Month: May 2022

Placeholder while article actions load The news quickly went viral: “THEY FOUND THE CAUSE OF SIDS,” read one sample tweet, one of countless celebratory posts from parents ecstatic over a new study out of Australia. Multiple news sites asserted that the study found a “cause” of sudden infant death syndrome: a biochemical marker that could help identify babies at risk of death. And why wouldn’t people celebrate? SIDS takes the lives of more than 1,000 babies in the United States each year. That number is significantly lower than it used to be — after a successful public health campaign in the 1990s to encourage parents to put babies to sleep on their backs, SIDS deaths dropped in half — but the death of each baby is shattering, and fear of a sleeping baby never waking up haunts many ne...

SALT LAKE COUNTY, Utah — Utah health officials announced Monday that two probable cases of monkeypox have been found in Salt Lake County. The cases are based on preliminary testing of two adults in the same household. Confirmation of the test results is expected Tuesday. According to a release from the Salt Lake County Health Department, the two adults became symptomatic after traveling internationally earlier in the month. The residents had gone to the doctor Friday complaining on flu-like symptoms. Both adults are expected to fully recover and are only experiencing mild illness as they isolate at home. The department says it has "not identified any exposure risk to the public," the release said, adding exposure is only limited to those people who had direct, close contact with the infec...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Could the sound of your voice reveal hidden heart problems? A new speech analysis app predicts worsening heart failure weeks before the onset of symptoms. The app, used by heart failure patients at home, recognizes fluid in the lungs an average of 21 days before an unplanned hospitalization or escalation in outpatient drug treatment. “The current standard of care just isn’t good enough for keeping patients with heart failure well and out of the hospital,” explains study co-author William Abraham, of The Ohio State University, in a statement. “The system tested in this study was able to predict 80 per cent of worsening heart failure in advance, compared to a 10 to 20 per cent success rate for daily weight monitoring shown in previous studies. In the future, speech analys...

Theresa Babb was 12 when a birthday gift from a doctor broke her spirit. Doctors were trying to determine why the pre-teen was overweight. A hospital stay in Halifax coincided with her birthday. With a flu making the rounds, visitors weren't allowed to enter the hospital. A doctor gave her a birthday card that had an elephant on the front. "I think that's when, as a child, I recognized and understood that I was never going to get any help," said Babb, now in her 60s. "Didn't matter where I went, who I spoke with. That just continued on for the rest of my life." Whether it was a doctor who remarked that her hiking boots were just "for show," or a doctor who asked if she was going to get a fat bike when she expressed an interest in cycling, Babb has encountered weight bias many times. In a ...