As wildfires continue to burn across parts of California, a new study finds that smoke from these blazes and other air pollution could be harming kids’ mental health. Repeated exposure to high levels of particle pollution increases kids’ risk of depression, anxiety and other mental health symptoms, researchers reported. What’s more, each additional day of exposure to unsafe air significantly boosted the likelihood that a youngster would suffer mental health problems. “We need to understand what these extreme events are doing to young people, their brains and their behavior,” said lead investigator Harry Smolker, a research associate with the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Institute of Cognitive Science. For the study, researchers analyzed data from 10,000 kids ages 9 to 11 participating in an ongoing study of brain development. Using the participants’ addresses, they calculated how many days in 2016 each kid was exposed to particle pollution levels the Environmental Protection Agency considers unsafe. Some studies have found that these airborne particles could be small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier and affect the brain. These particles have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers; by comparison, a human hair is about 50 micrometers in diameter. Adult hospital admissions for depression, suicide and psychosis tend to increase on high pollution days, researchers said in background notes. When pregnant women are exposed to heavy particle pollution, their children…  read on >  read on >

With implications for research around postpartum depression and other health issues, scientists have tracked the changes pregnancy brings to the female brain. These changes weren’t subtle: Big shifts in what’s known as the brain’s “white matter” versus “gray matter” were observed, according to a team from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). “The maternal brain undergoes a choreographed change across gestation, and we are finally able to see it unfold,” said study co-author Emily Jacobs, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at the university. The study is thought to be the first to track brain changes throughout a pregnancy, rather than looking at discrete ‘snapshots’ taken at various points in gestation. The study focused on the brain of one woman undergoing her first pregnancy. Researchers led by Laura Pritschet, a PhD student working in Jacob’s lab, took scans of the woman’s brain every few weeks — starting before pregnancy, during gestation and then for two years after delivery. The “neuroplasticity” observed in her brain was dramatic, Pritschet and colleagues report. The biggest alteration came with the ratio of white matter and gray matter within the brain. Cortical gray matter — the kid found on the wrinkly outer surface of the brain — decreased in volume as hormonal changes associated with pregnancy occurred, the researchers said. That’s not a particularly negative change, the researchers…  read on >  read on >

Tiny puffs from asthma inhalers could be causing big climate problems for Mother Earth, a new study warns. Each inhaler dose contains some of the most potent greenhouse gases known, and they are adding up, researchers reported recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. By the time some inhalers are empty, they have emitted as much greenhouse gas as an average car driven 60 miles, researchers found. Further, the more than 70 million inhalers prescribed in the United States each year contribute more air pollution than the annual electricity use of 200,000 American homes, the researchers added. “There was a really wide range of emissions between different inhaler types, and it turns out that in the U.S. we’re still mostly prescribing the inhalers that are the worst when it comes to emissions,” said lead researcher Dr. Jyothi Tirumalasetty, a clinical assistant professor of pulmonary, allergy and critical care medicine at Stanford University. “But there are some easy replacements for those inhalers, and we hope that patients and providers consider emissions when they choose an inhaler,” Tirumalasetty added in a university news release. There are three main types of inhalers, researchers said: Metered-dose inhalers that use propellant gas to drive medication deep into the lungs Dry-powder inhalers that contain medicine dust that patients must breathe in Soft-mist inhalers that turn liquid medication into an…  read on >  read on >

Over 5 million Americans could benefit if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the “magic mushroom” psychedelic psilocybin as a treatment for depression, researchers estimate. “While our analysis is a crucial first step, we’ve only scratched the surface in understanding the true public health impact psilocybin therapy may have,” said study co-author Dr. Charles Raison. He’s professor of psychiatry and human ecology at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. Shunned for decades as an illicit drug, psilocybin has undergone a kind of rebirth in recent years as studies have suggested that — given in a controlled, supervised manner — it might help ease tough-to-treat depression. The drug is now under consideration by the FDA as a possible new treatment for depression. Just how many Americans might stand to benefit? To find out, Raison and colleagues looked at national data on the prevalence of depression, as well as patient criteria (sourced from recent clinical trials) that might make a person eligible for psilocybin therapy. The result: In the mid-range of estimates, anywhere from 56% to 62% of Americans currently being treated for depression could be eligible to try psilocybin. That’s anywhere from 5.1 million to 5.6 million potential patients, according to the researchers. The number could even grow higher if people currently untreated for their depression decide they would like to try psilocybin, the investigators noted. “This underscores…  read on >  read on >

Smokers who make the decision to quit will see almost immediate health benefits, including a quick drop in their risk for atrial fibrillation, new research shows. “The findings provide a compelling new reason to show current smokers that it’s not too late to quit and that having smoked in the past doesn’t mean you’re ‘destined’ to develop A-Fib,” said study senior author Dr. Gregory Marcus. “Even for the current and longtime smoker, A-Fib can still be avoided,” said Marcus, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. His team published its findings Sept. 11 in JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology. With A-Fib, the upper chambers of the heart, called the atria, start to beat irregularly. This allows blood to pool and potentially clot in the atria, increasing a person’s risk of stroke. “There’s strong evidence that smoking increases the risk of A-Fib, but the benefits of quitting smoking have been less certain,” Marcus said. “We wanted to determine whether quitting smoking could lower a person’s risk of developing A-Fib or if the risk would stay the same.” To find out, they looked at British data on over 146,700 current or former smokers whose smoking history and health was tracked for 12 years in the UK Biobank database. Folks who were former smokers (before they joined the study) had a 13% lower odds for A-Fib than current…  read on >  read on >