Health & Fitness

Researchers trying to learn what killed the first person to receive a heart transplant from a pig have discovered the organ harbored an animal virus but cannot yet say if it played any role in the man’s death. A Maryland man, 57-year-old David Bennett Sr., died in March, two months after the groundbreaking experimental transplant. University of Maryland doctors said Thursday they found an unwelcome surprise — viral DNA inside the pig heart. They did not find signs that this bug, called porcine cytomegalovirus, was causing an active infection. But a major worry about animal-to-human transplants is the risk that it could introduce new kinds of infections to people. Because some viruses are “latent,” meaning they lurk without causing disease, “it could be a hitchhiker,” Dr. Bartley Griffith...

Researchers trying to learn what killed the first person to receive a heart transplant from a pig have discovered the organ harbored an animal virus but cannot yet say if it played any role in the man’s death. A Maryland man, 57-year-old David Bennett Sr., died in March, two months after the groundbreaking experimental transplant. University of Maryland doctors said Thursday they found an unwelcome surprise — viral DNA inside the pig heart. They did not find signs that this bug, called porcine cytomegalovirus, was causing an active infection. But a major worry about animal-to-human transplants is the risk that it could introduce new kinds of infections to people. Because some viruses are “latent,” meaning they lurk without causing disease, “it could be a hitchhiker,” Dr. Bartley Griffith,...

BREAKFAST staples may increase the risk of three deadly cancers, a major study has found. It is feared dairy products, which includes milk, yoghurt and cheese, are drivers of the disease. 1 An ingredient that's common at breakfast time was linked to inreased cancer risk in Chinese adultsCredit: Getty - ContributorResearchers, including from the University of Oxford, studied half a million people from China.  One in five participants said they ate dairy at least once a week, while 70 per cent said they never ate it, questionnaires found.  Over an 11-year period, 30,000 of the recruits aged 30 to 79 years old developed cancer. Regular dairy-eaters had significantly greater risks of liver and breast cancer - among the most common types of cancer in China and worldwide.  ...

Seven more cases of hepatitis have been detected in Ohio with one child left needing a liver transplant, doctors have said — as the U.S. tally rose to 40 including one death in Wisconsin. The children were all aged between 18 months and 10 years old, and were treated for the disease at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. North Dakota today also confirmed its first case of hepatitis in a child, with health chiefs revealing the patient was now recovering at home. They did not need a liver transplant. A total of 14 states have now reported cases of the mysterious hepatitis, including six liver transplants and one fatality. Scientists are puzzled by what is triggering the spate of cases because none of the infected children have tested positive for the normal hepatitis-causing viruses. The leadin...

NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! 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.   Taking a patients blood pressure. (BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Researchers at the University of Waterloo looked at the interactions of...

New York City's top health official says mask mandates and vaccine checks could make a comeback as the city battles a slight uptick in cases and hospitalizations from the omicron BA.2 subvariant.  But one small business association says the return of pandemic restrictions would be a step 'backwards' that bars and restaurants 'cannot afford' as inflation and supply chain issues cut into their bottom lines. The city increased its COVID-19 alert from low to medium this week. Commissioner Ashwin Vasan - who previously sparked outrage when he said children under 5 will stay masked 'indefinitely' - has announced that restrictions will come back for all New Yorkers if things get worse. 'It's clear that if we moved into a high risk and high alert environment, we'd be seriously considering bringin...

Photo: Domareva.Tanya (Shutterstock) Odds are, over the past two years, you’ve woken up at least one morning with a scratchy throat and clogged sinuses, and your first thought was: Is it allergies? Or is it COVID? The frustration of this ambiguity lies in the completely disproportionate amount of stakes in each scenario. A positive COVID-19 test will torpedo your week (or more) and potentially affect anyone you’ve spent time with in person; a case of allergies likely just means some discomfort. Either scenario seems equally possible, too. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 60 million Americans suffer from seasonal allergies. On top of that, an estimated 81.5 million Americans have tested positive for COVID-19 (with experts believing the tru...

U.S. and global health officials are sounding the alarm about an increasing number of mysterious cases of severe hepatitis occurring among children. Earlier this month, researchers in the United States and Europe announced they were investigating small clusters of the cases emerging across the globe. Soon after, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released an alert to doctors and providers to be on the lookout for the unusual cases. Globally, around 278 cases have been identified, according to World Health Organization officials, with many of the sick children under the age of 10. “What is particularly unusual is that the majority of these children were previously healthy,” Dr. Philippa Easterbrook, a medical expert with the WHO's Global HIV Hepatitis and STI Programme, s...

Most of us have internalized it as a rule: A full night of sleep means eight hours for adults. But that may no longer be true once people hit a certain age. A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK and Fudan University in China have found that seven hours of sleep may be the ideal amount of shut-eye for middle-aged and elderly people. In a study published in the journal Nature Aging, the researchers said they found that seven hours of sleep was best for cognitive performance and good mental health. The researchers examined data from nearly 500,000 participants aged 38 to 73 years and found that insufficient ― but also excessive ― sleep were associated with impaired cognitive performance and worse mental health. Study participants reported their sleep patt...

Photo: Farknot Architect (Shutterstock) Most dyslexic people are diagnosed in childhood, but the disorder can be overlooked and remain untreated into adulthood, which can lead to a different set of symptoms and struggles. There’s more to dyslexia than the common assumption that it simply makes people mirror or flip letters in their brains. Numerous other symptoms impact memory, attention, speech, and organization—and make it harder to diagnose as a result, since adults with these symptoms may never realize they could have dyslexia at all. The longer the disorder goes undiagnosed—and untreated—the longer adults with dyslexia have to struggle with symptoms for no reason. Here are a few signs you might have dyslexia and what you can do about it. What is dyslexia? Most people are probabl...