling, but everyone benefits when the fruits of vaccine and drugs research are shared equitably.
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News Feature |
FedEx for your cells: this biological delivery service could treat disease
Researchers want to know why cells produce tiny packages called vesicles — and whether these bundles could be used for therapy.
- Alison Abbott
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News Feature |
Human trials of artificial wombs could start soon. Here’s what you need to know
US regulators will consider clinical trials of a system that mimics the womb, which could reduce deaths and disability for babies born extremely preterm.
- Max Kozlov
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News |
AI detects eye disease and risk of Parkinson’s from retinal images
Researchers have developed a model trained similarly to ChatGPT that can be adapted to evaluate multiple health conditions.
- Mariana Lenharo
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Nature Podcast |
A mussel-inspired glue for more sustainable sticking
A soya-oil-derived adhesive matches the strength of conventional glues, and reassessing the extent and impacts of childhood malnutrition.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Shamini Bundell
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Article
| Open AccessA foundation model for generalizable disease detection from retinal images
RETFound, a foundation model for retinal images that learns generalizable representations from unlabelled images, is trained on 1.6 million unlabelled images by self-supervised learning and then adapted to disease detection tasks with explicit labels.
- Yukun Zhou
- , Mark A. Chia
- & Pearse A. Keane
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News |
COVID boosters are back: what scientists say about whether to get one
As many countries head into autumn, they are targeting vaccinations at people in high-risk categories, leaving those at lower risk uncertain about what to do.
- Mariana Lenharo
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Nature Index |
Global leaders in science’s battle against cancer
A look at the key research institutions, funders and collaborations that are driving the field forward.
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Nature Index |
African scientists call for research equity as a cancer crisis looms
Rising death rates are defying global trends but the continent’s researchers are keen to lead the fightback.
- Linda Nordling
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Nature Index |
Ukraine seeks to resume its role in cancer clinical trials
The country was making a key contribution before Russia’s invasion.
- Rachel Nuwer
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Nature Index |
The gross imbalances of cancer research must be addressed
A zealous focus on discovery should not come at the expense of improving basic intervention.
- Richard Sullivan
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Nature Index |
Four ways research aims to outwit cancer’s evasion tactics
From AI-enabled drug discovery to therapeutic vaccines, science is opening up fresh angles of attack against the disease.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Nature Index |
Can cancer research shift its focus?
Misdirected funds could be undermining efforts to improve patient outcomes in regions that need it most.
- Bec Crew
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Editorial |
Gender equality: the route to a better world
Health outcomes, ending poverty and greening the environment are boosted when power is shared between the genders.
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News Explainer |
Why are concrete schools crumbling in the UK — and what can be done?
Researchers say safety concerns over RAAC concrete in UK schools could be “the tip of the iceberg”.
- Jonathan O'Callaghan
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World View |
A new model for public health in Africa can become a reality
As Africa emerges from the COVID pandemic, combating infectious diseases must be a priority — along with treating non-communicable and mental health conditions.
- Jean Kaseya
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Research Highlight |
Genomes reveal yellow fever’s deadly route through Brazil
New RNA sequences show the path that the virus travelled from the Amazon to the densely populated south.
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News |
Strike at outbreak-alert service ProMED to end — but tensions remain
Most of the striking ProMED staff members are prepared to return to work, although many still have concerns.
- Max Kozlov
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News |
COVID infection risk rises the longer you are exposed — even for vaccinated people
Rigorous evidence shows that significant contact with a person with SARS-CoV-2 is more likely to lead to transmission than a short encounter.
- Anil Oza
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News Feature |
Is a boost to height a boost to health? Dwarfism therapies spark controversy
Emerging treatments for achondroplasia pose difficult choices for parents. Proponents say they are changing lives. Others fear they will feed stigma and erase identity.
- Cassandra Willyard
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Correspondence |
WHO: a global boost for evidence-based traditional medicine
- Bhushan Patwardhan
- , L. Susan Wieland
- & Shyama Kuruvilla
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News |
WHO’s first traditional medicine summit splits opinions
The World Health Organization says the world-first summit will take an evidence-based approach — some are sceptical that much progress will be made.
- Gayathri Vaidyanathan
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Outlook |
In search of a vaccine for leishmaniasis
Researchers hope that immunization will provide much needed protection against the neglected parasitic disease in conflict zones.
- Anthony King
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News |
Can the world really stop wild polio by the end of 2023?
Given that global efforts to eradicate the poliovirus were recently described as unsuccessful, how are Afghanistan and Pakistan now on the verge of eliminating it?
- Clare Watson
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Nature Podcast |
Racism in health: the roots of the US Black maternal mortality crisis
Reproductive health-care is fraught with racism. In this podcast, we explore how.
- Tulika Bose