Health News

Amid much speculation and research about how our genetics affect the way we age, a University of California, Berkeley, study now shows that individual differences in our DNA matter less as we get older and become prone to diseases of aging, such as diabetes and cancer.

Coccidioidomycosis—also known as Valley fever—is an infectious disease that is taking an increasing toll on the health of Californians and people living throughout the Southwest. In a study published today in Lancet Planetary Health, researchers at UC Berkeley have discovered a pronounced role of California’s recent droughts in driving the transmission of the pathogen in the state.

Researchers at UC Berkeley have discovered a pronounced role of California’s recent droughts in driving the transmission of Valley fever in the state.

A new study—led by UC Berkeley School of Public Health postdoctoral researcher Heather K. Amato and co-authored by Environmental Health Sciences Professor Jay Graham—found that increased access to public toilets reduced feces reports to the San Francisco Department of Public Works, especially in neighborhoods with people experiencing homelessness (PEH).

A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Virginia Tech is one of the first to analyze how incarcerated individuals in California may be impacted by arsenic-contaminated water. The study analyzed 20 years of water quality data from prisons where arsenic levels in the water supply exceeded regulatory limits for months or even years at a time.

In collaboration with Hutson and other Allensworth community leaders, engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, are currently field testing a simple and low-cost new arsenic treatment system that is designed to help small, rural communities like Allensworth access arsenic-safe drinking water.

This Halloween season, vampires might want to pause their never-ending search for the blood of youth. A new study from UC Berkeley researchers disputes the idea that, for humans, young blood can rejuvenate the old — and suggests there is likely a better way to ward off the ravages of time.

While food insecurity is a problem for a growing segment of the U.S. population — made even worse by the coronavirus pandemic — few studies have looked at the effect that feast or famine has on the developing brain in isolation from other factors that contribute to adversity. A new study by neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, simulated the effects of food insecurity in juvenile mice and found lasting changes later in life.

A new study led and co-authored by professor Amanda Brewster found that hospitalizations declined when patients were part of a social needs case management program.

The supply of a plant-derived anti-cancer drug can finally meet global demand after a team of scientists from Denmark and the U.S. engineered yeast to produce the precursor molecules, which could previously only be obtained in trace concentrations in the native plant. A study describing the breakthrough was published today in Nature.

In Berkeley Talks episode 149, Mahesh Srinivasan, an associate professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Psychology, discusses the importance of child-directed speech in language learning, how poverty may suppress parents’ speech to their children and how children learn language from overheard speech.

Monkeypox was declared a public health emergency in the United States last week, with cases exploding to over 7,500 between May (when there were only two cases reported) and August 2022. We asked John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at UC Berkeley School of Public Health, to give us his perspective on the virus: where it came from, how it spreads, and what individuals can do to protect themselves from contracting it.