Many people with type 2 diabetes also struggle with depression, and this combination can lead to premature death, researchers say. “More than 35 million Americans have diabetes, and more than 95 million have prediabetes, making diabetes one of the leading causes of death in the U.S.,” said study co-author Jagdish Khubchandani. He is a professor of public health sciences at New Mexico State University, in Las Cruces. “Unfortunately, a large proportion of these people struggle with depression, anxiety or poor mental health,” Khubchandani said in a university news release. To explore this association, the researchers used data on nearly 15,000 people from the 2005 to 2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The research team then linked the data to death records from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The investigators found that more than 10% of American adults suffer from depression or diabetes. Overall, participants with diabetes were 1.7 times more likely to die prematurely than those without diabetes, the data showed. The risk of death more than quadrupled for participants with both diabetes and depression compared to those without diabetes or depression. “Diabetes alone is a debilitating disease, and the co-occurrence of depression makes it worse,” Khubchandani said. “Unfortunately, many Americans with diabetes continue to struggle financially and emotionally, making it difficult to manage the disease.” Many demographic, psychosocial and biological…  read on >  read on >

Gun violence causes a ripple effect that creates a lasting impact on young people lucky enough to survive being shot, as well as their families, a comprehensive new study finds. Child and teenaged gunshot survivors carry the physical and emotional scars of violence, and their families suffer even more dramatic aftereffects, the Harvard-associated researchers found. “The unspeakable tragedy of youth gun violence has overshadowed the massive health crises that occur in the wake of injuries and deaths,” said study author Zirui Song, an associate professor of health care policy and medicine in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Children 19 and younger who survive gun violence experience a 68% increase in psychiatric disorders and a 144% increase in substance use disorders, compared with young people who haven’t been shot, researchers found. Their moms and dads suffer alongside them, experiencing a 30% increased risk of psychiatric disorders compared with parents whose children haven’t sustained a gunshot injury, results show. “Gunshot survivors and their families often experience long-lasting, invisible injuries, including psychological and substance use disorders with roots in the shared trauma they have experienced,” Song, who is also a general internist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in a hospital news release. “It’s important for clinicians to be aware that these families are at an increased risk for these conditions so that they can…  read on >  read on >

Even with the same prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels, Black men are more likely to have prostate cancer than white men, new research shows. The findings point to the need for earlier and more frequent screening, the researchers noted. It’s already known that Black men in the United States are more likely to develop prostate cancer than their white peers. After diagnosis, they’re also more likely to have advanced disease and to die. The new research suggests that at any PSA level, Black men are more likely to harbor prostate cancer than white men. The research included more than 75,000 Black men and more than 207,000 white men who were receiving care from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The researchers used modeling to predict the likelihood of prostate cancer diagnosis from a first biopsy. Prostate cancer was detected in the first biopsy in 55% of Black men and in 43% of white men, the investigators found. After accounting for other factors, Black veterans were 50% more likely to receive a prostate cancer diagnosis based on their first prostate biopsy than white Veterans were, according to the report published online Nov. 6 in the journal CANCER.  Black men with a pre-biopsy PSA of 4.0 ng/mL had a 49% risk of prostate cancer detected during their biopsy. This compared to a 39% risk for white men…  read on >  read on >

The American Cancer Society has expanded its recommendations for who should get lung cancer screening. The updated guidance now says annual screening should start at a younger age and among those who smoke less, and it should continue regardless of how many years ago a former smoker may have quit. “If you are a person who formerly smoked, once 15 years had elapsed since your cessation you were no longer eligible for lung cancer screening on the assumption that your risk had just gotten too low over time to justify screening,” explained Robert Smith, senior vice president for Early Cancer Detection Science at the American Cancer Society (ACS). “When we look at that, actually the continuing absolute risk and people who had a significant number of years of smoking, we found that just wasn’t true,” Smith said. “In fact, your risk declined a little bit after you stopped smoking. Then it flattened out and started increasing again as your age increased, and eventually, rising pretty steeply — about 9% a year if you smoked 20 cigarettes a day.” To address that, screening should now start at age 50 and continue until age 80, the ACS said. In addition, those who have smoked at least 20 cigarettes a day for 20 years or more should be screened; the previous recommendation was 20 cigarettes a day for…  read on >  read on >