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By Nancy Lapid, Health Science Editor

Hello Health Rounds readers! Today we highlight a study that shines a light on the mental health toll on U.S. healthcare workers with some alarming suicide statistics. On a more promising note, researchers may be a major step closer to understanding the causes and mechanisms behind long COVID and one day developing a blood test to diagnose the lingering illness. Finally, we feature an analysis that demonstrates the benefits of stem cell transplants in treating highly active multiple sclerosis.

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In breaking news, see these stories from our Reuters journalists: 

EU regulator to discuss anesthesia risk for weight-loss drugs; US Supreme Court says for now, Biden administration can still point out misinformation to social media outlets; workers in the UK take most sick leave in over 10 years; and cough syrup deaths overseas prompt U.S. crackdown on testing.

Suicide rates are high among health care workers, including nurses, lab technicians, dental hygienists, and others, a new study found. REUTERS/Mike Segar

U.S. nurses and other healthcare workers had significantly higher-than-average suicide rates in the decade before COVID-19 hit, researchers have found, even though the issue gained prominence during the pandemic.

Tracking more than 1.8 million employed adults between 2008 and 2019, researchers found suicide rates per 100,000 people were 32% higher for healthcare workers overall than for non-healthcare workers, after accounting for age, sex, race and ethnicity, marital status, education, and other factors.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic peak, the mental health of healthcare workers received considerable national attention,” the researchers wrote on Tuesday in JAMA.

“As the pandemic has receded, efforts to improve the mental health of healthcare workers could lose momentum,” they cautioned.

Suicide rates were 81% higher among “healthcare support workers,” such as nursing aides, occupational therapy assistants, and dental assistants, than among non-healthcare workers, the study found. The rate was 64% higher among registered nurses and 39% higher among “health technicians,” including lab technologists, emergency medical technicians and paramedics.

Suicide rates were not elevated among physicians, social and behavioral healthcare workers, or other practitioners involved in diagnosing or treating patients, the researchers found.

The link between healthcare occupations and suicide risk may be significantly greater for women than for men, the data suggested.

Previous studies have shown that healthcare workers have higher risks for mental health problems, the researchers noted.

It will be important to find and fix the work-related factors that contribute to healthcare workers’ mental health risks and to ensure that workers who seek mental health treatment do not suffer punitive consequences, they said.

(If you’re thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, call 988 in the United States, 833-456-4566 in Canada, 0800 689-5652 in the UK, or 13 11 14 in Australia.)

People with long COVID have clear differences in immune and hormone function, according to a study that brings doctors a step closer to developing a blood test to diagnose the condition.

Long COVID patients in the study were found to have abnormal activity of germ-fighting T cells, reactivation of viruses that had remained in their body from infections years earlier, and significantly reduced levels of cortisol, a stress hormone involved in the body’s response to infections.

The study, published on Monday in Nature, is the first to show specific blood biomarkers that can accurately identify patients dealing with lingering affects of a COVID-19 infection.

Symptoms of long COVID include cognitive impairment or “brain fog,” extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, and chronic pain for more than three months after contracting the virus. Until now, the causes of long COVID have been unclear.

The study involved 271 adults who had either fully recovered from a confirmed case of COVID-19, had never been infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, or had long COVID symptoms lasting four months or more after a confirmed infection.

“We are excited to see such clear differences in the immune (profiles) in people with and without long COVID,” Akiko Iwasaki of Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, one of the study leaders, said in a statement. “These markers need to be validated in larger studies, but provide a first step in dissecting the disease pathogenesis of long COVID.”

Read more about long COVID on Reuters.com:

• Infected in the first wave, they navigated long COVID without a roadmap
• U.S. government awards $45 million for long COVID clinics

A well-known treatment for blood cancers should become a standard of care for patients with active multiple sclerosis (MS), researchers urged on Monday in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

The treatment, called autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (aHSCT), involves removing healthy blood stem cells from a patient and reinfusing them to replace dysfunctional bone marrow.

The researchers noted that in an earlier trial, aHSCT was significantly superior to standard therapy in keeping highly active MS from worsening and in staving off neurological disability after two years.

To assess the safety and effectiveness of this approach in routine healthcare, the researchers reviewed data collected since 2004 on 174 patients with relapsing-remitting MS who had undergone aHSCT.

There was no evidence of disease activity in 73% of the patients after five years and in 65% after 10 years, they found.

Among the 149 patients who were already experiencing some disability, more than 90% had no disease progression, as 54% showed improvement and 37% remained stable, while 9% saw their MS worsen.

On average, patients had 1.7 relapses in the year before aHSCT treatment. After the treatment, the relapse rate fell to 0.035 per year.

There were no treatment-related deaths, and adverse events were “manageable,” the researchers said.

“We believe that aHSCT could benefit a greater number of MS patients and should be included as a standard of care for highly active MS,” they concluded.

This newsletter was edited by Bill Berkrot.

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