It’s commonly thought that having a companion animal — be it a dog, cat or bird — is good for the owner’s mental health. A new study suggests that’s not so, at least for people with severe mental illness and for pets that aren’t trained therapy animals. Pets may, however, be an important part of the social network for folks with severe mental illness. Having pets was not significantly associated with the well-being, depression, anxiety or loneliness scores for owners with a range of severe mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and psychosis, according to the study published July 14 in the journal Human-Animal Interactions. This research followed up on a 2021 survey, in which researchers found a self-reported decline in mental health with animal ownership. This may have been due to pandemic restrictions and the challenges of looking after the animal in lockdown. “In the absence of COVID-19 restrictions, a possible explanation for our current findings could be that the added responsibility of animal ownership may still exacerbate other potential stressors experienced by people living with severe mental illness. This includes the cost of food, veterinary bills and uncertainty over housing,” lead author Dr. Emily Shoesmith, a research fellow at the University of York in the United Kingdom, said in a journal news release. “Our findings may also imply that animal ownership and the…  read on >  read on >

The color of the oceans has changed over the past two decades, which has scientists concerned about the impact of climate change. “I’ve been running simulations that have been telling me for years that these changes in ocean color are going to happen,” said study co-author Stephanie Dutkiewicz, senior research scientist in Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “To actually see it happening for real is not surprising, but frightening. And these changes are consistent with man-induced changes to our climate,” Dutkiewicz added in a school news release. Though subtle to the human eye, these color changes have happened over 56% of the world’s oceans — an expanse that is larger than the total land area on Earth, the researchers said. Tropical ocean regions near the equator have become steadily greener over time. This suggests that ecosystems within the surface ocean must also be changing, the authors said. “This gives additional evidence of how human activities are affecting life on Earth over a huge spatial extent,” said study lead author B.B. Cael of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England. While deep blue water reflects very little life, greener waters indicate ecosystems, including plant-like microbes known as phytoplankton that contain the green pigment chlorophyll. The pigment helps plankton harvest sunlight, which they use to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.…  read on >  read on >

Racial discrimination may drive health inequities from an early age, according to researchers who found that it puts kids at risk for obesity. “Exposure to racial discrimination must be acknowledged as both a social determinant of obesity and a significant contributor to obesity disparities among children and adolescents,” said lead researcher Adolfo Cuevas. He is an assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences at the NYU School of Global Public Health in New York City. Specifically, the new study found that children who experience racial discrimination were more likely to develop a larger waistline and higher body mass index (BMI). BMI is an estimate of body fat based on height and weight. Black and Hispanic youth have higher rates of obesity, a problem that is a major health issue overall in children and teens in the United States, the study authors noted. A growing body of research underscores the negative effects of racial discrimination. Among those: It puts people at risk for sleep problems, high levels of the stress hormone cortisol and poor mental health. And it has previously been linked to higher BMI in adults. For this study, the researchers used data for nearly 6,500 kids aged 9 to 11 years who were participants in a study of adolescent brain development from 2017 to 2019. These young people were asked whether they were treated…  read on >  read on >

Ticks may be responsible for the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in Wisconsin’s deer population, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that ticks can harbor transmissible amounts of the protein particle that causes CWD, a fatal neurological disease seen in deer, elk and moose. The pathogen, prion, can pass through soil or through bodily fluids, including feces. Prion can prompt certain proteins to fold abnormally, particularly in the brain. That can prevent these proteins from carrying out their normal functions. Over time, the CWD prion can cause severe brain damage and eventually death in deer, the study explained. While a lot of CWD studies focus on the role of soil in the disease’s spread, researcher Heather Inzalaco was curious about other means of transmission. She’s a researcher in the Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, housed in the UW–Madison department of forest and wildlife ecology. “Deer live these secret lives; we don’t see everything that they do,” Inzalaco said in a university news release. Inzalaco wondered if one possibility might be ticks. The arachnids acquire blood from CWD-infected deer, but she wondered if they could also host the prions. “Deer will groom one another to get places that they can’t reach on their own through self-grooming,” Inzalaco said. “If they’re grooming each other and they’re doing that to…  read on >  read on >