A new study from China, recently published in JAMA Ophthalmology, finds that people who wear glasses are at lower risk of being infected with COVID-19.
For the study, a team of researchers collected data on the wearing glasses from all patients infected with COVID-19. They found that only 16 (5.8%) of the 276 patients with COVID-19 wore glasses for more than 8 hours per day.
The scientists determined that all those patients had myopia (short-sightedness), so they looked for the same patients in Hubei Province, where the hospital is located. The analysis of the number of people with myopia indicated that the proportion of short-sighted COVID-19 hospital admissions was over 5 times lower than it was expected from the population.
A recent study from Kings College London in the United Kingdom suggests that lonely older adults are at higher risk to develop type 2 diabetes regardless of other risk factors like smoking, alcohol consumption, and excess weight.
For the study, a team of researchers analyzed data from more than 4,000 people aged 50 and over, taken from the data collected during the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Within the follow-up period of 12 years, 264 people developed type 2 diabetes. This makes approximately 6% of the sample.
Lead author of the study Dr. Ruth Hackett says: “The study also demonstrates a clear distinction between loneliness and social isolation, in that isolation or living alone does not predict type 2 diabetes, whereas loneliness, which is defined by a person’s quality of relationships, does.”
A new study, conducted by researchers from the Wake Forest School of Medicine, in Winston-Salem, U. S., finds that a diet, called the modified Mediterranean-style ketogenic diet may prevent mild cognitive impairment, which often leads to the development of Alzheimer’s, by creating a more healthful balance of the gut microbiota.
This type of diet includes very few carbohydrates that used as fuel by the human body, and when the body is short on carbs, it starts to break its fat reserves to produce ketones as an alternative source of energy.
Principal investigator Hariom Yadav, Ph.D., an assistant professor of molecular medicine at Wake Forest comments the results of the study: “Although we do not fully understand how these fungi contribute to Alzheimer’s disease, this is the first study of its kind to reveal their role in our mental health, which we hope will ignite thinking in the scientific community to develop a better understanding of them in relation to Alzheimer’s disease.”
According to the Chinese study, recently published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, passengers in seats directly adjacent to an infected person are at the highest level of risk of COVID-19 transmission, with an average of 3.5% of them contracting the disease.
Passengers, who sit in the same row with the infected person, have a 1.5% risk to get the virus, which is 10 times higher than seats one and two rows apart. At the same time, passengers who use a seat previously occupied by an infected person, have only a 0.25% chance to contract the novel coronavirus.
Researchers write in their paper: “To prevent Covid-19 spread during an outbreak, the recommended distance is at least two seats apart within the same row, with travel time-limited to three hours.”
A new study, which recently appeared in the journal Diabetes Care, finds that people with metabolic syndrome are at higher risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes, including requiring ventilation and death.
Metabolic syndrome is an umbrella term for several conditions that affect a person’s risk of heart conditions and other health problems, according to the National Health, Lung, and Blood Institute (USA).
For the study, a team of scientists analyzed data from 287 patients diagnosed with the novel coronavirus at two hospitals in New Orleans, US, between March 30 and April 5, 2020. Overall, 66% of the people met the threshold for metabolic syndrome.
The results of the analysis showed that people with metabolic syndrome had a higher risk of dying from COVID-19 (3.4 times) compared to people without metabolic syndrome.
Recent research, led by professors Maria Bes-Rastrollo and Amelia Marti, both of the University of Navarra, Spain, suggests that people eating a lot of ultra-processed junk food are more likely to have a change in their chromosomes associated with aging.
For the study, a team of scientists looked at health data for about 900 people, 645 men, and 241 women, aged 55 and over, who provided DNA samples in 2008 alongside with detailed data about their eating habits every two years thereafter. All the participants were divided into four groups, depending on their consumption of ultra-processed foods.
Three or more servings of ultra-processed food a day doubled the odds that telomeres (strands of DNA and proteins found on the end of chromosomes) would be shorter compared to people who rarely consumed this kind of food.
The researchers found that compared to the group who ate the fewest ultra-processed foods, the other three groups had an increased likelihood – 29%, 40%, and 82%, respectively – of having shortened telomeres.
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