How teens see their family’s social status may play a part in their mental health and success at school, a new study suggests. Social status appears to be more important than what their parents do for a living, how much money they have or how educated they are, the researchers said. “The amount of financial resources children have access to is one of the most reliable predictors of their health and life chances,” said Candice Odgers, a professor of psychological science at the University of California, Irvine. “But these findings show that how young people see their family’s place in a hierarchical system also matters. Their perceptions of social status were an equally good, and often stronger, indicator of how well they were going to do with respect to mental health and social outcomes,” Odgers explained in a university news release. For the study, the researchers followed more than 2,200 twins born in England and Wales in 1994 and 1995. The children assessed their family’s social ranking at ages 12 and 18. By late adolescence, these beliefs were linked to how well the teen was doing, independent of the family’s income, health care, adequate nutrition and education. This pattern was not seen at age 12. The researchers also found that the twins’ views were not always the same. At 18, the twin who said the…  read on >

New research involving the DNA of 200,000 U.S. veterans suggests that there really is such a thing as a “worry gene.” Researchers have identified six genetic variants linked to anxiety — a discovery that may help explain why anxiety and depression often go hand in hand. “This is the richest set of results for the genetic basis of anxiety to date,” said study co-lead author Dr. Joel Gelernter, director of human genetics at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. “There has been no explanation for the comorbidity of anxiety and depression and other mental health disorders, but here we have found specific, shared genetic risks,” he said in a university news release. The researchers identified the six variants linked to anxiety by analyzing the genes of about 200,000 veterans. Five variants were found in European Americans, and one was found only in blacks, according to the report published Jan. 7 in the American Journal of Psychiatry. “While there have been many studies on the genetic basis of depression, far fewer have looked for variants linked to anxiety, disorders of which afflict as many as one in 10 Americans,” said study senior author Dr. Murray Stein. He’s a professor of psychiatry, family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego. One variant occurs in a gene involved in functioning of receptors for the…  read on >

Minimum wage laws can be a literal lifesaver for people who are struggling to get by, a new study suggests. The suicide rate declines among less-educated folks when the minimum wage is increased, researchers discovered. States experience as much as a 6% decrease in their suicide rates for every $1 increase in the minimum wage, said lead researcher John Kaufman, a doctoral student of epidemiology at Emory University, in Atlanta. A $1 increase in the federal minimum wage could have prevented 13,800 suicides among less-educated adults aged 18 to 64 during the peak in unemployment following the 2009 financial crash, researchers estimated. A $2 increase would have prevented 25,900 suicides between 2009 and 2015. This effect is solely among people with a high school education or less, Kaufman said, and it grows stronger when the unemployment rate is higher. “During periods of high unemployment, people are more willing to work at lower-wage jobs, and those lower-wage jobs are going to be the ones that have increased pay if there’s an increase in minimum wage,” Kaufman said. “Those jobs become more valuable both to the people working and to their dependents and their families, compared to times when the economy is doing well.” There’s broad support among Democratic presidential candidates for doubling the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15, including former Vice President Joe Biden…  read on >

Testosterone therapy is no fountain of youth for older men, though it might help some who are impotent. That’s according to new guidelines from the American College of Physicians — the first from the group to address the issue of treating age-related “low T.” It’s known that men’s testosterone levels decline with age. And for years industry has promoted the idea that men suffer a range of symptoms caused by what’s sometimes described as “male menopause.” The list includes fatigue, weakness, muscle loss, dulled memory and thinking, depression, and dampened libido and erectile dysfunction. Yet for nearly all of those problems, there is no good evidence testosterone therapy helps, the college found in a research review. The only area where there is some benefit, the group says, is in treating sexual dysfunction. On average, studies have found “small improvements” in sexual and erectile function. The lackluster performance in clinical trials is “a bit surprising,” said ACP president Dr. Robert McLean. But, he pointed out, the fact that testosterone wanes with age does not automatically mean that’s behind men’s health issues. And that means replacing testosterone will not necessarily help. That never stopped manufacturers of supplemental testosterone, however. For years, they launched aggressive marketing campaigns warning men of the health effects of age-related declines of the male hormone. Between 2009 and 2013, the number of U.S.…  read on >

High levels of ozone and wood smoke each increase the risk for lung diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) among smokers and nonsmokers alike, two new studies find. People with COPD gradually lose their ability to draw a decent breath. Cigarette smoking is the leading cause, but COPD also can be caused by regular exposure to lung irritants. In one study of nearly 1,900 participants, researchers found that exposure to high levels of ozone over a decade increased the likelihood of COPD. For every 5-parts-per-billion increase in 10-year ozone exposure, the risk for COPD increased 16%, the findings showed. The same increase in ozone was also linked with greater odds of emphysema and a worse quality of life, the study authors said. “What really stood out was that the effect was apparent even among current heavy smokers,” said researcher Dr. Nadia Hansel, director of the pulmonary and critical care division at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore. “This means that active smoking doesn’t outweigh this effect of ozone.” Even those already at risk for COPD had an additional increased risk with ozone exposure, she added in a university news release. “I think this adds to increasing evidence that there is probably no healthy level of ozone,” Hansel said. Her team’s findings were published online recently in JAMA Internal Medicine. In the second…  read on >