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The knee develops differently in men and women, with sex-specific distinctions in the joint appearing as early as childhood, a new study finds. Taking these differences into account among girls could help prevent knee arthritis for women later in life, researchers say. Gender-based differences in knee cartilage and ligaments develop prior to puberty and can’t be explained by sex hormones, researchers reported recently in the journal Osteoarthritis and Cartilage. There also are metabolic differences that could affect the knee, particularly in the abundance of various amino acids, researchers said. These differences play key roles in the likelihood of injury early in life, which can increase the risk of knee arthritis for women, they argue. “Young female athletes have a higher risk of ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] injuries compared to young male athletes, and we know these types of injuries can likely develop into osteoarthritis later in life,” said lead researcher Paula Hernandez, an instructor of orthopedic surgery and biomedical engineering at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. These findings lay the groundwork for a better understanding of how arthritis is influenced by a person’s biological sex, researchers said. As a result, they can help develop sex-specific exercises that could reduce the risk of injury and arthritis based on biological differences in the joints. “We hope that by showing evidence that sex disparities are not limited… read on > read on >

Youngsters so sick they’ve needed treatment in an ICU appear to bear the scars of that experience years later, a new study finds. Children and teenagers treated in an intensive care unit have a significantly higher risk of developing a mental illness as they grow up, researchers reported July 20 in the Journal of Affective Disorders. “Given our study results, the development of appropriate major psychiatric disorder prevention strategies should be emphasized for child and adolescent ICU survivors,” concluded the research team led by Dr. Ping-Chung Wu, of the Taipei Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan. For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 8,700 children admitted to an ICU between 1996 and 2013. Those who survived their illness were followed an average of nearly 10 years. Data showed the survivors had: 4.7 times the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 3.2 times the risk of schizophrenia A doubled risk of bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder 1.7 times the risk of major depression Kids who stayed in the ICU three days or more in particular had a higher risk of these disorders, researchers said. Risk of specific mental illnesses also varied depending on the condition that landed the child in the ICU, researchers found. For example, schizophrenia risk was highest among patients admitted for blood diseases, nervous system disorders and digestive illnesses, while PTSD was… read on > read on >

More and more Americans who use “micromobility” transport, such as electric bikes and e-scooters, are motoring their way straight into the ER, new data shows. In fact, the rate of e-bike injuries among Americans doubled each year between 2017 and 2022, reportED a team led by Dr. Adrian Fernandez, of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). There was a concurrent 45% rise in injuries linked to e-scooters. This steep rise in accidents “underscores an urgent need for added safety measures,” Fernandez said in a UCSF news release. His team published its findings July 23 in the journal JAMA Network Open. As the researchers noted, the use of tiny motorized means of getting around has surged 50-fold over the past decade in the United States. E-bikes and e-scooters are not only much easier on the environment than cars, but they are relatively cheap, convenient and can reach speeds of up to 28 miles per hour. But there’s a downside: Accidents. Fernandez and colleagues used data from U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System for 2017 through 2022. While 751 injuries on e-bicycles were reported in 2017, that number had spiked to 23,493 just five years later, the team found. At the same time, e-scooter injuries rose from 8,566 to 56,847. Compared to folks riding conventional, pedal-powered bikes, those who opted for electric… read on > read on >

The boom in using GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic to treat obesity has resulted in a bust regarding the drugs’ original purpose, which was to treat type 2 diabetes, a new study finds. New prescriptions for these drugs have doubled among people who have obesity but not diabetes, investigators found. As a result, drug shortages have triggered a drop in new prescriptions for type 2 diabetes, even though Ozempic and Mounjaro were initially developed as diabetes drugs, the researchers said. Both drugs were later approved for weight loss under different brand names, Wegovy and Zepbound. “Essentially, after the medication was approved for obesity… use took off so quickly that we lost control and vision of how fast people were picking up these medications,” said lead researcher Dr. Ali Rezaie, medical director of the Cedars-Sinai GI Motility Program. For the study, researchers analyzed the medical data of about 45 million Americans between 2011 and 2023. About 1 million people became new GLP-1 users during that period in time, results show. Researchers classified them based on whether they had diabetes, obesity or some other related medical condition. GLP-1 drugs work by adjusting a person’s hormone levels and suppressing appetite. Semaglutide — the drug sold as Ozempic and Wegovy — is being prescribed disproportionately to females, whites, and those with a BMI of 30 or more, indicating obesity, results… read on > read on >

Folks with depression who got therapy via text or voice messages fared just as well as those who got weekly video-based telemedicine sessions with a therapist, a new trial has found. The findings “suggest that psychotherapy delivered via text messages may be a viable alternative to face-to-face or videoconferencing delivery and may allow for more immediate on-demand care,” in a time when it’s often tough for people to access mental health care, the study authors wrote. The trial was funded by the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health and published July 19 in the journal Psychiatric Services. The shutdown of traditional in-office services during the pandemic threw the spotlight on telemedicine as a means of delivering psychiatric care. But are face-to-face video sessions the only effective way to deliver telemedicine? In the new study, 215 adults with depression received 12 weeks of telemedicine care from a digital mental health care company called Talkspace (the company played no role in funding the study). Half of the patients received weekly standard videoconference sessions with a therapist for 30 to 45 minutes. The other half received psychotherapy delivered via voice or text messages, where patients could interact with the therapist whenever and how often they wanted. At the halfway point (six weeks), roughly the same amount of patients — 28 patients receiving message-based therapy and 27 receiving videoconferencing… read on > read on >

Consistently bad sleep is linked to a person’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a new study shows. Both too little and too much sleep is tied to diabetes risk, and swinging wildly between the two patterns of poor sleep reflects the most risk, researchers reported recently in the journal Diabetologia. The findings support “the importance of sleep health in midlife, particularly maintaining regular sleep schedules over time, to reduce the risk of adverse cardiometabolic conditions,” said researcher Kelsie Full, a behavioral epidemiologist and assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. For the study, researchers analyzed the long-term sleep patterns of more than 36,000 adults participating in a health study of residents in 12 southeastern states in the United States. About 62% of the participants were Black people. The team examined the participants’ sleep patterns based on what they reported at the start of the study, as well as during a follow-up that took place an average of five years later. Poor sleep was defined as either fewer than seven hours or more than nine hours a night. “One of the main strengths of our study was that we focused on long-term sleep pattern rather than one-time measurement,” said lead researcher Qian Xiao, an associate professor of epidemiology, human genetics, and environmental sciences at the UT Health Science Center at… read on > read on >

City dwellers are less likely to be healthy, happy and well-off than people living outside urban areas, a new study reports. Instead, there’s a suburban “Goldilocks zone” between cities and rural areas where people are happiest, researchers report. “Areas near cities but beyond their boundaries… show the highest and most equal levels of psychological satisfaction,” said lead researcher Adam Finnemann, a psychologist and doctoral student with the University of Amsterdam’s Center for Urban Mental Health. For the study, researchers analyzed data on 156,000 people aged 40 and older drawn from the UK Biobank, a major health research database. The researchers used a new method of assessing whether someone lived in a city, suburb or rural area, based on both their distance from the nearest city center as well as the population density of that urban area. Thus, the team accounted “for the fact that living 15 kilometers from London differs from living 15 kilometers from Leeds—one is still urbanized while the other is countryside,” Finnemann said in a university news release. Results showed that while urban residents had the highest incomes, this didn’t make them happier. Instead, people in highly urban areas scored worse on a series of eight measures covering well-being, social satisfaction and economic contentment. Despite these scores, people are flocking to cities. The percentage of people living in cities has surged from… read on > read on >

How many drugs in your bathroom medicine cabinet have expired? Now imagine you have no way of refilling them, because you’re millions of miles from home. That’s the dilemma that will face astronauts on a Mars mission, a new study warns. More than half of the medicines stocked on the International Space Station would expire before a mission to Mars could make it back to Earth, results show. These include staples like pain relievers, antibiotics, allergy medicines and sleep aids. Astronauts on their way back from Mars could end up relying on drugs that have become either ineffective or even harmful over time, researchers reported July 23 in the journal Microgravity. “It doesn’t necessarily mean the medicines won’t work, but in the same way you shouldn’t take expired medications you have lying around at home, space exploration agencies will need to plan on expired medications being less effective,” said senior researcher Dr. Daniel Buckland, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C. For the study, researchers reviewed the formulary of medications kept on the International Space Station (ISS), assuming NASA would stock similar drugs on a Mars mission. “Prior experience and research show astronauts do get ill on the International Space Station, but there is real-time communication with the ground and a well-stocked pharmacy that is regularly resupplied,… read on > read on >

Medical debt is significantly more common among people with a mood disorder, and these money woes can keep them from getting the help they need, a new study says. Among people with depression or anxiety, those with medical debt were twice as likely to delay or forego mental health care as those who were debt-free, results show. “The prevalence of medical debt in the U.S. is already quite high, and the prevalence was significantly higher among adults with depression and anxiety,” said lead researcher Kyle Moon, a doctoral student in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School’s Department of Mental Health in Baltimore. “On the flip side, a relatively high number of adults with no medical debt also report delaying or forgoing mental health care, and medical debt appears to compound the problem,” Moon added in a Hopkins news release. For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 27,600 participants in an annual federal survey on health. About 27% of adults with depression and 26% with anxiety have medical debt going back 12 months, compared with about 9% of those who don’t have either mood disorder, results show. Consumer credit report data shows that medical debt is the biggest contributor to personal debt, researchers said in background notes. These sort of money troubles impact access to health care, by causing people to delay or forego treatment.… read on > read on >

In her youth, Shola, an English Shepherd Dog, was a member of the Edale Mountain Rescue Team, a corps of U.K. pooches charged with helping hurt and stranded hikers. But Shola was retired as part of the Rescue Team after a rare genetic disease affecting dogs, called progressive retinal atrophy (PRA), robbed her of her sight. It’s too late for Shola, but new research has led to a gene test that could prevent the disease from ever being passed down to puppies — perhaps someday eliminating PRA from dog populations for good. “Once the dog’s eyesight starts to fail, there’s no treatment – it will end up totally blind,” explained study first author Dr. Katherine Stanbury, a veterinary researcher at the University of Cambridge. Often an owner may not even realize their dog has PRA until middle-age, long after puppy breeding may have occurred. However, “now we have a DNA test, there’s no reason why another English Shepherd Dog ever needs to be born with this form of progressive retinal atrophy – it gives breeders a way of totally eliminating the disease,” Stanbury said in a Cambridge news release. The key was pinpointing which gene or genes led to the vision-robbing condition. Stanbury’s team did so by comparing DNA samples from six English Shepherds with PRA and 20 without it. The Cambridge group was already… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Sex Differences in Knee Arthritis Emerge as Early as Childhood

Risk of Mental Illness Rises for Kids Treated in ICUs

U.S. Injuries From Electric Bikes, Scooters Are Soaring

Study Finds Big Shift in Who’s Using GLP-1 Meds Like Ozempic

Psychotherapy Via Texts Can Be Just as Effective

Another Study Ties Poor Sleep to Type 2 Diabetes

City vs. Country vs. Suburbs: Who’s Happier?

How Well Would Meds Work on a Mission to Mars?

Money Worries Keep Depressed Americans From Mental Health Care

Scientists May Have Stopped a Form of Inherited Blindness in Dogs