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Parents of kids with food allergies probably won’t be surprised to hear that Halloween is an especially risky time for their youngsters. A new study found that serious allergic reactions (anaphylaxis) triggered by peanuts jumped 85% when kids were trick or treating. Serious reactions triggered by an unknown tree nut or peanut exposure rose by 70% on Halloween compared to the rest of the year. And the risk is similar on Easter — when kids are hopping around collecting chocolate eggs and other candy. Compared to other times, anaphylaxis from unknown nut exposure spiked 70% at Easter and there was a 60% increase in peanut-triggered anaphylaxis. Fortunately, other holidays — including Christmas, Chinese New Year, Diwali and Eid al-Adha — didn’t seem to lead to an increase in serious reactions in kids with food allergies. “The most common cause of anaphylaxis is food. When I was working in the emergency department, I was told [anaphylaxis] was higher on Halloween,” said study co-author Dr. Moshe Ben-Shoshan, an associate professor of allergy and immunology at Montreal Children’s Hospital and McGill University in Canada. “With this study, we wanted to establish whether there actually was an increased risk of anaphylaxis on holidays compared to the rest of the year.” Anaphylaxis is a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. It’s treated with… read on >

Reacting to an upsurge in abuse of benzodiazepine sedatives such as Valium, Xanax and Ativan, U.S. officials on Wednesday added a “Boxed Warning” to the drugs’ labels, cautioning about the danger. Benzodiazepines are tranquilizers commonly prescribed to help ease issues such as anxiety, seizures, insomnia and panic disorders. But “while benzodiazepines are important therapies for many Americans, they are also commonly abused and misused, often together with opioid pain relievers and other medicines, alcohol and illicit drugs,” U.S. Food and Drug Agency Commissioner Dr Stephen Hahn said in an agency news release. So he said the FDA is now “taking measures and requiring new labeling information to help health care professionals and patients better understand that while benzodiazepines have many treatment benefits, they also carry with them an increased risk of abuse, misuse, addiction and dependence.” Illicit use of “benzos” has been on the rise, and the drugs are often taken along with opioid drugs — sometimes to deadly effect. In fact, in a report released last year by the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, benzos were found to be involved in a full third of all fatal opioid overdoses. The drugs were also involved in nearly two-thirds of overdoses tied to the lethal synthetic opioid fentanyl. The report looked at 2017-2018 data from 25 states. According to the FDA, in 2019 alone,… read on >

Drinking lots of sugary beverages can wreak havoc on your health, but new research finds more Americans are turning away from those high-calorie drinks. And that includes many people who used to drink large quantities of sweetened beverages — the equivalent of 3.5 cans of soda daily. “Our study found the percentage of children and adults who are heavy [sugar-sweetened beverage] drinkers has declined significantly over time,” said study author Kelsey Vercammen. She’s a doctoral degree candidate in the department of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston. For the study, the researchers reviewed data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2003 to 2016, studying responses from more than 21,000 children (aged 2 through 19 years) and 32,000 adults. The investigators found that the percentage of heavy consumers of sugar-sweetened beverages — 500 calories or more daily — among children declined from 11% to 3%. The percentage of heavy sugar-sweetened beverage consumers among adults dropped from 13% to 9%. “Our research team was particularly interested in looking at the heavy sugar-sweetened beverage consumers because these individuals are the ones who are obviously drinking the most sugar-sweetened beverages, so we think that they likely face the biggest health risks,” Vercammen said. Potential explanations for the recent steep decline in intake include the impact of beverage taxes imposed… read on >

Children who need to take oral steroids for chronic or life-threatening conditions can experience serious side effects, according to new research. Children with autoimmune disorders such as juvenile arthritis, psoriasis or inflammatory bowel disease are often prescribed a steroid to keep the illness under control. But the odds that a child might develop diabetes was nearly six times higher in children taking steroids than in those who don’t. The odds of high blood pressure was 19 times higher in those on steroids, and the likelihood of a blood clot was 16 times higher, the study found. The good news, however, is that these complications are all exceedingly rare. “These complications are serious but rare. They affect a very tiny proportion of children with steroids,” said study author Dr. Daniel Horton, an assistant professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the Rutgers Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science in New Brunswick, N.J. Horton pointed out that doctors are aware of the many side effects related to steroids, but they also know how much good the drugs can do in certain situations, such as asthma or autoimmune conditions. “When I prescribe this medication, the benefits must outweigh the risks or I wouldn’t prescribe it. This study shows the kinds of complications that doctors need to look out for, particularly if a child receives high doses of an oral… read on >

Want to fend off high blood pressure? New research adds to the pile of evidence showing that living healthy can help you avoid hypertension. The study included nearly 3,000 Black and white U.S. adults, aged 45 and older, who didn’t have high blood pressure at the start of the study. The participants’ heart health was assessed with the American Heart Association’s Life’s Simple 7 tool, which measures seven risk factors: body mass index, diet, smoking, physical activity, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar levels. A score of 10 to 14 is ideal; 5 to 9 is average, and 0 to 4 is poor. The median score among the participants was 9. Over about nine years of follow-up, 42% of participants developed high blood pressure. The rates among Black adults were 52% in women and 50% in men. Among white adults the rates were 37% in women and 42% in men. Each 1-point higher score was associated with a 6% lower risk of high blood pressure, without significant difference by race or sex, according to the study published Sept. 15 in the Journal of the American Heart Association. “High blood pressure is among the most common conditions in the U.S., and it contributes to the greatest burden of disability and largest reduction in healthy life expectancy among any disease,” said lead author Dr. Timothy Plante, an… read on >

A lot has been made of the so-called “quarantine 15.” Now, a new study suggests certain people are more likely to binge eat during the coronavirus pandemic than others. Most often they are young adults who faced social stigma about being overweight before COVID-19 swept the globe. The researchers found this group had higher levels of depressive symptoms, stress, eating as a coping strategy and binge-eating behaviors compared to those who hadn’t dealt with weight stigma previously. The risk of binge eating was nearly three times higher among those who’d been teased or mistreated because of their size compared to those who hadn’t, according to the study. The study included nearly 600 young adults who took part in a previous study on eating and activity, and completed a follow-up survey during the pandemic. “Understanding whether weight stigma elevates risk for health challenges during the pandemic represents a critical first step for the development of health messaging, responses, and support during outbreaks of COVID-19 and similar public health emergencies,” said study author Rebecca Puhl. She is deputy director of the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. “With additional outbreaks and more cases of COVID-19 expected in the coming months, it is important to support individuals who may be prone to worse health and health behaviors exacerbating their risk during these times of… read on >

The new rapid COVID-19 test approved last week is probably not the most reliable option for determining whether someone is infected. But it’s cheap and it’s fast, and if used correctly, it could be the basis of a screening strategy to keep Americans safe as they return to school and work, infectious disease experts say. The BinaxNOW COVID-19 Ag Card produced by Abbott Laboratories is an antigen test, a type of scan that looks for specific structural proteins of the coronavirus that form during infection. The test will produce results within 15 minutes and cost $5, Abbott says. Antigen tests are notorious for producing many false positives, indicating that people are infected when they really aren’t, said Dr. Gary Procop, medical director and co-chair of the Enterprise Laboratory Stewardship Committee at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. And he said that’s absolutely fine if the test is used appropriately, as a screening tool to make sure folks infected with SARS-CoV-2 don’t make it into a crowded school or a basketball court or an assembly line. “Whenever you do screening tests, you actually want a lot of false positives because you want to capture everybody with disease,” Procop said. The key is to make the antigen test the first in a two-step screening process, he said. Everyone who tests positive should then receive a confirmatory PCR test… read on >

Telemedicine might help people with stubbornly high blood pressure get their numbers down — and possibly lower their risk of heart disease and stroke in the long run, a new study suggests. Doctors already recommend that people with high blood pressure use a home monitor to track their numbers. But research suggests that home readings, alone, only make a small difference in getting the condition under control. “People really don’t have the agency to act [on those readings] on their own,” said Dr. Karen Margolis, executive director of research at the HealthPartners Institute in Minneapolis. And if there is no clear plan for what to do about high home numbers, she said, any issues may only come to light at the periodic doctor visit. So Margolis and her colleagues tested a “telemonitoring” program designed to give patients more help: Their home readings were sent electronically to a pharmacist within the health system who then had regular phone “visits” with the patients. Over the next 18 months, the tactic worked. Compared with patients on standard care, those in the telemonitoring program lowered their blood pressure by an extra 7 to 10 points, on average, the study found. And over five years, they were half as likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke, or develop heart failure, according to the report. That finding, Margolis said, fell… read on >

If you have hypertension and you’re depressed, don’t blame your blood pressure drugs. Although previous research hinted there might be a connection between high blood pressure medications and depression, a new study of dozens of commonly used drugs found no such link. In fact, the Danish researchers found the opposite — nine blood pressure drugs were associated with a lower risk of depression. How could blood pressure medication help depression? “It is possible that the mechanism involved in decreasing the risk of depression is the anti-inflammatory effect among these nine medications,” study author Dr. Lars Vedel Kessing said in a statement from the journal Hypertension, where the findings were published Aug. 24. He’s a professor of psychiatry at the Psychiatric Center Copenhagen and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Kessing added that more study is needed. But the findings might help doctors when choosing medications to treat high blood pressure in patients who also have depression or a high risk of depression. He also noted that the study wasn’t designed to prove a cause-and-effect relationship between the medications and a lower risk of depression. The new study relied on a Danish population registry. The researchers included 5.4 million people in Denmark in 2005 and followed their health outcomes until December 2015. During that time, nearly 3.75 million people were given a prescription for a high… read on >

Women who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant may need to forgo coffee, tea, sodas and other sources of caffeine. A new data analysis finds no safe level of the drug during this time. “The cumulative scientific evidence supports pregnant women and women contemplating pregnancy being advised to avoid caffeine,” concluded study author Jack James, a professor at Reykjavik University in Iceland. The findings challenge current U.S. expert recommendations from organizations such as the March of Dimes and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Those guidelines say that consuming a small amount of caffeine each day — 200 milligrams, equal to about a cup or two of coffee — does not appear to harm the fetus. In the new analysis, James tracked data from 37 studies and 11 meta-analyses (data gleaned from multiple studies) published over the past two decades. The study focused on six major negative pregnancy outcomes: miscarriage, stillbirth, low birth weight and/or babies small for gestational age, preterm birth, childhood acute leukemia, and childhood overweight/obesity. Of the 42 separate findings in the observational studies, 32 found that caffeine significantly increased the risk of a negative pregnancy outcome, while 10 others found either no associations or inconclusive associations. Caffeine-related risks were reported with moderate to high levels of consistency for all pregnancy outcomes except preterm birth. Of the 17 findings from… read on >