MONDAY, Sept. 21, 2020 (Healthday News) — As the U.S. coronavirus case count neared 200,000 on Monday, public health experts debated whether the spread of the virus will continue to slow or a new surge will come, as cold weather returns to much of the country. “What will happen, nobody knows,” Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, told The New York Times. “This virus has surprised us on many fronts, and we may be surprised again.” In the United States, fewer new coronavirus cases have been detected week by week since late July, but the nation’s daily count of new cases has started to climb again in recent days, the Times reported. Meanwhile, at least 73 other countries are seeing second surges in new cases. Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, told the Times it was conceivable that the death toll in the United States could reach 300,000 if Americans start to relax social distancing measures. As case counts started trending upward again, 1,400 public schools in New York City reopened Monday for nearly 90,000 pre-K students and children with advanced disabilities. The remaining 1 million students will start their school year online, with the option of returning to classrooms…  read on >

A portable generator may power up your home after a hurricane or storm knocks out your electricity, but it also poses the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, one expert says. Carbon monoxide is often called the silent killer because it’s colorless, odorless and tasteless. “Never use a generator in your home or garage, even if the doors and windows are open,” said Dr. Lindell Weaver, medical director of hyperbaric medicine at Intermountain Medical Center and LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. “Only use generators outside, more than 20 feet away from your home, doors and windows,” Weaver added in an Intermountain news release. All homes and businesses should have a carbon monoxide alarm. Carbon monoxide poisoning should be suspected if multiple people have “flu-like” symptoms all at once, especially if fever is absent, Weaver said. Another sign is if a person improves when out of the area where suspected carbon monoxide exposure is occurring. Carbon monoxide poisoning symptoms include: headache, dizziness, weakness, vomiting, chest pain, confusion, seizure, loss of consciousness and death. If a person develops symptoms consistent with carbon monoxide poisoning, evacuate the area immediately and call 911, Weaver said. Treatment for carbon monoxide poisoning reduces the risk of permanent brain or heart injury, but patients may still suffer disability. It’s crucial to take precautions to prevent and avoid carbon monoxide exposure, Weaver…  read on >

MONDAY, Sept. 14, 2020 (Healthday News) — Oxford University has announced that final-stage testing of a coronavirus vaccine it is developing with drug maker AstraZeneca will restart following a pause last week after a serious side effect showed up in a volunteer. “The independent review process has concluded and following the recommendations of both the independent safety review committee and the U.K. regulator… the trials will recommence in the U.K.,” the university said in a statement released on Saturday. No further details were given on the results of the review. Media reports have said the person who had the suspected adverse reaction had been volunteering in a trial based in the United Kingdom. The volunteer was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammatory syndrome that affects the spinal cord and is often sparked by viral infections. The AstraZeneca vaccine is considered a frontrunner among the dozens of coronavirus vaccines in various stages of testing around the world, the Associated Press reported. The university said in large trials “it is expected that some participants will become unwell and every case must be carefully evaluated to ensure careful assessment of safety.” Globally, some 18,000 people have received its vaccine so far, the AP reported. Two other vaccines are in final testing in the United States, one made by Moderna Inc. and the other by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.…  read on >

TUESDAY, Sept. 15, 2020 (Healthday News) — In a sign that Americans are becoming more wary about the safety of a new coronavirus vaccine, a new poll shows a majority of adults don’t trust what President Donald Trump has said on vaccine development. More than half (52%) of adults said they don’t trust the president’s vaccine comments, the NBC News/Survey Monkey poll found, while just 26 percent say they do. Twenty percent said they were “not aware” whether they trust what the president has said about a vaccine, NBC News reported. Those polled were also more skeptical about whether they or their families would get a government-approved coronavirus vaccine if one became widely available, NBC News reported. The poll’s latest data show that just 39% said they would get it, 23% said they wouldn’t and 36 percent say they weren’t sure. Just a month ago, 44% of Americans said they would get a government-approved vaccine, 22% said they wouldn’t, and 32% said they weren’t sure. The highest level of confidence in a coronavirus vaccine came during the week of Aug. 17 to Aug. 23, when 45% polled said they would get a vaccine. Despite public hesitancy, President Trump has promised a “safe and effective vaccine this year,” and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised states to prepare for “large-scale” vaccine distribution…  read on >

New research may have people with asthma breathing a little easier: Doctors found the airway disease doesn’t raise the risk of being hospitalized due to COVID-19. The researchers also noted that people with asthma weren’t more likely than people without it to need a ventilator to help them breathe. “A lot of people with asthma think they have a predisposition to severe COVID, and they worry a lot about going out. They should take precautions like using their masks, but they may not need to worry so much,” said study author Dr. Fernando Holguin. He’s director of the Asthma Clinical and Research Program at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, in Aurora. Holguin said the proportion of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with asthma was around 6%. “For most places, that’s an asthma prevalence that is at or lower than the asthma prevalence in the general population. To compare, with influenza [flu], we typically see about a quarter of those in the hospital have asthma,” he said. When the pandemic first began, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that people with asthma had a higher risk of hospitalization and other severe outcomes. People with asthma do have a significantly higher risk of complications with flu, another viral infection. In the new study, the researchers reviewed 15 studies on COVID-19 infections to see how…  read on >

About 1 in 9 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, but experts say early detection can be a lifesaver. “Prostate cancer that is detected early, typically while it is still within the prostate gland, has a better chance of being successfully treated,” explained Dr. Alexander Kutikov, chief of the Division of Urologic Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “Some types of prostate cancer are aggressive. However, most cancers are quite slow-growing, and a significant portion can be monitored without aggressive treatment,” he said in a Fox Chase news release. Men aged 55-69 should consider prostate cancer screening, the American Urological Association says. “Much debate has centered around screening for prostate cancer. Given the risks and benefits of screening, not every man should be screened for prostate cancer,” Kutikov said. “Men should talk to their health care provider about their risk factors, options and preferences. Together, they can make a decision.” In the early stages, prostate cancer usually causes no symptoms. More advanced prostate cancer may cause: difficulty urinating, including a slow or weak urinary stream or the need to urinate more often, especially at night; blood in urine or semen; pain or burning during urination; discomfort in the pelvic area; bone pain, or trouble getting an erection. “Many of these symptoms can be caused by something other than prostate cancer. However, you…  read on >

TUESDAY, Sept. 8, 2020 (Healthday News) — In a sobering illustration of the toll the coronavirus pandemic took this summer, tallies now show the number of Americans who have died of COVID-19 jumped from just under 100,000 to over 186,000 between Memorial Day and Labor Day, while cases more than quadrupled, to over 6.2 million. As troubling as those statistics are, public health experts warn the fall and winter could be even worse, the Washington Post reported. A cold-weather surge of COVID-19 cases could trigger a much-feared “second wave” of infections and deaths that begins well before Election Day in November, though scientists believe the crest of cases would come weeks later, the Post reported “My feeling is that there is a wave coming, and it’s not so much whether it’s coming but how big is it going to be,” Eili Klein, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, told the newspaper. Still, national numbers have been slowly dropping following surges that showed up in the Sun Belt in early summer, the Post reported. A model produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) predicts a daily death toll of 1,907 on Election Day, roughly double the current number. Under the IHME forecast, the numbers would continue to rise until early December, peaking at more than…  read on >

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 9, 2020 (Healthday News) — Final testing of a leading coronavirus vaccine candidate was paused by drugmaker AstraZeneca on Tuesday after a trial volunteer experienced a serious adverse reaction. The company did not release specifics on the case, but whether the reaction was caused by the vaccine or was coincidental is still unclear, The New York Times reported. The pause, first reported by STAT, will allow for a safety review and investigation of what caused the illness. The disappointing news came as drug companies around the world race to develop a coronavirus vaccine that could bring an end to an international pandemic that has claimed almost 900,000 lives, the Times reported. AstraZeneca’s vaccine is a front-runner, with late-stage clinical trials underway in different countries. If the cause of the reaction turns out to be related to the vaccine, efforts to have it ready by the end of the year could be delayed, the Times reported. In a statement, AstraZeneca described the trial’s halt, which was done voluntarily, as a “routine action which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials, while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials.” The company added that in large trials participants sometimes become sick by chance “but [the cases] must be independently reviewed to check this carefully.”…  read on >

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 >