Brian Vastag

All Stories by Brian Vastag

  1. Health & Medicine

    Early Arrival: HIV came from Haiti to United States

    New analysis of 25-year-old blood samples indicates that HIV reached the United States in about 1969, 12 years before AIDS was first formally described.

  2. Health & Medicine

    HIV-positive people getting heavier

    With drug treatment, HIV-infected people no longer suffer from wasting but are about as overweight or obese as the U.S. population as a whole.

  3. Health & Medicine

    ‘Knuckle fever’ reaches Italy

    A virus that causes debilitating fever and joint pain has spread from Africa to Italy, where it has caused at least 284 cases of illness.

  4. Health & Medicine

    Twice bitten

    Repeat episodes of Lyme disease are more likely caused by a second tick bite rather than by a return of the original illness.

  5. Health & Medicine

    Ulcer bug may prevent asthma

    Children whose stomachs carry the bacterium Helicobacter pylori are at lower risk for asthma than children who don't have the bug.

  6. Tech

    Virtual Worlds, Real Science

    Epidemiologists and social scientists are tapping into virtual online worlds inhabited by millions to collect data with real-world uses.

  7. Health & Medicine

    Beware the Starlings: Common birds can carry avian influenza

    Common songbirds such as starlings may be able to carry and spread avian influenza.

  8. Health & Medicine

    Moving up the Charts: Drug-resistant bug invades military, civilian hospitals

    Acinetobacter baumannii, a common bacterium, is becoming more virulent and drug resistant in hospitals.

  9. No Slippery Slope: Physician-aided deaths are rare among those presumed vulnerable

    Vulnerable people such as the very old or the mentally ill do not seek out physician-assisted suicide in disproportionate numbers, as critics of the practice feared they would.

  10. Health & Medicine

    Lonely white cells

    In chronically lonely people, white blood cells show abnormal gene activity that may affect health through immune responses.

  11. Health & Medicine

    Lack of Evidence: Vaccine additive not linked to developmental problems

    Thimerosal, a mercury-containing vaccine preservative, shows no signs of causing memory, attention or other problems in children.

  12. One tall gene

    The first reported gene for height can account for almost a centimeter of difference among people who have different versions of it.