Combining a swallowable gastric balloon with a weight loss drug may be a way to lose significant body weight, a new study suggests. In about eight months of combination treatment, participants lost an average of 19% of their body weight, and significantly reduced their body mass index (BMI), researchers report. “Combination therapy gives providers much flexibility and further options in managing obesity in patients who need additional weight loss or increased durability,” said lead researcher Dr. Roberta Ienca, from the Nuova Villa Claudia Clinic in Rome, Italy. “The ease of use and low rate of adverse events make it an ideal primary weight loss therapy that can be complemented by medications or other treatments,” she added. Gastric balloons for weight loss are not new, but they haven’t been popular because they require an endoscopy for placement, the study authors said. This new swallowable balloon from Allurion Technologies eliminates the need for a medical procedure. (Ienca and her two co-authors are advisors for Allurion.) In the noninvasive procedure, the balloon is swallowed as a capsule and is filled with liquid after it reaches the stomach. The outpatient procedure takes about 20 minutes. After about 16 weeks, the balloon is excreted naturally. The balloon reduces the amount of food that can be ingested, which leads to weight loss. Taking the diabetes drug liraglutide (Saxenda) enhances feelings of…  read on >  read on >

Kids whose families left distressed neighborhoods had significantly fewer severe asthma attacks, with improvements greater even than those seen with medication. New research found that children whose families participated in a program that enabled them to move to areas with less poverty, and better schools and parks had about 50% fewer severe attacks. After moving, there were about 40 severe asthma attacks per year for every 100 children, compared to 88 before the move. “That degree of improvement is larger than the effect we see with asthma medications,” said senior study author Dr. Elizabeth Matsui, a professor of population health and pediatrics at Dell Medical School of the University of Texas at Austin. “We were also surprised to find that improvements in neighborhood stressors, including feeling safer in their new community and experiencing better social cohesion with neighbors, seemed to be major factors in the improvements in asthma,” Matsui added in a university news release. The study attributed between 20% and 35% of improvement in asthma symptoms to a reduction in neighborhood-related stress. The study included 123 children, aged 5 to 17, whose families enrolled in a six-year housing mobility program in Baltimore. After moving, children had asthma symptoms just three days over two weeks, compared to five days before. “These findings confirm what we’ve long suspected: A big part of the asthma burden is…  read on >  read on >

Many American women fear childbirth, and the COVID-19 pandemic did not calm those feelings, new research shows. “Our results showed really high rates of childbirth fear in our sample,” said Zaneta Thayer, co-author of a new study and an associate professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. Moreover, childbirth fear was linked to higher odds for preterm birth, the researchers found. “Since there’s no pre-pandemic U.S. data, we cannot compare our data to that context but we know that the rates are very high compared to other international studies on the subject that have been published pre-pandemic,” Thayer said in a college news release. About 62% of study participants had clinically high levels of childbirth fear, also known as “tokophobia,” the researchers found. The figure among Black mothers was much higher. They had a 90% higher chance of having childbirth fear than white mothers, which may reflect experiences with racism during their obstetric care, the study authors said. The researchers also found that people in the lowest household income category, $50,000 or less per year, and those with no college degree had high levels of childbirth fear. High-risk pregnancy, prenatal depression and a pre-existing health condition were also associated with childbirth fear. For the study, the researchers used data from an online survey conducted from April 2020 to February 2021. It included prenatal…  read on >  read on >

Americans are less anxious than they were in early 2020, at the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, but many still have anxiety about keeping themselves or their families safe. In a new poll by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), 70% of U.S. adults reported being anxious or extremely anxious about keeping safe. About 78% of adults expressed anxiety over inflation. About 70% were anxious about a potential recession. And 67% had worries about gun violence, including 42% who were “very anxious” about gun violence, which was an increase of 5% over the previous month. “Ongoing stress about our basic needs can lead to other negative mental health effects,” said APA president Dr. Rebecca Brendel. “The impact of this stress means that psychiatrists will need to continue work with the communities they serve, the larger mental health field and policymakers to ensure those who need care can access it,” Brendel said in an APA news release. The association surveyed about 2,200 adults between April 20 and April 22, weighting the data to approximate a target sample of adults based on gender, educational attainment, age, race and region. Overall, 37% felt more anxious this year than at this time last year. That was also an increase of 5%. In all, 30% said they had talked about mental health issues with a mental health professional in the past…  read on >  read on >

A chemical used to degrease industrial parts that was also used as a surgical anesthetic until the 1970s may increase the risk for Parkinson’s disease, researchers report. Their new study found that two years of heavy exposure to the liquid chemical TCE may boost Parkinson’s risk by 70%. TCE, or trichloroethylene, lingers in the air, water and soil. It has been linked to certain cancers. For the study, researchers compared Parkinson’s diagnoses in about 160,000 U.S. Navy and Marine veterans. A little more than half came from Camp Lejeune, a Marine base in Jacksonville, N.C., where TCE used to degrease military equipment fouled the water. Between 1974 and 1985, service members spent at least three months at Camp Lejeune or Camp Pendleton in California. TCE levels in the water at Camp Lejeune were 70 times higher than maximum safety level. Water at Camp Pendleton was not contaminated. Data included follow-up health information from 1997 to 2021, by which time the veterans might have been expected to develop Parkinson’s disease. In all, 430 vets were diagnosed with Parkinson’s. The risk for those who spent time at Lejeune was 70% higher than that for Camp Pendleton vets. On average, service members were stationed at their camps for about two years, beginning at age 20. They were diagnosed with Parkinson’s at an average age of 54 for Lejeune…  read on >  read on >

The high cost of — everything: Rising inflation rates are ramping up anxieties among some groups of Americans much more than others, a new study reports. Women, middle-age adults and people with less education or lower pay are feeling much more stress over higher prices, as well as people who were previously married but are now widowed, divorced or separated, according to findings published May 15 in JAMA Network Open. “In general, it’s vulnerable populations — people who are more exposed to changing prices,” said lead researcher Cary Wu, an assistant professor of sociology at York University in Toronto. For the study, Wu and his colleagues analyzed data on nearly 370,000 Americans who participated in the Household Pulse Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The survey data revealed: Women were 30% more likely to be stressed by inflation than men. People who were widowed or divorced were about 50% more likely than married couples to be stressed, and those separated were twice as likely. People with a graduate degree were 40% less likely to feel the pinch from inflation than those with a high school diploma, while those with a bachelor’s were 50% less likely. As would be expected, family income also played a crucial role in feeling inflationary stress. About 66% of people earning less than $25,000 felt stressed regarding high inflation, compared…  read on >  read on >

More than 10 million people in the United States are living with bipolar disorder, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). It’s characterized by severe, dramatic shifts in mood that can catch people off guard. The name captures the dramatic swing from elation to despair. With treatment, many people with bipolar disorder lead stable, satisfying lives. What is bipolar disorder? Bipolar disorder is a mental health condition marked by extreme swings between mania (elevated mood) and depression. On average, it starts around age 25, according to NAMI, although it may begin in adolescence. “These are not just your normal run-of-the-day mood swings,” said James Maddux, a senior scholar at George Mason University’s Center for the Advancement of Well-Being, in Fairfax, Va. He explained that the condition “involves a manic episode that could be for several weeks or several months, followed by a crash into a major depression — which also can last several weeks to several months.” Bipolar disorder symptoms The main symptoms of bipolar disorder are mania or hypomania and depression. These periods may occur separately, one right after the other or at the same time, according to NAMI and the American Psychological Association. Mania is marked by: Elevated mood Psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusional thinking Impulsive behavior Risk-taking Poor decision-making Irritability, agitation and restlessness Overconfidence Suicidal thoughts Hypomania is…  read on >  read on >