A good night’s sleep is often hampered by caffeine, hunger, alcohol or chronic pain. Now, America has a new cause of poor sleep: the sound of gunfire on city streets. New research shows that gunshots are twice as likely to occur at night, mostly affecting the sleep of people in low-income neighborhoods. In fact, nearly three out of four gunshots (72%) occur at night in major U.S. cities, mostly on Saturday and Sunday, researchers found. “A nighttime gunshot likely disrupts the sleep of nearby community residents due to the sheer sound of the shot, which is then followed by a cacophony of sirens from police vehicles and ambulances,” said researcher Rebecca Robbins, an assistant professor of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. For the study, researchers analyzed more than 72,000 records on the time and location of gunshots in six major cities around the United States, including Baltimore, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., and Washington, D.C., between 2015 and 2021. The team tracked how many gunshots occurred during the day versus at night, and then created maps to show which neighborhoods are most plagued by nighttime gunfire. They also estimated the number of people who lived near a location where gunshots occurred. As many as 12.5 million nights of sleep were ruined by gunfire across the six cities, given the number…  read on >  read on >

A rotten work schedule in young adulthood can affect a person’s middle-aged health, a new study finds. Young adults who worked shifts outside the usual 9-to-5 schedule were more likely to report worse sleep and symptoms of depression in their 50s, researchers discovered. “Work that is supposed to bring resources to help us sustain a decent life has now become a vulnerability to a healthy life,” said researcher Wen-Jui Han, a professor with New York University. For the study, Han and her colleagues analyzed data from a long-term study that tracked the health of more than 7,000 people in the United States for more than three decades. Results showed that in their 20s through their 40s, people rarely have a straight 9-to-5 schedule. “Indeed, about three-quarters of the work patterns we observed did not strictly conform to working stably during daytime hours throughout our working years,” Han said in a university news release. “This has repercussions.” These sort of volatile work hours are associated with bad sleep, physical fatigue and emotional exhaustion, all of which can contribute to poor health, Han said. “People with work patterns involving any degree of volatility and variability were more likely to have fewer hours of sleep per day, lower sleep quality, lower physical and mental functions, and a higher likelihood of reporting poor health and depressive symptoms at age…  read on >  read on >

Two newly discovered genetic variations can have a powerful effect on a person’s risk for obesity, a new report says. Variants in the gene BSN, also known as Bassoon, can increase risk of obesity as much as sixfold, researchers report April 4 in the journal Nature Genetics. These variants affect about 1 in every 6,500 adults, researchers said. Variants of the APBA1 gene also are associated with increased obesity risk, results show. “We have identified two genes with variants that have the most profound impact on obesity risk at a population level we’ve ever seen,” said researcher Giles Yeo, a professor with the Medical Research Council’s Metabolic Diseases Unit at Cambridge University. Previous genetic variants associated with obesity have been linked to the brain pathways normally associated with appetite regulation, known as the leptin-melanocortin pathway, researchers said. Interestingly, neither the BSN nor the APBA1 gene are known to be involved in that brain pathway, researchers said. Instead, prior studies have found that these genes play a role in the transmission of signals between brain cells — suggesting that age-related brain declines might affect appetite control. Further, neither gene is associated with childhood obesity risk, researchers said. For the study, researchers used data from the UK Biobank genetic research project to perform genetic sequencing of body mass index in more than a half-million people. They found…  read on >  read on >

Massive racial disparities exist in the treatment of pregnancy-related mood disorders in the United States, a new study shows. White women suffering from depression or anxiety during or after pregnancy are nearly twice as likely receive treatment as women of color are, researchers report April 1 in the journal Health Affairs. About two-thirds of white women (67%) said they received mental health treatment for their diagnosed depression or anxiety during pregnancy or in their first year of motherhood, researchers found. Comparatively, fewer than two out of five (37%) Black and Hispanic received treatment for their pregnancy-related mood disorders, results show. That number dipped to one in five (20%) for other ethnicities, including Asian, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern and North African. “Our study in concert with existing work shows that Asian, Black and Latine birthing people, who may be at the greatest risk of postpartum depression, are the least likely to receive any form of postpartum mental health care — illustrating stark racial inequities in how postpartum depression is identified and managed in the U.S.,” said lead researcher Sarah Haight, a doctoral candidate in epidemiology with the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. Nearly one in eight people who give birth wind up suffering postpartum depression, researchers said in background notes. For the study, they surveyed more than 4,500…  read on >  read on >

People who gamble on sports are more likely to be binge drinkers as well, a new report finds. Both women and men who bet on sports were at least twice as likely to binge drink compared to non-gamblers, results showed. Further, the odds of binge drinking increased with the frequency of gambling. “With past research showing that sports gamblers are more likely to report symptoms of alcohol use disorder, our results suggest that individuals who wager on sports use alcohol in particularly risky ways,” the research team said in an American Psychiatric Association news release. The study was led by Joshua Grubbs, an associate professor of clinical psychology with the University of New Mexico. For the study, Grubbs’ team analyzed survey data from nearly 4,400 adults about their gambling and drinking habits. Overall, three out of four said they’d used alcohol during the previous year, and more than 1,800 were sports gamblers. Researchers found that women and men who bet on sports once or twice during the previous year were 2.4 times and 1.9 times more likely to report binge drinking, respectively. Binge drinking involves consuming five or more drinks on a single occasion for men, and four or more drinks for women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The odds also increased as either sex gambled more often: Monthly: 3.8…  read on >  read on >

Expecting or new mothers are much more likely these days to be diagnosed with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, new research shows. However, more women are also getting treated for these problems rather than roughing it out, researchers report in April 1 issue of the journal Health Affairs. “Taken together, these studies show a lot of movement in maternal mental health,” said researcher Stephanie Hall, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Medical School. “The landscape is different, at least as far as our health care system’s ability to pick up on conditions and help people get treatment for them.” For the research, investigators analyzed claims data for people with private insurance between 2008 and 2020. They specifically looked for depressive and anxiety disorders occurring during pregnancy or in the first year of motherhood. By 2020, more than one in four (28%) women received a diagnosis of a mood disorder during either pregnancy or the first year of parenthood – a rate nearly double that seen in 2008. Further, the rate of PTSD diagnosis among expecting or new moms quadrupled, rising to nearly 2% of all those pregnant or postpartum in 2020. Fortunately, treatment also appeared to increase alongside diagnoses, researchers said. The rate at which new or expecting moms received talk therapy more than doubled, rising 16% for women diagnosed with anxiety,…  read on >  read on >