Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:
More Than Two Dozen Transgender People Killed in U.S. Last Year
Violence against transgender people is on the rise in the United States and more than two dozen were killed last year, new information suggests.
The exact number is unknown because federal data is limited and there is "serious under-reporting" according to the Williams Institute, a public policy think tank on sexual orientation and gender identity issues, CNN reported.
Information gathered by CNN, the New York City Anti-Violence Project, and the LGBTQ civil rights advocacy group Human Rights Campaign suggests that 28 transgender people, ages 18 to 54, were killed in the U.S. last year.
"Death, profound loss, the violence that surrounds us, it's constant. It's a significant part of my transgender experience," Isa Noyolahas, deputy director, Transgender Law Center, Oakland, Calif., told CNN.
She said she has met many community members who report such experiences and has attended a funeral for a friend every year she's been active in the transgender community.
Community advocates say violence against the transgender community is getting worse.
Last year was the second in a row in which more than two dozen transgender people were killed. At least 29 were killed in 2017, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
It calculates that 128 trans people have been killed in 87 cities across 32 states since 2013. Of those, 80 percent were people of color, CNN reported.
Last year, all but one of the victims were trans women, and all but one were people of color.
Eighteen of the known victims were shot, four were stabbed, the homes of two were set on fire while they were still in them, and four were beaten to death. Eighteen of the cases remain unsolved, CNN reported.
The youngest victim, 18-year-old Vontashia Bell, 18, was found lying in the street in Shreveport, Louisiana, in August, shot in the chest and wrist. The case remains unsolved.
The oldest victim was 54-year-old Keisha Wells of Cleveland, who was shot in the stomach in June. She was the second trans woman killed in the city last year and her case hasn't be solved, CNN reported.
Five trans women were killed in Florida in 2018, three in Jacksonville, one in Orlando and one in North Port, according to Equality Florida.
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Purdue Pharma Owners Lied About Dangers of OxyContin: Court Filing
The family that owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma directed attempts to play down the dangers of the opioid painkiller, suggest previously undisclosed documents included in a court filing by the attorney general of Massachusetts.
The filing includes emails and other internal Purdue communications that mention the Sackler family. It's the first evidence that appears to link the family with specific decisions made by Purdue about the marketing of OxyContin, which contributed to the U.S. opioid epidemic, The New York Times reported.
In one email, Richard Sackler suggests blaming addicts when the growing problem of opioid abuse became apparent in the early 2000s.
"We have to hammer on abusers in every way possible," he wrote in the email in 2001, when he was president of Purdue Pharma. "They are the culprits and the problem. They are reckless criminals."
Sackler, the son of a company founder, said sales representatives should advise doctors to prescribe the highest dosage of the powerful drug because it was the most profitable, according to the court filing, The Times reported.
OxyContin came on the market in 1996, Since then, there have been more than 200,000 prescription opioid overdose deaths in the U.S.
Purdue Pharma has long contended that the Sackler family was not involved in the day-to-day operations of the company. The Sacklers are one of the richest families in the U.S. and their name is on museums and medical schools worldwide, The Times reported.
The court filing is "littered with biases and inaccurate characterizations," according to a statement from Purdue Pharma, which dismissed suggestions of wrongdoing by it or the Sackler family.
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Ocean Temps Reached Record High in 2018: Study
Last year was the hottest for the world's oceans since record keeping on such data began in 1958, scientists say.
The previous record was set in 2017, and the top five years of ocean heat have occurred in the last five years, CNN reported.
This trend of higher ocean temperatures is a direct result of human-caused global warming, the international team of scientists said in the study published Wednesday in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.
Last week, the same group published a study showing that oceans are warming faster than previously thought, which will lead to a six-fold rise in ocean warming by 2081-2100, compared to the past 60 years, CNN reported.
Problems caused by warmer oceans include rising sea levels, more intense storms with heavier rainfall, melting polar ice and coral bleaching.
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Congo Ebola Outbreak Now 2nd Worst in History
There have been 600 confirmed cases of Ebola and 347 confirmed deaths since early August in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, making it the second-largest and second deadliest outbreak of the disease in history.
Since the ongoing outbreak was declared on Aug. 1, Ebola symptoms have been reported in 649 people in the northeastern provinces of North Kivu and Ituri, with 600 of those cases confirmed as Ebola, the country's health ministry said Monday night, ABC News reported.
The fatality rate in the outbreak is about 61 percent. There have been 347 confirmed deaths from Ebola and 49 probable Ebola deaths, according to the ministry.
On average, about half of all Ebola patients die, but death rates have ranged from 25 to 90 percent in past outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization, ABC News reported.
The worst Ebola outbreak occurred in West Africa in 2014-16. There were 28,652 people infected and 11,325 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
