More than half of adults and a third of children and teens worldwide will be overweight or obese by 2050, a comprehensive global analysis has concluded. Overweight and obesity rates in adults, children and teens more than doubled over the past three decades, afflicting 2.1 billion adults and 493 million young people with excess weight, researchers reported in The Lancet. And unless something changes, about 60% of adults (3.8 billion) and a third of children and teens (746 million) will be overweight or obese by 2050, researchers project. “The unprecedented global epidemic of overweight and obesity is a profound tragedy and a monumental societal failure,” lead author Emmanuela Gakidou said in a news release. She’s a professor of health metrics sciences with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle. Among high-income countries, America had the highest rates of obesity, results show. About 42% of men and 46% of women in the U.S. were obese in 2021. More than half of adults with excess weight now live in just eight countries, researchers found: China (402 million), India (180 million), the United States (172 million), Brazil (88 million), Russia (71 million), Mexico (58 million), Indonesia (52 million) and Egypt (41 million). The largest number of adults with overweight and obesity in 2050 are expected to be in China (627 million),…  read on >  read on >

Suicide prevention campaigns are overlooking seniors, even though people 75 and older have the highest rates of suicide for any age group, a new study says. None of the seven most prominent suicide prevention programs include any messaging aimed at at-risk seniors on their web sites. Older adults are ignored even though five of the programs specifically acknowledge older adults as a high-risk population for suicide on those very web sites, researchers reported Feb. 24 in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. “Public-facing suicide prevention campaigns have a record of effectiveness, and the need for such campaigns targeting older adults is greater than ever,” senior researcher Dr. Ipsit Vahia, chief of geriatric psychiatry at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., said in a news release. “Our hope is that shedding a light on this imbalance may lead to major suicide prevention organizations considering ways to make their resources more easily accessible to older adults,” he continued. The suicide rate among people 75 and older is 20.3 deaths per 100,000 Americans, and 23 per 100,000 for those 85 and older, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That far outpaces the rates for every other age group: 10-14 years of age (2.4 per 100,000); 15-24 (13.6); 25-34 (19); 35-44 (18.7); 45-54 (19.2); 55-64 (18.7); and 65-74 (16). What’s more, the suicide rate for seniors…  read on >  read on >

FRIDAY, Feb. 28, 2025 (HealthDay News) People hospitalized for a severe bout of COVID-19 are far from in the clear after they’ve recovered enough to return home, a new study says. COVID hospital patients have an increased risk of death from any cause for at least two and a half years following their initial illness, researchers reported in a new study published in the journal Infectious Diseases. They also are more likely to be hospitalized again, with particularly high risk for neurological, psychiatric, heart and lung problems, researchers found. “These findings are a stark reminder of the far-reaching impact of COVID-19, which extends far beyond the initial infection,” lead researcher Dr. Sarah Tubiana, an infectious disease specialist at Bichat Hospital in Paris, said in a news release. “While much attention has been given to the immediate dangers of the virus, our research shows that hospitalized COVID-19 survivors remain at greater risks of severe health complications months and even years later,” Tubiana said. “The long-term implications for public health are significant.” For the study, researchers followed nearly 64,000 French adults admitted to a hospital with COVID between January 2020 and August 2020. The team compared their health with nearly 320,000 other people matched for age, sex and location who had not been hospitalized for COVID during the same period. During follow-up for up to 30 months,…  read on >  read on >

TUESDAY, Feb. 25, 2025 (HealthDay news) — Antidepressants are frequently prescribed to people with dementia for symptoms like anxiety, depression, aggressiveness and sleeplessness. But a specific class of antidepressant medications — selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) — actually might speed up brain decline among some dementia patients, a new Swedish study suggests. Heavier doses of certain SSRIs are tied to a higher risk for severe dementia, researchers reported in a new study published Feb. 24 in the journal BMC Medicine. Taking more than the average amount typically prescribed for these drugs was linked to an additional decline of 0.42 points per year in a dementia scale that runs from 0 to 30, researchers found. The SSRI drug escitalopram was associated with the fastest cognitive decline, followed by citalopram and sertraline. Mirtazapine, which works in a different way, had less negative impact on brain function, researchers found. “Depressive symptoms can both worsen cognitive decline and impair quality of life, so it is important to treat them,” said senior investigator Sara Garcia Ptacek, an assistant professor of neurology at the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden.  “Our results can help doctors and other healthcare professionals choose antidepressants that are better adapted for patients with dementia,” she added in a news release. For the study, researchers tracked the brain health of more than 18,700 patients enlisted in the Swedish…  read on >  read on >

Narcissists may seem self-assured, but new research shows they often feel excluded — and their behavior may be making things worse. Hallmarks of narcissm include an inflated sense of one’s importance, a hunger for admiration and negative response to criticism. The new research — published Feb. 20 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology — found that folks with those personality traits are more likely to be left out socially than their peers. And this rejection only reinforces their narcisstic behaviors, creating what the authors described as a self-perpetuating cycle. “Ostracism — being excluded and ignored — has severe, negative consequences,” they wrote. “Many people think of narcissism in terms of entitlement and arrogance, but our research highlights that narcissists also frequently experience social pain,” lead researcher Christiane Büttner of the University of Basel in Switzerland told The Washington Post. To explore the link between narcissism and exclusion, researchers analyzed data from multiple surveys and experiments conducted in Germany, the U.S., Britain, Switzerland and New Zealand. The study focused on “grandiose narcissists.” These are folks who display dominance, rivalry and are extra sensitive to social cues. This form of narcissism differs from “vulnerable narcissism,” which is more closely linked to insecurity, researchers noted. “One of the biggest questions going into this research was whether narcissists might actually report less ostracism because their grandiose self-image…  read on >  read on >

Smoking more than doubles the risk of unexplained strokes among younger adults, a new study warns. And heavy smoking is even worse, with stroke risk more than quadrupled among adults who smoke more than a pack of cigarettes every day for 20 years compared to people who don’t smoke, researchers found. “Our findings suggest that continued public health efforts around preventing smoking, especially heavy smoking, may be an important way to help reduce the number of strokes happening to young people,” lead researcher Phillip Ferdinand with Keele University in the U.K said in a news release. For the study, researchers focused on a type of stroke called cryptogenic stroke. These strokes are caused by a blockage of blood flow, but it’s not clear what caused the clog. “While smoking has long been linked to ischemic stroke, little is known about how smoking affects people under 50, especially in those with unexplained stroke,” Ferdinand said. His team compared the medical records of 546 people aged 18 to 49 who suffered an unexplained stroke, to 546 people of matched age and sex who hadn’t had a stroke. About 33% of smokers had suffered an unexplained stroke, compared to 15% of non-smokers, researchers found. Gender, age and smoking intensity all played a role in stroke risk among younger adults, results show. Male smokers had more than three times…  read on >  read on >

A radioactive gas could be contributing to asthma among schoolkids, researchers have found. Children exposed to elevated levels of radon gas tended to have more asthma symptoms, results show. “Residential radon has not previously been described as an environmental risk factor for asthma,” a team led by Dr. Wanda Phipatanakul, director of immunology research with Boston Children’s Hospital, concluded. “For the first time, we demonstrate a relationship between residential radon exposure and airway inflammation and asthma symptoms among school‐aged children with asthma,” researchers wrote recently in the journal Pediatric Pulmonology. Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that’s odorless and invisible, occurring to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It emanates from the breakdown of trace amounts of uranium found in soil. Homes can fill with radon as it seeps out of soil and up through cracks and crevices, the CDC says. It is the second-leading cause of lung cancer deaths in the U.S. after cigarette smoke. For the study, researchers tracked the health of nearly 300 children with asthma attending inner-city schools. The team compared kids’ radon exposure in their homes — estimated based on ZIP code — to their asthma symptoms. Asthmatic kids exposed to radon tended to have more days with asthma symptom flare-ups, researchers found. They also suffered from increased airway inflammation as warm weather turned cold. “It…  read on >  read on >

The societal stress and stigma of being LGBTQ+ can increase a person’s risk of mental health problems, a new study suggests. People in sexual and gender minorities are more likely than heterosexuals to suffer from problems like anxiety, depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, ADHD, eating disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder, researchers reported recently in JAMA Network Open. But they emphasized that these mental health problems are not caused by these folks’ sexual and gender identity, but “reflect the stigma and minority stress experienced by these individuals.” Factors such as “limited legal protections, exposure to violence, lack of access to gender-affirming treatments, and weaker social support systems” affect LGBTQ+ people physically and mentally, “heightening the risk of mental health issues over time,” a team led by senior author Marvin Langston concluded. Langston is an assistant professor of epidemiology and population health at Stanford University. For the study, researchers analyzed responses from nearly 270,000 people participating in the All of Us Research Program, a national project designed to explore mental health disparities.  Of those participants, more than 22,000 self-identified as a member of a sexual or gender minority. The study compared people’s risk for 10 mental health conditions: anxiety, attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), autism, bipolar, eating disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and schizophrenia. Results show that people in sexual or gender minorities…  read on >  read on >