Symptoms of mild COVID-19 infection have shifted this season, and now are more akin to those of allergies and the common cold, doctors say. Many people with COVID-19 now are presenting with upper respiratory symptoms like runny nose, watery eyes and a sore throat, said Dr. Teresa Lovins, an independent family physician in Columbus, Ind.… read on > read on >
A new government report finds that federal regulators need to do more to help in the battle to keep kids and teens off tobacco. Among the report’s findings were that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration needs to get tough on retailers selling tobacco to youth and should improve its oversight of online retailers. The… read on > read on >
Americans will once again be able to get free at-home COVID tests. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Wednesday that it will spend $600 million to buy and offer the tests, produced by 12 domestic manufacturers, and it will begin accepting orders for those tests on Monday through covidtests.gov. “The Biden-Harris… read on > read on >
A longstanding core belief of mental health maintains that people must confront their fears to ease the anxiety and depression stemming from those negative thoughts. Now a new study argues that, for some people, suppressing negative thoughts and worries might be a more successful strategy. Mental health actually improved for some study participants after they… read on > read on >
The United States is experiencing an alarming wave of congenital syphilis, and one southern state saw a 1,000% rise in babies born with the infection between 2016 and 2022. The number of babies born with the infection in Mississippi rose from 10 in 2016 to 110 in 2022. Syphilis is a sexually transmitted bacterial infection.… read on > read on >
As working class neighborhoods gentrify, you’ll likely see rents rise, pricey restaurants move in — and maybe also a rise in gunshot wounds, researchers say. In U.S. neighborhoods that gentrified, gun injuries were 62% higher than they were in similar neighborhoods that hadn’t gone upscale, according to a new study. Overall firearm incidence was also… read on > read on >
Helping undocumented immigrants in the United States connect with primary care doctors could be a money-saver, substantially reducing emergency department use and lowering health costs, a new study finds. The findings are from a New York City program that helped arrange medical appointments from May 2016 to June 2017 for undocumented immigrants with limited incomes.… read on > read on >
More people around the world are exposed to wildfire smoke that has the potential to harm human health, and their numbers are growing, new research finds. More than 2 billion people are exposed to at least one day of potentially health-impacting wildfire smoke each year, a figure that has grown by almost 7% in the… read on > read on >
Substance abuse and pregnancy may be a dangerous combination. New research finds that pregnant women with a history of substance abuse had a dramatically increased risk of death from heart attack and stroke during childbirth compared to women with no drug history. “This telling research shows that substance use during pregnancy doubled cardiovascular events and… read on > read on >
A lot of people who think they don’t have secondhand smoke exposure actually do, according to a new study that compared survey answers with blood tests. According to the results of sensitive blood tests, more than half of American adults in the study had recently been exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke. Most were not aware… read on > read on >
