Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

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Articles

Is obesity a disease? Not always, new expert report says

Jan 14, 2025 | science.org | Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

A team of more than 50 doctors and scientists has concluded that obesity is not always a disease. Their report today in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, which presses for a more nuanced definition of obesity and new diagnostic standards, also advocates for widespread access to weight loss treatments for those who suffer health complications from carrying extra body weight.
Unusual genetic results in prenatal tests can also flag cancers-in the mom

Dec 4, 2024 | science.org | Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Pregnancy comes with a slew of check-ups and screenings to monitor both the health of the fetus and maternal complications such as gestational diabetes. But a routine prenatal test for chromosomal abnormalities in the developing baby can, in rare cases, also turn up a surprising variety of preexisting maternal cancers, a study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine finds.
Would Trump’s CDC nominee fix the agency’s problems-or create new ones?

Nov 26, 2024 | science.org | Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), announced on 22 November, is another sign that on public health, the new administration is veering away from tradition. David Weldon, a 71-year-old physician and former Republican representative from Florida, has questioned vaccine safety, and scientists worry about his potential impact on the long-venerated agency.
Preprint on Alzheimer’s drug deaths ignites dispute among authors

Nov 14, 2024 | science.org | Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Infighting among a group of prominent Alzheimer’s disease researchers has led to the withdrawal of a preprint they co-authored, which suggested a new Alzheimer’s drug markedly increases the risk of death. One scientist involved in the work charges the senior author failed to seek the go-ahead from his co-authors before posting an edited version of the article to a preprint server.
A breakthrough cancer immunotherapy is now taking aim at autoimmune disease

Nov 14, 2024 | science.org | Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

One fall day in 2020, rheumatologist and immunologist Georg Schett joined three other doctors in a colleague’s spacious office, on the second floor of University Hospital Erlangen, to urge them to try something new. One of them, head of hematology/oncology Andreas Mackensen, was the gatekeeper of a treatment Schett sought to access: a pioneering, genetically engineered cell therapy. Until then, it had only been used in people with cancer. Schett saw potential for much more.
New Alzheimer’s drugs create prescribing dilemmas for doctors

Oct 29, 2024 | science.org | Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Two esteemed hospitals in the midwestern United States are a 5-hour drive apart, but when it comes to how they’re prescribing new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, they might as well be on different planets. “I’ve been worrying about these therapies for a long time,” says Alberto Espay, a neurologist at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where, to his knowledge, not a single patient has gotten the monoclonal antibody lecanemab or its more recently approved cousin donanemab.
Lasker awardee Svetlana Mojsov describes a yearlong journey out of obscurity

Sep 19, 2024 | science.org | Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

The Lasker Awards, announced today, are among the most prestigious prizes in biomedicine and basic biology. The winners, which include dozens who have gone on to win a Nobel Prize, have usually been feted in their fields—and often beyond—long before being selected. One of this year’s awardees, however, was largely unknown until a year ago.
How do celebrity suicides become contagious? New study provides clues

Jul 31, 2024 | science.org | Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

After beloved actor Robin Williams died by suicide in August of 2014, a tragic pattern followed: a suicide spike, eventually estimated at more than 1800 additional deaths over 4 months in the United States. Such suicide contagion, as it’s called, is a well-known phenomenon, especially after the death of a celebrity. Smaller clusters can also occur in high schools and other communities, though such contagion can be blunted with .
Can infections cause Alzheimer’s? A small community of researchers is determined to find out

Jul 30, 2024 | science.org | Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

PHILADELPHIA— This week, thousands of researchers are flocking to downtown Philadelphia for what’s billed as the largest international conference dedicated to Alzheimer’s disease. But several kilometers away a much smaller group congregated for an alternative meetup: a daylong dive into whether and how pathogens might cause the fatal dementia.
Antibodies from Long Covid patients prompt symptoms in mice

Jun 21, 2024 | science.org | Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

In the quest to explain the symptoms of Long Covid, one suspect—antibodies in the blood that target a patient’s own tissues—is getting extra scrutiny from two teams of scientists an ocean apart. Both groups injected mice with antibodies from the blood of people with Long Covid, the constellation of symptoms that sometimes persist for months or years after a SARS-CoV-2 infection.