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THURSDAY, Sept. 30, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Despite the troubling findings of a congressional report released earlier this year on toxins in baby foods, a new report finds even more manufacturers are selling baby foods that contain potentially unsafe levels of heavy metals.The toxins in question include dangerous levels of arsenic, lead, cadmium and mercury, among others."No level of toxic heavy metals and exposure to them is safe for a baby," said Illinois Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, which authored the latest report.Named in the findings are some high-profile companies, including Gerber, Plum Organics and Beech-Nut.In citing Gerber, congressional investigators said the company's infant rice cereal contained inorganic...

THURSDAY, Sept. 30, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Someday, your smartwatch might be able to tell you if you're coming down with a virus and how sick you'll be — even before symptoms start.In a small study, researchers showed that a wearable device, like a Fitbit or Apple Watch, could detect which patients had the H1N1 flu and which had a common cold. "One of our goals was to be able to detect that infection before a person feels symptoms, because they may be spreading pathogens without even knowing that they're sick," explained senior researcher Jessilyn Dunn, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Duke University in Durham, N.C.The wristband does this by reading biological signs, including resting heart rate, heart rate variability and skin temperature, she said."The device...

THURSDAY, Sept. 30, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Kids who are gay, bisexual or questioning their sexuality may be vulnerable to contemplating suicide at a tender age, a new U.S. government study finds.It has long been known that teenagers who are part of sexual minorities have a higher risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, compared to their heterosexual peers. That includes kids who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning.Experts said the new findings -- published online Sept. 27 in the journal Pediatrics -- add another layer: Those kids also start to grapple with suicidal thoughts at a younger age -- with an increased risk appearing as early as age 10.What's more, they typically progressed more quickly from the "thinking" stage to actually planning for...

THURSDAY, Sept. 30, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Artificial intelligence (AI) might be able to spot the next virus to jump from animals to humans, Scottish researchers report.Identifying diseases before they become a threat to humans is challenging, because only a few of the nearly 2 million animal viruses can infect humans. By developing machine learning models, researchers can analyze genetic patterns of viruses that might infect people."Our findings show that the zoonotic potential of viruses can be inferred to a surprisingly large extent from their genome sequence," the researchers at the University of Glasgow reported. "By highlighting viruses with the greatest potential to become zoonotic, genome-based ranking allows further ecological and virological characterization to be targeted...