Category: Health News

Minority groups in the US are more vulnerable to memory loss, confusion and their consequences earlier in life, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Public Health.

A researcher at Delaware State University, U.S., investigated levels of subjective cognitive decline in US adults, who were over 45 years old. Subjective cognitive decline is the experience of frequent confusion and memory loss, which has been identified as a potential early sign of Alzheimer’s disease. The author used data on 179,852 US adults aged 45 and over, collected as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey from 2015 to 2018 during which respondents answered six questions designed to self-assess memory loss and cognitive ability.

Overall, 10.8% (19,276) of adults aged 45 or over self-reported subjective cognitive decline. 10.7% of those who were white experienced subjective cognitive decline compared to 12.3% of

The U.S. government is stepping up efforts to get younger Americans vaccinated for COVID-19 as concerns grow about the spread of a new variant that threatens to set the country back in the months ahead.

The push is underway as the delta variant, first identified in India, has come to represent more than 20% of coronavirus infections in the U.S. in the last two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday. That’s double what it was when the CDC last reported on the variant’s prevalence.

“The delta variant

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and migraine often co-occur, but researchers knew relatively little about how or why this happens. A new study in Frontiers in Neuroscience is the first to investigate if the conditions have a common genetic basis. By studying identical twins, where one twin in each pair lives with PTSD or migraines and the other twin does not, the researchers found common genes that may play a role in both conditions. These genes may help to explain why the conditions co-occur, and could reveal new treatment targets for both.

PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that typically occurs after a traumatic experience, such as a life-threatening event. Most people will experience a traumatic event at some point in their lives, but the vast majority will not develop PTSD, so there is something special about those who do.

Identical twins can reveal epigenetic risk factors

China on Sunday announced it had administered its one-billionth shot in the world’s biggest coronavirus inoculation drive as Brazil’s death toll from the pandemic passed 500,000.

The global death toll from COVID-19 is now more than 3.8 million and many nations are still battling outbreaks, but vaccine drives in some countries are allowing activities that were unthinkable a few months ago.

China’s vaccine milestone comes after the number of shots administered globally passed 2.5 billion on Friday, according to an AFP count from official sources.

But the Asian giant’s vaccination efforts initially got off to a slow start after a successful fight against the virus left little sense of urgency to get jabbed.

A lack of transparency and previous vaccine scandals have also led to resistance among many residents.

Authorities have set an ambitious target of fully vaccinating 40 percent

Russia’s capital Moscow on Saturday reported a pandemic high for new coronavirus cases for the second straight day, as the city’s hospitals were flooded with new patients due to the Delta variant.

The city registered 9,120 new coronavirus infections in 24 hours, according to government figures, a second consecutive high topping the previous day’s total of 9,056 cases.

Those figures have ballooned from just 3,000 daily just two weeks ago, with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin saying the highly infectious Delta variant first identified in India represented nearly 90 percent of new cases.

The new wave of infections came as Russia’s second city of Saint Petersburg, the country’s worst COVID hotspot after Moscow, is slated to host seven Euro 2020 matches—including a quarter-final on July 2—expected to draw thousands of European football fans.

Officials are now scurrying to reintroduce pandemic restrictions and roll out new beds dedicated

The biological mechanisms behind stress-related psychiatric conditions, including major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), are poorly understood.

New research now details the interplay between proteins involved in controlling the body’s stress response and points to potential therapeutic targets when this response goes awry. The study, which was conducted by an international team led by investigators at McLean Hospital, appears in the journal Cell Reports.

“A dysregulated stress response of the body can be damaging for the brain and promote susceptibility to mood and anxiety disorders,” said lead author Jakob Hartmann, Ph.D.. Hartmann is an assistant neuroscientist in the Neurobiology of Fear Laboratory at McLean and an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

“A key brain region involved in the regulation of the stress response is the hippocampus,” said