Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Lives could be saved from tropical disease with new rapid test

Globally, more than half of patients die after infection with the neglected tropical disease, melioidosis, often before they are diagnosed. A new rapid test could save lives by diagnosing patients in hours rather than several ...

Medications

Who benefits from direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising?

A new study co-authored by a University of Massachusetts Amherst economist reveals the value of government vaccine recommendations to drugmakers, as well as potential benefits of advertising pharmaceuticals directly to consumers—a ...

Health

Infant mortality rates vary across race, Hispanic-origin groups

There is variation in infant mortality rates across maternal race and Hispanic-origin groups and by selected maternal characteristics, according to the March 5 National Vital Statistics Reports, a publication from the National ...

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Population history of American indigenous peoples

It is estimated, based on archaeological data and written records from European settlers, that from 8 to 140 million indigenous people lived in the Americas when the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus began a historical period of large-scale European interaction with the Americas. European contact with what they called the "New World" led to the European colonization of the Americas, with millions of emigrants (willing and unwilling) from the "Old World" eventually resettling in the Americas.

While the population of Old World peoples in the Americas steadily grew in the centuries after Columbus, the population of the American indigenous peoples plummeted. This was somewhat caused by direct conflict and warfare with European colonizers and other Native American tribes, but probably mostly due to their susceptibility to old world diseases [smallpox, influenza, bubonic and pneumonic plagues, etc.] that they had never before been exposed to. The extent (and to a lesser extent the causes) of this population decline have long been the subject of debate.

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