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When it comes to the array of different microorganisms found in the human gut, more is better: A more diverse microbiome is a healthier microbiome. Now, initial results of a small, ongoing study suggests that weight loss through either intermittent fasting or a calorie-restricted diet can improve that diversity. After tracking calorie-control dieters and intermittent fasters for three months, both had significantly improved microbiome diversity, said study author Maggie Stanislawski, an assistant professor of biomedical informatics at the University of Colorado. “The increase wasn’t greater in one group or the other,” she said. Each individual has a unique population of microorganisms including bacteria, fungi and viruses, in his or her gut. “These microorganisms are important to our health because they help to digest our food,” Stanislawski said. In fact, “many foods that you eat you cannot digest without the help of those microorganisms,” she stressed. Such organisms also help turn food into critical substances such as metabolites, which play important roles in many processes, from controlling inflammation to ensuring “how full you feel after a meal,” Stanislawski said. And the greater the variety of microorganisms colonizing the gut, the more effectively such functions are carried out. To see what impact different dietary approaches might have on the microbiome, researchers studied 47 healthy adults ranging in age from 18 to 55 who were either overweight or… read on > read on >

If you’ve had a heart attack, your doctor likely told you to take a low-dose aspirin daily to stave off a second heart attack or stroke, but most people don’t follow through with this advice over the long-term. Those folks who don’t take daily low-dose aspirin consistently are more likely to have another heart attack, stroke or die compared with their counterparts who consistently take aspirin, a new study shows. Aspirin keeps platelets from clumping together, which can help prevent or reduce the blood clots that can cause heart attacks and strokes. ”Most people should be on lifelong aspirin after a heart attack,” said Dr. Deepak Bhatt, director of Mount Sinai Heart and professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City. “Long-term adherence to medication is a problem worldwide, including in the USA, and this is true even for inexpensive drugs such as aspirin, which can be life saving in heart attack patients,” said Bhatt, who had no role in the research. The study was led by Dr. Anna Meta Kristensen of Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital in Frederiksberg, Denmark. The researchers followed more than 40,100 people aged 40 or older who had a first-time heart attack from 2004 through 2017. The study team checked up on aspirin use two, four, six, and eight years after their heart attacks to… read on > read on >

The degenerative joint disease osteoarthritis affects 15% of the global population over age 30, so by 2050 that could be nearly 1 billion people, researchers say. Living longer and obesity are both major contributors. “With the key drivers of people living longer and a growing world population, we need to anticipate stress on health systems in most countries,” said study author Jaimie Steinmetz, lead research scientist at Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle. “There is no effective cure for osteoarthritis right now, so it’s critical that we focus on strategies of prevention, early intervention, and making expensive, effective treatments like joint replacements more affordable in low- and middle-income countries,” she said in an institute news release. The research was part of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021, and used 30 years of osteoarthritis data, from 1990 to 2020, in more than 200 countries. The study found that cases increased rapidly over the past three decades because of aging, population growth and obesity. While around 256 million people had osteoarthritis in 1990, that number jumped to 595 million people in 2020, a 132% increase. The study found that obesity was responsible for about 20% of the disability of osteoarthritis in 2020. For people aged 70 and older, osteoarthritis ranked seventh in causes for years lived with disability. The condition is expected to… read on > read on >

Too much screen time can lead to developmental delays in babies, researchers say. When 1-year-olds viewed screens for more than four hours a day, they had delays in communication and problem-solving skills when assessed at ages 2 and 4, according to a new study published Aug. 21 in JAMA Pediatrics. They also had delays in fine motor and social skills at age 2, though that gap was gone by age 4, researchers. It may not be the screens, but what they replace, a Yale expert said. Face-to-face interaction between a parent and child gives babies information about language and meaning through facial expressions, words, tone of voice and physical feedback, said David Lewkowicz, a developmental psychologist at the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, Conn. “It doesn’t happen when you’re watching the screen,” Lewkowicz told the New York Times. For the study, Japanese researchers led by Ippei Takahashi of Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, asked nearly 7,100 parents of young children to answer questions about development and screen time. More screen time meant greater likelihood of seeing delays. About 4% of the babies in the study had four or more hours of daily screen time, while 18% had two to four. Most had less than two hours. Mothers of babies with high levels of screen time were more likely to be younger, first-time moms,… read on > read on >

People can help reduce their odds of developing atrial fibrillation or stroke through one piece of standard medical advice: stay fit. According to a new study in 15,000 people, physical fitness was found to have a lower likelihood of these conditions. The findings will be presented this weekend at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2023, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. “This was a large study with an objective measurement of fitness and more than 11 years of follow-up. The findings indicate that keeping fit may help prevent atrial fibrillation and stroke,” study author Dr. Shih-Hsien Sung, of the National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taipei, Taiwan, said in a meeting news release. Research participants did not have atrial fibrillation, or a-fib, an irregular and often rapid heart rhythm, at the study start and were referred for a treadmill test between 2003 and 2012. Researchers assessed their fitness using the Bruce protocol, where each person was asked to walk faster and at a steeper grade in successive three-minute stages. Then the team calculated participants’ fitness according to the rate of energy expenditure the participants achieved, which was expressed in metabolic equivalents (METs). The study followed the participants, who started at an average age of 55, and of whom 59% were male, looking for new-onset a-fib, stroke, myocardial infarction and death. After adjusting for other potentially… read on > read on >

British researchers may have found a way to diagnose Parkinson’s disease several years sooner. Researchers at University College London and Moorfields Eye Hospital say that eye scans may be able to detect signs of Parkinson’s up to seven years before diagnosis. “I continue to be amazed by what we can discover through eye scans. While we are not yet ready to predict whether an individual will develop Parkinson’s, we hope that this method could soon become a pre-screening tool for people at risk of disease,” said lead author Dr. Siegfried Wagner, of the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and Moorfields Eye Hospital. “Finding signs of a number of diseases before symptoms emerge means that, in the future, people could have the time to make lifestyle changes to prevent some conditions arising, and clinicians could delay the onset and impact of life-changing neurodegenerative disorders,” Wagner said in a university news release. Artificial intelligence (AI) was used in the analysis of the AlzEye dataset and the wider U.K. Biobank. AlzEye is believed to be the world’s largest single-institution retinal imaging information database. Even though Parkinson’s has a relatively low prevalence in the population — about 0.1% to 0.2% — these data sets helped identify these subtle markers. Eye scan data — a field called “oculomics” — have previously revealed signs of other neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis… read on > read on >

COVID-19 patients face a markedly greater risk for developing persistently high blood pressure, even if they never had blood pressure concerns before, new research indicates. The rise in risk seen among otherwise heart-healthy patients also appeared to be notably greater among COVID patients than in influenza patients. The findings, said senior study author Tim Duong, are the “first to my knowledge.” Duong is a vice chair of research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. He stressed that the increased risk seen among COVID patients is not limited to those with severe illness. At an average six months after initial infection, just over a fifth of patients who had been hospitalized with COVID developed high blood pressure, despite no prior blood pressure problems, the study found. That figure fell to just below 11% among COVID patients who were never hospitalized, Duong said. The findings were published Aug. 21 in the journal Hypertension. A prior history of high blood pressure does tend to boost the risk of more serious COVID symptoms and hospitalization. The new study focused on patients with no prior heart or vascular complications. Researchers reviewed the medical records of more than 45,000 COVID patients. Of those, roughly 28,500 had no history of high blood pressure. All were initially infected with COVID between March 2020 and… read on > read on >

When U.S. parents express their concerns about their school-aged children, social media use and the internet are at the top of the list. Mental health issues are another top worry, according to the University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health. “Parents still view problems directly impacting physical health, including unhealthy eating and obesity, as important children’s health issues, said pediatrician Dr. Susan Woolford, co-director of the poll. “But these have been overtaken by concerns about mental health, social media and screen time,” Woolford said in a Michigan Medicine news release. Two-thirds of parents surveyed reported that they are worried about children’s increased time on devices, including overall screen time and use of social media. Those were the No.1 and No.2 concerns on the list this year. “Children are using digital devices and social media at younger ages, and parents may struggle with how to appropriately monitor use to prevent negative impacts on safety, self-esteem, social connections and habits that may interfere with sleep and other areas of health,” Woolford said. Screen time became a growing concern for parents during the pandemic, previous reports have suggested. Woolford encourages parents to regularly evaluate their kids’ use of technology. Certain social media and device settings can also help protect kids. Mental and emotional health were among the other top concerns. The majority… read on > read on >

Walkable neighborhoods — with sidewalks, parks and paths — encourage pregnant women to get more exercise, which leads to good outcomes for both mom and baby. New research looks at the influence of these walkable communities on this activity, which is considered safe for pregnant women. “Gestational diabetes is a growing issue and low birth weight and preterm babies are always a concern, they can just have so many more complications,” said Karen Conway, a professor at University of New Hampshire Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics. “At the end of the day, the data shows walkable communities mean mom and the baby are both in better health.” To study this, Conway and co-author Andrea Menclova, associate professor of economics at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, combined walkability measures created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with federal government data on physical activity and pregnancy outcomes. A 10-point increase in the walkability index — the equivalent of transitioning from the “least walkable” to the “most walkable” category — was associated with a more than 70-minute increase in weekly exercise among pregnant women. That same change increased the likelihood of a full-term birth by almost a full percentage point. It also led to a 27-gram (nearly 1 ounce) increase in birth weight; a 27% reduction in likelihood of gestational diabetes, and… read on > read on >

People may assume that a COVID-19 infection protects them the next time they encounter the virus, but that’s not necessarily true. A new study of 750 vaccinated seniors living in retirement homes and long-term care facilities found that those infected during the first omicron wave were actually more vulnerable to reinfection with a later wave. “This research highlights the need for continued vigilance and underscores the importance of ongoing preventive measures against COVID-19,” said study co-author Dawn Bowdish, an immunologist and associate professor of medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. “We must remain cautious and proactive in our approach to protecting public health,” she said in a university news release. Bowdish and her colleagues said the findings underscore the need to consider COVID vaccine boosters this fall. This should serve as a warning that there are still unknowns about how previous infections will affect susceptibility to the variants now in circulation, said co-author Andrew Costa, an epidemiologist and associate professor in McMaster’s Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact. “These findings strongly suggest broader research is required to understand whether the wider population shares the same susceptibility as the seniors our group studied,” Costa said in the release. “Until we know more, we think it’s smart for everyone to protect themselves.” Bowdish said long-term care residents are easier to study because COVID-19 infections… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Low-Cal vs. Fasting Diets: How Does Each Affect the Microbiome?

Skipping Aspirin After Heart Attack Raises Odds for Recurrence

1 Billion People Worldwide Will Suffer From Arthritis by 2050

More Screen Time for Babies Could Slow Development

Stay Fit to Avoid A-Fib and Stroke

Eye Scans Could Spot Parkinson’s in Earliest Stages

COVID May Help Trigger High Blood Pressure

Social Media Is Parents’ Top Concern as Kids Head Back to School: Poll

Great Step for Baby: Walkable Neighborhoods Linked to Safer Pregnancies

Does Prior Omicron Infection Shield Against Future Infection? Maybe Not