Health
US State Sees Rise in Unusual Syphilis Symptoms, Raising Concerns!
Chicago health experts issue warning about rising Syphilis cases, urging increased screening due to atypical symptoms.
United States: Disease detectives in Chicago say they are seeing a worrisome trend: Soaring complaints of patients experiencing unusual eye or vision problems or headaches, dizziness, or hearing loss because of a sexually transmitted infection called Syphilis.
Syphilis has the ability to severely damage vision and hearing and its potential to give an individual psychological change. However, these changes are usually associated with infections that may have been undetected for many years.
About the recent study
In a new research study at the 2024 Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Conference, which was held in Atlanta on Wednesday, researchers revealed that in Chicago alone last year, there were more than twenty-five cases with symptoms similar to those of some kind of illness, and if these illnesses are not treated early, their rates will increase.
According to CNN Health reports, Syphilis was diagnosed for over two-thirds (68 percent) of patients with the atypical form of the disease, which did not exhibit common symptoms like the chancre sore or the rash or chancre sore, which might help doctors to find the infection.
Dr. Amy Nham, the study lead author and the first-year EIS officer or “disease detective” assigned to the Chicago Department of Public Health, stated, “Providers definitely need to be screening more and be aware that this is what we’re seeing,” as CNN Health reported.
About the rising Syphilis cases in the US
Syphilis cases are gaining pace and are disrupting the US society. In 2022, 207,000 syphilis cases were reported, which is the highest number of cases since the sixties, according to the CDC’s website.
For many years, the most susceptible population among them is men who have sex with men. They have experienced the highest rate of Syphilis in the US, and this is still true.
Yet, the population with different sexual habits has been rising and reveals now almost 200 percent more gay men and women than in 2019.
In addition to the clustering of a common congenital disease in a single region, some women with congenital syphilis tend to pass on the disease to their newborn babies.
What are the findings from the recent study?
According to Nham, who was being asked by her supervisors at the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) to go over any atypical symptoms of NOO syphilis (or neurosyphilis, ocular syphilis, and otic syphilis), after the infection, cases were on the rise in the city.
She examined thoroughly to find cases of patients that had symptoms or signs that were diagnosable as NOO syphilis and 28 cases met the case definition.
The majority of cases (about 75 percent) were men and Black (71 percent). They were 23-82-year-olds. Out of them, six were gay men, whereas almost half described themselves as heterosexual.
1/3 of the people tested were HIV positive. However, this statistical figure was lower than Nham presumed since most HIV-positive individuals would usually have a more advanced stage of Syphilis.
According to the latest CDC study, practically one out of three gay men with primary and secondary Syphilis was infected with HIV.
Nham’s research revealed that the most affected patients reported symptoms, cranial pressure/headache, personality changes or mental functioning, and eye problems such as vision loss, sensitivity to light, or conjunctival swelling as the most common complaints.
Nham stated, “They’re not the most specific symptoms, which is why it’s really important that providers are doing appropriate screening and asking patients for risk factors,” and things like their sexual history, as CNN Health reported.
United States: As experts note, if one skips a workout or stays up late, his/her brain might still be paying for it even two weeks from now.
The team of researchers from Aalto University and the University of Oulu in Finland have presented how our lifelong daily behaviors influence brain connectivity and how they remain remodeled throughout our lifespan, thus providing valuable grounds for understanding neural plasticity.
More about the finding
Researchers are now very specific that the ways our brains communicate also change, rather than staying the same over a long time, in response to recent experiences over a long extended time period.
Moreover, they also rejected several principles of brain function stability and opened the consciousness of the influence of human daily habits on the neural network, studyfinds.org reported.
The particular experimental design of this study was examined in one subject over the span of five months and reported in PLOS Biology.
Are Your Daily Habits Remodeling Your Brain? Find Out! Credit | Adobe Stock
By acquiring a brain image every few days and integrating it with data donated by wearables and smartphones, the researchers were able to assess how such pre-mentioned variables as sleep quality, physical activity, mood, and even heart rate variability affect the connectivity of the brain.
Further details of the analysis
The participant, Ana Triana, was also the main researcher in the study and received thirty scans over fifteen weeks.
Each scan involved four different tasks: simple attention task, working memory task, resting state, and then execution of watching the movie.
This variation helped the researchers to trace how various types of brain activities changed along with everyday perceptions.
At the same time, monitoring devices of her sleep/wake cycle, physical movements, and data about her heart and breathing rates were collected.
Simple events can leave “echoes” in our brain for up to 15 days! 🧠@AnaM_Triana and her colleagues were tracking one person’s brain and behavioural activity for five months using brain scans and wearable technology.@JariSaramaki @MedicalReel @eglereanhttps://t.co/Mxm7qRsltF
— Aalto University (@AaltoUniversity) October 9, 2024
The mobile application is used to capture the moods and events of each day. This integration of brain scans and actigraphy gave us an extremely high-resolution picture of how daily experience and brain activity were related, studyfinds.org reported.
The study revealed two distinct patterns of brain response: A brief wave, which lasts for a period of up to seven days, and a long-term wave, which can go up to fifteen days.
Results of the study
One of the interesting outcomes was a strong connection between heart rate variability – which is a measure of the heart’s adaptability – and brain connectivity while resting.
It shows that activities that affect our body’s relaxation response, like stress management ways, can shape our brain wiring even when we’re not actively concentrating on a task.
United States: Obesity remains a huge problem for Americans as far as their health is concerned. New data received by the governments indicate severe obesity, a condition that involves storing far too much fat in the body, has risen to a great extent in the last decade.
More about the study
About 40 percent of the population in the US is obese, according to a 2021-2023 survey of about 6,000 people.
Overall, 9 percent of those polled said they were suffering from severe obesity, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Moreover, women were nearly two times as likely as men to report severe obesity.
The general obesity rate looked to have decreased in comparison to what was observed in the 2017-2020 survey. However, it was not considered as a statistically significant change.
US Obesity Crisis: 40% of Americans Now Obese – What’s Going On? Credit | USA TODAY
That is, the numbers are small enough that there exists a probability that the rates did not fall at all.
What more are the experts stating?
Dr. Samuel Emmerich conducted the latest study for CDC as a public health officer. He said it is still early to determine its impact on the disease, including new obesity treatments, which include weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound.
What they found is that the combined obesity estimate of the United States in the last decade has not considerably altered.
According to Emmerich, “We simply can’t see down to that detailed level to prescription medication use and compare that to changes in obesity prevalence.”
The prevalence of severe obesity increased from nearly eight percent in the study between 2013 and 2014 to nearly 10 percent in the most recent study.
Prior to that, obesity rates had risen rapidly in the US since the 1990s, according to US federal research.
🇺🇸 — Nearly 40% of Americans are obese, with cases of severe obesity rising sharply, particularly among women, who are nearly twice as likely as men to be severely obese. In 23 states, more than 1 in 3 adults were obese.
🔗 Source
⚡️ @FolkishObserver | 📱 Follow pic.twitter.com/grwzoWKdTR
— Cod (@DocKnows097) October 2, 2024
Obesity and severe obesity are expressed in terms of BMI, which is calculated with the help of height and weight. The above BMI indicates that a person is obese, as per the Food and Drugs Administration.
Super obesity is defined as the condition when the person’s BMI is 40 or more.
Solveig Cunningham is a professor of global health at Emory University who is interested in obesity.
“Seeing increases in severe obesity is even more alarming because that’s the level of obesity that’s most highly associated with some of the highest levels of cardiovascular disease and diabetes and lower quality of life,” Cunningham added.
Cunningham also added that it is not apparent why severe obesity rates were higher among women.
United States: Recent reports about potential health risks and whether fluoride benefits are as big as once believed have prompted scrutiny of a public health practice – adding fluoride to water supplies.
This is because, as with some questions, the safety of the practice and new data raise questions about the value of fluoride.
More about the news
Adding fluoride to tap water produces only a slight benefit in reducing tooth decay in children’s baby teeth, a new report from the Cochrane Collaboration, an independent group reviewing scientific research, finds.
It is found that adding fluoride to tap water is a slight benefit, leading to slightly fewer cavities in children’s baby teeth, CNN Health reported.
One step in the right direction is to rid our water of fluoride!It’s toxic poison… M.A.H.A. 🇺🇸🦅💯🙌🏻M.A.H.A. https://t.co/WPog4DfVma
” IQ loss in children when exposed to what is presently considered “optimal levels” pic.twitter.com/jAxOFWJSjS— MrsCinkay (@MrsCinkay) October 7, 2024
More about the finding
Research done before 1975 had large benefits; children living in areas with fluoride added to their water averaged about one fewer primary teeth affected by decay than those of children living in areas without water fluoridation.
Those findings don’t apply to more current populations with increased access to other sources of fluoride and lower levels of dental disease at baseline.
Since the 1970s, fluoride-containing toothpaste has been widely available and is more often used.
According to the new report published this week, fluoride in water was tied to a difference in decay of only about a quarter of a tooth, on average, in more recent studies.
The federal judge, last month had asked the US Environmental Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water in response to concerns that fluoride may affect young children’s intellectual development, CNN Health reported.
In light of concerns about fluoride’s possible effect on young children’s intellectual development, a federal judge last month ordered that the EPA further regulate fluoride in drinking water.
Some foods and groundwater have fluoride, a mineral. It can help protect tooth enamel, which can erode with acids produced by plaque, bacteria, sugar, and other acids found in your mouth.
The USA began adding fluoride to public water systems in 1945.
Now, almost three-quarters of the US population, about two hundred and nine million people, are served by drinking water systems that have been fluoridated, according to data from the CDC.