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In new guidelines released Tuesday, U.S. health officials now recommend that certain people take the antibiotic doxycycline as a morning-after pill to lower the risk of some sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The latest recommendations only apply to gay and bisexual men and transgender women who have had an STD in the past year and are at high risk of getting infected again. While past research has shown that doxycycline works for those populations, there’s not enough evidence to recommend the preventive treatment, known as doxy PEP, for all American adults, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted. The new guidelines were published in the CDC publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. CDC officials stressed that better ways to slow the spread of STDs are needed. “No vaccines and few chemoprophylaxis options exist for the prevention of bacterial sexually transmitted infections… [specifically syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea]. These infections have increased in the United States and disproportionately affect gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men [MSM] and transgender women,” wrote researchers led by Laura Bachmann, chief medical officer of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention. “In three large randomized controlled trials, 200 [milligrams] mg of doxycycline taken within 72 hours after sex has been shown to reduce syphilis and chlamydia infections by >70% and gonococcal infections by approximately 50%,” they added. When… read on > read on >

Military veterans often struggle with their mental health once their service ends, but the first clinical trial of its kind has found that having a service dog helps lower the risk of PTSD for these former soldiers. Veterans paired with a service dog had 66% lower odds of a PTSD diagnosis, compared to a control group of vets still waiting for a service dog, researchers reported June 4 in the journal JAMA Network Open. These vets also experienced lower anxiety and depression levels, as well as improvements in most areas of emotional and social well-being, researchers found. “This research reinforces what we have been studying for almost a decade — that service dogs are linked to significant benefits for many veterans suffering from PTSD and other invisible wounds of war,” said lead researcher Maggie O’Haire, associate dean for research at the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine. “Service dogs are more than pets — they can be essential partners in helping veterans readjust and thrive after they return from service,” O’Haire said. For the study, researchers tracked more than 150 military veterans over three months. Vets received their dogs through the program K9s For Warriors, the nation’s largest provider of trained service dogs for military veterans. Most of the dogs provided by K9s For Warriors are rescues, researchers noted. The program trains them, on… read on > read on >

Teens on the verge of falling asleep behind the wheel is a common threat to public safety on U.S. roadways, a new study reports. About 1 in 6 teenage drivers say they’ve driven while drowsy, according to a National Sleep Foundation study presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Houston. The research was also published in a special supplement of the May issue of the journal Sleep. That finding means that about 1.7 million teenage drivers have driven while sleepy, and more than 400,000 teens drive drowsy at least once a week, researchers estimated. “This is a troubling rate, especially given that teens are new drivers with relatively low opportunity to have engaged in drowsy driving when compared to the lifetime of driving opportunities in adults,” said principal investigator Joseph Dzierzewski, vice president of research and scientific affairs at the National Sleep Foundation. Teens know it’s not safe — about 95% said drowsy driving is extremely or very risky, poll results show. However, they listed drowsy driving as having the lowest risk of death or serious harm when compared to drunk, drugged or distracted driving, researchers found. Most teens said work or school schedules keep them from getting the sleep they need to drive alert. Teen drivers with jobs were more than twice as likely to have driven drowsy… read on > read on >

Less than one-quarter of people who survive serious heart conditions receive the dietary counseling needed to protect their future health, a new study finds. Only about 23% of people treated for major illnesses like heart attack and heart failure receive counseling on their diet within three months of hospitalization, researchers reported recently in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “Nutrition counseling may reduce the risk a person has for cardiovascular episodes and disease, yet our research shows that the vast majority of patients, who are all at risk after significant heart events, are not receiving this essential education,” said senior researcher Dr. Brahmajee Nallamothu, a professor of internal medicine-cardiology at the University of Michigan Medical School. For the study, researchers tracked nearly 150,000 patients seen for serious heart problems at hospitals across Michigan between late 2015 and early 2020. Most of the patients who did receive dietary counseling got it as part of a cardiac rehabilitation program. Only 20% to 30% of eligible patients take advantage of such rehab, researchers noted. Outside of cardiac rehab, doctors offered dietary counseling just 5% of the time. It might be that the doctors don’t have the time to offer diet advice, or don’t consider themselves expert enough to provide good counseling, researchers said. “When patients receive this education, we have seen tremendous results — some… read on > read on >

Booze could threaten a sleeping air passenger’s heart health, particularly on long-haul flights, a new study warns. Alcohol combined with cabin pressure at cruising altitude lowers the amount of oxygen in the blood and raises the heart rate for a long period, even in the young and healthy, researchers explained. And the more alcohol a person drinks, the greater these effects might be – especially among older passengers or those with chronic health problems, results show. Blood oxygen levels can decline to around 90% in healthy passengers at cruising altitude, researchers said in background notes. Anything lower than that is considered hypobaric hypoxia, or low blood oxygen levels at high altitude. Alcohol relaxes blood vessel walls and increases heart rate during sleep, causing an effect similar to hypobaric hypoxia, researchers said. That made them suspect the combination could do harm to sleeping air passengers. For their experiment, researchers recruited 48 people ages 18 to 40. They assigned half to a sleep lab under normal air pressure and half to an altitude chamber that mimicked cabin pressure at cruising altitude. Among those, half were asked to drink an amount of vodka that roughly equaled two cans of beer or two glasses of wine. The combination of alcohol and cabin pressure caused a fall in blood oxygen levels to just over 85%, and a compensatory increase in… read on > read on >

Maternal mortality rates in the United States continue to exceed those in other wealthy nations, with most women dying during pregnancy and childbirth in ways that were preventable, a new report shows. In 2022, U.S. women had a death rate from complications of pregnancy and childbirth of 22 deaths per 100,000 live births, researchers found. That’s a rate more than double and sometimes triple that of other high-income countries, researchers said. For example, there were zero recorded maternal deaths in Norway that year. Further, Black women have the highest maternal death rate in the United States, at nearly 50 deaths per 100,000 live births. “This study provides a bleak picture of how poorly the U.S. is performing when it comes to maternal mortality rates compared to other high-income countries,” said study author Munira Gunja, a senior researcher with the Commonwealth Fund. For the study, researchers assessed maternal health across 14 nations: the United States, Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. About two-thirds (65%) of maternal deaths in the United States occur after birth, and more than 80% are preventable, the report found. Severe bleeding, high blood pressure and infection are the leading causes of maternal death within the first week following delivery, researchers report. In the subsequent weeks and months, weakening of the… read on > read on >

Could the blockbuster GLP-1 meds like Wegovy and Ozempic have a role to play in helping people cut down on problem drinking? A new study suggests so. Researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland report that obese folks with drinking issues who took the drugs to shed pounds had an up to 56% reduction in re-occurrence of alcohol use disorder over one year later, compared to those not using the meds. “This is very promising news in that we may have a new therapeutic method to treat alcohol use disorder,” said lead researcher Rong Xu. She’s a professor of biomedical informatics at the Case Western’s School of Medicine. Prior data has suggested that something about GLP-1 diabetes/weight-loss drugs can have the effect of curbing excess drinking. And the Case Western team have already shown that semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) can have other unexpected health benefits. “In January we showed that semaglutide is associated with a decrease in suicidal thoughts, and in March, we demonstrated that semaglutide is also associated with a reduction in both new diagnoses and recurrence of cannabis use disorder,” Xu noted in a university news release. So what about alcohol intake? In the new study, Xu’s team pored over the electronic health records of nearly 84,000 patients with obesity. Compared to people who weren’t taking semaglutide, those who took the med saw a… read on > read on >

Ozempic and Wegovy appear to improve people’s sensitivity to tastes, potentially lowering their desire for sweets, a new study suggests. The active ingredient in the weight-loss medications, semaglutide, also appears to affect the way that the tongue and brain respond to sweet tastes, researchers reported Saturday at the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in Boston. “People with obesity often perceive tastes less ‘intensely,’ and they have an inherently elevated desire for sweet and energy-dense food,” said researcher Mojca Jensterle Sever, an endocrinologist with the University Medical Centre in Ljubljana, Slovenia. For the study, researchers randomly assigned obese women to receive either semaglutide injections or a placebo. For four months, researchers measured the participants’ taste sensitivity using strips containing different concentrations of tastes. They also used MRI scans to measure brain responses to a sweet solution dripping onto their tongues, both before and after the women ate a standard meal. Researchers also took tissue samples to evaluate genetic activity in the participants’ tongues. Women receiving semaglutide experienced changes in their taste perception, in the ways their taste bud genes expressed themselves and the way their brain responded to sweets. The changes track with those seen in animal studies, Jensterle Sever said. “Clinicians will likely correlate the findings with reports from their patients on changes in desire for certain foods, which go beyond broad changes in appetite and… read on > read on >

People who feel lonely and socially isolated might benefit from more sleep, especially if they’re a young adult, a new study suggests. Better sleep is associated with significantly less emotional and social loneliness, researchers report. Younger adults in particularbenefit from better sleep, but people of all ages report less loneliness after they’ve slept well, results show. “Loneliness is an urgent public health crisis, and there is a pressing need for providers to better understand and treat it,” said lead researcher Joseph Dzierzewski, vice president of research and scientific affairs at the National Sleep Foundation in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Surgeon General’s Office warned in 2023 about a public health crisis of loneliness and isolation, researchers noted. Even before the pandemic, about half of U.S. adults were experiencing loneliness, and the social isolation measures required to protect health likely made matters even worse, the warning said. “Our results highlight the important role that sleep plays in understanding loneliness across the adult lifespan,” Dzierzewksi said in a university news release. “Perhaps efforts to improve sleep health could have a beneficial effect on loneliness, especially for young people.” Adults should get about seven hours of sleep each night to promote optimal health and alertness, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says. For this study, nearly 2,300 adults with an average age of 44 completed an online sleep health… read on > read on >

Ozempic and Wegovy might help lower the risk of pancreatitis in patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes, a new study says. Up to now, doctors have been cautious about prescribing semaglutide to patients with a history of pancreatitis, because they feared the drug could worsen the condition, said lead researcher Dr. Mahmoud Nassar, a fellow in endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at the University of Buffalo in New York. In fact, the drug’s prescribing information even warns about this potential side effect, Nassar noted. “Our research highlights the safety and the potential for GLP-1 receptor agonists [like semaglutide] to reduce the risk of acute pancreatitis recurrence in individuals with obesity and type 2 diabetes, challenging previous concerns and offering new hope for effective disease management,” Nassar said. For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 638,000 patients with a history of pancreatitis. The patients were located across 15 countries, but they were mainly from the United States. Researchers tracked how many patients developed pancreatitis again within 15 years of starting either semaglutide or other drugs for diabetes and obesity. The other drugs included SGLT2 inhibitors, which decrease blood sugar levels by preventing glucose from being absorbed in the kidneys, and DPP4 inhibitors, which help the pancreas release insulin. About 15% of patients taking semaglutide had wound up suffering a recurrence of pancreatitis, compared with… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

CDC Supports Use of Antibiotic as ‘Morning After Pill’ to Stop STDs

Service Dogs Work Wonders for Veterans With PTSD: Study

Too Many Teens Are Driving Drowsy

Few Heart Attack Survivors Get Expert Advice on Diet

How Drinking on Long-Haul Flights Could Threaten Your Heart

U.S. Maternal Death Rate Remains Much Higher Than Other Affluent Nations

Wegovy, Ozempic May Help Curb Alcohol Dependence

Could New Weight-Loss Drugs Be Changing Women’s Taste for Sweets?

Better Sleep Might Bring Less Loneliness

GLP-1 Weight Loss Meds Might Keep Your Pancreas Healthy