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THURSDAY, Dec. 31, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Teenagers who use e-cigarettes may be at increased risk of "mental fog," a new study suggests.The study, of thousands of U.S. teens, found that those who vaped were three times more likely than their peers to report problems with concentration, memory and decision-making.The findings mirror those of a recent study of adults by the same research team: Men and women who used e-cigarettes had more complaints about their memory and thinking skills than non-users.Neither study proves that vaping causes mental fog, said senior researcher Dongmei Li, an associate professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in New York.It's possible, she said, that kids with cognitive complaints are drawn to e-cigarettes.That point was...

THURSDAY, Dec. 31, 2020 -- Even the most privileged people in the United States with the best access to health care are sicker and more likely to die than average folks in other developed nations, a new study finds.People living in the highest-income counties in the United States are, on average, more likely to die from a heart attack or cancer, during childbirth, or to lose an infant than people in 12 other industrialized countries, according to findings published online Dec. 28 in JAMA Internal Medicine."We're talking about whites, and we're talking about whites living in the richest parts of the country," said lead researcher Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, in Philadelphia. "We were...

THURSDAY, Dec. 31, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Blood vessel damage and inflammation in the brains of deceased COVID-19 patients suggest the damage is not caused by the virus, but the body's immune response to it.Researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) consistently found signs of damage caused by thinning and leaky brain blood vessels in tissue samples from patients who died shortly after getting COVID-19.The researchers saw no signs of the virus in the tissue samples, which they said may mean that the damage was not caused by the virus itself."We found that the brains of patients who contract infection from SARS-CoV-2 may be susceptible to microvascular blood vessel damage. Our results suggest that this may be caused by the body's inflammatory response to the virus,"...

THURSDAY, Dec. 31, 2020 -- A new and more infectious variant of the COVID-19 virus has shown up in separate cases in Colorado and California, weeks after it first emerged in the United Kingdom.Doctors on the pandemic's front line say people shouldn't panic, but should definitely adhere even more closely to proven infection control measures, like mask wearing and social distancing."While the new strain is more transmissible -- up to 70% by a recent analysis -- the mutation itself has not previously been thought to be more virulent [able to cause harm] than the current strains that have been circulating in the U.S. and abroad," said Dr. Robert Glatter. He's an emergency medicine physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.There is no evidence that the new variant makes people any...