WEDNESDAY, Feb. 2, 2022 (American Heart Association News) — School closures. Family strains. Isolated and quarantined friends. Even when young people haven’t directly experienced COVID-19, the pandemic has strained their mental health. Often severely. Even before the recent wave of omicron-related cases, a coalition that included the American Academy of Pediatrics declared a national emergency…  read on >  read on >

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 2, 2022 (American Heart Association News) — Black people who spent their early adult years in racially segregated neighborhoods were twice as likely to develop coronary artery calcium – a predictor of heart disease – as those who lived in less segregated neighborhoods, new research shows. The heart health benefits of living in…  read on >  read on >

Suicides by drug overdose have increased among teens, young adults and seniors, even as they declined for the overall population, U.S. federal researchers say. Drug-related suicides declined for Americans in general during the latter part of the 2010s, researchers from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) found. But rates of suicide by overdose…  read on >  read on >

A return to non-contact physical activity three days after a concussion is safe and possibly even beneficial for kids, a Canadian clinical trial finds. “Gone are the days of resting in a dark room,” said study co-author Andrée-Anne Ledoux, a scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Ottawa, Canada. The new…  read on >  read on >

The placenta was designed by nature to keep baby both nourished and safe. Now, research reveals how it protects the developing fetus from a new foe: The virus that causes COVID-19. “The placenta is one of the few ‘success stories’ of the pandemic,” said study co-author Dr. Elizabeth Taglauer, an assistant professor of pediatrics at…  read on >  read on >

Many American teens and young adults underestimate the risk of sexually transmitted infections from unprotected oral sex, and that’s especially true of young men, a new survey shows. Doctors say oral sex can transmit herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, HIV and human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer, and head and neck cancers. While…  read on >  read on >

As the number of U.S. children with COVID-19 continues to surge, there are a number of things parents should know, a pediatric infectious disease expert says. “What used to be the average number of children with COVID for the whole hospital is now the average just for the intensive care unit,” said Dr. Jessica Ericson,…  read on >  read on >