Latest Health News

TUESDAY, April 27, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- The more gun laws a state has, the lower its suicide and murder rates, a new U.S. study finds.Gun violence in the United States is a public health crisis. In 2017, nearly 67,000 Americans died by suicide and homicide. And guns were involved in about half of the suicides and 74% of the murders, the researchers reported.But in recent decades, "as states' strictness [on gun ownership] increased, their suicide and homicide rates decreased," lead author John Gunn said in a Rutgers University news release. He's a postdoctoral researcher at the Rutgers School of Public Health and New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center.To assess the association between gun laws and suicide and homicide rates, the researchers analyzed data gathered nationwide from...

TUESDAY, April 27, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- If you live with a smoker, breathing in their smoke could increase your risk of oral cancer by more than 50%, a new analysis shows.The findings highlight the need for more effective programs to prevent people from being exposed to secondhand smoke, the British authors said.They analyzed five studies from Asia, Europe, North America and Latin America that included a total of nearly 7,000 people -- including more than 3,400 who were exposed to secondhand smoke. The researchers found that people who were exposed to secondhand smoke had a 51% higher risk of developing oral cancers (lip, mouth and throat cancers). Exposures of more than 10 or 15 years increased the risk to more than twice that of people not exposed to secondhand smoke.The findings...

MONDAY, April 26, 2021 (American Heart Association News) -- People who are salt-sensitive may have an increased risk of developing high blood pressure, according to a study that points to the need for better genetic testing for sodium sensitivity.Scientists already knew high salt sensitivity is more common among people with high blood pressure, which is a leading preventable risk factor for cardiovascular disease. But researchers wanted to investigate whether salt sensitivity caused hypertension or happened as result of it.The new study, published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension, determined the salt-sensitivity level of 1,604 Chinese adults by putting them on a seven-day low-salt diet, followed by a seven-day high-salt diet. After following the...

MONDAY, April 26, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- An experimental COVID-19 vaccine could potentially provide universal protection against future COVID variants as well as other coronaviruses — maybe even the ones responsible for the common cold. And it's dirt cheap — less than $1 a dose, researchers say.The vaccine targets a part of the COVID virus' spike protein that appears to be highly resistant to mutation and is common across nearly all coronaviruses, said senior researcher Dr. Steven Zeichner. He is a professor of pediatric infectious disease with the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville.In animal studies, the COVID vaccine protected pigs against two separate diseases caused by two types of coronavirus, COVID-19 and porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), according to results...