Drinking alcohol is bad in many ways; raising a glass can raise your risks of various health problems, such as accidental injuries, liver diseases, high blood pressure, and several types of cancers. But, it's not all bad—in fact, it's surprisingly good for your cholesterol levels, according to a study published today in JAMA Network Open.

Researchers at Harvard University led the study, and it included nearly 58,000 adults in Japan who were followed for up to a year using a database of medical records from routine checkups. Researchers found that when people switched from being nondrinkers to drinkers during the study, they saw a drop in their "bad" cholesterol—aka low-density lipoprotein cholesterol or LDL.  Meanwhile, their "good" cholesterol—aka high-density lipoprotein cholesterol or HDL—went up when they began imbibing. HDL levels went up so much, that it actually beat out improvements typically seen with medications, the researchers noted.

On the other hand, drinkers who stopped drinking during the study saw the opposite effect: Upon giving up booze, their bad cholesterol went up and their good cholesterol went down.

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Two people in Oklahoma have likely contracted measles infections linked to a mushrooming outbreak that began in West Texas, which has now risen to at least 258 cases since late January.

On Tuesday, Oklahoma's health department reported that two people had "exposure associated with the Texas and New Mexico outbreak" and then reported symptoms consistent with measles. They're currently being reported as probable cases because testing hasn't confirmed the infections.

There was no information about the ages, vaccination status, or location of the two cases. The health department said that the people stayed home in quarantine after realizing they had been exposed. In response to local media, a health department spokesperson said it was withholding further information because "these cases don’t pose a public health risk and to protect patient privacy."

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Doctors in China inadvertently took time-series images of parasitic worms actively invading a woman's brain and causing rare and rapidly progressing lesions.

The previously healthy 60-year-old woman went to the hospital after having a fever and altered mental status for three days, according to a report of her case published Monday in JAMA Neurology. By the time she arrived, she was unable to communicate normally.

Figure A: FLAIR MRI of the brain before treatment showed multiple white matter lesions adjacent to the lateral ventricles. Credit: Li et al. JAMA Neurology 2025

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed white matter lesions around her lateral ventricles, large cavities in the center of the brain filled with cerebrospinal fluid that, from the side, are C-shaped. The type of MRI used, a FLAIR MRI, is used to more easily detect lesions, and the fluid-filled lateral ventricles appear as dark, curved spaces in the center. Doctors could see white blotches and smears around those dark spaces, indicating lesions. After doing a spinal tap and running tests on her cerebral spinal fluid, they suspected she might have a bacterial infection in her brain. So they treated her with an antibiotic and a fever reducer.

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The measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico has reached 208 cases.

Texas officials reported 198 confirmed cases across nine counties as of Friday, with 23 people requiring hospitalization since the outbreak exploded at the end of January. Most of the cases continue to be in children and teens, with 153 of the 198 cases being between the ages of 0 and 17. Eleven cases have no confirmed age listed. All but five cases are in people who are unvaccinated or have no vaccination record.

Texas officials have so far reported one death in the outbreak in an unvaccinated school-age child with no underlying health conditions. Media reports have identified the child as being a 6-year-old.

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In an early clinical trial, an experimental norovirus vaccine given as a pill produced defensive responses exactly where it counts—in the saliva of older people most vulnerable to the explosive stomach bug.

The results, published this week in Science Translational Medicine, are another step in the long effort to thwart the gruesome germ, which finds a way to violently hollow out innards wherever people go—from restaurants to natural wonders and even the high seas. It's a robust, extremely infectious virus that spreads via the nauseating fecal-oral route. Infected people spew billions of virus particles in their vomit and diarrhea, and shedding can last weeks. The particles aren't easily killed by hand sanitizers and can linger on surfaces for up to two weeks. Exposure to as few as 10 virus particles can spark an infection. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, norovirus causes an average of between 19 and 21 million cases of acute gastroenteritis in the US every year, leading to 109,000 hospitalizations and 900 deaths. This racks up an economic burden estimated to be $2 billion to $10.6 billion.

Vaccine design

For most, the gut-busting bug is miserable but usually over in a few days. But older people—especially those with underlying medical conditions—are vulnerable to severe outcomes. About 90 percent of people who die from a norovirus infection are people age 65 or older who live in long-term care facilities.

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US Health Secretary and long-standing anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing criticism for his equivocal response to the raging measles outbreak in West Texas, which as of Tuesday has grown to 159 cases, with 22 hospitalizations and one child death.

While public health officials would like to see a resounding endorsement of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine as the best way to protect children and vulnerable community members from further spread of the extremely infectious virus, Kennedy instead penned an Op-Ed for Fox News sprinkled with anti-vaccine talking points. Before noting that vaccines "protect individual children" and "contribute to community immunity," he stressed parental choice. The decision to vaccinate is "a personal one," he wrote, and merely advised parents to "consult with their healthcare providers to understand their options to get the MMR vaccine."

Further, Kennedy seemed more eager to embrace nutrition and supplements as a way to combat the potentially deadly infection. He declared that the "best defense" against infectious diseases, like the measles, is "good nutrition"—not lifesaving, highly effective vaccines.

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Federal health policies and decisions are quickly becoming less transparent under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—despite him telling Health Department employees just last month that he would work with them to "launch a new era of radical transparency."

Since then, Kennedy has axed a public meeting on vaccines—leaving lingering questions about the future of those transparent proceedings. He has also revoked a broad transparency policy for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that required public notice for certain new rules and a comment period to allow for the public to be involved with the rulemaking process. Revoking the policy could have sweeping effects. For instance, HHS could now change Medicaid requirements with no notice or change federal research grants without input from the research community—something the Trump administration has already tried to do before it was put on hold by a federal judge.

Rolling back public participation

On Monday, Kennedy published the new policy in the Federal Register, which specifically revoked a transparency rule adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 1971. The rule—called the Richardson Waiver, after then-Health Secretary Elliot Richardson—required HHS to have public notice-and-comment periods for proposed rules and policies regarding certain matters, namely public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts. These five categories would otherwise have been exempt from public notice-and-comment requirements under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The APA also says that public notice-and-comment periods can be waived for "good cause."

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At least 146 measles cases have been identified in West Texas so far, including 20 hospitalizations and one death.

A Texas health authority is warning against "measles parties" as the outbreak in West Texas grew to at least 146 cases, with 20 hospitalized and one unvaccinated school-age child dead. The outbreak continues to mainly be in unvaccinated children.

In a press briefing hosted by the city of Lubbock, Texas, on Friday, Ron Cook, chief health officer at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, offered the stark warning for Texans in his opening statements.

"What I want you to hear is: It's not good to go have measles parties because what may happen is—we can't predict who's going to do poorly with measles, be hospitalized, potentially get pneumonia or encephalitis and or pass away from this," Cook said. "So that's a foolish idea to go have a measles party. The best thing to do is make sure that you're well-vaccinated."

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Doctors around the US have anecdotally reported an uptick of children critically ill with the flu developing severe, life-threatening neurological complications, which can be marked by seizures, delirium, hallucinations, decreased consciousness, lethargy, personality changes, and abnormalities in brain imaging.

It's long been known that the seasonal flu can cause such devastating complications in some children, many with no underlying medical conditions. But doctors have begun to suspect that this year's flu season—the most severe in over 15 years—has taken a yet darker turn for children. On February 14, for instance, health officials in Massachusetts released an advisory for clinicians to be on alert for neurological complications in pediatric flu patients after detecting a "possible increase."

With the anecdata coming in, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed all the data it has on neurological complications from flu this year and seasons dating back to 2010. Unfortunately, existing surveillance systems for flu do not capture neurological complications in pediatric cases overall—but they do capture such detailed clinical data when a child dies of flu.

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An unvaccinated, school-aged child in Texas has died of the measles amid an ongoing outbreak in the state that has so far infected at least 124 people, mostly children, sending at least 18 to the hospital. Additionally, nine measles cases have been confirmed across the border in New Mexico.

On Wednesday morning, the Lubbock health officials and the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) confirmed the death, which occurred within the last 24 hours.

It is the first death in the mushrooming outbreak in Texas, and it marks the first measles death in the country since 2015, when a woman with underlying health conditions in Washington state died amid an outbreak. The death highlighted the importance of maintaining high community vaccination rates to prevent the spread of the extremely infectious disease to vulnerable people. Prior to that, the US hadn't recorded a measles death since 2003.

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COVID-19 vaccines cut the risk of long COVID by between 57–73 percent in kids and teens, according to a study published today in JAMA Network Open. And there's more good news: A second study published today in the journal offered more data that the now-annual shots are not linked to sudden cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death in young athletes—a claim that gained traction on social media and among anti-vaccine groups during the acute phase of the pandemic.

Together, the studies bolster current recommendations that children and teens should stay up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines, which are estimated to have prevented more than 3 million deaths and more than 18 million hospitalizations in the first two years of their use.  So far, the recommendations for kids have largely gone unheeded; only 14 percent of children ages 5 to 17 are up to date on their 2024–2025 COVID shot. Surveys suggest that parents largely think the vaccines are unnecessary, given that most children only have mild COVID infections.

Still, not all infections are mild, and even mild cases can lead to long COVID, according to the authors of the first study. An estimated 1 percent to 3 percent of children infected with SARS-CoV-2 will develop long COVID, defined as having symptoms that continue or develop four or more weeks after the initial phase of infection. With tens of millions of kids getting infected with the pandemic virus, a large number of them are at risk of developing the condition.

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An ongoing measles outbreak that began in one of Texas' least vaccinated counties has mushroomed to 90 cases across a cluster of seven counties in the state, according to an update by the Texas Department of State Health Services on Friday.

The outbreak may have also spread across the border to New Mexico, where nine cases have been reported. In an email to Ars, Robert Nott, the communications director for the New Mexico Department of Health, said that as of today, the department has not confirmed a connection between the nine cases and any of the confirmed cases in Texas.

However, all nine of the cases are in Lea County, New Mexico, which sits at the border with Gaines County, Texas, the epicenter of the outbreak. Of Texas' 90 cases, 57 are in Gaines, which has a vaccination rate among kindergartners of just 82 percent this school year. The lack of a clear connection between the Texas and New Mexico cases may be yet more worrying because it suggests undetected community spread and a heightened risk of transmission in Lea, the health department noted in an alert last week.

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Just days after anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. became the country's top health official, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has already pulled back some of its efforts to protect Americans with safe, lifesaving vaccines. The agency has indefinitely postponed a public meeting of its vaccine advisory committee and killed a campaign promoting seasonal flu shots.

Last weekend, a Washington Post columnist noted on Bluesky that the CDC's effective "Wild to Mild" seasonal flu shot campaign had vanished. The campaign highlighted how the seasonal vaccines can prevent influenza infections from becoming severe or life-threatening. It used animals as an analogy for the diminished threat of the flu virus after vaccination, juxtaposing a lion and a domestic kitten in one ad while showing an elephant and a mouse in another. The CDC page no longer leads to a "not found" landing page, but it wasn't restored either. It now redirects to a 2023 article announcing the campaign, which does not contain the shareable resources found on the original page. The removal is startling given that the US is currently battling one of the worst flu seasons in 15 years.

NPR first reported that CDC staff were told in a meeting Wednesday, February 19, the campaign was halted. In a story Thursday, Stat News added more context to the decision. According to the outlet's sources, the Department of Health and Human Services’ assistant secretary for public affairs informed the CDC that Kennedy wanted vaccine advertisements to emphasize "informed consent" instead.

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Regardless of the state of the world—whether you're staring down a Constitutional crisis or enjoying happier times, at ease on a beach—it's wise to remember that there will always be tiny worms with gaping mouths ringed by razor-sharp teeth ready to pierce your body, burrow into your skin, and tunnel through your flesh like an ambitious gopher in springtime.

I'm referring, of course, to hookworms, the blood-feeding parasites aptly named for the hook-like heads they use to latch onto their victims. In the US, they're most often found in international travelers. But, it's not out of the question that these petrifying parasites can strike on American soil, particularly in warm, moist areas. In a new clinical report in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors in Los Angeles report just such a case, and a particularly unusual one at that.

“We still got ’em”

Before we get to the gruesome details, there are some things you should know about hookworms. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes, there are two delightful categories of these helminths. First, there are the ones that make it to your intestines after digging into your flesh and invading your organs. Once in your guts (your small intestine, to be specific), the worms live their best lives, maturing to adults, finding mates, and reproducing, all while sucking the life-blood out of you from the inside. They release their eggs into your poop to start this charming cycle anew in anyone whose skin is exposed to sewage-contaminated soil.

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Over the weekend, the Trump administration fired several frontline responders to the ongoing H5N1 bird flu outbreak—then quickly backpedaled, rescinding those terminations and attempting to reinstate the critical staff.

The termination letters went out to employees at the US Department of Agriculture, one of the agencies leading the federal response to the outbreak that continues to plague US dairy farms and ravage poultry operations, affecting over 160 million birds and sending egg prices soaring. As the virus continues to spread, infectious disease experts fear it could evolve to spread among humans and cause more severe disease. So far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has documented 68 cases in humans, one of which was fatal.

Prior to Trump taking office, health experts had criticized the country's response to H5N1 for lack of transparency at times, sluggishness, inadequate testing, and its inability to halt transmission among dairy farms, which was once considered containable. To date, 972 herds across 17 states have been infected since last March, including 36 herds in the last 30 days.

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The cadre of elite disease detectives at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to be left in ruin today as the Trump administration continues to slash the federal workforce.

Many members of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service, EIS—a globally revered public health training program—were informed earlier Friday that they were about to be fired, according to reporting from Stat News. Multiple sources told CBS News that half of EIS officers are among the ongoing cuts.

The Trump administration is ousting thousands of probationary federal workers in a wide-scale effort to dramatically slim agencies.

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As prominent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed to the nation's top health position Thursday, Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham sent a memo to the state's health department saying that the state "will no longer promote mass vaccination" and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns, according to a report by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans.

The memo echoes directives that state health employees say they were told in October and November. In meetings at the time, employees learned of a policy shift that would end seasonal campaigns for flu, COVID-19, and mpox vaccines, but it was to be implemented discreetly and not put in writing.

According to Abraham's memo, the abandonment of lifesaving vaccination campaigns is in service of individual choice. "For many illnesses, vaccines are one tool in the toolbox of ways to combat severe illness," according to The New York Times, which also obtained a copy of the memo.

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A measles outbreak in an area of Texas with abysmal vaccination rates continues to mushroom, with cases doubling since Tuesday and expanding into additional counties.

A week ago, officials reported nine confirmed cases in Gaines County, at the border of New Mexico, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates among kindergartners in the state at just about 82 percent. On Tuesday, the cases climbed to 24, all in Gaines. In Friday's update, the state health department reports that the case count has now reached 48 and spread to three nearby counties, which also have vaccination rates below the 95 percent threshold that prevent vaccine-preventable diseases from spreading onward.

Gaines now reports 42 cases. There's one case reported in Lynn County to the northeast, which has a 91 percent vaccination rate. Terry County, with a vaccination rate of 94 percent, reports three cases, and Yoakum County, with a vaccination rate of 92.5 percent, reports two cases. Terry and Yoakum are both directly north of Gaines.

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Three veterinarians who work with cows have tested positive for prior infections of H5 bird flu, according to a study released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The finding may not seem surprising, given the sweeping and ongoing outbreak of H5N1 among dairy farms in the US, which has reached 968 herds in 16 states and led to infections in 41 dairy workers. However, it is notable that none of the three veterinarians were aware of being infected, and none of them worked with cows that were known or suspected to be infected with H5N1. In fact, one of them only worked in Georgia and South Carolina, two states where H5N1 infections in dairy cows and humans have never been reported.

The findings suggest that the virus may be moving in animals and people silently, and that our surveillance systems are missing infections—both long-held fears among health experts.

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