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TUESDAY, April 7, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Intensifying a standard form of brain stimulation may bring relief to people with hard-to-treat depression, a preliminary study suggests. The study involved just 21 patients, but the treatment sent 90% into remission within a few days. That's a success rate that has never been seen in early testing of other therapies for severe depression, the researchers said. The therapy involves transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), where a magnetic coil is placed at the scalp to non-invasively deliver electrical pulses to a brain region involved in depression. In the United States, TMS is an approved option for depression that does not respond to standard antidepressant medication. Normally, TMS is done once a day, over six weeks. That conventional...

TUESDAY, April 7, 2020 (American Heart Association News) -- Doctors and nurses are trained to deal with life-and-death situations, to be calm in the face of crisis. But whether it's in hard-hit New York or places where COVID-19 has yet to surge, medical workers say the pandemic is straining their mental health like nothing before. "The stress is probably 100 times what you could have imagined it was in the past," said Judy Davidson, a nurse scientist at University of California, San Diego Health. Davidson, whose research shows nurses were at higher risk for suicide than the general population even before the coronavirus struck, said delivering psychological support to health care workers will be as crucial as providing protective gear. Stories from some of those on the front lines...

TUESDAY, April 7, 2020 (American Heart Association News) -- High blood pressure during pregnancy can put mother and baby at risk during normal circumstances. But with the novel coronavirus spreading rapidly, many are wondering how this highly contagious threat may affect them. The good news is, thus far, nothing researchers have learned about COVID-19 raises additional concerns for pregnant women – even if their blood pressure runs high, or if they have been diagnosed with problems such as gestational diabetes. The bad news is, because the virus is new and relatively unstudied, there's still a great deal researchers don't know. "Researchers are still learning how COVID-19 affects pregnant women," said Dr. Lisa Hollier, chief medical officer for Texas Children's Health Plan and a...

TUESDAY, April 7, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- It's a tough task, but parents need to keep kids away from playgrounds, shared toys and sports equipment during the coronavirus pandemic, experts emphasize. The coronavirus can stick around on surfaces for a long time, a recent New England Journal of Medicine study found. It takes 72 hours for the virus to become undetectable on plastic, according to the study, about 48 hours on stainless steel and cardboard, and eight hours on copper. Even if kids are practicing social distancing on the playground, they're still touching the same surfaces as all the other kids, noted Samiksha Raut, an associate professor of biology at University of Alabama at Birmingham. "Kids are constantly moving from one part of the playground to another and are quite...