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Kids and teens around the world are consuming more sugary drinks, increasing their risk of future health problems, a new study finds. Young people consumed nearly 23% more sugar-sweetened beverages in 2018 compared to 1990, according to the report published Aug. 7 in the BMJ. “Sugary beverages increase weight gain and risk of obesity, so even though kids don’t often develop diabetes or cardiovascular disease when they are young, there could be significant impacts later in life,” said lead researcher Laura Lara-Castor. She’s a postdoctoral scholar in nutritional epidemiology at the University of Washington. The study provides the first global estimates of sugary drink intake by kids and teens, researchers said. For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than 1,200 surveys completed during the three-decade study period. The data assessed the dietary habits of children from 185 countries. The research team specifically looked at consumption of soda, juice drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks and home-sweetened fruit drinks like aquas frescas. Their definition of sugary drinks did not include 100% fruit juices, diet sodas or sweetened milks. Sugar-sweetened beverage intake averaged 3.6 servings a week globally, and ranged from 1.3 servings a week in South Asia to 9.1 in Latin America and the Caribbean. Children and teens in 56 countries representing 238 million young people – about 10% of the global youth population – averaged… read on > read on >

Many people with Parkinson’s disease may fear dementia as a common consequence of the disease. But new research suggests dementia is not inevitable with Parkinson’s, and in fact is less common than presumed. If dementia does occur, it typically does so much later in life than was previously assumed, the study also found. “These results provide more hopeful estimates of the long-term risk of dementia for people with Parkinson’s disease, suggesting that there is a longer window to intervene to prevent or delay cognitive decline,” said study lead author Dr. Daniel Weintraub, of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in Philadelphia. The findings were published Aug. 7 in the journal Neurology. As Weintraub noted in a journal news release, “the development of dementia is feared by people with Parkinson’s, and the combination of both a movement disorder and a cognitive disorder can be devastating to them and their loved ones.” Prior studies had suggested that 80% of Parkinson’s patients might develop dementia within 15 to 20 years of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s. “While these studies were important in highlighting the issue of cognitive decline in Parkinson’s disease, the studies were conducted many years ago, were relatively small and had other limitations, so we wanted to re-evaluate these findings,” noted Weintraub, an assistant professor of psychiatry at UPenn. To get a clearer picture of the incidence of… read on > read on >

Remember your besties from high school? Sure, they made a lasting impression, but science suggests they influenced the trajectory of your health, too. It’s not that far-fetched: Your friends carry genes that may or may nor predispose them to mental health issues ranging from addiction to anxiety and depression. That can influence the mental health of the people in their friend circle, according to researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “Peers’ genetic predispositions for psychiatric and substance use disorders are associated with an individual’s own risk of developing the same disorders in young adulthood,” said study lead author Jessica Salvatore. “What our data exemplifies is the long reach of social genetic effects,” she said in a Rutgers news release. Salvatore is an associate professor of psychiatry at the university. It’s a relatively new field of research called socio-genomics: How one person’s genetic makeup (“genotype”) can influence a wider network of people. Just how powerful is the socio-genomic effect? To find out, Salvatore’s group looked at Swedish data on over 1.5 million individuals born in Sweden between 1980 and 1998. They then pinpointed exactly where everyone went to school in their teen years. That was followed up by a deep dive into local medical, pharmacy and legal registries that documented any history of substance use and mental health disorders for the same individuals in adulthood.… read on > read on >

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 7, 2024 (HealthDay news) — Medicare and Medicaid patients are less likely to get cutting-edge weight-loss drugs than people with private insurance are, a new study finds. Medicaid accounted for less than 10% of semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) prescription fills in 2023, researchers found. Similarly, Medicare Part D accounted for less than 29% of Ozempic fills and a little more than 1% of Wegovy fills. “If only certain patient populations get access to these medications — those primarily with private insurance, more generous health plans — then there’s a huge percentage of the U.S. population that isn’t getting access to these medications. And that brings up a very significant equity issue,” said lead researcher Dr. Christopher Scannell, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California’s (USC) Center for Health Policy & Economics. For the study, researchers reviewed a pharmaceutical database that captures about 92% of prescriptions filled and dispensed at retail pharmacies in the United States. Ozempic is a once-weekly semaglutide injection approved for use in treating type 2 diabetes in 2017. A higher-dose version called Wegovy was approved in 2021 specifically for weight loss. Ozempic costs about $1,000 a month, while Wegovy is $1,350 a month, researchers noted. Prescription fills for semaglutide drugs skyrocketed by more than 400% between 2021 and 2023, reaching 2.6 million by December 2023, researchers found. However, most… read on > read on >

David Lynch, who transformed television and film with series such as “Twin Peaks” and movies like “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive,” announced Monday that he is battling the lung disease emphysema. Lynch, 78 and a former long-time smoker, first spoke about his illness in an article for Sight and Sound, a magazine from the British Film Institute. Although emphysema is limiting his mobility, Lynch said that he could continue directing, just remotely. He confirmed his diagnosis on a social media post. “Yes, I have emphysema from my many years of smoking,” Lynch said. “I have to say that I enjoyed smoking very much, and I do love tobacco — the smell of it, lighting cigarettes on fire, smoking them — but there is a price to pay for this enjoyment, and the price for me is emphysema.” He added that he quit smoking two years ago. “Recently, I had many tests and the good news is that I am in excellent shape except for emphysema,” Lynch said. “I am filled with happiness, and I will never retire.” According to the American Lung Association, over 3 million Americans are living with emphysema. “Emphysema causes damage to the lung tissue and alveoli or tiny air sacs. Over time, this damage causes the tiny air sacs to break and create one big air pocket instead of small ones,” the… read on > read on >

There’s a hint of good news for parents concerned about teen mental health: After 57% of U.S. teen girls surveyed in 2021 said they felt “persistent sadness,” that number declined somewhat by 2023, to 53%, new government data show. In the latest biennial poll of over 20,000 high school students nationwide, called the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that pandemic-era rates of despair may be ebbing, although they remain high. “One of our main priorities at CDC is improving Americans’ mental health,” Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science, said in an agency news release. “The data released today show improvements to a number of metrics that measure young people’s mental well-being — progress we can build on. However, this work is far from complete.” In general, girls tend to feel persistent sadness more than boys: About 28% of boys surveyed in both the 2021 and 2023 surveys said they felt that way. In other survey findings, suicide risk among girls did not change between the two surveys. However, a rise in suicide attempts among Black students that appeared in 2021 has now declined significantly. “These data show that we’ve made some progress in tackling these issues in recent years, which proves that they are not insurmountable.… read on > read on >

Fireworks displays can cause worse air quality than wildfire smoke, a new study reveals. About 60,000 firework shells exploded over Manhattan’s East River as part of Macy’s Fourth of July show in 2023, researchers said. The colorful bursts caused air pollution in New York City to spike dramatically, with levels many times higher in the hours after the display than was caused by smoke from a Canadian wildfire that had blanketed the region a month before. Particle pollution levels peaked at 3,000 micrograms per cubic meter of air at a sampling site near the display, and 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter at two other nearby sites, results show. For comparison, New York City’s average daily particle pollution levels are 15 micrograms per cubic meter, researchers said. Those levels reached just 460 micrograms per cubic meter when wildfire smoke choked and reddened the Manhattan skies in June 2023. In addition to air pollution, water samples collected from the East River contained more than double the usual level of metals sometimes used to make fireworks explode in brilliant colors. These include nickel, lead and antimony. “Our findings suggest that major firework displays can create a temporary spike in air pollution that may pose a health risk to both humans and the environment,” said lead researcher Terry Gordon, a professor with the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Fireworks… read on > read on >

Wildfire smoke could interfere with the safety of surgeries, a new study warns. Inhaling the smoke could complicate the effects of anesthesia on surgical patients, and it also might hamper their recovery, researchers reported Aug. 6 in the journal Anesthesiology. “Wildfire smoke poses significant health risks, particularly in people with preexisting heart and lung disease, obese patients, infants and young children, and other vulnerable groups,” said senior researcher Dr. Vijay Krishnamoorthy, chief of critical care medicine at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C. “At a time of rising global exposure, anesthesiologists need to be equipped to manage the potential adverse effects of wildfire smoke exposure” on patient outcomes, Krishnamoorthy added in a journal news release. Nearly 100 wildfires are currently raging across the United States, burning more than 2 million acres, researchers noted. Wildfire smoke contains a complex mix of fine particles and chemicals that, when inhaled, enter the circulatory system. Organs like the heart and lungs can be damaged as a result, researchers said. The inhaled particles produce inflammation, damage the lining of blood vessels and cause clotting abnormalities in smaller blood vessels, they added. Exposure to such particle pollution also increases the risk of heart attack, heart rhythm problems, heart failure and stroke, they noted. All these factors lead to increased rates of complications among patients undergoing surgery, the researchers concluded.… read on > read on >

Eating more fruits and veggies can lower blood pressure and improve heart health by reducing acid levels in the body, a new clinical trial finds. People who added two to four cups of fruits and vegetables to their daily diet wound up with lower blood pressure and reduced heart disease risk, as well as improved kidney health, trial results published Aug. 6 in the American Journal of Medicine showed. “This supports our recommendation that fruits and vegetables should be ‘foundational’ treatment for patients with hypertension, because we accomplish all three goals [kidney health, lower blood pressure and reduced cardiovascular disease risk] with fruits and vegetables, and we can do so with lower medication doses,” said researcher Maninder Kahlon, an associate professor of population health with the University of Texas at Austin Medical School. In other words, doctors should first have people eat more fruits and veggies before starting them on blood pressure medications, the researchers said. “Dietary interventions for chronic disease management are often not recommended and even less often executed because of the many challenges to get patients to implement them,” explained lead researcher Dr. Donald Wesson, a professor of internal medicine with the University of Texas at Austin. “Nevertheless, they are effective, and in this instance, kidney- and cardiovascular-protective.” “We must increase our efforts to incorporate them into patient management and more broadly,… read on > read on >

A newly developed biomaterial might be able to treat crippling arthritis by prompting the growth of new cartilage, a new animal study suggests. The bioactive material looks like rubbery goo, but it’s actually a complex biological stew designed to mimic natural cartilage in the body, researchers said. The biomaterial successfully regenerated high-quality cartilage in the knee joints of sheep within six months. If successful in humans, the new material could be used to treat osteoarthritis, which occurs when bones rub together after the cartilage separating them wears down, researchers said. That means the biomaterial could make obsolete the total knee replacement surgery now used to treat severe osteoarthritis. In the surgery, the bone ends are cut away and replaced with titanium, and the cartilage with plastic. “Cartilage is a critical component in our joints,” said lead researcher Samuel Stupp, a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University. “When cartilage becomes damaged or breaks down over time, it can have a great impact on people’s overall health and mobility.” “The problem is that, in adult humans, cartilage does not have an inherent ability to heal,” Stupp added in a university news release. “Our new therapy can induce repair in a tissue that does not naturally regenerate. We think our treatment could help address a serious, unmet clinical need.” The new biomaterial combines an essential… read on > read on >

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All Sauce from Weekly Gravy:

Kids Worldwide Are Consuming More Sugary Drinks

Dementia May Not Be as Common Among Parkinson’s Patients as Thought

Your Friends’ Genes May Harm or Help You

Cost Keeps Many Who Need Them From Getting New Weight-Loss Meds

Filmmaker David Lynch Has Emphysema

Fewer U.S. Teen Girls Are Reporting ‘Persistent Sadness’

Too Much Fun? Fireworks Displays Quickly Harm Air Quality

How Wildfire Smoke Could Be Harming Surgical Patients

Study Shows How Fruits, Veggies Lower Blood Pressure, Heart Risks

When Your Knee Cartilage Wears Out, a ‘Biomaterial’ Might Help Replace It