DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ ADHD medication abuse in schools is a ‘wake-up call’
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Sandee Lamotte | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Schools with the highest rates of teens using prescribed ADHD medications were about 36% more likely to have students misusing prescription stimulants during the past year, the study found. Schools with more White students and those who had medium levels of student binge drinking were also more likely to see teen abuse of stimulants. “But these findings were not being driven solely by teens with ADHD misusing their medications,” McCabe said. Research has also shown people who misuse ADHD medications are highly likely to have multiple substance use disorders. “Parents can make sure the schools their kids attend have safe storage for medication and strict dispensing policies.

☆ A Little Alcohol Won’t Kill You or Make You Stronger
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Julie Wernau | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A new study published on Friday joins a body of evidence that shows alcohol does more harm than good. First, the good news: A nip of alcohol here and there probably won’t kill you. For a study published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open, researchers set out to make sense of years of conflicting evidence on alcohol’s effect on health. Some research suggested that drinking alcohol improves life expectancy. Other studies had demonstrated poorer health outcomes at any level of drinking.

☆ Long Covid disabled them. Then they met a ‘broken’ Social Security disability process
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-25 | by ( Morgan Stephens | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +12 min

And two Congressional bills addressing the long Covid crisis — The “Covid-19 Long Haulers Act,” which would’ve collected data on long Covid patients with the goal of creating better care and treatment, and “The Care For Long Covid Act” would’ve improved research, centralized data and resources for people with Long Covid — died without making it out of committee. Disabled by long Covid since March 2020, she lives with her spouse and their 7-year-old son in Portland, Ore. “We didn’t design our life to be a single-income household.”Other long Covid patients have rearranged their finances, too. His company’s private long-term disability insurance pays a smaller percentage of the monthly benefit payout when federal disability pays a portion. “They’re not only dealing with long Covid complications, but they’re dealing with financial complications,” she said of her clients.

☆ The Wild World Inside Your Gut
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( Alice Callahan | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +20 min

The Wild World Inside Your GutWe tackled everything from heartburn, stress, spicy foods and colon cleanses to antibiotics and more. So grab a kombucha, get comfortable and read on for everything you’ve wanted to know about the wild world inside your gut. 3 What are some simple things I can do to improve my gut health? That “really is going to have the strongest impact on our health, including gut health,” she said. (Though for general gut health, Dr. Rao said, most people living in the United States could benefit from eating fewer refined carbohydrates and more fiber.)

"Everybody has a different amount of fibroglandular tissue and a different pattern," Freer said, referring to dense breast tissue. In individual interviews as part of Gunn's survey, six out of 61 women said dense breasts contributed to breast cancer risk. There are two reasons dense breasts are linked to a higher risk of breast cancer. To lower one's risk of breast cancer overall, doctors recommend limiting alcohol intake, exercising regularly and maintaining a healthy diet. The Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium offers an online tool to help people gauge their breast cancer risk based on multiple factors, including breast density.

How much does insulin cost? People with Type 1 diabetes need, on average, one to three vials of insulin per month, according to the American Diabetes Association. Patients with Type 2 diabetes don't always need to take insulin, but those who do can sometimes require more than people with Type 1 diabetes. Even people with what's considered good health insurance coverage can face steep costs in certain situations. In addition to insulin and insurance premiums, Gibson also must spend $550 every three months for glucose monitors and $1,100 for insulin pumps.

An experimental treatment for advanced melanoma is poised to be the next major advance in cancer treatment, experts say. Those who got TIL therapy had a 50% reduction in disease progression and death, compared to those who were treated with ipilimumab, the study found. Bruce Hawley and his wife, Laurie, celebrated their third wedding anniversary in 2021 in Vancouver, several years after his TIL therapy. "The chemotherapy knocks down the immune cells to make space for the TIL cells going in," Hwu said. The hope is that TIL therapy will also be used for other solid cancers, not just melanoma, Rosenberg said.

☆ Remembering Gary Strieker, who helped establish CNN's presence in Africa
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-03 | by ( Tricia Escobedo | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +12 min

CNN —Gary Strieker had every reason to be a pessimist. Gary Strieker, who passed away in July 2022, helped establish CNN's presence in Africa. Courtesy Strieker family Born in the tiny Illinois farm town of Breese in 1944, Gary Gerard Strieker moved to San Diego, California at a young age. Courtesy Strieker family Strieker is remembered by his family and colleagues as a quiet, humble man who never lost his optimistic spirit or tireless energy for making the world a better place. Courtesy Strieker family Strieker was the network's only correspondent on the African continent for some time, covering the AIDs epidemic in the 1980s and other major moments in history, including the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

☆ Pain relief from marijuana may come from believing it helps, study says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Sandee Lamotte | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

A 2020 study, for example, found using marijuana before entering the hospital for a surgical procedure made pain during recovery significantly worse. In fact, the optimistic attitude generated by a placebo can be powerful enough to affect study results dramatically. A unique part of the study looked at the role of news and social media for the placebo effect in cannabis clinical trials, Jensen said. Researchers found positive media coverage after each of the cannabis clinical trials, even when the study results were less than spectacular, she said. “I don’t think you can explain the placebo effect or blame it on social media.

The words some doctors use are often misunderstood by patients and their families, leaving them feeling confused and vulnerable, according to researchers. "You could be the smartest doctor in the world, yet you're useless if your patients don't understand what you are saying," Pitt said. An 'impressive' chest X-rayTake the word "impressive." But when doctors say a patient's chest X-ray is "impressive," they really mean, "This worries me." "If somebody is using medical jargon, a phrase that you don't understand, feel free to say, 'Excuse me, I don't understand what you're trying to say.

☆ Drug and alcohol deaths increasing among US adults 65 and older, CDC data shows
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Jacqueline Howard | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

In 2020, more than 5,000 adults 65 and older in the United States died of a drug overdose. Though drug overdose death rates for older adults tend to be lower than for other age groups – and made up just 0.2% of total deaths among adults 65 and older in 2020 – such deaths have been climbing. Between 2000 and 2020, the rates rose from 2.4 to 8.8 deaths per 100,000 people among adults 65 and older. Between 2000 and 2020, drug overdose deaths increased more among men than women, rising from 2.7 to 12.3 deaths per 100,000 men compared with 2.3 to 5.8 per 100,000 women. “Because of ageism, we typically do not think of older adults as having a substance use disorder nor do we think of older adults for being at-risk for a drug overdose.

☆ Gun Death Rate Nears Three-Decade High, With Men at Most Risk
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Dominique Mosbergen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A record 48,953 deaths in the U.S. were caused by guns last year, a new study says. The rate of gun deaths in the U.S. reached a 28-year high in 2021 after sharp increases in homicides of Black men and suicides among white men, an analysis of federal data showed. A record 48,953 deaths in the U.S., or about 15 fatalities per 100,000 people, were caused by guns last year, said the analysis published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open. Gun deaths declined in the 1990s, but have been rising steadily over the past decade and skyrocketed during the Covid-19 pandemic, said researchers who conducted the analysis.

☆ America’s gun epidemic is deadlier than ever, and there are vast disparities in who’s dying
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Deidre Mcphillips | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

The researchers found that firearm mortality rates increased for most demographic groups in recent years – especially during the pandemic – and vast disparities persisted. With infant mortality in the United States, when you look at Black infants versus White infants, there’s over a two-fold (difference in) mortality rate. There are two key factors driving community gun violence, says Jonathan Jay, an assistant professor at Boston University School of Public Health: disadvantage at the neighborhood level and exposure to gun violence at the individual level. “Gun violence is most likely in spaces that show signs of physical disinvestment. The gun suicide rate increased 10% while the non-gun suicide rate decreased by 8%, and the gun homicide rate increased 45% while the non-gun homicide rate increased only 6%.

☆ Daylight Saving Time debate sheds light on growing racial inequities in sleep health
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-25 | by ( Jacqueline Howard | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the Sleep Research Society and other medical groups have advocated for ending the practice, calling for the adoption of a permanent standard time that would not involve shifting forward each spring and falling back each autumn. She authored a paper, published in September in the journal Sleep, detailing the potential health benefits of adopting a permanent standard time. Now, some sleep researchers worry about the potential effects that continuing to change standard time twice each year may have on sleep health inequities. “Fortunately, sleep health is largely modifiable.”As for the inequities seen in sleep health, it’s not that White adults don’t also experience a lack of sleep and its health consequences – but people of color appear to disproportionately experience them more, and that’s believed to be largely due to social systems in the United States. Improving sleep health has been a national objective in the federal government’s past two Healthy People programs, noted Caraballo-Cordovez, who is not involved in the programs.

☆ Feeling Groggy? You Might Have ‘Social Jet Lag’
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Dominique Mosbergen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A person’s social clock is influenced by obligations such as work and school, as well as social activities. Groggy and disoriented on Monday morning after a weekend of late nights? “Social jet lag” may be to blame, sleep experts say, an inconsistency of sleep schedules that research suggests could have as much an impact on health as how much sleep one gets. Almost half of U.S. adults experience some social jet lag, according to a new study published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open. The term refers to the mismatch between a person’s biological time, determined by an internal body clock, and their social clock, which is influenced by obligations such as work and school, as well as social activities.

☆ Sleepy at Work? You Might Have ‘Social Jet Lag’
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Dominique Mosbergen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Groggy and disoriented on Monday morning after a weekend of late nights? “Social jet lag” may be to blame, sleep experts say, an inconsistency of sleep schedules that research suggests could have as much of an impact on health as how much sleep one gets. Almost half of U.S. adults experience some social jet lag, according to a new study published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open. The term refers to the mismatch between a person’s biological time, which is determined by circadian rhythms, the roughly 24-hour cycles driven by an internal body clock, and their social clock, which is influenced by obligations such as work and school, as well as social activities.

☆ Sleep deprivation affects nearly half of American adults, study finds
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Sandee Lamotte | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

The analysis also found over 30% of adults reported an hour of sleep debt -— when you sleep less than your body needs — while nearly 1 in 10 adults had a sleep debt of two hours or more. “This is a well done study examining a very large and representative sample,” said Dr. Bhanu Prakash Kolla, a sleep medicine specialist in the Center for Sleep Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Social jet lagIn addition, nearly half of the adults in the study reported social jet lag – a bad fit between the sleep timing preferred by a person’s inner biological clock and the one dictated by society. Over 46% of the survey participants reported at least 1 hour of social jet lag, while 19.3% experienced at least 2 hours. Untreated social jet lag can have serious consequences, including insomnia, early waking or excessive sleepiness, daytime fatigue, difficulty concentrating, constipation or diarrhea and increased cortisol levels.

☆ More adolescent e-cigarette users report vaping within five minutes of waking up, study finds
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Jacqueline Howard | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

The data included a total of 151,573 survey respondents, all in middle or high school in the United States. ‘Concerning’ trends in the intensity of useThe overall prevalence of e-cigarette use peaked in 2019 and then declined. But by 2019, more e-cigarette users were using within the first five minutes of waking up each day compared with traditional cigarette users. “It is encouraging that the prevalence of e-cigarette use has declined among U.S. adolescents from 2019 to 2021. “Unfortunately, early nicotine addiction could overturn the significant tobacco control progress made over many decades,” she said.

Alcohol-related deaths rose by 26% from 2019 to 2020, a new report published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds. From 2000 through 2018, age-adjusted alcohol-related deaths rose yearly, but never at a rate higher than 7%. Overall, alcohol-related death rates are higher among men than women; in 2020, there were 19.2 deaths per 100,000 men, compared with 7.5 per 100,000 women. The researchers found that alcohol-related deaths were most common among middle-aged adults. Overall, alcohol deaths among women rose by 27% from 2019 to 2020.

☆ Sexual assault-related ER visits increased more than tenfold since 2006, study finds
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( Julianne Mcshane | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

The study authors said their research represents the largest longitudinal study of sexual assault-related visits to emergency rooms in the U.S. That could be because cultural understandings of what constitutes sexual assault have expanded beyond encounters involving extreme physical violence. In 2019, for example, there were more than 139,800 reports of sexual assault to law enforcement compared to 55,296 ER visits. Sexual assault overall makes up just 0.06% of emergency room visits, according to the study. The FBI data, meanwhile, relies on voluntary reports from law enforcement and narrow definitions of sexual assault, according to the study.

☆ Drug overdose death rates highest among American Indian people and middle-age Black men, study shows
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( Deidre Mcphillips | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —Drug overdose deaths in the United States increased sharply throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, reaching record levels in 2021. But by 2021, rates among Black men had surpassed those of American Indian men. In 2021, overdose death rates among Black men ages 35 to 64 were higher than any other demographic group. Drug overdose deaths continue to rise, with the CDC’s latest provisional data showing that more than 109,000 people died of a drug overdose in the 12-month period ending March 2022. Relative to state population, rates of overdose deaths were by far the highest in West Virginia, with 83 overdose deaths for every 100,000 residents.

☆ Flint residents reported high rates of depression, PTSD years after water crisis
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( Carma Hassan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

CNN —In a new study, researchers say that the experiences of residents of Flint, Michigan, show that environmental disasters like the water crisis can have long-term consequences for mental health. Flint residents reported changes to the water’s color, smell and taste soon after the city turned to the Flint River as a water source in April 2014. Researchers found that 1 in 5 Flint residents met the criteria for presumptive major depression, 1 in 4 for presumptive post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and more than 1 in 10 for both disorders. Eight years after the water crisis began in Flint – even with new pipes and a different water source – some city residents recently told CNN they still don’t trust the water. In a statement, the Mississippi Department of Mental Health said community mental health centers can provide therapy, peer support and intensive outpatient programs for people in need of psychiatric care and substance abuse treatment.

☆ Studiu: Simptomele neurologice ale COVID-19 cresc de şase ori riscul de deces
▼ + stars: | 2021-05-12 | by ( Publika.Md - Aici Sunt Știrile | ) www.publika.md time to read: +2 min

Pacienţii cu COVD-19 care dezvoltă simptome neurologice prezintă un risc de şase ori mai mare de deces, potrivit unui studiu internaţional publicat marţi de revista medicală JAMA Network Open, relatează EFE, citat de agerpres.ro. Rezultatele, încă provizorii, au fost obţinute pe baza a 3.744 de adulţi spitalizaţi în 133 de centre de pe cele cinci continente. Principala concluzie a studiului este că 82% dintre pacienţii spitalizaţi au dezvoltat simptome neurologice, care merg de la dureri de cap şi până la pierderea mirosului sau a gustului, ceea ce creşte de şase ori riscul de deces. De asemenea, pacienţii cu boli neurologice preexistente, precum demenţă sau migrene cronice, au un risc dublu de a dezvolta simptome neurologice asociate COVID-19. Sherry Chou, profesor de neurologie la Universitatea din Pittsburg (SUA), a condus consorţiul internaţional care a realizat studiul.

Persons: Chou, Sherry Organizations: Network Open, Universitatea din Locations: Pacienţii, Universitatea din Pittsburg, SUA

Search resuls for: "Network Open"

23 mentions found