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Roughly 16 million Americans have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but only a fraction have access to a lifesaving treatment called pulmonary rehabilitation. COPD is a family of diseases, including emphysema and chronic bronchitis, that make breathing difficult and worsens over time. The main cause is smoking. Other causes include secondhand smoke and exposure to polluted air, chemical fumes or dusts. There is no cure. But pulmonary rehab can help after a hospital stay, according to Dr. David Mannino, director of the Pulmonary Epidemiology Research Laboratory at the University of Kentucky, in Lexington. Pulmonary rehab teaches patients to exercise, eat well and use medications appropriately in order to regain their strength. Rehab clinics can also foster socialization, as COPD patients often feel isolated, Mannino said. To learn more, a team from the University of Massachusetts studied data from almost 200,000 Medicare patients hospitalized for COPD in 2014. The findings were published May 12 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Of that group, 1.5% (2,721 patients) began pulmonary rehabilitation within 90 days of leaving the hospital. In total, just over 38,300 patients died within one of year of discharge from the hospital. The difference in the outcomes between those who had rehab within 90 days and those who didn’t was striking: Within a year of discharge, 19.6% of the group who did not have… read on >

(HealthDay News) — President Donald Trump told the World Health Organization on Monday that the United States would permanently end all funding to the organization if it did not agree to make significant changes in the next 30 days. The threat was delivered in a letter that Trump posted on his Twitter account. Sent to WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the letter also warned that the United States would reconsider its membership in the WHO because it was soft on China and “so clearly not serving America’s interests.” “It is clear the repeated missteps by you and your organization in responding to the pandemic have been extremely costly for the world,” the four-page letter said. Also in the letter, Trump claims that the WHO “consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal.” But the prestigious British medical journal shot back at that accusation in a statement released Tuesday, saying “The Lancet published no report in December, 2019, referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China. The first reports the journal published were on January 24, 2020.” Last year, the United States contributed about $553 million of the WHO’s $6 billion budget, with China providing $43 million, The New York Times reported. Before… read on >

As coronavirus pandemic restrictions are lifted, many Americans will face physical and mental health challenges — including fear and anxiety — as they return to work. “Uncertainty and unpredictability can really create an unhealthy amount of fear and stress, especially when it’s sustained over such a long period of time,” said Dr. K. Luan Phan, head of psychiatry and behavioral health at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center in Columbus. “Challenges will remain as businesses reopen, and the typical workplace will look very different following this pandemic,” he said in an OSU news release. Phan said it’s essential to find new ways to work as a team while maintaining your distance from colleagues and preventing the spread of infection. Infection precautions such as taking each worker’s temperature on arrival, providing face masks, keeping work stations at least 6 feet apart and wiping down surfaces can make everyone feel safer and less anxious. “Physical and mental health are closely intertwined. While you practice good hygiene and physical distancing in the office, you should also practice stress-reduction,” said Bernadette Melnyk, dean of the College of Nursing and OSU’s chief wellness officer. For instance, she suggests taking five deep, abdominal breaths as you wash your hands for at least 20 seconds. “Doing this at least five times a day can reduce anxiety and even lower your blood pressure,”… read on >

(HealthDay News) — The coronavirus crisis has pushed almost 3 million more Americans into the ranks of the unemployed, according to new statistics released Thursday. At the same time, the World Health Organization warned that the new virus could be here to stay. In the past eight weeks, a whopping 36 million Americans have lost their jobs as the country went into lockdown to try and slow the spread of COVID-19. The statistics served as a grim reminder of the economic carnage the coronavirus pandemic has wrought so far, with no end in sight. “It is important to put this on the table: This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities, and this virus may never go away,” Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO emergency response team, said Thursday, the New York Times reported. And as many states across America continued to move through reopening plans, the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a stay-at-home order extension issued by Gov. Tony Evers, the Washington Post reported. Some Wisconsin counties and major cities, including Milwaukee, still plan to keep their local restrictions in place, the newspaper reported. Even as the country’s top health officials testified to Congress on Tuesday about the dangers of reopening too quickly, a new report shows millions more Americans are now venturing out in public. About 25… read on >

More than one-quarter of popular English-language COVID-19 information videos posted to YouTube are misleading, researchers warn. There are posts, for example, falsely claiming that drug companies already have a cure for COVID-19, but won’t sell it, and that different countries have stronger strains of coronavirus, a new study finds. YouTube viewers “should be skeptical, use common sense and consult reputable sources — public health agencies or physicians — to fact-check their information,” said study lead author Heidi Oi-Yee Li, a medical student at the University of Ottawa in Canada. With billions of viewers, YouTube has enormous potential to bolster or hamper public health efforts, Li and her colleagues said in background notes. But what they turned up in their recent YouTube search is “alarming,” Li said. “In an ideal world, social media platforms should take more responsibility for content uploaded,” she said. But “this is an unrealistic expectation, given the billions of users uploading information every second across the globe.” Li’s team did a simple keyword search for “coronavirus” and “COVID-19” on March 21, 2020. After compiling the top 75 videos for each of the search words, the team excluded all non-English clips, those exceeding an hour, duplicates, and anything not actually about COVID-19. The remaining 69 videos had already been viewed nearly 258 million times, they said. Just under one-third (29%) were clips from… read on >

Sense of smell most often diminishes by the third day of infection with the new coronavirus, and many patients also lose their sense of taste at the same time, a new study finds. The findings may help identify patients most likely to benefit from antiviral treatment, according to the researchers. “The relationship between decreased sense of smell and the rest of the COVID-19 is something to be aware of. If someone has a decreased sense of smell with COVID-19, we know they are within the first week of the disease course and there is still another week or two to expect,” said principal investigator Dr. Ahmad Sedaghat of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. His team examined characteristics and symptoms of 103 patients in Switzerland who were diagnosed with COVID-19 over six weeks. The patients were asked how many days they had COVID-19 symptoms and also about the timing and severity of lost or reduced sense of smell, along with other symptoms. At least 61% of the patients reported reduced or lost sense of smell, and the average onset for this was 3.4 days, according to the study. The findings were published online recently in the journal Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. Problems with sense of smell were more likely to occur in younger patients and women. “We also found in this study that the… read on >

(HealthDay News) — As millions of Americans try to navigate a safe re-entry into public life, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday released recommendations to guide schools, businesses and restaurants through reopening during the coronavirus pandemic. Six “checklists” — which also offer advice to day care centers, mass transit and camps — come after many states have already begun to ease social distancing on their own. These final guidances are less detailed than draft recommendations the agency sent to the White House for review last month, the Washington Post reported. A CDC spokesman told the Post that additional recommendations may still come from the agency. The six checklists were ready for release, so the Trump administration decided to put them out while other guidelines make their way through the review process, the spokesman added. The documents are aimed at helping facilities decide if they’re ready to open and inform how they do so, the spokesman told the newspaper. “This was an effort on our part to make some decision trees we thought might be helpful to those moving forward with opening their establishment,” the spokesperson said. But some public health officials say more is needed. “We need to unleash the voices of the scientists in our public health system in the United States so they can be heard, and their guidance… read on >

COVID-19 hits smokers much harder than nonsmokers, according to a new review. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), analyzed 19 studies that included data on smoking and severity of COVID-19 among nearly 11,600 patients in the United States, China and Korea. Most patients were hospitalized, but two studies also included outpatients. Just over 6% of participants had a history of smoking. While COVID-19 symptoms worsened in 18% of all patients, the rate was 29.8% among current or former smokers, compared with 17.6% among nonsmokers. “Smoking is associated with substantially higher risk of COVID-19 progression,” said study co-author Stanton Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF. And when COVID-19 progressed, current or ex-smokers had more acute or critical conditions and a higher risk of death, the researchers found. “This finding suggests that California’s ongoing strong tobacco control measures that have lowered smoking may, together with the state’s other strong public health interventions, be contributing to California’s efforts to thwart the effect of COVID-19,” Glantz said in a university news release. Co-author Dr. Roengrudee Patanavanich, a visiting scholar at UCSF, noted that the fact tobacco use is lower among COVID patients than the general population has been cited as evidence for a protective effect of smoking. “But this low prevalence may actually be due to an under-assessment of… read on >

Insomnia may significantly increase the risk that older adults will be unable to shake off depression, researchers say. For the study, the investigators analyzed data on nearly 600 people over age 60 who visited primary care centers in New York City, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. All had some level of depression. Compared to patients whose sleep improved, those with worsening sleep problems were about 28 times more likely to be diagnosed with major depression at the end of the 12-month study. Patients whose sleep worsened also had nearly 12 times the odds of minor depression and were 10% more likely to report having suicidal thoughts, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study. The report was recently published online in the journal Sleep. Compared to patients whose sleep improved, those with persistent, but not worsening, insomnia were more likely to have lasting depression. But their risk was not as high as patients whose sleep got worse. “These results suggest that, among older adults with depression, insomnia symptoms offer an important clue to their risks for persistent depression and suicidal ideation,” said study senior author Adam Spira, a professor of mental health at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. “We can’t say that the sleep disturbances we’re seeing are necessarily causing the poor depression outcomes,” he said in a Hopkins news release. “But the results suggest… read on >

The coronavirus pandemic has been tough on Americans of all ages, but parents need to watch their teens for signs of depression, anxiety, anger and other emotional and mental health problems, a leading pediatricians’ group says. “It’s normal for teens to feel sad during this time, crying sometimes because they miss their friends or because sports and musical productions were canceled,” said Dr. Sara Goza, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). But some teens may find it especially difficult to cope, and parents should watch for the following signs that their teen may need more support, according to the AAP: Changes in mood, ongoing irritability, or feelings of hopelessness or rage. Changes in behavior, such as stepping back from personal relationships. Changes in weight or eating patterns. Changes in appearance, such as lack of basic personal hygiene. A lack of interest in activities the teen previously enjoyed. Difficulty falling or staying asleep, or starting to sleep all the time. Problems with memory, thinking, or concentration. An increase in risky or reckless behaviors, such as using drugs or alcohol, and thoughts about death or suicide, or talking about it. Parents should keep lines of communication open and check in with their teens often to discuss how they’re feeling and managing, and to watch for signs of mental health struggles. It’s important for parents to… read on >