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THURSDAY, Aug. 5, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- A little more than two out of every three people who have mild or moderate cases of COVID-19 will go on to develop long-term symptoms.That's the troubling takeaway from a University of Arizona Health Sciences' study launched in May 2020."This is a real wake-up call for anyone who has not been vaccinated," said lead researcher Melanie Bell, a professor of biostatistics in the university's College of Public Health. "If you get COVID, the chances that you'll experience long-term symptoms are surprisingly high."The CoVHORT study has followed Arizonans who had COVID-19 since May 2020, as well as those who have not been infected.Among participants who tested positive for COVID-19, nearly 69% still had least one symptom after 30 days, and the rate...

THURSDAY, Aug. 5, 2021 (American Heart Association News) -- The ancient world had a reverential affection for figs. They're celebrated in both the Bible and in Islamic texts. In Egypt, they were offered to the gods, while the Greeks considered figs a gift from them.Today, scientists would consider the common fig, Ficus carica, to be slightly less than a miracle food. But if you're looking for a healthy treat that's divinely sweet, you could do worse."It's not going to be a go-to for anything," said Christopher Gardner, a professor of medicine at Stanford University in California. "But I think it's a great and underappreciated ingredient that could be used in multiple ways."Plus, he said, "They're super easy to snack on."Gardner is a nutrition scientist the Stanford Prevention Research...

THURSDAY, Aug. 5, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- As June 28 approached, David Beverley had been "psyching himself up" for major surgery, as a lifesaving liver donor for his ailing 60-year-old father, Peter."But then they called us, literally the day before, and told us: 'We've got to stop this. We don't have any blood.'" the 32-year-old Utah resident said.That's the moment when both David and Peter came into the crosshairs of what's fast becoming a national health care crisis: a severe blood shortage that's jeopardizing surgeries and medical procedures. "A blood shortage is when we have demand outpacing our supply," noted Paul Sullivan, senior vice president of donor services for the American Red Cross. "Usually it's around some challenging period of the year. The beginning of summer,...

THURSDAY, Aug. 5, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists suspect that a century-old tuberculosis vaccine might be able to protect older adults against the worst ravages of COVID-19.The Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine was first used in 1921, and is on the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines. More than 130 million babies worldwide receive this vaccine every year.But it is also known to calm the immune system, and new research shows the vaccine might specifically blunt the severe inflammatory response that does so much damage to the body during a COVID infection."Typically, older people are more susceptible to severe COVID due to their ability to make exuberant inflammatory responses," said senior researcher Dr. Subash Babu, scientific director of the National...