Latest Health News

23Jun
2020

Cyberbullies and Their Victims Can Both Develop PTSD

Cyberbullies and Their Victims Can Both Develop PTSDTUESDAY, June 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Both cyberbullies and their victims can suffer from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a new British study finds. Cyberbullying is bullying online rather than in person. It's so pervasive that pediatricians should routinely ask their patients about it as part of psychological assessment, the researchers said. "Parents, teachers and health professionals need to be aware of possible PTSD symptoms in young people involved in cyberbullying," said study author Ana Pascual-Sánchez and colleagues. She's in the psychiatry division at Imperial College London. Cyberbullying among teenagers is estimated to range from 10% to 40%, said the researchers. Because it can be done anonymously day or night, it poses special risks, they...

Could Crohn's, Colitis Raise Dementia Risk?

23 June 2020
Could Crohn`s, Colitis Raise Dementia Risk?TUESDAY, June 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- People with inflammatory bowel disease might be vulnerable to developing dementia, a new study suggests. Inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD, is an umbrella term for ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. Both cause chronic inflammation in the digestive tract, thought to be triggered by a misguided immune system attack. In the new study of more than 19,000 adults, those with IBD were twice as likely to develop dementia over 16 years. They were also diagnosed seven years sooner, on average -- at age 76, versus 83 among people without IBD. The findings do not prove IBD directly contributes to dementia, the researchers stressed. One possibility is that certain lifestyle factors help explain the link, said lead researcher Dr. Bing Zhang, of...

Suicide Rate 170 Times Higher for People With Schizophrenia

23 June 2020
Suicide Rate 170 Times Higher for People With SchizophreniaMONDAY, June 22, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- People with schizophrenia have a suicide rate 170 times higher than the general population, Canadian researchers report. The researchers looked at 20 years of population data, including information on 75,000 patients with schizophrenia. Each was followed for about 10 years, on average. Risk of suicide was heightened the first five years after the mental illness was diagnosed, the researchers said. Suicide risk was also heightened if the patient had a mood disorder or was hospitalized before diagnosis. Later age at diagnosis was also linked to higher odds of suicide. "What this study teaches us is that although people with schizophrenia spectrum disorder [SSD] are at higher risk for suicide, we can target those at the highest risk with...

Cancer Drug Might Help Curb Severe COVID-19

23 June 2020
Cancer Drug Might Help Curb Severe COVID-19TUESDAY, June 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Could a cancer drug spare hospital patients from the ravages of severe COVID-19? Yale doctors think it can after giving the medication, known as tocilizumab, to severely ill patients back in March. How does tocilizumab work? It has a long history of dampening the life-threatening immune system reactions cancer patients often experience while undergoing treatment. Since the same kind of dangerous response develops in many COVID-19 cases, the researchers thought the drug might make a difference for the sickest patients. The result -- while preliminary -- appears to be a dramatically lower death rate among patients placed on mechanical ventilators. How much lower? Among the first 239 COVID-19 patients treated at Yale New Haven Hospital, in...

More Young Americans Developing Unhealthy Predictors of Heart Disease

23 June 2020
More Young Americans Developing Unhealthy Predictors of Heart DiseaseTUESDAY, June 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- A new study finds that 1 in 5 people under age 40 now have metabolic syndrome, a group of risk factors that together increase the odds for many serious conditions, including diabetes, heart disease and stroke. The rate of metabolic syndrome is rising in all age groups -- as many as half of adults over 60 have it. But among 20- to 39-year-olds, the rate rose 5 percentage points over five years, the study reported. Metabolic syndrome is a group of heart disease risk factors that occur together. They include: A large waistline, High blood pressure, Higher-than-normal blood sugar levels, High triglyceride levels (triglycerides are a type of blood fat), Low levels of good (HDL) cholesterol. "The trends for metabolic syndrome are very...

Heat Kills More Americans Than Previously Thought

23 June 2020
Heat Kills More Americans Than Previously ThoughtTUESDAY, June 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Heat is an underestimated killer in the United States, a new study suggests. According to researchers, death records indicate that heat kills as many as 600 hundred Americans each year, but moderate heat may actually be killing more than 5,000 annually. And the social distancing restrictions of COVID-19 might make staying cool harder this summer. Most of the deaths were from moderately hot weather, rather than extremely hot weather -- categories the researchers defined by using normal temperatures in a given area. "How dangerous a hot day is may depend on where you live," said researcher Kate Weinberger, an assistant professor of occupational and environmental health at the University of British Columbia School of Population and Public...

Coming This Way: Huge Saharan Dust Plume Will Affect Americans' Health

23 June 2020
Coming This Way: Huge Saharan Dust Plume Will Affect Americans` HealthTUESDAY, June 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- A pandemic, a slew of protests -- and now a huge blanket of Sahara Desert dust will engulf parts of the United States this week. That's what some weary Americans will have to brace themselves for by Wednesday or Thursday, meteorologists and health experts warn. The dust plume, drifting from North Africa across the Atlantic to North America, occurs a few times every year, the experts said. But this week, the cloud of dust is especially huge, and it's already hit the Caribbean. "This is the most significant event in the past 50 years," Pablo Méndez Lázaro, an environmental health specialist with the University of Puerto Rico, told the Associated Press. "Conditions are dangerous in many Caribbean islands." Health experts across the Caribbean...

Pandemic Job Losses Leaving Many Americans Uninsured: Survey

23 June 2020
Pandemic Job Losses Leaving Many Americans Uninsured: SurveyTUESDAY, June 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Furloughs and layoffs stemming from the coronavirus pandemic have left many Americans without health insurance, a new survey reveals. "Here in the fourth month of COVID-19-related job losses, a growing number of people won't be able to afford health care in the midst of the worst public health crisis in modern times," said report author Sara Collins, vice president for health care coverage and access with the Commonwealth Fund, a survey sponsor. "It has never been clearer how important it is to ensure that all U.S. residents have affordable, comprehensive coverage regardless of their employment status," she said in a Commonwealth Fund news release. For the study, almost 2,300 U.S. adults were asked whether they or their spouse had been out...

AHA News: Heart Condition Made Her Feel 'Like a Ticking...

TUESDAY, June 23, 2020 (American Heart Association News) -- Heather Lister was 28 when her cardiologist said, "If you're planning to have children, you shouldn't wait long." The problem was her...

COVID Spreads Quickly in Crowded Homes, Poor Neighborhoods

TUESDAY, June 23, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Poverty and crowded living conditions increase the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, a new study suggests. Researchers reached that...
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