Day: October 12, 2021

People over the age of the 60 without heart disease should not take low-dose aspirin daily to prevent a first stroke or heart attack, according to an independent panel of U.S. health experts.

In a draft of new guidelines released online Tuesday, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said bleeding risks caused by aspirin outweigh any potential benefits for adults in their 60s who have not had a heart attack or stroke.

Low-dose aspirin has long been recommended for people with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity or other maladies that increase their risks of a heart attack or stroke. 

“Aspirin use can cause serious harms, and risk increases with age,’’ said task force member and Tufts Medical Center primary care expert Dr. John Wong.

Wong said adults of all ages should consult with their doctors before deciding to start or stop taking aspirin, a pain reliever and blood thinner.

If the guidelines are finalized, they would mark a reversal of the group’s 2016 recommendations for preventing a first heart attack and stroke. But they would be more consistent with more recent guidelines issued by other medical organizations.

Public comments on the guidelines are allowed until Nov. 8, after which the group will consider before making a final decision.
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Brain computer interfaces, where computers analyze brain signals and help paralyzed people to write and carry out other actions, is a burgeoning area of research. VOA’s Deana Mitchell has the story of one breakthrough.
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A group of World Health Organization experts is calling for 70 percent of the global population to be fully vaccinated by mid-2022 to prevent the COVID-19 pandemic from progressing in more dangerous ways. The 15-member Strategic Advisory Group of Experts, known as SAGE, which makes recommendations to WHO on vaccine policy and strategy, just concluded a four-day meeting.

The experts say more than enough vaccines are available to cover everyone by the middle of next year if the doses are not hoarded by wealthy countries and are shared equitably with poorer nations which as of yet do not have them. 

WHO director of immunization vaccines and biologicals Katherine O’Brien says it is urgent to get the doses to places that are falling behind in the race to vaccinate.

“Unless we do that, we will continue to have transmission and transmission will lead to more variants and the issue of the variants is that there is the potential for those variants to escape immune pressure and to undo much of the progress that has been made,” O’Brien said.

The experts recommend people who are moderately and severely immune compromised should be offered an additional or third dose of all COVID-19 vaccines. 

O’Brien says the third dose should be administered one to three months after people have received their second shot. 

“The intent of the third dose is to induce that person’s immune system to have protection that would be at the level that was demonstrated to prevent against severe disease, hospitalization, and death in the clinical trials, which excluded people with immuno-compromised conditions,” O’Brien said.

The SAGE experts say these additional shots are different from booster shots, which are not needed at this stage of the pandemic. For now, they say it is more important that people who have not been inoculated receive their jabs before people who are already vaccinated get a third dose.  

They say they will discuss booster shots at their next meeting November 11 and issue further recommendations then. 
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Severe storms brought suspected tornadoes and baseball-sized hail to parts of Oklahoma, but there were no reports Monday of deaths or injuries. 

The severe weather system that hit Oklahoma late Sunday also brought heavy rain, lightning and wind to parts of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Texas, and more stormy weather is predicted later this week in parts of the central United States. 

Severe weather is not unusual in the Southern Plains in October, said Chuck Hodges, senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Tulsa. But Sunday’s storm “was kind of more of a spring setup,” he said. 

“We had unusually high moisture and a very, very strong weather system that came through,” he said. 

Tornado warnings and reports of damage popped up across Oklahoma beginning Sunday afternoon, and survey crews with the weather service will head out Monday to determine how many tornadoes struck, Hodges said. 

A possible tornado hit the Tulsa suburb of Coweta late Sunday, causing significant damage to a high school, homes and a gas station, news outlets reported, and Coweta Public Schools classes were canceled Monday. 

Building damage was also reported in Anadarko, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Oklahoma City. 

Earlier, baseball-sized hail shattered windows and dented cars in Norman, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Oklahoma City. 

The National Weather Service confirmed two small tornadoes touched down in rural areas of southwestern Missouri — an EF-1 twister in Newton County around 1 a.m. and an EF-0 in Jasper County around 4:45 a.m. KYTV-TV reported that a mobile home, a couple of barns and an irrigation system were damaged, but no one was hurt. 

Lightning that appeared to be from the same line of storms delayed an NFL game between the Buffalo Bills and the Chiefs in Kansas City, Missouri, for about an hour Sunday night. 

On Monday, severe storms were possible in parts of Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan, while another round of storms is predicted Tuesday in Kansas and Oklahoma, the Storm Prediction Center said. 
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