Latest Health News

5Aug
2020

Obesity Ups Odds for Severe COVID-19, But Age Matters

Obesity Ups Odds for Severe COVID-19, But Age MattersWEDNESDAY, Aug. 5, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- If you're younger than 65 years old and obese, COVID-19 poses a special danger to you. A new study reports that the more obese you are, the more likely you are to either die from infection with the new coronavirus or require lifesaving mechanical ventilation to survive. Morbidly obese COVID-19 patients are 60% more likely to die or require intubation, compared with people of normal weight, researchers found. Patients who were mildly obese were 10% more likely to die or need a breathing machine, while those who were moderately obese were 30% more likely, according to the study. "Increasing obesity was associated with an increased risk of lung failure or death in COVID-19," said lead researcher Dr. Michaela Anderson, a pulmonologist at...

Seven States Join Pact to Speed Coronavirus Testing

5 August 2020
Seven States Join Pact to Speed Coronavirus TestingWEDNESDAY, Aug. 5, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- As the daily U.S. coronavirus death toll averaged more than 1,000 for the ninth straight day on Tuesday, governors from seven states banded together to shorten turnaround time for COVID-19 test results. Three Republican governors and three Democratic governors signed an interstate testing agreement on Tuesday, The New York Times reported. Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio and Virginia will work with the Rockefeller Foundation and two U.S. manufacturers of rapid tests to buy 3 million tests, the newspaper said. A seventh state, North Carolina, later joined the pact, CNN reported. The bipartisan plan illustrates just how bad testing delays are across the country. The United States is testing about 755,000 people a day, up...

Say What? Like Animals, People Perk Up Their Ears to Hear

4 August 2020
Say What? Like Animals, People Perk Up Their Ears to HearTUESDAY, Aug. 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Like many other animals, people can move their ears to focus on a specific sound, researchers say. However, this movement of ears is subtle and the ability to do it hasn't been known until now. By measuring electrical signals in ear muscles as volunteers tried to detect sounds, researchers found that people make tiny, unconscious movements to aim their ears at a particular sound. "The electrical activity of the ear muscles indicates the direction in which the subject is focusing their auditory attention," said study leader Daniel Strauss, neuroscientist at Saarland University in Germany. "It is very likely that humans still possess a rudimentary orientation system that tries to control the movement of the pinna (the visible outer part of the...

Mysterious Paralyzing Illness in Kids Is Set to Return,...

4 August 2020
Mysterious Paralyzing Illness in Kids Is Set to Return, CDC WarnsTUESDAY, Aug. 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- A new outbreak of a mysterious, potentially fatal polio-like illness could strike hundreds of American children within the next few months, U.S. health officials warned Tuesday. Acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) outbreaks have occurred every two years in the United States since 2014, peaking between August and November, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. More than 9 of 10 cases occur in children. More than half of AFM cases wind up in intensive care, and nearly 1 in 4 require a ventilator to survive after their muscles grow too weak to adequately draw breath, according to a review of the 2018 outbreak published Aug. 4 in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. "AFM is a medical emergency that requires immediate...

COVID-19 Fears Had Sick, Injured Americans Avoiding ERs

4 August 2020
COVID-19 Fears Had Sick, Injured Americans Avoiding ERsTUESDAY, Aug. 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Visits to hospital emergency rooms fell off sharply in March when the COVID-19 pandemic started keeping people at home -- and a new study reports they never returned to normal. "This is a case where public messaging appears to have worked too well," said researcher Dr. Edward Melnick, associate professor of emergency medicine at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. "We said, 'stay home,' and what people heard was: 'Stay home at all costs to avoid COVID-19.'" His team analyzed data from 24 emergency departments in five health care systems in the United States between January and April 2020. The departments varied widely, serving small rural populations as well as large urban ones, with an annual emergency department volume ranging from 12,500...

Many COVID-19 Patients Given Useless Antibiotics: Study

4 August 2020
Many COVID-19 Patients Given Useless Antibiotics: StudyTUESDAY, Aug. 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Early in the U.S. coronavirus pandemic, many people landing in the hospital may have been given unnecessary antibiotics, a new study suggests. The findings come from one of the hard-hit hospitals in New York City, the initial epicenter of the U.S. pandemic. Researchers there found that of COVID-19 patients admitted between March and May, just over 70% were given antibiotics. That's despite the fact that COVID-19 is caused by a virus, and very few of those patients actually had a coexisting bacterial infection. Antibiotics kill bacteria, but are useless against viral infections such as the common cold, the flu and COVID-19. However, someone with a bad case of COVID-19 has all the symptoms that mark bacterial pneumonia, explained lead...

Cancer Diagnoses Plunge as Americans Avoid Screening During Pandemic

4 August 2020
Cancer Diagnoses Plunge as Americans Avoid Screening During PandemicTUESDAY, Aug. 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- As COVID-19 continues to impact nearly all aspects of American health care, researchers warn that the United States has seen a troubling drop in cancer diagnoses since the pandemic began. The drop is not being attributed to a downturn in cancer incidence, but rather a COVID-driven reluctance to get screened. "Our research found that during the COVID-19 pandemic, between March 1 and April 18, there was a 46% decrease in diagnoses of the six common cancer types we looked at, which included breast, colorectal, lung, pancreatic, gastric and esophageal cancers," said study author Dr. Harvey Kaufman. But, "this decrease in diagnoses was unfortunately not the result of a drop in cancer rates," stressed Kaufman, who is senior medical director of...

Brush With Common Cold Might Help Protect Against COVID-19

4 August 2020
Brush With Common Cold Might Help Protect Against COVID-19TUESDAY, Aug. 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Since the pandemic began, it's been known that the severity of coronavirus illness varies widely between people. Could the common cold be the reason why? It's still just a theory, but researchers in California suspect that if you've recently had a cold -- many of which are also caused by coronaviruses -- your immune system's T-cells might recognize SARS-CoV-2 and help fight it. "We have now proven that in some people, preexisting T-cell memory against common cold coronaviruses can cross-recognize SARS-CoV-2, down to exact molecular structures," said study co-lead author Daniela Weiskopf, an assistant professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. "This could help explain why some people show milder symptoms of disease while others get...

U.S. Grandparents Are Raising Millions of Kids, and It's...

TUESDAY, Aug. 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Nearly 3 million children in the United States are being raised by grandparents, and life has placed these kids on a rocky road toward adulthood, a new...

Vitamin D Won't Reduce Risk of Depression

TUESDAY, Aug. 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- For those battling debilitating depression, a new study delivers some bad news: Vitamin D supplements won't make a dent in improving mood. While the...
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