How do you tell if a condition is caused by an infection? — It seems like an obvious question, right? In the post-Van Leeuwenhoek era we can look at whatever part of the body is diseased under a microscope and see, you know, microbes — the usual suspects. Except when we can’t. And there are plenty of cases where we can’t — where…

We’re more cold-blooded than we thought. — Every branch of science has its constants. Physics has the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the Planck constant. Chemistry gives us Avogadro’s number, Faraday’s constant, the charge of an electron. Medicine isn’t quite as reliable as physics when it comes to these things, but insofar as there are any…

A new study asks whether all that stress is for nothing. — If you’re my age or older, and you’re, like me, something of a rule follower — then you’re getting screened for various cancers. Colonoscopies, mammograms, cervical cancer screening, chest CTs for people with a significant smoking history. The tests are done and usually, but not always, they are negative. And…

VX-548 (brand name to be determined) may provide acute pain control without the risks associated with other drugs. — When you stub your toe, or get a paper cut on your finger, you feel the pain in that part of your body. It feels like the pain is coming from that place. But of course, that’s not really what is happening. Pain doesn’t really happen in your toe or…

AI may help identify signals in common radiology studies that radiologists are not trained to identify. — If a picture is worth a thousand words, than a CT scan of the chest might as well be Atlas Shrugged. When you think of the sheer information content in one of those scans, it becomes immediately clear that our usual method of CT scan interpretation must be leaving a…

A case-control study draws some surprising conclusions about the deadly disease. — Basically all cancers are caused by a mix of genetic and environmental factors — with some cancers driven more strongly by one or the other. …

A legacy of industry from nearly a century ago, arsenic is affecting our kids’ cardiovascular health today. — It’s easy to look at Onondaga lake, in upstate New York, and appreciate its placid beauty. Its clear cold waters are fed by a 285 square mile drainage basin, its meandering streams flow slowly into the Seneca river, eventually to Lake Ontario. …

What else could this be? — Today I am going to tell you the single best question you can ask any doctor — the one that has saved my butt countless times throughout my career — the one that every attending physician should be asking every intern and resident when they present a new case. …

Serious illness has serious effects. — When a patient presents with symptoms of a viral respiratory infection these days, we can usually know which virus is to blame within hours, thanks to lab testing that has become fairly routine. But it doesn’t stop us — nor should it — from guessing beforehand. We’ve all learned that…