Over-the-counter drugs like aspirin or ibuprofen might help protect against dementia, a new study suggests. These NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) might help protect the brain by quelling inflammation that contributes to dementia, researchers reported in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. People who took NSAIDs long-term had a 12% lower risk of developing dementia, researchers found. “Our study provides evidence on possible preventive effects of anti-inflammatory medication against the dementia process,” senior researcher Dr. M. Arfan Ikram, chair of epidemiology at Erasmus MC University Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, said in a news release. “There is a need for more studies to further consolidate this evidence and possibly develop preventive strategies,” Ikram added. For the study, researchers tracked nearly 12,000 healthy residents of The Netherlands taking part in an ongoing study, following them for more than 14 years on average. Of the study participants, 9,520 (81%) had used NSAIDs at any given time, based on pharmacy dispensing records, and 2,091 developed dementia. Long-term NSAID use was associated with a lower risk of dementia, but not short- or medium-term use, results show. In addition, a person’s cumulative dose of NSAIDs did not seem to decrease their risk of dementia, researchers said. “This suggests that prolonged rather than intensive exposure to anti-inflammatory medication may hold potential for dementia prevention,” researchers wrote. However, researchers noted that…  read on >  read on >

Each hour a person spends squinting into a smartphone or staring at a screen increases their risk of nearsightedness, a new evidence review suggests. Every daily one-hour increment in digital screen time is associated with 21% higher odds of myopia, researchers reported recently in JAMA Network Open. What’s more, the risk continues to increase as more time each day is spent with screens, researchers found. “Myopia risk increased significantly from 1 to 4 hours of screen time and then rose more gradually thereafter,” the research team led by Young Kook Kim, an associate professor of ophthalmology with the Seoul National University College of Medicine in South Korea, wrote. The risk of nearsightedness is doubled for people who spend four or more hours with a screen every day, results show. The review suggests a “potential safety threshold of less than 1 hour per day of exposure, with an increase in odds up to 4 hours,” the researchers concluded. By 2050, nearly one-half of the world’s population is expected to be nearsighted, researchers said in background notes. Nearsightedness is when close-up objects look clear but distant objects appear blurry, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology.  For example, a nearsighted person can read a map but has trouble seeing well enough to drive a car without glasses or contacts. “The projected surge in myopia cases is likely…  read on >  read on >

Yikes! The way parents use their phones around their kids may influence how much inappropriate content kids consume. Researchers reported Feb. 4 in the journal BMC Pediatrics that the odds of kids watching R-rated movies or playing mature-rated video games rose with higher parental screen use and inconsistent family media rules. The study analyzed data from more than 10,000 12- and 13-year-olds who were part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. “We wanted to explore parent rules and adolescents’ exposure to mature content because there’s a lack of research to guide parents of young adolescents on media use,” lead author Dr. Jason Nagata told CNN in an email.  “While the American Academy of Pediatrics provides general recommendations for ages 5 to 18, young adolescents are at a unique developmental stage — they’re not little kids anymore, but they’re also not fully independent teens,” Nagata, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, added. Parents in the study answered a 14-item questionnaire, rating their agreement with statements such as, “I try to limit how much I use a screen-based device when I am with my child” on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Meanwhile, kids self-reported how often they watched R-rated movies and played mature-rated video games, using a 0-to-3 scale (never to…  read on >  read on >

Many Americans don’t see anything wrong with taking daily low-dose aspirin, even though experts have concluded its risks outweigh its benefits, a new survey has found. Nearly half (48%) of people incorrectly think that the benefits of taking low-dose aspirin daily to reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke outweigh the risks, according to the survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. “Habits backed by conventional wisdom and the past advice of health care providers are hard to break,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the center’s director, said in a news release. “Knowing whether taking a low-dose aspirin daily is advisable or not for you is vital health information,” she added. For years, healthy seniors were advised to take low-dose aspirin to reduce heart attack and stroke risk. The rationale was that aspirin acts as a blood thinner, reducing the risk that a blood clot could cause a heart attack or stroke by clogging an artery. But in 2019, the leading heart groups — the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association — reversed that recommendation in a set of new guidelines. The groups concluded that daily aspirin for healthy seniors 70 and older wasn’t worth the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding.  “If you’re over 70, taking aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke could do more harm…  read on >  read on >

Daily low-dose aspirin can help prevent cancers from returning in about a third of colon cancer patients, a new study says. Taking 160 milligrams of aspirin a day cuts the risk of cancer recurrence in half among colon cancer patients with a mutation in their PI3K genes, researchers reported at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium in San Francisco. These PI3K mutations are found in about 30% of all colon cancers, researchers said in background notes. They can make cancers more aggressive and harder to treat. The results of this study could immediately change treatment for those colon cancer patients, researchers said. “Aspirin has been shown to effectively reduce recurrence rates and improve disease-free survival in more than one-third of these patients,” lead researcher Dr. Anna Martling, a professor of surgery at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, said in a news release. For the study, researchers recruited more than 600 patients in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway who had moderate to advanced colon cancer or rectal cancer. The patients were randomly assigned to take either daily aspirin or a placebo for three years. Patients taking daily aspirin had a 51% lower risk of cancer recurrence if they had a mutation in their PIK3CA mutation, compared to placebo, researchers found. Recurrence was 7.7% for people taking aspirin versus 14.1% for those on…  read on >  read on >