Featured
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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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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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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 |
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 |
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 |
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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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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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 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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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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 |
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
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News |
Key alert system for disease outbreaks is in crisis — can it be saved?
ProMED staff members look for rescue options, after going on strike and calling for new leadership and financing.
- Max Kozlov
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News Feature |
How a controversial US drug policy could be harming cancer patients worldwide
The FDA’s accelerated-approval process was designed to help people access life-saving drugs. But gaps in communication could mean that people are undergoing treatments known to be ineffective.
- Jyoti Madhusoodanan
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Correspondence |
Control side effects of the psychedelic renaissance
- Christoph Bublitz
- , Nicolas Langlitz
- & Dimitris Repantis
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Arts Review |
Dr Semmelweis review: Mark Rylance play shows how hand washing saved hundreds of lives
Professional pride and personal tragedy stymied ideas about how infections spread in the nineteenth century, suggests a show about maverick Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis.
- Georgina Ferry
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News |
NIH launches trials for long COVID treatments: what scientists think
World’s largest study of long COVID will evaluate potential therapies for brain fog, sleep disruption and more.
- Max Kozlov
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News |
Dengue is breaking records in the Americas — what’s behind the surge?
Increasing temperatures contribute to longer dengue seasons, and could drive the geographical expansion of the disease.
- Mariana Lenharo
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World View |
Saving tens of millions of children a year from the effects of lead poisoning is a surprisingly solvable problem
Funding to help nations eliminate lead paint and other sources of exposure would avert millions of deaths and one trillion dollars a year in income loss.
- Nafisatou Cissé
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Nature Podcast |
Disrupting snail food-chain curbs parasitic disease in Senegal
Intervention against schistosomiasis also shows agricultural and economic benefits, and the successful launch of India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Shamini Bundell
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News & Views |
A sustainable way to control the parasitic disease schistosomiasis
A trial in Senegal has tested an innovative method for tackling a common human parasitic disease. The approach reduced infection numbers and also offered agricultural and economic benefits.
- Nathan C. Lo
- & Benjamin Arnold
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Article |
A planetary health innovation for disease, food and water challenges in Africa
By harvesting aquatic vegetation that provides habitat for snails that harbour Schistosoma parasites and converting it to compost and animal feed, a trial reduced schistosomiasis prevalence in children while providing wider economic benefits.
- Jason R. Rohr
- , Alexandra Sack
- & Caitlin Wolfe
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News & Views |
From the archive: infant mortality, and a guidebook about fossils
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Editorial |
The best medicine for improving global health? Reduce inequality
The COVID pandemic knocked back progress towards improving public health. Without addressing the underlying social and economic causes of ill health, it could completely stall.
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Comment |
COVID-19 digital contact tracing worked — heed the lessons for future pandemics
For all the controversy over decentralized contact-tracing apps, data show that these privacy-preserving tools saved thousands of lives during the pandemic. National and international authorities must invest in the technology now.
- Marcel Salathé
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News |
New COVID jabs are coming — who should get them?
Countries rolling out updated vaccines weigh up whether to restrict them to high-risk individuals.
- Max Kozlov
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Outlook |
Battling a health crisis in the Amazon
Scientists are racing to control malaria in northern Brazil where the disease is playing a major part in the current health emergency threatening the region’s Indigenous people.
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Outlook |
Can malaria researchers slow the spread of drug resistance?
Concerns that artemisinin combination treatments are losing their effectiveness against Plasmodium parasites have set scientists looking for alternatives.
- T. V. Padma
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Outlook |
Malaria: highlights from research
A mosquito hibernation mystery solved, parasites grown in dishes for the first time, and other studies and trials.
- Laura Vargas-Parada