Doctors sometimes turn to antidepressants as a means of easing older people’s physical pain, but a new expert review finds there’s little evidence to support the practice. Antidepressants may even come with hazards for seniors who don’t need them, said researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia. “Harms of antidepressant use in older people are well documented,” said study senior author Dr. Christina Abdel Shaheed. Her team found that, compared to older folks using other methods to ease pain, those on antidepressants had higher risks for falling, dizziness and injury. “These medicines are being prescribed to remedy patients’ pain, despite the lack of evidence to adequately inform their use,” said Abdel Shaheed, an associate professor in the university’s School of Public Health and the Institute for Musculoskeletal Health. The findings were published recently in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. According to the researchers, over the past 40 years there have been only 15 trials worldwide that focused on the use of antidepressants for physical pain in people over the age of 65. Poring over the data from these studies, the Sydney team found little evidence to support the use of the drugs to ease pain in seniors. Standard international guidelines do support the use of antidepressants for chronic pain generally, but the data those guidelines are based on did not focus on patients…  read on >  read on >

Would-be dads don’t have to worry that taking the epilepsy drug valproate will result in children with birth defects, a new review concludes. Valproate, an anti-seizure drug, is known to cause birth defects and developmental disorders when taken by pregnant women. But the drug does not appear to have the same impact on the fetus when taken by men hoping to become fathers, researchers report. “Our systematic review shows that evidence for any risk to the offspring resulting from paternal exposure to anti-seizure medications is scarce and inconsistent, with most studies showing no increased risk compared with unexposed controls,” wrote the research team led by co-senior author Piero Perucca, a professor of adult epilepsy with the University of Melbourne in Australia. “Therefore, the available evidence does not justify major concerns,” the team concluded. Experimental animal studies have linked anti-seizure drugs to male infertility, birth defects and developmental delays, sparking concerns that human males might run the same risks. In fact, one major government regulatory body — the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency — has gone so far as to prohibit valproate use for anyone under the age of 55 who might become a new parent. For the new review, researchers pooled data on 10 studies evaluating the effects on pregnancy of valproate taken by men. Although the data were limited, researchers found no…  read on >  read on >

Therapy dogs can help boost the spirits of health care workers in the same way they brighten the moods of hospital patients, a new study shows.  The furry, four-legged friends reduced emotional exhaustion and job stress among a small group of workers at two surgical and two intensive care units in the Midwest, researchers report. “We brought the dogs to the units and many times we had staff in tears sitting with the dogs, telling them about their day,” said lead investigator Beth Steinberg, a senior researcher with Ohio State University’s Center for Integrative Health. “For the most part, people have an affinity to a non-judgmental, warm, furry animal that can come and just sit with them and listen,” Steinberg said in a university news release. “Dogs don’t care what you look like, how you’re feeling that day; they just know that when you need them, they’re there.” Steinberg is co-founder of Buckeye Paws, a therapy dog program initially aimed at improving the mental and emotional health of staff at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Buckeye Paws launched in March 2020, shortly before the pandemic began taking its toll on overtaxed health professionals. To see whether the program is making a difference, researchers focused therapy dog sessions with a group of 64 health care workers. The group included doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, respiratory…  read on >  read on >

Folks who are content with what they’ve got could be less likely to suffer a heart attack or stroke, a new study suggests. “Our findings support a holistic approach to health care, where enhancing a person’s mental and emotional well-being is considered an integral part of preventing heart disease and stroke,” said senior study author Dr. Wen Sun, associate director of the Stroke Center at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, China. “Health care professionals might consider including strategies to improve life satisfaction and happiness as part of routine care, such as recommending regular physical activities, social activities or stress management techniques as effective ways to enhance personal well-being,” Sun added. For the study, researchers analyzed data gathered from more than 120,000 participants in the U.K. Biobank, a large-scale medical database. Participants filled out questionnaires that assessed their well-being in terms of satisfaction with family, friendships, health, finances and general happiness. Researchers compared people’s well-being with their risk of four major heart-related diseases. Results show that people with the highest well-being scores had: A 44% lower risk of clogged arteries. A 45% lower risk of stroke. A 51% lower risk of heart failure. A 56% lower risk of heart attack. Further analysis suggested that people who feel more content tend to adopt healthier lifestyles and suffer less inflammation, researchers said. “These…  read on >  read on >

Deprivation, neglect and abuse during childhood can increase a person’s long-term risk of health problems, a new study warns. “Stress is implicated in nine of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States today,” said senior researcher Dr. George Slavich, director of the UCLA Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research. “It’s about time we take that statistic seriously and begin screening for stress in all pediatric and adult clinics nationwide.” For the study, published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, researchers analyzed data on more than 2,100 participants in a long-range study funded by the National Institute on Aging. The team looked at different childhood traumas reported by the participants — financial distress, abuse, neglect, frequent moves, living apart from parents and receiving welfare. The participants also provided samples that allowed researchers to calculate 25 different disease biomarkers, and said whether they’d been diagnosed with 20 different major health conditions. Results showed that the risk of health problems in men and women increased with the amount of childhood stress they endured. Researchers also found that the effects of stress differed between men and women. Childhood stress tended to have greater effects on the metabolism of women than men, results show. On the other hand, emotional abuse and neglect appear to have greater health effects on men than women when it comes to…  read on >  read on >

As wildfires continue to burn across parts of California, a new study finds that smoke from these blazes and other air pollution could be harming kids’ mental health. Repeated exposure to high levels of particle pollution increases kids’ risk of depression, anxiety and other mental health symptoms, researchers reported. What’s more, each additional day of exposure to unsafe air significantly boosted the likelihood that a youngster would suffer mental health problems. “We need to understand what these extreme events are doing to young people, their brains and their behavior,” said lead investigator Harry Smolker, a research associate with the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Institute of Cognitive Science. For the study, researchers analyzed data from 10,000 kids ages 9 to 11 participating in an ongoing study of brain development. Using the participants’ addresses, they calculated how many days in 2016 each kid was exposed to particle pollution levels the Environmental Protection Agency considers unsafe. Some studies have found that these airborne particles could be small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier and affect the brain. These particles have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers; by comparison, a human hair is about 50 micrometers in diameter. Adult hospital admissions for depression, suicide and psychosis tend to increase on high pollution days, researchers said in background notes. When pregnant women are exposed to heavy particle pollution, their children…  read on >  read on >

With implications for research around postpartum depression and other health issues, scientists have tracked the changes pregnancy brings to the female brain. These changes weren’t subtle: Big shifts in what’s known as the brain’s “white matter” versus “gray matter” were observed, according to a team from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). “The maternal brain undergoes a choreographed change across gestation, and we are finally able to see it unfold,” said study co-author Emily Jacobs, an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at the university. The study is thought to be the first to track brain changes throughout a pregnancy, rather than looking at discrete ‘snapshots’ taken at various points in gestation. The study focused on the brain of one woman undergoing her first pregnancy. Researchers led by Laura Pritschet, a PhD student working in Jacob’s lab, took scans of the woman’s brain every few weeks — starting before pregnancy, during gestation and then for two years after delivery. The “neuroplasticity” observed in her brain was dramatic, Pritschet and colleagues report. The biggest alteration came with the ratio of white matter and gray matter within the brain. Cortical gray matter — the kid found on the wrinkly outer surface of the brain — decreased in volume as hormonal changes associated with pregnancy occurred, the researchers said. That’s not a particularly negative change, the researchers…  read on >  read on >

Tiny puffs from asthma inhalers could be causing big climate problems for Mother Earth, a new study warns. Each inhaler dose contains some of the most potent greenhouse gases known, and they are adding up, researchers reported recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. By the time some inhalers are empty, they have emitted as much greenhouse gas as an average car driven 60 miles, researchers found. Further, the more than 70 million inhalers prescribed in the United States each year contribute more air pollution than the annual electricity use of 200,000 American homes, the researchers added. “There was a really wide range of emissions between different inhaler types, and it turns out that in the U.S. we’re still mostly prescribing the inhalers that are the worst when it comes to emissions,” said lead researcher Dr. Jyothi Tirumalasetty, a clinical assistant professor of pulmonary, allergy and critical care medicine at Stanford University. “But there are some easy replacements for those inhalers, and we hope that patients and providers consider emissions when they choose an inhaler,” Tirumalasetty added in a university news release. There are three main types of inhalers, researchers said: Metered-dose inhalers that use propellant gas to drive medication deep into the lungs Dry-powder inhalers that contain medicine dust that patients must breathe in Soft-mist inhalers that turn liquid medication into an…  read on >  read on >

Over 5 million Americans could benefit if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the “magic mushroom” psychedelic psilocybin as a treatment for depression, researchers estimate. “While our analysis is a crucial first step, we’ve only scratched the surface in understanding the true public health impact psilocybin therapy may have,” said study co-author Dr. Charles Raison. He’s professor of psychiatry and human ecology at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. Shunned for decades as an illicit drug, psilocybin has undergone a kind of rebirth in recent years as studies have suggested that — given in a controlled, supervised manner — it might help ease tough-to-treat depression. The drug is now under consideration by the FDA as a possible new treatment for depression. Just how many Americans might stand to benefit? To find out, Raison and colleagues looked at national data on the prevalence of depression, as well as patient criteria (sourced from recent clinical trials) that might make a person eligible for psilocybin therapy. The result: In the mid-range of estimates, anywhere from 56% to 62% of Americans currently being treated for depression could be eligible to try psilocybin. That’s anywhere from 5.1 million to 5.6 million potential patients, according to the researchers. The number could even grow higher if people currently untreated for their depression decide they would like to try psilocybin, the investigators noted. “This underscores…  read on >  read on >