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20Jan
2023

What to Know About XBB, the New COVID Variant

What to Know About XBB, the New COVID VariantFRIDAY, Jan. 20, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- The new coronavirus continues to dodge, duck, dip and dive, mutating again and again to find its way past people’s immune defenses.The latest COVID variant to gain a foothold in America is called XBB.1.5, which has rapidly started to crowd out other competing variants.XBB.1.5 is the first recombinant COVID variant expected to become dominant in the United States, according to the viral surveillance company Helix. This variant is called "recombinant" because it was created by two Omicron subvariants merging through evolution.The new strain also took two evolutionary steps instead of just one, gaining a mutation for immune evasion as well as an unsuppressed ability to bind to and infect human cells, Helix said in its report.These rapid-fire...

Plane Wastewater Study Shows How COVID Travel...

20 January 2023
Plane Wastewater Study Shows How COVID Travel Restrictions FailedFRIDAY, Jan. 20, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Wastewater research isn't for the squeamish, but it can get to the bottom of questions about such things as the effectiveness of COVID-19 air travel restrictions.Tests of toilet tank water from flights entering the United Kingdom helped Welsh scientists determine that steps meant to keep the virus from traveling among countries appear to have failed."Despite all the intervention measures that the U.K. had in place to try to stop people with the illness getting on flights to the U.K., almost every single plane we tested contained the virus, and most of the terminal sewers, too," said researcher Davey Jones, a professor in the School of Natural Sciences at Bangor University in Wales. "That might have been because people developed symptoms after...

Poll Finds Nearly Half of Americans Unprepared for...

20 January 2023
Poll Finds Nearly Half of Americans Unprepared for Medical EmergencyFRIDAY, Jan. 20, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- A medical emergency can happen at any moment. Will you be prepared? Nearly half of American adults will not, according to a new poll from the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and Morning Consult. About 76% felt prepared to communicate with a 911 operator, but only 55% said they could provide hands-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).Meanwhile, just 47% said they were prepared to apply a tourniquet to control severe bleeding, the same number who said they could move a victim to safety. Fewer than 29% said they felt prepared to use an automatic external defibrillator (AED).“A medical emergency can happen at any time and quick action by a bystander can be the difference between life or death,” said ACEP president Dr....

Gut Microbiome May Play Role in Irritable Bowel Syndrome

20 January 2023
Gut Microbiome May Play Role in Irritable Bowel SyndromeFRIDAY, Jan. 20, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers believe they have found a link between lower bacterial diversity in the intestine's microbiome and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).Normally, “more than 10,000 species of microorganism live in the human intestine,” noted study co-author Dr. Jung Ok Shim, a professor of pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition at Korea University College of Medicine in Seoul.To study this, the investigators combined their own dataset with nine other published datasets, involving a total of 576 IBS patients and 487 healthy "control" patients. What did they find? The gut bacteria was less diverse in IBS patients than in healthy people, Shim said. The level of abundance of 21 specific bacterial species also differed between IBS patients...

ADHD Tied to Higher Rates of Anxiety, Depression

19 January 2023
ADHD Tied to Higher Rates of Anxiety, DepressionTHURSDAY, Jan. 19, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be an even bigger predictor of depression and anxiety in adulthood than autism is, a new study finds — highlighting the mental health side of the disorder.It's known that kids and adults with ADHD often have co-existing conditions, including depression and anxiety. Research suggests that about 14% of children with ADHD have depression, while up to 30% have an anxiety disorder, according to the National Resource Center on ADHD.Adults with ADHD, meanwhile, are even harder-hit — with each of those conditions affecting up to half.The new study, researchers said, adds to what's known by showing that ADHD is even more strongly linked to anxiety and depression than "autistic traits" are....

Aspirin OK After Fracture to Help Avoid Blood Clots

19 January 2023
Aspirin OK After Fracture to Help Avoid Blood ClotsTHURSDAY, Jan. 19, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- When people undergo surgery for broken arms or legs, they are often injected with prescription blood thinners to reduce their risk of developing potentially life-threatening blood clots in their lungs and legs.But a large, new study suggests it may be time to rethink this practice. It found that aspirin may be as effective as injections of low-molecular-weight heparin when it comes to staving off blood clots and their related complications."Patients all over North America who come in for surgery for fractures are at risk for blood clots in their legs and lungs, and the standard treatment is injections of low-molecular-weight heparin in the hospital and for weeks after discharge," said study author Dr. Robert O’Toole, chief of orthopaedics...

Is There a Best Diuretic Drug for Heart Failure?

19 January 2023
Is There a Best Diuretic Drug for Heart Failure?THURSDAY, Jan. 19, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- It doesn’t matter which water pill you’re prescribed to treat your heart failure, because new trial data shows that one works as well as the other.Two diuretics widely used to treat heart failure, furosemide and torsemide, showed no difference in their ability to improve patient survival, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored trial.“We’re not saying that patients don’t need diuretics. We’re saying that there’s no difference in the survival benefit of these two therapies,” said study co-leader Dr. Robert Mentz, chief of the heart failure section at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. “This suggests we should be spending more time focusing on the right diuretic dose for our patients and...

AHA News: Simple or Moderate Congenital Heart Defects Might Not Impair Fertility

19 January 2023
AHA News: Simple or Moderate Congenital Heart Defects Might Not Impair FertilityTHURSDAY, Jan. 19, 2023 (American Heart Association News) -- Women and men born with simple or moderate heart defects who choose to have children are no more likely than others to experience infertility as adults, a study in Denmark suggests.The researchers said it is the first study to examine the risk of infertility among women and men with congenital heart defects and offers reassurance to patients who are concerned about how the condition may affect their fertility if they decide to start a family. The results were published this week in the Journal of the American Heart Association.With advances in treatment, many more children born with heart defects are living into adulthood, said the study's lead author, Dr. Louise Udholm of Copenhagen University Hospital. But little was known...

Hormonal Therapies Are Boosting the Mental Health of...

THURSDAY, Jan. 19, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- As numerous U.S. states move to restrict transgender health care, a new study shows that such care can substantially improve teenagers' mental...

Another Major HIV Vaccine Trial Fails

THURSDAY, Jan. 19, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- In yet another setback for the future of HIV prevention, the only HIV vaccine in a late-stage trial has failed, study leaders announced...
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