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More than 320,000 U.S. children lost a parent to drug overdose during the past decade, according to a new study reported May 8 in JAMA Psychiatry. What’s more, the death rate accelerated during the period, more than doubling between 2011 and 2021, researchers found. About 27 children per 100,000 had a parent die from an overdose in 2011. Ten years later, 63 children per 100,000 lost a parent to lethal drug use, results show. “This first-of-its-kind study allows us to better understand the tragic magnitude of the overdose crisis and the reverberations it has among children and families,” Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, administrator of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said in a news release. Nationwide death records show that nearly 650,000 people 18 to 64 died of a drug overdose between 2011 and 2021. Of those, an estimated 321,566 left behind a child, based on data from drug use surveys. “It is devastating to see that almost half of the people who died of a drug overdose had a child,” Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said in a news release. “No family should lose their loved one to an overdose, and each of these deaths represents a tragic loss that could have been prevented.” These findings come on the heels of another study reporting a three-fold rise… read on > read on >

Parents striving to be “perfect” will never attain that goal, and the aim isn’t even healthy for their families, a new study says. The risks of striving for perfection are such that researchers have now created a scale to help parents track their burnout and, if necessary, counter it. The first-of-its-kind Working Parent Burnout Scale is a 10-point survey that helps parents measure their stress and fatigue in real time, researchers say. “If maybe you’re prioritizing making sure your house is spotless all the time, but then you don’t feel like you have time to go for a walk every night with your children, maybe you need to reorganize or find a way to make both of those things work,” lead researcher Kate Gawlik, an associate clinical professor at the Ohio State College of Nursing, said in a news release. About 57% of parents who took part in a new survey said they’re burned out. Burnout can happen when a parent sets unrealistic expectations for themselves, as part of a “culture of achievement” that’s been spurred in part by social media. “You can look at people on Instagram or you can even just see people walking around, and I always think, ‘How do they do that? How do they seem to always have it all together when I don’t?’ ” Gawlik said. “We have high… read on > read on >

Children and young adults who are couch potatoes could wind up with enlarged hearts, increasing their risk of heart attack, stroke and early death. Sedentary behavior contributed as much as 40% to the total increase in heart size between the ages of 17 and 24, researchers found. Further, a lack of movement helped enlarge teens’ hearts independent of other risk factors like obesity or high blood pressure, researchers found. Childhood and teenage sedentary behavior amounts to a “ticking time bomb,” researcher Andrew Agbaje said in a news release. He’s an associate professor of clinical epidemiology and child health at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio. “There is growing evidence that childhood sedentariness is a health threat that needs to be taken seriously,” he said. On the other hand, children who regularly engaged in light physical activity reduced their increase in heart mass by 49%, researchers said. “Light physical activity is an effective antidote to sedentariness. It is easy to accumulate three to four hours of light physical activity daily,” Agbaje said. Examples of light physical activity include outdoor games, walking a dog, running errands, walking and biking to stores or to school, taking a stroll in the park, playing in the forest, gardening, and casual games of basketball, soccer, golf, frisbee, he said. Kids who regularly worked out even harder tended to increase their heart… read on > read on >

People who carry two copies of the gene mutation most strongly implicated in Alzheimer’s disease are almost certain to develop brain changes related to the degenerative disorder, a new study says. A single mutated APOE4 gene has been found to pose the strongest genetics-driven risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s, researchers said. Virtually everyone with two copies of the APOE4 gene mutation wound up with higher levels of Alzheimer’s-related brain by age 55, compared to people with another version of APOE, researchers reported May 6 in the journal Nature Medicine. By age 65, more than 95% of people with two APOE4 genes showed abnormal levels of amyloid protein in their cerebrospinal fluid and 75% had positive amyloid scans, researchers said. Amyloid beta plaques are one of the hallmark symptoms of Alzheimer’s. These findings suggest that having two copies of the APOE4 gene could represent a new genetic form of Alzheimer’s disease, said Dr. Juan Fortea, director of the Memory Unit at the Sant Pau Research Institute’s Neurology Service in Barcelona, Spain. “This gene has been known for over 30 years and it was known to be associated with a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. But now we know that virtually all individuals with this duplicated gene develop Alzheimer’s biology,” Fortea said in a news release. “This is important because they represent between 2 and 3%… read on > read on >

Researchers say they’ve identified a human “neural compass” — a pattern of brain activity that helps prevent humans from becoming lost. For the first time, the internal compass humans use to orient themselves and navigate through the environment has been pinpointed in the human brain, researchers reported May 6 in the journal Nature Human Behavior. This discovery could increase understanding of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, in which a person’s navigation and orientation are frequently impaired. “Keeping track of the direction you are heading in is pretty important. Even small errors in estimating where you are and which direction you are heading in can be disastrous,” said lead researcher Benjamin Griffiths, a psychology fellow at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. “We know that animals such as birds, rats and bats have neural circuitry that keeps them on track, but we know surprisingly little about how the human brain manages this out and about in the real world,” Griffiths added in a news release. Tracking neural activity in humans usually requires participants to remain as still as possible, but for this study researchers employed mobile EEG devices and motion capture to analyze the brain waves of people on the move. A group of 52 participants moved their heads — or sometimes just their eyes — to orient themselves based on cues from different computer… read on > read on >

Parents can be very effective buzzkills for their teens, just by letting kids know they’re being closely watched, a new study reports. Teenagers are less likely to drink, smoke or use drugs when parents keep tabs on their activities, according to findings published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. What’s more, teens don’t need to be busted at least once by their parents to get on the straight and narrow, results show. Simple awareness that parents are monitoring their behavior wound up cutting teens’ use of alcohol or drugs by 40%, without any actual punishment being doled out, researchers found. “Some parents think drinking or using drugs is something that kids are just going to do, no matter what,” lead researcher William Pelham, an assistant adjunct professor of psychiatry at the University of California-San Diego, said in a news release. “But that’s not true. Parents can make a difference.” Previous studies have found that teens are less likely to use drugs, alcohol or tobacco if they have parents who remain aware of their activities, know their friends, and know their whereabouts when they aren’t home, researchers said. The assumption up to now has been that monitoring works because parents are more likely to catch kids red-handed and inflict some sort of punishment like grounding them or taking away their smartphones, Pelham said.… read on > read on >

An injectable gene therapy caused measurable improvements in vision among a small group of people with inherited blindness, an early-stage clinical trial says. Researchers recruited 14 people with Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA), a rare genetic condition that causes babies to lose some or all of their sight from birth. Eleven of the 14 had measurable improvements in the vision of one eye that received a single injection of a gene-editing medication, researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine. “Our patients are the first congenitally blind children to be treated with gene editing, which significantly improved their daytime vision,” researcher Dr. Tomas Aleman, a pediatric ophthalmologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said in a news release. “While more research is needed to determine who may benefit most, we consider the early results promising,” added lead researcher Dr. Eric Pierce, director of Mass Eye and Ear Ocular Genomics Institute and Berman-Gund Laboratory for the Study of Retinal Degenerations in Boston. “To hear from several participants how thrilled they were that they could finally see the food on their plates – that is a big deal,” Pierce said. “These were individuals who could not read any lines on an eye chart and who had no treatment options, which is the unfortunate reality for most people with inherited retinal disorders.” LCA affects 2 to 3 out… read on > read on >

Nearly 100,000 U.S. children lost a parent in 2020 to gun violence or drug overdose, a three-fold rise since 1999, according to a new study. Overall, these two causes made up nearly a quarter (23%) of parental losses in 2020, almost double the level cited in 1999, according to a team who reported its findings May 4 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “US youth are at high and increasing risk of experiencing parental death by drugs or firearms,” a team led by Mathew Kiang of the Stanford University School of Medicine concluded. In the study, Kiang’s team noted that, “the U.S. is experiencing dual overlapping public health crises of drug poisoning … and firearm deaths. Since 1999, more than 1 million residents of the U.S. have died by fatal drug poisonings and more than 750,000 by firearms.” Just how much is all this affecting the nation’s children? To find out, the researchers combed through federal death statistics, fertility data and population demographics to estimate how many parents lost their lives to drugs or gun violence in recent years. Many of these parents died young: The study found the average age of fatal drug overdose or gun injury to a parent was just 42. Fathers were three times more likely to die from these causes than mothers. Drug overdose deaths are rising especially… read on > read on >

Worries over health-related costs are plaguing the minds of older Americans of all backgrounds, a new poll suggests. Five of the six health-related issues that most people found very concerning had to do with health care costs, according to results from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging. And the sixth issue – financial scams and fraud – also had to do with money, results show. “In this election year, these findings offer a striking reminder of how much health care costs matter to older adults,” Dr. John Ayanian, director of the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, where the poll is based, said in a news release. The poll is supported by AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M’s academic medical center. Overall, 56% of people over 50 said they’re concerned about the cost of medical care for older adults, poll results show. Other top concerns included assisted living costs (56%), prescription medicine costs (54%), scams and fraud (53%), cost of health insurance or Medicare (52%), and the cost of dental care (45%), the poll found. The same six topics rose to the top regardless of age, gender, race, ethnic group, region of the country, political ideology or income level, researchers said. Other topics rounding out the top 10 health issues included access to quality assisted living (38%), overall quality of… read on > read on >

A potentially dangerous spike in blood pressure known as preeclampsia can occur in 1 in every 25 pregnancies, but an accurate test to spot those women at highest risk has remained elusive. Now, Canadian researchers at Université Laval in Québec City say they’ve developed an algorithm that seems to do just that. In their study of more than 7,000 pregnant women, the test outperformed standard measures to pinpoint high-risk pregnancies. That could be a great tool for doctors, who can advise such women to take daily low-dose aspirin to lower their odds for preeclampsia. “Using this new screening model, treatment decisions were based on each individual’s personal risk,” said study senior author Dr. Emmanuel Bujold, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the university. “With their personal risk calculated, it’s much easier for a woman to make the right decision,” he explained. “For example, if she chooses to take daily low-dose aspirin, she is much more likely to follow through because it’s based on personalized screening test.” The findings were published May 6 in the journal Hypertension. Preeclampsia is defined as a dangerous rise in blood pressure during pregnancy — anything over 140/90 mm Hg. Unchecked preclampsia is one of the leading causes of maternal death worldwide. For the mother, preeclampsia can cause headaches, vision changes and swelling of the hands, feet, face or eyes.… read on > read on >

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More Than 321,000 U.S. Kids Lost a Parent to Drug ODs in a Decade

Drive to Be ‘Perfect’ Parent Isn’t Healthy, Survey Finds

Study Finds Heart Damage in ‘Couch Potato’ Kids

Gene Discovery Points to a New Form of Alzheimer’s

Scientists May Have Located Your Brain’s ‘Neural Compass’

A Parent’s Watchful Eye Does Keep Kids From Drugs, Alcohol: Study

Gene Therapy Improves Vision in People With Inherited Blindness

Parental Deaths to Guns, Drugs Harmed Nearly 100,000 U.S. Kids in 2020

Money Worries Top Seniors’ List of Health-Related Concerns: Poll

New Test Might Alert Pregnant Women to Preeclampsia Danger