Health & Fitness

A new study conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School among others has found that the omicron variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is just as severe as earlier variants, and not more transmissible but no less severe, as previously thought. The study was based on the records of 130,000 COVID patients in Massachusetts and carried out by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Minerva University along with Harvard and is currently being peer-reviewed by Nature Portfolio, according to a Reuters report. But its findings, which evaluated the severity of omicron after accounting for the effect of vaccines, underscores how important vaccines and boosters are, and shows they helped rein in hospitalizations and deaths during the omicron surge. “Although t...

A 24-year-old Vietnamese man had to have a steel nut cut from his penis using a drill after getting it stuck while pleasuring himself. The unidentified patient went to hospital in Ho Chi Minh city where he told doctors the fastener had been stuck there for 10 hours. He admitted that he had shoved the 2cm (0.7inch) thick hexagonal nut around his shaft to enhance his masturbation experience. The uncircumcised patient complained that his penis had become numb and that he was unable to urinate. His penis was so swollen that doctors could not remove the makeshift pleasure ring by hand, and were forced to use a dental drill to cut it off. Doctors said the steel nut (left), which was 2.7cm wide (1inch) on the inside and 4.1cm wide (1.6inches) on the outside, was...

Maryland David Bennett died two months after groundbreaking surgery in which a genetically modified pig’s heart was transplanted into him The 57-year-old patient who survived two months after undergoing a landmark pig heart transplant died of a pig virus, his transplant surgeon announced last month.In January, David Bennett, a handyman who suffered from heart failure, underwent a highly experimental surgery at the University of Maryland medical center in which doctors transplanted a genetically modified pig’s heart into him.Shortly after undergoing the surgery, Bennett died in March. The hospital simply said his condition had worsened over the span of a few days but did not provide an exact cause of death. Last month, Bennett’s transplant surgeon, Bartley Griffith, revealed that the pig’...

HARTFORD, Conn. (WFSB) - All eight Connecticut counties are either in the medium or high categories when it comes to COVID-19 community levels. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its COVID-19 Community Levels Map on Thursday night. According to the state Department of Public Health, it was only a week ago that just New London County was listed in the medium/yellow category while the other seven counties were listed in the low/green category. The COVID-19 Community Levels map, which was launched in late February, informs CDC recommendations on prevention measures, such as masking and testing, the DPH said. The guidelines include a color-coded system available on the CDC website of “low,” “medium” and “high.” The approach focuses on preventing hospitals and health care ...

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You might not know it by looking around you at all those unmasked faces, but there’s still an awful lot of novel coronavirus out there. And the virus appears to be mutating faster than ever, producing steadily more contagious variants and subvariants. The evolutionary trend with SARS-CoV-2 might not mean there are definitely going to be big surges in infections, hospitalizations and deaths. At least not everywhere or for very long. But it underscores an uncomfortable truth: that despite the lifting of COVID restrictions in most countries that aren’t China, despite many people’s eagerness to move past the pain and uncertainty of the past two years, the pandemic isn’t over. The virus isn’t done mutating. The latest subvariants are the most transmissible yet. BA.4 and BA.5, both offs...

When people get into their 40s and beyond, their close-up vision starts to worsen. For many people, cranking up the font size on a phone or maxing out the brightness on a computer is the only way to be able to read some text.   This condition is known as presbyopia, and it affects around 128 million people in the US and more than a billion people worldwide. In late 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a new eye drop medication to treat presbyopia. As an optometrist, I was initially skeptical. Prior to the release of these eye drops – called Vuity – people would either need glasses, contacts or eye surgery to alleviate presbyopia. But after learning how these eye drops work, I recognized that for many people, they could offer an easier and safer way to see clearly again....

Patients who are prescribed a diuretic and a renin-angiotensin system (RSA) inhibitor, such as an angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB), to control their hypertension (high blood pressure), should avoid taking ibuprofen, according to new research published in the journal Mathematical Biosciences. Diuretics and RSA inhibitors are available by prescription under a variety of pharmaceutical brand names while painkillers such as ibuprofen are mostly available over-the-counter under different name brands such as Advil or Motrin. Researchers at the University of Waterloo looked at the interactions of diuretics, RSA, and ibuprofen using computer-simulated drug trials. The investigators found that in some patients with certain med...

Bottles on the wall: higher fat levels appear to 'amplify' the harmful effects of alcohol  Guideline drinking limits should be set lower for fat people as alcohol causes them greater harm, experts say. Overweight boozers who follow the UK's recommendations of no more than 14 units a week are three times more likely to develop some cancers than those who are slim. A University of Sydney study examined data on 400,000 UK adults aged between 40 and 69 and looked at how many developed alcohol-related cancer during a 12-year period.  They found higher fat levels appeared to 'amplify' the harmful effects of alcohol. Compared to 'never drinkers' with the lowest body fat, those with the most fat who drank within alcohol limits were 53 per cent more likely to develop cancers ...

Summary: Restricting calories and eating only during the most active part of the day helped extend the lifespan of mice. Source: HHMI One recipe for longevity is simple, if not easy to follow: eat less. Studies in a variety of animals have shown that restricting calories can lead to a longer, healthier life. Now, new research suggests that the body’s daily rhythms play a big part in this longevity effect. Eating only during their most active time of day substantially extended the lifespan of mice on a reduced-calorie diet, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Joseph Takahashi and colleagues report May 5, 2022, in the journal Science. In his team’s study of hundreds of mice over four years, a reduced-calorie diet alone extended the animals’ lives by 10 percent. But feeding mice the...