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(HealthDay News) – Millions of Americans take cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins, but a new study finds Black and Hispanic adults get the drugs less often than white people do. “This adds to the known racial and ethnic disparities already highly prevalent in heart disease,” said lead author Dr. Ambarish Pandey, an assistant professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “These findings have the potential to affect how we screen for and treat people who do not have heart disease but may have risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking,” he said in a medical center news release. Using national survey data and examining risk factors for heart disease, researchers found about 38% of white participants used statins like Lipitor (atorvastatin) and Zocor (simvastatin) compared with about 24% of Hispanic and Black participants. Statins are among the most prescribed drugs in the United States. Having health insurance and regular access to routine health care were associated with higher statin use. Rates of heart disease are higher in Black and Hispanic adults than white adults, according to past research, so race and ethnicity are considered factors in your individual risk of developing heart disease. Data for the study came from the 2013-2020 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). A subset of participant records was selected to represent the… read on > read on >

Maintaining a healthy weight may be important for reducing the risk of gastrointestinal cancer, a new study suggests. The research adds to the evidence that excess weight and weight increases in adulthood increase the risk for colon and other gastrointestinal (GI) cancers. “In a time when obesity rates are rising globally and 70% of the U.S. population alone is considered overweight or obese, understanding the association between obesity and long-term disease risk, such as cancer, is critical for improving public health,” said study lead author Holli Loomans-Kropp, a cancer control researcher and epidemiologist with the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, in Columbus. “Our study suggests that being overweight or obese during several phases of life can increase a person’s risk for gastrointestinal cancers in later adulthood,” she added in a university news release. A body mass index (BMI) that reached levels for obese or overweight in early, middle and late adulthood increased the risk of GI cancer. Frequent aspirin use did not change this increased risk in overweight and obese people. Obesity and overweight are linked to at least 13 types of cancer, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute. For the new study, researchers evaluated previously collected data from more than 131,000 patients enrolled in the multicenter Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial between 1993 and 2001. Participants were aged 55… read on > read on >

Severely obese people may need more frequent COVID-19 booster shots to keep their immunity going, new research suggests. Protection from the shots declines more rapidly in those who are severely obese compared to those at a normal weight, according to scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. “Because of the high prevalence of obesity across the globe, this poses a major challenge for health services,” study co-author Sadaf Farooqi said in a Cambridge news release. She is from the Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science at Cambridge. Past research has shown that COVID vaccination has been highly effective at reducing symptoms, hospitalization and death, including for people with obesity. Yet antibody levels may be lower in vaccinated obese people, potentially putting them at higher risk of severe disease and death, the researchers noted. To study this, a team from the University of Edinburgh, led by Aziz Sheikh, assessed data tracking the health of 3.5 million Scottish people as part of the EAVE II study. Specifically, they looked at hospitalization and death from COVID-19 in adults who received two doses of either the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine or the AstraZeneca vaccine. (The AstraZeneca vaccine is not offered in the United States.) Those with a body mass index (BMI) greater than 40 — considered extreme obesity — had a 76% higher risk of severe… read on > read on >

Months before U.S. health officials warned that tainted eye drops were causing vision loss and even death, a Cleveland woman lost the sight in her eye in a case that puzzled her doctors. The 72-year-old went to an outpatient eye clinic last November complaining of blurry vision. She was sent to a hospital emergency department from there. Ophthalmologists evaluated her eye, cultured the infection and sent the woman home with a combination of strong antibiotic eye drops. But the next day her eye was worse, and she saw yellow discharge on her pillow. This time she saw a cornea specialist, and eventually she was referred to microbiologists and infectious disease experts. “We wondered if she’d accidentally touched something, or there was some freak accident,” said lead study author Dr. Morgan Morelli, an infectious disease fellow at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. “It required a lot of thinking and digging to figure out what was going on,” Morelli said. “And we never thought it was related to a global manufacturing issue,” she added in a news release from the American Society for Microbiology. But that was the cause — tainted EzriCare Artificial Tears. Eye infections linked to the contaminated artificial tears have caused devastating infections for U.S. patients, leading to a warning by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in February. By March, the… read on > read on >

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday finalized the elimination of certain restrictions that prevented healthy gay and bisexual men from donating blood. Instead of requiring men who have sex with men or the women who have sex with them to abstain for sexual contact for three months, the FDA has created an individual risk assessment for all donors. These questions are meant to reduce the risk of transfusion-transmitted HIV. “The FDA has worked diligently to evaluate our policies and ensure we had the scientific evidence to support individual risk assessment for donor eligibility while maintaining appropriate safeguards to protect recipients of blood products. The implementation of these recommendations will represent a significant milestone for the agency and the LGBTQI+ community,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in an agency news release. “The FDA is committed to working closely with the blood collection industry to help ensure timely implementation of the new recommendations, and we will continue to monitor the safety of the blood supply once this individual risk-based approach is in place,” Marks added. These policies are in alignment with what already happens in some other countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada, according to the FDA. LGBTQ advocates said the decision was much needed. “The FDA’s decision to follow science and issue new recommendations… read on > read on >

The first U.S. cases of drug-resistant ringworm infection have been reported in New York City. The cases of two women with highly contagious skin infections caused by Trichophyton indotineae are reported in the May 12 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report . The fungus causes widespread, very itchy, and very hard-to-treat tinea infections. (Tinea is also known as ringworm, which can be misleading since no actual worm is involved.) “These are the first reported cases in the United States, but the infection is now spanning the globe,” said researcher Dr. Avrom Caplan, a dermatologist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. It has been spreading widely in India over the last decade and was termed “indotineae” in a report of two 2020 cases, he noted. “The name should not imply that it is only in India,” Caplan said. “We may see more of this infection over time.” The infection can be transmitted by direct contact; by contact with particles of dead skin, nails and hair shed by the host, usually animals and pets; or by contact with fungal spores. The infection is easily spread from person to person. Caplan said doctors should be aware of this infection and that topical antifungal creams aren’t going to be enough to treat it. “We also know that… read on > read on >

An asthma attack can literally leave you gasping for breath, so having treatments that relax your airways is critical. Asthma strikes nearly 8% of Americans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, so if you have asthma, you are not alone. A chronic condition, asthma occurs when the airways become inflamed and narrow, which hinders airflow. “The prevention of asthma as a condition is quite difficult. What you can prevent is the frequency and severity of attacks by the use of regular treatment,” Dr. John Costello, a pulmonologist at Mayo Clinic Healthcare in London, said in a recent article. Here, experts discuss the most common asthma treatments that physicians use when creating an individualized treatment plan. Non-medication treatments for asthma Your physician will work with you to develop an individualized treatment plan. It is important to follow this plan diligently and check in with your physician regularly. Avoid triggers: Because asthma is triggered by many things in the environment, one of the most important treatments for asthma does not involve medication, but rather awareness of what those triggers are. It is important for you to keep a journal in which you record when you have an attack and what triggered it. By noticing what your individual triggers are, you are more prepared to avoid them in the future. According to the Allergy… read on > read on >

A medication to treat agitation in Alzheimer’s patients now has approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA gave supplemental approval to Otsuka Pharmaceutical Company Ltd., and Lundbeck Inc. for Rexulti (brexpiprazole) oral tablets on Thursday. Rexulti is the first FDA-approved treatment for these symptoms. “Agitation is one of the most common and challenging aspects of care among patients with dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease. ‘Agitation’ can include symptoms ranging from pacing or restlessness to verbal and physical aggression,” said Dr. Tiffany Farchione, director of the division of psychiatry in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “These symptoms are leading causes of assisted living or nursing home placement and have been associated with accelerated disease progression,” she added in an agency news release. The approval followed two 12-week studies. Participants were between 51 and 90 years of age, and had a probable diagnosis of Alzheimer’s dementia, along with the type, frequency and severity of agitation behaviors that require medication. Patients in the first study received either 1 or 2 milligrams (mg) of Rexulti. In the second study, they received 2 or 3 mg of Rexulti. Over the 12 weeks, researchers looked for a change from baseline in a patient’s Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Inventory (CMAI) score. The inventory is a tool that uses caregivers’ input to rate the frequency of agitation on a… read on > read on >

There’s a glimmer of good news when it comes to the mental health of America’s adolescents: Visits to U.S. emergency departments for psychiatric troubles declined among kids aged 12 to 17 by the fall of 2022, compared to a year prior. Overall, mean weekly adolescent emergency department (ED) visits for mental health conditions fell by 11% last fall, compared to higher levels in the fall of 2021, when the pandemic was still keeping many kids out of school and in lockdown at home. According to data compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, similar year-on-year declines were also seen for adolescent ED visits linked to thoughts of suicide (down 12%) and drug overdoses (down 10%). Why the improvement in teens’ mental health? “Many adolescents have returned to prepandemic-like school and community environments, which might have improved social engagement, reduced isolation and supported mental and behavioral health,” wrote a team led by CDC investigator Kayla Anderson. The researchers also believe that “familial stressors” might also have ebbed as kids were released from lockdowns and remote schooling. The report wasn’t all good news, however. Boys seem to be benefiting more than girls, the researchers noted, and ED visits for mental health conditions “remain similar to or higher than already concerningly high prepandemic baselines among females into 2022,” the team reported. There was also one… read on > read on >

Fighting is par for the course in professional ice hockey, but a new study raises the question of whether it is shortening some players’ lives. The study, of hundreds of National Hockey League (NHL) players, found that those who were “enforcers” on the ice — that is, did a lot of fighting — tend to die at a younger age and from different causes than their peers. Of 45 players who died during the study period, enforcers were about 10 years younger at their deaths compared to other players. And the causes were disproportionately from suicide, drug overdose, car accidents, or, in two cases, degenerative brain disease. Experts stressed that the findings do not prove that frequent fights on the ice played any role in those players’ deaths. Release of the study comes midway through the second-round of the NHL’s Stanley Cup championship playoffs. The study used fights and time in the penalty box as proxies for players’ exposure to repetitive head impacts. There was no way to tell whether those who died had any brain injury. And even if they did, the researchers said, it would not be possible to draw a straight line between the injury and the cause of death. “This study is just showing associations, not cause and effect,” said lead researcher Dr. Charles Popkin, an orthopedic sports medicine specialist at… read on > read on >

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Whether or Not You Get Heart-Healthy Statins May Depend on Race

More Evidence That Obesity Raises Odds for Gastrointestinal Cancers

Severe Obesity Could Mean Faster Decline of Immunity From COVID Shot

Cleveland Case Suggests Tainted Eye Drops Were Harming Vision Months Before CDC Alert

FDA Eases Rules on Gay Men Donating Blood

Cases of Drug-Resistant Fungal Ringworm Spotted in New York City

Asthma Treatments: How to Get Relief

FDA Approves First Drug Meant to Ease Alzheimer’s-Linked Agitation

ER Visits by Teens in Mental Health Crisis Have Declined: CDC

For NHL Players, More Fighting on the Ice Is Linked to Shorter Lives