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U.S. health care workers were most likely to be infected with COVID-19 at work during the pandemic’s first year, according to a new study that challenges previous research suggesting their risk was highest off the job. Researchers said their findings could help guide efforts to better protect health care workers during future infectious disease outbreaks. “This study provides important insights to guide infection prevention and control practices in health care settings so that we can better protect HCPs [health care professionals] and their patients,” said Linda Dickey, president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), which published the findings in its journal. For the study, researchers analyzed data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on nearly 84,000 health care workers who were diagnosed with COVID-19 between March 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021, and whose source of exposure was known. Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 was more likely in the workplace (52%) than in the home (nearly 31%) or community (about 26%). Workplace-associated exposures peaked in April 2020 at 84%, the researchers found. About two-thirds of health care workers who reported a specific type of on-the-job exposure said they’d come into contact with patients or other health care workers who had COVID-19. The largest reductions in workplace exposures occurred in June 2020 after introduction of improved infection prevention and control… read on > read on >

So, the new year has begun and everyone is trying to losing weight, but what is the best way to determine how many pounds you need to shed — BMI or body fat? “Both body fat percentage and BMI are important to monitor. They give you a good starting point, but you don’t want to use BMI alone to make a health diagnosis or define body fat,” said Claire Edgemon, a senior registered dietitian at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “If BMI is used alone, it could be misleading about an individual’s health status.” Why is BMI a less accurate measure of body fat? It only tracks a person’s weight compared to their height, but that doesn’t include muscle, bone or fat mass. And since BMI doesn’t measure what is going on metabolically, blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels should also be measured, Edgemon noted. In contrast to BMI, percentage of body fat determines how much of a person’s weight is fat. A quick way to measure body fat comes down to the circumference of the waist. Over 35 inches for women and over 40 inches for men points to more abdominal fat and greater health risks, Edgemon said. “There is a healthy range for body fat percentage, but there are differences to consider, like age or gender. A healthy body fat range… read on > read on >

Folks who take Ozempic or Wegovy for diabetes and weight loss need not worry about a higher risk of suicidal thoughts or feelings while on the medications, a new, large review finds. In the study, which was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, researchers turned to a database of more than 100 million patient records to measure the risks of suicidal ideation among people using semaglutide, which is sold as Ozempic for type 2 diabetes and Wegovy for weight loss. The results were published Jan. 5 in the journal Nature Medicine. Study author Dr. Rong Xu, a professor of biomedical informatics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, told CNN that she decided to look into the issue after European regulators opened a probe into semaglutide and reports of suicidal thoughts last summer. Just this week, a quarterly report from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revealed that the agency is looking into similar reports among users of multiple weight-loss drugs, including Ozempic and Wegovy. For the new review, Xu and her team, which included National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Dr. Nora Volkow, compared cases of suicidal ideation among people taking semaglutide with those taking other medicines for weight loss or diabetes. “We observed a lower incidence of suicidal ideations in patients who had taken semaglutide than in patients who were treated with non-GLP1R-targeting… read on > read on >

Combining mindfulness with exercise could be the key to managing stress during a potentially turbulent 2024, a new review argues. People who exercise and practice mindfulness meditation together tend to have less worry, stress, anxiety and depression than those who only engage in either activity, according to results from 35 studies involving more than 2,200 people. Mindfulness meditation — in which people focus on being in the moment — can help people better embrace exercise by providing them motivation and helping them look past the temporary discomfort that comes with working out, said lead researcher Masha Remskar, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Bath in England. “Mindfulness is an approach that can help us ‘train up’ the psychological strengths we need to exercise and be more in tune with our bodies, as well as make exercising more interesting and help us recognize its benefits,” Remskar said in a university news release. “This may be because becoming more mindful prompts us to think differently about our lifestyle, [and] makes us more accepting and less judgmental of our own shortcomings, which can help to build healthy habits,” she added. “There is a huge potential to use mindfulness to unlock the positive benefits exercise can bring.” Exercise and mindfulness have been linked separately to improved mental health, but this is one of the first major… read on > read on >

It’s easy to see the immediate health hazards of wildfire smoke, as people struggle to breathe through a sooty haze. But a new study finds that harmful chemicals found in wildfire smoke can linger in a person’s home for weeks after the immediate threat has passed, posing a continuing health threat. The chemicals — compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) — are highly toxic and can be found in household air filters, glass surfaces and cotton cloth more than a month later, researchers report. “They are associated with a wide variety of long-term adverse health consequences like cancer, potential complications in pregnancy and lung disease,” said researcher Elliott Gall, an associate professor of mechanical and materials engineering at Portland State University in Oregon. “If these compounds are depositing or sticking onto surfaces, there are different routes of exposure people should be aware of,” Gall added in a university news release. There’s lots of good advice out there on what to do during a wildfire, researchers noted — close windows and doors, run an air purifier, wear a mask. But there’s not much to guide people on how to best clean up afterward, researchers said. For this study, Gall and his team looked at how PAHs stuck to glass, cotton and air filters during a four-month span. They found it took 37 days for PAHs to… read on > read on >

Teenagers who’ve packed on extra pounds have a significantly increased risk of developing kidney disease as a young adult, a new study finds. Obesity increased risk of later kidney disease as much as ninefold in boys and fourfold in girls, according to results published recently in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. Even a few extra pounds increased a teen’s risk of kidney disease, researchers found. “The association was evident even in persons with high-normal BMI in adolescence, was more pronounced in men and appeared before the age of 30 years,” wrote the research team led by Dr. Avishai Tsur, of the Hebrew University Department of Military Medicine in Israel. Prior research has linked high BMI to kidney disease in older folks, but there hasn’t been much investigation into the potential risks of childhood obesity for kidney health, the researchers said. The study tracked more than 593,000 Israeli adolescents ages 16 to 20 who were born after 1974, all of whom underwent medical assessments for mandatory military service. After an average follow-up of 13 years, researchers found that nearly 2,000 of the participants had developed early chronic kidney disease. The teens’ risk of kidney disease increased with their excess weight, results show. Boys with severe obesity had a nine times higher risk of kidney disease, while those with mild obesity had a nearly seven times higher risk… read on > read on >

How much a person believes in the strength of a drug might influence how powerfully that drug influences brain activity, a new study has found. Smokers told to expect a low, medium or high dose of nicotine from an e-cigarette showed a brain response that tracked with the purported dose, even though nicotine levels were actually constant, researchers said. “We set out to investigate if human beliefs can modulate brain activities in a dose-dependent manner similar to what drugs do, and found a high level of precision in how beliefs can influence the human brain,” said senior researcher Xiaosi Gu. She’s an associate professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City. For the study, Gu and her team recruited a group of people hooked on nicotine and had them puff on an e-cigarette, after telling them how powerful a nicotine dose they should expect. The participants then underwent brain scans while performing a decision-making task known to engage parts of the brain affected by nicotine. “Beliefs can have a powerful influence on our behavior, yet their effects are considered imprecise and rarely examined by quantitative neuroscience methods,” Gu noted in a Mount Sinai news release. The thalamus — an important binding site for nicotine in the brain — showed a dose-dependent response to each person’s… read on > read on >

Migraines are not only extremely painful, but they also appear to pose a driving risk for seniors, a new study warns. Older adult drivers recently diagnosed with migraines are three times more likely to be involved in a car crash, researchers reported recently in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. “Migraine headaches affect more than 7% of U.S. adults over the age of 60,” noted lead researcher Dr. Carolyn DiGuiseppi, a professor with the University of Colorado School of Public Health. “The U.S. population is aging, which means increasing numbers of older adult drivers could see their driving abilities affected by migraine symptoms previously not experienced,” DiGuiseppi added in a university news release. “These symptoms include sleepiness, decreased concentration, dizziness, debilitating head pain and more.” For the study, researchers tracked more than 2,500 drivers ages 65 to 79 in five sites across the United States. A previous diagnosis of migraine did not appear to influence a driver’s crash risk, results show. But a new migraine diagnosis brought with it a threefold increase in the risk of a wreck within a year, researchers found. Medications commonly prescribed for migraines did not appear to influence either crash risk or driving habits, the researchers noted. “These results have potential implications for the safety of older patients that should be addressed,” DiGuiseppi said. “Patients with a new migraine… read on > read on >

Drugs already used by millions to lower cholesterol might someday have a new role: Relieving asthma and COPD. That’s the hope of a new line of research underway at the University of California, Davis. A study funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health is seeking to determine whether a “statin inhaler” might reduce the airway inflammation that makes breathing difficult for folks with illnesses like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Taking a statin pill has no significant effect on the airways, but “delivering statins directly to the lung via inhalation might achieve better local tissue drug levels, and therefore, better clinical results,” theorized lead investigator Amir Zeki, a professor of internal medicine who specializes in pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at UC Davis. This research is still in its early stages. However, if it pans out it might offer another treatment option to the more than 26.5 million Americans with asthma and the more than 16 million battling COPD. Zeki’s team is focusing on what’s known as airway smooth muscle (ASM) — tissue which lies within each airway’s wall and helps control airflow. The inflammation that drives asthma can trigger a tightening of smooth muscle, restricting airways. This “hyperactivity” of smooth muscle also plays a role in COPD, the researchers explained. Treatments such as asthma bronchodilators already target receptors on specific… read on > read on >

People who are early risers appear to be at greater risk of developing anorexia, a new study claims. This differs from other disorders like depression, binge eating and schizophrenia, all of which appear to be associated with folks being “night owls,” the researchers noted. “Our findings implicate anorexia nervosa as a morning disorder in contrast to most other evening-based psychiatric diseases and support the association between anorexia nervosa and insomnia as seen in earlier studies,” said senior study author Hassan Dashti, an assistant investigator in Massachusetts General Hospital’s Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine in Boston. Previous research has suggested a link between eating disorders and the internal clock of the human body, which controls sleep cycles and affects nearly every organ in the body, researchers said in background notes. For this study, the team examined genes specifically associated with anorexia, looking to see whether people with a higher genetic risk for the disorder also tended to have a specific sleep cycle. The team discovered a two-way association between genes linked to anorexia and genes associated with waking early and going to bed early. Having anorexia could lead a person to be an early bird, and an earlier wake time could mean a person is at higher risk of anorexia. An elevated genetic risk score for anorexia was also associated with a higher… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Health Care Workers Were At Highest COVID Risk in Workplace

BMI or Body Fat Percentage: Measure Both to Gauge Health

Study Shows No Sign Ozempic, Wegovy Raise Odds for Suicidal Thoughts

Better Mental Health in ’24? Try Mindfulness + Exercise

Cleaning Toxins From Your Home After a Wildfire: Experts Offer Tips

Obese Kids Could Be at Risk for Kidney Trouble Later

Nicotine Study Shows Mind’s Power When It Comes to Drugs

Migraines Could Raise Crash Risks for Older Drivers

Could Inhaling a Statin Help Ease Asthma, COPD?

Could ‘Early Birds’ Be at Higher Risk for Anorexia?