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Natural grass playing fields pose a greater concussion risk for young football players than artificial turf, a new study shows. Athletes who sustained a concussion on grass reported more than 10 symptoms, on average, compared with about six for those injured on artificial turf, researchers found. Players on natural grass fields also had an average concussion symptom severity score of more than 26, compared with under 12 for those injured on artificial turf. “Many natural grass fields, especially at the youth level, may not be well maintained and can be harder and less forgiving than modern artificial turf, which has evolved significantly from the old, hard fields of the past,” said lead researcher C. Munro Cullum, a professor of psychiatry, neurological surgery and neurology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. For the study, researchers analyzed data on 62 middle school, high school and college players, ages 10 to 24. All of the players sustained a helmet-to-ground concussion during practice or play, and then went to a specialty concussion clinic within 14 days of their injury. Of the players, 33 were injured on natural grass and 29 on artificial turf, researchers said. Seven major symptoms were more likely to occur following a concussion on grass, researchers found. They included: Dizziness Blurred vision Sensitivity to noise Feeling in a fog Difficulty remembering Fatigue or low energy… read on > read on >

Not all babies born prematurely will suffer long-term developmental problems, a new study finds. Preemies tend to fall into three risk categories, with about one in five (20%) scoring above average on standard cognitive tests, researchers reported Aug. 13 in the journal Child Development. A second profile representing 41% of preemies scored above normal on tests of memory, vocabulary and reading, but below average on tests of pattern recognition and working memory, researchers said. And a third profile representing nearly 40% of preemies scored below normal on all tests, suffering both cognitive and attention deficits. “Our study dispels the notion that every preterm child is born with cognitive and behavioral deficits,” said lead researcher Iris Menu, a post-doctoral scholar of child and adolescent psychiatry with the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City. About 13 million babies are born prematurely each year, and preterm birth has been linked to a higher risk of ADHD, problems with social development and lower grades, researchers said in background notes. But the tendency to lump preemies into a single group hinders efforts to tailor care for any one child, they added. For the study, researchers analyzed cognitive and behavioral data for nearly 1,900 boys and girls born prematurely who had reached 9 to 11 years of age. The team found that children who fell within the first… read on > read on >

Many nonsmokers have lung nodules that have been linked to lung cancer, a new study warns. About 42% of nonsmokers or former smokers have at least one lung nodule, which is a small mass of dense tissue that may be cancerous, according to chest CT scans performed on more than 10,400 people aged 45 and older. Further, about 11% of participants had larger lung nodules measuring 6 to 8 millimeters that will require close medical scrutiny, researchers said. “This was higher than we expected and even similar to the prevalence reported in high-risk populations of smokers,” said senior researcher Dr. Rozemarijn Vliegenthart, a professor of cardiothoracic imaging at the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands. The older people are, the greater their odds of having both more lung nodules and larger nodules, results showed. Men were more likely than women to both have lung nodules and have multiple nodules, researchers noted. Most of the lung nodules weren’t cancerous, Vliegenthart stressed. “The incidence of lung cancer in this population is very low, 0.3%, suggesting that most of the clinically relevant and even actionable nodules in a nonsmoking cohort are benign,” Vliegenthart said in a university news release. However, their presence will require follow-up scans and examination under current cancer screening guidelines, the researchers said. The new study was published Aug. 13 in the journal Radiology.… read on > read on >

Eating a healthy diet that dampens inflammation in the body could lower your odds for dementia, especially if you already have heart risk factors, a new Swedish study shows. So-called anti-inflammatory diets focus on foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish and beans and include heart-healthy regimens such as the Mediterranean diet. In a study involving more than 84,000 older adults tracked for more than 12 years, those who adhered to an anti-inflammatory diet had a 21% lower odds of developing dementia, compared to people who ate an unhealthy pro-inflammatory diet rich in red meats, eggs, dairy and processed foods. When looking specifically at older adults with ailments such as heart disease or diabetes, the risk of dementia fell by 31% when they stuck to an anti-inflammatory diet, reported a team led by Abigail Dove. She’s an investigator at the Aging Research Center at the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm. MRI brain scans of a subset of more than 9,000 of the participants also showed neurological benefits linked to the healthier diet. There were “positive changes within the brain,” noted Dr. Liron Sinvani, director of geriatric hospital services for North Shore University Hospital, in Manhasset, N.Y. “Larger gray matter volume — gray matter is good — and lower burden of ‘white matter hyperintensities’ was seen among those who ate an anti-inflammatory diet, said Sinvani, who wasn’t… read on > read on >

Red meat contains a type of iron that could increase a person’s risk of type 2 diabetes, a new study warns. People who ate the most foods high in heme iron — red meat and other animal products, mainly — had a 26% higher risk of type 2 diabetes than those who ate the least, researchers reported Aug. 13 in the journal Nature Metabolism. In fact, heme iron accounted for more than half of the type 2 diabetes risk associated with unprocessed red meat, researchers found. But non-heme iron, which is found in plant-based foods, had no link at all with type 2 diabetes, results show. “This study underscores the importance of healthy dietary choices in diabetes prevention,” said researcher Frank Hu, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “Reducing heme iron intake, particularly from red meat, and adopting a more plant-based diet can be effective strategies in lowering diabetes risk,” Hu added in a Harvard news release. Heme iron comes from hemoglobin, a blood protein that facilitates the transport of oxygen in red blood cells. It’s commonly found in meat, poultry and seafood, and is more easily absorbed by the body than non-heme iron. For the study, researchers assessed the link between iron intake and type 2 diabetes using 36 years of dietary reports… read on > read on >

New research suggests that switching from smoking to vaping won’t prevent some dangerous changes to a person’s genome. A new study conducted in young adults shows similar cancer-linked gene changes in both vapers and smokers. “These findings have significant implications for public health and tobacco regulation that aim to keep vaping products away from young people, who are a particularly vulnerable population,” said study lead author Stella Tommasi. She’s an associate professor of research population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles. At issue is a process called DNA “methylation,” essentially an on/off switch for genes that tells DNA if it should operate. The new study looked at the genetics of 30 young adults averaging 23.5 years of age. Some were exclusive e-cigarette users, vaping at least three times per week for at least six months; some were exclusive smokers, smoking at least three times per week for at least a year; and some neither vaped nor smoked. Tommasi’s group used a high-tech gene sequencing technique to look at the genomes of cells taken from each participant in cheek swabs. They found 831 “differentially methylated regions” (DMRs) in the genomes of vapers and 2,863 in smokers. DMRs are genetic areas that may be more or less methylated (switched on/off) in one person versus another. Overall, there was a 46% overlap… read on > read on >

An experimental drug based on ancient Chinese herbal medicine can help ease the toxic side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy in cancer patients, the results of a small new trial results suggest. A small group of 24 patients experienced fewer GI side effects from their treatment for rectal cancer after they took YIV-906, researchers reported recently in the Journal of Gastrointestinal Oncology. YIV-906 is based on an 1,800-year-old treatment for stomach ailments that combined licorice, dates, peonies and skullcap, researchers said. “This study is the first demonstration of YIV-906’s effectiveness in reducing GI toxicity caused by chemotherapy and radiation, showing the medicine’s potential of improving the patient’s quality of life while increasing treatment effectiveness,” said co-researcher Yung-Chi Cheng, a professor of pharmacology at Yale School of Medicine who helped develop the drug. For the four-year, phase 2 study, the patients were given capsules of YIV-906 along with chemo and radiation prior to surgery. At the time of surgery, about 17% of patients had a complete or near-complete response to their cancer treatment, while the overall survival rate at five years was 82%, results show. Only two cases of severe diarrhea were reported among the patients. YIV-906 is meant to ease side effects like diarrhea, fatigue and nausea. “We didn’t have any serious toxicity associated with the drug and patients found taking the drug in… read on > read on >

Kids more often get the psychiatric care they need if they live in states that mandate insurance coverage for child mental health care, a new study confirms. Parents and caregivers were 20% less likely to say they’d had trouble getting mental health services for a child if they lived in states with comprehensive laws around mental and behavioral health insurance coverage, reported a team from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Going without needed mental health services can lead to tragedy, study lead author Dr. Ashley Foster said. “Unfortunately, in my own practice, I regularly see children who are unable to access needed mental health care, and their symptoms continue to worsen until they reach a crisis point,” said Foster, a pediatric emergency care physician at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. The need is real: A poll released last month by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) found that nearly a third of American adolescents and teens received some sort of mental health treatment in 2023. SAMHSA noted that rates of adolescents getting mental health treatment has increased virtually every year since 2009. In the new study, Foster’s team surveyed 30,000 child caregivers nationwide. They found that about 1 in 8 said they’d had trouble accessing mental or behavioral health service for their child between 2016 and 2019. The effect was more common… read on > read on >

At least 20 million hernia surgeries are performed globally each year, making it one of the most common medical procedures in the world. But does gender matter when it comes to hernia risk? New Australian research says yes: Half of the nearly 436,000 hernia repair procedures performed in adults in that country between 2017 and 2021 were for inguinal (groin) hernias, with men accounting for 89.6% of those operations. And the age-standardized prevalence in men was more than seven times that of women. Inguinal hernias were the most common type of hernia seen in the study. Why are men more susceptible? Researchers say the gender difference is due to higher rates of smoking, heavy exercise, bladder issues, chronic airway disorders, hypertension and heart disease. It’s important that doctors know “those patients who have higher risks of hernia repair, so we can develop health campaigns and policies to improve their quality of life and lower their risks of developing hernias,” study co-author Dr. Marianne Gillam, from the University of South Australia, said in a university news release. A hernia occurs when one of your organs pushes through the muscle or tissue that contains it. This can trigger discomfort and abdominal pain and in severe cases can strangulate the bowel, which requires emergency surgery. In the study, the team turned to data from the Australian Institute of Health &… read on > read on >

A study of more than 400,000 people tracked for up to 24 years finds that those who got their dietary fat from plants versus animals had significantly lower odds of dying during the study period. Plant-based fats’ benefit included a reduced odds for deaths due to heart disease, the research showed. Conversely, the study “provides evidence that diets high in animal-based fats, including dairy and eggs, are associated with elevated risks of overall and cardiovascular disease mortality,” concluded a team led by Dr. Demetrius Albanes, of the U.S. National Cancer Institute. As the researchers noted, the composition of fats found in plant sources — grains, vegetables, beans or nuts — differs greatly from that sourced from animals. “Plant-based fats are recognized for their greater composition of monounsaturated fatty acids [MUFAs] and polyunsaturated fatty acids [PUFAs], whereas animal-based fats are characterized by a higher proportion of saturated fatty acids [SFAs],” the team explained. Bodies need fat to live, but U.S. dietary guidelines say that cutting down on saturated fats and replacing them with unsaturated fats is a healthy move. How much would that help folks over the long term? To find out, Albanes’ team looked at dietary and health data collected from 1995 through 2019 as part of the National Institutes of Health AARP Diet and Health Study. The analysis included data on 407,531 adults who… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Natural Grass or Artificial: One Is Worse for Football Concussions

Not Born Equal: Preemie Babies Fall Into 3 Risk Categories

Many Nonsmokers Have Lung Nodules Linked to Cancer Risk

Anti-Inflammatory Diet Could Lower Your Odds for Dementia

Why Red Meat May Be Especially Linked to Diabetes Risk

Smoking, Vaping Tied to Similar Unhealthy Changes in DNA

Chinese Botanical Medicine Eases a Cancer Treatment Side Effect

Tougher State Insurance Laws Get Kids Needed Mental Health Care

Men Face Much Higher Risk for Hernias Than Women, and Age Matters

Getting Fats From Plants Vs. Animals Boosts Your Life Span