A new study confirms yet another consequence of the pandemic for children and teenagers: Eating disorders, and hospitalizations for them, rose sharply in 2020. The study of six hospitals across Canada found new diagnoses of anorexia nearly doubled during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. And the rate of hospitalization among those patients was…  read on >  read on >

The COVID-19 death toll in the United States reached 800,000 on Monday, and one expert believes it will likely hit 1 million at some point in 2022. The 800,156 confirmed deaths in the nearly two years since the first known U.S. victims of the coronavirus were confirmed in February 2020 is more than any other…  read on >  read on >

The ability of two-dose COVID-19 vaccines to protect against symptomatic infection by the Omicron variant falls significantly short, but a booster shot provides considerable protection, according to the first real-world study of how effective vaccines are against the rapidly spreading new form of the coronavirus. Four months after their second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine,…  read on >  read on >

Big “surprise” medical bills may still be a problem for Americans. According to a new study, more than half of U.S. hospitals haven’t complied with recent regulations requiring that they disclose their prices online for all services, to help prevent unexpected bills for patients. About 55% of hospitals have yet to comply with the Hospital…  read on >  read on >

You may feel silly doing it, but baby talk helps your infant learn the basics of human language, a new study suggests. By mimicking the sound of a smaller vocal tract, baby talk guides babies on how words should sound coming out of their own mouths, the researchers explained. “It seems to stimulate motor production…  read on >  read on >

Older adults have a higher risk of delirium after hip and knee surgery if they’re taking anxiety, depression or insomnia drugs, researchers say. “Our findings show that different classes of medicine are riskier than others when it comes to causing delirium after surgery, and the older the patients are, the greater the risk,” said lead…  read on >  read on >

Long COVID can be tough to diagnose in children, but there are a number of things to look for. “Many children don’t have any symptoms when they have a COVID infection,” said Dr. Sindhu Mohandas, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and attending physician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “So if the symptoms of long COVID…  read on >  read on >