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The 2026 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to three scientists – Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel – for their work developing a technique to decode the inner workings of the brain. This method – known as optogenetics – acts as a “light-sensitive switch,” allowing scientists to “map which cells are responsible for which function” in the brain, said Anna Wedell, a member of the Nobel Prize committee, which announced the prestigious honor in Sweden on Monday. (Ronald and Hunt, 10/5)

Emily Pearson was 8 years old when the attacks started. Just minutes in the sun would leave her hands and feet hurting. Her extremities "felt like they were in a hot oven" while being poked "with pins and needles." A short while outdoors could leave her in pain for days. Worst of all, no one knew why. Over the next decade, Pearson's parents tried to identify the cause of her reactions. Sunblock didn't help. She started wearing protective clothing and staying indoors as much as possible. (Breen, 10/3)

The recent success of a late-stage mRNA cancer vaccine, showing the drug stopped the return of melanoma, has boosted hopes that the approach can be successfully harnessed to attack other cancers. The question now is which ones — and whether mRNA is up to the task. (DeAngelis, 10/5)

One of the most elusive and tantalizing targets in cancer is so common that scientists have a nickname for it: McGene. In 70 percent of cancers, this gene — whose proper name is MYC — is too active and fuels the aggressive growth, spread and survival of tumors all over the body. A study published on Friday reveals details about the control circuit that triggers cells to churn out extra copies of MYC — offering a new and potentially more tractable target for drugs. (Johnson, 10/2)

Katie Beth Hand was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes 13 years ago. Since then, the 40-year-old said, she rarely went to sleep without thinking about her blood sugar. (Syal, Thompson and Herzberg, 10/4)

New research suggests that voice disorders, including shifts in vocal pitch, volume or clarity, could indicate a higher probability of developing dementia or cognitive impairment in the future. A study involving 833,417 participants aged 50 and older examined the connection between a voice disorder, hearing loss, or both with the chance of developing cognitive impairment or dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, beginning a year after the voice disorder and hearing loss diagnoses. (Chafe, 10/4)

A dengue fever outbreak in Florida appears to have grown into the largest number of cases the continental U.S. has seen in decades — totaling 252 reported cases this year in the Sunshine State, according to an update this week. Dengue fever, which is transmitted through infected mosquito bites, is rarely fatal and most infected people do not experience symptoms. However, it can cause fever, eye and joint pain, nausea, and rash, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Last month, Florida reported one death from the virus of an elderly woman in Tampa. (Davis, 10/3)

Following the dengue fever outbreak in Florida, which health officials are describing as the largest outbreak in the continental United States in decades, dengue fever cases have increased across a number of U.S. states in recent days, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The data shows that the number of reported cases has risen in at least 15 states, with Florida accounting for the largest share of the increase. (Greenwood, 10/4)

With three months left of 2026, the United States is closing in on a number of measles cases that would have been unheard of just a couple years ago. With 228 new cases logged this week, the country reached 3,886 infections, just 114 shy of 4,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) weekly update today. It could top that milestone next week. And US cases could be more than double the 2025 total this month. (Wappes, 10/2)

Pennsylvania’s health department reported Friday that there have been nearly 1,000 measles cases in the state this year, after previously reporting on Sept. 28 the number had just surpassed 900. The Pennsylvania Department of Health wrote that “977 measles cases have been confirmed across 39 counties in Pennsylvania so far in 2026,” in a statement released Friday. (Bhakta, 10/3)

Measles infections make people miserable for up to two long weeks, commonly causing dangerously high fevers, a painful sensitivity to light and, of course, a tell-tale red rash. Sufferers who escape without developing pneumonia, brain swelling, or other serious complications may believe the worst is over. Yet the measles virus has only gotten started. (Szabo, 10/2)

The chickenpox vaccine appears to protect against shingles, according to a large new analysis. Anyone who got infected with chickenpox as a child is at risk of later developing shingles, a painful, blistering rash that usually appears on one side of the body. For unknown reasons, cases of shingles have been gradually rising, even among younger adults, research has shown. (Sullivan, 10/2)

Russian authorities have imposed “anti-epidemic measures” after a laboratory worker at an institute in Siberia dedicated to studying the plague and other infectious diseases died of a mysterious illness. (Lister, Vlasova, Harvey and Chernova, 10/5)

The White House is monitoring reports of a suspected plague case and related quarantines in Russia, a Trump administration official told Axios on Sunday. Russian health authorities have taken precautionary measures in response to the death of a woman who worked at an anti-plague research facility, but have not confirmed that she contracted plague. (Isenstadt, 10/4)

After a young Arizona man died of pneumonic plague last year, a report from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Arizona scientists yesterday issued a caution to clinicians in areas where plague is endemic. They say to consider it as a possible cause of patients’ severe respiratory and systemic disease if they’ve been exposed to sick animals. As detailed in a new paper in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the man who died had occupational exposure to two ill cats, which are especially susceptible to plague. (Boden, 10/2)

The largest-ever Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has reached 8,300 infections and 4,018 deaths, as a Medicines Sans Frontieres (MSF) staff member is evacuated after testing positive for the virus. The staff member was medically evacuated to the Netherlands after testing positive for Ebola on September 29, according to an MSF press release yesterday. Fifty healthcare workers have died of Ebola since the outbreak was declared in May, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said in a special briefing yesterday. (Van Beusekom, 10/2)

The Food and Drug Administration said on Friday that it had found two samples of the cyclospora parasite during its investigation of Taylor Farms facilities in Mexico, strong new evidence that an outbreak that sickened thousands in the United States this summer came from lettuce produced by the company. The agency sent inspectors to the company’s processing plant and nearby farms in August, about a month after Taylor Farms recalled bags of lettuce sent to retailers and restaurants across the nation. Friday’s announcement disclosed the first results of that inquiry: Inspectors discovered cyclospora in water from a tank that held outgoing wastewater from the Taylor Farms de Mexico processing facility, which chopped fresh lettuce. (Jewett, Callahan and Hopkins Legaspi, 10/2)

The largest cyclosporiasis outbreak on record in the U.S. this past summer sickened 12,883 people in 21 states, including North Carolina, before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared it over on Sept. 11. In North Carolina, the picture is more complicated. The state Department of Health and Human Services has reported 955 cyclosporiasis cases and 32 hospitalizations since May, more than half in Wake County alone. (Atwater, 10/5)

Flu is hitting unusually early in parts of the West, catching doctors by surprise as some hospitals see levels of illness more typical of early winter, when the respiratory virus season normally gets underway. Across Seattle Children’s hospital system, about 150 children have tested positive for influenza in the past two weeks, a level the system typically does not see until early December. By comparison, for the same time period last fall, the health system had about 10 flu cases, said Danielle Zerr, who heads the pediatric infectious diseases division. The percentage of flu tests coming back positive has also risen sharply, signaling that the virus is spreading more widely in the community. (Sun, 10/4)

President Donald Trump said his administration would soon send checks of “nearly $100” to more than 20 million older Americans to “help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums.” The president, who made the announcement in a post on Truth Social late Friday, said the money would come from the Medicare Improvement Fund, established in 2008 to enhance the original Medicare health insurance program. (Harney, 10/3)

The political bill for Republicans’ health care agenda is coming due earlier than they’d hoped. Republicans’ signature legislation from Trump 2.0 — 2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act — ensured that its tax cuts were immediate while its controversial cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs wouldn’t take effect until after the midterm elections. (Ollstein, 10/3)

It was sometime around Xavier Rogers’ second birthday that his mom and Early Head Start teachers noticed a shift in his demeanor. Xavier, usually a happy baby, now mostly wanted to play alone and would sometimes bite and hit other kids in his class. Instead of removing Xavier from his class, his Chicago-area preschool gave the family extra support from a social-emotional and mental healthcare team. (Geduld, 10/5)

The Trump administration is moving ahead with big changes to Head Start — the federal early childhood education program that serves low-income families — to the outcry of advocates who say the proposals will limit access to the program, which currently serves 700,000 students. Interested parties have until Tuesday to submit their thoughts to the federal government on how the changes would affect the 17,000 Head Start centers nationwide. The government says it will then review the public’s comments and decide how to move forward with the proposal. (Lonas Cochran, 10/3)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Divides Rural Voters, KFF-AP Poll Finds

More than a year into President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, a poll finds that voters in rural parts of the country are divided on whether those immigration policies have benefited or harmed their communities. In the Associated Press-KFF survey of more than 2,000 rural voters in August, about a third said the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement had been positive for their community and about a third said it had been negative. The remaining 3 in 10, roughly, said it had no impact. (Sanders, Tribble, Swenson and Hussein, 10/5)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement is turning on its leader. Not RFK Jr. Rather, Tony Lyons, the Kennedy friend and book publisher who is the president of a web of MAHA nonprofits and political groups. Supporters of Kennedy’s message, that food and pharma companies have conspired with bureaucrats to poison Americans for profit, say Lyons is selling out to business interests who want Kennedy’s ear now that he’s President Donald Trump’s health secretary. Ignoring the grassroots could cost Republicans running in the midterm elections who need it energized, they say. (Chu, 10/4)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: �������ýҕ�l Health News’ ‘On Air’: Journalists Evaluate Rural Voter Sentiment, MAHA Movement, And Gene-Editing Finding

�������ýҕ�l Health News chief rural correspondent Sarah Jane Tribble discussed the findings of a KFF-Associated Press poll about rural support for the Make America Healthy Again movement on NPR’s Morning Edition on Sept. 30. (10/3)

The Trump administration, under the influence of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, is exploring the potential use of psychedelic substances in medicine — once a fringe topic that is now being heavily researched and invested in. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held a public hearing in September in which over 200 people requested to comment on the potential uses of psychedelic drugs, with substances like psilocybin, MDMA, ayahuasca and ibogaine discussed. (Choi, 10/3)

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Friday called on the Trump administration to finalize its proposed rule limiting the sale of kratom, a plant with opioid-like properties that can be bought over the counter. “All Kratom is deadly it should NOT be sold at gas stations/vape stores/ANYWHERE Admin needs 2 put out final 7OH rule NOW Kratom is killing our kids BEWARE of special interest snake oil,” Grassley said on the social media platform X. (Choi, 10/2)

A congressional lawmaker has taken a step toward veterans, military service personnel and first responders achieving government-approved access to controversial peptide therapies. Not everyone is on board. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who is leaving Congress after this current term, recently introduced the Providing Evidence-based Peptide Therapies to Improve Delivery and Expanded Services for Veterans Act, or Peptides for Veterans Act, which would direct the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to officially start the research. (Dennis, 10/5)

Aid cuts have affected HIV drug and test supplies across the world, with some providers reporting they are out of stock of key medicines, according to a survey of 40 countries. Organisations providing HIV care revealed that more than half (55%) had run out of stock within the past year, with a critical scarcity of HIV tests and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) – a prescription medicine that people take to reduce the risk of getting HIV. (Johnson, 10/5)

Workers and employers are drowning in their health insurance premiums. The reason for that deluge: the health care industry’s high and inscrutable prices. (Herman, 10/5)

A gaggle of doctors in white coats gathered at the Virginia state capitol in Richmond on Friday to make their case that the safety of their patients and their ability to practice medicine is threatened by an upcoming referendum to enshrine abortion protections in the commonwealth’s constitution. Thousands of miles away, hundreds of doctors in Idaho were making the opposite case — that physicians in general and ob-gyns in particular would continue to flee the state in alarming numbers unless voters passed a ballot measure to overturn the state’s ban on abortion. (Ollstein, 10/3)

As they walked out the main door of Mercy Medical Center in the early hours of Thursday morning, there were squeals of surprise – along with plenty of laughter and chatter as this army of labor and delivery nurses was greeted with posters, flowers and bear hugs from mothers who had given birth at the Aurora hospital. It seemed like a celebration. Except for the tears. (Crosby, 10/4)

Health systems are broadening efforts to steer patients who don’t need emergency care to more appropriate lower-cost settings. Providers look to increase revenue and lower operating costs by expanding care-navigation programs and sites outside of the hospital, to free emergency department capacity for high-acuity cases. The push comes as they race against Affordable Care Act and Medicaid policy changes that are poised to increase emergency department utilization over the next year. (Kacik, 10/2)

HCA Healthcare has completed a deal to sell 31 home health and hospice locations in eight states to Deaconess Associations. The former HCA sites and their employees are now part of Deaconess subsidiary Central Pyramid, the Cincinnati-based provider announced in a news release Thursday. Neither Deaconess nor Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA disclosed the financial terms of the transaction. (Eastabrook, 10/2)

Unannounced drills that used professional actors posing as patients exposed some gaps in how healthcare facilities respond to a potential infectious disease outbreak, according to a study of three jurisdictions. (Rudd, 10/2)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: �������ýҕ�l Health News’ ‘An Arm and a Leg’: Medicare Is More Broken Than We Thought

By Oct. 1, at least 2 million seniors will have received alarming notices: Their health plans — which they get through Medicare Advantage, the version of Medicare run by private health insurance companies — will disappear at the end of the year. Many will be stuck without a lot of options. In some cases, no other companies in their area may offer Medicare Advantage plans to replace them. This isn’t the first time this has happened. Last year, almost 3 million seniors found themselves in similar situations. (Weissmann, 10/5)

The U.S. market for soft-tissue robotic surgery systems is becoming more competitive, giving hospitals more options as they weigh technology, workflow and purchasing arrangements. Johnson & Johnson MedTech has commercially launched the Ottava Robotic Surgical System with select customers in the U.S. after receiving authorization from the Food and Drug Administration this summer.The company is planning a gradual rollout, initially focusing on hospitals with high-volume surgical robotics programs, a company spokesperson said. (Dubinsky, 10/2)

Bob Diamond, erstwhile chief executive officer of Barclays, only intended to ditch alcohol for a month. He’s barely touched a drop for nearly three years, he was so horrified by the dive in scores on his fitness tracker when he tried to resume his “wine with dinner” lifestyle. Diamond didn’t feel like he was “over-drinking” to begin with, but the data “showed me clearly the impact of wine at dinner versus no wine at dinner,” he said. An early Fitbit user, he’s since switched to a Whoop band to monitor his heart rate and other physical signs of stress. (Noonan, 10/3)

Stem cell entrepreneur Chuck Meeker is bullish about his industry’s prospects with the Food and Drug Administration nowadays. “If I were a betting man, I would say before the end of the year we have a series of FDA roundtables happening,” Meeker told STAT at PepMed 2026, a conference for regenerative health businesses held by the American Academy of Peptide Medicine. (The FDA declined to say whether such events were imminent.) (Manto, 10/5)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Doctors Should Keep An Eye On Your Mix Of Medication. If They Don’t, You Should

Medications can snowball as we age. Pill organizers pile up. Prescriptions that are no longer necessary can mix with other drugs to create concerning side effects. “Once you get to six or seven prescription medications, you get a nearly 100% chance of some sort of side effect or intolerance,” said physician K. Eric De Jonge, director of geriatrics at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. (Span, 10/5)

Frankie Llerandi, 21, has been unable to land a single internship in his three years at Michigan State University. He will graduate in the spring with an economics degree and an interest in data analytics, but true adulthood seems maddeningly far away. Most of his cousins have not been able to buy a house or start a family deep into their 30s. (Ganun and Riccardi, 10/4)

Years after the risks of social media for kids first became apparent, U.S. states this summer reached an accord hailed as a turning point for child safety. Meanwhile, a new generation of children has begun engaging with an even more potent technology: artificial intelligence.While the efforts to make social media safer are still taking shape, they offer some lessons for those looking to protect children using AI — technology that is growing so quickly, the extent of its risks for young people and their development is just emerging. (Huamani and Ortutay, 10/5)

In case you hadn’t heard from everyone that digital media can be bad for kids, new research warns just how harmful it can be to their health. About 20% of instances of depression and 15% of obesity cases in young people are associated with excessive screen time, according to a meta-analysis of 121 global studies of children and digital media published Sunday as part of a series of papers in the medical journal The Lancet. (Alaimo, 10/4)

The belief that heat can benefit the mind and relieve psychic suffering has a long history across human societies. But when Eva Hilland scanned the scientific literature for the kind of evidence that would support recommending heat as a legitimate intervention for mental health, she came up with very little. "There are many knowledge gaps," says Hilland, a cognitive neuroscientist at Oslo Metropolitan University. Although, what existing evidence she did find seemed promising. "So we just saw the potential." (Stone, 10/5)

As vaccination rates dwindle, public health experts have been working to understand the factors that encourage people to undergo immunization. A new paper in Vaccine examines how trust in government agencies influences a person’s decision to receive a flu vaccine, finding that a one-point boost in a composite trust score is linked to a 42% increase in one’s likelihood of being vaccinated. “Higher trust in government agencies was associated with greater influenza vaccination acceptance,” wrote the authors, from the Peter O’Donnell Jr. School of Public Health at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. (Holohan, 10/2)

In July, as smoke drifted down from Canadian wildfires, New York City officials initiated an emergency response to what was expected to be historically poor air quality. Outreach workers fanned across the city. Police officers handed out masks. For a period on July 16, New York City had the third-worst air quality in the world. Then the skies began to clear, and the response was concluded. But in a way, the emergency wasn’t really over. (Dalton, 10/4)

The Food and Drug Administration this week classified to its highest-risk designation a company’s voluntary recall of a salad dressing over concerns about salmonella contamination, the agency said. The company, Salata Dressings of Houston, voluntarily recalled its Jalapeño Avocado Dressing in August. Diced jalapeños in it were potentially linked to a widespread, multistate salmonella outbreak in jalapeño peppers that the F.D.A. had also been investigating. (Cerro, 10/3)

Jo Henderson was 17 when she was diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer. It came after months of symptoms — stomach pain, bloating, constipation — and months of testing. “I was expecting a gluten allergy, lactose intolerance,” said Henderson, now 18, of Seekonk, Massachusetts. “Literally anything but cancer.” (Sullivan and Edwards, 10/2)

Tennessee’s failed execution of Christa Pike this week has resulted in fresh scrutiny of the shaky and secretive supply chain for lethal injection drugs. Pharmaceutical companies no longer provide drugs for executions. So U.S. states have turned to loosely or even unregulated sources for the deadly cocktails, which experts say make lethal injections less reliable. (Lawrence and Janin, 10/3)

Christa Pike, who was sentenced to death in Tennessee for her role in a brutal 1995 murder, remains in critical condition several days after she was hospitalized following a botched execution, her attorney said Sunday. Stephen Ferrell told CNN that his client is still on a ventilator as doctors continue trying to clear two doses of pentobarbital, the lethal injections she survived, from her system. (Jira, 10/4)

Nurses at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, among the most prestigious in the country and one of Harvard University’s teaching hospitals, are set to go on an indefinite strike after a months-long stalemate over salary and benefit negotiations. Roughly 4,000 nurses, represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, are set to begin their strike on October 14 after providing the required 10-day notice to hospital leadership on Friday, according to a statement from the union. The nurses group voted to authorize a strike in late September. (Querolo and Ryan, 10/2)

Doctors and health insurers filed a lawsuit Friday alleging Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature violated the law when they approved a healthcare tax that could substantially increase insurance premiums for Californians. (Hwang, 10/2)

Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed a major victory for his signature mental health court on Thursday, but critics say his math appears more than a little fuzzy. Posting on X, Newsom wrote the CARE Court program “has now helped 10,000+ Californians get the lifesaving support and care they need and deserve – reaching (his administration’s) goal of 7,000 to 12,000 ‘initially served.’” (Wiener and Kendall, 10/2)

Voters this November will decide whether to make Colorado the latest state to ban certain gender-related surgeries for people under the age of 18. Proposition 135 would prohibit doctors from performing surgeries on minors to alter their sex characteristics. It would also ban state or federal funds, Medicaid or private insurance coverage from paying for such surgeries. (Ingold, 10/4)

An Oklahoma oil and gas company plugged a well that disposes of oil production’s toxic byproduct after an investigation by The Frontier and ProPublica revealed that regulators had approved the well in violation of state rules meant to protect public groundwater supplies. The disposal well, named the Flying Monkey, injected oil field wastewater underground and sat roughly a quarter-mile from two municipal groundwater supply sites that served the small city of Enid in northwest Oklahoma. Wastewater injection operations are banned within a half-mile of public water wells unless regulators hold a hearing to ensure that this activity will not pollute groundwater. (Bowlin, 10/5)

The calls started coming into the Utah Poison Control Center in March. People had taken a herbal supplement known as “cat’s claw” but were reporting symptoms that sounded much like an opioid overdose. (10/1)

Eleven years after conjoined twins Knatalye and Addy Mata were successfully separated, the girls are undergoing surgery yet again. The pair received surgery at Scottish Rite for Children hospital in Dallas to treat their scoliosis, according to a hospital Facebook post on Thursday. The sisters were apart for three months for their surgeries and have since reunited, ABC News' Dallas affiliate WFAA reported. "It's something to be proud of and not to be ashamed of," Knatalye said, according to Scottish Rite. (Fahrney, 10/2)

What one doctor tells family and friends who are asking for help. (Ashish K. Jha, 10/5)

More than half of people who qualify for one diagnosis also qualify for another during their lifetime. (Maia Szalavitz, 10/5)

Lethal injection failures are not glitches; they are features of the process. (Joel Zivot, 10/4)

Democrats are reviving an old idea. Now they have to define it and pay for it. (Elisabeth Rosenthal, 10/5)

In a single generation, energy drinks have conquered the beverage world.  Starting as an upscale version of the humble NoDoz pill, then sugared up for guzzling, they are now the caffeine jolt of choice for the sluggish and the sleep-deprived. In an odd commercial convergence, they have also hooked up with the burgeoning wellness movement by adding favorites like ginseng, vitamins, and amino acids to the mix, making the energy drink seem like a friendly sports drink. Presto! An $85-billion-a-year (and growing) global market is upon us. (Kent Sepkowitz, 10/5)   

On Monday morning, the Nobel Prize for medicine was announced. This year, I wonder: Will Claude or a future artificial intelligence agent ever win the most prestigious award for medical discovery? (Jeffrey S. Flier, 10/5)