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 >

In a finding that should encourage scientists who are racing to develop coronavirus vaccines, a new study out of Iceland suggests that immunity to the disease may not be as fleeting as first thought. Among 30,000 Icelandic residents who were tested for antibodies to COVID-19, researchers discovered the antibodies stayed in people’s systems for at least four months, the study found. Of those who tested positive for the coronavirus, 487 had received multiple antibody tests. In the first two months after a patient was diagnosed, the antibodies that can confer immunity rose significantly. For the next two months, antibody levels remained stable, according to the study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. In a commentary that accompanied the study, scientists from Harvard University and the U.S. National Institutes of Health noted that while the Icelandic research focused on a largely homogeneous population, “this study provides hope that host immunity to this unpredictable and highly contagious virus may not be fleeting and may be similar to that elicited by most other viral infections.” Earlier research on coronavirus antibodies had indicated that immunity might be short-lived, leaving people vulnerable to reinfection. But the Icelandic study offers hope that a vaccine that triggers a strong immune response will have a longer-lasting effect than some had believed. Interestingly, the Icelandic researchers also found that women, nonsmokers…  read on >