Children who grew up in more polluted areas had an increased risk of having reduced lung growth which may never be recovered, writes Dr. Sally Robinson in her column. The average drop in lung function is similar to the impact of growing up in a home with parents who smoke.

A growing body of evidence shows that spending time outdoors can improve overall health and even prolong your life, Dr. Samuel Mathis writes in his column. One study found that spending 20 minutes outside can lower the stress hormone cortisol by 20 percent from baseline. The activity didn’t matter; rather, just the act of being outside improved people’s stress levels.

University of Texas Medical Branch Professor Dr. Peter Cram is featured on the latest episode of the podcast, Freakonomics, M.D. Cram, who is chair of Internal Medicine at UTMB, did the math on how Katie Couric influenced people to get colonoscopies. But were they the people who needed cancer screening?

An implant little bigger than a grain of rice, put gently in place alongside a strategically placed blood vessel, could replace much bulkier devices that stimulate nerves. A collaboration of Texas Medical Center institutions published the first proof-of-concept results from a years-long program to develop tiny, wireless devices that can treat neurological diseases or block pain. Dr. Peter Kan, a professor and chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, is a co-lead author of the paper.

The subvariant known as BA.2 accounted for 55.4% of new COVID-19 cases in New England during the week of March 13-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Clearly, this BA.2 is really increasing,” said Pei-Yong Shi, Ph.D., vice president for research innovation at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas. The new subvariant already has taken center stage in Europe, and if past surge trends continue, will come to dominate new cases across the U.S., Shi said.

About 90 percent of the older people with mild cognitive impairment showed higher levels of certain microRNAs in their blood, Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel explain in their recent Medical Discovery News column. In mice, the levels of these microRNAs began to increase even before the mice showed any signs of mental impairment. Scientists determined that the levels of these molecules were predictive of dementia two to five years into the future. These could be the first blood-based biomarkers that we could use for early diagnosis of dementia.

It has been reported that a single infant’s intake of microplastics from feeding bottles ranged from 14,600 to 4,500,000 particles. This enormous range of the number of particles shows the difficulty of measuring during early life and the difficulty of measuring such small particles, writes Dr. Sally Robinson in her regular column.