Add a heightened risk for depression to the list of challenges facing the caregivers of loved ones who have Alzheimer’s disease. A new study found that older adults caring for spouses newly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s had a 30% increase in symptoms of depression compared to those whose spouses didn’t have Alzheimer’s or related dementia. And with care often lasting for years and Alzheimer’s symptoms continuing to worsen, those caregivers can have sustained depression for a long period of time. “We know there’s a lot of research out there on dementia and how it affects people diagnosed. But there’s not a lot of research out there looking at the emotional health of partners,” said study author Melissa Harris, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. She and her team analyzed data on 16,650 older adults from the University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study. They looked at depressive symptoms over an extended period, rather than for just a snapshot in time, as had been done in previous studies. They considered individual symptoms, including feeling depressed, alone, sad and or that everything is an effort. Participants also answered whether they had felt happy in the past two weeks and whether they had felt like they enjoyed life. “The fact that we saw these depressive symptoms stay for at least two years, beyond two…  read on >

THURSDAY, Sept. 10, 2020 (Healthday News) — Just weeks into the fall semester, universities and colleges in all 50 states are now struggling to contain the spread of coronavirus on their campuses. More than 40,000 cases of COVID-19 have been reported among students, staff and faculty nationwide, CNN reported. That number is likely higher due to a lag from schools that update their data every few days. Many outbreaks have cropped up after gatherings at fraternities and sororities: One cluster of COVID-19 cases was traced back to a fraternity party held at the University of New Hampshire. More than 100 people attended the Aug. 29 party and few wore masks, CNN reported. At Indiana University Bloomington, 30 sorority and fraternity houses have been ordered to quarantine following what campus officials have described as an “alarming increase” in COVID-19 cases within the houses, CNN reported. School officials told Greek houses to suspend all in-person activities until at least Sept. 14, according to CNN. “IU’s team of public health experts is extremely concerned that Greek houses are seeing uncontrolled spread of COVID-19,” the university said in a statement. “This poses a significant risk to the nearly 2,600 students currently living in Greek or other communal housing organizations, as well as to the other 42,000 IU Bloomington students, the campus’s 12,000 faculty and staff, and the surrounding community.”…  read on >

Flu and pneumonia vaccines lead to fewer hospital deaths among heart failure patients, a new study finds. “Our study provides further impetus for annual immunizations in patients with heart failure. Despite advice to do so, uptake remains low,” said study author Dr. Karthik Gonuguntla, of the University of Connecticut. In heart failure, your heart can’t pump blood as well as it should. This leads to fluid buildup in the lungs that causes shortness of breath, coughing and reduced quality of life. Respiratory infections like pneumonia and the flu make heart failure worse, so annual vaccinations are recommended for patients. However, few studies have compared outcomes among heart failure patients who have and haven’t received these vaccinations. In this study, the researchers looked at nearly 3 million heart failure patients, average age 70, in the United States who were hospitalized between 2010 and 2014. Only 1.4% of the patients had received the flu vaccine and just 1.4% had received the pneumonia vaccine. Rates of in-hospital death were much lower among patients who received the flu and pneumonia vaccines (just over 1% for each) than among those who didn’t receive either vaccine (almost 4%), the researchers found. The study findings were released Friday and scheduled for presentation at the European Society of Cardiology virtual annual meeting. “Pneumonia and flu vaccines are vital to preventing these respiratory infections…  read on >

Older Americans with depression have held up well to the threat of COVID-19, a new study finds. Researchers saw no increase in their depression and anxiety during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. And they said these seniors showed resilience to the stress of physical distancing and isolation. “We thought they would be more vulnerable to the stress of COVID because they are, by [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] definition, the most vulnerable population,” said study co-author Dr. Helen Lavretsky, professor-in-residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But what we learned is that older adults with depression can be resilient. They told us that coping with chronic depression taught them to be resilient,” she said in a university news release. The researchers, from UCLA and four other universities, interviewed people older than 60, average age 69, during the first two months of the pandemic. Participants lived in Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh and St. Louis, and were enrolled in studies of treatment-resistant depression. The study was funded by the University of Pittsburgh. The researchers found that the volunteers’ depression and anxiety levels, or risk of suicide, were the same before and during the pandemic. In general, participants were more concerned about the risk of contracting the coronavirus than the risks of isolation. Also, while all maintained…  read on >

As the number of coronavirus cases in the United states passed the dubious milestone of 6 million on Sunday, a new report shows COVID-19 is now spreading at a faster rate in children and teenagers than among the general public. The troubling data, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, comes just as schools and universities around the country are reopening for fall classes. Since the start of the summer, every state in the country has witnessed an increase in the number of young people who have tested positive for coronavirus. In late May, about 5 percent of the nation’s cases were recorded in minors, the The New York Times reported. By Aug. 20, that number had risen to more than 9 percent. Young children seem to catch and transmit the virus less often than adults, but Dr. Sean O’Leary, vice chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases, told the Times that community spread in many parts of the United States this summer has corresponded with more infections among children. After reports of outbreaks at summer camps, it is clear that the virus can spread among children under certain circumstances, Dr. William Raszka Jr., a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Vermont’s College of Medicine, told the Times. He worries about opening schools in places where infection rates are high.…  read on >

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on Monday that it would extend its flexible free school meals program through the fall, to help keep millions of kids fed as the coronavirus pandemic continues to hold the country in its grip. The program, which allowed parents and caregivers to collect free meals for their kids at any school this summer, was set to expire at the start of September but pressure had been mounting on the agency to continue the program, the Washington Post reported. In mid-August, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said that extending the full scope of the free meals for kids program beyond August would go “beyond what [the] USDA currently has the authority to implement and would be closer to a universal school meals program which Congress has not authorized or funded.” However, Perdue said in a statement released Monday that his agency was “extending summer meal program flexibilities for as long as we can, legally and financially.” The statement said the millions of families that rely on the program would be able to do so until as late as the end of the year. “We appreciate the incredible efforts by our school foodservice professionals year in and year out, but this year we have an unprecedented situation,” Perdue said. “This extension of summer program authority will employ summer program sponsors…  read on >

In a finding that should encourage scientists who are racing to develop coronavirus vaccines, a new study out of Iceland suggests that immunity to the disease may not be as fleeting as first thought. Among 30,000 Icelandic residents who were tested for antibodies to COVID-19, researchers discovered the antibodies stayed in people’s systems for at least four months, the study found. Of those who tested positive for the coronavirus, 487 had received multiple antibody tests. In the first two months after a patient was diagnosed, the antibodies that can confer immunity rose significantly. For the next two months, antibody levels remained stable, according to the study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. In a commentary that accompanied the study, scientists from Harvard University and the U.S. National Institutes of Health noted that while the Icelandic research focused on a largely homogeneous population, “this study provides hope that host immunity to this unpredictable and highly contagious virus may not be fleeting and may be similar to that elicited by most other viral infections.” Earlier research on coronavirus antibodies had indicated that immunity might be short-lived, leaving people vulnerable to reinfection. But the Icelandic study offers hope that a vaccine that triggers a strong immune response will have a longer-lasting effect than some had believed. Interestingly, the Icelandic researchers also found that women, nonsmokers…  read on >

Men: A bulging belly may be bad for more than your heart. A new study suggests it might also up your risk of dying from prostate cancer. Researchers analyzed data from more than 218,000 men in Britain who were free of cancer when they enrolled in the U.K. BioBank study between 2006 and 2010. Over almost 11 years of follow-up, nearly 600 of the men died of prostate cancer. There was no clear association between risk of prostate cancer death and body mass index (BMI — an estimate of body fat based on weight and height) or total body fat percentage. However, there was a link between high levels of fat around the belly and waist (central adiposity) and prostate cancer death risk, according to the study being presented this week at the virtual European and International Conference on Obesity. Men in the top 25% for waist circumference were 35% more likely to die of prostate cancer than men in the bottom 25%, while those in the top 25% for waist-to-hip ratio were 34% more likely to die than men in the bottom 25%. “We found a significant association between concentration of body fat around the belly and waist and the risk of prostate cancer death, but no clear association between total body fat and risk of prostate cancer death,” said study author Aurora Pérez-Cornago,…  read on >

THURSDAY, Sept. 3, 2020 (Healthday News) — Colleges across America struggled to control coronavirus outbreaks on campus, even as Dr. Anthony Fauci warned on Wednesday that sending students home after an outbreak is “the worst thing you could do.” Universities continue to be hit with alarming infection rates, and many have already switched to online learning, the Washington Post reported. In some instances, students have been told to move out of their dorms and return home, the newspaper said. But Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, told NBC’s “Today” show that it was important to ensure that infected students are placed in isolation, “but don’t have them go home, because they could be spreading it in their home state.” Along with shutting down in-person instruction, many universities are cracking down on student activities that fuel the spread of COVID-19, the Post reported. At the University of Illinois, where more than 700 students have tested positive in less than two weeks, administrators instituted a ban on “gathering in small or large groups under any circumstances.” In what is the equivalent of stay-at-home orders, students will not be allowed to leave their dorm rooms for anything besides essential activities — attending class, buying groceries, solo outdoor exercise, religious services and medical visits. The college also plans to aggressively crack down on parties, the Post reported. “We…  read on >

In the midst of the ‘Me Too’ movement, a new study finds that people sexually harassed at work may be at increased risk for attempted suicide and suicide. The findings out of Sweden show that workplace sexual harassment may “represent an important risk factor for suicidal behavior,” said study author Linda Magnusson Hanson, an associate professor in the psychology department at Stockholm University, and colleagues. The research included more than 85,000 male and female workers in Sweden who completed a questionnaire between 1995 and 2013. It asked if they’d been sexually harassed at work in the past 12 months by either fellow workers, superiors or by what they termed “others,” such as clients, passengers, students or patients. Overall, nearly 5% of the workers reported workplace sexual harassment: about 2% of men and 7.5% of women. Those who said they were sexually harassed were more likely to be younger, single, divorced, in low-paid but high-strain jobs, and born outside of Europe. The workers were then followed for an average of up to 13 years. During that time, 125 died by suicide and 816 made a suicide attempt. While the study was only observational and did not prove a cause-and-effect link, workplace sexual harassment was associated with a nearly threefold increased risk of suicide and almost doubled increased risk of attempted suicide, the researchers found. The increased…  read on >