Opinion | ‘People Need to Make Their Own Decisions’: What We Heard This Week
“As to whether a booster is ‘unnecessary’ in certain age groups, I think we’re at the point where people need to make their own decisions.” — John Moore, PhD, of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, on getting the bivalent COVID booster shot. “We will live the day that they will not undergo surgery […]
Health Workers Unlikely to Catch Monkeypox From Infected Patients
Healthcare personnel (HCP) were unlikely to be infected with monkeypox from an infected patient, according to research from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Among 313 healthcare workers exposed to 55 patients with confirmed monkeypox, none contracted the virus over 21 days of follow-up, even though many did not wear personal protective equipment […]
Some Reassurance That a Cuffless BP Sensor Works Regardless of Body Fat, Skin Color
SAN DIEGO — For a given individual, blood pressure (BP) readings were largely the same coming from a cuffless photoplethysmography (PPG)-based monitor or a traditional cuff-based device — regardless of the person’s sex, BMI, or skin color, a study showed. Calibrated to a cuffed device and used for cuffless wrist- and chest-based BP measurement, the […]
More And More People Have ‘Lifestyle Fatigue.’ Maybe You Do, Too.
Even though we’re armed with COVID-19 vaccines and updated booster shots, the world is still largely in a different (and oft-worried) place compared with before the pandemic. This, experts say, can lead to a feeling of malaise — or “lifestyle fatigue,” in the words of Sean Grover, a psychotherapist who writes for Psychology Today. Lifestyle […]
Blood Type Tied to Early-Onset Stroke Risk
Two variants in ABO, a known stroke locus, were linked with early-onset ischemic stroke risk, a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) showed. The variants tagged blood type subgroups O1 and A1, and effect sizes were significantly larger in early-onset (under age 60) than late-onset stroke, reported Braxton Mitchell, PhD, MPH, of University of Maryland […]
Herpes Viruses Linked to Brain Changes
Symptomatic herpes viruses were linked with several neurologic and cognitive features, but not with Alzheimer’s disease processes, a longitudinal cohort study showed. Among older adults who mainly were cognitively normal, herpes virus infection was associated with accelerated tissue loss in brain white matter over time, particularly in the temporal lobe, according to Keenan Walker, PhD, […]
Pious Parasites: Medieval Monks Battled Nasty Gut Germs
Latest Infectious Disease News FRIDAY, Aug. 19, 2022 (HealthDay News) Medieval monks were much more wormy than average folks, a new archaeological analysis has revealed. Those living in medieval Cambridge were nearly twice as likely to be infected by intestinal parasites as city dwellers, researchers found. Even though Augustinian friars had access to advanced sanitation […]
A Legacy of the Deepwater Horizon Spill: Asthma in Cleanup Workers
Workers who responded to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 were more likely to report incident asthma within a few years, a cohort study found. Those oil spill response and cleanup workers were 60% more likely to report developing asthma in the 1-3 years after the spill compared with non-workers who had been trained […]
Active Treatment for Extremely Preterm Babies on the Rise
Babies born extremely preterm were more likely to receive active treatment in recent years, but there were gaps in treatment among different racial and ethnic groups, according to a cross-sectional study. From 2014 to 2020, the proportion of extremely preterm infants who received active treatment rose nearly 4% each year (45.7% to 58.8%), increasing in […]
False Claims About COVID Vax Animal Testing Resurface
False claims that COVID-19 vaccine trials were halted when animals died in preclinical studies are making the rounds on social media again, according to reports. The misinformation gained traction in 2021 after Sen. Bob Hall (R-Texas) claimed at a hearing that the “American people are now guinea pigs.” A 1-minute clip of his remarks was […]