Pregnancy increases the risk of mental illness among women with multiple sclerosis (MS). Pregnant MS patients have a higher risk of mental illness both during gestation and in the first years after they give birth, researchers reported in a new study published Jan. 22 in the journal Neurology. Overall, women with MS have a 26% increased risk of mental illness during pregnancy and a 33% increased risk after giving birth, compared to women without the degenerative nerve disease. “Mental health struggles can affect both parents and kids, making it important to understand how mental health challenges around pregnancy affect people with MS,” lead researcher Dr. Ruth Ann Marrie, a professor of medicine and community health sciences at the University of Manitoba in Canada, said in a news release. For the study, researchers tracked the health of nearly 900,000 mothers, including more than 1,700 with MS. They looked at records from two years before conception to three years after participants gave birth. The research team then examined how many women had been diagnosed with a mental illness, including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, psychosis, suicide attempts or substance abuse. Mental illness affected about 42% of women with MS during pregnancy, and that increased to 50% within the first year after birth, results show. By comparison, 30% of women without MS had mental health problems during pregnancy and…  read on >  read on >

A broken home seems to set a ticking time bomb in the brains of some children of divorce. Seniors have a 61% higher risk of stroke if their parents divorced when they were children or teenagers, researchers reported in a study published Jan. 22 in the journal PLOS One. The level of added risk is on par with that posed by two other well-established risk factors for stroke, diabetes and depression, researchers said. “Even after taking into account most of the known risk factors associated with stroke — including smoking, physical inactivity, lower income and education, diabetes, depression, and low social support — those whose parents had divorced still had 61% higher odds of having a stroke,” lead researcher Mary Kate Schilke, a lecturer in psychology at Tyndale University in Ontario, Canada, said in a news release. For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 13,200 seniors 65 and older collected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2022 as part of an annual survey of American health. More than 7% of older Americans included in the study had suffered a stroke, and nearly 14% were children of divorce, researchers said. The study specifically excluded people who’d suffered childhood abuse. “We found that even when people hadn’t experienced childhood physical and sexual abuse and had at least one adult who made…  read on >  read on >

Drug is the first and only approved monotherapy for refractory major depressive disorder  read on >

A set of chameleon-like immune cells could be contributing to severe asthma in some patients. Intermediate group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) appear to be able to get around cutting-edge asthma treatments by transforming into another type of immune cell. Targeted biologic drugs have revolutionized the treatment of severe asthma driven by eosinophils, which are white blood cells linked to ILC2s, researchers noted in a recent study in the journal Science Translational Medicine. However, not all patients respond to these biologic drugs — and the fact that ILC2s can transform themselves could be a reason why, researchers said. Intermediate ILC2s share traits of both ILC2s and another type of immune cell called group 3 innate lymphoid cells, or ILC3s. ILC3s are tied to another type of white blood cell called neutrophils. An inhaler is less likely to calm an asthma attack involving eosinophils and neutrophils, researchers said. “When asthma is associated with both eosinophils and neutrophils cells, individuals are generally less responsive to treatment with glucocorticosteroids — which are the mainstay of treatment for severe asthma,” researcher Dr. Parameswaran Nair said in a news release. He’s chair in airway diseases at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Severe asthma that resists standard therapies is believed to affect up to 10% of people with asthma, researchers said in background notes. “The findings from this research pave…  read on >  read on >

TUESDAY, Jan. 21, 2025 (HealthDay New) — A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision barring job discrimination significantly eased the minds of LGBTQ+ workers, a new study says. The court extended employment protections to nearly 3.6 million LGBTQ+ people in 12 states with its 2020 Bostock v Clayton County decision. As a result, those workers experienced improvements in their mental health, according to a study published Jan. 15 in JAMA Psychiatry. “Implementation of a federal ban on sexual orientation–based employment discrimination after the Bostock decision was associated with significant relative reductions in poor mental health days and severe mental distress among employed sexual minority adults,” a team led by Michael Liu, a student at Harvard Medical School, concluded. The Bostock decision affirmed that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation. To see the effect that had on LGBTQ+ people, researchers analyzed federal survey data that regularly assesses the mental health of Americans. The team specifically looked at the mental health of LGBTQ+ workers in the 12 states where work protections were extended — Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. They compared those workers to LGBTQ+ folks employed in nine states that had independently passed employment protection prior to the Bostock decision — Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington…  read on >  read on >

Check out your surgeon as you’re wheeled into the operating room. Do they seem tense, on edge, or stressed out? If so, that could be good news for you, a new study says. The patients of stressed surgeons tend to suffer fewer major complications from surgery, according to findings of new study published in JAMA Surgery. Like high-level athletes, experienced surgeons appear to work best under pressure, researchers concluded. The findings show that “stress among experienced surgeons is associated with patient outcomes and may warrant attention from future efforts geared toward improving surgical care,” a research team led by Dr. Jake Awtry, a research fellow with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, concluded. For the study, researchers monitored nearly 800 surgeries conducted by 38 attending surgeons. The surgeons’ average age was 46, and about 3 out of 5 were either professors or associate professors, the study says. The surgeons wore devices to track their heart rates while they operated. The surgeries took place between November 2020 and December 2021 at four university hospitals in Lyon, France. They involved 14 surgical departments and seven specialties — digestive, orthopedic, gynecologic, urologic, cardiac, thoracic and endocrine surgery. Patients had a 37% lower risk of major complications if their surgeon’s heart rate revealed increased signs of stress at the start of an operation, researchers found. But stress did not…  read on >  read on >

Many more Americans are turning to ketamine for kicks, a new study reports. Recreational use of the anesthetic drug among U.S. adults increased 40% between 2021 and 2022, researchers say. That follows a nearly 82% increase in ketamine use from 2015 to 2019, results show. The more recent increase occurred mainly among young adults 26 to 34, as well as in people with a college degree, researchers found. “These findings are consistent with other research indicating increased use among nightclub attendees in New York City along with increasing law enforcement seizures of illicit ketamine in the U.S.,” wrote the research team led by Dr. Kevin Yang, a third-year resident physician in psychiatry at the University of California-San Diego School of Medicine. Ketamine — also known as “Special K” or Super K” — is typically used an anesthetic for people and animals. In 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of a nasal spray ketamine derivative called esketamine (Spravato) to treat depression in adults, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Ketamine can cause changes in how people perceive reality, the NIDA says. Users might feel like they are floating outside their bodies or dissolving into their environment. “At higher doses, a person may experience extreme detachment from their body and reality, which is called being in a k-hole,” the…  read on >  read on >