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TUESDAY, May 25, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Mild cases of COVID-19 leave people with long-term antibody protection against reinfection, according to a new study that challenges previous findings. "Last fall, there were reports that antibodies wane quickly after infection with the virus that causes COVID-19, and mainstream media interpreted that to mean that immunity was not long-lived," said study senior author Ali Ellebedy, an associate professor of pathology and immunology, medicine and molecular microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "But that's a misinterpretation of the data. It's normal for antibody levels to go down after acute infection, but they don't go down to zero; they plateau," Ellebedy said in a university news release. "Here, we found...

TUESDAY, May 25, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Too much fat around your heart could increase your risk of heart failure, especially if you're a woman, researchers warn.They looked at nearly 7,000 45- to 84-year-olds across the United States who had no evidence of heart disease on initial CT scans. Over more than 17 years of followup, nearly 400 developed heart failure.High amounts of fat around the heart -- pericardial fat -- doubled women's risk of heart failure and increased men's risk by 50%, according to findings published online May 24 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology."For nearly two decades we have known that obesity, based on simple measurement of height and weight, can double one's risk of heart failure, but now, we have gone a step further by using imaging...

TUESDAY, May 25, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Long-term use of anti-seizure medications in babies who had seizures soon after birth may not be necessary and could be harmful, a new study suggests.Newborns who have seizures after birth are at risk of long-term conditions such as developmental delays, cerebral palsy or epilepsy, so they're given anti-seizure medication to treat the electrical brain disturbances that cause their seizures.Some babies only receive the medicine for a few days at the hospital, while others receive it for months at home due to concerns that seizures may reoccur, the Michigan Medicine-University of Michigan researchers explained.But they found that continuing this treatment after the seizures stop may not be necessary.The study included about 300 babies born over...

MONDAY, May 24, 2021 (HealthDay News) – As researchers work to learn more about COVID-19 and so-called long-haulers, a new study suggests "brain fog" can persist and even worsen for those who were infected months before.Long-haulers continue to have symptoms long after their COVID diagnosis, and these symptoms can be mental as well as physical."People have trouble problem-solving, or they get in the car and forget where they're supposed to be going," said study author Leonard Jason, a psychologist at DePaul University in Chicago.The researchers compared long-haulers' complaints with those with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). Patients with ME/CFS have long-term symptoms possibly triggered by the Epstein-Barr virus or for other unknown reasons. The team...