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WEDNESDAY, July 14, 2021 (American Heart Association News) -- At 13, Leilani Graham was running on the treadmill in her garage when she suddenly collapsed. Her mother, who was supposed to be gone, heard a bizarre moaning sound coming from the garage and rushed to find her daughter unconscious. She immediately called 911.At the emergency room, an electrocardiogram showed an abnormality in her heart. Further tests showed Graham had an enlarged left ventricle."I was told I should have died," Graham said.Doctors implanted a defibrillator in her chest that would shock her heart back into a normal rhythm should she again go into cardiac arrest. It saved her life three times.The first time was several months later. Her PE class was running the mile relay. She'd been told she could no longer...

WEDNESDAY, July 14, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- As America went into lockdown and treatment centers closed their doors, drug overdose deaths in the United States jumped by nearly a third last year, new data show. The estimated 93,331 drug overdose deaths recorded during 2020 are a sharp increase -- a 29.4% rise -- over the 72,151 deaths estimated in 2019, according to preliminary data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The NCHS is part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, called the new numbers "chilling."""This is the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period, and the largest increase since at least 1999," she said. "The COVID-19 pandemic created a...

WEDNESDAY, July 14, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- As many as two of every five Americans who've died from COVID-19 were suffering from diabetes, making the chronic disease one of the highest-risk conditions during the pandemic, an expert says.About 40% of deaths from COVID-19 in the United States were among diabetics, a "really quite sobering" statistic that should prompt people with the ailment to get vaccinated, said Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association (ADA)."I can't say this strongly enough — if you have diabetes, get vaccinated. Speak to your health care provider, discuss your concerns," Gabbay said during a HealthDay Now interview. "With the risk of hospitalization and death related to COVID six to 12 times higher in people...

WEDNESDAY, July 14, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- New coronavirus infections are once again climbing in the United States, driven by the highly contagious Delta variant, lingering vaccine resistance and Fourth of July celebrations.Over the past three weeks, new cases per day have doubled, with data from Johns Hopkins showing that confirmed infections climbed to an average of about 23,600 a day on Monday, up from 11,300 on June 23. All but two states — Maine and South Dakota — have reported that case numbers have gone up over the past two weeks."It is certainly no coincidence that we are looking at exactly the time that we would expect cases to be occurring after the July Fourth weekend," Dr. Bill Powderly, co-director of the infectious disease division at Washington University's School...