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 >

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 >

Folks struggling with depression are much more likely to turn to marijuana to ease their symptoms these days, and that’s not necessarily a good thing, researchers report. Depressed people are more than twice as likely to have used pot within the last month and three times more likely to use it nearly every day in 2015-2016, a far higher number than 10 years before, the new study found. Experts say this boom in use among the depressed is probably linked to the spread of marijuana legalization across the United States, particularly for medical purposes. “Its accessibility has increased over the specific time period that this study measures,” noted Michael Wetter, director of adolescent and young adult medicine with the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. The problem is that previous studies have shown pot actually can worsen mood disorders like anxiety or depression, said Dr. Elie Aoun, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry with the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. “Marijuana does not change anything in the underlying brain pathology that contributes to depression,” Aoun said. “It just numbs your feelings so you can get through a couple of hours without thinking about your problems. When the effect dissipates, you’re going to be more depressed than you were before.” He and Wetter were not part of the research. The new study relied on data…  read on >

The coronavirus pandemic silenced choirs around the globe, but researchers in Sweden say it may be safe to sing with others if you take precautions. “There are many reports about the spreading of COVID-19 in connection with choirs singing. Therefore, different restrictions have been introduced all over the world to make singing safer,” said Jakob Löndahl, an associate professor of aerosol technology at Lund University. “So far, however, there has been no scientific investigation of the amount of aerosol particles and larger droplets that we actually exhale when we sing,” he said in a university news release. Löndahl and his colleagues wanted to gain a better understanding of the amount of aerosols (small airborne particles), droplets and coronavirus emitted when people sing. They conducted tests with 12 healthy singers and two people with confirmed COVID-19. Seven of the participants were professional opera singers. The study found that singing — particularly loud and consonant-rich singing — spreads a lot of aerosol particles and droplets into the surrounding air. According to Malin Alsved, a doctoral student of aerosol technology at the university, “Some droplets are so large that they only move a few decimeters from the mouth before they fall, whereas others are smaller and may continue to hover for minutes. In particular, the enunciation of consonants releases very large droplets and the letters B and P…  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 >

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 >