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WEDNESDAY, Sept. 8, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Adults with autism, intellectual disabilities or mental health disorders are at increased risk for COVID-19 and severe illness, researchers report.Being aware of the heightened risk is important in prioritizing COVID-19 prevention measures, such as vaccination, testing, masking and distancing for these groups, the researchers said."These high-risk populations should be recognized by clinicians, and these groups should be prioritized for vaccine outreach and education," study co-author Whitney Schott, a research scientist at Drexel University's Autism Institute, said in a school news release.The researchers analyzed Medicaid data to assess COVID-19 risk factors among adults ages 20-64 with autism, intellectual disabilities and mental health...

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 8, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Young people appear to have normal lung function after recovering from COVID-19, new studies find.In one, Swedish researchers found that even asthma patients had no significant impairment in lung function.In the other, German researchers found unimpaired lung function after kids and teens had a COVID-19 infection — unless their infection was severe."The COVID-19 pandemic has raised questions about if and how the lung is affected after clearance of the coronavirus infection, especially in young people from the general population with less severe disease. Until now, this has not been known," said Dr. Ida Mogensen, a post-doctoral fellow at the Karolinska Institute, who led the Swedish study.Her team collected data on 661 young people. Of...

TUESDAY, Sept. 7, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Early retirement may sound appealing, but a recent study hints that putting it off a few years might help older adults retain more of their mental sharpness.Using data on more than 20,000 older Americans, researchers estimated that if all of those people waited until age 67 to retire, their collective cognitive health would benefit."Cognition" refers to a person's ability to think, reason, plan and remember, among other vital brain functions. Research suggests that various factors over a lifetime — from education level to exercise habits to heart health — can affect a person's rate of cognitive decline, and risk of dementia, later in life.For the new study, researchers wanted to estimate the possible impact of later retirement on people's...

TUESDAY, Sept. 7, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes baby in the baby carriage.While that childhood rhyme used to be true, college-educated women in the United States are now more likely than ever to have a first baby outside marriage. They're also more likely than other women to have a wedding ring by the time they have their second baby."It suggests a change in the way that college-educated young adults are living their family lives, and change in the place of marriage in young adults' family lives," said sociologist Andrew Cherlin, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore.That doesn't mean that most women are doing it. But Cherlin projects that 18% to 27% of college-educated women now in their 30s will follow this pattern.Yet, it...