Singing may help stroke patients regain communication skills, according to new research. About 40% of stroke survivors have aphasia, a difficulty to deliver or comprehend spoken or written language. That impairment is ongoing for about half of those patients a year after their stroke, potentially affecting quality of life or leading to social isolation. Researchers in Finland studied a singing-based group rehabilitation program. “Our study utilized a wide variety of singing elements, such as choral singing, melodic intonation therapy and tablet-assisted singing training,” said study co-author Anni Pitkäniemi, a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. She spoke in a university news release. Melodic intonation therapy involves using melody and rhythm to progress gradually from singing toward speech. It has been used to some extent in aphasia rehabilitation. Though previous research had determined that it was possible to retain singing ability even in severe aphasia, the use of singing — especially choral singing — had not been widely studied in aphasia rehabilitation. Rehab sessions were led by a trained music therapist and a trained choir conductor. While singing therapy has typically been done individually, these researchers suggested that singing-based group training should be used as part of aphasia rehabilitation. “In addition to training in speech production, group-based rehabilitation provides an excellent opportunity for peer support both for the patients and their families,” said co-author Sini-Tuuli…  read on >  read on >

FRIDAY, Dec. 30, 2022 (HealthDay News) – The United States could see a huge rise in diabetes among young people over the next several decades, a new modeling study finds. As many as 220,000 young people under the age of 20 could have type 2 diabetes in 2060, which would represent a nearly eight-fold increase, a research team that included scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. Type 1 diabetes cases could increase, too, by as much as 65% in the next 40 years. Even if the rate of new diabetes diagnoses among young people stayed unchanged, type 2 cases could increase nearly 70% and type 1 cases by 3% by 2060. “This new research should serve as a wake-up call for all of us. It’s vital that we focus our efforts to ensure all Americans, especially our young people, are the healthiest they can be,” CDC Acting Principal Deputy Director Dr. Debra Houry said in an agency news release. “The COVID-19 pandemic underscored how critically important it is to address chronic diseases, like diabetes. This study further highlights the importance of continuing efforts to prevent and manage chronic diseases, not only for our current population but also for generations to come.” The study authors used findings from the Search for Diabetes in Youth survey, which was funded by the CDC…  read on >  read on >

A new study confirms what many believe: Women tend to be better than men at imagining or understanding what another person is feeling or thinking. Using a test that measures empathy, researchers evaluated more than 300,000 people in 57 countries around the world to come to that conclusion. “Our results provide some of the first evidence that the well-known phenomenon — that females are, on average, more empathic than males — is present in a wide range of countries across the globe. It’s only by using very large data sets that we can say this with confidence,” said study author David Greenberg, from Bar-Ilan University in Israel. The study was led by Cambridge University in England and included collaborators from Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities in Israel, as well as Harvard and Washington universities in the United States, and IMT School for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy. The test used in the study is one of the most widely used for measuring empathy. It asks participants to choose a word best describing what a person in a photo is thinking or feeling just by viewing photos of the eye region of the face. This new study found that females scored significantly higher than males, on average, in 36 countries. Females scored similarly to males in 21 countries. In no country did males score significantly higher than…  read on >  read on >

Most working-age Americans get health insurance through their employer, but even they are finding it tougher to afford medical care these days, a new study shows. Researchers found that over the past 20 years, a growing number of Americans with job-based health insurance have been skipping medical care due to costs. Women have been particularly hard-hit. The study, published Dec. 27 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, could not get at the reasons. But experts said there are some likely explanations, including rising health care costs and moves by insurance plans to foist more payment responsibility onto consumers. “The U.S. health care system is unique in how privatized it is,” said lead researcher Avni Gupta, a PhD student at the NYU School of Global Public Health in New York City. About 61% of Americans younger than 65 get health insurance through their employer, and businesses use that benefit to help attract workers, Gupta pointed out. “It’s the most important fringe benefit of employment,” she said. But increasingly, the new findings show, that fringe benefit is falling short. By 2020, the study found, about 6% of U.S. women with employer-sponsored insurance said they’d been forced to skip needed medical care in the past year due to costs. That was double the percentage 20 years before, at 3%. The figures were lower among men, but…  read on >  read on >

Made infamous as the club drug Special K, ketamine is nowadays being seen as a wonder drug for some folks with hard-to-treat depression. However, a new study finds that some types of patients are more likely to gain a rapid and significant benefit from ketamine than others. Overall, while most patients did benefit from the drug, about one-third experienced a “rapid improvement” in their depression symptoms, the researchers said. Certain patient characteristics appeared to predict that level of benefit. “Severely depressed individuals with a history of childhood trauma may have a better likelihood of a rapid and robust response to ketamine,” concluded lead researcher Brittany O’Brien, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. In 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a ketamine derivative called esketamine (Spravato) for depression that has failed to respond to at least two conventional antidepressants. Given as a nasal spray, esketamine is different from ketamine, which is an injectable anesthetic that can have mind-altering effects. The new study included nearly 300 people with major depression who were treated with three infusions of ketamine at an outpatient clinic. Participants were 40 years old, on average, and most were men. They had not responded to at least two antidepressants in the past. Mood changes were measured using a standardized depression scale over six…  read on >  read on >

Being evicted can have a significant impact on a person’s health, according to new research. In U.S. counties where eviction rates were elevated, death rates were higher for all causes, especially if those areas were home to a higher proportion of Black residents and women. Study author Dr. Andrew Sumarsono, assistant professor of internal medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, said this study was the first to evaluate and identify a link between county eviction and death rates. “Affordable, stable housing is a public health concern. If you’re worried about where you’re going to live next week, caring about your health can easily become a lesser priority,” Sumarsono said in a center news release. “Policies that increase affordable housing and cushion against life events that lead to housing instability could translate to better health outcomes.” To study this, researchers analyzed both eviction rates and deaths in nearly 700 U.S. counties using data from 2016. In counties where the proportion of women was above the median (meaning half had fewer, half more), death rates were five times higher than in counties with a lower proportion of women. Although death rates in areas with a higher proportion of Black residents were also higher, just 2% of those in the study were Black so the findings may be limited, researchers said. The county data…  read on >  read on >

While 8 of 10 mothers breastfeed their newborns for a short time, the number plummets despite recommendations from experts, in part because milk production falls off. Researchers investigating why that happens found that in women who are obese, inflammation may be the culprit. Prior research has shown that when a person is obese, chronic inflammation starts in the fat and spreads to organs and systems throughout the body. And that inflammation may disrupt absorption of fatty acids from the blood into body tissues. These fatty acids are the building blocks for the fats needed to feed a growing infant. “Science has shown repeatedly that there is a strong connection between the fatty acids that you eat and the fatty acids in your blood,” said lead author Rachel Walker, postdoctoral fellow in nutritional sciences at Penn State University. “If someone eats a lot of salmon, you will find more omega-3s in their blood. If someone else eats a lot of hamburgers, you will find more saturated fats in their blood.” The study is among the first to examine whether fatty acids in blood are also found in breast milk, Walker said. “For women who are exclusively breastfeeding, the correlation was very high; most of the fatty acids that appeared in blood were also present in the breast milk,” she said in a university news release. But…  read on >  read on >