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People with peanut allergies have to be vigilant about avoiding the food and always be armed with emergency treatment. Now scientists say they’ve taken an early step toward a drug that could prevent severe reactions to peanuts in the first place. The compound has only been tested in lab mice, and no such drug will be available for people anytime soon, experts stressed. But in early experiments, researchers found that the drug protected lab mice from severe allergic reactions to peanuts for more than two weeks. However, animal findings do not always pan out in humans. The vision is to have a self-injected medication that people with peanut allergy can take every couple weeks, or maybe once a month, according to researcher Mark Kaplan, chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Indiana University School of Medicine. It would not be a “cure” for the condition. But it could give people an additional layer of protection should they accidentally ingest peanuts. “Accidental exposure is always a real risk,” Kaplan explained. That’s because peanuts are harder to avoid than many people realize, he noted. They are often used as ingredients in processed or prepared foods, and cross-contamination is also possible — when the same equipment that has touched peanuts is used for other foods, too. Even though parents and adults with peanut allergy studiously read… read on > read on >

Canned tuna is known to contain low levels of mercury, but a new Consumer Reports investigation has found spikes of the neurotoxin in some cans. The organization tested five popular tuna brands, CBS News reported. While the mercury levels were all within U.S. Food and Drug Administration standards, Consumer Reports urged pregnant women to “avoid canned tuna altogether.” FDA guidelines say pregnant women can eat canned tuna in limited quantities. “While canned tuna, especially light varieties, has relatively low average levels of mercury, individual cans can sometimes have much higher levels,” Consumer Reports said. “From can to can, mercury levels can spike in unpredictable ways that might jeopardize the health of a fetus,” said James Rogers, director of food safety research and testing at the independent nonprofit. Mercury can affect neurodevelopment, said CBS News medical contributor Dr. David Agus. The effects may include impaired brain function and developmental delays in children. If a fetus is exposed to high levels of mercury, it may lead to thinking and memory issues later on, he said. “Young children and pregnant women especially need to keep mercury away from those neurons that are developing,” Agus told CBS News. Consumer Reports tested 10 tuna products from five brands: Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea, Safe Catch, StarKist and Wild Planet. The tests included about 30 samples of both albacore and… read on > read on >

Email has become an easy and essential form of communication between patients and physicians — so much so that doctors are deluged daily with messages from patients. Now, some hospitals and health systems have started charging for doctors’ responses to those messages, depending on the amount of work needed to respond. Only a handful of health systems have started billing for these, and those that do say only a tiny percentage of doctor messages cost anything. But advocates say they’re concerned these charges will wind up limiting an option meant to expand patient access to health care. “We already know that even a small dollar amount of cost-sharing results in patients utilizing service less,” said Caitlin Donovan, senior director of the Patient Advocate Foundation. “I worry about anything that’s going to stop patients from contacting and communicating with their providers.” A new study suggests Donovan’s concerns are well-founded. Patient e-messages to University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) doctors slightly declined immediately after UCSF Health started charging for some responses, according to research published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “We started putting this language on our website, on our patient portal that said, as an FYI, there’s a potential that if your message meets the requirements to the clinical question, it may be billed,” said lead researcher A. Jay Holmgren, an assistant… read on > read on >

The key to living longer could be eating less. In a new study published in the journal Nature Aging, researchers found that a calorie-restricted diet had substantial health benefits, including delayed aging. “The main take-home of our study is that it is possible to slow the pace of biological aging and that it may be possible to achieve that slowing through modification of lifestyle and behavior,” senior study author Dr. Dan Belsky, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, told NBC News. The phase 2 clinical trial included 220 adults who either made a 25% calorie cut to their diet or no changes at all. The body mass index (BMI) for participants ranged from 22 to 27 (a BMI of 30 is the threshold for obesity). In the first month, those in the calorie-restricted group were given three prepared meals each day so they would be familiar with portion sizes. They were counseled about their diet for the first 24 weeks of the two-year study. The other group had no counseling or restrictions. Despite the plan to cut about 500 calories in a 2,000-calorie daily diet, most cut only half that, said Dr. Evan Hadley, director of the geriatrics and clinical gerontology division at the National Institute of Aging (NIA), which funded the study. “But… read on > read on >

Healthy young people who vape or smoke may be putting themselves at greater risk for developing severe COVID, new research finds. Both smoking tobacco and vaping electronic cigarettes may predispose people to increased inflammation, future development of severe COVID-19 and lingering cardiovascular complications, said lead study author Dr. Theodoros Kelesidis. He’s an associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, in Los Angeles. “The key message is that smoking is the worst, but vaping is not innocent,” Kelesidis said in a UCLA news release. “This has been shown for many lung diseases, but not for COVID. It was a quite interesting and novel finding that vaping changed the levels of key proteins that the virus uses to replicate.” For the study, the researchers examined blood plasma collected before the pandemic from 45 nonsmokers, 30 vapers and 29 cigarette smokers. The investigators tested the plasma to measure levels of since-identified proteins that the COVID virus needs in order to replicate. These proteins are known as ACE2, furin, Ang II, Ang 1–7, IL-6R, sCD163 and L-selectin. A protein called ADAM17 collectively regulates those last three proteins. The researchers found that plasma from healthy young people who smoke tobacco or vape had increased levels of furin, sCD163, and L-selectin, compared to nonsmokers. The findings suggest there may be increased… read on > read on >

Using a “neuroprotectant” drug alongside the standard surgical removal of a clot may slash the risk of death and disability following a stroke, a new study finds. The new medication, called ApTOLL, shields brain tissue from continuing damage by cooling down inflammation, the researchers said. A stroke occurs when blood supply to part of the brain is blocked by a clot or when a blood vessel in the brain bursts. Ischemic strokes, which are far more common, occur when a blood clot cuts off blood supply to the brain. Still, more research is needed before ApTOLL is ready for prime time. “We need confirmatory studies in larger populations, and we are aiming to start those in the last quarter of 2023,” said study author Dr. Marc Ribó, an interventional neurologist at Hospital Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona, Spain. “If everything goes well and we replicate these findings in larger studies, the drug may be available in a couple of years.” For the study, more than 150 people who had an ischemic stroke (average age, 70) were treated in 15 hospitals in France and Spain between July 2021 and April 2022. Patients received either 0.05 mg/kg of ApTOLL, 0.2 mg/kg of ApTOLL, or a placebo medication. Everyone in the study also underwent mechanical blood clot removal to restore blood flow to their brain within six hours of… read on > read on >

For the first time, COVID-19 vaccines have been added to the list of routine immunizations recommended for adults — a further sign the virus is here to stay. The addition is being made to the 2023 Recommended Adult Immunization Schedule, released Thursday by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP), an expert panel that advises the U.S. federal government on vaccination recommendations for all Americans. COVID vaccination has, of course, been recommended ever since the vaccines became available. But its inclusion on the recommended vaccine schedule underscores the fact that COVID-19 is not going away, said Dr. Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, an Atlanta-based physician who serves as an ACIP liaison. “This reiterates that COVID has gone from pandemic to endemic,” Fryhofer said. “For now, it looks like it’s here to stay.” “Endemic” means that a disease is spreading at a more stable frequency, versus the exponential growth seen during a pandemic. At this point, most Americans have received the primary series of vaccines against COVID. However, few have gotten the updated “bivalent” boosters that target both the original strain of the virus that causes COVID and two Omicron subvariants. It has been available since September, but only about 16% of Americans have gotten it, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That rate is higher among people age 65 and older, who are… read on > read on >

A new treatment for chronic constipation may bring relief without having to use drugs. It’s a vibrating pill called Vibrant that stimulates the colon as it passes through the body. Although the pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last August, doctors can start prescribing Vibrant this week. “We are working right now with insurance companies to obtain coverage in commercial plans,” Cathy Collis, chief commercial officer for Vibrant Gastro Inc., told CNN. “But until we get that coverage, our goal and commitment is to make sure that this is accessible and affordable to patients.” The company had to show the pills contained no toxic materials, could withstand an accidental bite and didn’t carry risk of infections, getting stuck, irritating tissues or interfering with other medical devices, CNN reported. A person prescribed the pill would take it at bedtime daily. The pill would then travel through the stomach and small intestine before reaching the large intestine about 14 hours later and stimulating nerve cells. In doing this, it causes muscle contractions that move food out. The pill then leaves the body with the feces. The pills are made of medical-grade material similar to what gastroenterologists use for pill cameras, CNN reported. Vibrant is intended for the 10% to 20% of people who live with chronic constipation, having fewer than three bowel movements… read on > read on >

Many football fans fondly remember Rick Arrington as the Philadelphia Eagles’ quarterback from 1970 to 1973, but his daughter’s memories are tainted by years spent watching her dad suffer from late-stage chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). A degenerative brain disease found in athletes, military veterans and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma, CTE causes depression, suicidal thoughts, aggression and mood swings. Eventually, folks have problems with thinking and memory, and may ultimately develop dementia. Repeated blows to the head — even if they don’t cause concussions — are considered the main risk factor for CTE. Speaking about her father’s illness for the first time at a recent benefit for the Concussion Legacy Foundation, sportscaster Jill Arrington said she no longer enjoys watching football. “When I see players’ heads collide on the field, I see my dad’s face begging me through tears to end his misery. I see the strongest man I have ever known struggle to sleep for months on end … and unable to make a simple cellphone call,” she told the crowd. Though he had no history of concussions, Arrington said her dad suffered with CTE for more than 35 years. “His life was cut short by the sport he loved,” she lamented. Researchers at the Boston University CTE Center recently announced that they have now diagnosed CTE in the brains of… read on > read on >

Chemicals found in plastic personal care products, kids’ toys, and food and drink packaging could be raising the risk of type 2 diabetes among women, new research suggests. To study the impact of these chemicals, known as phthalates, researchers followed just over 1,300 U.S. women for six years to see if exposure contributed to the incidence of diabetes. About 5% of the women developed diabetes during the study period. The researchers found that white women exposed to high levels of some phthalates had a 30% to 63% higher chance of developing diabetes. The harmful chemicals were not linked to diabetes risk in Black or Asian women. Exposure to these endocrine-disrupting chemicals has previously been associated with reduced fertility and other endocrine disorders. “Our research found phthalates may contribute to a higher incidence of diabetes in women, especially white women, over a six-year period,” said Sung Kyun Park, an associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, in Ann Arbor. “People are exposed to phthalates daily, increasing their risk of several metabolic diseases. It’s important that we address [endocrine-disrupting chemicals] now as they are harmful to human health,” Park said in a news release from the Endocrine Society. The study, which was published online Feb. 8 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, received funding from… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Mouse Study Hints at New Treatment for Peanut Allergy

Consumer Reports Warns of Mercury in Canned Tuna

Emailing Your Doctor Could Soon Cost You

Cutting Calories May Slow Aging in Healthy Adults

Vaping Could Raise Teens’ Odds for Severe COVID

‘Neuroprotectant’ Drug Could Boost Outcomes After a Stroke

In a First, COVID Vaccine Is Added to Adult Immunization Schedule

Could a Vibrating Pill Ease Chronic Constipation?

In Autopsy Study, Over 90% of Former NFL Players Showed Signs of Brain Disease CTE

Common Plastics Chemical Tied to Higher Diabetes Risk in Women