The mosquito-borne Zika virus has been linked to a surge in cases of birth defects in Brazil, and is spreading in other countries in the southern hemisphere. Flaminia Catteruccia, associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says the virus may have adapted to the human environment and mutated.

Flint, Michigan temporarily switched its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River in April 2014 to cut costs. Should officials have known that lead contamination would result?

People who eat spicy foods nearly every day have a 14% lower risk of death compared with those who consume spicy foods less than once a week, according to a new study. Regular spicy food eaters are also less likely to die from cancer, heart, and respiratory diseases than those who eat spicy foods infrequently.“The…

The rush to contain the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in the last few months has generated years’ worth of new information about the previously little understood infectious disease, including simple but effective prevention measures, according to Lindsey Baden, deputy editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and member of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology faculty.“We’ve learned as…