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TUESDAY, May 10, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- During the first year of the pandemic, the number of Americans felled by gun violence reached a level not seen since 1994, a new government report shows.From 2019 to 2020, the rate of murders involving guns rose by nearly 35%, the highest logged in more than 25 years.In fact, guns were involved in 79% of all murders and 53% of all suicides in 2020. Along with increases in gun suicide rates among some groups, the racial and ethnic gap in gun violence has only widened, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers found. "Firearm injury is, tragically, a major public health problem in the United States," Dr. Debra Houry, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, said during a media briefing on the...

TUESDAY, May 10, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Certain lifestyle factors can sway the risk of dementia, and a new study points to the top threats to Americans these days: obesity, physical inactivity and lack of a high school diploma.Researchers found that in just the past decade, there has been a shift in the most important modifiable risk factors for dementia in the United States. In 2011, the big three were physical inactivity, depression and smoking.Today, lack of exercise is still among the top three, but the other spots have been replaced by obesity in middle-age and low education levels (not graduating from high school).At the same time, the study found, that top three is not one-size-fits-all: The leading modifiable risk factors for dementia vary somewhat according to race and...

TUESDAY, May 10, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Today's H1N1 flu — commonly known as the swine flu — appears to be a direct descendent of the influenza virus that caused the catastrophic 1918 pandemic, a new analysis shows.Genetic data drawn from 1918 flu samples recently discovered in Germany suggests that all genomic segments of the seasonal H1N1 flu could be directly descended from that terrible initial strain, the researchers said."The subsequent seasonal flu virus that went on circulating after the pandemic might well have directly evolved from the pandemic virus entirely," said senior researcher Sebastien Calvignac-Spencer, an evolutionary biologist with the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin.If correct, this new theory contradicts other hypotheses that have held that today's seasonal...

TUESDAY, May 10, 2022 (American Heart Association News) -- To celebrate her 50th birthday, Victoria Shepherd was pulling out all the stops.She was in her 30th year as a freelance director in Toronto, so the party would begin at her latest play. Her friends would take in a closing week performance of "The Glass Menagerie" by her favorite playwright, Tennessee Williams.Next, the party would move to her home. As guests enjoyed a multi-layer cake she planned to bake, they'd be entertained by the musicians from the soundtracks to her plays. Her daughter, Vivien, would sing.Less than a week before the event, Victoria was showing Vivien a new metallic red lipstick she'd bought for the party. They were on a landing between the kitchen and the back door that also served as an entrance to the...