A distinct brain pattern appears to make some people more likely to develop depression, a new study indicates. “Deep” functional MRI brain scans revealed that a brain feature called the salience network is nearly twice as large in people with depression than in those without the condition, researchers reported Sept. 4 in the journal Nature. The salience network is a group of brain regions thought to be involved in reward processing and focusing attention, researchers said. “Having a larger salience network appears to increase the risk for depression—the effect is an order of magnitude larger than what we usually see in fMRI studies,” said senior researcher Dr. Conor Liston, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. Functional MRI scans identify patterns of activity in the brain by measuring changes in blood flow. Researchers recruited six people with major depression to undergo repeated fMRI brain scans, and compared their results to those from 37 healthy people. On average, the depression patients had salience networks that occupied 73% more brain surface compared to those of the control group. The salience network “being implicated in depression kind of makes sense, because one of the main deficits in depression is anhedonia, which is the inability to feel pleasure and enjoy everyday activities,” said lead researcher Dr. Charles Lynch, an assistant professor of neuroscience…  read on >  read on >

Just 5.9% of American middle and high school students now vape, a big drop from the 7.7% who did so a year ago, new government data shows. Put another way, about 1.6 million youth now say they used e-cigarettes at least once over the past month, compared to 2.1 million in 2023. Among those who say they vape, 23.6% said they do it on a daily basis. It was high school kids who drove the change, according to the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), with middle schoolers still vaping at rates roughly similar to a year ago. Still, any reduction in vaping is welcome, said Brian King, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products. “The continued decline in e-cigarette use among our nation’s youth is a monumental public health win,” King said in an agency news release. Yolanda Richardson, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, agreed that the new numbers are encouraging, but warned that the vaping and tobacco industry isn’t through with the nation’s kids yet. “Youth e-cigarette use has fallen sharply, sparing many young people from the severe nicotine addiction and other health consequences that can result from e-cigarette use,” she said in a statement. “Despite this progress, youth e-cigarette use remains a serious public health problem in the United States, and the industry remains relentless in…  read on >  read on >

The stereotype of the slacker stoner might not be too far off the mark, a new study shows. People who use weed are prone to workplace absenteeism — and the more problematic the cannabis use, the more likely they are to skip work, results showed. “These findings underscore the importance of developing and implementing strategies to monitor, screen and intervene with individuals at risk for problematic cannabis use,” concluded the research team led by Dr. Kevin Yang, a psychiatric resident with the University of California, San Diego. “To address these issues, workplace prevention programs focusing on education, screening and access to treatment are imperative,” the team said in the paper, which was published recently in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. For the study, researchers analyzed data on nearly 46,500 people gathered in 2021 and 2022 as part of the National Survey on Drug Use. Nearly 16% of full-time employed adults in the survey said they’d used weed in the past month, and almost 7% appeared to have cannabis use disorder, researchers found. People were more likely to skip work if they’d used weed in the past moth, results showed. Those who used the drug once or twice were 57% more likely to skip work than non-users, while those who used 20 to 30 days were 83% more likely to shrug off their work responsibilities,…  read on >  read on >

Ketamine is becoming a popular depression drug, but doctors aren’t keeping in mind the danger it can pose to a pregnancy, a new study warns. Ketamine can be very harmful to a developing fetus and should not be used during pregnancy, researchers said. But only 20% of ketamine clinics require a pregnancy test at least once prior to or during treatment, according to results published recently in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Further, only 26% of clinics discuss the potential need for contraception with ketamine patients, and fewer than 15% specifically recommend or require contraception use during ketamine treatment, researchers found. That is concerning because more than 80% of clinics prescribe long-term maintenance ketamine, with nearly 70% saying patients receive care for more than six months. “These data suggest that a large population of patients could be pregnant, or could become pregnant, while receiving ketamine treatment,” said lead researcher Dr. Rachel Pacilio, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan.  “Many patients do not know that they’re pregnant in the first weeks, and animal studies of ketamine are very concerning for potential harm to the fetus during this time,” Pacilio added in a university news release. Ketamine is administered to people with depression as an IV drip or through a nasal spray. It works differently from standard antidepressants, according to the Mayo Clinic,…  read on >  read on >

People who can cope with challenges as they grow older are more likely to live longer, a new study shows. Seniors with higher levels of mental resilience are 53% less likely to die within the next 10 years than those with the lowest levels, researchers found. Even with chronic health problems or an unhealthy lifestyle, people with high mental resilience remained 46% and 38% less likely to die within 10 years than those with the least fortitude. “Resilience is often discussed in terms of protective factors, allowing adults in normal environments to maintain relative stability even in the face of highly disruptive events,” wrote the research team led by Dr. Yiqiang Zhan, an associate professor of epidemiology with the Sun Yat-Sen University School of Public Health in China. “This study is unique in establishing a statistically significant association between psychological resilience and all-cause mortality in the older and retired population, even after accounting for confounding factors,” the researchers concluded in a university news release. Good coping skills can help offset long-term chronic illnesses or disabilities in older age, they added. However, it hasn’t been clear whether the ability to cope and adapt is associated with slower aging or a lower risk of death, researchers said. To examine this, they analyzed data from more than 10,500 participants in a U.S. health and retirement study involving people 50…  read on >  read on >

A survey of Australian adolescents finds those who are experiencing depressive symptoms have double the risk of taking up vaping. “In the short term, nicotine may reduce feelings of anxiety and stress, and young people may be reaching for vapes as a coping mechanism,” said study co-author Emily Stockings. “Regardless of whether mental ill health influences smoking or vice-versa, it is clear that if we are to prevent vaping onset, we need to address mental health at the same time,” said Stockings, who is an associate professor of medicine at the University of Sydney’s Matilda Center. Her team published its findings Sept. 2 in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. The study tracked the mental health and vaping rates of more than 5,000 Year 7 and 8 students (about 12-13 years of age) from 40 schools in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. About 8.3% said they’d used e-cigarettes. Compared to kids with low stress levels, those who said they had moderate levels of stress were 74% more likely to have taken up vaping, and those who said they had high stress levels were 64% more likely to vape, the study found. Vaping was 105% more likely among adolescents who rated their well-being as low versus though who said it was high. There was no link between anxiety levels and adolescent vaping,…  read on >  read on >