Month: September 2020

A Massachusetts construction worker’s love of black licorice wound up costing him his life. Eating a bag and a half every day for a few weeks threw his nutrients out of whack and caused the 54-year-old man’s heart to stop, doctors reported Wednesday. “Even a small amount of licorice you eat can increase your blood pressure a little bit,” said Dr. Neel Butala, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who described the case in the New England Journal of Medicine. The problem is glycyrrhizic acid, found in black licorice and in many other foods and dietary supplements containing licorice root extract. It can cause dangerously low potassium and imbalances in other minerals called electrolytes. Eating as little as 2 ounces of black licorice a day for two weeks could cause a heart rhyt...

Scientists in Houston on Wednesday released a study of more than 5,000 genetic sequences of the coronavirus, which reveals the virus’s continual accumulation of mutations, one of which may have made it more contagious. That mutation is associated with a higher viral load among patients upon initial diagnosis, the researchers found. The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, was posted Wednesday on the preprint server MedRxiv. It appears to be the largest single aggregation of genetic sequences of the virus in the United States. A larger batch of sequences was published this month by scientists in the United Kingdom, and, like the Houston study, concluded that a mutation that changes the structure of the “spike protein” on the surface of the virus may be driving the outsize spr...

44 additional coronavirus cases, 33 new recoveries reported by Maine CDC Updated: 11:27 AM EDT Sep 24, 2020 The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported 44 additional coronavirus cases and no new deaths on Thursday.The number of Mainers with COVID-19 who have died remains at 140.The 44 additional cases bring the total since the outbreak began in Maine to 5,215. The Maine CDC said 4,478 people have recovered from the coronavirus, an increase of 33 since Tuesday.Active cases increased from 586 on Wednesday to 597 on Thursday.MAINE CORONAVIRUS DATA: Deaths: 140 Total Cases: 5,215 Confirmed cases: 4,677 Probable ca...

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