Men with low testosterone levels have a much higher risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19, a new study from Italy finds.

The study included nearly 300 symptomatic male COVID-19 patients who arrived at the emergency department and were admitted to San Raffaele University Hospital in Milan during the first wave of the pandemic.

The lower the patients' levels of the hormone te...

The air people breathe -- and how much pollution is in it -- may make a difference in their outcomes when infected with COVID-19, a new study finds.

Researchers found that living in more polluted areas -- including near sewage water dischargers and in close proximity to heavy traffic -- was linked with a greater likelihood of being admitted to the intensive care unit and more likelihood ...

Having a case of COVID-19 significantly increases hospitalized trauma patients' risk of complications and death, a new study finds.

"Our findings underscore how important it is for hospitals to consistently test admitted patients, so that providers can be aware of this additional risk and treat patients with extra care and vigilance," said lead author Dr. Elinore Kaufman. She's assistant ...

Dementia patients who have the same nurse for all of their home health care visits are a third less likely to be readmitted to the hospital, a new study finds.

"While continuity of nursing care may benefit every home health care patient, it may be particularly critical for people with dementia," said study co-author Chenjuan Ma. "Having the same person delivering care can increase familia...

Hospitalized patients with diabetes who hadn't been taking their medication had more severe cases of COVID-19, a new study shows.

"Our results highlight the importance of assessing, monitoring and controlling blood glucose [sugar] in hospitalized COVID-19 patients from the start," said study author Sudip Bajpeyi, associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Texas at El Paso. H...

Black COVID-19 patients in the United States are more likely to die than white patients, but there would be 10% fewer deaths among Black patients if they could get the same level of hospital care as white people, according to new research.

"Our study reveals that Black patients have worse outcomes largely because they tend to go to worse-performing hospitals," said study co-author Dr. Dav...

Giving COVID-19 survivors' blood plasma to blood cancer patients hospitalized with COVID-19 significantly improves their chances of survival, a new study finds.

"These results suggest that convalescent plasma may not only help COVID-19 patients with blood cancers whose immune systems are compromised, it may also help patients with other illnesses who have weakened antibody responses to th...

There's a severe blood shortage in the United States due to a recent surge in trauma cases, organ transplants and elective surgeries, the American Red Cross says.

The Red Cross is appealing to Americans to roll up their sleeves and donate blood immediately.

"Our teams are working around the clock to meet the extraordinary blood needs of hospitals and patients -- distributing about 7...

Having a baby is expensive. The cost of diapers, a crib, a car seat and all the other infant necessities can really add up, and now a new study shows that having a child comes with its own hefty hospital price tag for many U.S. families.

About one in six families in the Michigan Medicine study spent more than $5,000 to have a baby. For privately insured families whose babies required time...

Far too many women are showing up in U.S. emergency rooms due to fibroids, according to a new study spanning 12 years.

Fibroids are common noncancerous growths in the uterus. They don't always cause symptoms, but those that do may result in heavy menstrual bleeding and severe abdominal pain.

Fully tens of thousands of women are seen annually in the emergency department for fibroids ...

People hospitalized for COVID-19 are often discharged in much worse shape than before their illness - underscoring the value of preventing severe cases with vaccination.

In a new study, researchers found that during the pandemic's early months, almost half of COVID-19 patients discharged from their health system had some degree of "functional decline."

That's a broad category includ...

The cost of COVID-19 hospitalizations averaged nearly $22,000 for older Americans in 2020 - and much more for those who became critically ill, a new government study finds.

Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at the cost of COVID-19 care to the Medicare program, which covers Americans aged 65 and up.

On average, the investigators found, the prog...

COVID-19 patients are at increased risk for severe strokes, according to a new study that also found that the overall risk of stroke is higher in younger patients.

Researchers analyzed data from 432 COVID-19 patients in 17 countries who suffered strokes and found they were more likely to have large vessel occlusion (LVO) than stroke patients in the general population.

LVO strokes ar...

COVID survivors can relax when it comes to vaccination: A new study shows that getting immunized will not worsen any symptoms that linger long after infection, such as breathing difficulties, fatigue and insomnia.

The encouraging takeaway is based on a small analysis that looked at how 44 "long-haul" British COVID patients fared after being inoculated with the first dose of either the Pfi...

A third antibody treatment designed to keep high-risk COVID-19 patients from winding up in the hospital was approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday.

Importantly, in lab tests the newly authorized drug, dubbed sotrovimab, neutralized the highly infectious virus variant that is crippling India, as well as variants first spotted in Britain, South...

Patients facing relatively simple outpatient surgeries are nonetheless being told to undergo a number of preoperative tests that just aren't necessary, a new study reports.

More than half of a group of patients facing low-risk outpatient surgery received one or more tests -- blood work, urinalysis, an electrocardiogram (EKG), a chest X-ray -- prior to their operation.

One-third of p...

If you land in the hospital with a COVID-19 infection, there's a good chance you'll still be suffering symptoms months later, researchers report.

A wide swath of lingering health issues plagued more than 70% of these patients, investigators found.

"Early on, we completely ignored the long-term consequences of getting sick with this virus," said study senior author Dr. Steven Goodman...

Newfangled marijuana products -- edibles, concentrates, vapes -- are driving an overall increase in pot-related calls to U.S. poison control centers, a new study shows.

There were more than 11,100 calls related to marijuana use in 2019, up from about 8,200 in 2017, researchers said.

More and more of those calls are related to manufactured products that contain distilled amounts of T...

Virginia Terrell knew she wouldn't be allowed visitors after she checked into the hospital with COVID-19 late last month, but being braced for that reality didn't make her week-and-a-half stay any easier.

"You get pretty lonely," said Terrell, 59, who was treated at WakeMed and Duke Health hospitals in Raleigh, N.C. "It's helpful knowing that person will be there that day to see you, even...

The actual number of U.S. children hospitalized due to COVID-19 may be lower than current figures suggest, a new study indicates.

That's because counts of hospitalized children who test positive for COVID-19 may include those who were admitted for other reasons and have no COVID symptoms, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers explained.

Throughout the pandemic, childre...

U.S. hospitals have been required to make their prices public since 2019, but 18 months into the rule more than half weren't doing it, a new study finds.

In 2018, the Trump administration issued a rule requiring hospitals to publish their "chargemasters" on their websites. A chargemaster is a rundown of a hospital's services, along with their list prices - something akin to the manufactur...

New insight into a rare and dangerous disorder that can occur in kids with COVID-19 could improve treatment of the condition, researchers say.

Many children infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) go undiagnosed or have no symptoms, but about one in 1,000 develop a condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) within four to six weeks.

Symp...

There's good news and bad on rates of head injuries among America's bike-riding public: Rates for these injuries have sharply declined among kids but barely budged among the growing number of adult bike riders.

Between 2009 and 2018, increasing helmet use, construction of dedicated bike lanes in cities and other safety interventions have greatly reduced bike-related traumatic brain injur...

Neurological problems are occurring in a very high percentage of hospitalized COVID-19 patients -- and what's worse, those symptoms foretell a bad end for many sufferers, a new study finds.

About four out of five people sick enough to be hospitalized for COVID-19 suffer some sort of neurological problem, ranging from headache and a loss of sense of smell to confusion, delirium, stroke a...

When young women land in the emergency room with chest pain, they wait longer and get less treatment than their male counterparts, a preliminary study finds.

Using a federal survey of U.S. hospitals, researchers found that younger women with chest pain were treated less urgently than men their age. That included a lower likelihood of receiving standard tests for diagnosing a heart attack....

Survivors of the intensive care unit (ICU) have a higher risk of self-harm and suicide after discharge than other hospital patients, a Canadian study shows.

Researchers compared the health records of 423,000 ICU survivors in the province of Ontario with those of with 3 million patients who were hospitalized but not in intensive care between 2009 and 2017.

Compared to others, ICU sur...

Two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine provide a high level of protection for populations, a new study shows.

The findings from Israel -- the first nation to report national data on the vaccine -- show that two doses provide more than 95% protection for people 16 and older against COVID-19 infection, hospitalization and death.

The study period was from Jan. 24 to April 3,...

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, breast cancer experts realized space in operating rooms and hospitals could become scarce. That meant rethinking standard care, to provide the best way to treat patients under these suddenly restricted conditions.

One of the new ideas: Reverse the order of care given to patients with a type of breast cancer known as estrogen receptor-positive (ER+). ER+ ...

Giving birth during the coronavirus pandemic presents its own challenges, but the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) wants to reassure pregnant women that they need not panic.

Instead, they "should be comforted to know that the hospital is a very safe place to have a baby now," said Dr. Beverly Philip, president of the ASA.

"The obstetricians, midwives, physician anesthesio...

Health care in rural America has become ever more scarce during the coronavirus pandemic, with folks finding it increasingly difficult to find a doctor or get to a hospital.

For a decade, rural areas have been losing hospitals to financial problems, forcing residents to either drive long distances or shrug their shoulders and forgo needed care.

Add to that a nationwide shortage of d...

Say you twist your ankle playing catch with your kids. Or maybe your daughter has a rash that's spreading. Do you visit urgent care or the hospital emergency department?

Many cases of injury or illness can be handled at an urgent care clinic rather than a hospital emergency department, an expert says.

"Urgent care is a good starting point, especially when you can't see your primary ...

There's some sobering news for the millions of Americans who skipped their second coronavirus vaccine dose: Doing so could greatly reduce their odds of avoiding severe illness.

In a "real-world" study of 417 adults aged 65 or older who got either the Pfizer or Moderna two-dose vaccines, effectiveness in keeping folks out of the hospital with COVID-19 "was 94% among adults who were fully v...

In rare cases, people hospitalized for COVID-19 can develop heart failure, even if their hearts were previously healthy, new research shows.

The researchers found that of over 6,400 COVID-19 patients at their hospital, 0.6% newly developed heart failure. That included eight patients -- mostly relatively young men -- with no history of heart disease or risk factors for it.

Heart fail...

Long-term exposure to polluted air could increase the risk of severe COVID-19 in people with respiratory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), new research shows.

For the study, researchers at the University of Cincinnati examined the backgrounds and health outcomes of more than 1,100 COVID-19 patients diagnosed at UC Health between mid-March and early ...

While ER visits have stayed below normal levels as the coronavirus pandemic continues, the number of people showing up in the emergency department with mental woes is increasing, new federal government data shows.

Between March 29 and April 25, 2020, visits to emergency departments dropped 42%, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. Although the number...

'Bleeding' stroke patients with COVID-19 are more than twice as likely to die as those without COVID-19, new research shows.

For the study, a research team from the University of Utah analyzed data from 568 hospitals in the United States. They compared a control group of more than 23,300 patients without COVID-19 who suffered a bleeding (hemorrhagic) stroke to 771 COVID-19 patients who ha...

Exercise guards against a host of chronic diseases that can plague people as they age, but can it also protect against severe cases of COVID-19?

New research suggests that's so: Being physically active reduced COVID-19 patients' risk of hospitalization, intensive care unit (ICU) admission and death, and even being just somewhat active provided some protection.

"This is a wake-up cal...

Doctors, nurses and other frontline health workers in U.S. emergency departments have struggled with significant mental health challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new poll reveals.

"As the nation moves into what many believe is a fourth wave of COVID, this study is important to our understanding of the impact of the pandemic on the mental well-being of frontline medical personnel,"...

U.S. children commonly wait hours in the emergency room for help with a mental health crisis -- a problem that has worsened over time, a new study finds.

Researchers found that between 2005 and 2015, prolonged ER stays became ever more common for children and teenagers in need of mental health help. By 2015, nearly one-quarter of kids were in the ER for at least six hours -- up from 16% a...

About six in 10 U.S. workers who've been hospitalized for an injury return to their jobs, but physical disabilities and financial struggles are common, researchers say.

For the study, investigators analyzed federal survey data from trauma patients who were hospitalized with injuries between 2008 and 2017. The patients completed the surveys about seven weeks, on average, after leaving the ...

Long-term organ damage appears to be common in hospitalized COVID-19 patients after they've recovered and been discharged, British researchers report.

One U.S. expert who read over the report said she's seen the same in her practice.

"This study proves that the damage done is not just to the lungs, but can affect the heart, the brain and the kidneys, as well," said Dr. Mangala Naras...

Compared with white patients, Black adults are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to hospital safety in the United States, a new report warns.

Black patients are significantly less likely to gain access to "high-quality" hospitals, an Urban Institute analysis found. As a result, they're much more likely to undergo surgical procedures in facilities with relatively poor safety records...

Nonsmokers usually try to avoid secondhand smoke, but many kids have no option, and now a new study finds tobacco smoke exposure puts them at higher risk of hospitalization.

Compared to other kids, those exposed to secondhand smoke were more likely to have had an urgent care visit over a one-year period, and to incur higher costs for such visits. They also were nearly twice as likely to b...

White Americans had a greater decline in potentially avoidable hospitalizations during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic than Black Americans, according to a new study.

The findings suggest that Black patients may have had less access to outpatient care that could have helped keep them out of the hospital for non-COVID health problems.

Researchers from the University of C...

Time is never more precious than in the minutes after a stroke. Now, research is confirming that a "mobile stroke unit" can rush aid to patients quickly, potentially saving lives.

"Patients who are treated early benefit from a complete reversal of stroke symptoms and avoidance of disability," said lead study author Dr. James Grotta. He is director of stroke research at the Clinical Instit...

For someone suffering a severe stroke, every 10 minutes that goes by before treatment starts in the emergency room may cost eight weeks of a healthy life, Canadian researchers report.

In fact, delays in the hospital may have worse consequences for recovery than delays in getting to the hospital, they noted.

"Our study confirmed that any delay in delivering appropriate stroke treatme...

It's already being taken by millions to help ward off heart issues, and now preliminary research hints that daily low-dose aspirin might also cut your odds of contracting COVID-19.

As the Israeli research team noted, aspirin is an anti-inflammatory and previous studies have shown that it may help the immune system combat some viral infections. According to the researchers, aspirin was wid...

Giving homeless COVID-19 patients a free hotel room for their quarantine and recovery pays huge health dividends for the entire community, according to a new study out of San Francisco.

Only 4% of homeless folks transferred from Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital to a participating hotel wound up back in the hospital with worsened COVID-19 symptoms, the researchers said in the repo...

THURSDAY, March 4, 2021 (Healthday News) -- In a finding that suggests overweight people should be prioritized for COVID-19 vaccines, a new report released Thursday shows the risk of death from coronavirus infection is about 10 times higher in countries where most of the population is overweight.

The World Obesity Federation report found that 88 percent of deaths due to COVID-19 in t...

Two new studies suggest that the jury is still out on whether the arthritis drug tocilizumab helps those with severe COVID-19.

Both reports were published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine. The first, from scientists at the University of California, San Diego, found tocilizumab didn't improve outcomes or reduce the risk of death in patients with severe COVID-19 pneu...