Japan has approved a stem-cell treatment for spinal-cord injuries. The event marks the first such therapy for this kind of injury to receive government approval for sale to patients.

“This is an unprecedented revolution of science and medicine, which will open a new era of healthcare,” says oncologist Masanori Fukushima, head of the Translational Research Informatics Center, a Japanese government organization in Kobe that has been giving advice and support to the project for more than a decade.

But independent researchers warn that the approval is premature. Ten specialists in stem-cell science or spinal-cord injuries, who were approached for comment by Nature and were not involved in the work or its commercialization, say that evidence that the treatment works is insufficient. Many of them say that the approval for the therapy, which is injected intravenously, was based on a small, poorly designed clinical trial.

Federal regulators say they’ve identified the source of the cancer-causing impurities that have tainted millions of bottles of commonly used generic blood pressure and heart failure medications recalled by drugmakers over the last seven months.

The carcinogens are a chemical byproduct of the process used to synthesize the active ingredient in the drugs, which include valsartan, losartan and irbesartan. People who take those drugs may have been exposed to trace amounts of impurities for at least four years, after a switch in how companies manufactured the active ingredient, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Vaginal mesh, used to repair and improve weakened pelvic tissues, is implanted in the vaginal wall. It was initially — in 1998 — thought to be a safe and easy solution for women suffering from stress urinary incontinence.

But over time, complications were reported, including chronic inflammation, and mesh that shrinks and becomes encased in scar tissue causing pain, infection and protrusion through the vaginal wall.

The flu season is going strong.

About six million to seven million people in the United States have come down with the illness so far, with half of them sick enough to have seen doctors, according to estimates released on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some 69,000 to 84,000 ended up in the hospital during the period from Oct. 1, 2018 through Jan. 5.

Most Americans say it would be OK to use gene-editing technology to create babies protected against a variety of diseases — but a new poll finds they’d draw the line at changing DNA so children are born smarter, faster or taller.

A month after startling claims of the births of the world’s first gene-edited babies in China, the poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds people are torn between the medical promise of a technology powerful enough to alter human heredity and concerns over whether it will be used ethically.

NIPT’s entry into the mainstream has raised some questions as busy health-care providers scramble to figure out how to offer it en masse to a public with varying understanding of genetic testing and little access to genetic counselors.

Ever since scientists created the powerful gene-editing technique CRISPR, they have braced for the day when it would be used to produce a genetically altered human being. Now, the moment they feared may have come. What’s likely to happen next?

Theft of your personal medical information is on the rise, despite stringent privacy laws intended to safeguard it, according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The breaches of electronic health records can include a vast array of personal information, including your Social Security number and medical history. The theft is the latest example of how all private data is increasingly subject to breaches, where credit card numbers, account log-ins and more end up in the wrong hands.

Neuroscientists have amassed more evidence for the hypothesis that sticky proteins that are a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases can be transferred between people under particular conditions — and cause new damage in a recipient’s brain.

They stress that their research does not suggest that disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease are contagious, but it does raise concern that certain medical and surgical procedures pose a risk of transmitting such proteins between humans, which might lead to brain disease decades later.