Mpox, the high infectious disease that used to be called monkeypox, has been declared a public health emergency in Africa by the continent’s top health body.

High temperatures and humidity can alter the components in many home-delivery medications, rendering them less effective. Here’s what to look for.Every day, millions of Americans get prescription medications delivered to their homes. It’s a convenient option, but rising temperatures can make safe transport challenging and put the drugs at risk.Temperature and humidity levels can affect drugs all year round, but the likelihood of a problem is highest during the summer. Whether you are enrolled in a mail-order pharmacy program or are ordering over-the-counter pills from Amazon, it’s important to consider how compounds could be affected on their way to your doorstep.Are my medications really being exposed to extreme heat?For many oral medications, the United States Pharmacopeia, an independent organization that sets standards for the nation’s drug supply, recommends keeping medications at temperatures of 68 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit. It allows for an expanded temperature range of 59 to 86 degrees to accommodate for mild “excursions,” as long as the average temperature does not exceed 77 degrees.Most mail-order pharmacies say that their packaging is weather resistant. But research has shown that packages sometimes spend more than two-thirds of transit time outside the appropriate temperature range.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

The temperatures inside delivery trucks can reach twice the recommended threshold, but federal rules on drug storage conditions do not apply to the booming world of mail-order delivery.Melted capsules. Cloudy insulin. Pills that may no longer work.Doctors and pharmacists say the scorching temperatures enveloping the country could be endangering people’s health in an unexpected way: by overheating their medications.Millions of Americans now receive their prescription medications through mail-order shipments, either for convenience or because their health plans require it. But the temperatures inside the cargo areas of delivery trucks can reach 150 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, according to drivers — far exceeding the range of 68 to 77 degrees recommended by the national organization that sets standards for drug handling.Mail-order pharmacies say that their packaging is weather resistant and that they take special precautions when medication “requires specific temperature control.” But in a study published last year, independent pharmaceutical researchers who embedded data-logging thermometers inside simulated shipments found that the packages had spent more than two-thirds of their transit time outside the appropriate temperature range, “regardless of the shipping method, carrier, or season.”Extreme temperatures can alter the components in many medications, from pancreatic enzymes to the thyroid replacement drug levothyroxine to oral contraceptives, medical experts say.Dr. Mike Ren, a primary care physician and an assistant professor in the department of family and community medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, said that liquid medications like insulin or AUVI-Q, the epinephrine injection for allergic reactions, are often at heightened risk of degradation because excessive heat exposure can cause the evaporation of liquid components that were compounded at precise ratios. Aerosolized medications, too, are uniquely vulnerable because of the risk of pressure changes in the canister.A summertime delivery route in Brooklyn. Temperatures inside the cargo areas of delivery trucks can reach 150 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, according to drivers.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

One morning in 2012, eight weeks into her pregnancy, Shannon Withycombe woke up bleeding: She was having a miscarriage. In the emergency room, however, no doctor or nurse uttered that word. Instead, she had to wait to read her discharge papers, which read “incomplete abortion.”Dr. Withycombe, a medical historian at the University of New Mexico, knew the term from her research on 19th-century medical journals; it was doctorspeak for a miscarriage that had not fully exited the uterus. But it was jarring to see it on her own 21st-century medical notes.“I’ll admit, I was surprised,” she said. “Like most of us, I had been socialized to think that miscarriage and abortion were very different animals.”Physiologically, miscarriage and medication abortion are near-identical experiences. Both start with a decrease in the hormones that maintain pregnancy, followed by vaginal bleeding, and then the uterus squeezes like a fist to push out the tissues of pregnancy. Both are managed with the same tools and medications, which is why laws that restrict abortion care also affect women who miscarry.In the 21st-century United States, of course, the distinction matters. Dr. Withycombe’s odd-sounding diagnosis is a relic of a time when the word “abortion” had none of the legal, moral or political connotations that it does today — a time before doctors had medicalized miscarriage and legislators had moralized abortion.In medical circles during the 1800s, “abortion” was the preferred term for any form of early pregnancy loss, used interchangeably with the more colloquial “miscarriage.” It was often accompanied by a modifier like “spontaneous” (meaning it happened of its own accord), “missed” (tissues were retained in the uterus) or “habitual” (several miscarriages occurred consecutively).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Instagram/Bella HumphriesTelling hilarious or embarrassing stories from your personal life is something many stand-up comedians do night after night on stage.

Nottinghamshire PoliceA review has found “a series of errors, omissions and misjudgements” in the care of a killer who stabbed three people to death in the Nottingham attacks.

Virtually any amount increased the risk for cancer, and there were no heart benefits, the researchers reported.Even light drinking was associated with an increase in cancer deaths among older adults in Britain, researchers reported on Monday in a large study. But the risk was accentuated primarily in those who had existing health problems or who lived in low-income areas.The study, which tracked 135,103 adults aged 60 and older for 12 years, also punctures the long-held belief that light or moderate alcohol consumption is good for the heart.The researchers found no reduction in heart disease deaths among light or moderate drinkers, regardless of this health or socioeconomic status, when compared with occasional drinkers.The study defined light drinking as a mean alcohol intake of up to 20 grams a day for men and up to 10 grams daily for women. (In the United States, a standard drink is 14 grams of alcohol.)“We did not find evidence of a beneficial association between low drinking and mortality,” said Dr. Rosario Ortolá, an assistant professor of preventive medicine and public health at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and the lead author of the paper, which was published in JAMA Network Open.On the other hand, she added, alcohol probably raises the risk of cancer “from the first drop.”The findings add to a mounting body of evidence that is shifting the paradigm in alcohol research. Scientists are turning to new methodologies to analyze the risks and benefits of alcohol consumption in an attempt to correct what some believe were serious flaws in earlier research, which appeared to show that there were benefits to drinking.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A new study shows how deadly warming can be, and how behavioral and social changes can reduce mortality. More than 47,000 Europeans died from heat-related causes during 2023, the world’s hottest year on record, a new report in Nature Medicine has found.But the number could have been much higher.Without heat adaptation measures over the past two decades, the death toll for Europeans experiencing the same temperatures at the start of the 21st century could have been 80 percent higher, according to the new study. For people over 80 years old, the toll could have doubled.Some of the measures include advances in health care, more widespread air-conditioning, and improved public information that kept people indoors and hydrated during extreme temperatures.“We need to consider climate change as a health issue,” said Elisa Gallo, a postdoctoral researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, a nonprofit research center, and the lead author of the study. “We still have thousands of deaths caused by heat every year, so we still have to work a lot and we have to work faster.”Counting deaths from extreme heat is difficult, in part because death certificates don’t always reflect the role heat played in a person’s death. The study used publicly available death records in 35 countries, representing about 543 million Europeans and provided by Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

LEIGH DAYA13-year-old girl with a severe dairy allergy suffered an “immediate reaction” after a just one sip of a Costa Coffee hot chocolate that was supposed to be made with soya milk, an inquest has been told.

The journal Psychopharmacology has retracted three papers about MDMA-assisted therapy based on what the publication said was unethical conduct at one of the study sites where the research took place.Several of the papers’ authors are affiliated with Lykos Therapeutics, the drug company whose application for MDMA-assisted therapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder was rejected last week by the Food and Drug Administration. The company said the research in the retracted papers was not part of its application to the F.D.A. In declining to approve Lykos’s application, the agency cited concerns about missing data and problems with the way the company’s study was designed, according to a statement released by Lykos on Friday.The F.D.A. has asked Lykos to conduct an additional clinical trial of its MDMA-assisted therapy, which would have been the first psychedelic medicine to win approval by federal regulators. Lykos has said it would appeal the decision.The journal retraction was first reported by Stat, the health and medical news website.On Sunday, Lykos said that it disagreed with Psychopharmacology’s decision and that it would file an official complaint with the Committee on Publication Ethics, a nonprofit that sets guidelines for academic publications.“The articles remain scientifically sound and present important contributions to the study of potential treatments for PTSD,” the company said in the statement.The incident cited by Psychopharmacology has been well documented. In 2015, an unlicensed Canadian therapist who took part in the trial engaged in a sexual relationship with a participant after the conclusion of the trial’s dosing sessionsIn civil court documents, the patient, Meaghan Buisson, said she was sexually assaulted by the therapist, Richard Yensen, who at the time was working alongside his wife, a licensed therapist. Mr. Yensen has said the relationship was consensual and initiated by Ms. Buisson. Six months after the final session, she moved from Vancouver to Cortes Island, in British Columbia, where the couple lived, according to court documents. The relationship between patient and practitioner continued for more than a year, the documents said. Professional associations in both Canada and the United States prohibit sexual relationships between psychologists and patients for at least two years after their final session. The incident helped highlight some of the challenges associated with psychedelic medicine, which can render patients especially vulnerable during dosing sessions. For that reason, most clinical trials involving psychedelic compounds require the presence of two mental health professionals. (Lykos’s trials with MDMA require only one of the practitioners to be licensed.)The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, is the nonprofit that carried out the research and later created Lykos to market its proprietary MDMA-assisted therapy. The association publicly acknowledged the incident in 2019, adding that it had been reported to the F.D.A. and to Canadian health authorities.The company acknowledged on Sunday that it had failed to notify Psychopharmacology about the violations, but it said that the oversight should have been addressed through a correction, not a retraction.