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TUESDAY, April 21, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Young adults may be waiting too long to seek help for eating disorders, a new study suggests. Researchers surveyed 300 young adults, ages 18-25, in Australia. They found the majority had eating, weight or body shape concerns. "Concerningly, only a minority of people with eating disorder symptoms had sought professional help and few believed they needed help despite the problems they were experiencing," said study co-author Dan Fassnacht. He's a psychology lecturer at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. Reasons for not getting professional care include denial, concerns about losing control of their eating or weight, and not understanding the severity of their eating disorder. Feeling embarrassed or fearing that others don't...

TUESDAY, April 21, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Studies are beginning to show that, in rare cases, people with severe COVID-19 may develop the serious nervous system disorder known as Guillain-Barre syndrome. "Guillain-Barre syndrome is a well-known condition in which one's immune system targets peripheral nerves as foreign and attacks them, resulting in the cardinal features of the disease," explained Dr. Anthony Geraci, who directs neuromuscular medicine at Northwell Health in Great Neck, N.Y. The symptoms of the disorder "include weakness, areflexia [absence of reflexes], paresthesia [tingling], and in some cases facial weakness and ataxia [poor balance]," Geraci said. It's not uncommon for severe cases of infectious disease to trigger Guillain-Barre, experts noted. According to the...

TUESDAY, April 21, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Preliminary data from two clinical trials using the antiviral drug remdesivir to treat COVID-19 patients is encouraging, researchers report. One trial is providing the drug to patients with moderate illness and the other focuses on patients with severe illness. A number of the patients are now recovering and have been released from the hospital. While it's too early to tell, the researchers said there are also indications that remdesivir can possibly stave off being put on a ventilator. "Early results are promising, and that is important right now. Much of what we are learning about COVID-19 management is centered around preventing quick deterioration. Timing is everything. I can't say for certain they [patients] would have been intubated...

TUESDAY, April 21, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- An early analysis of antibody testing from Los Angeles County finds a coronavirus infection rate that is up to 55 times the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. According to the researchers behind the study, the vast majority of people infected with the new coronavirus may be going without symptoms or have minimal symptoms. It's one of the first in-depth analyses of local population infection rates conducted in the United States. Los Angeles County's population totals more than 10 million. As the research team noted, by early April, there were 7,994 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported in the county, including 600 COVID-19 deaths. But new findings from the first round of ongoing antibody blood testing of county residents showed that about...