Latest Health News

2Jul
2020

Scientists Find Source of COVID Clots

Scientists Find Source of COVID ClotsTHURSDAY, July 2, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- COVID-19 is linked to potentially fatal blood clots. Researchers now believe they've found out how they occur, which potentially could lead to better treatment. "While many forms of illness can generate blood clots, the endothelial cells that line the inside of blood vessels play a surprisingly large role in COVID-19 clotting," said researcher Dr. Alfred Lee, an associate professor of medicine at Yale Cancer Center. "Endothelial damage is a central component in the entire spectrum of COVID-19 disease. Our study is the first to demonstrate that this process of endothelial damage is present in a wide range of COVID-19 patients, particularly as people become critically ill," Lee said in a Yale news release. For the study, Lee and his team...

MS Patients Turn to Marijuana, Other Alternative Treatments

2 July 2020
MS Patients Turn to Marijuana, Other Alternative TreatmentsTHURSDAY, July 2, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Despite the existence of conventional medications to manage multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms, a majority of patients also rely on alternative therapies, including vitamins, exercise and marijuana, a new survey suggests. For the study, researchers at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland asked MS patients if they used "complementary and alternative therapies" -- medicines and practices outside of standard medical care. A majority of just over 1,000 respondents said they used some type of alternative therapy, including marijuana, vitamins, herbs and minerals, plus mind-body therapies like exercise, mindfulness, massage and various diets. An earlier survey, conducted in 2001, found some people regularly used these therapies --...

New U.S. Coronavirus Cases Top 50,000 as More States...

2 July 2020
New U.S. Coronavirus Cases Top 50,000 as More States Slow Reopening PlansTHURSDAY, July 2, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The daily tally of new U.S. coronavirus cases passed 50,000 on Wednesday, as more reopening plans across the country were slowed amid fears of spiking infections. A glimmer of hope emerged on the economic front when unemployment numbers were released by the U.S. Labor Department Thursday morning: 4.8 million jobs were added to the national workforce last month, the second straight monthly gain after losing more than 20 million jobs in April, The New York Times reported. Still, 1.4 million Americans filed jobless claims last week, the 15th straight week that unemployment claims have surpassed 1 million. Meanwhile, rapidly rising infection counts continued to thwart reopening plans: On Wednesday, California, Michigan and New York City became...

No Good Evidence on Accuracy of Coronavirus Antibody...

1 July 2020
No Good Evidence on Accuracy of Coronavirus Antibody Tests: StudyWEDNESDAY, July 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Do you wonder if you've been exposed to the new coronavirus in the recent past? Good luck finding out for sure: A new review finds there's little good evidence of the accuracy of blood antibody tests for COVID-19, especially those performed outside a lab. The new findings "indicate important weaknesses in the evidence on COVID-19 serological [blood] tests, particularly those being marketed as point-of-care tests," said researcher Mayara Lisboa Bastos, of McGill University Health Center in Montreal, Canada, and colleagues. And, the researchers believe that point-of-care tests -- performed directly with a patient outside of a laboratory -- are especially inaccurate at telling people whether or not they've been infected with coronavirus....

Americans Started Staying Put Early in the Pandemic, and That May Have Saved Lives

1 July 2020
Americans Started Staying Put Early in the Pandemic, and That May Have Saved LivesWEDNESDAY, July 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Americans began to travel less before states started to issue stay-at-home orders, and that may have curbed coronavirus case numbers, a new study suggests. "Our results strongly support the conclusion that social distancing played a crucial role in the reduction of case growth rates in multiple U.S. counties during March and April, and is therefore an effective mitigation policy for COVID-19 in the USA," said study author Lauren Gardner, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "Critically, we also found that behavioral changes were already underway in many U.S. counties days to weeks before state-level or local-level stay-at-home policies were implemented," she added. For the study, Gardner's team analyzed mobile phone data to...

Seizures After Vaccination Don't Affect Kids' Development: Study

1 July 2020
Seizures After Vaccination Don`t Affect Kids` Development: StudyWEDNESDAY, July 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Kids who have a fever-related seizure after getting a vaccine won't have developmental and behavioral problems as a result, according to a new study. These so-called febrile seizures do not affect children's development whether they occur after a vaccination or not, the researchers said. "A febrile seizure can occur following vaccination and understandably can be quite distressing to parents. It can also cause parents to lose confidence in future vaccinations," said study author Dr. Lucy Deng. She is a pediatrician at the National Center for Immunization Research and Surveillance in Sydney, Australia. "Now, parents will be relieved to hear that having a febrile seizure following vaccination does not affect the child's development," Deng...

Numbers of Non-COVID-19 Deaths Up During Pandemic

1 July 2020
Numbers of Non-COVID-19 Deaths Up During PandemicWEDNESDAY, July 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Nearly one-third of excess deaths in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States were linked to causes other than COVID-19, but that doesn't mean that the virus didn't play a role in those deaths, a new study claims. The researchers found there were just over 87,000 excess deaths in the United States between March 1 and April 25. Excess deaths are those above the number that would be expected based on averages from the previous five years. Only 65% of the excess deaths that occurred in March and April were attributed to COVID-19, meaning that 35% were linked to other causes. In the two most populous states -- California and Texas -- and in 12 other states, more than half of the excess deaths were attributed to an...

New Leash on Life: How Dog-Walking Is Helping Veterans Battered by PTSD

1 July 2020
New Leash on Life: How Dog-Walking Is Helping Veterans Battered by PTSDWEDNESDAY, July 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Many soldiers experience traumas on the battlefield that leave them emotionally wounded, but something as simple as walking a dog might bring these veterans desperately needed psychic relief. So suggests a new study where researchers compared how four weeks of walking with a shelter dog or with another person affected three biomarkers of stress in male and female veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The three biomarkers were: heart rate variability; cortisol (a "stress" hormone); and the enzyme alpha-amylase. The strongest indication that walking with a dog reduced stress came from heart rate variability findings. "Based on heart rate variability, our study provides evidence that walking with a shelter dog may benefit...

Muscle Relaxants for Back Pain Are Soaring: Are They Safe?

WEDNESDAY, July 1 , 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Back pain plagues many Americans, and new research shows that doctors are doling out muscle relaxant prescriptions to treat the pain -- often along...

An HIV Drug You Only Take Twice a Year?

WEDNESDAY, July 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists are reporting an early step toward an HIV drug that could potentially be taken only a couple of times per year. A single injection of the...
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