Cases of RSV, flu ticking up among young children in US as respiratory virus season begins

(NEW YORK) — The deadly E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders was declared over on Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In total, 104 people reported falling ill across 14 states with about one-third of them being hospitalized, according to the CDC.

The true number of people who got sick was likely much higher because many people recover from E. coli without medical care and are never tested, the CDC noted.

Americans between ages 1 and 88 were affected in the outbreak, according to he CDC. Colorado had the greatest number of cases with at least 30 people falling ill. The state also reported one death.

An outbreak notice was first released by the CDC in late October. Evidence from health officials’ investigation at the time showed that slivered onions served on Quarter Pounders were a likely source of contamination.

Nearly all the people who fell ill and were interviewed by health officials reported eating at McDonald’s and the overwhelming majority remembered eating a menu item that contained the fresh, slivered onions, according to the CDC.

The fast food chain’s distributor of the onions, Taylor Farms, initiated a voluntary recall of the onions in late October. McDonald’s stopped using the ingredient and removed the Quarter Pounder entirely off the menu in a dozen states.

The latest reported illness was on Oct 21. All the confirmed cases occurred before the onions were recalled and the ingredient was taken off of the McDonald’s menu at some locations, according to health officials.

The fast-food chain is no longer serving the recalled onions and there “does not appear to be a continued food safety concern related to this outbreak,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday. The agency also noted that its investigation is now closed.

McDonald’s North America chief Impact officer Michael Gonda and chief supply chain officer Cesar Piña shared a message on Tuesday, saying the announcements from the CDC and FDA provide “certainty and validation” that the outbreak is over and the risk to the public has remained low since late October.

While the issue had been fully contained — and any contaminated product associated with this issue had been removed from our supply chain as of Oct. 22, 2024 — it can now be classified as “closed” and remediated,” the message read, in part.

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(NEW YORK) — People who were diagnosed with severe COVID-19 infections from the first wave of the pandemic could face double the risk of heart attack and stroke, a new study has found.

The study, published this week in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology and supported by the National Institutes of Health, found the elevated risk could last for up to three years

Researchers focused on the long-term cardiovascular risks for unvaccinated people who were sick with the virus during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and 2020.

Compared to someone who never had COVID-19, the likelihood of heart attack, stroke and death doubled for anyone who was ever ill with the virus, and was four times higher for people who required hospitalization, the study found.

The elevated danger persisted for more than three years after the initial infection, which, according to the study, posed a serious cardiovascular threat comparable to that of type 2 diabetes.

“Findings suggest severe COVID-19 infection as a catastrophic component,” Dr. Hooman Allayee, the study’s principal investigator, told ABC News. “Cardiovascular mortality trends from 2010 to 2019 were steadily going down. Then, all of a sudden, between 2020 and 2022, ten years of work [was] completely wiped out because of COVID-19.”

People with blood types A, B and AB were especially vulnerable to increased cardiovascular risk from COVID-19, while people with type O blood had a reduced chance of facing such issues, according to the study.

“Blood type is known to be associated with heart attack and stroke risk,” said Allayee, who is a professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. “If your blood type is A, B or AB, the virus is more likely to infect you and makes these blood cells open to viral entry.”

The study analyzed individuals from the UK Biobank, a large medical database consisting primarily of data taken from older, wealthier and predominantly white participants. However, similar studies looking at other populations came to nearly identical conclusions, according to Allayee.

The study emphasized the importance of COVID-19 vaccinations, Allayee said.

“No matter what vaccine you got, just six months after the vaccination or the booster, the chance of heart attack and stroke went down,” he said. “But immunity wanes over time, which is why you need the boosters. If not, you could be susceptible to getting severe COVID again.”

Anyone who has ever had a severe COVID-19 infection, especially if they required a hospital stay, should discuss the potentially increased health hazards caused by the virus with their health care provider, Allayee stressed.

“Talk to your doctor and start the discussion with your physician,” he said. “It’s not going away, so we have to start talking about it. Stay on top of your vaccinations and boosters and get regular check-ups.”

Mahir Qureshi, M.D. is an internal medicine physician resident at Cooper University Hospital and a member of the ABC Medical Unit.

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(NEW YORK) — The active ingredient found in popular medications for Type 2 diabetes and weight loss, including Ozempic and Wegovy, may reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, a new study published Thursday finds.

Researchers from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, looked at three years of electronic records of almost 1 million patients with Type 2 diabetes, including those prescribed semaglutide.

Semaglutide falls under a class of medications known as glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, or GLP-1s, which mimic the GLP-1 hormone that is produced in the gut after eating.

It can help produce more insulin, which reduces blood sugar and therefore helps control Type 2 diabetes. It can also interact with the brain and signal a person to feel full, which — when coupled with diet and exercise — can help reduce weight in those who are overweight or obese.

The team found that compared to seven other anti-diabetic drugs, semaglutide helped significantly lower the risk for Alzheimer’s disease, including other types of GLP-1s.

Semaglutide was associated with a 70% reduced risk when compared with insulin and 40% reduced risk when compared with other GLP-1 drugs, according to the study.

Women experienced an even lower risk for Alzheimer’s with semaglutide when compared to men, at about 80% compared to 50%, respectively.

However, women in the study were younger and more likely to have obesity or depression. They were also less likely to have heart disease, which may have led to their lower risk.

About 120,000 Americans die from Alzheimer’s disease in the U.S. each year, and it is currently the seventh-leading cause of death nationally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While getting Type 2 diabetes under control may already lower the risk for Alzheimer’s disease, there may be additional dementia risk reduction for semaglutide, according to Rong Xu, lead researcher and professor of biomedical informatics at Case Western.

Semaglutide is considered to be “the most potent of the GLP-1s being that it has the greatest effect at hitting the receptor,” and, of the GLP-1s, it also produces the greatest weight loss, said Dr. Louis Aronne, the director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Center at Weill-Cornell Medical Center.

The greater potency of semaglutide may be why it has a stronger protective effect against Alzheimer’s.

Xu told ABC News that although there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, there are several risk factors including Type 2 diabetes and obesity that may be controlled.

“If we can address those risk factors, then we can prevent Alzheimer’s disease,” she said. “So, for semaglutide, there’s some preclinical evidence showing that this medication has neuro-protective effects and is also anti-inflammation, which can address a lot of risk factors associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”

This means GLP-1 medications may not only lower blood sugar to reduce the risk for Alzheimer’s disease, but they may also play a role in reducing neuro-inflammation.

“GLP-1 receptor agonists mitigate neuroinflammation, they mitigate oxidative stress, [and] they mitigate a number of things which occur systemically but also in the brain,” Nigel Greig, principal investigator at the National Institute on Aging, told ABC News.

However, the exact mechanism behind how GLP-1 medications reduce Alzheimer’s risk is unknown so more research is needed, according to Xu.

This is only [an] association, we cannot prove causality,” Xu said. “So, it’s not recommended to say people prescribed this medication can treat or prevent Alzheimer’s disease.”

“But this study can help people who already have Type 2 diabetes or obesity and are high risk for Alzheimer’s disease, it maybe can provide some evidence for medication selection,” she added.

For future research, Xu said she wants to examine if semaglutide can also lower the risk of other neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia.

“GLP-1s provide benefit over and above weight loss alone. We are just beginning to understand the benefits of these drugs beyond weight loss alone,” said Aronne.

Itohan Omorodion, MD, MPH, is an internal medicine resident at George Washington University Hospital and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.

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