Category: Health News

All that overtime could be killing you

(HealthDay)—A 40-hour work week may sound like a vacation to those burning the midnight oil. But a study in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine shows that consistently surpassing this standard can be detrimental to your health. Researchers said they found that working 61 to 70 hours a week increased the risk of coronary heart

Explainer: what is lupus and how is stress implicated?

Thanks to Selena Gomez and Dr. House, most of us have heard of lupus. But most of us don’t know what it is, and until recently, none of us were sure whether stress could be a risk factor. The simplest way to understand lupus is “your immune system gone wrong”. We have evolved powerful immune

Rumination leads to problems in boys with autism

Boys with autism are more prone to develop physical complaints, depression and aggressive behaviour. Psychologists at Leiden University have discovered that this is mainly related to rumination. Publication in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Research has shown that autisme not only leads to social problems. Young people with autism also suffer anxiety, depression

Maryland’s hospital payment reform fails to deliver

An experiment in Maryland designed to save health care dollars by shifting services away from expensive hospital-based care and toward less costly primary, preventive and outpatient services has yielded disappointing results. These are the findings of two separate studies led by investigators from Harvard Medical School and the University of Pittsburgh. One study will be

Vitamin A appears helpful in pediatric retinitis pigmentosa

(HealthDay)—For children with retinitis pigmentosa, vitamin A supplementation is associated with slower loss of cone electroretinogram amplitude, according to a study published online March 29 in JAMA Ophthalmology. Eliot L. Berson, M.D., from Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues conducted a nonrandomized comparison study involving children with retinitis pigmentosa taking or not taking vitamin

Proper data analysis might be among Hurricane Maria’s casualties

The ability to use statistics to guide decision-making may be collateral damage of Hurricane Maria’s devastating blow to Puerto Rico, according to a Penn State demographer. In an article published today (April 2) in Health Affairs, Alexis Raúl Santos, the director of the graduate program in applied demography, said that a failure to properly account

Unraveling the immunopathogenesis of Johne’s disease

Researchers of Hokkaido University, the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), and Tohoku University demonstrated that a physiologically active substance called prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) impairs the immune response by upregulating the expression of an immunoinhibitory molecule, programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1), in cattle affected with Johne’s disease. The discovery is expected to help develop a

Dietary supplement shows promise for reversing cardiovascular aging

Scientists have long known that restricting calories can fend off physiological signs of aging, with studies in fruit flies, roundworms, rodents and even people showing that chronically slashing intake by about a third can reap myriad health benefits and, in some cases, extend lifespan. From a public health perspective, that advice would be impractical for

Put your best feet forward, despite diabetes

(HealthDay)—If you have diabetes, it’s time to think about your feet. “Diabetes is a multisystem disease,” Dr. Ronald Lepow explained in a news release from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “Circulation in the feet and legs may be diminished because there are problems with blood vessels that get narrowed or clogged as a

Optimistic Latinos have healthier hearts, study finds

Latinos who are the most optimistic are more likely to have healthy hearts, suggests a new study of more than 4,900 people of Latino/Hispanic ancestry living in the U.S. “Each unit increase in a Latino adult’s level of optimism was associated with 3 percent higher odds of meeting the criteria for ideal cardiovascular health across

Montreal Parkinson risk of dementia scale deemed accurate

(HealthDay)—The office-based, eight-item Montreal Parkinson Risk of Dementia Scale is a valid predictor of development of dementia, according to a study published online March 26 in JAMA Neurology. Benjamin K. Dawson, from McGill University in Montreal, and colleagues conducted a multicenter study using four diverse Parkinson’s disease cohorts with a prospective 4.4-year follow-up to examine