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WEDNESDAY Dec. 16, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Old age and chronic health conditions aren't the only risk factors for serious COVID-19 infection. Researchers say people with high levels of the heavy metal cadmium may also have higher odds of severe disease during the pandemic.Cadmium is found in cigarettes and in contaminated vegetables. Previous research has shown that long-term exposure to cadmium, even at low levels, may weaken the lungs' defense system."Our study suggests the public in general, both smokers and nonsmokers, could benefit from reduced exposure to cadmium," said study co-author Sung Kyun Park. He's an associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, in Ann Arbor.This study found that people with...

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 16, 2020 (American Heart Association News) -- Mark Kincaid greeted spectators coming to the high school football game as he collected donations for his son's baseball team. His daughter, a cheerleader, was on the field while his wife and one of their three sons watched the game.As a woman dropped money into Mark's bucket, his expression went blank. He stumbled backward. A friend standing nearby caught Mark before he fell. He tried to say something but couldn't speak.Paramedics working the game came running. Mark's wife, Tonya, followed the ambulance to the hospital, only 2 miles away."When the doctor came out to talk to me, I knew immediately that it was bad," Tonya said.Undetected high blood pressure had caused Mark, then 42, to have a stroke. During the CT scan that...

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 16, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Amid hopes stirred by the recent rollout of an approved COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, a new study warns that shots may not be available to nearly one-quarter of the world's people until 2022.A second study estimates that 3.7 billion adults worldwide are willing to get the vaccine. Together, these two findings suggest that getting people immunized could be as big a challenge as developing vaccines, especially in low- and middle-income countries."High-income countries have secured future supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, but that access for the rest of the world is uncertain," according to the researchers. "Governments and manufacturers might provide much needed assurances for equitable allocation of COVID-19 vaccines through greater...

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 16, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- As America rolls out a nationwide coronavirus vaccination campaign this week, experts help answer your questions about the new COVID-19 vaccines.Both the Pfizer vaccine (already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) and the Moderna vaccine (up for approval) were developed using a technology called messenger RNA, or mRNA, explained Dr. Thomas Ma. He's chair of the department of medicine at Penn State Health's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. These mRNA vaccines introduce genetic material that prompts your cells to create a harmless piece of COVID-19's spike protein. "This type of vaccine -- mRNA -- has been studied before," said Dr. Catharine Paules, an infectious diseases physician at the medical center. "But this will be the...