The New York Times (2/29, Jewett , Hoffman ) reports, “Alcohol-related deaths surged in the United States by nearly 30 percent in recent years…according to a new studypublished by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

CNN (2/29, Christensen ) reports, “In 2020-21, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, there were an average of about 488 deaths per day from excessive alcohol drinking, according to” the report. The data indicated that “the average number of deaths related to excessive alcohol use increased more than 29% from 2016-17 to 2020-21.” The report found that “during 2016-2017 there were 137,927 alcohol-related deaths, but for 2020-2021, there were 178,307.” This “increase in deaths related to excessive alcohol seemed to hit all ages.”

HealthDay (2/29, Mundell ) reports that the study found that “men continue to lose their lives to alcohol in greater numbers than women,” but “the rate at which women are dying from excessive drinking is rising faster than that of men.”

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— “The New York Times (requires login and subscription)

HealthDay (2/28, Mundell ) reports Kundalini yoga “appears to have bolstered the brain health of older women who had risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease,” researchers concluded in a study of “more than 60 women” who practiced either Kundalini yoga or “memory enhancement training.” The benefits of yoga “included significant improvement in subjective memory complaints, prevention in brain matter declines, increased connectivity in the hippocampus which manages stress-related memories, and improvement in the peripheral cytokines and gene expression of anti-inflammatory and anti-aging molecules,” researchers said. The study was published in Translational Psychiatry.

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— “Yoga Brings Brain Benefits to Women at Risk for Alzheimer’s,”Ernie Mundell, HealthDay, February 28, 2024

The New York Times (2/28, Belluck ) reports patients with long COVID may experience “measurable cognitive decline, especially in the ability to remember, reason and plan, a large new study suggests.” Cognitive tests of nearly 113,000 UK patients “found that those with persistent post-COVID symptoms scored the equivalent of 6 I.Q. points lower than people who had never been infected with the coronavirus, according to the study, published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.” In addition, people “who had been infected and no longer had symptoms also scored slightly lower than people who had never been infected, by the equivalent of 3 I.Q. points, even if they were ill for only a short time.”

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— “The New York Times (requires login and subscription)

MedPage Today (2/28, Henderson ) reports the CDC on Wednesday issued new guidance “on identifying and responding to clusters of suicide, as tens of thousands of lives are lost to suicide each year in the U.S.” The agency recommended “three primary steps,” including “conducting a preliminary assessment to determine if a formal assessment is warranted; a formal assessment of the suspected cluster to determine whether it meets the definition of a cluster; and an investigation to identify similarities in cases that can guide community response.” CDC researchers wrote that while rare, suicide clusters “can have unique characteristics and challenges” and “can have considerable negative effects on the community, including prolonged grief and elevated fear and anxiety about further deaths.”

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

The Wall Street Journal (2/27, Mathews , Michaels, Subscription Publication) reports that the Justice Department has launched an antitrust investigation into U.S. health insurer UnitedHealth.
Bloomberg (2/27, Tozzi, Strohm , Nylen , Subscription Publication) reports, “The probe opens a new layer of scrutiny on the largest U.S. health insurer that operates in pharmacy benefits, medical care, technology and other services.” The investigation “emerged out of concerns about UnitedHealth’s acquisitions of health-care providers and data companies, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing information that isn’t public.”

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— “U.S. Opens UnitedHealth Antitrust Probe,”Anna Wilde Mathews, The Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2024