TUESDAY, Sept. 8, 2020 (Healthday News) — In a sobering illustration of the toll the coronavirus pandemic took this summer, tallies now show the number of Americans who have died of COVID-19 jumped from just under 100,000 to over 186,000 between Memorial Day and Labor Day, while cases more than quadrupled, to over 6.2 million. As troubling as those statistics are, public health experts warn the fall and winter could be even worse, the Washington Post reported. A cold-weather surge of COVID-19 cases could trigger a much-feared “second wave” of infections and deaths that begins well before Election Day in November, though scientists believe the crest of cases would come weeks later, the Post reported “My feeling is that there is a wave coming, and it’s not so much whether it’s coming but how big is it going to be,” Eili Klein, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, told the newspaper. Still, national numbers have been slowly dropping following surges that showed up in the Sun Belt in early summer, the Post reported. A model produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) predicts a daily death toll of 1,907 on Election Day, roughly double the current number. Under the IHME forecast, the numbers would continue to rise until early December, peaking at more than…  read on >

About 1 in 9 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, but experts say early detection can be a lifesaver. “Prostate cancer that is detected early, typically while it is still within the prostate gland, has a better chance of being successfully treated,” explained Dr. Alexander Kutikov, chief of the Division of Urologic Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “Some types of prostate cancer are aggressive. However, most cancers are quite slow-growing, and a significant portion can be monitored without aggressive treatment,” he said in a Fox Chase news release. Men aged 55-69 should consider prostate cancer screening, the American Urological Association says. “Much debate has centered around screening for prostate cancer. Given the risks and benefits of screening, not every man should be screened for prostate cancer,” Kutikov said. “Men should talk to their health care provider about their risk factors, options and preferences. Together, they can make a decision.” In the early stages, prostate cancer usually causes no symptoms. More advanced prostate cancer may cause: difficulty urinating, including a slow or weak urinary stream or the need to urinate more often, especially at night; blood in urine or semen; pain or burning during urination; discomfort in the pelvic area; bone pain, or trouble getting an erection. “Many of these symptoms can be caused by something other than prostate cancer. However, you…  read on >

New research may have people with asthma breathing a little easier: Doctors found the airway disease doesn’t raise the risk of being hospitalized due to COVID-19. The researchers also noted that people with asthma weren’t more likely than people without it to need a ventilator to help them breathe. “A lot of people with asthma think they have a predisposition to severe COVID, and they worry a lot about going out. They should take precautions like using their masks, but they may not need to worry so much,” said study author Dr. Fernando Holguin. He’s director of the Asthma Clinical and Research Program at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, in Aurora. Holguin said the proportion of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with asthma was around 6%. “For most places, that’s an asthma prevalence that is at or lower than the asthma prevalence in the general population. To compare, with influenza [flu], we typically see about a quarter of those in the hospital have asthma,” he said. When the pandemic first began, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that people with asthma had a higher risk of hospitalization and other severe outcomes. People with asthma do have a significantly higher risk of complications with flu, another viral infection. In the new study, the researchers reviewed 15 studies on COVID-19 infections to see how…  read on >

FRIDAY, Sept. 4, 2020 (Healthday News) — The chief adviser for the White House vaccine program said Thursday it was “extremely unlikely, but not impossible” that a vaccine could be available by the end of October. Speaking with National Public Radio, Dr. Moncef Slaoui said that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance to states to prepare for a vaccine as early as late October was “the right thing to do” in case a vaccine was ready by that time. “It would be irresponsible not to be ready if that was the case,” Slaoui said, adding that he first heard about the new CDC guidance from media reports, the Washington Post said. Still, Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser for Operation Warp Speed, described getting a vaccine by late October as a “very, very low chance.” That message ran counter to optimistic claims from the White House that a vaccine could be ready for distribution before the November presidential election. During the National Republican Convention, President Trump announced that a vaccine could be ready “before the end of the year or maybe even sooner.” Slaoui did confirm that the two main vaccine candidates, referred to as Vaccine A and Vaccine B by the CDC, were being developed by Pfizer and Moderna, respectively. He said there was “no intent” to introduce a vaccine before clinical…  read on >

In the midst of the ‘Me Too’ movement, a new study finds that people sexually harassed at work may be at increased risk for attempted suicide and suicide. The findings out of Sweden show that workplace sexual harassment may “represent an important risk factor for suicidal behavior,” said study author Linda Magnusson Hanson, an associate professor in the psychology department at Stockholm University, and colleagues. The research included more than 85,000 male and female workers in Sweden who completed a questionnaire between 1995 and 2013. It asked if they’d been sexually harassed at work in the past 12 months by either fellow workers, superiors or by what they termed “others,” such as clients, passengers, students or patients. Overall, nearly 5% of the workers reported workplace sexual harassment: about 2% of men and 7.5% of women. Those who said they were sexually harassed were more likely to be younger, single, divorced, in low-paid but high-strain jobs, and born outside of Europe. The workers were then followed for an average of up to 13 years. During that time, 125 died by suicide and 816 made a suicide attempt. While the study was only observational and did not prove a cause-and-effect link, workplace sexual harassment was associated with a nearly threefold increased risk of suicide and almost doubled increased risk of attempted suicide, the researchers found. The increased…  read on >

THURSDAY, Sept. 3, 2020 (Healthday News) — Colleges across America struggled to control coronavirus outbreaks on campus, even as Dr. Anthony Fauci warned on Wednesday that sending students home after an outbreak is “the worst thing you could do.” Universities continue to be hit with alarming infection rates, and many have already switched to online learning, the Washington Post reported. In some instances, students have been told to move out of their dorms and return home, the newspaper said. But Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, told NBC’s “Today” show that it was important to ensure that infected students are placed in isolation, “but don’t have them go home, because they could be spreading it in their home state.” Along with shutting down in-person instruction, many universities are cracking down on student activities that fuel the spread of COVID-19, the Post reported. At the University of Illinois, where more than 700 students have tested positive in less than two weeks, administrators instituted a ban on “gathering in small or large groups under any circumstances.” In what is the equivalent of stay-at-home orders, students will not be allowed to leave their dorm rooms for anything besides essential activities — attending class, buying groceries, solo outdoor exercise, religious services and medical visits. The college also plans to aggressively crack down on parties, the Post reported. “We…  read on >

Men: A bulging belly may be bad for more than your heart. A new study suggests it might also up your risk of dying from prostate cancer. Researchers analyzed data from more than 218,000 men in Britain who were free of cancer when they enrolled in the U.K. BioBank study between 2006 and 2010. Over almost 11 years of follow-up, nearly 600 of the men died of prostate cancer. There was no clear association between risk of prostate cancer death and body mass index (BMI — an estimate of body fat based on weight and height) or total body fat percentage. However, there was a link between high levels of fat around the belly and waist (central adiposity) and prostate cancer death risk, according to the study being presented this week at the virtual European and International Conference on Obesity. Men in the top 25% for waist circumference were 35% more likely to die of prostate cancer than men in the bottom 25%, while those in the top 25% for waist-to-hip ratio were 34% more likely to die than men in the bottom 25%. “We found a significant association between concentration of body fat around the belly and waist and the risk of prostate cancer death, but no clear association between total body fat and risk of prostate cancer death,” said study author Aurora Pérez-Cornago,…  read on >