HEALTH BRIEFS

COVID RECOVERY

The antidepressant drug fluvoxamine does not speed up recovery from mild or moderate Covid-19, say scientists from Duke University School of Medicine in the US. The drug was tested in 1228 patients, 674 of whom received fluvoxamine, while the rest received a non-active placebo. The average recovery time was 12 days for those given the drug, and 13 days for those in the placebo group. One participant in the fluvoxamine group and two participants in the placebo group were hospitalised. There were no deaths in either group.

BABY INFLUENCERS

Social media influencers are offering contraceptive advice that may be leading to unplanned pregnancies, say researchers from the University of Delaware in the US. They analysed 50 YouTube videos posted by influencers, with between 20,000 and 2.2 million followers, and found most talked about stopping hormonal birth control, with 74% saying they’d stopped or planned to. Around 40% said they used non-hormonal birth control instead, with fertility trackers being the most popular. However, fertility trackers are not as effective as hormonal birth control, and require effort and careful planning, details most influencers didn’t mention, warn the scientists.

MOOD MUSIC

Music helped people manage stress during the severest part of the pandemic, according to a survey conducted by the University of Vienna, Austria. Researchers followed the listening habits of hundreds of people in Europe in mid-2020 who self-reported how much music they were listening to and how stressed they felt over the period of a week. Listening to music was associated with less stress at the time of listening and a improved overall o mood.