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THURSDAY, May 11, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- The first U.S. cases of drug-resistant ringworm infection have been reported in New York City.The cases of two women with highly contagious skin infections caused by Trichophyton indotineae are reported in the May 12 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report . The fungus causes widespread, very itchy, and very hard-to-treat tinea infections. (Tinea is also known as ringworm, which can be misleading since no actual worm is involved.)"These are the first reported cases in the United States, but the infection is now spanning the globe," said researcher Dr. Avrom Caplan, a dermatologist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. It has been spreading widely in India over the last...

THURSDAY, May 11, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- An asthma attack can literally leave you gasping for breath, so having treatments that relax your airways is critical.Asthma strikes nearly 8% of Americans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so if you have asthma, you are not alone. A chronic condition, asthma occurs when the airways become inflamed and narrow, which hinders airflow. "The prevention of asthma as a condition is quite difficult. What you can prevent is the frequency and severity of attacks by the use of regular treatment," Dr. John Costello, a pulmonologist at Mayo Clinic Healthcare in London, said in a recent article.Here, experts discuss the most common asthma treatments that physicians use when creating an individualized treatment...

THURSDAY, May 11, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- A medication to treat agitation in Alzheimer's patients now has approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.The FDA gave supplemental approval to Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company Ltd., and Lundbeck Inc. for Rexulti (brexpiprazole) oral tablets on Thursday. Rexulti is the first FDA-approved treatment for these symptoms.“Agitation is one of the most common and challenging aspects of care among patients with dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease. ‘Agitation’ can include symptoms ranging from pacing or restlessness to verbal and physical aggression,” said Dr. Tiffany Farchione, director of the division of psychiatry in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “These symptoms are leading causes of assisted living or...

THURSDAY, May 11, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Medications that treat opioid addiction and prevent overdose deaths are drastically under-prescribed in the United States, particularly for Black patients, a new study has found.Disabled people on Medicare are not likely to be prescribed either buprenorphine – the best medication for treating opioid addiction – or naloxone (Narcan), a drug that can reverse a life-threatening overdose, researchers report in the May 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.Further, Black Americans are even less likely than whites to receive these meds following a medical event that clearly indicates the patient has opioid use disorder, said lead researcher Dr. Michael Barnett, an associate professor of health policy and management at the Harvard T.H....