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FRIDAY, July 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- There were academic, social and emotional consequences for U.S. high school students who attended classes remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, new research shows. The study included more than 6,500 students in Orange County Public Schools in Florida, who were surveyed in October 2020, when two-thirds were attending school remotely and one-third were attending in person. On a 100-point scale, in-person students scored higher than remote students on social well-being (77.2 versus 74.8), emotional well-being (57.4 versus 55.7) and academic well-being (78.4 versus 77.3). This "thriving gap" was consistent across gender, race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, according to the study published online July 13 in the journal Educational Researcher....

FRIDAY, July 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- How long can some COVID symptoms linger? New research suggests that more than a quarter of adults who had COVID-19 in 2020 weren't fully recovered six to eight months later.There's growing evidence that COVID-19 can cause long-term physical and mental health problems. These cases -- called long-haul COVID -- are a growing issue for health care systems.This study included 431 people in Zurich, Switzerland, who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) between February and August 2020. They all completed an online health questionnaire about seven months after their initial diagnosis. Their average age was 47.Nearly 9 in 10 of the participants had symptoms when they were diagnosed, and 19% were hospitalized at the time of...

FRIDAY, July 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- The heart benefits of cholesterol-lowering statins in people without heart disease far exceed the risks of any side effects, a new review finds.Statins are widely prescribed to people with heart disease, and recent guidelines recommend greater preventive use of the drugs even before heart issues are diagnosed. But it hasn't been clear whether the benefits outweigh the risks in people without heart disease.To find out, researchers analyzed data from 62 trials with more than 120,000 people (average age: 61), who were followed for an average of 3.9 years.Statins were linked with a slightly higher risk of self-reported side effects such as muscle pain, liver and kidney problems, and eye conditions such as cataracts. But they were not associated...

FRIDAY, July 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- No amount of lead in drinking water is safe for people with kidney disease, a new study warns.Low levels of lead in drinking water are widespread in the United States. These findings suggest that U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules on allowable lead levels in drinking water pose a risk to the 30 million to 40 million Americans with kidney disease."While drinking water may seem uniformly healthy, low levels of lead contamination found in the majority of drinking water systems in the United States may have toxic effects for those with chronic kidney disease," said lead author Dr. John Danziger, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.The findings will appear in an upcoming issue of JASN."More rigorous efforts to improve the...