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WEDNESDAY, June 2, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- A new form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) that affects children has been discovered by an international team of researchers. They used advanced genetic techniques to identify 11 such cases in children who had mysterious neurological disorders.Most cases of ALS -- also known as Lou Gehrig's disease -- are diagnosed in people between the ages of 50 and 60, and it progresses so rapidly that patients typically die within three to five years.But this newly identified form of ALS begins in childhood, progresses more slowly, and is linked with a gene called SPTLC1, which is part of the body's fat production system. Preliminary results suggest that genetically silencing SPTLC1 activity may combat this type of ALS, according to the authors of...

TUESDAY, June 1, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Because of controversial statements about racism made by a staff member, the editor-in-chief of JAMA and JAMA Network will step down on June 30, the American Medical Association (AMA) announced Tuesday.Dr. Howard Bauchner, JAMA's chief since 2011, has been on administrative leave due to a JAMA podcast and tweet about structural racism in medicine that ignited a storm of protest. "I remain profoundly disappointed in myself for the lapses that led to the publishing of the tweet and podcast. Although I did not write or even see the tweet, or create the podcast, as editor-in-chief, I am ultimately responsible for them," Bauchner said in a statement Tuesday.The firestorm began on Feb. 24, when Dr. Ed Livingston, a deputy editor who is white, said...

TUESDAY, June 1, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- The health of your lungs may have a lot to do with the size of your bank account, a new, large study indicates.The finding follows a six-decade look at lung disease risk among more than 215,000 American children and adults.In general, poorer Americans continue to have worse lung health than their wealthier peers. In some cases, the gap between rich and poor is widening. "We examined long-term trends in socioeconomic inequalities in Americans' lung health," explained study lead author Dr. Adam Gaffney. "Specifically, we looked at the prevalence of lung symptoms like shortness of breath, lung disease diagnoses like asthma or COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] and lung volumes." (The latter refers to the amount of air retained in the...

TUESDAY, June 1, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- COVID-19 does not pose a threat to the safety of the United States' blood supply under existing donor screening guidelines, researchers report. For the study, the investigators reviewed the results of tests for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in nearly 18,000 pools of donated blood, representative of over 257,800 single blood donations that were collected between March and September 2020 from six U.S. metropolitan regions. Only three of the samples tested positive, and all had very low concentrations of the virus. The researchers concluded that the likelihood of a transfusion recipient receiving blood with trace amounts of SARS-CoV-2 was approximately 0.001% – a little over 1 in 100,000 – and that the likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 transmission by...