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FRIDAY, July 14, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Your gut bacteria could affect your risk for the fatty deposits in heart arteries -- and future heart attacks, researchers say.A new study finds a link between the levels of certain microbes in the gut and these coronary atherosclerotic plaques.Led by researchers from Uppsala and Lund Universities in Sweden, the study analyzed gut bacteria and cardiac images from nearly 9,000 Swedish patients ages 50 to 65 with no known heart disease.“We found that oral bacteria, especially species from the Streptococcus genus, are associated with increased occurrence of atherosclerotic plaques in the small arteries of the heart when present in the gut flora," said researcher Tove Fall, a professor of molecular epidemiology at Uppsala University. "Species...

FRIDAY, July 14, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Racial discrimination may drive health inequities from an early age, according to researchers who found that it puts kids at risk for obesity.“Exposure to racial discrimination must be acknowledged as both a social determinant of obesity and a significant contributor to obesity disparities among children and adolescents,” said lead researcher Adolfo Cuevas. He is an assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences at the NYU School of Global Public Health in New York City.Specifically, the new study found that children who experience racial discrimination were more likely to develop a larger waistline and higher body mass index (BMI). BMI is an estimate of body fat based on height and weight.Black and Hispanic youth have higher rates...

FRIDAY, July 14, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Ticks may be responsible for the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in Wisconsin’s deer population, according to a new study.Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that ticks can harbor transmissible amounts of the protein particle that causes CWD, a fatal neurological disease seen in deer, elk and moose. The pathogen, prion, can pass through soil or through bodily fluids, including feces. Prion can prompt certain proteins to fold abnormally, particularly in the brain. That can prevent these proteins from carrying out their normal functions. Over time, the CWD prion can cause severe brain damage and eventually death in deer, the study explained.While a lot of CWD studies focus on the role of soil in the disease’s...

FRIDAY, July 14, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Treatment can control the symptoms of the most common type of glaucoma and save someone’s vision.The catch is that a person can’t feel the changes in eye pressure that can damage vision, so they often won’t know they even have it before it’s too late. That is, unless they’ve been seeing an eye doctor regularly.One vision expert encourages people to not wait for that pressure to damage the optic nerve, but rather to preserve vision with regular health care. “Some people say they don’t need glasses, so they don’t need to see an eye doctor,” said Dr. Tara O’Rourke, an optometrist at Penn State Health Eye Center. “It’s important for everyone to have yearly eye exams to monitor the health of the eye, especially for patients...