Congenital Hearing Loss

A man hospitalized with COVID-19 is given medicine. Credit: Getty Images Health officials say obesity is among many health conditions that can cause severe illness from COVID-19 including death or hospitalization, with Florida facing a detrimental trend of obese and overweight residents. People who are overweight or obese are more likely to experience negative outcomes when they contract COVID, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some key facts the CDC mentions about the link between obesity and COVID include tripling the risk of hospitalization, increasing the risk of death, and weakening the immune system. In Florida, obesity remains a problem, as people struggle to maintain a healthy weight. According to the Florida Department of Health, unhealthy weight is "the number one public health threat to Florida's future," with only 36 percent of residents currently considered at a healthy weight. "On our current trend, by 20...

IMAGE:  Beige adipocytes within white adipose tissue (beige adipocytes stained with UCP-1 in green. Lipids are stained in red and F-actin outlining cells especially blood vessels in grey, DNA ist blue)... view more  Credit: Ruth Karlina The protein Asc-1 regulates whether fat-burning beige or fat-storing white adipocytes are formed, which can have an impact on the development of metabolic diseases. This is shown by a current study of the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD). The results open up new approaches to prevent the development of metabolic diseases. The study has now been published in Nature Communications . Not all fat is the same: there is white, brown and beige adipose tissue *. While white fat cells serve as energy stores, excess energy is burned in brown and beige fat tissue. Too much white fat is considered unhealthy. If the white adipose tissue increases significantly in adults with obesity, metabolic diseases such as...

Obesity, a complex disorder is caused by multiple factors, both environmental and genetic. Obesity has been identified by the American Medical Association as a chronic medical condition, and not just a lifestyle disease. Being obese is not a result of being lazy. It is an actual medical condition that warrants just as much attention, consideration, and care as any other medical condition such as diabetes or heart disease. Yet, most of the obese people are blamed and shamed for their condition by society without understanding the root cause. Not just the society, some physicians also have a misplaced understanding of this chronic condition. They must move past the basic and generally futile endorsement of "eat less and exercise more". It is critical to investigate and address the causes of amplified energy intake, diminished metabolic rate, and reduced activity. Obesity reduces life expectancy by increasing the risk of type-2 diabetes, heart attack, heart failure, high blood...

Diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease account for the majority of COVID-19 hospitalizations, suggests a new study. Researchers estimate a 10 percent reduction in the number of people with each of these conditions could have potentially prevented about 11 percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations. Experts say physicians should help people manage these conditions to decrease their risk of severe COVID-19. Certain medical conditions increase the risk of severe COVID-19. Four of these account for the majority of COVID-19 hospitalizations, suggests a recent study. Researchers estimated that of the more than 900,000 COVID-19 hospitalizations that occurred in the United States through mid-November 2020, 30 percent could be attributed to obesity; 26 percent to high blood pressure; 21 percent to diabetes; and 12 percent to heart failure. Combined, these four cardiometabolic conditions accounted for almost two-thirds of the COVID-19 hospitalizations during t...

Seventy-five years after World War II ended, connections to the Holocaust keep fading as more and more survivors die. And the relatively few remaining find themselves at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. Salt Lake City businesswoman and writer Faye Lincoln has been searching unsuccessfully for some of her relatives, even reaching out to Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the millions of victims, and getting no response. "As the child of Holocaust survivors from Auschwitz, most historical memories of those killed have been lost," said Lincoln, who is on the board of Salt Lake City's Congregation Kol Ami synagogue. "It is challenging to access records during the occupation in order to trace relatives." She was pleased Friday to learn that Utah-based Ancestry has now digitized millions of records of Holocaust and Nazi persecution-related victims in partnership with the Arolsen Archives Collection, the largest repository of such documents. Ancest...

The world's biggest family history conference is free this weekend to anyone who registers online at Roots Tech.org. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (famous for its vast FamilySearch digitalized trove of birth, death and marital records dating back centuries) hosts an annual genealogy event and it's open to everyone, regardless of faith. This year, many workshops and speakers focus on Black family history and the African diaspora.  Ancestry.com and Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society will be on hand to lecture and take questions. Roots Tech will start live-streaming select programming at 11 a.m. Friday, Feb. 25, and through Saturday. As of Wednesday, more than 501,000 people from 224 countries had registered. More than 85 percent of them are new to the conference. The Albany spokesperson for Roots Tech, Tarra Rust, vows there will be plenty of experts available to guide newbies through a whole cosmos of online genealogical records. At some poin...

Note: Portions of this essay were adapted from Libby Copeland's book " The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are ," which will be released in paperback in June. Abrams Press When I met Jason, he was in his late 40s and living in the Midwest. If it were up to him, his full name would be printed here; he is done with secrets. But this is his mother's story, too, and Jason wants to respect her privacy. Growing up, Jason was raised mostly by his grandparents, with his mom and a stepfather in and out of his life. His mom wouldn't talk about who his biological father was — not when she came to his high school graduation, nor when he was getting married. He was too young to understand, she'd say, or now wasn't a good time. Jason was in his 30s, a father with two young kids, when he decided to ask again. A relative had recently died, and it occurred to him his mother might pass away without ever revealing the mystery of his paternity. In...

COVID-19 restrictions led The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to order a now year-old and all but complete global halt to baptisms and other temple rites on behalf of the dead. Before the pandemic, proxy baptisms likely numbered in the millions annually. The church won't reveal specific numbers for such private, sacred ceremonies performed in its 168 dedicated temples worldwide. Officially, the faith confirms only that such rites have almost entirely been suspended since March 26, 2020. (At this writing, fewer than 20 temples have resumed offering limited vicarious ordinances for deceased ancestors.) However, the Utah-based church and the legions of family historians among its 16.5 million members have hardly ceased their genealogical labors. Instead they are anticipating the eventual end of the pandemic, and with that the reopening of temples to widespread in-person use. FamilySearch.org, the church's massive nonprofit genealogical research website, reported ...

Note: This story was updated March 31, 2021, to note that the ALSummit trial has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration but will proceed only in Korea; there are no plans to open additional sites in the U.S. or elsewhere. A Phase 3 clinical trial is recruiting adults with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of NeuroNata-R (lenzumestrocel), a stem cell therapy approved to treat ALS in South Korea. Enrollment is currently ongoing in South Korea, and patients interested in participating must be able to stay in the country for at least 14 months, Corestem, the therapy's developer, stated in an email to ALS News Today. ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder caused by the gradual loss of motor neurons — the specialized nerve cells responsible for controlling voluntary movements — in the spinal cord and brain, leading to muscle weakness and shrinkage. Stem cell therapy is emergi...

BURLINGAME, Calif.--( BUSINESS WIRE )--Humanigen, Inc. (Nasdaq: HGEN) ("Humanigen"), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on preventing and treating an immune hyper-response called 'cytokine storm' with its lead drug candidate, lenzilumab, today announced positive topline results from its Phase 3 clinical trial evaluating the efficacy and safety of lenzilumab in patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Trial results showed that patients who received lenzilumab and other treatments, including steroids and/or remdesivir, had a 54% greater relative likelihood of survival without the need for IMV compared with patients receiving placebo and other treatments. These results are statistically significant. "The results from our Phase 3 clinical trial with lenzilumab treatment were associated with better outcomes in hospitalized hypoxic COVID-19 patients who had not yet progressed to the point of requiring IMV," said Cameron Durrant, MD, MBA, Chief ...