John Roberts, a 68-year-old anchor for Fox News, is currently in the hospital battling a serious case of malaria. Roberts shared with PEOPLE magazine that he was diagnosed on Monday, August 25. He believes he contracted the illness during a vacation in Indonesia.

According to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention, US reports 2000 malaria cases a year with an average of 7 deaths per year since 2007-2022. What’s surprising is that 95% of these cases happen to be people who did not take malaria prevention medication.

What Symptoms Did John Roberts Experience?

Roberts described his symptoms as starting about 10 days after he returned from his trip. He felt pain all over his body, as he explained “from head to toe” and experienced uncontrollable shivering while on air. Initially, he thought it was just the flu, but knew it was serious when blood tests showed his white blood cells and platelets were very low.

Upon being officially diagnosed in the emergency room, Roberts admitted he was "a little scared," recognizing that malaria can be deadly if not treated. He said he has never felt this sick in his life.

What Is The First Symptom Of Malaria?

Stanford University explains that In the beginning, malaria can feel a lot like the flu. Symptoms might not seem unique, as they are similar to many other common illnesses. The most typical symptoms of malaria include:

• Fever
• Chills
• Headache
• Sweating
• Fatigue or feeling very tired
• Nausea and vomiting
• Body aches
• A general feeling of being sick

How severe these symptoms are can depend on your age, overall health, and the type of malaria parasite you have. In some cases, people who have been infected many times might have few or even no symptoms at all.

While most people recover, in rare cases, malaria can become very serious. It can lead to problems with the brain or spinal cord, seizures, or a loss of consciousness. The most severe types of malaria can even be deadly.

How Long Does It Take For Malaria Symptoms To Appear?

Symptoms usually show up anywhere from 7 to 30 days after you are infected. However, for some types of malaria, you might not feel sick for many months, and in rare cases, up to a year after being exposed. The time it takes for symptoms to appear can also be longer if you have taken medicine to prevent the infection. Additionally, if you have had malaria before, your symptoms might be less severe.

How Was John Roberts Treated?

Roberts has been treated with IV artesunate, a powerful medication used for severe cases of malaria. He describes his recovery as a series of "up and down" days, with his body temperature swinging from shivering cold to sweating.

Roberts is the only malaria patient in his hospital, and one of his doctors said it was the first case he had ever seen. A person’s malaria treatment depends on a few things like,

• Whether it's for prevention or to treat an active infection.
• Your health, age, and if you are pregnant.
• How sick you are.
• If the malaria parasite is resistant to certain medicines.
• The possible side effects of the medicine.
• People who need special care include pregnant women, children, the elderly, and those with other health problems.

How Is Severe Malaria Treated?

In very serious cases of malaria, a special procedure called an exchange blood transfusion may be used. This is the fastest way to get rid of the parasites. During this procedure, blood is taken from you while you receive new blood from a donor, along with malaria medicine.

If you are traveling to a remote area without easy access to medical care, your doctor might give you medicine to carry with you. You will get instructions on how to use it if you start showing malaria symptoms. This is a temporary solution, and you should still get to a doctor as soon as possible, ideally within 24 hours.

Vision impairment is an issue that many people don’t understand. Most people view vision loss as absolute, either you can see or you cannot. However, there are other conditions where a person has slightly less vision and also severe visual impairment. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 2.2 billion people in the world have near or distance impairment and according to their statistics, 1 billion of these cases could have been addressed. Taking a step towards this same cause, a new technology has been created, which could help people who have slowly lost their sight to read again.

A new study has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, announcing a huge step forward for people with Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD). This is a common disease that causes people to lose their central vision over time. The groundbreaking result of the study was that dozens of patients who took part in the study were able to get some of their sight back. This was achieved by using a brand-new system that combines an eye implant with special smart glasses.

This technology was powerful enough to help these patients return to doing simple, everyday things they could no longer do, like reading books or solving crossword puzzles. The people who participated in this trial were all 60 years or older, had AMD in both eyes, and had very poor vision in the eye being studied.

How Can You Help Someone With Progressive Vision Loss?

To understand why this is a big deal, you need to know that AMD causes the cells in the center of the retina (the light-sensitive part at the back of the eye) to die. Once they die, vision loss is considered permanent. This new study doesn't cure AMD, but it focuses on replacing the job of those dead cells to bring some vision back. The system has two main parts:

The Implant

This is a tiny device, only about 2x2 millimeters in size, which is smaller than a small pea. It’s made of little photovoltaic solar panels. It is carefully surgically placed underneath the patient's retina.

The Smart Glasses

The patient wears these special glasses, which have a camera. The glasses capture a close-up, zoomed-in image of the world and send this image to the implant using near-infrared light.

Once the implant receives the light signal, it creates small electrical pulses. These pulses travel to the optic nerve, completely taking over the job of the dead retinal cells and allowing the brain to finally see the world again.

How Does This Technology Work?

The clinical trial started with 38 patients who got the implant. After one full year, 32 patients were still involved in the study. The results at the one-year mark were extremely encouraging:

26 out of the 32 participants, which is an 80 percent success rate, could see better than they did when they started the trial.

It’s important to note that the vision they regained isn't perfect; patients can only see a blurry image and everything is in black and white. However, outside experts have praised the achievement, with some calling the work "amazing," because it provides hope where there was previously none.

The technology was developed by a company called Science Corporation, which works on brain-computer interfaces. The CEO and founder of Science Corporation is Max Hodak, who also helped start the well-known neurotechnology company Neuralink with Elon Musk back in 2016.

Science Corporation took over this vision project in 2024. They acquired the retinal implant technology from a French company named Pixium Vision. Pixium Vision had spent ten years trying to develop the technology but eventually ran out of money. This kind of "rescue" is actually not unique in the medical world; a similar situation happened with another company, Second Sight Medical, whose abandoned vision technology was also saved by a different startup to keep its clinical trials going.

A landmark study titled “COVID-19 Vaccine Linked to Longer Survival in Cancer Patients” has revealed that people with advanced lung or skin cancer who received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine within 100 days of starting immunotherapy lived significantly longer than those who did not. Conducted by researchers from the University of Florida (UF) and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the findings were presented at the 2025 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Berlin and mark a major step in exploring how mRNA technology could strengthen cancer treatment.

A Milestone in mRNA Research

This study represents the culmination of more than a decade of UF research on mRNA-based cancer therapies. Lead investigator Dr Elias Sayour, a pediatric oncologist at UF Health, called the findings “extraordinary,” noting that the vaccine’s immune-boosting effect could help design a universal, off-the-shelf cancer vaccine capable of enhancing immunotherapy responses.

mRNA, or messenger RNA, is a molecule that carries genetic instructions to make proteins. It forms the basis of COVID vaccines developed during the pandemic, and scientists now believe this same mechanism could be harnessed to amplify the body’s cancer-fighting abilities.

How the Study Was Conducted

Researchers analyzed medical records of over 1,000 patients with stage III and IV non-small-cell lung cancer or metastatic melanoma treated at MD Anderson between 2019 and 2023. Of these, 180 lung-cancer patients and 43 melanoma patients received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine within 100 days of starting immunotherapy. Their outcomes were compared with 704 and 167 unvaccinated patients, respectively.

The results were striking. Vaccinated lung-cancer patients showed a median survival of 37.3 months, nearly double the 20.6 months observed in unvaccinated counterparts. Among melanoma patients, survival rose from 26.7 months to about 30–40 months, with several patients still alive at data cut-off — suggesting an even greater long-term benefit.

Importantly, the effect was specific to mRNA COVID vaccines; flu and pneumonia shots did not produce similar outcomes.

The Science Behind the Boost

Earlier this year, Dr Sayour’s lab discovered that to trigger a strong immune attack, targeting a single tumor protein wasn’t necessary. Instead, stimulating the immune system as if fighting a viral infection worked better. When this nonspecific mRNA vaccine was combined with immune checkpoint inhibitors — drugs that “release the brakes” on immune cells — mice showed powerful antitumor responses.

Building on this, the team theorized that the COVID mRNA vaccine might act like an immune flare, mobilizing immune cells from tumor zones to lymph nodes where cancer defense is stronger. This mechanism, Sayour explained, could make previously unresponsive cancers respond to treatment.

Implications and Next Steps

Although this is an observational study and cannot yet prove causality, experts are optimistic. UF’s Dr Duane Mitchell emphasized that while more trials are needed, such a large survival benefit “is the type of treatment effect we rarely see.”

A large-scale clinical trial through the UF-led OneFlorida+ Research Network is now planned to verify these findings across hospitals in several U.S. states.

If confirmed, the discovery could reshape how cancer is treated — turning vaccines from preventive tools into active partners in therapy. For patients battling advanced cancers, this could mean something profoundly valuable: more time and renewed hope.

Every year on October 20, World Osteoporosis Day is marked, to put the spotlight on osteoporosis. The day marks a year-long campaign, which is dedicated to raising global awareness of bone health, and the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis and related musculoskeletal diseases.

Osteoporosis is a serious condition where bones lose its density and strength, and it thus makes them fragile and more likely to break. It is often called the 'silent disease', and most people don't even realize that they have it until a fracture happens.

The most common fracture in this condition is in hip, spine, wrist, or shoulder. These fractures can result in long hospital stays, and lead to loss of independence, and reduced quality of life.

World Osteoporosis Day 2025 Theme

This year's theme is 'It's Unacceptable'.

This puts the spotlight on the persistent and preventable crisis in osteoporosis care.

This condition affects over 500 million people worldwide, and most remain severely underdiagnosed and undertreated. Up to 80% of patients with osteoporotic fractures do not receive any follow-up diagnosis or treatment.

This theme furthermore makes an effort for everyone to make noise for the silent disease.

The disease is more common among women, as 1 in 3 women, as compared to 1 in 5 men aged 50+ are prone to osteoporotic fracture in their remaining lifetime. These fractures could lead to chronic pain and disability, loss of independence, increased risk of further fractures, and even premature deaths.

Thus the theme 'It's Unacceptable', highlights that it is simply unacceptable that patients continue to receive inadequate care, and people are still not aware of the condition.

Origin Of World Osteoporosis Day

The World Osteoporosis Day was first launched in 1996 by the United Kingdom's National Osteoporosis Society, with support from the European Commission. The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF), then took over the global coordination in 1997, turning it into a worldwide awareness campaign that takes place annually on October 20. The World Health Organization (WHO) also co-sponsored the event in 1998 and 1999, helping to raise its international profile.

Significance of World Osteoporosis Day 2025

Why is it important to observe a day on this, internationally? The reason is, this condition is very common, is among the most frequent health events, yet not much talked about. The IOF notes that in women osteoporotic fractures are more common than breast cancer. Women who are over the age of 45 account for more days in hospital than many other diseases, if they are osteoporotic. This comparison is done with other chronic diseases, including diabetes, myocardial infarction, and even breast cancer, notes IOF.

For men, in many countries, osteoporotic fractures account for more hospital bed days than those due to prostrate cancer.

IOF notes that osteoporosis is not prioritized in healthcare policy, and that it continues to be underdiagnosed and undertreated, globally. Only 1 in 3 vertebral fractures come to clinical attention, and most spinal fractures are often diagnosed as simple 'back pain'. This is why there remains a high treatment gap. In Europe, 72% of women who are at a high risk of osteoporotic fractures do not receive treatment.

This is why awareness about this condition becomes more so important, especially when framing public policies, education campaigns, and preventative care, especially making people understand the importance of calcium and vitamin D.