Air pollution caused by forest fires can be deadly for people with kidney failure, a new study suggests.

The tiny particles of air pollutants -- called fine particulate matter -- from wildfires can trigger inflammation in the lungs and further affect the delicate health of people with kidney failure, the researchers said.

Using data from the U.S. Renal Data System (a regis...

Alcohol abuse is associated with an increased the risk of death in people with abnormal heart rhythms, a new study warns.

Researchers reviewed deaths among almost 115,000 patients aged 15-54 hospitalized for abnormal heart rhythm (arrhythmia) between 2010 and 2014.

Nearly 10% of the patients were also diagnosed with alcohol abuse, defined as drinking that causes problems...

The death of a twin, especially earlier in life, leaves the surviving twin at risk for psychiatric problems, a new study finds.

"Losing a co-twin by death may be a particularly devastating life stressor with considerable health implications for surviving twins, yet there have been few studies on this type of bereavement," said lead author Dr. Huan Song. She is a senior researcher at ...

Hospitals have put in place strict no-visitation rules meant to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but these precautions have led to another heart-wrenching dilemma.

People are dying alone, gasping their last breath without any family or friends there to provide comfort.

Now, some experts are arguing this shouldn't be the case, and that hospitals need to come up with plans that...

More people in the United States are dying during the COVID-19 pandemic, but not just because of the coronavirus. One reason, experts say, is people with other ailments may not be seeking help.

That conclusion is emerging from new research showing deaths are increasing from causes such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes – while emergency room visits for those conditions are dow...

Even after undergoing the artery-clearing procedure angioplasty, Black patients with heart disease are more likely than whites to suffer a heart attack or die within the next several years.

That's the conclusion of a new analysis of 10 clinical trials: On balance, both Black and Hispanic patients fared worse after angioplasty, versus white patients. And that was particularly true for ...

New York City's COVID-19 death rate was more than double that of some countries, and the city's oldest people had the highest risk of death, researchers report.

They used a computer model to analyze over 191,000 lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases along with more than 20,000 confirmed and probable COVID-19 deaths in New York City from March 1 to May 16.

During that time, the city's...

Nearly one-third of excess deaths in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States were linked to causes other than COVID-19, but that doesn't mean that the virus didn't play a role in those deaths, a new study claims.

The researchers found there were just over 87,000 excess deaths in the United States between March 1 and April 25. Excess deaths are those above the...

Smoking, drinking too much and divorce are among the social and behavioral factors most strongly linked to dying early, a new study says.

Researchers analyzed data from more than 13,600 U.S. adults between 1992 and 2008, and examined 57 social and behavioral factors among those who died between 2008 and 2014.

The 10 factors most closely linked with dying were: being a curren...

Heat is an underestimated killer in the United States, a new study suggests.

According to researchers, death records indicate that heat kills as many as 600 hundred Americans each year, but moderate heat may actually be killing more than 5,000 annually. And the social distancing restrictions of COVID-19 might make staying cool harder this summer.

Most of the deaths were from...

When patients are pushed out of the hospital after hip surgery to make room for others, the odds of dying increase, according to a recent study from Norway.

When beds are in short supply, patients are forced out, researchers say. Fridays, the day before holidays and times when hospitals are overbooked are prime times for patients to be discharged, they report.

"Patients wh...

People infected with COVID-19 who need surgery have much higher odds of dying soon afterward, a new study finds.

Infected patients who had surgery died at rates nearly equal to those of the sickest COVID-19 patients in intensive care units, the researchers found.

For the study, the investigators looked at data on more than 1,100 surgical patients with COVID-19 at 235 hospi...

Walking or biking to work may lower your risk of getting sick or dying early, British researchers report.

"As large numbers of people begin to return to work as the COVID-19 lockdown eases, it is a good time for everyone to rethink their transport choices," said lead researcher Richard Patterson, from the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. Scientists from Imperial C...

Among patients in China with COVID-19, researchers found that those with high blood pressure had twice the risk of death from the coronavirus compared with patients who didn't have high blood pressure.

And patients with high blood pressure who were not taking drugs to control it were at even higher risk, the findings showed. However, the study only found an association and could not ...

Among detected cases of COVID-19 in the United States, 1.3% of patients will die from the illness, according to a new calculation. But that rate could increase if current precautions and health care capacities change, the study's author said.

The 1.3% rate calculation is based on cumulative deaths and detected cases across the United States, but it does not account for undetec...

An Australian study has good news for people with type 2 diabetes -- fewer people with diabetes are having heart attacks and strokes compared to 20 years ago.

Heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular complications have declined in the general population, too. But the decreases among people with diabetes have outpaced those for the general population, the researchers said.

More green spaces in cities could significantly reduce premature deaths and their costs, researchers say.

Focusing on Philadelphia, they concluded that increasing the city's tree canopy by about one-third -- from 20% to 30% of land area -- could prevent more than 400 premature deaths a year and save nearly $4 billion in related economic costs.

Increases of 5% and...

Seniors hospitalized with pneumonia are much more likely to die in the hospital and within two years of leaving the hospital than those with hip fractures, new research shows.

But many older people don't recognize the serious threat posed by pneumonia, the researchers said. The study took place in 2009 to 2015, years before the coronavirus pandemic and its respiratory effects became a...

The largest analysis of hospitalized U.S. COVID-19 patients to date finds that most did not survive after being placed on a mechanical ventilator.

The study included the health records of 5,700 COVID-19 patients hospitalized between March 1 and April 4 at facilities overseen by Northwell Health, New York State's largest health system.

Among the 2,634 patients for whom outcom...

Parts of Europe with consistently high levels of air pollution have higher COVID-19 death rates, a new study finds.

The study compared confirmed COVID-19 deaths with air quality data, including satellite readings of nitrogen dioxide air pollution.

Nitrogen dioxide damages the respiratory tract and is known to cause many types of respiratory and heart diseases, according to s...

Women under age 65 with coronary artery disease are more likely to die if they live in rural areas of the United States, and premature deaths among them have surged, a new study finds.

Researchers analyzed nationwide data on premature deaths from coronary artery disease between 1999 and 2017. While premature deaths decreased overall, they remained consistently higher in rural areas --...

As deaths from coronavirus continue to mount, researchers are calling attention to another toll of the pandemic: the many people left behind to grieve, in a time of social isolation.

Losing a loved one is a traumatic event at any time. But experts say the ongoing crisis presents unique difficulties for people in mourning -- from the suddenness of the loss, to the societal shifts happe...

In a harrowing harbinger of what might come in places like New York City, a new report out of Italy shows the death rate for hospitalized COVID-19 patients continues to grow almost 40 days after the country's first case was reported.

Italy has passed China for coronavirus cases, reporting close to 106,000 cases and nearly 12,500 deaths, a Johns Hopkins tally showed Wednesday morning. ...

Heart disease deaths spike with extreme heat, and rising temperatures due to climate change may lead to a surge in such deaths in hot regions, researchers say.

For the study, the investigators analyzed 2010 to 2016 data on more than 15,000 heart-related deaths among people aged 15 and older in Kuwait, which has an average temperature of 82.2 degrees Fahrenheit (F).

Compared ...

Once infected with the new coronavirus, a 20-something has about a 1% chance of illness so severe it requires hospitalization, and that risk rises to more than 8% for people in their 50s and to nearly 19% for people over 80, a comprehensive new analysis finds.

On the other hand, the death rate from COVID-19 is significantly lower than that seen in prior estimates, the new ...

There's been a sharp increase in high blood pressure-related deaths in the United States, particularly in rural areas, a new study says.

Researchers analyzed data on more than 10 million U.S. deaths between 2007 and 2017 and found that death rates linked to high blood pressure (hypertension) rose 72% in rural areas and 20% in urban areas.

The increase was highest in ...

A new study on the evolving coronavirus crisis brings good news: A death rate that's much lower than prior estimates.

The report out of China now sets the overall death rate in symptomatic cases from COVID-19 disease at 1.4% -- much lower than the 3.4% death rate supplied earlier in the pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).

That puts the COVID-19 death rat...

For every 52 smokers, secondhand smoke claims the life of one nonsmoker, an international study reports.

"We hope that attributing harm directly to smokers will help influence public opinion against secondhand smoke exposure and enthuse governments to enforce stringent anti-tobacco control," said co-author Dr. Jagat Narula in a Mount Sinai news release. He is a professor of medicine a...

If you wind up in the hospital with coronavirus, what might raise your chances of dying from the disease?

A new study offers some answers: being older; showing signs of sepsis; and having blood-clotting issues. To come to that conclusion, researchers analyzed 191 adult patients with confirmed COVID-19 at two hospitals in Wuhan, China, the city where the worldwide outbreak began.

People whose spouse or partner has died are less likely to be diagnosed with melanoma, but more likely to die from it, a new study says.

An analysis of data from population-based studies conducted in the United Kingdom and Denmark between 1997 and 2017 found that people who had lost a spouse or partner were 12% less likely to be diagnosed with melanoma than others.

But b...

Walking on America's streets is getting ever more dangerous, a new report shows.

Based on data from the first six months of 2019, the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) predicts there were 6,590 pedestrian deaths that year, which would be a 5% increase over the 6,227 pedestrian deaths in 2018.

The 2019 figure is the highest number of such deaths in more than 30 ...

U.S. life expectancy hasn't kept up with other wealthy nations and experts have cited health care, drug addiction and mental health woes as possible causes.

But maybe the key to longevity can be found in the classroom, new research suggests.

In the new study, a team from Yale and the University of Alabama-Birmingham sought to tease out the impact of race and education on l...

Americans are drinking themselves to death at ever-increasing rates, with women in particular hitting the bottle hard, a new study shows.

The rate of alcohol-induced deaths among women increased between 3.1% and 3.6% a year from 2000 to 2016, while deaths among men increased 1.4% to 1.8% each year, according to the findings.

What's worse, the rates have accel...

Daily exposure to ground level ozone increases city residents' risk of early death, researchers warn.

Ground level ozone -- commonly found in cities and suburbs -- forms when pollutants react in sunlight.

New study findings suggest that thousands of ozone-related deaths "could be potentially reduced under stricter air quality standards," according to study co-author Ana Vice...

Survivors of the 2001 terrorist attack on New York City's World Trade Center who developed PTSD have a lasting risk of premature death, a new study finds.

The study of nearly 64,000 emergency responders and civilians found that the longer the post-traumatic stress disorder lingered, the more likely they were to die early from any cause.

Over 13 years of follow-up, more than...

The dangers of "distracted driving" are well-known, but texting while walking may also be a road hazard, a new research review finds.

Pedestrians who are busy texting are less likely to look both ways before crossing the street and have caused a growing number of "close calls" with cars, the review found. And while chatting on a cellphone or listening to music can be distracting, neit...

More than two-thirds of Americans don't know that heart disease is the leading cause of death among U.S. women, a new survey reveals.

Overall, 68% of respondents weren't aware that heart disease is the top killer of women, but the rate was much higher (80%) among millennials.

A large number of respondents mistakenly believed breast cancer is the main cause of death i...

Older women with colon or rectal cancer are more likely to die early if they lack support from family, friends or others, a new study finds.

For the study, researchers looked at more than 1,400 postmenopausal women with colon or rectal cancer who were enrolled in the long-term U.S. Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study.

Compared to those with strong social support, those wit...

All it takes is short-term exposure to fine-particle air pollution from cars and bushfires to increase the risk of cardiac arrest, a new study warns.

The findings underscore the need for tighter worldwide limits on so-called PM2.5 air pollution and development of cleaner energy sources, according to the authors.

"As no boundary exists in air quality among countries, a global...

Young Americans who live in urban areas or live with low income or low education levels are more likely to die if they get colon cancer, a new study finds.

"There are a lot of disparities in health care," said lead investigator Dr. Ashley Matusz-Fisher, an internist at the Levine Cancer Institute in Charlotte, N.C. "It is important to look at the sociodemographic disparities so that w...

How bad or how long this year's flu season will be remains to be seen. But one thing is already clear: It's proving to be an especially lethal season for infected children.

Fueled by a strain of influenza that children may be especially vulnerable to, less than two months into flu season 39 children have already died, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Pre...

"Food insecurity" -- not having enough money to afford sufficient food -- increases the risk of premature death, new research suggests.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 510,000 adults in Canada between 2005 and 2017. Over the study period, nearly 25,500 people died prematurely. The average life expectancy in Canada between 2008 and 2014 was 82, so deaths at or b...

Sepsis kills more than twice as many people worldwide as once believed, and children in poor regions account for an excessive number of such deaths, researchers say.

Sepsis is an out-of-control immune response to infection that harms organs. People who survive sepsis can have lifelong disabilities.

In 2017, there were 48.9 million cases of sepsis and 11 million sepsis deaths...

Drugs may kill twice as many Americans as government records suggest, a new study claims.

In 2016, the reported rate of drug-related deaths among 15- to 64-year-olds was 9% -- compared with about 4% several years earlier -- with 63,000 deaths classified as drug-related.

However, the new study concluded that the actual number of drug-related deaths could have been abo...

A condition called lymphopenia -- low levels of lymphocyte blood cells -- could be an early warning for illness, a new study suggests.

Danish researchers linked the condition to a 60% increased risk of death from any cause during the study period.

A low lymphocyte count was also associated with a 1.5- to 2.8-fold increased risk of death from cancer, heart disease, respir...

Drowning death rates at public beaches, lakes and rivers are three to four times lower in states with tighter rules for swimming in such locations, a new U.S. study finds.

Researchers analyzed U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data to focus on the 20 states with the highest rates and the 10 states with the lowest rates of drowning deaths among people over age 5. Open wat...

Kids in poor countries are up to 200 times more likely to die after surgery than kids in rich nations, a new study finds.

As the need for pediatric surgery grows in poor and moderate-income countries, it leaves 2 billion children without access to safe surgery and anesthesia, said researcher Dr. Mark Newton. He's a pediatric anesthesiologist at Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital a...

In a finding that suggests most opioid overdose deaths are accidental, new research shows suicide is associated with far fewer of these deaths than thought.

"Our findings suggest that the current emphasis on the contribution of suicide to opioid-related deaths may be overstated, and that for most individuals who overdose on opioids, the primary clinical focus should be on substance us...