Danish smokers bought less tobacco and more quit smoking during the Covid pandemic, new research finds. This comes as a surprise given that mental health and exercise habits waned during the lockdown.
The language used by doctors when diagnosing female patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) can negatively impact their wellbeing and how they view their condition, new research finds.
Researchers for the first time compared schizophrenia and frontotemporal dementia, disorders that are both located in the frontal and temporal lobe regions of the brain.
More than 225,000 tweets with the hashtags #scamdemic and #plandemic led to an “infodemic” of misinformation and disinformation on Twitter during the first year of the pandemic, a new study finds.
It is often believed that a close relationship between owners and their dogs can bring many mental health benefits to owners, but findings from a new study paint a more complicated picture.
Staff across all levels of UK health and social care reported feeling betrayed, morally violated and being treated unjustly and unfairly at work during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Changes in areas of the brain associated with emotion have been identified in people with Takotsubo syndrome, sometimes known as broken heart syndrome, according to new research.
Patients with neurological conditions such as dementia or autism can prove especially challenging for radiographers. A session at the ECR Overture in March gave insights to a patient-focused approach.
Around 33% of GPs are likely to quit direct patient care within five years, according to a UK survey. The high percentage of young physicians is especially alarming.
E-mental health services could provide a response to these challenges and offer effective ways for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and aftercare.
A large-scale qualitative study looks into the difficulties frontline doctors faced across two waves of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK and Ireland since early 2020.
French researchers have found that addressing concerns related to the Covid-19 vaccination via a chatbot interface might be capable of swaying the vaccine-hesitant. Vaccine hesitancy is one of the major challenges in containing the Covid-19 pandemic. Previous studies have revealed that mass communication—through short messages relayed by television or radio—is not a very effective means of…
Colourful, 3D rendered scientific images are fascinating - but can they deceive viewers? New research from Spain suggests this might be the case. According to the study by the Instituto de Radio Televisión Española and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona conducted during the Covid-19 lockdown, black and white images of SARS-CoV-2 make the virus seem more infectious. The results, published on…
Claustrophobia or anxiety can overwhelm small children and people with cognitive difficulties, especially in a confining and noisy MRI scanner tube. Their restless reactions can then render scan images useless. To help such patients to relax during scanning, a team from King’s College London (KCL) has designed an immersive environment with a special virtual reality (VR) headset for use with MRI…
A pandemic is not a game. Yet, human response in dealing with Covid-19 resembles patterns known from games: people hoard resources, compare leaderboards and graphs, play certain social roles, establish a good-versus-evil narrative, and align themselves with prominent hero figures. The reasoning behind this is simple.
Two clusters of brain cells compete to promote either the persistence or disappearance of traumatic memories, according to a new study conducted in mice. The findings could provide important insights into human conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders, and associated problems such as alcohol use disorder (AUD) that can arise from the persistence of traumatic…
Some clinicians are concerned that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis has risen throughout Western society since the late 1980s. Is this correct? And if so, has the true incidence of PTSD really spiralled out of control, or has it simply become overdiagnosed? Experts debate the issue in The BMJ this week. PTSD is a serious and uncommon condition resulting from severe trauma, but it…
Every year, millions of children around the world are admitted to hospital for having anaesthesia and surgery. Many of them experience preoperative anxiety which negatively affects both their hospital experience and medical outcome, as well as their future relationships with healthcare services from both a short-term and long-term point of view. A new, internationally aimed website offers…
Increased allergic reactions may be tied to the corticotropin-releasing stress hormone (CRH), suggests a new study. These findings may help clarify the mechanism by which CRH induces proliferation of mast cells (MC) – agents involved in the development of allergies in the human nasal cavity.
A study conducted by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health researchers reports a high global prevalence of both depression and anxiety during the Covid-19 pandemic. It also shows how the implementation of mitigation strategies including public transportation and school closures, and stay-at-home orders impacted such disorders. Results are published in Psychological Medicine.
During pandemics, protective behaviors need to be motivated by effective communication. A critical factor in understanding a population’s response to such a threat is the fear it elicits, since fear both contributes to motivating protective responses, but can also lead to panic-driven behaviors. Furthermore, lockdown measures affect well-being, making it important to identify protective factors…
A way of using machine learning to more accurately identify patients with a mix of psychotic and depressive symptoms has been developed by researchers at the University of Birmingham. Patients with depression or psychosis rarely experience symptoms of purely one or the other illness. Historically, this has meant that mental health clinicians give a diagnosis of a ‘primary’ illness, but with…
Anorexia is a debilitating eating disorder, and was long thought to be purely psychological. New research is challenging this by revealing that gut microbes may have a significant role in anorexia. A recent review examines the evidence that gut microbes can contribute to anorexia and may provide a new method to treat it.
The identification of people wearing masks has often presented a unique challenge during the pandemic. A new study by researchers from BGU and York University in Canada reveals the impact of this predicament and its potentially significant repercussions. The findings were just published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Patients who need surgery to fix major bone fractures use fewer opioid pills after their procedure if they're reminded of their values – and those reminders don't necessarily need to come from a doctor, according to a new study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. “We showed that opioid medication utilization could be decreased by more than a third in an at-risk patient…