U.S. rates of suicide by all methods rose steadily for adolescents between 1999 and 2020, a new analysis shows. During those two decades, over 47,000 Americans between the ages 10 and 19 lost their lives to suicide, the report found, and there have been sharp increases year by year. Girls and minority adolescents have charted especially steep increases in suicides, said a team led by Cameron Ormiston, of the U.S. National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. “An overall increasing trend was observed across all demographics,” the researchers wrote in a study published March 29 in the journal JAMA Network Open. The findings were based on federal death certificate data from 1999 through 2020. By race, sex and means of suicide, some troubling trends stood out. For example, while deaths from drug (or other substance) overdose rose by 2.7% per year between 1999 and 2020 among all adolescents, it rose by 4.5% per year among girls, specifically. That trend has only accelerated in recent years: Between 2011 and 2020, suicides by overdose jumped 12.6% per year among female adolescents, Ormiston’s group reported. All of this suggests that “adolescents are finding more lethal means of poisonings, contributing to an increase in deaths by suicide,” they said. And while suicides using guns rose 5.3% per year during 1999 to 2020 among boys, it increased even more…  read on >  read on >

A genetic mutation that boosts cell function could protect people against Alzheimer’s disease, even if they carry another gene mutation known to boost dementia risk. The newly discovered mutation appears to protect people who carry the APOE4 gene, which increases risk of Alzheimer’s, researchers said. The protective mutation causes cells to produce a more powerful version of humanin, a tiny protein that plays an important role in cellular function. Humanin levels are higher in people who have reached the age of 100 despite carrying the APOE4 gene, which predisposes people to early death as well as Alzheimer’s, researchers discovered. Humanin produced by this variant also effectively cleared amyloid beta from the brains of lab mice carrying APOE4, researchers report. “This new study sheds light on resilience genes that help people live longer and partially explains why some people at high risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease are spared,” said senior study author Dr. Pinchas Cohen, dean of the University of Southern California (USC) Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. The gene variant that causes higher levels of humanin is called P3S-humanin, researchers said. This variant is thought to be extremely rare, and is found primarily in people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, researchers said. Mitochondria, the energy powerhouse of cells, produce humanin to protect against cellular aging and stress, according to a 2023 review in the journal Biology.…  read on >  read on >

Children who are obese face double the odds of developing multiple sclerosis later in life, a new study warns. The overall odds for any one child to develop the neurodegenerative illness remains very low. However, the Swedish researchers believe the link could help explain rising rates of MS. “There are several studies showing that MS has increased over several decades and obesity is believed to be one major driver for this increase,” wrote a team led by Claude Marcus, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. “Thanks to our prospective study design, we can confirm this theory.” The findings will be presented in May at the European Congress on Obesity in Venice. For the study, Marcus and his colleagues tracked data from 1995 through 2020, compiled by the Swedish Childhood Obesity Treatment Register. Almost 22,000 children were covered by that database, and their incidence of MS later in life was compared to that of similar, non-obese children from the general Swedish population. Rates of cases of newly diagnosed MS were tracked till 2023. The result: While 0.06% of the non-obese children went on to develop MS, the rate more than doubled, to 0.13%, among people who had been obese during childhood. Two-thirds of cases occurred in females, the study found, which mimics the general ratio of MS observed in women compared to men. MS was diagnosed…  read on >  read on >

Folks with genetically-driven stress are more likely to suffer heart attacks after nerve-wracking events or times of unrest, a new study shows. People with above-average genetic scores linked to neuroticism and stress were 34% more likely to experience a heart attack following stressful periods, researchers found. Further, these jittery individuals were more than three times as likely to have a heart attack during stressful times if they also had anxiety or depression. “We found people who are genetically predisposed to stress tend to have a strikingly higher probability of developing a heart attack after these stressful events,” said lead researcher Dr. Shady Abohashem, an instructor of cardiovascular imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. For the study, researchers analyzed data on nearly 18,500 participants in the Mass General Brigham Biobank, a program that captures genetic data for use in medical research. Researchers compared genetic stress scores among people who had a heart attack after stressful times against those who had a heart attack during calmer times and those who’d never had a cardiac event. For the study, periods considered to be highly stressful included: The 10 days after Christmas. The five days after presidential elections. The five days after major sporting events like Super Bowls or NBA playoffs involving Boston-area teams. People with above-average genetic stress scores had a 34% higher…  read on >  read on >

Suicidal thoughts and contemplation of death haunt the minds of many rural Black men in the United States, a new study reports. One in three rural Black men said they had such dark thoughts within the past two weeks, University of Georgia researchers found. These thoughts are driven by childhood trauma, poverty and exposure to racism, all of which take a heavy toll on mental health as Black teens enter adulthood, researchers said. “We found when Black men were exposed to childhood adversity, they may develop an internal understanding of the world as somewhere they are devalued, where they could not trust others, and they could not engage the community in a supportive way,” said researcher Michael Curtis, a graduate of the University of Georgia’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences. Racial discrimination in particular predicted higher rates of suicidal thoughts, researchers found. Even Black men who reported positive childhood experiences struggled to maintain healthy relationships if they had experienced racial discrimination, results show. As a result, they were more likely to feel isolated and experience thoughts of suicide. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Black people between the ages of 15 and 24, researchers said in background notes. Further, Black men die by suicide at a rate four times that of Black women. “We just know it’s bad, and particularly among young…  read on >  read on >