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MONDAY, Aug. 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Diabetes can wreak havoc on many parts of the body, including the eyes, but people with diabetes aren't doomed to have vision problems. With good blood sugar management and regular eye exams, many eye conditions can be prevented or treated, experts say. Patricia Welter, a Pilates studio owner from Palm Harbor, Fla., wishes she'd known more about preventing eye problems related to diabetes before it was too late. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 14, and lost one of her eyes because of diabetes when she was in her 40s. "I was always scared to death of eye complications and blindness from diabetes," Welter said. Her uncle and her mother both had type 1 diabetes and had vision issues from the disease. But Welter was diagnosed in the...

MONDAY, Aug. 10, 2020 (American Heart Association News) -- In the months since COVID-19 emerged, medical experts have learned a lot about the threat it poses to people with issues such as high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity or cardiovascular disease. But much of the essential advice remains the same: Take the coronavirus seriously. Do all you can to avoid catching it. And never ignore symptoms of a heart attack, stroke or other condition that should be treated in an emergency room. More is being learned every day. And not all the news is grim. For example, "it does not look like cardiovascular disease makes people more likely to get the virus," said Dr. Mitchell Elkind, professor of neurology and epidemiology at Columbia University in New York City. "It's more that it makes the...

MONDAY, Aug. 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- As the November presidential election approaches in the United States, researchers say that many states still aren't prepared to deal with the chaos the coronavirus pandemic could cause. "The COVID-19 pandemic presents a severe threat to states' 2020 election plans, which will have higher turnout and higher stakes since this is a presidential election year," said researcher Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior political scientist at RAND Corp. "To be prepared to conduct elections during a pandemic, states will need registration and voting options that reduce crowds, minimize direct personal contact, and limit common access to high-touch surfaces," she added in a RAND news release. But two reports released Aug. 5 show that nine states do not have any...

MONDAY, Aug. 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- A simple blood test may predict which COVID-19 patients are likely to get worse and die, a new study suggests. "When we first started treating COVID-19 patients, we watched them get better or get worse, but we didn't know why," said researcher Dr. Juan Reyes. He's an assistant professor of medicine at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, in Washington, D.C. "Some initial studies had come out of China showing certain biomarkers were associated with bad outcomes. There was a desire to see if that was true for our patients here in the U.S.," Reyes said in a school news release. For the study, Reyes and his colleagues evaluated nearly 300 patients with COVID-19 admitted to George Washington Hospital between March 12 and...