People with long COVID exhibit brain changes that are different from the brains of fully recovered COVID-19 patients, a new brain scan study reports. COVID-19 induced a specific pattern of microscopic structural changes in various brain regions of people with long COVID, researchers will report at the upcoming annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study comparing patients with long COVID to both a group without history of COVID-19 and a group that went through a COVID-19 infection but is subjectively unimpaired,” lead researcher Dr. Alexander Rau, a neuroradiology resident at University Hospital Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany, said in an RSNA news release. Between 10% and 25% of patients with a COVID infection wind up developing long COVID, researchers estimate. Long COVID involves a collection of different symptoms that can last for weeks, months or even years after a person gets over their initial illness, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Symptoms can include “brain fog,” fatigue, joint or muscle pain, shortness of breath, GI disturbances, heart palpitations, and changes in sense of smell or taste. For this study, researchers scanned participants’ brains using a novel MRI technique that analyzes the movement of water molecules in tissues. This method can provide detailed information on the brain’s microstructure, and can detect even very small…  read on >  read on >

Robert Fleetwood, 73, needed joint replacements in both knees, both to relieve his arthritis pain and to continue competing in athletic activities. And thanks to medical advances, Fleetwood was able to go home the same he had each knee replaced, in procedures spaced several months apart. A knee replacement “changes your perspective on life. It makes you feel so much more alive and dynamic when you’re not living with chronic pain that becomes debilitating,” Fleetwood, of Stuart, Fla., said in a news release. “I’m very happy now.” People used to have to spend a night in the hospital following a knee replacement, but improvements in technology, surgery and pain management have made it possible to undergo the procedure in the morning and be back home by the evening, Dr. Martin Roche, director of joint replacement at Hospital for Special Surgery Florida in West Palm Beach, said in a hospital news release. “We’ve come a long way in terms of being able to get people up and out of the hospital quickly, and that motivates them mentally, as well,” Roche said. Advances over the past five years that have led to outpatient knee replacements include: 3D CT scans that allow surgeons to plan highly personalized procedures beforehand. Surgical robotics and sensors that allow a high degree of precision and accuracy. Less invasive surgery that spares muscles…  read on >  read on >

Four of every 10 American seniors who suffer a fall and end up in the ER with head trauma get no follow-up care once they go home, a new study finds. “Only 59 percent of our study subjects had follow-up with their [health care] provider,” study senior author Dr. Richard Shih said. He’s professor of emergency medicine at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Even if patients do manage to see a doctor after their ER discharge, they often get no guidance on how to prevent another fall, Shih and his colleagues said. “Of the patients in our study that had primary care physician follow-up, 28 percent reported that there was no fall-risk assessment and 44 percent did not receive fall prevention interventions,” he said in a university news release. Falls can be highly injurious and often fatal for older Americans. According to data supplied by the university, in a given year 1 in every 4 Americans aged 65 or older will suffer a fall, resulting in 8 million emergency department visits annually, 800,000 hospitalizations and more than 27,000 deaths. Seeing your family doctor after you’ve recovered from a serious fall is crucial to helping prevent subsequent falls, the Florida team said. Unfortunately, that kind of follow-up often doesn’t happen. In their study, Shih’s team tracked levels of follow-up care for more than 1,500 seniors…  read on >  read on >

SATURDAY, Nov.18Data showing that the antibiotic doxycycline might prevent a sexually transmitted infection (STI) if taken soon after sex made headlines earlier this year. As surging numbers of cases of syphilis and gonorrhea affect more Americans, here’s what you need to know about using the drug. “If you’re actively having sex and not using condoms 100% of the time, which is the reality out there, this strategy could be appropriate for you,” said Dr. Christopher Foltz, an infectious disease specialist at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. “It comes down to each person’s individual risk level, something that you should discuss with your physician.” He noted that syphilis, especially, has reemerged with a vengeance in recent years as a health threat.  “Syphilis has been climbing at the highest rate with a significant increase among pregnant women and men who have sex with men,” Foltz said in a hospital news release. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, syphilis cases among gay and bisexual men in the United States rose by 7% between 2020-2021. Rates of new cases of the disease rose even more steeply among women: a 55.3% jump between 2020 and 2021, and 217.4% rise between 2017 and 2021 overall. That means more babies potentially being born with syphilis, as well. You may not even realize you are infected with syphilis, Foltz noted,…  read on >  read on >

Air filters might help keep the air in your home fresh, but a new review finds they don’t appear to reduce your risk of catching an airborne virus. Technologies designed to make indoor spaces safer from infection are not effective in the real world, researchers from the University of East Anglia in the UK argue. The team analyzed data from 32 prior studies in which air treatment technologies were tested in real-world setting like schools or nursing facilities. “The kinds of technologies that we considered included filtration, germicidal lights, ionisers and any other way of safely removing viruses or deactivating them in breathable air,” said lead researcher Dr. Julii Brainard, from the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School. The pooled data revealed that the filter systems did nothing to keep people from catching airborne respiratory or GI infections. “In short, we found no strong evidence that air treatment technologies are likely to protect people in real-world settings,” Brainard said in a university news release. “The combined evidence was that these technologies don’t stop or reduce illness. “ “Our findings are disappointing — but it is vital that public health decision makers have a full picture,” Brainard added. The study was published Nov. 16 in the journal Preventive Medicine. The researchers did note that all of the studies in their review dated from prior to the…  read on >  read on >

Shrinkage of one of the brain’s key memory centers appears to herald thinking declines, a new study finds. The region in question is the hippocampus, a two-sided structure located roughly above each ear and embedded deep within the brain’s temporal lobe. It’s long been known to play a crucial role in the storage and transference of short- and long-term memory. The new research was published Nov. 15 in the journal Neurology. It focused on brain scan data collected from 128 people averaging 72 years of age. A team led by Dr. Bernard Hanseeuw, of Harvard Medical School in Boston, used the scans to track changes in brain levels of amyloid plaques or tau tangles. Both are linked to the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The team also used the scans, which were taken annually, to chart any changes in the size of an individual’s hippocampus over the course of seven years. People who showed the most significant shrinkage in their hippocampus were also most likely to display thinking declines over the study period, Hanseeuw’s group reported. This seemed to occur independently of changes in levels of either amyloid or tau, they noted. They estimated that hippocampus shrinkage might account for 10% of thinking declines. “These results suggest that neurodegenerative diseases other than Alzheimer’s are contributing to this decline, and measuring the hippocampus volume may help us…  read on >  read on >

THURSDAY, Nov, 16, 2023Young adults are now more likely to vape than to smoke cigarettes, with more becoming addicted to nicotine through vaping than traditional smoking, researchers say. Nearly three in five young adults who vape (56%) have never regularly smoked cigarettes, according to data from an ongoing federal study of tobacco use. This is the first time that there are more young people who began to use nicotine through vaping rather than smoking, researchers said in a research letter published Nov. 13 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. “We now have a shift such that there are more ‘never smokers’ who vape than established smokers,” said researcher Benjamin Toll, director of the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) Health Tobacco Treatment Program. “That is a massive shift in the landscape of tobacco.” “These ‘never smokers’ are unlikely to start smoking combustible cigarettes – they’re likely to vape and keep vaping,” Toll added in a university news release. “And it’s this group, ages 18 to 24, who are going to forecast future e-cigarette users.” E-cigarettes could be a less harmful option than smoking, but it’s not harm-free, researchers said. Because of that, it’s disheartening to see young non-smokers begin to vape. “If you currently smoke and you’ve smoked combustible tobacco cigarettes for a few decades — those people are at very high risk of cancer,…  read on >  read on >

For many women with breast cancer, struggles with sexual issues becomes a hidden burden, new research shows. Because most patients don’t feel comfortable talking over these issues with a doctor, many turn to online patient-support forums for advice. The new study found that three-quarters of breast cancer patients admitted to some form of sexual dysfunction, most often vaginal dryness or pain upon penetration. However, instead of going to physicians for advice, “women with breast cancer are taking the initiative to fill the gap in their care for sexual symptoms by seeking, innovating and sharing solutions amongst themselves,” concluded a team led by Christiana von Hippel. She’s a graduate researcher at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston. In the study, von Hippel’s group conducted a survey of 501 adult members of the popular Breastcancer.org online forum community. Seventy percent said they had remained sexually active at the time they completed the survey. About two-thirds identified as heterosexual, and about two-thirds were partnered. Forty-seven percent said they’d been very or extremely satisfied with their sex lives prior to cancer treatment, but 44 percent also said they’d experienced a significant worsening of their sex life post-diagnosis.  Vaginal dryness and/or pain upon penetration were the most common issues cited, and 57% of respondents said they’d never discussed the sexual side effects of…  read on >  read on >

Oral nicotine pouches might be marketed as an alternative to cigarettes, but they do little to curb smokers’ nicotine cravings, a new study finds. The pouches – which contain nicotine powder and other flavorings, but no tobacco leaf – take too long to provide the nicotine “spike” that eases cravings, researchers report in the Nov. 15 issue of journal Addiction. Current smokers still get a much greater nicotine spike and much sharper relief from craving symptoms when they take a puff than when they use either low- or high-dose nicotine pouches, the results showed. The spike of nicotine from smoking occurs within about five minutes, said lead researcher Brittney Keller-Hamilton, of Ohio State University’s Cancer Control Program. By comparison, nicotine pouches take 30 minutes to an hour to hit peak effectiveness, researchers said. It’s reasonable to see how the instant gratification from cigarette smoking would be more appealing than oral nicotine pouches for smokers deep in the need for a nicotine fix, Keller-Hamilton said. At the same time, researchers are concerned that the pouches could appeal to young people, increasing nicotine addiction in a younger population while doing nothing to stem cancer risk among smokers. “Our challenge is to approach regulation of nicotine pouches to limit their appeal among young people while making them more appealing to adult smokers who would see health benefits by…  read on >  read on >