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WEDNESDAY, May 31, 2023 (American Heart Association News) -- Melanie Wickersheim has no memory of the first time her heart gave her trouble. She was an infant, and her pediatric myocarditis – an inflammation of the muscular walls of the heart – resolved before she was old enough to know anything had ever been wrong.She spent the first 10 years of her life like any other kid in Los Angeles, believing she was perfectly healthy. Until suddenly, she wasn't. She couldn't hold down food. She felt so weak, she could barely walk. "I remember trying to walk across a parking lot. I had to stop at every light pole to take a breath, panting for air," she said.Her doctor said she had the flu. But it went on for weeks. "We took her to the emergency room multiple times," said her mother, Linda...

WEDNESDAY, May 31, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- An anti-inflammatory drug that has been around for over 2,000 years might help delay a very modern problem: hip and knee replacements.That's the suggestion of a new study finding that older adults who used the drug — called colchicine — were less likely to need hip or knee replacement surgery over the next two years, versus those given placebo pills.The study, published May 30 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, does come with a big caveat, researchers noted: The patients were part of a trial testing colchicine for warding off heart trouble — not joint replacements.So the findings do not prove the medication actually stalled the progression of knee or hip osteoarthritis. That's the common, age-related form of arthritis where the...

WEDNESDAY, May 31, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Lack of energy for exercise is a common problem for folks with so-called long COVID.New research pinpoints the most likely reason why: diminished capacity to get the heart pumping fast enough to support the effort. The name for this is chronotropic incompetence.“The amount of aerobic exercise an individual can do is limited largely by the delivery of oxygen by the heart, lungs, blood, and its use by the muscles,” noted study first author Dr. Matthew Durstenfeld, a cardiologist and assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.“If the heart can't pump as fast, you can't exercise as much," Durstenfeld said.Chronotropic incompetence wasn't the only reason people with long COVID had lower than expected...

WEDNESDAY, May 31, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- A nasal spray containing ketamine might help relieve migraine headaches when other treatments fail, a new study suggests.Ketamine is a synthetic anesthetic with hallucinogenic effects that is sometimes used intravenously for migraine headaches. It's being tried for treatment-resistant depression, too. But it's also a potentially addictive "party" drug so it is not for everyone.In this trial, researchers report that 49% of migraine sufferers who used the nasal spray found it very effective in relieving pain. Forty percent said it was somewhat effective and nearly 36% said it improved their quality of life. "It's for patients who've tried several other treatments that haven't been effective and for patients that are really disabled or...