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In mid-July, as listeria infection cases multiplied across the United States, Maryland health officials who track foodborne illnesses grew increasingly alarmed. The outbreak was spreading at a much more rapid rate than normal for listeria. Two people — in Illinois and New Jersey — had already died and more than two dozen had fallen ill in the previous seven weeks. The health officials feared many more would succumb. (Roubein and Heim, 9/30)

Compassion in the deep-red state only extends so far for a young woman marking her 20th month of sobriety and trying to make a life for her two daughters. (Paquette, 10/1)

Astronauts embarking on long-haul journeys in deep space can’t pack all the calories they will need in the form of freeze-dried food. They also can’t grow everything they’ll need, as onboard garden technology isn’t mature enough to keep them flush with fresh produce. Given those nutritional constraints, a group of engineers thinks future space travelers should pivot their diets. In a study published Thursday in The International Journal of Astrobiology, scientists suggest that astronauts could look to asteroids for all-you-can-eat meals. (Scoles,10/3)

A year ago last week, Jeanne Marrazzo stepped into a very big pair of shoes. Marrazzo became the first new director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in decades, taking over a job held for 38 years by Anthony Fauci, whose long-term status as a science god in Washington gave way to Covid-19 fall guy in some quarters during and after the pandemic. The months since have been a whirlwind for Marrazzo, a veteran researcher in the field of sexually transmitted infections — especially their effect on women. (Branswell, 10/1)

An impoverished family in Africa is unable to afford a 50-cent course of antibiotics to save the life of a child with a simple bacterial infection. Is such a tragedy best described as a case of antimicrobial resistance, the slow-motion health emergency caused by the misuse of lifesaving antibiotics? For more than a decade, antimicrobial resistance has been framed as a problem of excess. The willy-nilly consumption of antibiotics, scientists said, have rendered the drugs less effective, leading to the unnecessary death of millions, many of them poor. (Jacobs, 9/26)

It’s been four months since Sifa Kunguja recovered from mpox, but as a sex worker, she said, she’s still struggling to regain clients, with fear and stigma driving away people who’ve heard she had the virus. “It’s risky work,” Kunguja, 40, said from her small home in eastern Congo. “But if I don’t work, I won’t have money for my children.” Sex workers are among those hardest-hit by the mpox outbreak in Kamituga, where some 40,000 of them are estimated to reside — many single mothers driven by poverty to this mineral-rich commercial hub where gold miners comprise the majority of the clientele. Doctors estimate 80% of cases here have been contracted sexually, though the virus also spreads through other kinds of skin-to-skin contact. (Mednick, 10/2)