Taking a cutting-edge weight-loss drug could help extremely obese patients drop enough pounds to be eligible for bariatric surgery, a new study shows. Patients with extreme obesity — a BMI of 70 or more — are at higher risk of complications from surgery compared to people who weigh less. Weight loss prior to surgery can lower that risk, but up to now nothing’s been able to help patients lose enough weight to make a difference, researchers say. However, new GLP-1 agonist medications like Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound have been shown to help people quickly shed pounds. For this trial, researchers recruited 113 extremely obese patients and assigned them to either a single GLP-1 drug, more than one GLP-1 drug or a medically supervised diet and exercise program. Patients were treated an average of 73 days. People on multiple drugs had the greatest weight loss, dropping about 13% of their total body weight. A single GLP-1 drug helped people lose a little more than 8% of their body weight, while diet and exercise helped participants drop about 6% of their body weight. The findings were presented Thursday at the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery’s annual meeting in San Diego. “Combining anti-obesity medications may achieve much greater pre-surgery weight loss than other methods for those with extreme obesity,” said researcher Dr. Phil Schauer, director of…  read on >  read on >

You don’t consider yourself a lonely person generally, but sometimes have days where feelings of loneliness set in. If you’re one of those people, even that transient loss of connection with others could be impacting your physical health, a new study finds. “A lot of research is focused on loneliness being a binary trait — either you’re lonely or you’re not. But based on our own anecdotal lives, we know that’s not the case. Some days are worse than others — even some hours,” explained study lead author Dakota Witzel. “If we can understand variations in daily loneliness, we can begin to understand how it affects our daily and long-term health,” said Witzel, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State University. As Witzel’s group noted, long term loneliness is a known health risk factor — so much so that in 2023 U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy labeled loneliness a public health crisis. He noted raised rates of depression and other mental health troubles tied to loneliness, as well as a 29% higher risk of heart disease, a 32% increased risk of stroke and a 50% increased risk of developing dementia in older adults. But what about more temporary moments or days of loneliness? In the study, Witzel’s group looked at data on middle-aged Americans from the 1,538 participants in…  read on >  read on >

A new form of psychotherapy appears to work even better at treating chronic pain in older adults than gold-standard cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a new study finds. U.S. veterans who received emotional awareness and expression therapy (EAET) experienced a longer and more significant reduction in chronic pain than those who underwent CBT, researchers reported June 13 in the journal JAMA Network Open. About 63% of veterans who underwent EAET reported at least a 30% reduction in pain, which is considered clinically significant, results show. By comparison, only 17% of veterans who got CBT achieved that sort of pain relief. Further, pain reduction was sustained among 41% of EAET participants six months after treatment, compared to 14% of CBT patients. EAET patients also reported greater benefits for addressing anxiety, depression, PTSD and life satisfaction, researchers added. “Most people with chronic pain don’t consider psychotherapy at all. They’re thinking along the lines of medications, injections, sometimes surgery or bodily treatments like physical therapy,” said lead researcher Brandon Yarns, an assistant professor at UCLA Health’s Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. “Psychotherapy is an evidence-based treatment for chronic pain,” Yarns added in a UCLA news release. “What this study adds is that the type of psychotherapy matters.” CBT focuses on helping patients improve their ability to tolerate pain, using exercises designed to recognize pain triggers and respond to…  read on >  read on >

Women who deliver low-birth-weight babies could be more likely to have memory and thinking problems later in life, a new study warns. As seniors, these women had brain test scores that indicated one to two years of additional aging in their memory and thinking skills, compared with women who delivered normal-weight babies, according to results published June 12 in the journal Neurology. And the more low-birth-weight babies a woman had, the lower her test scores were, results show. “Previous research has shown that people who have had a low-birth-weight delivery have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure,” said researcher Diana Soria-Contreras, a postdoctoral research fellow with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. “Our study found that a history of having a child with a low birth weight may also be a marker of poorer cognition later in life,” Soria-Contreras added in a journal news release. The study involved more than 15,000 women with an average age of 62. About 8% had delivered a baby with low birth weight, defined as less than 5.5 pounds for pregnancies lasting more than 20 weeks. The women completed a series of thinking and memory tests, and also filled out a questionnaire about their pregnancy history. On average, women who had babies with low birth weigh scored lower in tests of thinking…  read on >  read on >

Bipolar disorder doesn’t have to be a lifelong challenge, a new study says. Nearly 1 in 4 people with bipolar disorder wind up achieving complete mental health, researchers found. Further, more than 2 in 5 become free from bipolar symptoms over time, results show. “Most research on individuals with bipolar disorder has failed to focus on recovery and optimal functioning,” said senior researcher Esme Fuller-Thomson, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. “We hope that those with the disorder and their loved ones and health professionals will be heartened to learn that that one-quarter of the respondents who previously had bipolar disorder were now thriving and happy or satisfied with their life almost every day,” Fuller-Thomson added in a university news release. For the study, researchers compared 555 Canadians who’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder with more than 20,500 people without the mental illness, which involves wild swings between manic and depressive episodes. To be considered in complete mental health, people had to be free from any mental illness during the past year, including bipolar disorder, depression and substance use disorders. They also had to report almost daily happiness or life satisfaction. About 24% of people once diagnosed with bipolar disorder had achieved such a state of complete mental health, researchers found. Also, 43% were free from all bipolar symptoms, results…  read on >  read on >

After helping America through one of its worst tragedies, some responders to the events of 9/11 may now face another foe: Heightened risks for dementia. A new study looks at the health of thousands of firemen, construction workers and others who worked at the World Trade Center (WTC) site for almost a year after the attacks. Many were exposed to high levels of toxic dust. The study found that the worst-exposed workers face a much higher odds for dementia before the age of 65, compared to folks who worked onsite but either weren’t exposed to dust and/or wore effective personal protective equipment (PPE). “This study builds on prior work suggesting that dust and debris from the WTC collapse contained neurotoxins,” said a team led by epidemiologist researcher Sean Clouston, of Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y. “These results imply that these exposures were dangerous and support the view that the use of PPE might have prevented the onset of dementia before age 65 years among exposed responders,” Clouston and colleagues wrote. He is a professor of family, population and preventive medicine at Stony Brook. The new findings were published June 12 in the journal JAMA Network Open. As the researchers noted, during the days and months of rescue and cleanup at the WTC site, “workers reported heavy exposure to dust and particulate matter that…  read on >  read on >

Dads appear to make a small but important contribution to a newborn baby’s gut health, a new study discovers. Many microbes found in babies throughout their first year of life originate in the father rather than the mother, researchers report June 12 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. Most importantly, these include Bifidobacterium longum strains – a bacteria that aids in the digestion of a mother’s milk. “The role of the father may be small, but it is not to be neglected,” said lead researcher Willem de Vos, a professor of microbiology with Wageningen University in The Netherlands. “It is likely that the same holds for others who have close contact with the newborn.” Babies are born without any microbes in their GI tract, researchers explained. They receive these important and beneficial microbes during and shortly after birth. It’s well-known that babies receive a substantial amount of microbes from their mothers during vaginal delivery. In fact, about half of the bacterial strains found in a baby’s gut can be traced to their moms. That led researchers to consider how other people who have close contact with an infant could contribute to the other half of their gut microbiome, providing a stable source of healthy microbial strains necessary for good health. “This highlights the importance of studying other microbial contributions as well, such as those…  read on >  read on >

Growing public fascination with “magic” psilocybin mushrooms as a trendy treatment for depression had led to increased interest in another type of psychedelic mushroom, a new study reports. Unfortunately, this second sort of shroom — known as Amanita muscaria — can be more toxic than fentanyl, cocaine and PCP, researchers say. Marketing the two types of mushrooms as essentially the same is not only wrong, but potentially dangerous, said senior researcher Eric Leas, an assistant professor in the University of California, San Diego’s Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science. “Companies who are making these products are pushing the limits of our regulations. They are getting away with making a buck until someone tells them they can’t,” Leas said in a university news release. “Given the substantial risks associated with using Amanita muscaria products, it is a buyer-beware marketplace where consumers are at risk and are not accurately informed,” Leas added. “The time for a public health first response is now.” Google searches for Amanita muscaria mushrooms skyrocketed 114% between 2022 and 2023, researchers reported June 10 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Gummies and chocolates containing compounds derived from Amanita muscaria mushrooms — muscimol and ibotenic acid — are being marketed as aids to reduce anxiety, depression and other conditions, researchers say.  Amanita muscaria mushrooms have psychedelic effects similar to…  read on >  read on >

Depression and memory declines may be closely linked in older people, new research suggests. “Our study shows that the relationship between depression and poor memory cuts both ways, with depressive symptoms preceding memory decline and memory decline linked to subsequent depressive symptoms,” said senior study author Dr. Dorina Cadar, of University College London. The study suggests that effective depression treatment could help preserve memory function with age, she added in a university news release. The new findings come from an analysis of data from the ongoing English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, where people are tracked by questionnaires every two years. In this sample, 16 years of data were collected from nearly 8,300 adults averaging 64 years of age. In contrast to the finding that memory and depression were closely intertwined, the research did not show a strong relationship between depression and another marker of brain health, verbal fluency. Cadar, who is a research fellow in dementia at UCL, said it’s not surprising that battles with depression could affect memory over time. “Depression can cause changes in brain structures, such as the hippocampus, which is critical for memory formation and retrieval,” she explained. “Chronic stress and high levels of [the stress hormone] cortisol associated with depression can damage neurons in these areas.” The researchers also believe that depression upsets the balance of serotonin and dopamine in…  read on >  read on >