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Top killer in US revealed, plus red meat warnings spark questions

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Top killer in US revealed, plus red meat warnings spark questions

Fox News’ Health newsletter brings you stories on the latest developments in health care, wellness, diseases, mental health and more.

TOP 3:

This disease kills more people than all cancers and accidents combined

– Red meat could raise dementia risk, researchers claim, yet some doctors have questions

– Brain and memory are boosted by eating one particular diet, study finds

Heart disease remains the top killer of Americans as risk factors continue to grow. The latest statistics were revealed in the American Heart Association’s annual report, 2025 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics. (iStock)

MORE IN HEALTH

SOBER EFFECTS – Kelly Ripa reveals the surprising result of giving up alcohol. Continue reading…

DEMENTIA DUPE – A little-known condition is often misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease. Continue reading…

WATER WEIGHT – A certain type of water could support weight loss, a study suggests. Continue reading…

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Pope Francis Has Bilateral Pneumonia

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Pope Francis Has Bilateral Pneumonia

Pope Francis, who remains hospitalized, has bilateral pneumonia, the Vatican said on Tuesday.

The term simply means pneumonia in both lungs, said Dr. James Musser, director of the center for infectious diseases at the Houston Methodist Research Institute. He added that, without examining a patient, he could not say anything specific about his condition.

In general, pneumonia is an infection of the small airways of the lungs. As the body mounts an inflammatory response, small pockets in the lungs fill with immune cells; symptoms can include fever, cough and shaking chills. To diagnose the illness, a doctor typically asks the patient to say a long “e,” as if the person were singing. Through a stethoscope, the “e” of a pneumonia patient sounds like an “a,” said Dr. Paul Pottinger, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Washington.

Most people with pneumonia recover well at home and do not need to be hospitalized. But for older people, pneumonia can be “a deadly situation,” infectious disease experts said.

Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, added that “the mortality rate goes up after age 85.” The pope is 88, and is missing part of one lung after pulmonary surgery in 1957.

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The most likely cause of pneumonia is an infection caused by a bacterium, Streptococcus pneumoniae, according to Dr. Chin-Hong. “The No. 1, 2 and 3 cause of pneumonia is strep pneumonia,” he said.

The illness can respond to antibiotics, but bacteria can sometimes spill out of the lungs and into the rest of the body, resulting in sepsis, a dangerous situation. A vaccine can help mitigate this sepsis risk but does not prevent the condition, Dr. Chin-Hong said.

Dr. Pottinger noted that, although strep pneumonia can involve both lungs, it usually is confined to one lobe of one lung. Most bilateral pneumonia, he said, is caused by viruses, including influenza, or other bacteria. Other causes include respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V., Legionella, mycoplasma and chlamydia, Dr. Pottinger said.

He agreed with Dr. Chin-Hong about the likely gravity of the pope’s condition.

“It is a very scary situation,” Dr. Pottinger said.

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Minnesota declares state of emergency as diseases cripple Midwestern farms

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Minnesota declares state of emergency as diseases cripple Midwestern farms

Minnesota has declared a state of emergency as multiple strains of bird flu have ravaged farms.

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) stated in a press release that the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s Rural Finance Authority (RFA) Board established the emergency following three outbreaks.

Those included avian metapneumovirus (aMPV), highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), and the H5N1 flu virus.

NEW BIRD FLU STRAIN DETECTED IN NEVADA DAIRY WORKER, CDC SAYS

The state of emergency allows Minnesota farmers who have experienced livestock losses to access funds through zero-interest disaster recovery loans, according to the above source.

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Fran Miron feeds his cows at his farm on Sept. 5, 2019, in Hugo, Minnesota. Minnesota has declared a state of emergency as multiple strains of bird flu have ravaged farms. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

An MDA spokesperson confirmed with Fox News Digital that this declaration is a “formality the Rural Finance Authority Board must take in order to open up the Disaster Recovery Loan Program to farmers.” 

“The declaration has no impact beyond that and affects no other funding or programs.”

The loan program provides funds for expenses not covered by insurance, according to the MDA, including replacement of flocks or livestock, building improvements, or loss of revenue due to animal disease outbreaks.

BIRD FLU UPTICK IN US HAS CDC ON ALERT FOR PANDEMIC ‘RED FLAGS’: REPORT

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Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner Thom Petersen wrote in a statement that this is an “important step in helping Minnesota farmers affected by these three animal health diseases.” 

“I encourage those who have faced livestock losses to explore these zero-interest loans,” he added.

avian metapneumovirus (aMPV) is a “highly infectious respiratory disease” that affects poultry and can cause “significant immunosuppression” in birds, as well as secondary infections and high mortality, according to the MDA.

bird flu outbreak on minnesota farm

USDA workers disinfect a work crew at a Jennie-O turkey farm in Eden Valley, Minnesota, on April 30, 2015, amid a bird flu outbreak. (Glen Stubbe/Star Tribune via Getty Images)

Since April 2024, Minnesota has reported 871 aMPV positive tests, which is “likely an undercount,” health officials said.

HPAI — which is a contagious, viral and fatal disease — has also posed a “major threat” to the poultry industry, MDA reported.

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In Minnesota, there have been 185 cases of HPAI confirmed since March 2022, affecting 9.1 million domestic birds, mostly turkeys.

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H5N1, also known as avian influenza or bird flu, causes the same virus in poultry as HPAI, but can also affect dairy cows and other animals.

Bird flu strains have also spread to humans, including a dairy worker in Nevada who was infected by a new type (D1.1) last week, as Fox News Digital previously reported.

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Sam Scarpino, director of AI and life sciences and professor of health sciences at Northeastern University in Boston, previously said that he considers the ongoing U.S. bird flu outbreak as “serious.”

Blood collection tubes H5N1 in front of chicken

Bird flu cases have risen across the U.S. and have infected some humans. (iStock)

“We now have at least two distinct H5N1 strains (akin to variants if we were discussing COVID-19) that have infected dairy cattle, poultry and humans,” he told Fox News Digital. “The H5N1 situation in the U.S. continues to get worse, not better.”

Scarpino shared his approval of the recent choice of Dr. Gerald Parker to run the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy. 

“His appointment signals that the federal government is giving the H5N1 situation the attention it needs,” he said.

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“From the perspective of both the building agricultural costs and continued risk of human infection, we have to bring this H5N1 outbreak under control.”

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An Invisible Medical Shortage: Oxygen

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An Invisible Medical Shortage: Oxygen

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of people in poor nations died literally gasping for breath, even in hospitals. What they lacked was medical oxygen, which is in short supply in much of the world.

On Monday, a panel of experts published a comprehensive report on the shortage. Each year, the report noted, more than 370 million people worldwide need oxygen as part of their medical care, but fewer than 1 in 3 receive it, jeopardizing the health and lives of those who do not. Access to safe and affordable medical oxygen is especially limited in low- and middle-income nations.

“The need is very urgent,” said Dr. Hamish Graham, a pediatrician and a lead author of the report. “We know that there’s more epidemics coming, and there’ll be another pandemic, probably like Covid, within the next 15 to 20 years.”

The report, published in The Lancet Global Health, comes just weeks after the Trump administration froze foreign aid programs, including some that could improve access to oxygen.

Boosting the availability of medical oxygen would require an investment of about $6.8 billion, the report noted. “Within the current climate, that’s obviously going to become a bit more of a challenge,” said Carina King, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute and a lead author of the report.

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Still, she said, governments and funding organizations should prioritize medical oxygen because of its importance across health care. People of all ages may need oxygen for pneumonia and other respiratory conditions, for severe infections including malaria and sepsis, for surgeries and for chronic lung conditions.

“We’re not pitting oxygen against other priorities, but rather that it should be embedded within all of those programs and within those priorities,” Dr. King said. “It’s completely fundamental to a functioning health system.”

Medical oxygen has been used for more than 100 years, often for treating patients with pneumonia. But it was added to the World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines List only in 2017.

Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, Every Breath Counts, a coalition of more than 50 organizations, pushed for increased access to medical oxygen. By the end of 2022, an emergency task force had mobilized more than $1 billion worth of medical oxygen equipment and supplies to more than 100 countries.

One country that has made substantial investment in improving oxygen access is Nigeria, which had taken steps in that direction even before Covid.

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Nigeria has set up about 20 cost-effective plants for generating oxygen on-site for hospitals, and is exploring liquid oxygen plants that can supply large swaths of urban areas, said Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate, the country’s minister of health and social welfare.

Many hospitals do not have systems that can deliver oxygen reliably, “so that is sort of a design and a legacy issue that we have to deal with,” he said. “There’s more that needs to be done.”

Modifying hospital systems to deliver oxygen can pose engineering and market issues, and delivering oxygen requires infrastructure that can transport heavy oxygen tanks for long distances.

Even once oxygen supply is assured, the equipment to deliver the oxygen directly to patients must be routinely maintained and cleaned, and spare parts may take months to be delivered. Health care workers must be trained to use the equipment effectively.

“We’ve seen so much investment in equipment, but very little investment in how to operationalize that equipment sustainably,” Dr. King said.

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Health care facilities also require pulse oximeters to screen and monitor blood oxygen levels during treatment. But in low- and middle-income countries, pulse oximetry is used in fewer than 1 in 5 patients in general hospitals, and it’s almost never used at primary health care facilities, according to the report.

The panel included testimonials from patients, families and health care workers who have struggled with the oxygen shortage. In Sierra Leone, before the Covid-19 pandemic, only one public hospital in the entire country had a functioning oxygen plant, resulting in thousands of avoidable deaths. In Pakistan, a man with a chronic lung condition said that he stayed indoors and avoided stairs to prevent his lungs from rupturing under the strain. He had to borrow money from friends and family to pay the $18,000 cost of treatment at home.

In Ethiopia, a doctor was forced to take oxygen away from one patient to treat another who was more desperately ill. “It was very heartbreaking trying to decide who lives and who dies,” he said.

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