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While HDL cholesterol is considered the “good” kind for heart and brain health, too much or too little of it may up a person’s risk of dementia, new research suggests. “This study is especially informative because of the large number of participants and long follow-up,” noted study author Maria Glymour, of Boston University. She said her team was able to “study the links with dementia across the range of cholesterol levels and achieve precise estimates, even for people with cholesterol levels that are quite high or quite low.” Still, that can’t prove that high or low levels of HDL cholesterol actually cause dementia, the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) cautioned in its news release about the study. To learn more about the potential connection, researchers studied data on more than 184,000 people from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Health Plan, with an average age of 70. The patients did not have dementia at the start of the study. The participants filled out a survey on their health behaviors and had their cholesterol levels measured during routine health care visits an average of 2.5 times in the following two years. These people were then followed with their electronic health records for an average of nine years. More than 25,000 study participants developed dementia during that time. The average HDL cholesterol level for people in the study… read on > read on >

America’s kids are safer now than a decade ago when it comes to many types of injury, with two glaring exceptions: drugs and guns. That’s the crux of a new study that looked at injury trends among U.S. children and teenagers between 2011 and 2021. It found that nonfatal injuries from accidents and assaults fell by 55% and 60%, respectively, during that time period. That included substantial drops in injury due to car crashes, falls and other accidents that have long been leading causes of injury among kids. Countering those gains, though, was the harsh reality of guns and drugs. Firearm fatalities among children and teens rose by 87% during the study period, while nonfatal gun injuries more than doubled. Meanwhile, deadly drug overdoses also doubled. “As a society, we’ve done a great job at targeted interventions,” said senior researcher Dr. Rebekah Mannix, of Boston Children’s Hospital. Everything from better car and roadway design, to helmets, to childproof household products have made kids safer in many ways, Mannix said. “But what we’ve missed,” she added, “is that the most lethal means of injury are still incredibly accessible to kids.” The findings, published Oct. 5 in the journal Pediatrics, come at a time when a record number of U.S. kids, mainly older teenagers, are dying from gun-related injuries. In 2020, firearms became the leading cause of… read on > read on >

More than 80% of eligible Americans did not get a COVID-19 booster shot last fall. Now, a new study reveals the reasons for the hesitation. Nearly 40% of survey participants said a prior COVID-19 infection factored into their decision to not get the booster. Another 31.5% were worried about side effects. And an additional 28% didn’t think a booster would provide extra protection, while 23% said it wouldn’t protect from the new coronavirus. “Our results indicate that we have a lot more work to do in terms of educating the public and health care providers about the importance of staying up to date on COVID-19 boosters,” said first study author Elizabeth Jacobs. She is a professor of epidemiology at the Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona Health Sciences, in Tucson. This research was done through Arizona CoVHORT, which began in May 2020 to track the effect of COVID infection on Arizonans. Researchers hope the results, published in the Oct. 6 issue of the journal Vaccine, will help encourage interventions to get more people vaccinated. A variety of strategies may be needed to improve vaccination rates, as age, ethnicity and education affected reasons for hesitation, according to the study. “Our results indicate that many people don’t know that a booster provides additional protection even if they have already been infected or that… read on > read on >

People recovering from wounds or severe burns might one day be treated with fully functional “bioprinted” skin created in a lab, a new study suggests. Researchers say they “printed” skin samples containing all six major human cell types found in skin. The result was multi-layered, full-thickness skin containing all three layers present in normal human tissue: epidermis, dermis and hypodermis. Test transplants performed in the lab found that the bioprinted skin formed blood vessels and skin patterns, essentially functioning and forming as normal human tissue. Other tests demonstrated improved wound closure, reduced skin contraction, and more collagen production to reduce scarring, the researchers reported. The report was published Oct. 4 in the journal Science Translational Medicine. “Comprehensive skin healing is a significant clinical challenge, affecting millions of individuals worldwide, with limited options,” said lead researcher Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina. “These results show that the creation of full-thickness, human bioengineered skin is possible, and promotes quicker healing and more naturally appearing outcomes,” Atala said in a Wake Forest news release. Perfected skin regeneration could provide burn victims, wounded soldiers and those with skin disorders an opportunity for complete healing. The sort of grafts available today have only some of the elements of normal skin, which can lead to a scarred appearance. The creation of full-thickness… read on > read on >

Going vegetarian is trendy and popular, along with being a healthy choice, but a large portion of those who say they want to stick with a plant-based diet don’t. It might come down to your DNA, suggests new research that has uncovered three genes that seem to be strongly linked to vegetarianism. “It seems there are more people who would like to be vegetarian than actually are, and we think it’s because there is something hard-wired here that people may be missing,” said corresponding study author Dr. Nabeel Yaseen, a professor emeritus of pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. As many as 48% to 64% of people who identify as vegetarian still report eating fish, poultry and/or red meat, the study authors pointed out in a university news release. To study the impact of genes on eating behavior, the scientists compared UK Biobank genetic data from more than 5,300 strict vegetarians — those who ate no fish, poultry or red meat — to more than 329,000 non-vegetarians (the “control” group). The investigators found 31 genes that are potentially associated. Several of these genes, including two of those most closely associated, are involved in metabolizing fat and/or brain function. “One area in which plant products differ from meat is complex lipids,” Yaseen said. “My speculation is there may be lipid component(s) present… read on > read on >

While studies of ADHD and driving usually target teens, a new one focused on seniors found they have a significantly higher risk of car crashes. Older adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were also more likely to slam on the brakes and get traffic tickets, the study found. “Little is known about ADHD in seniors,” said senior author Dr. Guohua Li, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, explaining the motivations for studying this issue. “Secondly, the population has been aging and continues to grow older, and there are more and more older adult drivers on the road.” The United States has about 48 million older drivers, a number that could reach 63 million within seven years, he noted. This study included more than 2,800 drivers between 65 and 79 years of age. About 2.6% had ADHD. The researchers linked ADHD to a 74% increased risk of crashes, a 102% increased risk in self-reported traffic tickets and a 7% increased risk of hard braking events. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition that is often diagnosed during childhood and can persist throughout life. About 8% of adults aged 18 to 44 are known to have ADHD, the researchers said in background notes, as are 9% to 13% of children under 18. ADHD symptoms that might contribute to driving challenges include… read on > read on >

New research has discovered 12 gene variants that may be tied to an increased risk of attempting suicide. These genes also may have links with physical and mental health woes, including chronic pain, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), lung conditions and heart disease. The researchers hope this finding, published online Oct. 1 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, will lead to better understanding of the biological causes of suicide. “Many people who die from suicide have significant health conditions associated with that risk,” said study corresponding author Anna Docherty, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Huntsman Mental Health Institute (HMHI) at the University of Utah. “If we can use genetic information to characterize the health risks of those who attempt suicide, we can better identify those patients who need contact with the mental health care system.” For the study, the investigators analyzed data from 22 different populations, including people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. What they found wasn’t one single gene influencing risk, but the cumulative effect of different genes. “In psychiatry, we have many tiny genetic effects, but when we account for all of them together, we start to see a real genetic risk signal,” Docherty explained in a university news release. To assess that risk, the team broke down data from the Million Veteran Program and the International Suicide Genetics Consortium. That data included nearly… read on > read on >

Drinking dark tea daily may help balance blood sugar levels and stave off type 2 diabetes, the form of the disease most closely tied to obesity. This is the main message from a new study that looked at tea-drinking habits and diabetes risk among people in China. Folks who drank dark tea every day had a 53% lower risk of developing prediabetes and a 47% reduced risk for type 2 diabetes when compared to people who never drank tea. Prediabetes refers to blood sugar levels that are higher than normal, but not high enough to be called diabetes yet. Dark tea is an aged tea from China that has gone through an extensive fermentation process and is rich in healthy bacteria or probiotics that may improve gut health. The new study wasn’t designed to say how, or even if, drinking dark tea improves blood sugar control, but researchers do have some theories. “Tea has been reported to exert numerous desirable effects, which help to reduce inflammation and [damaging] oxidation and improve insulin sensitivity,” said study author Dr. Tongzhi Wu, an associate professor at the Adelaide Medical School in Australia. For the study, researchers asked 1,923 adults aged 20 to 80 living in China how often they drank tea and what type of tea they preferred whether green, black, dark or another type. The investigators then… read on > read on >

The ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) program could grow into a source of accurate and comprehensive medical information, but it’s not quite ready for prime time yet, a new study reports. ChatGPT’s responses to more than 280 medical questions across diverse specialties averaged between mostly to almost completely correct, according to a report published online Oct. 2 in JAMA Network Open. “Overall, it performed fairly well as far as both accuracy and completions,” said senior researcher Dr. Douglas Johnson, director of the Melanoma Clinical Research Program at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, Tenn. “Certainly, it was not perfect. It was not completely reliable,” Johnson continued. “But at the time we were entering the questions, it was actually pretty accurate and provided, relatively speaking, reliable information.” Accuracy improved even more if a second AI program was brought in to review the answer provided by the first, the results showed. Johnson and his colleagues set out to test ChatGPT by peppering the AI with health questions between January and May 2023, shortly after it came online. People and doctors already lean on search engines like Google and Bing for answers to health questions, Johnson said. It makes sense that AI programs like ChatGPT will be the next frontier for researching medical issues. Such AI programs “provide almost an answer engine for many types of questions across different fields,… read on > read on >

In yet another reminder of the psychic toll the pandemic has taken on young people, new research shows spending on mental health services for U.S. children and adolescents has risen sharply since 2020. It climbed 26% for youths aged 19 and younger between March 2020 and August 2022, the RAND Corp. study found. Among a large group whose families had employer-provided insurance, use of mental health services increased by 22%. Use of telehealth for young patients skyrocketed more than 30-fold in the early days of the pandemic and remained 23 times higher than normal by August 2022. In-person care stood at 75% of pre-pandemic levels by that time. “Our findings suggest that telehealth care for mental health filled a critical need for pediatric patients after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to support a substantial proportion of pediatric mental health care,” said lead author Mariah Kalmin, a policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit research organization in Santa Monica, Calif. For the study, the researchers examined claims from health benefit manager Castlight Health. The study involved 1.9 million children and teens with commercial insurance from January 2019 through August 2022. Castlight manages insurance plans for about 200 employers in all 50 U.S. states. The researchers looked for common pediatric mental health diagnoses, including anxiety disorders, adjustment disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), major depressive disorder and… read on > read on >

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How HDL ‘Good’ Cholesterol Might Raise Dementia Risk

Big Rise Seen in Gun Deaths, Overdoses Among U.S. Kids

Why So Many Americans Aren’t Getting COVID Boosters

Scientists Produce ‘Bioprinted’ Human Skin for Wound Healing

Genes Might Be Driving You to Go Vegetarian

Seniors With ADHD Face Higher Car Crash Risk

Largest-Ever Study of Suicide Genetics Gives Clues to Who’s at Risk

Tea Drinkers May Gain Better Blood Sugar Control

AI Gets High Marks From Doctors in Answering Medical Questions

Spending on Kids’ Mental Health Keeps Rising