Health News

To find out how much interest there is in at-home medication abortions, researchers from UC Berkeley analyzed Google searches during 2020—the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic—to determine the extent to which people searched for out-of-clinic medication abortions in the U.S. through three initial search terms: home abortion, self abortion, and buy abortion pill online.

A new analysis from UC Berkeley School of Public Health published today in JAMA Open shows that travel distance to abortion facilities may be an insurmountable barrier to abortion access in the United States.

New research  from Berkeley Public Health and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management published today in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology shows that community exposure to oil and gas wells is more likely in historically redlined neighborhoods, exposing residents to environmental stressors such as water and air pollution. The study results add to evidence that structural racism in government policy is associated with more oil and gas wells being situated in marginalized neighborhoods.

A new paper published March 30, 2022, in JAMA Network Open by authors Patton Khuu Nguyen, MPH, and Berkeley Public Health Professor of Environmental Health Sciences S. Katharine Hammond, is the first to quantify SHCS levels from social cannabis smoking using a bong in the home. The research reveals concentrations greatly exceeded those in homes with tobacco cigarette or hookah smoking and decayed very slowly, which suggests that, contrary to popular beliefs, bong smoking is not safe for those nearby.

Scientists have successfully restored dim-light vision to dogs with an inherited disorder that causes night blindness, a major step toward using the same gene therapy to help people with similar vision problems.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that a drug once widely used to wean alcoholics off of drinking helps to improve sight in mice with retinal degeneration, which may revive sight in humans with the inherited disease retinitis pigmentosa (RP), and perhaps in other vision disorders, including age-related macular degeneration.

Hold back on the bickering. Couples who share sweet moments filled with humor and affection, and sync up biologically — two hearts beating as one — enjoy better health prospects and live longer than their more quarrelsome counterparts, suggests new UC Berkeley research.

A new study from the labs of Professors S. Lawrence Zipursky (opens in a new tab)(UCLA) and Karthik Shekhar(opens in a new tab) (UC Berkeley) presents significant findings that shine an exciting light on our understanding of the influence of vision during the critical period of development in the mouse visual cortex.

Like our social media feeds, our brains are constantly uploading rich, visual stimuli. But instead of seeing the latest image in real time, we actually see earlier versions because our brain’s refresh time is about 15 seconds, according to new UC Berkeley research.

An estimated 370,000 Californians rely on drinking water that may contain high levels of the chemicals arsenic, nitrate or hexavalent chromium, and contaminated drinking water disproportionately impact communities of color in the state, finds a new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

A recent study links anxiety behavior in rats, as well as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in military veterans, to increased myelin — a substance that expedites communication between neurons — in areas of the brain associated with emotions and memory.

A new study, Historical redlining and cardiovascular health: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, led by Berkeley Public Health’s Mahasin S. Mujahid, examined historical redlining, a discriminatory government-sanctioned policy and an indicator of structural racism, in relation to cardiovascular health.