When a parent is depressed, their child’s asthma care may suffer. Now, research suggests that getting a child’s asthma under control may include assessing a parents’ mental health. Researchers at University of Texas Southwestern found that treating a parent’s depression could sometimes improve symptom control in asthmatic children. About 8% of American children have asthma. Symptoms include shortness of breath, coughing and wheezing due to inflammation of the lungs and airways. “Moreover, asthma is a medical illness that is sensitive to a patient’s mood as well as medication adherence,” said Dr. E. Sherwood Brown, a professor of psychiatry. Stress and depression in children who have asthma can cause airway constriction and worsen symptoms. Then, this poor asthma control can exacerbate a child’s depression. High rates of depression among caregivers may also put stress on kids, worsening their depressive symptoms and asthma control, the researchers noted. To study the issue, the investigators followed caregivers with major depressive disorder and their children with persistent asthma for one year. They found that improvement in caregiver depression was associated with fewer asthma attacks and better asthma control for children. This improvement in asthma control occurred, in part, through reduction in the children’s depressive symptom severity. Health care providers may need to think more broadly when treating patients, Brown said in a university news release. “It might be useful to…  read on >  read on >

New research reveals that the brain is much more flexible than once thought and can change rapidly during treatment for major depression. People receiving inpatient treatment for major depression had increased brain connectivity after just six weeks, German researchers report. They compared brain connectivity — various brain regions acting together in generating thought, emotion and behavior — in 109 patients with serious depression to that in a control group of 55 volunteers without depression. MRI scans were used to identify which brain areas were communicating with others before and after treatment. “We found that treatment for depression changed the infrastructure of the brain, which goes against previous expectations. Treated patients showed a greater number of connections than they had shown before treatment,” said lead researcher Jonathan Repple, who was part of the University of Muenster team that did the study. He’s now a professor of predictive psychiatry at the University of Frankfurt. The research was presented recently at a meeting of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, in Vienna and online. For the study, patients with depression were treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), psychological therapy or medication, or a combination of all therapies. The researchers then rescanned participants’ brains, counting the number of connections. They also retested for depression. The upshot: Patients who showed the most response to treatment had developed more new connections than those…  read on >  read on >

For women, the key to getting ahead at work could be getting more shut-eye. Quality sleep boosted women’s moods, which then made them more intent on work achievements, a new study found. Researchers from Washington State University and University of Minnesota-Duluth surveyed 135 U.S. workers (men and women) twice a day for over two weeks to study this issue, gaining 2,200 observations. The study asked the women and men at noon daily about the previous night’s sleep and their current mood. In the evenings, the investigators asked participants about their intentions to pursue more responsibility, status and influence at work. While men and women in the study had both good and bad quality of sleep over the two weeks, women had lowered intentions about their work status after a poor night’s sleep. Men’s work intentions weren’t impacted by sleep quality. “When women are getting a good night’s sleep and their mood is boosted, they are more likely to be oriented in their daily intentions toward achieving status and responsibility at work,” said study author Leah Sheppard, an associate professor in WSU’s Carson College of Business. “If their sleep is poor and reduces their positive mood, then we saw that they were less oriented toward those goals.” The reason for these gender differences may be men and women tend to differ in emotion regulation, as well…  read on >  read on >

A new analysis illustrates the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade: In numerous states, women now have no choice but to travel long distances to get an abortion. One-third of American women of reproductive age must now drive excessive distances, the researchers reported. Twice as many women must now travel more than an hour to get abortion care. And some are having to drive even longer distances to access an abortion. “We need to understand the diminished access to this essential health service in order to better understand what resources we need to invest to regain that access,” said senior study author Yulin Hswen, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “We were startled to see that populations of major metropolitan areas now have to travel several hours for care,” she added in a university news release. In the South, where numerous neighboring states have eliminated access to abortion services, travel times grew the most, the findings showed. Median travel times to access an abortion had been 15 minutes, roughly, in Texas and Louisiana before the Supreme Court ruling this summer. It is now more than six hours, with an average increase of eight hours in Texas, the investigators found. In states with total or six-week abortion bans, travel times increased…  read on >  read on >

Scientists have found one more way Flipper is a lot like people: The sharp rise in antibiotic resistance affecting humans is also happening to dolphins. The discovery stems from a 13-year study of bottlenose dolphins in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon. “We’ve been able to provide a large database of information in order to continue learning from these impressive animals,” said Gregory Bossart, senior vice president and chief veterinary officer at the Georgia Aquarium, one of four partners in the new study. The research, published Sept. 15 in the journal Aquatic Mammals, follows a report last week that bottlenose dolphins in the English Channel harbor “a toxic cocktail” of chemicals, including some that have been banned for decades. For the latest study, the researchers analyzed antibiotic resistance in 733 samples of bacteria collected between 2003 and 2015 from 171 bottlenose dolphins in the lagoon on Florida’s eastern coast. Some of the bacteria are also a threat to humans. In all, over 88% were resistant to at least one antibiotic, the researchers found. Resistance was highest to erythromycin (nearly 92%), followed by ampicillin (77%) and cephalothin (about 62%). Similar to trends in people, resistance to ciprofloxacin among E. coli samples more than doubled during the study. And rates of resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa — a cause of respiratory and urinary infections in people — were the highest…  read on >

Alcohol taxes do little to reduce the burden on American taxpayers for the harmful impacts of heavy drinking, a new study finds. The cost of harm caused by excessive drinking in the United States is just over $2 per drink, with about 80 cents of that shouldered by government. But state and federal alcohol taxes bring in an average of about 21 cents per drink. That means most of the financial toll of alcohol-related harm is borne by people who drink in moderation or don’t drink at all, the study authors said. “Total alcohol taxes accounted for a median of 26.7% of the economic cost to the government, and 10.3% of the total economic cost of excessive drinking,” the researchers reported in the Sept. 11 issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. “The disparity between alcohol-related cost to government and alcohol taxes amounts to a large taxpayer-funded subsidy of excessive drinking and alcohol companies,” senior author Dr. Timothy Naimi said in a journal news release. He’s a physician and epidemiologist at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Public Health. Research shows that higher prices on alcohol — often in the form of increased taxes — can reduce excessive drinking and related harms, such as violence, vehicle-related injuries and liver cirrhosis. “Increasing alcohol taxes could improve public health and reduce the…  read on >

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in American men, so it’s important to know the risk factors and warning signs, an expert says. The American Cancer Society estimates there will be nearly 175,000 new prostate cancer cases in the United States this year and over 31,000 deaths. One in nine men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. “The disease can be successfully treated when detected early, typically when it is still within the prostate gland,” said Dr. Alexander Kutikov, chief of urologic oncology at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “However, some types are aggressive and can spread quickly. In these cases, there may be a lesser chance of successful treatment.” September is National Prostate Cancer Awareness month. Men between 55 and 69 years of age should consider prostate cancer screening, according to the American Urological Association. “Because screening has its advantages and disadvantages, not every man should be screened for prostate cancer,” Kutikov said. “Men should discuss their risk factors, screening options and preferences with their health care provider before deciding whether to be screened.” Symptoms of prostate cancer may include trouble urinating, including a slow or weak stream or the need to urinate more often, especially at night; blood in the urine; and pain or burning during urination. The risk for prostate cancer rises quickly after age…  read on >