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Exposure in the womb to bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA, may increase the risk of asthma among school-age girls, according to a new study of over 3,000 pairs of mothers and children from six European countries. "We believe that the effect may be due to the fact that bisphenols can cross the placental barrier and interfere with the child's respiratory and immune systems during the developmental phase," said first author Alicia Abellán, a postdoctoral researcher at Barcelona Institute for Global Health, in a statement. There was a significant association between levels of BPA in mothers' urine and asthma and wheezing for girls, but not boys, according to the the study published Friday in the journal Environment International. (LaMotte, 3/18)

Night was falling Thursday when sanitation crews had to pause work on clearing a homeless encampment at a Little Tokyo plaza. A protester had jumped into a sanitation truck and refused to get out. She cursed and yelled at sanitation workers for tearing down the encampment. By then, most of the homeless people had been given temporary housing or moved to the sidewalk. The 10-minute standoff was one of several clashes that continued past midnight as sanitation crews tried to clear and fence off Toriumi Plaza, reflecting the knot of tensions in a city with little agreement on how to deal with the homeless crisis. (Vives, 3/18)

When Daye Covington visited her doctor for a routine physical last year, she expressed concern about weight gain in her belly that she said made her look seven months pregnant. But she knew she wasn’t pregnant, and she had a healthy lifestyle. An MRI revealed that she had multiple uterine fibroids — noncancerous growths in the uterus — the size of cantaloupes. “First, I was relieved to know that I was not pregnant because I was not trying to be pregnant,” she told NBC News, “and then I was scared, because I didn’t know much about fibroids.” (Bellamy, 3/21)

San Francisco’s aggressive, nationally recognized push to drive HIV infections to near zero and improve the health of those living with the virus took a discouraging hit during the COVID pandemic, as attention citywide focused on a new and different public health crisis. HIV cases continued a decade-long decline during the pandemic, but testing also fell off dramatically and health officials worry they missed some infections in 2020 and 2021. Prescriptions for drugs to prevent HIV also decreased, potentially leaving some San Francisco residents vulnerable. (Allday, 3/20)

The pandemic has made healthcare workers harder to find and that’s also affected families of Alzheimer’s patients who are looking for help. By 2050, the number of Georgians living with Alzheimer’s disease is expected to reach 190,000, an increase of 26.7 percent, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. That rise will put even more pressure on caregivers and families, said Linda Davidson, executive director of the Alzheimer’s Association, Georgia Chapter. Nationally, fueled by the general aging of the population, the number of people age 65 and older with Alzheimer’s is projected to reach 12.7 million by 2050, according to the report. (Poole, 3/21)