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Calculating how many lives have been lost in the COVID-19 pandemic will be valuable for future epidemiological and policy decisions - in many cases telling the public what we should not do. A murder victim who had a positive test within 30 days of being shot was counted as a COVID-related death, and that didn't inspire confidence. But Americans only know about that because there some effort at transparency. Elsewhere, governments claimed whatever they wanted to claim. China, the home of SARS-CoV-2 and the pandemic that resulted, first claimed they had ended their pandemic at 4,000 deaths while citizens reported crematoriums running 24 hours per day across the country.

People talk about how couples in trouble may be experiencing the seven-year itch. The rock band The Clash sings ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ It’s clear that some couples separate at this point in their relationships, while others work on staying together and remain partners for years.You would think that the longer a couple has stayed together, the closer they would feel towards each other. And if there is such a thing as the seven-year itch, that would mean that couples reach bottom in their relationship at about this time. But does research provide any evidence that this is actually the case?

Very few people are average, that is the problem with using population level statistics in a clinical environment, and why few do it.Yet a population can show what questions to ask, like if there are racial differences in outcomes and why. A recent analysis in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society included data on 2,918 patients aged 75 years or older who were hospitalized for heart attacks at 94 US hospitals from 2013–2016.

Atopic dermatitis (AD), also called atopic eczema, is a common, chronic, recurrent, inflammatory disorder of the skin which affects 5 percent of children worldwide and perhaps more. Moisturizers bring some relief but studies from PubMed, EMBASE and Cochrane library identified relevant studies from their inception through 28 February, 2022 and the systematic review and network meta-analysis of 11 randomized controlled trials involving 3,483 infants found that they can also prevent eczema in high-risk infants.  They evaluated the quality of eligible studies using the Cochrane risk of bias assessment tool. Data analysis was performed using STATA 14.0.

Migraine is a common condition, involving a severe recurring headache but sometimes nausea, weakness and light sensitivity as well. According to the American Migraine Foundation, over 37 million people in the U.S. report being affected by migraine, though only 148 million people worldwide report suffering from it.Perivascular spaces are fluid-filled spaces surrounding blood vessels in the brain. They are most commonly located in the basal ganglia and white matter of the cerebrum, and along the optic tract. Perivascular spaces are affected by several factors, including abnormalities at the blood-brain barrier and inflammation. Enlarged perivascular spaces can be a signal of underlying small vessel disease.

With the population at 8 billion and on its way to 10, there is renewed concern about resources, but water? Yes, though the percentage of the world's water that is potable can be counted on one hand many countries don't have access to oceans. And if Europe forces developing nations to obey European laws on water like they do energy and food, poor countries will never be able to create centralized water services.

Elite performance takes natural ability coupled with elite levels of training. That last part has an effect later in life, according to a new analysis. It found that one in four retired Olympians have some level of osteoarthritis, which causes changes in the joint and can lead to discomfort, pain and disability.

A clinical trial where dogs get advanced cancer treatment could pave the way for a new immunotherapy treatment in kids.  Sarcoma is a cancer of the bones and soft tissues and one of the most common childhood cancers, the third most common cancer in children, with one in three dying from their disease. The first step for almost all sarcoma patients after diagnosis is surgery to remove the tumor. 

A new study says early intervention with cryoballoon catheter ablation (cryoablation) can halt disease progression and reduce risk of serious health impacts of atrial fibrillation(AF).

Age is relative. If you put two people the same chronological age next to each other, one may look younger while one may nonetheless be biologically younger. Yet age is the biggest risk factor for most diseases even though it doesn't tell much of a health story.Population statistics about age are as pointless in individual care as most epidemiology, but they can provide proxies for biological aging that at least have people taking important things for their future, rather than placebos like a USDA food servings chart.

One of the largest mass extinctions ever is bad. Six marine extinctions is even worse. That all happened in one period now known as The Devonian Period, 419 to 358 million years ago.Yet that is also when the world got the trees and complex land plants similar to those we know today first evolving and spreading across the landscape. Those complex root systems affected soil biogeochemistry and set off part of the chain that allowed humans to thrive.

In 2022, the United States surpassed one million COVID-19 related deaths. Many of them had co-morbidities that are risk factors for many diseases, like old age, cancer, or respiratory issues.Added into those risk factors were lifestyle diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, and smoking, all of which are linked to poorer outcomes from COVID-19 infections. Those have all long been linked to negative health outcomes, which is why we have advocated for exercise, sensible diets, and giving up cigarettes as first lines of defense against many future problems.