Can fingerprints predict schizophrenia? Plus, tips to calm down during the holidays, and more health news

As yet another winter blizzard barrels down on the U.S. East Coast, the the American Heart Association (AHA) is cautioning people to take care when shoveling snow, since the exertion and the cold can cause serious heart problems.

Many people, especially those who don’t exercise regularly, may face an increased risk of a heart attack or sudden cardiac arrest after shoveling heavy snow, according to the AHA. Even using a snowblower carries risk.

“Shoveling a little snow off your sidewalk may not seem like hard work,” said AHA volunteer Barry Franklin, a professor of internal medicine at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine in Royal Oak, Mich. “However, the strain of heavy snow shoveling may be as or even more demanding on the heart than taking a treadmill stress test, according to research we’ve conducted.”

Franklin has studied the topic extensively, finding that hundreds of people die in the United States every year during or just after snow removal.

Retired football players may experience accelerated aging, including higher prevalence of chronic diseases, compared with the general population, according to a study published online Dec. 7 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Rachel Grashow, Ph.D., from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues compared age-specific, race-standardized, and body mass index-standardized prevalence ratios of arthritis, dementia/Alzheimer disease, hypertension, and diabetes among young and middle-aged (ages 25 to 59 years) male former professional football players (2,864 men) versus a matched nationally representative cohort identified from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and National Health Interview Survey.

The researchers found that arthritis and dementia/Alzheimer disease were more prevalent among football players across all study age ranges. Only among young football players (25 to 29 years) were hypertension and diabetes more prevalent.

U.S. poison centers reported greater than 330,000 misuse and abuse exposure cases and 450 deaths over 20 years for school-aged children and adolescents, according to a study published online Dec. 5 in Clinical Toxicology.

Adrienne R. Hughes, M.D., from Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, and colleagues examined recent trends and patterns of intentional substance misuse and abuse exposures among U.S. school-aged children and adolescents. The analysis included intentional misuse and abuse exposures in children (6 to 18 years) reported to the National Poison Data System (2000 through 2020).

The researchers identified 338,727 cases, with misuse/abuse ingestions fluctuating over time and a peak in 2011. More intentional misuse/abuse ingestions occurred in males (58.3 percent) and in older children (>80 percent in youth aged 13 to 18 years).

Fingerprint images have potential as predictors of schizophrenia, according to a study published online Nov. 29 in Schizophrenia Bulletin.

Raymond Salvador, Ph.D., from the FIDMAG Germanes Hospitalàries Research Foundation in Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues built deep learning classification algorithms based on convolutional neural networks using a sample of fingerprints from 612 patients with a diagnosis of nonaffective psychosis and 844 healthy individuals. The general architecture of the network was chosen previously and then applied for building classification algorithms for patients versus controls based on single fingers and multi-input models.

The researchers found that the right thumb network achieved the highest level of accuracy from networks based on single fingers (weighted validation accuracy, 68 percent).

This season of celebrating also comes with lots of stress for many people.

But despite the long to-do list and mandatory get-togethers, it is possible to maintain a healthy mind, according to experts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

“Stress is an inevitable part of life and so the first thing people can do is focus on their wellness, which is really about accepting that stress can be something we can get through with the right supports,” said Kelly Moore, director of the Center for Psychological Services at Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology.

“Finding routine and predictability in your life is a great way to alleviate stress,” Moore added in a university news release.

Bees, in their role as master pollinators, increase crop yields, leading to more production of healthy fruits, vegetables and nuts.

But new research claims that the challenges these important insects face from changes in land use, harmful pesticides and climate change is affecting food production, leading to less healthy food in global diets and more diseases causing excess deaths.

“A critical missing piece in the biodiversity discussion has been a lack of direct linkages to human health. This research establishes that loss of pollinators is already impacting health on a scale with other global health risk factors, such as prostate cancer or substance use disorders,” said senior study author Samuel Myers. He is a principal research scientist of planetary health in the department of environmental health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston.