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WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Many former National Football League (NFL) players who took opioid painkillers early in their retirement still used them nine years later, a new study finds. The researchers also found that those who continued to use opioids were more likely to report moderate to severe depressive symptoms and low mental health-related quality of life. Long-term opioid use among former NFL players may be due to a number of factors, said study co-author Zachary Mannes, a recent graduate of the doctoral program in clinical psychology at the University of Florida. "It's hard to imagine that bodily pain doesn't contribute to continued opioid use, as retired NFL athletes may rely on opioids in an effort to manage chronic pain that has developed as a result of...

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Most people now know that COVID-19 can cause blood clots, potentially leading to paralysis, stroke, heart attack and death. While it's not clear precisely how SARS-CoV-2 causes clots, a new study suggests that the amount of a particular protein -- called factor V -- in a patient's blood may have something to do with it. In March, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital obtained a blood sample from a patient with severe COVID-19 and noticed something unusual. The patient's blood had significantly above-normal levels of factor V. Researchers then studied more than 100 patients treated in the intensive care unit for COVID-19. High levels of factor V were found across the group, and nearly half of the patients had above-normal...

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Want to fend off high blood pressure? New research adds to the pile of evidence showing that living healthy can help you avoid hypertension. The study included nearly 3,000 Black and white U.S. adults, aged 45 and older, who didn't have high blood pressure at the start of the study. The participants' heart health was assessed with the American Heart Association's Life's Simple 7 tool, which measures seven risk factors: body mass index, diet, smoking, physical activity, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels. A score of 10 to 14 is ideal; 5 to 9 is average, and 0 to 4 is poor. The median score among the participants was 9. Over about nine years of follow-up, 42% of participants developed high blood pressure. The rates among...

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Hearts donated by severely obese donors aren't more risky for recipients than hearts from people who aren't obese, a new study indicates. "These findings were somewhat surprising because the severely obese donors did tend to have more medical problems, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, than the non-obese donors," said study author Dr. Leora Yarboro. She's an associate professor of surgery at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. Her team analyzed the outcomes of 26,000 heart transplants in the United States from 2003 to 2017. About 3.5% of the donors were severely obese. There were no significant differences in short-term outcomes, one-year survival rates or long-term death rates between patients who received a heart...