Causation Or Correlation?: ‘Strong Evidence’ Of A Link Between Gum Disease And Alzheimer’s Discovered

The Hill: Gum Disease Bacteria May Be Cause Of Alzheimer’s: Study
Gum disease may lead to the development of Alzheimer’s, according to a new study. A team of scientists led by the pharmaceutical company Cortexyme found “strong evidence” of a link between Alzheimer’s and Porphyromonas gingivalis, the key bacteria in gum disease, University of Louisville researcher Jan Potempa said. (Burke, 1/24)

The Washington Post: CDC: Nearly 2 Percent Of High School Students Identify As Transgender — And More Than One-Third Of Them Attempt Suicide
Nearly 2 percent of high school students in the United States identify as transgender, according to data published Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. … Amit Paley, chief executive and executive director of the Trevor Project, the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, called the report’s findings “groundbreaking.” (Strauss, 1/24)

The Washington Post: Go To Bed! Brain Researchers Warn That Lack Of Sleep Is A Public Health Crisis.
In the screen-lit bustle of modern life, sleep is expendable. There are television shows to binge-watch, work emails to answer, homework to finish, social media posts to scroll through. We’ll catch up on shut-eye later, so the thinking goes — right after we click down one last digital rabbit hole. Brain research, which has pushed back hard against this nonchalant attitude, is now expanding rapidly, reaching beyond the laboratory and delving into exactly how sleep works in disease and in normal cognitive functions such as memory. The growing consensus is that casual disregard for sleep is wrongheaded — even downright dangerous. (Johnson, 1/24)

The Washington Post: The Doomsday Clock Remains At 2 Minutes To ‘Midnight’
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is keeping the Doomsday Clock set at two minutes to midnight — a metaphor for the end of the world — calling the threats against humankind “a new abnormal.” The scientists announced Thursday that the clock is stuck at 11:58, citing nuclear weapons and climate change as two existential risks that leave the world dangerously close to an apocalypse. (Bever and Ohlheiser, 1/24)

Reuters: CVS Unveils ‘Beauty Marks’ In Stores, Warning Shoppers Of Edited Images
CVS Pharmacy unveiled an initiative in U.S. stores on Thursday, labeling photos of models in its beauty aisles to make it clear whether the images had been digitally altered. The U.S. No 2 drugstore chain, part of CVS Health Corp, is the first major American company to adopt such a policy in the face of rising concerns about doctored images setting unrealistic ideals of beauty, especially for young women. (1/24)

The New York Times: Why Six Months Seems To Be The Sweet Spot For Paid Parental Leave
As the United States has debated the issue of paid parental leave, a few employers have stood out by providing very generous terms. One has been the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which in 2015 began offering parents one year of fully paid leave to spend with their babies. It turns out it was too long to be sustainable. Last week, the foundation told employees it was cutting paid parental leave by half, to six months, because yearlong leaves were impairing the work of the foundation. It will add a $20,000 stipend for new parents to spend on child care costs and family needs when they return to work. (Miller, 1/25)

The Washington Post: 2018 Was The Fourth Warmest Year On Record — And More Evidence Of A ‘New Normal,’ Scientist Group Reports
The year 2018 is likely to have been the fourth warmest year on record, a scientific group pronounced Thursday — and joins three other extra-hot years since 2015 that suggest a leap upward in warmth that the Earth may never return from in our lifetimes. The warmest year on record for the Earth’s land and oceans was 2016 — by a long shot, thanks to a very strong El Nino event. That’s followed by 2017, 2015, and now 2018, said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist with Berkeley Earth, which released the findings. (Mooney, 1/24)

Boston Globe: HIV-Positive Men More Likely To Develop Lung Disease From Smoking Marijuana, Study Says
HIV-infected men who smoke marijuana for long periods of time are more likely to be diagnosed with lung disease, according to a study published Thursday by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The study tracked 2,704 men — half of whom were HIV positive; the other half were not — between 1996 and 2014 to determine whether their long-term use of marijuana had an effect on pulmonary disease diagnoses. (Gans, 1/24)

CQ: Coal Industry Fought Black Lung Tax As Disease Rates Rose
While cases of black lung disease among miners were on the rise last year, coal companies and industry groups lobbied lawmakers against extending a tax program that provides a lifeline for sufferers and their families. Mandatory disclosures show the coal lobby spent some of its influence money on discussions with lawmakers regarding the Black Lung Excise Tax and the trust fund that helps pay for the health and living benefits of sick coal workers whose employers have gone bankrupt, and their beneficiaries. (Nawaguna, 1/25)

The Washington Post: Older, Right-Leaning Twitter Users Spread The Most Fake News In 2016, Study Finds
The notion that fake news exists in its own universe turns out to be doubly true: One universe is the realm outside truth. The other is its own seedy pocket of social media. In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, political scientists surveyed the inhabitants of this Internet pocket around the time of the last presidential election, from Aug. 1 to Dec. 6, 2016. They found that people who shared fake news were more likely to be older and more conservative. (Guarino, 1/24)

The New York Times: In Davos, Prince William Calls For Action On Mental Health
Prince William, who has long spoken publicly about his emotional struggles, has taken his campaign for mental health awareness to Davos, Switzerland, urging global leaders to help break the stigma. Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, who is second in line to the British throne, spoke candidly on Wednesday about the difficulty he faced in trying to get celebrities to sign on to his cause, revealing — without naming names — that not one had initially offered to join the mental health campaign that he has run since 2016 with his wife and his brother. (Karasz, 1/24)

Kaiser Health News: Postpartum Psychosis Is Real, Rare And Dangerous
Even after all she had been through — the helicopters circling her house, the snipers on the roof and the car ride to jail — Lisa Abramson still wanted to have a second child. That’s because right after her daughter was born in 2014 — before all that trouble began — everything felt amazing. Abramson was smitten, just as she had imagined she would be. She would look into her baby’s round, alert eyes and feel adrenaline rush through her. She had so much energy. (Dembosky, 1/25)

The Associated Press: NFL Says Concussions Down 29 Percent In Regular Season
The NFL is encouraged by progress made in reducing concussions while stressing there is much more work to be done. On Thursday, the league said the number of concussions dropped 29 percent in 2018 from the previous season, according to preliminary data. It added that there were 135 documented concussions, down from 190. By including preseason games and practices, concussions fell from a high of 281 to 214, a 23.8 percent decrease. That was the lowest total since the 2014 season (206 reported concussions). (Wilner, 1/24)