The first new type of medication in decades to help fight against schizophrenia was approved on Thursday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Cobenfy (xanomeline/trospium chloride) could bring patients what they’ve long hoped for: A means of easing the hallucinations and “voices” that disrupt their lives without the weight gain and sluggishness of current dopamine-focused drugs. Cobenfy does affect dopamine, but indirectly through what are known as cholinergic receptors, altering the activity of another neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. “Schizophrenia is a leading cause of disability worldwide. It is a severe, chronic mental illness that is often damaging to a person’s quality of life,” said Dr. Tiffany Farchione, director of psychiatry in the Office of Neuroscience in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “This drug takes the first new approach to schizophrenia treatment in decades,” she said in an agency news release. “This approval offers a new alternative to the antipsychotic medications people with schizophrenia have previously been prescribed.” According to the FDA, about 1% of people have schizophrenia, which is characterized by intrusive thoughts, hallucinations (including voices) and paranoia that can greatly interfere with daily living and social interactions with others. It can be a debilitating illness and greatly raises the odds of dying at a young age, the agency said. Almost 5% of people with schizophrenia die by suicide, the FDA noted. Almost…  read on >  read on >

Patients with opioid use disorder who receive higher doses of a drug to treat their addiction are more likely to have positive results, a new study finds.  Daily doses of the drug buprenorphine is a standard treatment for opioid use disorder, and the findings suggest that higher doses may be a better way to manage it. Researchers say this could be an important way to improve treatment for people who use fentanyl, a major cause of opioid overdose. “As the overdose crisis evolves, particularly with the rise of fentanyl, it is crucial to investigate how to best adapt and deliver the lifesaving and evidence-based treatments for opioid use disorder that we have available,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).  For the study, researchers reviewed insurance claims data from more than 35,000 patients who entered buprenorphine treatment between 2016 and 2021. During that time, 12.5% required emergency or inpatient care for mental health issues.  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends a daily dose of 16 milligrams (mg) of buprenorphine.  In the first year after receiving treatment, patients who took 16 to 24 mg of buprenorphine took 20% longer to have a subsequent ER or inpatient hospital visit than those receiving 8 to 16 mg a day. Meanwhile, those taking more than 24 mg of buprenorphine a day went…  read on >  read on >

U.S. suicide rates are ticking back upward again after a dip during the pandemic, new statistics show. Suicide deaths per 100,000 people had fallen from 14.2 recorded in the pre-pandemic year of 2018 to 13.5 in 2020. However, by 2022, the latest year for which statistics are available, the rate had climbed once more to 14.2 deaths per every 100,000 Americans, report researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This continues a tragic, longstanding trend, they noted. “From 2002 to 2018, the total rate [of suicide deaths] increased 30%, from 10.9 deaths per 100,000 standard population to 14.2,” wrote report co-authors Matthew Garnett and Sally Curtin, of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Looking at final 2022 data from the National Vital Statistics System, the researchers found some variations in suicide death by age, gender and method used. Among males, rates decreased somewhat among boys and young men ages 10 through 24 between 2020 and 2022, but it rose among men over the age of 24. However, rates for suicide death among males overall did rise, and “the suicide rate for males was three to four times the rate for females across the period,” Garnett and Curtin reported. In 2022, the suicide death rate among males was 23 fatalities per 100,000 people, compared to 5.9 among females. Nevertheless, the number…  read on >  read on >

As people living near airports probably already know, all that overhead traffic can take a huge hit to their sleep, a new study confirms. Night-time aircraft noise increases a person’s risk of tossing and turning in bed as engines roar overhead, researchers reported Sept. 25 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Airplane noise also appears to disrupt people’s sleep/wake cycles, leading them to fall asleep and wake up at irregular hours, researchers found. “Higher night-time aircraft noise was linked with disturbed sleep quality, even if people didn’t realize it,” said lead investigator Xiangpu Gong, a postdoctoral researcher with the University of Leicester in the U.K. “Sleep disturbance could have long-term effects on health, so it’s important for policies to address and reduce noise pollution from airplanes.” For the study, researchers tracked more than 80,000 people living near four major British airports — London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham. Study participants wore wrist devices that tracked their sleep patterns, and answered questionnaires about their sleep quality. Researchers compared this sleep data to maps created by the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority that show the level of aircraft noise that occurs in neighborhoods near airports. People exposed to higher levels of aircraft noise tended to move more while they slept, a sign of sleep disruption, researchers said. Higher levels of airplane noise was also associated with irregular…  read on >  read on >

“Body roundness” could be a better measure than BMI at predicting how excess weight might affect a person’s heart health, a new study finds. People who developed a high Body Roundness Index during a six-year period had a 163% increased risk of heart disease, researchers found, and even a moderate BRI was linked with a 61% increased risk. “Our findings indicate that six years of moderate-to-high stable BRI appeared to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, suggesting that BRI measurements may potentially be used as a predictive factor for cardiovascular disease incidence,” said senior investigator Dr. Yun Qian, a researcher of chronic non-communicable disease control at Nanjing Medical University’s Wuxi Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Body Roundness Index (BRI) compares a person’s waist circumference to their height, providing an estimate of their excess abdominal fat. By comparison, body-mass index only compares a person’s weight to their height. Some have criticized the BMI as an inaccurate measure of obesity — for example, very fit athletes can have a high BMI due to their heavy muscle mass. For the study, researchers tracked the BRI of nearly 10,000 adults in China 45 and older during the 2010s. BRI reflects not just a person’s belly fat, but also their amount of visceral fat — the fat packed in around the organs that’s thought to do the most damage related…  read on >  read on >