Having COPD can make it hard to breathe as it taxes both the lungs and the heart, but a new study offers a possible solution: Using an air purifier helped patients’ hearts work better. Researchers found that when people with COPD, also known as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, consistently used air purifiers, their hearts were better able to adapt their heart rates in response to daily demands, something known as heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is a key measure of overall heart health. In fact, the participants who used air purifiers daily saw a 25% increase in their HRV. Study author Dr. Sarath Raju, an assistant professor of medicine who specializes in lung diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, explained that an increase in HRV is important. “People with poor HRVs are at risk for a number of cardiac problems, such as heart attacks or a worsening of COPD symptoms,” he said. “All of these things increase the odds of someone with COPD being hospitalized, which is of course something we want to avoid.” The study also looked at the role of what scientists call ultrafine particles, tiny pieces of irritants in the air that people breathe. Raju and his colleagues found there was an association between the presence of these particles in a person’s home environment and a negative…  read on >  read on >

Capitalism is thought to bring out the best in workers, but there’s a dark side to tying a person’s everyday efforts to their weekly paycheck. Folks relying on short-term, freelanced office jobs, or jobs where pay is linked to hustle — depending largely on tips, commissions and bonuses — may often suffer poor health related to their financial insecurity, new research has shown. Employees with fluctuating and unpredictable pay tend to have poorer sleep, more stress and miserable physical symptoms that affect their work and home life, said lead researcher Gordon Sayre, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Emlyon Business School in France. Those symptoms grow worse as a person’s finances become more unstable, Sayre said, and the amount of savings they might have on hand seems to provide no solace. “There’s a lot of research looking at how performance-based pay, commission-based pay, piece-rate based pay leads to higher levels of motivation or higher levels of performance. That’s been sort of fairly well-established, and that’s one of the reasons why these pay practices have become popular,” Sayre said. “But there are some costs to these types of pay arrangements, and we need to consider them in addition to the performance benefits they bring,” he added. “They also have these health costs.” Millions of Americans are in jobs where they can’t count on a steady…  read on >  read on >

Both extremely hot and very cold days take their toll on people who have heart disease, particularly those with heart failure. A new multinational analysis of 32 million heart-related deaths over the past 40 years found more occurred on days with severe temperatures, an issue that climate change could make even worse. Although the greatest number of deaths were due to heart failure, extreme weather also led to a rise in stroke; arrhythmia (an irregular heartbeat); and ischemic heart disease (which is caused by narrowed heart arteries). “The decline in cardiovascular death rates since the 1960s is a huge public health success story as cardiologists identified and addressed individual risk factors such as tobacco, physical inactivity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and others,” according to researcher Dr. Barrak Alahmad. He is a fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “The current challenge now is the environment and what climate change might hold for us,” Alahmad said in a news release from the American Heart Association (AHA). Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. To study the impact of temperatures, researchers analyzed data for 32 million heart-related deaths in 27 countries between 1979 and 2019. The investigators compared heart-related deaths on the hottest and the coldest 2.5% of days in 567 cities with those on days when temperatures were…  read on >  read on >

If someone is stricken with a blood cancer or life-threatening clot, they’ll probably fare better if they are white and wealthy, three new studies show. The ongoing impact of patient race and income to medical outcomes was in the spotlight Saturday in New Orleans at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). In one study, a team led by Dr. Matthew Maurer, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., looked at who got enrolled (or didn’t) in clinical trials for new treatments against a blood cancer known as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). It’s the most common form of lymphoma in the United States. According to ASH, existing therapies help cure about 60% of patients, but another 40% may not be helped. So, enrollment in clinical trials can be crucial for some patients. The Mayo study examined data on enrollment in DLBCL trials from eight large academic medical centers across America. It found that 76% of enrollees were white. Results from lab tests were key to getting accepted into the trials, but Black or Hispanic Americans were much less likely to meet those lab-based criteria than were whites, the research showed. That means trial organizers may need to take a closer look at lab-based eligibility criteria to help level the playing field for entry into future clinical trials. “These exclusion criteria are…  read on >  read on >

An experimental therapy that uses the body’s own immune system cells may beat a standard treatment for patients with advanced melanoma, a new clinical trial finds. Researchers found that the therapy doubled the amount of time melanoma patients lived without their skin cancer progressing, versus a long-used drug called ipilimumab (Yervoy). The approach, called tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy, harnesses the natural tumor-fighting ability of patients’ own immune system T cells. Experts stressed that TIL is still experimental, and for now, patients can only receive it if they enroll in a clinical trial. “It’s very promising, but it’s still investigational,” said Dr. Nikhil Khushalani, who specializes in treating melanoma at Moffitt Cancer Center, in Tampa, Fla. That said, the new findings show that for patients who are good candidates for TIL, it beats ipilimumab, according to Khushalani, who was not involved in the trial. “I’d definitely utilize TIL over ipilimumab in the appropriate patients,” he said. However, the TIL process is no easy feat. And Khushalani said he foresees it being offered only at certain medical centers with the necessary expertise and resources — akin to organ transplantation. The study was published in the Dec. 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Melanoma is the least common but deadliest form of skin cancer. Historically, the prognosis has been dismal for people with metastatic melanoma…  read on >  read on >

Some Americans appear to be moving from areas with frequent hurricanes and heat waves to places threatened by wildfire and rising heat. They’re trading in the risk of one set of natural disasters for another because the wildfires are only beginning to become a national issue, according to researchers. “These findings are concerning, because people are moving into harm’s way — into regions with wildfires and rising temperatures, which are expected to become more extreme due to climate change,” lead author Mahalia Clark said in a news release from the University of Vermont. She’s a researcher at the university’s Gund Institute for Environment and Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. The researchers studied the issue by combining U.S. Census data with that on natural disasters, weather, temperature, land cover, demographics and socioeconomic factors. Between 2010 and 2020, the top U.S. migration destinations included cities in the Pacific Northwest; Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and Utah in the Southwest; Texas; Florida, and a large area of the Southeast from Nashville to Atlanta to Washington, D.C. They moved away from the Midwest, the Great Plains and areas along the Mississippi River, including many counties hit hardest by hurricanes or frequent heat waves, the researchers said. “These findings suggest that for many Americans, the risks and dangers of living in hurricane zones may be starting to outweigh the benefits…  read on >  read on >

Many Americans believe that suicide rates spike every time the holiday season comes around. There’s just one catch: It’s not true. Yet, a new analysis reveals that 56% of stories published last year in U.S. newspapers that touched on a potential connection between the holidays and suicide perpetuated the falsehood. Only 44% debunked the notion. When it comes to suicide rates, “we have consistently found that the winter months of November, December and January are the lowest, or close to lowest, every year, and there is no evidence of a surge in suicides during the end-of-year holidays,” said Dan Romer, research director for the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Romer and his Annenberg colleagues have conducted an analysis of suicide rates and media coverage of suicide during the holidays for more than two decades. The team used data compiled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine what the suicide trends truly are. At the same time, each year the researchers review how coverage in American newspapers is framing the issue. Are media outfits perpetuating confusion, or are they bursting the misinformation balloon? The researchers found that there was an overall rise in suicides in 2021, amounting to 14 out of every 100,000 Americans. That’s a rise compared with both 2019 and 2020, but lower than the 14.2…  read on >  read on >

Researchers have discovered a link between access to welfare payments and foster care. As many as 29,000 fewer children may have entered the foster care system during the 12-year study if U.S. states had made it easier for poor families to receive cash through the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. “The relatively small amount of income provided through TANF may be enough to help prevent some child maltreatment and result in fewer kids being placed into foster care,” said study co-author Michelle Johnson-Motoyama, a professor of social work at Ohio State University. “That’s about 29,000 children who might have a different life trajectory if their family had more resources,” she said in a university news release. “I think we have a pretty strong case for why we should invest in families and support them to do their best at parenting.” The TANF program was established in 1996 as a block grant program that gives states up to $16.5 billion a year to provide assistance for needy U.S. families. Benefits vary widely. One example: Monthly cash payments for a family of three were $170 in Mississippi and $923 in Alaska in 2016. “States have a lot of discretion in how they use the block grants for TANF and that allowed us to see how differences between states — and changes in states over…  read on >  read on >