Shedding excess weight does much more for the long-term heart health of young people than building muscle, new research suggests. It’s not that gaining muscle while young proved to be a cardiovascular problem. It’s just that losing fat offered bigger heart benefits. “We absolutely still encourage exercise,” said study lead author Joshua Bell, a senior…  read on >  read on >

Pfizer is expanding the recall of its anti-smoking drug Chantix (varenicline), the company announced Friday. The nationwide recall of all Chantix 0.5 mg and 1 mg tablets was prompted because they may contain levels of a nitrosamine, N-nitroso-varenicline, that are at or above levels approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Long-term ingestion of…  read on >  read on >

U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisors will meet Friday to consider whether it is safe and effective for Americans to receive a third “booster” dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. The FDA posted the materials it intends to use in the review on Wednesday. The advisory panel will review a variety of evidence, including new…  read on >  read on >

Childhood obesity was a worrisome issue before the pandemic, and now it’s alarmingly worse, new data shows. A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found a “profound increase in weight gain for kids” that is “substantial and alarming,” Dr. Alyson Goodman, one of the study’s authors, told the Associated Press. For the study,…  read on >  read on >

America’s waistline keeps widening. On Wednesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that 16 states now have at least 35% of their residents who are obese, a number that’s nearly doubled since 2018. The CDC’s 2020 Adult Obesity Prevalence Maps now show that Delaware, Iowa, Ohio and Texas have joined Alabama, Arkansas,…  read on >  read on >

People who eat plenty of fruits and vegetables may have a somewhat lower risk of COVID-19 than those with unhealthy diets, a new study suggests. Of more than 590,000 adults surveyed, researchers found that the quarter with the most plant-rich diets had a 9% lower risk of developing COVID-19 than the quarter with the least-healthy…  read on >  read on >

U.S. approval of the Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm is already mired in controversy. Now a new study finds that most Alzheimer’s patients could not have taken part in clinical trials that led to the green light. In June, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave accelerated approval to Aduhelm (aducanumab) for treating patients with mild cognitive…  read on >  read on >