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From defective child car seats to deadly virus outbreaks at restaurant chains, you’re likely to learn of major product recalls and serious health warnings through various news outlets. But there’s such a large number of alerts, big and small, that you might not hear about all of them, or hear about them soon enough to take steps to protect yourself and your family. One way to stay current is to sign up with the various government agencies that deliver alerts directly to your inbox or smartphone. You can also follow those agencies on Twitter or Facebook. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration puts out alerts about drugs and supplements, medical devices, vaccines and cosmetics through its MedWatch program. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is your source for recalls as well as safety standards for household items, and the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service reports on problems from contamination to food mislabeling, such as not listing an allergen like nuts or eggs on a packaged item’s ingredients label. To make signing up easier, the government has created Recalls.gov, a one-stop-shop for six key agencies. On the site, you can request recall notifications and get a variety of safety tips, as well as conduct your own searches under seven categories: consumer products, motor vehicles, boats, food, medicine, cosmetics and environmental products. You also… read on >

Motorists are more likely to plow into a deer on U.S. highways after the annual “fall back” end of daylight saving time (DST), a new study shows. That’s because frisky deer in the middle of their mating season (also known as rut) are crossing roads that become shrouded in darkness earlier in the day with the time change, researchers explained. There’s a 16% increase in deer-vehicle collisions in the week following the shift from DST to standard time, according to a report published Nov. 2 in the journal Current Biology. What’s more, nearly 1 in 10 of all deer-vehicle wrecks occur during the two-week period around the switch from DST to standard time, researchers found. Adopting permanent daylight saving time could save dozens of deaths, thousands of injuries and more than $1.1 billion in damages every year, just by warding off deer-related car crashes, researchers say. “Wildlife-vehicle collisions are a huge and growing problem,” said co-lead author Calum Cunningham, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington. “There are social costs — people killed and injured — and it’s also a conservation problem as it’s one of the largest sources of human-caused mortality of wildlife,” he said in a university news release. An estimated 2.1 million deer-vehicle crashes occur in the United States each year, killing about 440 people, causing 59,000 injuries and racking up… read on > read on >

Although blood pressure levels among Americans rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, new research suggests things could have been far worse. “We expected blood pressure control to be worse due to decreased physical activity, stress, poor sleep and other cardiovascular disease risk factors that worsened during the pandemic,” said study leader Dr. Hiroshi Gotanda, an assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “But the results were better than we expected, probably because of the use of telemedicine and home monitoring of blood pressure,” he noted. For the study, which was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, researchers looked at the electronic data records of more than 137,500 adults who had high blood pressure (hypertension) and were treated at Cedars-Sinai, Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, and Ochsner Health in New Orleans. Patients were an average age of 66. About 57% were women, while 30% were Black. The researchers compared blood pressure outcomes before the pandemic, from August 2018 through January 2020, with those during the peak of the pandemic, from April 2020 through January 2021. The number of blood pressure readings declined by as much as 90% during the first three months of the pandemic. Measurements began to increase as the months passed, though they were still below pre-pandemic levels. This may… read on > read on >

THURSDAY, Nov. 3, 2022 (HealthDay News) – A weight-loss drug approved for adults may soon become an option for teens struggling with obesity. Young people who received the drug Wegovy (semaglutide) were able to lose an average of 14.7% of their starting body weight in a new clinical trial. More than 40% of the youths who received a weekly injection of the medication plus lifestyle counseling were able to reduce their BMI by 20% or more. The trial, published Nov. 2 in the New England Journal of Medicine, included 201 people ages 12 to 17 who were treated at medical centers in the U.S., Europe and Mexico. Some received a placebo and counseling on diet and exercise instead of Wegovy. Those youths actually gained 2.7% of their initial body weight. The study was funded by the drug’s maker, Novo Nordisk. “I’m absolutely excited,” study co-author Aaron Kelly, co-director of the Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine at the University of Minnesota, told NBC News. “We’ve entered the phase where we are seeing the kind of weight loss where teens come to us in tears. It’s the first time they’ve had control of their weight in their lifetimes.” Study participants were an average weight of 237 pounds. About 73% of those who received the medication lost 5% or more of their body weight, compared to 18% of… read on > read on >

When a parent is depressed, their child’s asthma care may suffer. Now, research suggests that getting a child’s asthma under control may include assessing a parents’ mental health. Researchers at University of Texas Southwestern found that treating a parent’s depression could sometimes improve symptom control in asthmatic children. About 8% of American children have asthma. Symptoms include shortness of breath, coughing and wheezing due to inflammation of the lungs and airways. “Moreover, asthma is a medical illness that is sensitive to a patient’s mood as well as medication adherence,” said Dr. E. Sherwood Brown, a professor of psychiatry. Stress and depression in children who have asthma can cause airway constriction and worsen symptoms. Then, this poor asthma control can exacerbate a child’s depression. High rates of depression among caregivers may also put stress on kids, worsening their depressive symptoms and asthma control, the researchers noted. To study the issue, the investigators followed caregivers with major depressive disorder and their children with persistent asthma for one year. They found that improvement in caregiver depression was associated with fewer asthma attacks and better asthma control for children. This improvement in asthma control occurred, in part, through reduction in the children’s depressive symptom severity. Health care providers may need to think more broadly when treating patients, Brown said in a university news release. “It might be useful to… read on > read on >

Obesity is never healthy, and that may be especially true for people who also develop multiple sclerosis. Obese people with MS are likely to see the disability linked to the disease rapidly worsen, said German researchers who followed more than 1,000 patients in a new study. Weight loss, they suggested, might help slow the progression of the disease. “The findings from this study raise important questions about the role of elevated BMI (body mass index) on mechanisms that drive neurologic disability in MS,” said Dr. Fiona Costello, a professor of neurology at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary in Canada. Obesity correlates with a higher risk of developing MS, she said. “What has not been clear is how obesity is linked to disease severity and disability progression in individuals with MS. But a large body of published literature has shown that deleterious disease associations with obesity are not unique to MS.” Obesity already has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, as well as cognitive impairment and dementia, said Costello, who had no part in the study. This study can’t prove that obesity speeds up greater disability in patients with MS, only that the two seem to be connected, the researchers noted. Still, “obtaining a normal weight is likely beneficial for people with MS,” said… read on > read on >

Screening tests routinely catch cases of breast and colon cancer early, but a screening test for lung cancer is sorely underused in high-risk people and that needs to change, more than 50 cancer organizations said in a joint statement issued Tuesday. What prompted the move? Low-dose CT screening is recommended for people who are more likely to develop lung cancer, yet only 5.7% of people who are eligible get screened, the groups noted in a call to action for more screening. “It definitely catches cancer early,” said statement co-author Mary Reid, chief of cancer screening and survivorship at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, N.Y. That’s exactly what it did for New York resident Colleen Medvin. “I’m here because last year, a low-dose CT scan for lung cancer saved my life,” she testified during a congressional hearing in September. Medvin was diagnosed with both lung cancer and breast cancer following lung screening at Roswell Park. “Because each cancer was detected early-stage, surgery was the best option,” Medvin noted in her testimony. “I can’t believe how lucky I got.” About 46% of lung cancer patients are not so fortunate, and are diagnosed after their lung cancer has spread, Reid noted. “I’d really like to see a change and I think as a society we know what needs to be done, and we need to do… read on > read on >

Most people consider drowsy driving dangerous, but an estimated 37 million Americans still get behind the wheel at least once a year when they’re so tired they can barely keep their eyes open. About six in 10 people admitted to drowsy driving in a new survey by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). “Drowsy driving is impaired driving,” said Joseph Dzierzewski, the foundation’s vice president of research and scientific affairs. “We see that while most Americans believe drowsy driving is risky, they still drive when not fully alert. The good news is — drowsy driving is preventable.” In a survey conducted this fall, nearly 20% of respondents were overly confident in their ability to drive after sleeping two hours or less the previous night. Respondents who said they get the recommended amount of sleep — about seven to nine hours per night for adults and eight to 10 for teens — were less likely to drive drowsy. Members of historically excluded groups were at higher risk for drowsy driving, according to the NSF, which said it may be an issue of sleep health equity. (In a position statement issued earlier this year, the foundation noted that people of color in the United States are disproportionately affected by poor sleep health and sleep disorders.) An estimated 6,400 people die in the United States each year because of… read on > read on >

Poor sleep may be linked to glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness, new research suggests. The study drew on a database of more than 400,000 people to explore links between sleep and vision loss. Glaucoma is marked by progressive loss of light-sensitive cells in the eye and optic nerve damage. Left untreated, it can cause irreversible blindness. As many as 112 million people worldwide could be affected by 2040. For the new study, the researchers considered a variety of sleep behaviors. These included too much sleep as well as too little, insomnia and daytime sleepiness, being a “night owl” or a “morning lark,” as well as snoring. The investigators used data from more than 409,000 participants in the UK Biobank (average age: 57). The study defined normal sleep duration as seven to nine hours. The researchers used medical records and death data to track the health and lifespan of all participants until a first diagnosis of glaucoma, death, emigration or end of monitoring in 2021. During an average 10.5-year monitoring period, the researchers identified 8,690 cases of glaucoma. Frequent daytime sleepiness was associated with a 20% higher risk for the disease. The risk rose 12% with insomnia and 8% with short or long sleep duration. Snoring was associated with a 4% higher risk. Compared to folks who had a healthy sleep pattern, people who snored… read on > read on >

New research reveals that the brain is much more flexible than once thought and can change rapidly during treatment for major depression. People receiving inpatient treatment for major depression had increased brain connectivity after just six weeks, German researchers report. They compared brain connectivity — various brain regions acting together in generating thought, emotion and behavior — in 109 patients with serious depression to that in a control group of 55 volunteers without depression. MRI scans were used to identify which brain areas were communicating with others before and after treatment. “We found that treatment for depression changed the infrastructure of the brain, which goes against previous expectations. Treated patients showed a greater number of connections than they had shown before treatment,” said lead researcher Jonathan Repple, who was part of the University of Muenster team that did the study. He’s now a professor of predictive psychiatry at the University of Frankfurt. The research was presented recently at a meeting of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, in Vienna and online. For the study, patients with depression were treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), psychological therapy or medication, or a combination of all therapies. The researchers then rescanned participants’ brains, counting the number of connections. They also retested for depression. The upshot: Patients who showed the most response to treatment had developed more new connections than those… read on > read on >

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Get Up-to-the-Minute Safety Alerts Sent Straight to Your Inbox

Another Reason to Keep Daylight Saving Time: Fewer Deer-Car Collisions

How the Pandemic Affected Americans’ Blood Pressure

Trial Shows Weight-Loss Drug Works in Teens

Parent’s Mental Health Can Affect Kids’ Asthma Care

Obesity Could Speed Disability When MS Strikes

Top Medical Groups, Hospitals Urge Better Access to Lung Cancer Screening

Most Americans Admit to Driving While Drowsy: Poll

Bad Sleep Might Raise Your Odds for Glaucoma

Depression Treatment Starts Changing the Brain Within 6 Weeks