Your World This Week, Volume XII

Published September 7, 2015
Updated September 14, 2015

New Study Shows That HIV Prevention Pill Is Literally 100% Effective

Truvada Man Holding Pill

Image Source: The Huffington Post

Recently, 600 healthy subjects considered to be at high risk for contracting HIV were given the daily prevention pill, Truvada. When the study ended, not a single subject had contracted HIV. Success rates of 100 percent are practically unheard of in medical research, so the new study understandably has researchers ecstatic.

That said, various questions and concerns remain. Some argue (as they did when Truvada was first launched in 2012) that a preventative drug will encourage those who take it to engage in unsafe sex and thus perhaps contract other STIs. Some wonder whether the pill’s eventual costs will be too high for most people.

Others doubt whether people will actually have the discipline to take a pill every single day. While these concerns are legitimate and further study is needed, most agree that a new day for HIV prevention is here. Read more at The Washington Post.

Researchers Use Twitter As Way To Understand, Combat Anti-Bacterial Resistant Superbugs

Twitter

Twitter not only keeps people connected; it might also serve as an apt way for scientists to understand the way antibiotic-resistant bacteria work. Image Source: The Next Web

In Twitter, some see 21st century technology fulfilling a democratic promise. Others see a cesspit for half-baked thoughts and banalities. Carnegie Mellon researchers see a way to visualize—and potentially combat—antibacterial-resistant superbugs.

That Twitter users and communities might be compared to pathogens will not surprise those who see the social media platform as a petri dish for all things unsavory. But to the CM researchers, they hope to use the platform as a “metaphor to better understand how different bacterial strains communicate with one another via certain chemical signals to form densely matted biofilms that protect them against antibiotics,” says Scientific American. Learn more about the process there.

Recent Study Reveals That Work-Related Stress Potentially As Physically Damaging As Secondhand Smoke

Stack Of Papers

A new Harvard study reveals that work-related stresses may have the same negative health impacts as secondhand smoke. Image Source: The Guardian

Bad news, workaholics: the stress you accrue at your 9 to (well after) 5 is just as bad for you as secondhand smoke, researchers say.

Recently, researchers at Harvard Business School and Stanford University released a report which, after compiling evidence from 228 other studies, affirms that high job demands increase the likelihood of being diagnosed with an illness by 35 percent. Further, long work hours increase the chance of early death by nearly 20 percent, according to the study.

The study revealed fear of losing one’s job as the biggest work-related stressor, and that that stress increases the chance of having poor health by approximately 50 percent.

Read the study in full here.

author
John Kuroski
author
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.
editor
Savannah Cox
editor
Savannah Cox holds a Master's in International Affairs from The New School as well as a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and now serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Sheffield. Her work as a writer has also appeared on DNAinfo.