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Folks with life-threatening chronic illnesses can receive effective support over the telephone as they manage their condition day by day, a new clinical trial finds.

Seriously ill veterans living with lung or heart disease experienced significant improvements in depression, anxiety and quality of life from a palliative care program delivered by phone, researchers found.

"While we do...

Expecting moms who often turn to acetaminophen for their aches and pains are more likely to wind up with kids who have behavioral issues, a new study warns.

Children between the ages of 2 and 4 were more likely to have attention and behavioral problems if their mothers frequently used acetaminophen during pregnancy, researchers found.

"The kinds of behaviors the caregivers reported ...

Pain can present itself in many forms for people battling multiple sclerosis, and one type can interfere with exercising, new research shows.

One class of pain experienced by MS patients is what the authors of the new study call nociceptive, caused by specific damage to tissues. Another form is neuropathic pain, caused by the loss of the protective myelin sheath around nerves that is a ha...

Women are four to five times more likely than men to develop early-onset rheumatoid arthritis, and a few hormonal factors could be why, new research suggests.

Entering menopause early (before age 45), taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and having four or more kids are all related to heightened odds for developing rheumatoid arthritis, the study found.

Rheumatoid arthritis is ...

Some people might be prone to low back pain because of specific cells contained in their spinal disks, a new study suggests.

The research could explain why only certain people develop back pain due to the degeneration of their spinal discs, which are jelly-filled spacers that act as shock absorbers between the small bones of the vertebrae.

"We've identified for the first time partic...

Two types of mental health treatment are equally effective in treating fibromyalgia patients, Swedish researchers report.

They compared traditional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to what is known as exposure-based CBT.

In traditional CBT, patients receive several treatment strategies, such as relaxation, exercise or ways to manage negative thoughts.

Patients in exposure-ba...

Using a weight-loss medication to help you shed pounds gradually appears to help extend life for people with arthritis of the hips or knees, a new study finds.

However, folks with arthritis who dropped pounds very quickly showed no benefit in terms of survival, and even a slight uptick in their risk for heart disease, a team of American and Chinese researchers found.

The study's tak...

Beyond a myriad of other consequences, childhood trauma appears to raise the specter of chronic pain in adulthood, new research shows.

Researchers pored over 75 years' worth of data involving more than 826,000 people. That included information on levels of neglect or physical, emotional or sexual abuse, plus other serious trauma of childhood.

Their review found strong links between ...

People who've lost a leg due to injury or disease are often plagued by what's known as phantom limb pain -- discomfort arising in the area, despite the absence of the limb.

Now, researchers report that people who wear a prosthetic leg after amputation may have that pain eased, as well as improved sensation in their new foot, using spinal cord stimulation.

"We are using electrodes an...

In response to the ongoing crisis of opioid misuse, U.S. doctors had already cut the amount of opioids they gave patients after surgery by 2022 to just a third of the amount given in 2016, new research shows.

Much of the decline happened before the pandemic, however, and the rate at which doctors are reducing the use of post-op opioids has slowed.

The use of opioids during surgery r...

Migraine sufferers would do better to talk to their doctor about a prescription drug than reaching for a bottle of ibuprofen, a new study finds.

Drugs like triptans, ergots and anti-emetics can be two to five times more effective for treating migraines than ibuprofen, according to a report published Nov. 30 in the journal Neurology.

"These results confirm that triptans shou...

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 29, 2023 (Healthday News) -- Your neck muscles could be giving you headaches, claims new German research that used special MRI scans to spot the connection.

"Our imaging approach provides [the] first objective evidence for the very frequent involvement of the neck muscles in primary headaches, such as neck pain in migraine or tension-type headache, using the ability to qua...

The party drug and anesthetic ketamine is starting to show promise in trials as a treatment for depression.

But new research also suggests that hundreds of U.S. clinics may be misleading consumers, hawking off-label and unapproved ketamine to treat a variety of mental health and pain conditions.

"These are expensive treatments for which patients generally must pay out of pocket and ...

Patients with osteoarthritis in their thumbs can get good long-term outcomes with orthotics and exercise therapy, and avoid surgery at the same time, new research shows.

"Our findings support nonsurgical treatment as the first treatment choice and suggest that treatment effects are sustainable" in patients with problems in the thumb carpometacarpal joint, said study author