Health

(NEW YORK) — Travis Snyder is in a fight for his life as he races to find a bone marrow donor in his seven-year battle with acute myeloid leukemia, a type of cancer that worsens quickly if not treated, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Snyder, 44, is being helped in his search for a donor by actor Jason Momoa, whom Snyder met in Hawaii shortly after he was first diagnosed with leukemia in 2015.

The Aquaman star has shared Snyder’s story on Instagram and urged people to register on Be The Match’s bone marrow registry to become potential bone marrow donors.

“He’s a friend that’s always been there for me,” Snyder said of Momoa in an interview with ABC News’ Good Morning America. “When I mentioned the registry thing, he was kind of mad at me, and was like, ‘What? Why haven’t you told me this before?'”

Snyder continued, “Once he realized the awareness issue, he’s jumped in with both feet. I really love him and appreciate the support and awareness.”

Snyder, a father of three, was in good health and competing in triathlons when he said he began to feel achy and sick while traveling in London for work.

After he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia — a type of cancer in which the bone marrow makes abnormal blood cells, according to the National Cancer Institute — doctors put him on a regimen of chemotherapy because they did not find a perfect match in the bone marrow registry.

Snyder went into remission for three years, but then his cancer returned in 2018.

Unable again to find a perfect match donor, Snyder underwent a bone marrow transplant with his brother, who was a half-match.

He was in remission again until the cancer returned this March, forcing Snyder to look again for a bone marrow donor.

Doctors have not yet been able to find a match for Snyder, which has inspired him to advocate for change to broaden the bone marrow registry to more people and raise awareness of the need for donors.

Two of the largest bone marrow registries in the world — United States-based Be The Match and Germany-based DKMS — currently have over 40 million potential donors on their registries combined, a small fraction of the world’s population.

Currently, nearly 150 people die from a blood cancer each day, according to Be The Match.

“This continued cycle of being sick and going through all the treatment and getting well for long enough that I get my life going again, and then coming back and going to the registry and nothing is there, I feel very passionate,” Snyder said of his commitment to growing the bone marrow registries. “Obviously on behalf of myself but the many, many people who don’t have a match in the database.”

Snyder, the founder of The Color Run, a series of 5K road races, said he is focused on applying the entrepreneurial spirit that has propelled his career to revolutionizing the ways people join bone marrow registries.

Each year in the United States alone, around 18,000 people are diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses where a bone marrow transplant or umbilical cord blood transplant is their best treatment option, according to the Health Resources and Service Administration.

Snyder said he would like to see bone marrow donation become as common and well-known as organ donation, which people can volunteer for on their driver’s license.

Snyder is particularly focused on expanding the diversity of the bone marrow registries because of his own experience.

“We recently discovered that one of the reasons I’m unique is that I have Pacific Islander genetics, which is a surprise,” he said. “But Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are really underrepresented in all the registries, so the odds of finding a match are really low.”

According to Be The Match, the odds of someone who is Asian or Pacific Islander finding a match is 47%, while the odds of someone who is white is 79%.

Snyder’s doctor, Dr. Gary Schiller, a hematologist at UCLA, said that in addition to Pacific Islanders and Hawaiians, groups such as Asians, Native Americans and African Americans are also underrepresented. It is also more difficult for interracial people to find a donor, especially if they are in underrepresented groups, according to Schiller.

“For some reason, and there are a variety of reasons, for some ethnic groups it is more difficult than others,” Schiller told GMA. “It’s a combination perhaps of insufficient outreach but I think often it’s just insufficient understanding and reticence on the part of some individuals or groups to put themselves on the registry and donate.”

Schiller said doctors look for perfect matches when it comes to bone marrow donors in order to ensure the best chance for a successful recovery.

“Every one of our cells, with very few exceptions, wears markers on the surface. These markers are distinct for an individual,” he explained. “There are two pairs per cell — one pair from one’s father, one pair from one’s mother — and if we attempt to do a bone marrow transplant, we try to match at all of those markers.”

Schiller continued, “Some people have a collection of markers for which it is very hard to find a donor, even with 30 million people in the bone marrow registry.”

A main part of Snyder’s mission is making sure people know about the bone marrow registry and how easy it is both to join the registry and donate bone marrow.

All it takes to join the Be The Match registry, is to use the organization’s registration kit and give a swab of cheek cells, which entails rubbing a Q-tip-like item on the inside of your cheek.

The process of donating bone marrow is similar to donating blood, according to Schiller, who described bone marrow as “probably the easiest organ to donate.”

Snyder said that while he waits to find his own donor, he continues to see it as a “beautiful thing” that someone out in the world could be the person that saves his life. He said he wants people to realize the impact they could have by becoming a bone marrow donor, and what it means to a person like himself who is still in need of a donor.

“As an entrepreneur, I’m always interested in return on investment and making sure that what you put out, you get back in full,” he said. “And this is a huge return on investment situation for people because for a minor inconvenience to someone, it’s everything to someone else and their family.”

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Pfizer released new data Tuesday showing its vaccine continues to reduce the risk of COVID-19 in children ages six months to 4 years-old.

Unlike Moderna’s two-shot vaccine, Pfizer’s vaccine is given as three initial doses for in this age group — considered a “primary” series.

Three doses were 73.2% effective against mild and symptomatic illness from omicron and its subvariants, according to updated data in a Tuesday press release.

Vaccine efficacy is even higher when protecting against severe illness, but the study was not large enough to calculate an exact percentage.

Among children ages 6 through 23 months, the vaccine was 75.8% effective at preventing COVID-19, a median of 1.9 months after the third dose. For children ages 2 through 4 years of age, the vaccine was 71.8% effective at preventing COVID-19, a median of 2.4 months after the third dose.

Sequencing of positive tests found that cases were primarily caused by omicron subvariants, BA.2. Omicron subvariants, BA.4, and BA.5, were just beginning to emerge during the trial, and thus, efficacy results against these strains were inconclusive.

As with doses for adults, officials from Pfizer said they are working with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prepare an emergency use authorization for an Omicron BA.4/BA.5-adapted bivalent vaccine in children 6 months through 11 years of age.

Three doses of the vaccine continues to “be well-tolerated in this age group,” the company said, and the “majority of adverse events observed in this age group have been mild or moderate, with a safety profile similar to placebo.”

“Building on the strong safety and immunogenicity data that led to FDA authorization of our COVID-19 vaccine for children 6 months through 4 years, we are pleased to share confirmatory evidence that a full course of vaccination helps protect against symptomatic disease, particularly during a time when the Omicron BA.2 strain was predominant,” Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.

Despite a continued push to get young children vaccinated, the vast majority of children under 5 remain completely unvaccinated.

About 941,000 children, under the age of five, have now received their first shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, new federal data shows. The overall total represents less than 5% or approximately 4.8% of the 19.5 million U.S. children in that age group.

When broken down by age group, data shows that the majority of children under 5 who have received at least one shot are between the ages of 2 and 4. About 682,000 kids, ages 2 to 4, have received their first dose, compared to just 259,000 children under the age of 2.

Overall, although about 29.6 million kids 17 years and younger have received at least one vaccine, approximately 43.4 million eligible children remain completely unvaccinated, according to federal data.

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(NEW YORK) — Marijuana and hallucinogen use among young adults has reached a new high.

Use of marijuana and hallucinogens by 19- to 30-year-olds reached their highest levels since tracking began in 1988, according to a new Monitoring the Future panel study supported by the National Institutes of Health.

In 2021, 43% said they’d used marijuana in the last year, which was up 34% from five years ago and 29% compared to 10 years ago. More than 1 in 10 said they now use marijuana every day, according to the study.

Eight percent of young adults reported using hallucinogens in the past year in 2021, up from 5% in 2016 and 3% in 2011, the study showed.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told Good Morning America that this data provides a window into young adults’ substance use patterns.

“Certainly the consumption of marijuana has been going up across all of the country and it is driven by the legalization,” she said.

In a statement released with the study, Volkow explained that as the drug landscape shifts over time “we need to know more about how young adults are using drugs like marijuana and hallucinogens, and the health effects that result from consuming different potencies and forms of these substances.”

Recreational marijuana use is legal for adults in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

Many advocates claim marijuana is as safe if not safer than alcohol, which is believed to contribute to tens of thousands of deaths a year. Alcohol remained the most-used substance among adults in the study, and binge drinking — having five or more drinks in a row in the past two weeks — rebounded in 2021 after a historic low in 2020.

Researchers said they have seen some negative effects of marijuana.

Dr. Maria Rahmandar, medical director for substance use and prevention at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, told GMA that the results of this study are “particularly concerning for teenagers and young adults who have developing brains that are particularly susceptible to the negative effects.”

She continued, “Pretty much everybody who ends up having a problem with substance use started as a teenager and continued use as a young adult.”

One trend that has grown increasingly popular are beverages infused with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

Cannabis data company BDSA reported sales of cannabis beverages increased 65% from 2020 to 2021 in the 12 markets it tracked.

Doctors urge caution, saying you may not know exactly what’s in the drink or how it could affect an individual, and say the beverages are both understudied and underregulated.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration “is aware that some companies are marketing products containing cannabis and cannabis-derived compounds in ways that violate the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) and that may put the health and safety of consumers at risk.”

The agency said on its website that it is committed to improving “regulatory pathways for the lawful marketing of appropriate cannabis and cannabis-derived products.”

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(ATLANTA) — Every state saw a decline in life expectancy during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new federal data published Tuesday.

The report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, looked at death data for 2020, the last year for which complete data is available.

Results found that life expectancy declined in all 50 states and the District of Columbia from 2019 to 2020, mainly due to COVID and “unintentional injuries,” such as drug overdoses, according to the report.

States with the highest life expectancy were predominantly in the West and Northeast, while states with the lowest life expectancy tended to be in the South, CDC data found.

For the United States overall, life expectancy at birth was 77.0 years — a decrease of 1.8 years from the life expectancy of 78.8 years in 2020.

When broken down by state, Hawaii had the highest life expectancy at 80.7 years while Mississippi had the lowest at 71.9 years, the report said.

Aside from Hawaii, in the top five were Washington, Minnesota, California and Massachusetts. Meanwhile, rounding out the bottom five were West Virginia, Louisiana, Alabama and Kentucky.

The report found that women had an overall higher life expectancy than men at 79.9 years compared to 74.2. What’s more, in every state and D.C., women had a higher life expectancy than men, according to the report.

Hawaii and Mississippi kept their respective highest and lowest ranks when it came to life expectancy for men and women.

In Hawaii, men had a life expectancy of 77.6 years in 2020 and women had a life expectancy of 83.8 years. In Mississippi, men had a life expectancy of 68.6 years in comparison with the life expectancy of women at 75.2 years.

The report also looked at life expectancy after adults reached age 65, when they are considered senior citizens. Overall, in the U.S., adults were projected to live an additional 18.5 years after reaching age 65 in 2020.

Once again, the Aloha State and the Magnolia State had the highest and lowest life expectancy at 21.0 additional years and 16.1 additional years, respectively.

The report also found that life expectancy dropped in every single state from 2019 to 2020.

New York saw the biggest drop from 80.7 years to 77.7 years, and Hawaii saw the smallest drop from 80.9 years to 80.7 years.

Additionally, the report found that, generally, states in the South, as well as well-populated states like Illinois and New Jersey, had the biggest drops in life expectancy from 2019 to 2020, while states in New England and the West had the lowest declines.

“Overall, life expectancy in the United States declined by 1.8 years from 2019 to 2020, mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and increases in unintentional injuries (mainly drug overdose deaths),” the authors wrote.

According to a CDC report published earlier this year, COVID-19 was the third-leading cause of death in 2020, leading to more than 350,000 deaths.

Meanwhile, annual drug overdose deaths have been rising. In 2020, more than 83,500 people died from drug overdoses, a record high at the time, according to the National Safety Council.

The CDC did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

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(NEW YORK) — Wendy’s is removing the romaine lettuce it uses in some of its sandwiches as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigates an E. coli outbreak that has sickened dozens of people.

While a specific food has not been confirmed as the source of the outbreak, the CDC reported that multiple people reported getting sick after eating sandwiches with romaine lettuce from Wendy’s restaurants in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“Based on this information, Wendy’s is taking the precautionary measure of removing the romaine lettuce being used in sandwiches from restaurants in that region,” the CDC said in a statement Friday.

While there are hundreds of varieties of E. coli, most people infected with Shiga toxin-producing E. coli can experience severe stomach cramps, diarrhea (often bloody), and vomiting, according to the CDC.

Symptoms usually present within four days after consuming the bacteria and most will recover without treatment within five to seven days. In severe cases, some people can develop a type of kidney failure and require hospitalization.

The CDC advised people to contact their health care provider immediately if they have any severe E. coli symptoms. Officials also instructed anyone experiencing symptoms to assist public health officials by recording what they ate in the week before they got sick and reporting their illness to a local or state health department.

Wendy’s confirmed it uses a different type of romaine lettuce for salads and has not yet pulled those menu items.

“Investigators are working to confirm whether romaine lettuce is the source of this outbreak, and whether romaine lettuce used in Wendy’s sandwiches was served or sold at other businesses,” the CDC continued, adding that the restaurant chain “is fully cooperating with the investigation.”

In a statement on its website Friday, Wendy’s confirmed that it was “fully cooperating with public health authorities on their ongoing investigation of the regional E. coli outbreak reported in certain midwestern states,” adding that it was “taking the precaution of discarding and replacing the sandwich lettuce at some restaurants in that region.”

“The lettuce that we use in our salads is different, and is not affected by this action. As a company, we are committed to upholding our high standards of food safety and quality,” the statement read.

Dr. Darin Detwiler, a professor of food policy and corporate social responsibility at Northeastern University, told “Good Morning America” that “lettuce has a long history of being a ‘culprit food’ with E.coli.”

“Foodborne pathogens do not discriminate. Even the mightiest and the most well-meaning and food safety-focused brands are susceptible to the challenges and failures that are found every year in food safety,” Detwiler explained. “Nobody cooks a salad. Lettuce of any kind is not cooked, thus it has no ‘Kill Step’ to eliminate any harm from pathogens.”

Detwiler, who lost his own 16-month-old son Riley to E. coli in 1993 after a multi-state outbreak “resulting from consumption of hamburgers” according to the CDC, has a doctorate in law and policy and a master’s in education, and has also served on the Department of Agriculture’s National Advisory Board. He currently chairs the National Environmental Health Association’s Food Safety Program.

The food policy expert and author explained that “much of lettuce is still in transition in terms of regulatory compliance with the [Food and Drug Administration’s] Food Safety Modernization Act’s produce safety rule,” which former President Barack Obama signed into law in 2011 and aims to prevent foodborne illness rather than respond to it.

“Many illnesses and those infamous recalls — think Thanksgiving 2017, 2018, 2019 — have been tied to lettuce production’s seasonal transition from Yuma, Arizona to the California central coast region,” he said. “Importers of romaine lettuce and/or salad mixes containing romaine lettuce from the U.S. must declare that the product does not originate from counties of Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Benito and Monterey in the Salinas Valley, California, U.S., or prove — through testing results — that the romaine lettuce does not contain detectable levels of E. coli O157:H7.”

He also noted that “Wendy’s leadership has seen outbreaks like this before” and “provided a presence at food safety industry events.”

At the time of publication the CDC said it had not advised any businesses, including Wendy’s, to stop selling or serving food.

Additionally, the CDC said there was “no evidence to indicate that romaine lettuce sold in grocery stores, served in other restaurants, or in people’s homes is linked to this outbreak.”

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(NEW YORK) — Low-calorie sugar alternatives, which had previously been thought to be relatively harmless, may actually have a negative effect on human gut health, according to a new study.

All four substances tested in the study – saccharin, sucralose, aspartame and stevia – were found to change the gut microbiome, the collection of microbes in the gut that help protect humans against disease and enable us to digest food.

“It’s about more than just the number of calories in these ingredients,” ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton said Monday on “Good Morning America,” describing the study’s findings.

The study, published this month in the medical journal Cell, included 120 healthy adults, who were given the different low-calorie sugar alternatives at levels lower than the acceptable daily intake. The participants who participated in the study did not eat low-calorie sugar alternatives as a part of their diet prior to the study.

Study participants logged all of their food and physical activity using a smartphone app, and researchers took microbiome samples from the gut and mouth.

“Basically what they did is they looked at all of these sugar substitutes, things like aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, stevia,” said Ashton, who was not involved in the study. “Then they did some blood tests, they look at indicators of gut microbiome, and what they found was that saccharine and sucralose in particular increased the blood glucose, or ‘blood sugar’ level, [and] stevia increased our insulin level.”

She continued, “So bottom line here, these are not harmless or so-called ‘inert substances.’ And, again, it’s about more than whether or not they have calories like regular sugar.”

The researchers noted that previous research has shown that sugar consumption is strongly associated with weight gain, and replacing sugar in the diet with low-calorie sugar alternatives is one of the most common strategies people use to combat obesity and hyperglycemia, citing a study that showed 25.1% of kids and 41.4% of adults in the United States consumed low-calorie sugar alternatives from 2009 to 2021.

The prior study noted that more women than men consumed them as well.

The prevalence of obesity in adults in the United States was 41.9% in 2017-2020, and has increased 11.4% from 1999-2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In kids and teens, the prevalence of obesity is 19.7% in 2017-2020.

Obesity prevalence can be higher depending on the location, with the Midwest and South having the highest rates of obesity, according to CDC data.

People who are overweight or obese are at an increased risk for many serious health conditions, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, gall bladder disease, osteoarthritis, mental illness and other health problems.

For people whose diet is currently high in sugar substitutes, Ashton said she recommends minimizing their use, while acknowledging it can take time to do so.

“Right now we need more research to conclusively know what the impact it has on our health is, but the results of this study suggest that there is an impact on our metabolic health, and our overall health, and our gut — all important,” she said. “So, I think my recommendation would be minimize their use, don’t rely on them as a harmless, completely free-for-all when it comes to what we are putting in our foods, and take some time to re-train your taste buds.”

She continued, “That does take time but it is possible, and you can wean yourself away from that sweet tooth.”

Dr. Alexandria C. Wellman, a resident in the combined Anatomical and Clinical Pathology program at the University of California, Los Angeles, is a part of the ABC News Medical Unit.

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(NEW YORK) — Monkeypox has now been detected in all 50 states, health officials revealed.

Wyoming became the final state to report a case of the disease on Monday.

The Wyoming Department of Health announced the case in an adult male in Laramie County, which includes the capital of Cheyenne.

Public health representatives are currently working with the positive individual, to see if additional residents are at higher risk of contracting monkeypox, because of potential direct contact.

“Because monkeypox spreads through close, intimate contact we do not believe the risk for the virus is now a higher concern for the local community or for most people in Wyoming,” Wyoming Health Department state health officer and state epidemiologist Dr. Alexia Harrist said in a statement. said. “Monkeypox does not spread easily like familiar viruses such as influenza or COVID-19.”

Since the first case was announced in a Massachusetts patient in mid-May, more than 14,100 infections have been reported across the country as of Monday, CDC data shows.

New York currently has the most infections with more than 2,700, followed by California, Florida, Texas and Georgia, respectively, CDC data shows.

Over the last month, the daily number of reported cases has increased exponentially from 97 per day one month ago to more than 1,300 per day as of Aug. 10, according to the federal health agency.

Most of the cases in this outbreak have occurred during intimate skin-to-skin contact among men who have sex with men, a group that includes people who identify as gay, bisexual, transgender and nonbinary.

However, the CDC has stressed there is no evidence monkeypox is a sexually transmitted disease and that anyone can be infected through close prolonged contact.

At least five pediatric cases have been reported and at least one case has been reported among a pregnant woman.

While it is also possible to be infected with monkeypox by touching the clothes, sheets or towels of an infected patient or from prolonged face-to-face contact through respiratory droplets, the CDC says most documented transmission has not occurred from either of these two methods.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared the outbreak to be a public health emergency, which officials stated will help with the distribution of treatments and vaccines.

Public health officials urge anyone exposed to monkeypox or thinks that they have been exposed to receive the Jynneos vaccine, which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for both smallpox and monkeypox.

As of Aug. 9, more than 620,000 vaccine doses have been shopped and an additional 1.1 million are available to order, according to the HHS.

The CDC says the best way to lower one’s risk of infection is to limit skin-to-skin contact with people whose monkeypox status is unknown, wipe down “high-touch surfaces” their skin may touch and for people to avoid touching their skin or eyes with their hands after coming into contact with a shared surface.

ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos and Sony Salzman contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — Cervical cancer is usually caused by human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted infection so common nearly all sexually active men and women will get the virus in their lifetime, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Despite a widely available vaccine that prevents most types of HPV and available screening that allows early detection and treatment, rates of advanced cervical cancer have increased over the last two decades, according to a new study from the University of California Los Angeles.

The CDC reports that 13,000 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed annually in the U.S., taking 4,000 lives a year. Though advanced cervical cancer is a rare form of this disease, it has a five-year survival rate of only 17%.

Researchers at UCLA analyzed data from 2001 to 2018 using the United States Cancer Statistics program and showed that late-stage cervical cancer is more prevalent in Black and Hispanic women, compared to their white peers. White women, however, have seen the steepest annual rise in rates of this advanced cancer and the lowest rates of HPV vaccinations were found among white teens.

Specifically, white women in the South ages 40-44 have the highest rise in advanced cervical cancer rates (4.5%) per year and were also found to be significantly less likely to have cervical cancer screening done on time.

Dr. Jessica Shepherd, board-certified OBGYN and chief medical officer of Verywell Health, told ABC News these findings are “a bit shocking.” She pointed to the need for more cervical cancer screening and HPV vaccinations, saying men and women have a shared responsibility to get vaccinated and stop the spread of HPV.

“I think for women, you know, we are all in this together. Our goal really should be to fortify the health of every woman,” said Shepherd.

Two doses of the HPV vaccine separated by six to 12 months can be given to kids starting at age 9, long before encountering the virus, according to the CDC. Both safe and effective, HPV vaccines were first used in the U.S. in 2006. Since then, the CDC says infections and HPV types that cause genital warts and cancer have dropped 88%.

“Men are actually going to be very, a very big part of how that virus is transmitted and sexually transmitted. So, I think that they are a very big part of the vaccination process in order to decrease it across the board,” said Shepherd.

Women should have cervical cancer screening using a PAP test that is done in a clinical setting in routine intervals starting at age 21 that may be coupled with HPV testing, according to the CDC.

Shepherd added, “I believe that this is a moment where there should be a call to action to really drive the importance of regular screening, testing.”

Jade A Cobern, MD, board-eligible in pediatrics and MPH candidate, is a part of the ABC News Medical Unit and general preventive medicine resident at Johns Hopkins.

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(NEW YORK) — Dr. Martha Gulati will never forget the first time she saw a young, healthy athlete die of heat stroke.

It was 1995 in Chicago, in the middle of a heat wave that would ultimately claim nearly 700 lives. In the decades that followed, Gulati watched in alarm as the climate warmed and heat catastrophes grew even more intense.

“The medical community was not prepared for what these temperatures would do to people; we were ultimately learning on the fly,” said Gulati, now associate director of the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and president of the American Society of Preventive Cardiology.

Since that heat wave in 1995, climate change has intensified globally with wildfires, hurricanes, droughts, heat waves and cold spells leading to famine and drought. As a result of these extreme changes, the medical community is noticing an increasing rate of heart disease.

“The world we live in right now is not a very hospitable environment for the heart,” Gulati said. “With heart disease prevention, we tend to focus on controlling blood pressure and lipids, but we should consider the other aspects of prevention, like our environment.”

Sixty-two percent of deaths attributed to climate change were from cardiovascular disease, according to a study published in Lancet in 2020.

“We know that air pollution is a cause of heart disease.” said Dr. Sadeer Al-Kindi, a cardiologist at University Hospitals in Ohio and assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. “Evidence shows that air pollution increases heart disease, heart failure and insulin resistance.”

Particulate matter, tiny particles in the air invisible to the naked eye, are produced by greenhouse gasses and carbon emissions. These particles can enter your lungs and bloodstream, wreaking havoc on tissues that are vital to a healthy cardiovascular system. Over time, prolonged exposure to pollution can contribute to increased clotting, high blood pressure and sleep disturbances.

Dr. Kai Chen, assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health and director of research at the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health, said that when inhaled, these pollutants cause stress and inflammation in the body that can result in cardiometabolic syndromes, such as hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes.

Experts say it’s difficult to directly blame individual heart attacks on heat waves based on currently available data. However, there is research to suggest a close relationship, as regions with excessive heat or freezing temperature had alarmingly higher episodes of heart attack, according to a June study in Nature Reviews Cardiology.

It’s not clear exactly why temperature shifts are correlated with higher rates of heart attacks. Experts believe that temperature shifts affect the body’s ability to regulate normal body temperatures in response to the extreme temperatures.

Al-Kindi said that a concept called “climate penalty” could explain these patterns. Extreme weather conditions from climate change are able to increase and distribute those invisible molecules that are detrimental to our body, he said.

“Fires, winds, heat and cold driven by climate change increases the production and distribution of these pollutants,” Al-Kindi said. “[Climate change] both directly elevates the number of particles in the air that people breathe in, but also indirectly by causing droughts, famine, malnutrition and limiting accessibility to care.”

A study published earlier this month in the journal Nature Cardiovascular Research found that even medications used to treat heart disease may work differently during heat waves.

Chen, who was the lead author in the study, found that patients who were taking two medications used to treat heart disease had higher rates of heart attacks on days with record heat waves.

Regardless of the age, people who were on beta blockers and antiplatelet medications had a number of heart attacks, explained Chen.

“What is interesting,” Chen said, “is that young people on the same medications, who we typically do not expect to have heart disease, also had higher episodes of heart attacks than those who were not taking these medications.”

Al-Kindi, who was not involved in the study, believes this paradox of medications treating heart disease causing more heart attacks on extremely hot days could be from blunting our nervous system that regulates our “fight or flight” response and regulates the way we respond to temperature.

While avoiding cigarettes, eating healthy, sleeping well and exercising are ways to prevent heart disease, doctors agree that protecting yourself from the impacts of climate change is essential to your heart health.

Experts advise changes should be made as a community by reducing plastic waste, using public transport, recycling, avoiding red meat and advocating for policies to help prevent worsening climate change.

On an individual level, Al-Kindi said people should stay inside on extremely hot and cold days, avoid pollutants by wearing a mask, move away from fossil fuels and move toward clean energy.

“The impact of climate change is not a question of whether it’s happening — it is happening and we are seeing evidence of it every day,” said Gulati. “If we don’t act now, we won’t save lives and our job as physicians is to save lives.”

Lily Nedda Dastmalchi, D.O., M.A., is a cardiology fellow at Temple University Hospital and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.

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(NEW YORK) — The New York State Department of Health reported its first known case of monkeypox in a child in New York.

According to the new data, one child under the age of 18 has tested positive for monkeypox. The age of the child or the county where the case was reported was not specified in the report. The case was not reported in New York City.

According to the latest data reported by the NYC Department of Health on Thursday, no cases of monkeypox in children have been found in the city.

There are a total of 2,798 confirmed monkeypox cases in New York as of Friday, according to the NYSDOH. Of those, 2,596 are in New York City.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and other health officials declared monekypox to be the “epicenter of the outbreak” in July. Hochul declared a State Disaster Emergency executive order in response to the growing outbreak.

“My team and I are working around the clock to secure more vaccines, expand testing capacity and responsibly educate the public on how to stay safe during this outbreak,” Hochul said in a statement.

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