Health

As an unidentified canine respiratory illness continues to pop up in clusters around the United States — causing symptoms like cough, fever and lethargy, and in more serious cases, hospitalization or death — many dog owners are wondering what steps they should take to keep their pets safe.Despite the alarming headlines about fatalities, veterinarians are urging pet owners to be careful, but not to panic.“At this point in time, I don’t think there is reason for extreme alarm,” said Dr. Deborah Silverstein, a professor of small animal emergency and critical care medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Ryan Veterinary Hospital. “I do think it’s a time to be cautious and to stay informed.”We talked to Dr. Silverstein and other experts about the strategies they recommend (and in some cases, ...

Traumatic brain injuries have left more than five million Americans permanently disabled. They have trouble focusing on even simple tasks and often have to quit jobs or drop out of school.A study published on Monday has offered them a glimpse of hope. Five people with moderate to severe brain injuries had electrodes implanted in their heads. As the electrodes stimulated their brains, their performance on cognitive tests improved.If the results hold up in larger clinical trials, the implants could become the first effective therapy for chronic brain injuries, the researchers said.“This is the first evidence that you can move the dial for this problem,” said Dr. Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York who led the study.Gina Arata, one of the volunteers who receiv...

On the last Thursday of August, Jennifer Livovich spent the morning simmering beans and cheese sauce in her Boulder, Colo., apartment, preparing nachos. Then friends helped her load a truck with the food, along with donations she had secured — socks, toothbrushes, cellphones — to distribute at a downtown park where dozens of chronically homeless people congregate.“Hopefully, no drama,” she said as the truck pulled away.Ms. Livovich has become a central figure in Boulder’s efforts to help the homeless. In 2020, she created a nonprofit, Feet Forward, to serve several hundred people whom the county estimates lack permanent shelter. And she regularly consults with, and is consulted by, policymakers, housing officials and the Boulder County district attorney. In late November she wrote an op-ed...

It’s a good day when Frank Lee, a retired chef, can slip out to the hardware store, fairly confident that his wife, Robin, is in the hands of reliable help. He spends nearly every hour of every day anxiously overseeing her care at their home on the Isle of Palms, a barrier island near Charleston, S.C.Ms. Lee, 67, has had dementia for about a decade, but the couple was able to take overseas trips and enjoy their marriage of some 40 years until three years ago, when she grew more agitated, prone to sudden outbursts and could no longer explain what she needed or wanted. He struggled to care for her largely on his own.“As Mom’s condition got more difficult to navigate, he was just handling it,” said Jesse Lee, the youngest of the couple’s three adult children. “It was getting harder and harder...

Dr. William P. Murphy Jr., a biomedical engineer who was an inventor of the vinyl blood bag that replaced breakable bottles in the Korean War and made transfusions safe and reliable on battlefields, in hospitals and at scenes of natural disasters and accidents, died on Thursday at his home in Coral Gables, Fla. He was 100.His death was confirmed on Monday by Mike Tomás, the president and chief executive of U.S. Stem Cell, a Florida company for which Dr. Murphy had long served as chairman. He became chairman emeritus last year.Dr. Murphy, the son of a Nobel Prize-winning Boston physician, was also widely credited with early advances in the development of pacemakers to stabilize erratic heart rhythms, of artificial kidneys to cleanse the blood of impurities, and of many sterile devices, incl...