More middle-aged Black and Native Americans are now falling prey to “deaths of despair” than whites, a new study finds. These deaths — from suicide, drug overdose and alcoholic liver disease — initially had been more common among whites. But a new analysis has determined that deaths of despair have skyrocketed for Black and Native Americans over the past decade. The deaths of despair rate among Black Americans tripled between 2013 and 2022, rising from 36 deaths per 100,000 people to nearly 104 deaths per 100,000, researchers found. That’s slightly higher than the 2022 rate among white Americans, which was nearly 103 deaths per 100,000. The rate is worst among Native American/Alaska Native people, who suffered nearly 242 deaths of despair per 100,000 in 2022. “The findings reinforce the notion that we need to invest in services that can address these issues and, ultimately, we need much more comprehensive access to low-barrier mental health care and substance use treatment in the U.S.,” said researcher Joseph Friedman, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “And we need to specifically make sure those treatments, services and programs are implemented in a way that is accessible for communities of color and will actively work to address inequality,” Friedman added in a university news release. Deaths of despair attained the spotlight following a 2015 study that analyzed…  read on >  read on >

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it has finalized a first-ever rule that will drastically lower the amount of PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals,” in the nation’s drinking water. “Drinking water contaminated with PFAS has plagued communities across this country for too long,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in an agency news release announcing the new rule. “That is why President Biden has made tackling PFAS a top priority, investing historic resources to address these harmful chemicals and protect communities nationwide.” Exposure to PFAS has been linked to various cancers, liver and heart issues, and immune and developmental damage to infants and children, the agency noted. The level of exposure is significant in the United States: A 2023 government study detected PFAS in nearly half of the country’s tap water. The new rule, which requires utilities to reduce PFAS to the lowest level they can reliably be measured, should lower PFAS exposure for approximately 100 million people, the agency noted. In addition to the new rule, the EPA also announced that nearly $1 billion in new funding should help states and territories implement PFAS testing and treatment at public water systems and help owners of private wells address PFAS contamination. While environmental experts and health advocates welcomed the news, water utilities warned the new rule will cost billions more than the EPA has estimated and fall hardest on…  read on >  read on >

Teenagers suffering from anxiety, depression or bipolar disorder are likely to have a tougher time getting their driver’s license, a new study finds. Teens and young adults with these types of mood disorders are 30% less likely to obtain a driver’s license than peers without a mood disorder, researchers report April 8 in the journal JAMA Network Open. Youths with mood disorders also have nearly twice the risk of losing their license and a slightly elevated risk of crashing a vehicle, the researchers discovered. “Our results indicate that newly licensed youths with mood disorders have a greater risk of crashing than other young drivers, but that this is a manageable risk,” said senior researcher Allison Curry, an associate professor of pediatrics with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) Center for Injury Research and Prevention. As many as one in 10 teens and young adults have been diagnosed with a mood disorder, researchers said in background notes. These disorders often develop around the age a teen becomes eligible to get a driver’s license, researchers noted. However, skills required for safe driving — attention, memory, motor skills — are often impaired in those with mood disorders. For the study, researchers compared nearly 1,900 teens with mood disorders to more than 84,000 teens without such a disorder, all of whom were eligible to get their license. They linked…  read on >  read on >

Obese folks are less likely to benefit from a nerve-stimulation treatment for sleep apnea that’s recently been made available to them, a new study reports. The treatment is likely to be 75% less effective among obese people with BMIs of 32 to 35, compared to patients with lower BMIs, researchers found. “Our study shows that the more overweight you are, the less likely it is that nerve-stimulation treatment will be effective in treating your sleep apnea,” said senior researcher Dr. Eric Landsness, an assistant professor of neurology with the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “I’m not saying that we shouldn’t put this device in patients with a BMI of 38 or 40,” Landsness added in a university news release. “But my job as a physician is to help overweight patients make an informed decision, to better understand their odds of success and realize that the chances of it working for them may be a lot less.” The increasingly popular therapy, known as hypoglossal nerve stimulation, originally was approved in 2014 for sleep apnea patients whose weight was in the healthy range, researchers said in background notes. But that approval has now been extended to patients with BMIs up to 40, which is considered severely obese. Healthy BMI ranges from 18.5 to 24.9, and 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight. Sleep apnea occurs…  read on >  read on >

Overuse of marijuana is increasingly being linked to dangerous bouts of psychosis, and a new study finds that antipsychotics may be needed to keep such patients out of the hospital. Psychotic episodes involve a dangerous psychiatric state in which people lose their connection with reality. These episodes can get so out of control that people may need hospitalization. However, new research finds that people who overuse marijuana and then experience their first psychotic episode may be helped by the quick use of injected antipsychotics. “These findings encourage the early use of second-generation, long-acting injectables as an important secondary pre­vention strategy to reduce rates of hospitalization” in such patients, reports a team led by Dr. Alexander Denissoff, of the University of Turku in Finland. His team tracked outcomes for 1,820 people who had a first psychotic episode and also had cannabis use disorder between 2006 and 2021. Just over 1,100 of these patients ended up being hospitalized due to “psychotic relapse,” according to the American Psychiatric Association news release. However, folks who had received any antipsychotic med were a third less likely to require hospitalization due to relapse, compared to those who hadn’t gotten these drugs. Comparing the effectiveness of various antipsychotics, risperidone came out on top, cutting the odds for relapse-linked hospitalization by 60%, the researchers found, followed by aripiprazole (58% reduction), oral clozapine (57%),…  read on >  read on >

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 >