FRIDAY, July 26, 2024 -- Older people who avail themselves of the newest shingles vaccine could reap a hidden benefit: A significant drop in their odds of developing dementia . One expert applauded the new findings. "Dementia isn’t an inevitable part of aging; it’s caused by diseases like Alzheimer’s," said Dr. Sheona Scales , director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK. "Finding new ways to reduce people’s risk of developing these diseases is vital. This research, carried out in a large gro

FRIDAY, July 26, 2024 -- A simple home screening test for colon cancer can reduce the risk of dying from the disease by 33%, a new study shows. Results indicate that undergoing annual at-home FIT (fecal immunochemical test) screening “is as good as getting a colonoscopy every 10 years for screening people of average risk,” said senior study author Dr. Chyke Doubeni , a professor at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. “This study should give individuals and their clinicians the confid

FRIDAY, July 26, 2024 -- People diagnosed with one of the most common inherited heart arrhythmias, called Long QT syndrome (LQTS), can safely engage in vigorous exercise without any added risk for sudden death or cardiac arrest, a new study finds. "Arrhythmic events were low in these appropriately treated individuals with LQTS in both those exercising vigorously and those exercising moderately or who were sedentary," concluded a team led by Dr. Rachel Lampert , a professor of cardiology at Yale

FRIDAY, July 26, 2024 -- For adolescent girls and young women, lenacapavir every 26 weeks is beneficial for preventing acquired HIV infection, according to a study published online July 24 in the New England Journal of Medicine to coincide with the 25th International AIDS Conference, held from July 22 to 26 in Munich. Linda-Gail Bekker, M.B., Ch.B., Ph.D., from the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and colleagues conducted a phase 3 trial involving adolesce

FRIDAY, July 26, 2024 -- Abbott has warned diabetes patients that some of its continuous blood sugar monitoring systems may need to be replaced because of inaccurate readings. "Abbott has recently identified a small number of FreeStyle Libre 3 sensors that may provide incorrect high glucose readings, which if undetected may pose a potential health risk for people living with diabetes," the company said in an alert issued Thursday. An inaccurate high blood sugar reading may prompt diabetes patie

FRIDAY, July 26, 2024 -- Women who are diagnosed with breast cancer in one breast, even in the early stages, sometimes opt for a double mastectomy, due to the fear that the cancer will migrate to the other breast. But that decision may not offer any real benefit in terms of survival, an exhaustive new study of more than 600,000 patients tracked for two decades has found. Canadian researchers report that while having an unaffected breast removed did lower the odds of cancer appearing in that are

FRIDAY, July 26, 2024 -- There are widespread brain structural alterations apparent in conduct disorders, mostly in surface area, according to a study published in the August issue of The Lancet Psychiatry . Yidian Gao, Ph.D., from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, and colleagues examined brain structural correlates of conduct disorders among those aged 18 years or younger. Individual participant data were collected from 1,185 young people with conduct disorder and 1,253 typic

FRIDAY, July 26, 2024 -- The rate at which young Americans are ending up in hospital ICUs after using fake Oxycontin pills spiked with fentanyl is soaring, especially in the U.S. West, a new report warns. Medical toxicology data from one unnamed hospital in the western U.S. found the number of cases involving overdoses involving fake "M-30" Oxycontin pills rose from just three in 2017 to 209 during 2022, according to a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most patients (81%

FRIDAY, July 26, 2024 -- Children from poor families are less likely to survive cancer , particularly if they are not white, a new study reports. A childhood cancer patient’s risk of dying within five years of their diagnosis increases 4% for every one-point increase in their neighborhood’s Area Deprivation Index (ADI), researchers found. The ADI uses 17 factors to measure a patient’s background, with higher scores indicating greater economic uncertainty, researchers said. Results also showed t

FRIDAY, July 26, 2024 -- Black individuals are diagnosed with Huntington disease (HD) at least one year later than White individuals, according to a study published online June 21 in Neurology: Clinical Practice . Adys Mendizabal, M.D., from the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues examined sociodemographic factors associated with disparities in time from symptom onset to time to diagnosis (TTD) of HD using the global clinical research platform ENROLL-HD periodic data set 5 for