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THURSDAY, May 21, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The more pregnancies losses a woman has, the greater her risk of developing diabetes, a new study suggests. Researchers examined data on nearly 25,000 Danish women who were born between 1957 and 1997 and diagnosed with type 2 diabetes between 1977 to 2017. The women were compared with a control group of nearly 248,000 women with the same ages and educational levels who didn't have diabetes. Compared to women who'd never miscarried, those who had one, two or three lost pregnancies had an 18%, 38% and 71% higher risk, respectively, of developing type 2 diabetes. The study was published May 20 in the journal Diabetologia. "We cannot rule out that the psychological distress related to pregnancy loss can initiate lifestyle changes that...

THURSDAY, May 21, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- A combination drug therapy for COVID-19 aims to both prevent the virus from spreading inside the human body as well as quelling the immune system havoc that the germ wreaks. A U.S. federally funded clinical trial is testing whether the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir works better against COVID-19 if given with a powerful anti-inflammatory drug called baricitinib. "Baricitinib is a once-daily oral drug that has been well-tolerated in many studies examining its use in rheumatoid arthritis. It has very few drug interactions, so can [it] be combined with most antivirals such as remdesivir," said Dr. Vincent Marconi, a professor of medicine and global health at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. This isn't the only study...

THURSDAY, May 21, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Nearly 36,000 American lives would have been spared if strict social distancing measures had been enacted across the country just one week earlier than they were, new estimates suggest. And if those measures had been imposed two weeks before most people started staying home, about 54,000 COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided by early May, Columbia University disease models show, The New York Times reported. The U.S. coronavirus death toll stretched past 93,000 on Thursday, with more than 1.5 million cases. "It's a big, big difference," Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia and leader of the modeling team, told Times. "That small moment in time, catching it in that growth phase, is incredibly critical in reducing the number of...

WEDNESDAY, May 20, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The now-trendy keto diet is said to turn fat into fuel. But a new, small study says it may also change the vast array of microbes residing in your gut (the microbiome). That could be a good thing, as those changes may ultimately strengthen the immune system by tamping down inflammation, researchers say. The keto diet, which severely restricts carbohydrates and emphasizes fats and protein, has been touted as a way to rein in epilepsy, diabetes and expanding waistlines. Yet despite rising popularity, it remains controversial, and much is unknown about its true impact on health. The new finding follows a two-month study that tracked diet-related shifts in microbiome content among 17 overweight or obese men, with follow-up tests in...