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FRIDAY, June 5, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- A letter signed by nearly 1,300 public health professionals, infectious diseases professionals and community stakeholders says fear of COVID-19's spread is no excuse to stop people from joining police brutality protests in cities across America. Instead, it supports the anti-racist demonstrations and suggests ways that demonstrators can limit their risk of infection. "We are witnessing continuing demonstrations in response to ongoing, pervasive and lethal institutional racism set off by the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among many other black lives taken by police," the authors of the letter wrote. The authors called racism and white supremacy "a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19." When it...

FRIDAY, June 5, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Teens who donate blood are at significant risk for long-term iron deficiency, a new study warns. The concern comes as 16- to 18-year-olds have emerged as one of the fastest-growing groups of blood donors nationwide. But this study of nearly 31,000 teens who gave blood more than once between 2016 and 2018 found that roughly one in 10 were already iron-deficient when they donated for the first time. And a year later, one-third of the girls and about 15% of the boys still had low iron levels, according to the report published online June 5 in the journal Pediatrics. "Blood loss of any kind is a common cause of iron deficiency in the U.S.," said lead author Dr. Ralph Vassallo. And "blood donation results in the loss of iron-containing red...

FRIDAY, June 5, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Among patients in China with COVID-19, researchers found that those with high blood pressure had twice the risk of death from the coronavirus compared with patients who didn't have high blood pressure. And patients with high blood pressure who were not taking drugs to control it were at even higher risk, the findings showed. However, the study only found an association and could not prove cause-and-effect. For the study, researchers in China and Ireland analyzed data on nearly 2,900 COVID-19 patients who entered one hospital in Wuhan, China, between Feb. 5 and March 15. Nearly 30% of these patients had a history of high blood pressure. The analysis revealed that 4% of patients with high blood pressure died versus 1% of other patients,...

FRIDAY, June 5, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- COVID-19 is taking a heavy toll on Americans' mental health, a new nationwide survey shows. Overall, psychological distress more than tripled between 2018 and this spring -- from 4% of U.S. adults in 2018 to 14% in April. Beth McGinty, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said the findings, from a survey of 1,500 adults, suggest the need to prepare for a wave of mental illness once the pandemic passes. "It is especially important to identify mental illness treatment needs and connect people to services, with a focus on groups with high psychological distress including young adults, adults in low-income households, and Hispanics," McGinty said in a university news release. The survey used a...