Early-onset scoliosis is a potentially deadly curve in the spine that can damage a child’s heart and lung function as it progresses. Adolescents with scoliosis are traditionally treated with a single spinal fusion, where rods and screws are inserted to fuse the spine in a straighter position.

Parents want to make informed choices and a new study finds that preadolescent children with severe neuromuscular scoliosis who are treated with growth-friendly surgery prior to spinal fusion have more complications and unplanned subsequent surgeries than those who only have the spinal fusion.

It is well-known that the gravity from the moon impacts ocean tides, sailors knew it long before anyone knew what gravity even was. 

A new literature review and small meta-analysis hopes to add to the body of work showing how much gravity impacts plants and animals as well. The meta-analysis was of three previously published cases in which gravitational causality was not fully explored: the swimming activity of isopods, small shell-less crustaceans whose appearance on Earth dates from at least 300 million years ago; reproductive effort in coral; and growth modulation in sunflower seedlings inferred from autoluminescence. 

Cancer deaths rose to 10 million globally in 2019, up from 2010 when total cancer deaths numbered 8.29 million worldwide - but the headline masks some important health progress.

Cancer is not going up, despite claims by those who believe modern food, energy, and medicine are harming us. Diagnoses are going up, which means deaths are now more successfully categorized than in the past. And tracheal, bronchus, and lung cancer, the leading causes, will decline as the inroads America has made against smoking propagate throughout Europe and developing nations.

Though efforts to change mascots and team names have had some success, like the Washington Redskins and Cleveland Indians, more than 2,000 mascots referencing Indigenous terms and images are estimated to exist in the U.S. today, from high school to pro sports, including the Atlanta Braves, with their “tomahawk chop” chant that gained renewed attention during the 2021 World Series.

There has long been something of a stigma about mental health issues. If a celebrity goes into an alcohol or drug clinic, 30 days later their career is back on track, but a reputation for depression makes filmmakers worry they won't be able to take the stress of a new project.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and depression brought on by isolation and non-stop media coverage, changed all that.  For the first time since national data have been tracked in the United States, stigma toward people with depression has declined,  There has even been a statistically significant drop in social rejection for people described as having major depression. 

Smoking remains the most prevalent lifestyle disease in the world, and for people who want to quit, there are lots of options, from "cold turkey" to vaping to patches and gums.

But among smokers who don't intend to quit, there is a clear winner in getting them to stop smoking anyway: vaping.

A nationally representative cohort study of 1,600 adult regular cigarette smokers who did not use e-cigarettes and did not plan to ever quit smoking did - e-cigarettes as smoking cessation tools led to 8-fold greater odds of cigarette discontinuation.