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Fatty liver disease linked to diabetes and obesity can easily progress to liver cirrhosis, but new research suggests that GLP-1 medicines like Ozempic can help stop that. In a new decades-long study, veterans with diabetes and what’s known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) were 14% less likely to progress to cirrhosis if they’d taken a GLP-1, compared to other diabetes meds. One GLP-1 med, semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy), seemed especially potent in this regard, according to a team led by Dr. Fasiha Kanwal, a professor of gastroenterology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Overall, the use of GLP-1 meds “was associated with a lower risk of progression to cirrhosis and death,” Kanwal’s team reported Sept. 16 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. They noted that the medicine must be taken early in the course of MASLD: GLP-1s did not help people whose MASLD had already progressed to liver cirrhosis. A healthy liver has a fat content of just 5% or less by weight, but in MASLD fat can rise to unhealthy levels that put people at risk for cirrhosis, liver cancer or even the need for a liver transplant. Obesity and diabetes are prime risk factors driving fatty liver disease. In the new study, the Houston team looked at data from over 32,000 people with diabetes and MASLD who were all cared for at VA… 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 >

Statistics from 2023 on U.S. obesity rates bring no good news: In every state in the nation, 1 in every 5 people is now obese, the new tally shows. In 2013, not one state had an adult obesity rate topping 35%, but 10 years later 23 states had achieved that dubious distinction, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity is defined by the CDC as a BMI of 30 or higher. A person measuring 5 feet 11 inches and weighing 215 pounds has a BMI of 30; so does a person measuring 5 feet 6 inches with a weight of 186 pounds. Millions more Americans struggling with their weight is really bad news, the CDC said in a statement. “Obesity is a disease that can cause many health conditions such as asthma, heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, some cancers and severe outcomes from respiratory illnesses,” the agency said. “In addition, the stigma and bias about a person’s weight can cause social and mental health consequences, such as anxiety and poor body image.” Those 23 states where obesity has now affected at least 35% of the populace include: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wisconsin.… read on > read on >

The injectable weight-loss drug Zepbound appears to work better in women than in men, according to a new analysis of the clinical trials that led to its approval. All doses of tirzepatide consistently reduced weight in both women and men, researchers found. But women lost up to 25% of their initial body weight when treated with tirzepatide, compared with just 19% in men, results showed. Researchers presented the new analysis Wednesday at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes’ annual meeting in Madrid. Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal. “This post-hoc analysis underscores the consistent benefits of tirzepatide for women and men. More research is needed to understand the mechanism by which females may experience more weight reduction in these trials,” lead researcher Dr. Luis-Emilio García, an associate vice president at Eli Lilly, said in a meeting news release. Tirzepatide works by mimicking two types of hormones related to hunger and insulin control, GLP-1 and GIP. Its rival drug, Wegovy, only mimics GLP-1. This new study pooled all the data from four trials that tested tirzepatide against a placebo in nearly 3,000 women and 1,700 men. The trials tested the weight-loss drug in obese people with or without type 2 diabetes or other weight-related health problems. Some trials also included a three-month lifestyle intervention intended… read on > read on >

The weight-loss drug liraglutide helped obese children lower their BMI and reach a healthier weight, researchers report. The findings, published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented simultaneously at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes annual meeting in Madrid, are the first to demonstrate the effects of liraglutide (Saxenda) on children ages 6 to 11. “The results of this study offer considerable promise to children living with obesity,” study author Dr. Claudia Fox, co-director of the Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine at the University of Minnesota, said in a meeting news release. “To date, children have had virtually no options for treating obesity. They have been told to ‘try harder’ with diet and exercise. Now, with the possibility of a medication that addresses the underlying physiology of obesity, there is hope that children living with obesity can live healthier, more productive lives.” Most adults and children 12 and older can take newer weight-loss medicines like the GLP-1 drugs Wegovy and Zepbound, experts say, but younger children must rely on diet, exercise and counseling alone to lose weight. “Obesity is the most common chronic disease of childhood,” Fox noted. “Left untreated, obesity in childhood almost universally persists into adulthood and is associated with significant ill health, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and for some, premature death. Early intervention is therefore critical.” “However,… read on > read on >

Widespread and easy access to guns is the reason behind the shockingly high rate of firearm deaths in the United States, and not any rise in mental health problems suffered by perpetrators, a new study shows. The United States has the same burden of mental health disorders as 40 other countries with comparable populations, researchers reported recently in the journal PLOS One. However, the U.S. rate of death by firearms is 20 times greater than those other countries, results show. “We have the same degree of mental health issues as other countries, but our firearm death rate is far greater and continuing to increase,” said lead investigator Dr. Archie Bleyer, a clinical research professor with Oregon Health & Science University. “In most of the countries, firearms deaths are decreasing.” Polling has shown that most of the public believes that mental health disorders are to blame for the high U.S. firearm death rate, Bleyer said. But the latest findings indicate that firearm availability is the true cause of America’s gun death epidemic, Bleyer said. For the study, researchers compared the United States to 40 other countries with similar demographics between 2000 and 2019 using data drawn from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Global Health Burden. The research team looked specifically at firearm deaths and the burden of mental health issues in the countries. Since… read on > read on >

It’s natural for a parent to want to protect their children and keep them from harm. But sometimes this understandable desire crosses over into “helicopter parenting,” an overbearing need to be part of a child’s every decision and dilemma. “A helicopter parent is often fueled by anxiety, and that anxiety can come in different flavors: anxiety for their child to be safe, successful or not to be emotionally harmed, as well as anxiety to keep up with the Joneses or what their family or culture expects,” said Dr. Laurel Williams, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. A helicopter parent typically doesn’t allow their child to pursue normal kid behavior on their own. Their instincts cry out for them to make the pathway easier for their kid. But this actually can hamper their child’s development, Williams said. The child might not learn how to handle failure or disappointment, or how to best interact with other children their age. Parents would be better off modeling how kids should handle letdowns like not making a sports team or getting a bad grade. “Be helpful in planning on how this doesn’t happen again, but if you don’t let them handle it on their own, you can delay their development,” Williams said in a Baylor news release. It’s important to identify when… read on > read on >

An analysis of where suicides are occurring in the United States shows that, tragically, location matters. People living in poorer areas with fewer resources are significantly more likely to fall victim to suicide versus those living in more affluent areas, new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. “Improving the conditions where people are born, grow, live, work and age is an often-overlooked aspect of suicide prevention,” said the report’s lead author, CDC health scientist Alison Cammack. Her team published its CDC Vital Signs report on Sept 10. The analysis looked at factors such as insurance coverage, broadband internet access and household income in counties across the United States. They then compared those statistics to rates of suicide in each county. The results show that income, education and access to resources do matter. Compared to those counties scoring lowest when it comes to income, internet access and insurance coverage, suicide rates were: 26% lower in counties with the highest health insurance coverage 44% lower in counties where most homes have broadband internet access 13% lower in counties with the greatest average household income Initiatives that reduce these disparities might help bring suicide rates down, Cammack said in a CDC news release. “Public health programs that improve conditions in communities, such as those funded by CDC’s Comprehensive Suicide Prevention Program, can help… read on > read on >