U.S. Insurers Must Cover Eight COVID-19 At-Home Tests a Month: White House
TUESDAY, Jan. 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Private insurers will have to cover the cost of eight at-home COVID-19 tests per person per month as of Saturday, the Biden administration announced Monday.
Under the plan, people who provide their insurance …
Red Cross Says U.S. Blood Supply at Dangerously Low Level
TUESDAY, Jan. 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — There is an urgent need for blood donations as the U.S. blood supply drops to one of its lowest levels in more than a decade, the American Red Cross said Tuesday.In the past few weeks, blood centers nationwid…
Learn MoreAmericans Should Avoid Travel to Canada: CDC
TUESDAY, Jan. 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Americans should avoid travel to Canada due to “very high” levels of COVID-19 cases in that country, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.The agency placed Canada under a Level 4 tr…
Learn MoreIn Breakthrough Transplant, Man Receives Genetically Modified Pig Heart
TUESDAY, Jan. 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — In a medical first, doctors from the University of Maryland have implanted the heart of a genetically modified pig in a 57-year-old man facing the final stages of heart disease. The surgical feat, known as xe…
Learn MoreTwo Doses of BNT162b2 Vaccine Protect Against MIS-C
TUESDAY, Jan. 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Receipt of two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is associated with a high level of protection against multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) among children aged 12 to 18 years, according t…
Learn MoreCOVID-19 Survivors Overestimate Lingering Taste Impairment
TUESDAY, Jan. 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — More than half of patients with self-reported long-term altered taste perception following COVID-19 actually have normal gustatory function when evaluated with validated psychophysical tests, according to a research letter published online Jan. 6 in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.
Paolo Boscolo-Rizzo, M.D., from the University of Trieste in Italy, and colleagues examined whether psychophysical tests confirm a self-reported alteration of taste among patients self-reporting a persistent distorted perception of basic tastes three or more months after acute COVID-19. The analysis included 105 adult patients with psychophysical evaluation performed a median of 226 days after illness onset.
The researchers found that 98.1 percent had mildly symptomatic COVID-19 with no evidence of pneumonia. Almost all patients (94.3 percent) self-reported an associated olfactory impairment. A Taste Strips Score showed the prevalence of hypogeusia was 41.9 percent and dropped to 28.6 percent when adjusting for age. Only three patients (2.9 percent) had hypogeusia and were normosmic. With an increasing Threshold, Discrimination, and Identification score, the prevalence of normogeusic patients increased. Among 61 patients who were normogeusic, the majority (83.6 percent) had a TDI score
“This psychophysical study uncovers overestimation of self-reported taste impairment and supports the use of validated psychophysical tests to estimate the burden of chemosensory dysfunction in people with long-term COVID-19,” the authors write.
Learn MoreMindfulness Plus Brain Stimulation May Ease Chronic Migraine
TUESDAY, Jan. 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Mindfulness practices associated with left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) anodal transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) have a therapeutic effect in women with chronic migraine, according to a…
Learn MoreADA Updates Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes for 2022
TUESDAY, Jan. 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — The Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes clinical practice guideline has been updated for 2022 by the American Diabetes Association and published as a supplement to the January issue of Diabetes Care.Boris D…
Learn MoreBreastfeeding May Reduce Maternal Cardiovascular Risk
TUESDAY, Jan. 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Among parous women, those who breastfeed may have a reduced risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to a review published online Jan. 11 in Journal of the American Heart Association.Lena Tschiderer, …
Learn MoreCOVID-19 Incidence Up With Exposure to Airborne Pollutants
TUESDAY, Jan. 11, 2022 (HealthDay News) — The incidence of COVID-19 is increased in association with long-term exposure to airborne pollutants, according to a study published online Jan. 10 in Occupational & Environmental Medicine.Giovanni Veronesi, …
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