Most people think of eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia as afflictions of teenagers, but a new study finds that older women are also vulnerable to developing them, especially around menopause. The main driver of eating disorders in older women? Body dissatisfaction, the researchers found. When researchers looked at eating disorder symptoms among 36 women aged 45 to 61, they found that body dissatisfaction was a key risk factor for eating disorders across the lifespan, especially in midlife. Perimenopausal and early post-menopausal women were more likely to report a fear of gaining weight or losing control of their eating. Perimenopause is the transition before menopause that may be marked by irregular or skipped periods, among other symptoms. “Eating disorders have been stereotyped as a disease of adolescence and young adulthood, but are still present in older women,” said Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director of the North American Menopause Society and director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health in Rochester, Minn. About 3.5% of women older than 40 have an eating disorder, and this may manifest differently than it does in younger people, she said. “Women in perimenopause may have more dysregulated eating behaviors such as weight control behaviors/counting calories or consumption of diet foods, and may note more body dissatisfaction and fear of gaining weight,” said Faubion. Exactly why midlife is a…  read on >  read on >

Intravenous (IV) lines are generally associated with medical centers — picture a patient in a hospital bed, an IV drip-dropping needed fluids, nutrients and medicines into their arm. But millions now are receiving IV treatments at home, and a new study warns that not enough people are being properly trained to watch out for potentially dangerous IV-associated infections. There are no standard protocols for training home care nurses, caregivers or the patients themselves how to watch out for and report signs of infections caused by IV lines, said co-author Dr. Sara Keller, an assistant professor of infectious disease at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Md. “There are more patients receiving home infusion therapy now than there were 10 or 20 years ago, and being able to monitor complications in a validated and standardized fashion is going to be important,” Keller said. More than 3 million patients received IV treatment at home in 2019, a 300% increase from 2008, according to the National Home Infusion Association. “People no longer are in the hospital for six weeks of IV therapy,” said Dr. Aaron Glatt, chief of infectious disease at Mount Sinai South Nassau, in Oceanside, N.Y. “They’re sent home with central lines in place, and they’ll get their therapy on a daily basis as an outpatient, usually giving it to themselves or sometimes with…  read on >  read on >

When the deadly Camp Fire swept through Northern California in 2018, it may have damaged more than the landscape. University of California, San Diego researchers studying survivors’ mental functioning in the wake of the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the state’s history have uncovered evidence of “climate trauma.” The November 2018 fire burned 239 square miles, destroyed 18,804 structures and killed 85 people. “In this study, we wanted to learn whether and how climate trauma affected and altered cognitive and brain functions in a group of people who had experienced it during the Camp Fire,” said Jyoti Mishra, an associate professor of psychiatry and associate director of the UC Climate and Mental Health Initiative. “We found that those who were impacted, directly or indirectly, displayed weaker interference processing,” she said in a university news release. “Such weakened cognitive performance may then impair daily functioning and reduce well-being.” To function well, brains need to process information and manage memories that help a person achieve goals, while dispensing of harmful distractions, Mishra said. Extreme climate events are well-documented to have significant psychological impacts. “Warming temperatures, for example, have even been linked to greater suicide rates,” Mishra said. “As planetary warming amplifies, more forest fires are expected in California and globally, with significant implications for mental health effects.” The study included 27 people who were directly exposed…  read on >  read on >

A cancer diagnosis can be devastating. Now, new research shows that patients diagnosed with cancer have a risk of suicide 26% higher than the general population. A variety of factors contribute to the elevated risk, including geography, race and ethnicity, economic status and clinical characteristics, American Cancer Society (ACS) researchers found. The study also showed a decline in elevated risk for cancer patients compared with the general population from 67% in 2000 to 16% in 2016. “Our findings highlight the importance of timely symptom management and targeted interventions for suicide prevention in individuals with cancer,” said senior author Xuesong Han, scientific director of health services research at ACS. “These require joint efforts by federal and state governments, as well as health care providers, to ensure comprehensive health insurance coverage for psycho-oncological, psychosocial and palliative care, development of appropriate clinical guidelines for suicide risk screening, and inclusion of suicide prevention in survivorship care plans,” Han said in a society news release. Her team analyzed data from 16.8 million individuals diagnosed with cancer in 43 states between 2000 and 2016. During that time, nearly 20,800 people with cancer died by suicide. This elevated suicide risk was seen across all demographic groups, with particularly higher risks among folks who were Hispanic, uninsured, covered by Medicaid, or under 64 years of age and on Medicare. The suicide risk was…  read on >  read on >

Doctors are seeing an alarming increase in cases of a specific genital malformation in male babies, and new research suggests environmental factors might be at play. The malformation is known as hypospadias, where the opening of the urethra is not at the tip of the penis, but on the underside of the organ. In the study, scientists identified a direct link between hypospadias tissue samples and the presence of epigenetic alterations — changes to the molecular factors and processes around DNA that determine how genes behave. “Previous researchers have done extensive analyses and not found any kind of genetic DNA sequence mutations that correlate with the presence of the disease, so there has always been a big question mark regarding where it comes from,” explained senior study author Michael Skinner, a professor of biology at Washington State University. “Our study shows the etiology of the disease is environmentally driven through epigenetics, rather than a result of changes to the DNA sequence,” he said in a university news release. “It gives us a clearer picture of what is going on.” Incidents of this malformation have increased by 11.5% in recent decades. This research could ultimately lead to earlier detection and better clinical management this genital defect, the study authors said. What happens next is uncertain, but researchers pointed to one potential path. It could be identifying…  read on >  read on >

As numerous U.S. states move to restrict transgender health care, a new study shows that such care can substantially improve teenagers’ mental health. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed transgender and nonbinary teenagers who received “gender-affirming” hormones — either estrogen or testosterone — for two years. During that time, researchers found, two-thirds of teens who’d had moderate to severe depression showed a marked improvement. Many also saw their anxiety symptoms wane and reported gains in their satisfaction with life. Experts who were not involved in the study said it bolsters evidence of the benefits of gender-affirming care — health care services for transgender and nonbinary people. That care can include “puberty blockers” — medications that put a pause on pubertal development — and gender-affirming hormones, which alter patients’ physical traits to better align with their gender identity. In the study, there was a direct correlation between teenagers’ mental health gains and the degree to which hormone therapy had given them their desired physical appearance. It’s known that compared with their peers, transgender and nonbinary teenagers are at higher risk of mental health issues, substance use and suicide. A survey last year by the nonprofit Trevor Project found that between 12% and 22% of transgender and nonbinary young people had attempted suicide in the past year. And few — one-third —…  read on >  read on >

In today’s highly polarized political environment, is it possible to stay up-to-date with the news of the day without getting totally stressed out? If not, is there a way to limit the emotional and physical fallout? Or is all that individual stress in service of a greater societal good? New research paints a complex picture with no easy answers. On the one hand, paying close attention to the daily doings of politicians does appear to have a way of making people feel consistently bad, investigators found. And those negative emotions appear to take a toll, they warn, in the form of poorer mental and physical health. On the upside, the study also found that staying politically informed appears to serve a larger good, motivating people to get more involved in important causes, through volunteer work or financial donations. “We expected people would have negative reactions to politics each day, but we were somewhat surprised by how consistent the effects were,” noted study author Matthew Feinberg, an associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. What’s clear, however, is that all that negativity seems to source back to a fundamental fact, Feinberg said: People take politics very, very personally. “They internalize what happens in the political arena,” he said. And the result is that all “the scandals, the incivility and the animosity so…  read on >  read on >