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THURSDAY, June 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's become clear that many people with the infection lose their sense of smell and taste. And doctors are concerned that some will never get back to normal. At this point, it's hard to know how common the symptom is. First, there were anecdotal reports of COVID-19 patients who had lost their ability to smell or taste, said Dr. Nicholas Rowan, an assistant professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. And then, he said, studies started to confirm "there's a lot of truth to it." Rowan pointed to one study of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 that used objective tests to detect smell "dysfunction." Nearly all patients -- 98% -- showed some loss of smell....

THURSDAY, June 4, 2020 (American Heart Association News) -- Current federal law requiring restaurants to post calories on their menus would help diners make healthier choices and could ultimately lead to fewer cases of heart disease and diabetes, according to new research. Between 2018 and 2023, the public's response to the nutritional labels at restaurants could prevent 14,698 cases of cardiovascular diseases, including 1,575 deaths and 21,522 Type 2 diabetes cases, the modeling study estimates. The findings were published Thursday in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. The Food and Drug Administration in May 2018 began mandating that calories be listed on menus and menu boards of restaurants that are part of a chain of 20 or more...

THURSDAY, June 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- In the thick of the coronavirus pandemic, it might be hard to tell if you've come down with COVID-19, spring allergies or a cold, which all have some similar symptoms. Fever and dry cough are common symptoms of COVID-19, along with shortness of breath and difficulty breathing, sore throat, diarrhea, fatigue, chills, muscle pain, loss of taste and smell, and body aches. But it's rare for fever or diarrhea to occur with a cold or seasonal allergies, according to Dr. Michael Benninger, chairman of the Head and Neck Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. "It's a matter of taking a logical approach to symptoms," he said in a clinic news release. If you don't have a fever, difficulty breathing or diarrhea, then you probably have a cold or seasonal...

THURSDAY, June 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- There's been a nearly 60% drop in broken bones among U.S. children during the coronavirus pandemic, but the rate of fractures that occur at home has climbed, a new study finds. The researchers analyzed data on 1,735 youngsters treated for acute fractures at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) between March 15 and April 15, and compared that data with the same time period in 2018 and 2019. There was a nearly 2.5-fold decline in the number of daily fracture cases during the coronavirus pandemic, compared with the two previous years, the investigators found. There was a particularly sharp fall in sports-related fractures. They accounted for just 7.2% of all fractures during the during the recent time period, compared with 26% of all...