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FRIDAY, April 10, 2020 (American Heart Association News) --Researchers have long understood that African Americans experience a disproportionate level of high blood pressure and heart disease. As they've sought to understand why, evidence has emerged demonstrating the powerful role persistent, excessive levels of stress can play in cardiovascular health. But getting rid of that stress won't be easy, they warn. "For decades, we've understood full well the burden of hypertension – and the consequences of hypertension which are extraordinary in the African American community, more so than any other cohort in the world," said Dr. Clyde Yancy, vice dean for diversity and inclusion and chief of cardiology for Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. "Race alone is...

FRIDAY, April 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- A study out of China finds that strokes, altered consciousness and other neurological issues are relatively common in more serious cases of COVID-19. Looking at 214 cases of severe coronavirus illness treated in Wuhan city during the early phase of the global pandemic, doctors reported that 36.4% of patients displayed neurological symptoms. Sometimes these symptoms appeared in the relative absence of "typical" symptoms of COVID-19 -- fever, cough, diarrhea -- the team said. In such cases, doctors should consider coronavirus infection as a potential cause of the problem "to avoid delayed diagnosis or misdiagnosis," said a team led by Dr. Bo Hu, a neurologist at Union Hospital in Wuhan. Hu's team published their findings online April 10 in...

FRIDAY, April 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- For those with heart problems, home-based rehab can take the place of hospital-based cardiac rehabilitation during the current coronavirus pandemic, heart experts say. "Home-based cardiac rehab is a solution to help provide cardiac rehabilitation to patients with heart disease in a home setting, and to help them survive and thrive during this challenging period of time," said Dr. Randal Thomas. He's a preventive cardiologist and medical director of the Mayo Clinic's Cardiac Rehabilitation Program, in Rochester, Minn. "Home-based cardiac rehabilitation is much more than just going for a walk at home," Thomas said in a clinic news release. "It is a structured, standardized, evidence-based approach to apply all therapies -- lifestyle,...

FRIDAY, April 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- An analysis of Twitter data suggests that Americans are heeding social distancing and other safety recommendations during the coronavirus pandemic, researchers say. Officials have told people to limit travel, stay home and distance themselves to slow the spread of the virus. "The question though is how effective are these policies? Once you tell people to stay home, it doesn't mean everyone listens," said research leader Mark Dredze, a computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "It's important for us to understand on an ongoing basis if people are actually listening to these directives," he said in a Hopkins news release. But how do experts know people are staying put? For this study, they used location data from...