Middle-aged men who were anxious or depressed teens are at increased risk for heart attack, according to a large, long-term study. It included more than 238,000 men born between 1952 and 1956 who underwent extensive exams when they were 18 or 19 years old and were followed to age 58. Men diagnosed with anxiety or depression in their late teens had a 20% higher risk of heart attack than those who didn’t, the study showed. The findings only reflect an association. The link was partly, but not fully, explained by poorer ability to cope with everyday stress and lower physical fitness in teens with the mental health conditions, according to findings presented Wednesday at a virtual meeting of the European Society of Cardiology. The takeaway: “Be vigilant and look for signs of stress, depression or anxiety that is beyond the normal teenage angst: Seek help if there seems to be a persistent problem,” suggested study author Cecilia Bergh, a senior lecturer in health sciences at Orebro University in Sweden. “If a healthy lifestyle is encouraged as early as possible in childhood and adolescence it is more likely to persist into adulthood and improve long-term health,” she said in a meeting news release. Bergh said researchers already knew that men who were physically fit but stressed as teens seemed less likely to maintain fitness. “Our previous…  read on >

The first rapid coronavirus test that doesn’t need any special computer equipment to produce results was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday. Made by Abbott Laboratories, the 15-minute test will sell for $5, giving it an edge over similar tests that need to be popped into a small machine, the Associated Press reported. No larger than a credit card, the Abbott test is based on the same technology used to test for the flu, strep throat and other infections. BinaxNOW is the fourth rapid test in the United States that detects COVID-19 antigens, proteins found on the surface of the coronavirus, rather than the virus itself, the AP reported. It’s considered a faster, but less precise, screening method. Abbott’s entry into the rapid COVID-19 test market offers yet another option to expand testing, the AP reported. The FDA also recently gave its blessing to a saliva test from Yale University that bypasses some of the supplies that have led to testing bottlenecks, the wire service said. Neither test can be performed at home. But several companies are developing rapid at-home tests, though none have yet won FDA approval, the AP reported. Abbott’s new test still requires a nasal swab be taken by a health worker, like most older coronavirus tests. The Yale saliva test eliminates the need for a swab, but…  read on >

President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that his administration will have a coronavirus vaccine ready for Americans before the year ends. The lofty promise came during his acceptance speech on the final night of the Republican National Convention. “In recent months, our nation and the entire planet has been struck by a new and powerful invisible enemy,” Trump said to a largely mask-less crowd of 1,500 supporters gathered on the White House lawn. “We are delivering lifesaving therapies. And we’ll produce a vaccine before the end of the year, or maybe even sooner.” The pledge is ambitious by any measure. Several companies are vying for vaccine approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by the end of this year or by early 2021, but approval is just the beginning, The New York Times reported. Patients must be willing to take the vaccine, and there must be enough doses produced to be distributed widely. Medical experts noted that the audience setting for Trump’s speech posed the danger of community spread and set another bad example when Americans are being told they need to continue to wear masks, maintain social distancing and limit large gatherings, the Washington Post reported. “When you look at the way the president has handled the pandemic, it has basically been one evasion after another evasion,” Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert…  read on >

FRIDAY, Aug. 14, 2020 (HealthDay News) The novel coronavirus is surging once more in U.S. nursing homes, where it killed tens of thousands at the start of the pandemic. Federal data cited by two long-term care associations this week illustrated the troubling trend: The number of new cases in nursing homes bottomed out at 5,468 during the week of June 21, but it climbed to 8,628 for the week of July 19, the Washington Post reported. That’s a 58 percent increase, which roughly parallels the rise in overall U.S. cases during that period. On Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that more COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes and assisted-living facilities may be coming, even as total caseloads have begun to decline. Florida has seen an outbreak of coronavirus cases this summer and has a large elderly population, the Post reported. “Over the next couple weeks, I’m concerned of seeing kind of a tail, where we start to see some of these long-term-care deaths,” DeSantis said at a forum in Tallahassee. In a different analysis of 35 states, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that cases in long-term care facilities jumped 11 percent in the two weeks ending July 10. But in 23 hot spot states, they rose 18 percent, compared with just 4 percent in 12 states that had the virus under better control, the Post…  read on >

Scientists say they are seeing signs of lasting immunity to the coronavirus, even in those who only experience mild symptoms of COVID-19. A slew of studies show that disease-fighting antibodies, as well as B-cells and T-cells that can recognize the virus, appear to persist months after infections have run their course, The New York Times reported. “This is exactly what you would hope for. All the pieces are there to have a totally protective immune response,” said Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington and an author of one of the new studies, which is now undergoing review by the journal Nature. “This is very promising,” said Smita Iyer, an immunologist at the University of California, Davis, who is studying immune responses to the coronavirus in rhesus macaques, told the Times. “This calls for some optimism about herd immunity, and potentially a vaccine.” Although researchers cannot predict how long these immune responses will last, experts consider the data to be the first proof that the body has a good chance of fending off the coronavirus if exposed to it again. “Things are really working as they’re supposed to,” Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona, told the Times. Bhattacharya is an author on one of the new studies, which was published on medRxiv, a pre-print server for health research that has…  read on >

Microscopic bits of plastic have most likely taken up residence in all of the major filtering organs in your body, a new lab study suggests. Researchers found evidence of plastic contamination in tissue samples taken from the lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys of donated human cadavers. “We have detected these chemicals of plastics in every single organ that we have investigated,” said senior researcher Rolf Halden, director of the Arizona State University (ASU) Biodesign Center for Environmental Health Engineering. There’s long been concern that the chemicals in plastics could have a wide range of health effects ranging from diabetes and obesity to sexual dysfunction and infertility. But the presence of these microscopic particles in major organs also raises the potential that they could act as carcinogenic irritants in much the same way as asbestos, Halden explained. “It is not always necessarily the chemistry that harms us. Sometimes it’s the shape and the presence of foreign particles in our bodies,” Halden said. “We know the inhalation of asbestos leads to inflammation and that can be followed by cancer.” Previous research has shown that, on average, people ingest about 5 grams of plastic every week, the equivalent of a credit card, said Dianna Cohen, CEO of the nonprofit Plastic Pollution Coalition. “It’s heartening to see quality quantitative research being performed on humans to assess the cumulative harmful…  read on >

Women with early-stage breast cancer whose surgery has been postponed during the coronavirus pandemic need not worry about the delay, new study findings suggest. A longer time from diagnosis to surgery doesn’t affect overall survival of women with early-stage tumors, the researchers found. They also said a delay didn’t lower survival among women with estrogen-sensitive, early-stage breast cancer who received neoadjuvant endocrine therapy before their surgery. “Usually we take these patients with very small tumors directly to surgery, so it is a big change in practice to first put those patients on tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor,” said lead study author Dr. Christina Minami, an associate surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “What we can say from our findings is that despite the delay in surgical therapy, because you were on neoadjuvant endocrine therapy, we do not think that your survival will at all be impacted,” she added in a news release from the American College of Surgeons. For the study, her team used data on nearly 379,000 women. One group had ductal carcinoma in situ — the earliest form of breast cancer. The other group had small invasive tumors — stage 1 and 2 — that had not spread to lymph nodes and were estrogen receptor-positive. The researchers wanted to know if waiting up to one year from diagnosis to surgery affected…  read on >

In a potential harbinger of what could unfold on college campuses across the United States this fall, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said Monday it will revert back to online teaching after testing showed a rapid spread of coronavirus among students. The university was one of the largest schools in the country to bring students to campus for in-person teaching, The New York Times reported. Officials announced the abrupt change just a week after classes began at the 30,000-student university, the newspaper said. Online instruction for undergraduate students will take effect Wednesday. Why the switch? Out of hundreds tested, 177 cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed among students, the Times reported. Another 349 were in quarantine because of possible exposure to the virus, officials said. Clusters of coronavirus cases have already popped up in three residence halls and a fraternity house. “We understand the concern and frustrations these changes will raise with many students and parents,” UNC-Chapel Hill’s Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz and Provost Robert Blouin said in a statement, the Times reported. “As much as we believe we have worked diligently to help create a healthy and safe campus living and learning environment, we believe the current data presents an untenable situation.” On Monday, a new report highlighted another untenable situation: COVID-19 cases among nursing home residents have jumped nearly 80% this…  read on >