This week in health news, from UC San Diego’s Scott LaFee
Studies suggest flu shots are less effective in people with obesity, perhaps due to an altered immune response, so similar concerns have been raised about COVID vaccines. But a large study found that the two-dose COVID vaccines were effective in preventing severe illness across the spectrum of weight.
Nonetheless, there was some variation: People with very low or very high body mass indexes were at greater risk of hospitalization and death compared to healthy vaccinated people. As with flu shots, the reason might be a reduced immune response, frailty or other conditions associated with low body weight.
But a review of 50 years of data regarding injected hyaluronic acid found that it was only slightly more effective than the placebo effect at reducing pain and improving function. That’s not good news for a lot of Americans who resort to the costly therapy, which accounts for $300 million a year in Medicare claims alone.Even before the pandemic, the life expectancy of Native American and Alaska Native populations appears to have plateaued at 73.1 years, on average, in 2019.
Overall, life expectancy for Americans rose slightly to 79.1 years in 2019, but has since dropped due to COVID.
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