Brown rats found and analyzed near Atlanta now carry rat lungworm, researchers report. It’s a parasite that can trigger a dangerous brain encephalitis in both people and pets, and which now threatens a wide area of the U.S. Southeast. Researchers in Georgia say the microscopic rat lungworm, known scientifically as Angiostrongylus cantonensis, typically begins its life cycle in native and exotic snails — rats probably contract the parasite after eating snails. A. cantonensis was first identified in Asia and was for many years not endemic to the United States. It first appeared in Hawaii before being spotted in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Florida, “likely introduced by infected rats and gastropods [snails] through trade routes, such as on merchant ships,” explained a team led by Nicole Gottdenker. She’s associate professor of anatomic pathology at the University of Georgia in Athens. Infected rats excrete the parasite in their feces. In rare cases, people who accidentally come into contact with A. cantonensis can also become infected. The worm can trigger a dangerous inflammation of the brain or its surrounding membrane, the meninges — a condition called meningoencephalitis. Concerned that rat lungworm might have continued its spread throughout the Southeast, Gottdenker’s team collected samples of tissues “from 33 wild brown rats found dead during 2019-2022 on the grounds of a zoological facility located in Atlanta,” they reported. About one-fifth…  read on >  read on >

Nearly one in five counties across the United States lack psychiatrists or internet service, making it difficult for around 10.5 million Americans to find mental health care, a new study shows. The counties examined in the study were more likely to be in rural areas, have higher unemployment rates, and have populations that were more likely to be uninsured and lack a bachelor’s degree. What’s worse, individuals who fall into any one of these categories are also more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. So, the need for mental health services is especially critical in areas with the greatest barriers to access, the researchers noted. And while the pandemic created a rapid demand for telehealth, the medium has yet to reach the areas that need it most. “Telehealth was originally developed to mitigate the adverse effects of physician shortage. But unfortunately for many people in shortage areas, they don’t have access to broadband coverage,” said study author Dr. Hao Yu, an associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, in Boston. “We found those counties have negative health effects, like higher overdose mortality, higher suicide mortality. That’s kind of staggering,” he added. In July, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was passed by federal legislators and included a $65 billion investment to expand affordable and reliable high-speed internet access across the United States. While…  read on >  read on >

How big is a hospital bed’s carbon footprint? Pretty big, new research shows. One hospital bed alone was roughly equivalent to the carbon footprint of five Canadian households, according to researchers studying a British Columbia hospital during 2019. They identified energy and water use and the purchasing of medical products as the hospital’s primary energy hotspots, accounting for over half of the hospital’s yearly carbon footprint. “In our work, we often find that the biggest environmental footprints are where you least expect them to be. As the adage goes: ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’” said researcher Alex Cimprich. He is a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development at the University of Waterloo. “The goal is to make hidden environmental footprints more visible so that we can start to manage them.” For the study, the researchers assessed thousands of products purchased by hospitals, using a combination of statistical sampling and calculations of carbon intensity — CO2 equivalent per dollar spent — to calculate carbon footprints. “The results suggest that hospital sustainability initiatives need to look further to achieve deeper emissions reductions,” Cimprich said in a university news release. “While transportation of patients and products supplied to hospitals and hospital waste are visible areas of environmental concern, other more hidden areas like the supply-chains of medical products could have much bigger environmental…  read on >  read on >

A job that’s demanding but less than rewarding may take a big toll on a man’s heart health, a large new study suggests. The study, of nearly 6,500 white-collar workers, found that men who habitually felt stressed on the job had up to double the risk of developing heart disease as their peers who were more content at work. In some cases, that stress took the form of “job strain,” which meant that workers felt pressure to perform but had little power over how to get their work done. In other cases, the central problem was “effort-reward imbalance.” That’s when employees feel their diligence is not winning adequate returns — whether through pay, promotion, recognition or a sense of fulfillment. Men who reported either kind of job stress were about 50% more likely to develop coronary heart disease over the next 18 years, versus men who were happier on the job. Then there were the men who cited both types of job stress: Their risk of heart disease was double that of their male counterparts who reported neither work issue. There was no similar effect, however, seen among women. Researchers said the findings do not prove that job stress exacts a toll on men’s hearts, or that it doesn’t harm women. But there are plenty of reasons that stress at work — where adults spend…  read on >  read on >

Patients with Parkinson’s disease already face poorer mental and physical health, but now a new study shows they also suffer from decreased levels of hope and self-esteem due to the stigma associated with their disease. “There are patients who don’t even disclose the disease to family members because they’re afraid that the children may change their opinion of them or start making plans to put them in a nursing home or take over their finances or freedom to some degree,” said Dr. Alessandro Di Rocco, a professor of neurology at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell in Hempstead, N.Y. The study found that when most people think of Parkinson’s, they imagine older white men who are drooling, shaking and hunched over. This singular image can be damaging to people with Parkinson’s who differ in race, gender or age, and can lead to misdiagnosis or a delay in diagnosis. Furthermore, those who have several visible, physical symptoms of the disease can face greater stigma and even discrimination. And those fears are illustrated in the research, which found that more than half of people with Parkinson’s conceal their diagnosis for fear of stigma. For example, actor Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson’s and spearheads The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, kept his illness hidden for years before coming out to the public. Having symptoms…  read on >  read on >

Perhaps succumbing to fraudsters or facing mounting bills, older Americans begin losing wealth in the years preceding a definitive dementia diagnosis, new research shows. For example, the median household net worth of the seniors in the study dropped by more than half in the eight years before they were diagnosed with dementia, but dipped much less for folks who retained their mental capacity, according to a team reporting Sept. 18 in the journal JAMA Neurology. “Household wealth, especially financial wealth, declined much faster among people with probable [undiagnosed] dementia than [healthy] controls during the decade before dementia onset,” concluded researchers led by Jing Li. She works at the Comparative Health Outcomes, Policy, and Economics Institute at the University of Washington in Seattle. It’s well documented that aging people who are losing mental acuity can find finances tough to manage, and are also prime targets for scammers. Li and colleagues wondered if mental deterioration might be reflected in the financial deterioration of a person’s assets, as well. To find out, they tracked 20 years of data (1998-2018) from the ongoing Health and Retirement Study, which follows outcomes every two years for Americans 50 years of age and older and their spouses. Looking over medical records, researchers compared the financial health of two groups of participants: One group of about 5,400 people whose mental capacity (and that…  read on >  read on >

A clinical trial designed to test repurposed medications for their impact on fighting COVID-19 has found no benefit to taking the antidepressant fluvoxamine (Luvox) to ease coronavirus symptoms. The study, led by Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) in partnership with Vanderbilt University, found no symptom improvement in those taking the antidepressant at a dose of 100 milligrams (mg) twice daily for 13 days compared to those taking a placebo. “There was no evidence of improvement in the rate of sustained recovery in participants who took this dose of fluvoxamine versus those who took a placebo,” said researcher Dr. Adrian Hernandez, executive director of the Durham, N.C.-based institute. Researchers studied fluvoxamine because previous evidence suggested that it might be able to reduce inflammation caused by the virus. After finding no benefit in taking 50 mg of fluvoxamine twice daily for 10 days, the team tested the higher dose, given that it had a favorable safety profile and efficacy in other studies. “We are testing repurposed drugs to understand if they are effective in treating COVID-19,” explained Dr. Susanna Naggie, the DCRI principal investigator overseeing the study’s clinical coordinating center. The repurposed medications in this study are already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat other conditions. Fluvoxamine is one of four FDA-approved repurposed medications being tested in the new trial. It’s a selective…  read on >  read on >

That beautiful park you walk through could be hiding dangerous levels of lead. So, too, could the soil under the play equipment where your children slide and swing. New research in the United States finds that urban parks built on sites where waste was incinerated could be hotspots for lead. “We found that city parks and playgrounds built on the site of a former waste incinerator can still have greatly elevated levels of lead in their surface soils many decades after the incinerator was closed,” study co-author Daniel Richter, a professor of soils at Duke University School of the Environment, said in a university news release. Lead exposure has been linked to potential long-term health problems, especially in children. It can affect the brain and nervous system, slow growth and development, and cause learning and behavioral problems. Cities across the United States and Canada burned trash in municipal incinerators for decades. Most were closed in the 1970s because of pollution concerns. To study whether this led to continued soil contamination in land repurposed as parks, the researchers collected and analyzed surface soil samples from three city parks in Durham, N.C. The sites held incinerators that closed in the early 1940s. Samples collected from a two-acre section of one park had lead levels over 2,000 parts per million. That’s more than five times higher than the…  read on >  read on >

A new study is adding to evidence that the party drug “ecstasy” can boost the benefits of talk therapy for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In a clinical trial, researchers found that three months of talk therapy, assisted by carefully monitored doses of ecstasy (MDMA), worked significantly better than therapy alone. Of 52 patients who completed MDMA-assisted therapy, about 87% were considered responders. That meant they had meaningful reductions in the recurring nightmares, flashbacks, crippling anxiety and other symptoms that plague people with PTSD. In fact, 71% no longer qualified for a PTSD diagnosis by the study’s end. That compared with a rate of 48% among the 42 patients given talk therapy plus a placebo. Experts said the findings, published Sept. 14 in the journal Nature Medicine, offer more evidence that MDMA-assisted therapy is a “real” treatment for PTSD. “It’s not a panacea,” cautioned lead researcher Jennifer Mitchell, a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. For one, not everyone responds to the approach. And a big unanswered question, Mitchell said, is how long do the benefits last after therapy has ended? MDMA gained a bad reputation related to its use as a party drug, where it’s better known as ecstasy or molly. Its intoxicating effects include feelings of well-being, empathy and emotional openness. But the psychiatry field has long…  read on >  read on >