Ovarian cysts, which are small fluid-filled sacs that develop in or on the ovaries, are very common and are usually harmless. In fact, “the process of ovulation—maturing an egg and releasing it—basically makes at least a little cyst, which pops when the egg is released, and then these cysts resolve,” explains Dr. Mary Jane Minkin, an ob-gyn at Yale Medicine. These are often called “functional cysts,” and they usually go away on their own. Advertisement Other types of ovarian cysts include hemorrhagic cysts (which bleed and cause pain), dermoid cysts (which may contain skin cells and sebaceous glands), and endometriomas (which are filled with dark, thick blood and develop as a result of endometriosis). Ovarian cysts also can occur with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), but they don’t always. Here’s what to know about ovarian cysts. How ovarian cysts affect women Most ovarian cysts are the size of a grape or cherry and don’t cause symptoms. But cysts that grow quickly can cause pain in the pelvis near the hipbone and a feeling of persistent pressure. “This discomfort can be intermittent or constant and may feel sharp or dull,” says Dr. Kelli V. Burroughs, an ob-gyn at UT Health—University of Texas Medical School at Houston. By contrast, cysts that rupture or burst can cause intense pelvic pain and sometimes slight bleeding, says Minkin. “The pain will get better as the fluid gets absorbed by the lining of the abdominal cavity.”

Afederal judge on Friday ordered the immediate release of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. student at Tufts University who had been held for six weeks in an immigration detention center, ruling that her arrest and continued confinement were unlawful and raised serious constitutional concerns. Judge William K. Sessions III of the U.S. District Court in Vermont found that Öztürk, who was detained in March after co-authoring a pro-Palestinian op-ed in her campus newspaper, had been targeted for her speech in a manner that violated her First Amendment and due process rights. The ruling is a sharp rebuke of the Trump administration’s use of visa revocations and deportation proceedings against foreign students accused of dissenting from U.S. foreign policy.There is no evidence here… absent consideration of the op-ed,” Sessions said in court, describing the government’s case as hinging entirely on her protected speech. “Her continued detention cannot stand.” Öztürk, who appeared virtually from an ICE facility in Louisiana, was ordered released without restrictions on her travel, allowing her to return to her home in Massachusetts. The ruling was announced as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was in the midst of a briefing with reporters. When asked about the decision, Leavitt suggested Sessions had overstepped. “We’ve made quite clear that lower level judges should not be dictating the foreign policy of the United States," Leavitt said. Later on Friday, Stephen Miller, Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, announced that the Administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus, the right to challenge a person’s detention by the government when the U.S. has been invaded or during an insurrection. Habeas corpus has only been suspended four times since the ratification of the Constitution: during the Civil War; in South Carolina during Reconstruction to combat the Ku Klux Klan; in the Philippines during a 1905 insurrection; and in Hawaii after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. “The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion,” Miller said, just days after a New York federal judge ruled that the Trump administration had not shown evidence that there was a foreign invasion to justify using the Alien Enemies Act for deportations. Sessions’ order in the Öztürk case comes amid mounting scrutiny of President Donald Trump’s policy of revoking student visas on the basis of perceived political threats. Since returning to office, Trump has directed his administration to act aggressively against foreign nationals who the Administration has alleged are undermining American interests, particularly in the context of criticism of Israel and campus protests against the war in Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who revoked Öztürk’s visa, said her presence in the U.S. was contrary to American foreign policy interests and suggested she had aligned herself with groups hostile to Jewish students. A State Department memo cited the op-ed she co-authored and alleged links to a student organization that was temporarily suspended by Tufts. “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses,” Rubio told reporters. “If we’ve given you a visa and then you decide to do that, we’re going to take it away.”

Chad de Guzman by Chad de Guzman Reporter Former President Joe Biden was diagnosed with a “more aggressive” form of prostate cancer, his office said in a statement on Sunday. According to the statement, Biden, 82, was diagnosed with cancer on Friday, May 16, upon a medical check after experiencing “increasing urinary symptoms.” It added that Biden’s cancer was characterized by a Gleason score of 9, with metastasis to the bone. “While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management,” the office said. Biden and his family are reviewing treatment options. Advertisement It’s not Biden’s first brush with cancer: he had a skin lesion removed in 2023 that turned out to be basal cell carcinoma, and his son Beau died in 2015 of brain cancer. The elder Biden also had a brain aneurysm in the late 1980s that almost killed him. But the new prostate cancer diagnosis has been met with a wave of support for the former President, given his age as well as longstanding concerns about his health condition. Here’s what to know about the disease Biden was diagnosed with.

As the richest woman in the world, Alice Walton could turn her sizable resources to any cause. She chose health. After her own experience in and out of hospitals to treat a bone infection following a car accident, she saw firsthand how “broken” the U.S. health care system is, she says—from the widely disparate health services that people living in different parts of the country can access, to the skewed financial system that incentivizes more tests and procedures instead of medical care that focuses on providing the best health outcomes. Her solution was to create the Alice Walton School of Medicine, which will open in her home state of Arkansas in July 2025 and will train doctors with an innovative approach that addresses the whole patient, including behaviors and lifestyle as well as their physical symptoms. “Doctors are not trained in nutrition and preventive care because they are not paid to do it,” says Walton. “The health system and medical schools are just reacting to what the system incentivizes.” Walton will cover tuition for the first five classes. “I wanted to create a school that really gives doctors training on, number one, how to keep patients healthy, and, number two, the financial incentives in the system and what they should be so we can move toward value-based payments,” she says. And because Walton is a longtime art collector, the medical school will also feature a heavy dose of exposure to art. The school is steps from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., which she opened in 2011 to share her collection with the public. Art helped her through her own health journey, and she’s convinced that it will play an important role in teaching both doctors and patients how to take better care of themselves. “I do believe that the art world and the health care world need to collide more, because both will benefit from it,” she says. “It’s going to be exciting to see what happens.”

More than 21,000 people in Africa contracted mpox in 2024—a bad number that could have been much worse without the help of Nicaise Ndembi, then senior adviser to the director-general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and now the deputy director general of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI). In his time at Africa CDC, Ndembi helped manage the continent-wide response to mpox—strengthening surveillance and screening and providing vaccines and medicinal therapeutics—and the Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing, which created a framework for regional vaccine manufacturing and self-reliance. In his new role at the IVI, he will work to establish home-grown vaccine research and development, accelerating vaccine availability and distribution across Africa’s 54 countries. Correction, May 12 The original version of this story misstated Ndembi's former position and mischaracterized his roles in the mpox response and Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM). He was formerly senior adviser to the director-general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, not the head of the organization. He did not solely lead the mpox response in Africa or establish the PAVM; he was part of teams that did so.

Antibiotics are the workhorses of the medical world, critical for controlling infections and saving lives but rarely grabbing the attention that blockbuster treatments often do. Dame Emma Walmsley, CEO of the pharmaceutical company GSK, admits they have become “unfashionable.” But a new antibiotic for treating urinary tract infections (UTIs) might change that. In March, her team at GSK received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a new type of antibiotic, Blujepa, that interrupts the ability of UTI-causing bacteria, E. coli, to replicate. The drug targets two enzymes that E. coli use to untangle their genetic material in order to proliferate. And because Blujepa works through a novel approach, scientists hope the drug will make it harder for the bacteria to develop resistance against it. Focusing on a new antibiotic for UTIs, which haven’t had a novel therapy in decades, was intentional, Walmsley says. Half of women have a UTI at least once in their lifetime, and many experience repeat infections, raising the risk that the bacteria may become resistant to the antibiotics they take. Walmsley says GSK is also developing a different antibiotic to treat more complicated UTI cases as well.

Dr. Paul Offit knows a thing or two about public health and vaccines—and what he’s been seeing lately deeply troubles him. As director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) vaccine advisory committee, Offit has long been a vocal proponent of robust vaccine programs. Having Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vocal vaccine skeptic, in the top health job in the federal government “couldn’t be worse,” Offit says. Already, measles is spreading dangerously among pockets of unvaccinated children—even killing some of them, an unheard-of situation in recent history—while the government’s message to get vaccinated is muted, at best. The FDA also canceled its meeting to plan for next year’s flu shot. “I feel like we have been invaded by a foreign country whose principal objective is to destroy the entire infrastructure of public health,” Offit says. In this new era, he is talking to anyone who will listen—patients, the media, policymakers—about the importance of vaccines. “Through my Substack posts and interviews, I have tried to emphasize the continued threat of RFK Jr. to the health and well-being of America's children,” he says.

Steve Beard knows that diverse health care is better health care. The belief drives his efforts as CEO of Adtalem Global Education, a corporation that operates institutions for higher learning including Chamberlain University, Walden University, and Ross University School of Medicine. “Science shows the benefits of a diverse health care workforce, and no one makes a larger contribution to that goal than Adtalem’s institutions,” Beard says. Under his leadership, Adtalem has made large strides in addressing shortages of health care workers while increasing racial representation. With more than 90,000 students currently enrolled at its schools, Adtalem has become one of the leading suppliers of doctors, nurses, veterinarians, and social workers to the U.S. workforce. Adtalem’s medical schools are major producers of Black physicians in the U.S.—and over the past year, 95% of its medical school graduates have successfully secured hospital residencies, helping to shore up critical areas like primary care and underserved communities. Beard’s institutions are at the forefront of technology. In 2024, Adtalem forged a new partnership with Hippocratic AI, developing curricula to train nursing students—and soon physicians—to use AI tools to monitor patients and improve follow-ups after treatment. “Some of these innovations will relieve administrative burdens in ways that create better quality of life, on the hospital floor and at the bedside,” Beard says.Beard’s path from first-generation college student to changemaker is a personal success story—and through Adtalem, it’s become a model for building the next generation of health care professionals.

Early in Vas Narasimhan’s career as a physician scientist, he worked on programs for treating HIV/AIDS in Africa and saw the impact of medicine in places that need it most. The experience inspired Narasimhan to lead development of drugs and vaccines for more than two decades. But treatments didn’t always reach the neediest, and he “dreamed of having a much bigger impact on the world,” he says. In 2018, he became CEO of Novartis and seized the opportunity to direct the company’s vast resources for transformative change. In the past year alone, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved new uses of Novartis’ drugs for three devastating diseases: breast cancer, chronic myeloid leukemia, and prostate cancer. “These approvals will change the paradigm for treating cancer patients,” Narasimhan says. The medicine now approved for use against prostate cancer, called Pluvicto, is an example of Novartis’ investment in radioligand therapy—where a small radioactive molecule, delivered intravenously, destroys cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue. Narasimhan thinks it could revolutionize medicine. He is similarly excited about AI, which is accelerating Novartis’ clinical trials, and the company’s cell and gene therapies, including a new form of its treatment for spinal muscular atrophy designed to help a broader range of children. The CEO hasn’t forgotten his scientist roots, still scrutinizing the data from clinical trials. He’s also staying true to his ultimate goal: “advancing these novel technologies at scale.” With his leadership, Novartis last year became the No. 1 pharmaceutical company for improving access to medicine in low-to-middle-income countries, according to the Access to Medicine Foundation. More than 1 billion people in over 70 countries have received Novartis’ treatments for malaria largely at no profit to the company, Narasimhan says. Bringing his early-career visions of changemaking to fruition, he says, is “incredibly rewarding.”

Akeso Biopharma, based in Zhongshan, China, has become one of the country’s biggest breakout innovators this year. Led by co-founder and CEO Michelle Xia, the company has surged onto the international scene with drugs focused on cancer and immunology. In March, a phase 3 study published in The Lancet showed Akeso’s ivonescimab outperformed Merck’s blockbuster cancer drug Keytruda (pembrolizumab) pushing the FDA to fast-track its approval review of ivonescimab. And in April, the FDA approved Akeso’s drug candidate penpulimab-kcqx—its first approval in the U.S.—for some types of head and neck cancer, four years after it was approved in China. Just a decade ago, this kind of success was unimaginable to Xia. When she started the company with her cofounders in March 2012, there was little drug innovation in China. “We started from nothing,” she says. They built a lab, started drug discovery programs, moved products into development, manufacturing, clinical trials, and commercialization. In the past 10 years, they’ve tested dozens of candidates and brought seven drugs to market. They’re currently eyeing cancer treatment cadonilimab, first approved in China in 2022, as their next drug to expand globally. The drug significantly improved survival rates for patients with cervical cancer compared to chemotherapy alone, according to results presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology meeting in November. The company’s sudden global influence is indicative of China’s spreading power in medicine. Akeso is running several phase 3 studies to expand the approval of ivonescimab in China, but it’s also collaborating with Summit Therapeutics to bring ivonescimab to clinical trials in the U.S., Europe, and more. Despite the fraught geopolitical climate, Xia’s optimistic about a future where treatments can be exchanged between countries. For example, drugs Akeso developed in China have already accrued lots of patient data, which can shorten the development and approval timeline in the U.S.. “We can contribute innovation globally,” Xia says. “I think that's very satisfying.”