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Is your kid suddenly clamoring for a fast food meal or a sugary cereal you’ve never even heard of? He or she may have seen the product featured on a favorite “kid influencer” video. In a new study, researchers viewed the top 50 kid influencer videos on YouTube and found that 9 out of 10 featured unhealthy foods. Nearly 1 in 3 promoted a fast-food chain. But, what in the world is a kid influencer? If you have children, odds are you know at least one — or your kids do. Kid influencers are young online celebrities with large social media fan bases. They can earn big profits from ads and endorsements in their videos. The five most-watched influencers in this study have generated more than 48 billion views and 38.6 million subscribers through more than 10,000 YouTube videos posted through July 2019. Their average age? Just 7 years old. The most watched of these influencers is 9-year-old Ryan Kaji, whose video channel, “Ryan’s World,” has nearly 27 million subscribers. Published reports pegged his 2019 income at $26 million. His family started making videos of his reactions to unboxing new toys when he was just 3. “I think parents probably underestimate the effect of these videos for a few reasons: One is that kid influencers seem like everyday kids. They’re familiar and fun, but they… read on >

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, many doctors started providing care via telemedicine. Now, a new survey of people with type 1 diabetes suggests many like remote care and hope it continues in the future. Among the survey respondents who had a telemedicine visit during the pandemic, 86% found the remote appointments useful, and 75% said they planned on having remote appointments in the future, according to the Swiss study. “COVID really forced the issue of access to telemedicine. There were a lot of restrictions that made it difficult to access telemedicine in the past that were lifted with COVID. But will they remain available?” said Dr. Mary Pat Gallagher, director of the Pediatric Diabetes Center at NYU Langone Health in New York City. “It’s quite clear from my clinical experience that people really like this and would prefer it. I would like this to continue to be an option for our families,” added Gallagher, who was not involved in the current research. People with type 1 diabetes need to take multiple daily insulin shots or receive insulin via an insulin pump because they don’t make enough insulin on their own. Insulin is a hormone that ushers sugar from foods into the body’s cells for fuel. Replacing the body’s natural insulin is a balancing act, and insulin doses often need to be adjusted throughout a person’s… 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 >

Drug use is common among people taking part in virtual raves and happy hours during the coronavirus pandemic, a new study finds. “We explored whether stay-at-home orders changed how people use drugs — and it appears that drug use during virtual gatherings is somewhat prevalent among the party-going population we studied,” said study author Joseph Palamar. He’s associate professor of population health at NYU Langone Health in New York City. The researchers conducted online surveys in April and May 2020 with 128 New Yorkers who said they attend electronic dance music parties and reported recent drug use. About 56% said they had attended virtual raves and about 70% attended virtual happy hours during the pandemic. Of those, more than one-third said they had used illegal drugs during the events, including 41% of virtual rave attendees and 34% who attended virtual happy hours. Seven out of 10 participants used alcohol, and 30% said they used marijuana during both types of events, the survey found. Use of other drugs was less common. At virtual raves, about 9% used ecstasy, 7% used LSD and about 4% used cocaine. Slightly more than 3% of virtual happy hour attendees used cocaine and/or ketamine. The findings suggest that virtual dance parties and nightclub events could be an opportunity for drug use outreach and education, the researchers noted in a university news… read on >

Cellphone activity could be used to monitor and predict spread of the new coronavirus, researchers say. They analyzed cellphone use in more than 2,700 U.S. counties between early January and early May to identify where the phones were used, including workplaces, homes, retail and grocery stores, parks and transit stations. Between 22,000 and 84,000 points of publicly available, anonymous cellphone location data were analyzed for each day in the study period. Counties with greater declines in workplace cellphone activity during stay-at-home orders had lower rates of COVID-19, according to findings published Aug. 31 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. Researchers said their findings suggest that this type of cellphone data could be used to better estimate COVID-19 growth rates and guide decisions about shutdowns and reopenings. “It is our hope that counties might be able to incorporate these publicly available cellphone data to help guide policies regarding reopening throughout different stages of the pandemic,” said senior study author Dr. Joshua Baker, an assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. “Further, this analysis supports the incorporation of anonymized cellphone location data into modeling strategies to predict at-risk counties across the U.S. before outbreaks become too great,” he added in a university news release. Baker said it also may be possible to use cellphone data to forecast hotspots and take… read on >

More older Americans have been seeing their doctors virtually since the pandemic began than ever before, a new poll finds. During the first three months of the pandemic, one in four patients over 50 years of age used telehealth — way up from the 4% who did so in 2019. Comfort levels with telemedicine have also risen, the researchers said. In 2019, most older people had at least one concern about telemedicine, but by mid-2020, the number of those with concerns dropped, especially among people who had a virtual visit between March and June. But not everyone is comfortable with meeting their doctor online, according to the National Poll on Healthy Aging, published online by the University of Michigan. Among those over 50, 17% still said they have never used any kind of video conferencing for any reason, including medical care. That’s 11 percentage points lower than in the 2019 poll, but lack of experience or access may still be a barrier to getting care via telemedicine. The 2019 and 2020 polls each involved a national sample of more than 2,000 U.S. adults aged 50 to 80. “These findings have implications for the health providers who have ramped up telehealth offerings rapidly, and for the insurance companies and government agencies that have quickly changed their policies to cover virtual visits,” said researcher Lorraine Buis, a… read on >

After a period of improvement, U.S. kids are eating as much fast food as they were in the early 2000s, new government figures show. Researchers found that between 2003 and 2010, there was a decline in U.S. kids’ intake of fast-food calories — dipping from an average of 14% of daily calories, to just under 11%. The positive trend was short-lived, however. By 2018, that figure was back up to 14%. The study, by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), did not go into the underlying reasons. But other research gives some clues as to what could be driving the reversal. One possibility is that social media and “digital marketing” have a role, according to Frances Fleming-Milici, a researcher with the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut. “Fast-food companies have been pioneers in using digital marketing,” said Fleming-Milici, who was not involved in the NCHS report. Admittedly, she said, it is hard to get a handle on how often kids encounter fast-food promotions on their smartphones. But a recent Rudd study found that 70% of teens “engaged with” food and beverage brands on social media — meaning they followed the brands, or “liked” or shared their content. More than half of kids said they engaged with fast-food brands. Another Rudd study found that the percentage of parents… read on >

Taking a daily low-dose aspirin may speed the progression of cancer in the elderly, a new clinical trial shows. Daily aspirin doubled the risk that a person 70 or older would die from a stage 3 cancer, and increased the death risk associated with stage 4 cancers by nearly a third, according to data from more than 19,000 older people in the United States and Australia. Older patients taking daily aspirin also had a roughly 20% increased risk of their cancer spreading to other parts of their body either before or after diagnosis, the researchers found. Compelling evidence from earlier clinical trials had shown that daily aspirin taken by middle-aged folks could reduce the risk of cancer, particularly colon cancer, researchers said in background notes. But in this new trial, the investigators found that elderly people who presented with later-stage cancers “tended to do worse if they were on aspirin,” said senior researcher Dr. Andrew Chan, director of epidemiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, in Boston. “It does suggest there is a potential difference in the effect of aspirin on older adults compared with younger adults.” Based on these new findings, older people should have a serious discussion with their doctor before starting a course of low-dose daily aspirin, said Dr. Frank Sinicrope, a gastrointestinal cancer specialist with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,… read on >

All-terrain vehicles (ATVs) are a big draw for adventure-loving kids, but a new study warns that the thrill ride can often land children in the ER. U.S. data shows that nearly 280,000 children were treated over a 25-year period for head and neck injuries caused by ATV accidents. That’s about 31 children each day — and nearly half of them were younger than 12, the researchers reported. “I think it largely confirmed what we were concerned about, which was how frequent these injuries were occurring and how serious they were,” said Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. The fact that 46% of ATV-related head and neck injuries among kids occurred among those aged 12 or younger was particularly worrisome, Smith said. “These are large, powerful machines. They’re designed for off-road use. By definition, when you take this type of powerful machine off road, it requires an advanced degree of coordination, strength and moment-to-moment decision-making on uneven terrain,” Smith said. “And a child at 12 years of age just simply doesn’t possess that degree of skill. They just developmentally aren’t ready.” That’s true even for the lighter, smaller ATVs designed for kids, Smith added. The study looked at data from the U.S. National Electronic Injury Surveillance System to research injuries over a 25-year… read on >

The coronavirus pandemic has fueled big increases in video visits between patients and doctors, but older Americans haven’t easily taken to the trend, a new study finds. More than one-third of those over 65 face difficulties seeing their doctor via telemedicine — especially older men in remote or rural areas who are poor, have disabilities or are in poor health. “Telemedicine is not inherently accessible, and mandating its use leaves many older adults without access to their medical care,” said lead author Dr. Kenneth Lam, a clinical fellow in geriatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. “We need further innovation in devices, services and policy to make sure older adults are not left behind during this migration,” he added in a university news release. Video visits are a good way to reach patients at home, but they require patients to be able to get online, use computer equipment and fix technical problems when they arise. For the study, Lam’s team analyzed 2018 data on more than 4,500 Medicare patients. The researchers reported that about 38% weren’t ready for video visits, including 72% of those 85 or older, mostly because they were inexperienced with technology or had a physical disability. Even with outside support, 32% were not ready, and 20% couldn’t cope with a phone visit because of dementia or difficulty hearing or communicating, the… read on >