“As history has shown, when vaccination rates drop, diseases return,” write Drs. Megan Berman and Richard Rupp. Texas is seeing the consequences of declining vaccination rates as measles is spreading to children and adults in Gaines County.

Dr. Hasan Yasin looks into the health benefits of a whole food, plant-based diet. “While transitioning to a WFPB diet may require some adjustment, the evidence is clear, embracing a diet rich in whole plant foods can lead to significant health benefits,” Yasin writes.

New research has revealed a blood substitute that would alleviate blood shortages, write Drs. Norbert Herzog and David Niesel in their latest Medical Discovery News column.

A new study shows that bird flu has silently spread from animals to some veterinarians, the AP reports. “This means that people are being infected, likely due to their occupational exposures, and not developing signs of illness and therefore not seeking medical care,” UTMB’s Dr. Gregory Gray said. This news was picked up by news outlets across the nation and internationally.

"If the circulating H5 viruses become more transmissible between humans, we are not going to be able to control transmission as the viruses will spread rapidly and often subclinically," says Dr. Gregory Gray. The first study on the H5N1 bird flu outbreak from the CDC to make it to publication under the Trump administration came out on Thursday, NPR reports.

There are health benefits in “stopping to smell the roses,” writes Dr. Samuel Mathis. A recent study found that individuals who sat in a garden landscape and smelled the plants had lower heart rates and improved autonomic nervous system responses to stressful stimuli, he writes.

“While previous studies have analyzed how one or a few non-medical factors impact our health, Americans often face multiple barriers leading to different levels of health risks that are not yet well-understood,” says UTMB’s Dr. Suresh Bhavnani. A new study from Bhavnani and colleagues uses artificial intelligence to uncover how such nonmedical factors occur together across patients and their risks for outcomes.