14 May 2020
THURSDAY, May 14, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Memory and thinking skills are generally worse after a stroke for people with type 2 diabetes compared to people with normal blood sugar levels or prediabetes, new research suggests.
"We found that diabetes, but not prediabetes, is associated with poorer cognitive performance in every aspect of cognition tested," said study lead author Jessica Lo. She's a research associate from the University of New South Wales Sydney's Center for Healthy Brain Aging in Australia. Prediabetes is a condition in which blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not yet high enough to be considered type 2 diabetes.
People with diabetes are more likely to have strokes than people without the disease. In fact, every two minutes someone with diabetes in the...
14 May 2020
THURSDAY, May 14, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Older Americans were going hungry even before the coronavirus pandemic short-circuited the nation's food supply, a new poll finds.
Before the COVID crisis, 1 in 7 adults ages 50 to 80 had difficulty getting enough food because of high costs or other factors, according to the National Poll on Healthy Aging conducted by the University of Michigan.
The number unable to obtain needed food in the past year was even higher among blacks, Hispanics and those not yet getting Medicare, researchers said.
"Access to nutritious food and health status are closely linked, yet this poll reveals major disparities in that access," said poll director Dr. Preeti Malani, a professor of internal medicine at Michigan Medicine.
"Even as we focus on preventing...
13 May 2020
WEDNESDAY, May 13, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- In a first, scientists have treated a Parkinson's disease patient with his own skin cells -- repurposing them to become key brain cells that the disease kills off.
Two years after receiving the experimental treatment, the patient has had no adverse effects, his doctors report. His symptoms, meanwhile, have either stabilized or gotten somewhat better.
"The improvement has been modest," said senior researcher Kwang-Soo Kim, who directs the molecular neurobiology laboratory at the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, in Belmont, Mass.
"But," he added, "before this treatment he'd been deteriorating rapidly, and afterward his worsening stopped."
Kim said his team is planning to study the therapy in additional patients.
For now, this patient...
13 May 2020
WEDNESDAY, May 13, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Most people around the world say they would continue to work if they had flu-like symptoms, an online survey finds.
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, researchers called the findings disturbing.
The survey -- conducted online between October 2018 and January 2019, before the emergence of COVID-19 -- included responses from 533 workers in 49 countries. Respondents included 249 health care workers and 284 others.
Large majorities (over 99% of health care workers and 96.5% of others) said they'd work through "minor" symptoms, such as a sore throat, sneezing/runny nose or cough. And 58.5% said they'd work with flu-like symptoms, including major ones such as muscle aches and fever.
In fact, nearly 27% of health care workers said they...