A growing number of U.S. kids are landing in hospital emergency rooms for a mental health crisis. Now a new study finds that many do not get follow-up care after they’re discharged. Experts said the findings, published Feb. 13 in the journal Pediatrics, are yet more evidence of the cracks in the nation’s mental health care system — especially when it comes to helping kids. Of more than 28,000 U.S. kids discharged from the ER for a mental health concern, only about half had a follow-up health care appointment within a month, researchers found. More than one-quarter were back in the ER within six months. The results are, unfortunately, no surprise, the researchers said. Past studies have illustrated the ways in which the system is failing kids in mental health crisis. “But this puts some concrete numbers on what we’re seeing in practice,” said lead researcher Dr. Jennifer Hoffmann, a pediatric emergency physician at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Kids in mental health crisis can end up in the ER for various reasons. Sometimes they are suicidal or have intentionally harmed themselves. Sometimes they are having a panic attack or a serious behavioral issue. Sometimes they or their parents have nowhere else to turn for mental health help. For those families, Hoffmann said, the ER is a “safety net.” “This may be the first time…  read on >  read on >

If you’re one of the millions seeking The One this Valentine’s Day, here’s a tip: Try swiping less. This is the main message from a new study that found excessive swiping on dating apps can cause partner choice overload, among other issues. “Dating apps may give us the impression that there is always someone better just around the corner, so we keep on swiping,” said study author Jörg Matthes, a professor of communication at the University of Vienna in Austria. “That’s not necessarily true: You may not need 99+ matches to find love.” (For the uninitiated, swiping right on a dating app means you’re interested in someone; swiping left means you’re not. Apps reward frequent swiping with more choices.) In the study of 464 dating app users between 16 and 25 years of age, those who swiped excessively were more likely to feel like potential partners were out of their league, fear being single, and /or experience partner choice overload. This was true if people listened to their gut and swiped quickly or gave potential dates more thought before swiping left or right. The more a person used dating apps, the more likely they were to be excessive swipers, the study showed. Some people use dating apps excessively, similar to compulsive gambling, Matthes said. “Excessive use can have negative psychological effects on people,” he said.…  read on >  read on >

An alarming new survey shows that American teen girls are experiencing record high levels of violence, sadness and suicide risk. Schools may be the answer to improving what’s happening for young people, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 3 in 5 girls — 57% — said they felt persistently sad or hopeless in 2021. That’s up 60%, the CDC reported, and those numbers are double the number of teen boys experiencing sadness or hopelessness. Girls fared worse than boys across nearly all measures, though all teens reported increasing mental health challenges, experiences of violence and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. LGBTQ teens also continued to experience extremely high levels of violence and mental health concerns. “High school should be a time for trailblazing, not trauma. These data show our kids need far more support to cope, hope, and thrive,” said Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s Chief Medical Officer and Deputy Director for Program and Science. “Proven school prevention programs can offer teens a vital lifeline in these growing waves of trauma,” she said in an agency news release. According to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), 30% of teen girls seriously considered attempting suicide. About 18% experienced sexual violence in the past year, up 20% from 2017, when the CDC started monitoring this measure. About 14% had ever…  read on >  read on >

Exposure to wildfire smoke can increase the risk of premature birth, new research suggests. For the study, the researchers reviewed birth certificates and hospital delivery data for more than 2.5 million pregnant women in California from 2007 to 2012, and used satellite images and ZIP codes to compare daily estimates of wildfire smoke intensity. The study found that from the four weeks prior to conception and through the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, 86% of the women were exposed to at least one day of wildfire smoke. They had an average exposure of 7.5 days. Wildfire smoke was significantly associated with spontaneous preterm birth, the investigators found. Each additional day of smoke exposure slightly increased the odds of delivering prematurely. “Wildfires lead to acute and abrupt changes in air quality,” said lead study author Dr. Anne Waldrop, a maternal-fetal medicine subspecialist fellow at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. “And some emerging evidence suggests that wildfire smoke could be worse for your health than other types of pollutants. So, even as we work to decrease other forms of air pollution, with wildfires becoming more frequent, more intense, and happening on a much larger scale, exposure to wildfire smoke is a serious public health problem, especially for vulnerable populations like pregnant people,” Waldrop said in a news release from the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine. Wildfire smoke…  read on >  read on >

Researchers studying well water found current monitoring practices often fail to reflect actual groundwater pollution risks. The problem: Spikes in harmful bacteria, like those from animal and human waste, vary depending on the season. They may be higher at times when testing is less likely to be done. “This is concerning because many residents and homeowners across the country, including here in the Northeast, have been found to test their wells in colder months, which can cause a false sense of security and underestimate the true threat of harmful bacteria in their drinking water,” said study co-author Ranjit Bawa, a visiting assistant professor of natural resources and the environment at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The research team studied this by looking at year-round water samples from nearly 50,000 wells across the state of North Carolina between 2013 and 2018. The investigators found a significant gap in the timing of sample collection from private wells and when they were likely to become contaminated. More than 44 million people in the United States depend on private drinking water wells. These wells are not federally regulated, the study authors noted in a university news release. Communities without access to public water systems also tend to be near sources of industrial and agricultural pollution, according to the report. The researchers focused on wells near hog farm…  read on >  read on >

Healthy young people who vape or smoke may be putting themselves at greater risk for developing severe COVID, new research finds. Both smoking tobacco and vaping electronic cigarettes may predispose people to increased inflammation, future development of severe COVID-19 and lingering cardiovascular complications, said lead study author Dr. Theodoros Kelesidis. He’s an associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, in Los Angeles. “The key message is that smoking is the worst, but vaping is not innocent,” Kelesidis said in a UCLA news release. “This has been shown for many lung diseases, but not for COVID. It was a quite interesting and novel finding that vaping changed the levels of key proteins that the virus uses to replicate.” For the study, the researchers examined blood plasma collected before the pandemic from 45 nonsmokers, 30 vapers and 29 cigarette smokers. The investigators tested the plasma to measure levels of since-identified proteins that the COVID virus needs in order to replicate. These proteins are known as ACE2, furin, Ang II, Ang 1–7, IL-6R, sCD163 and L-selectin. A protein called ADAM17 collectively regulates those last three proteins. The researchers found that plasma from healthy young people who smoke tobacco or vape had increased levels of furin, sCD163, and L-selectin, compared to nonsmokers. The findings suggest there may be increased…  read on >  read on >

Using a “neuroprotectant” drug alongside the standard surgical removal of a clot may slash the risk of death and disability following a stroke, a new study finds. The new medication, called ApTOLL, shields brain tissue from continuing damage by cooling down inflammation, the researchers said. A stroke occurs when blood supply to part of the brain is blocked by a clot or when a blood vessel in the brain bursts. Ischemic strokes, which are far more common, occur when a blood clot cuts off blood supply to the brain. Still, more research is needed before ApTOLL is ready for prime time. “We need confirmatory studies in larger populations, and we are aiming to start those in the last quarter of 2023,” said study author Dr. Marc Ribó, an interventional neurologist at Hospital Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona, Spain. “If everything goes well and we replicate these findings in larger studies, the drug may be available in a couple of years.” For the study, more than 150 people who had an ischemic stroke (average age, 70) were treated in 15 hospitals in France and Spain between July 2021 and April 2022. Patients received either 0.05 mg/kg of ApTOLL, 0.2 mg/kg of ApTOLL, or a placebo medication. Everyone in the study also underwent mechanical blood clot removal to restore blood flow to their brain within six hours of…  read on >  read on >

Chemicals found in plastic personal care products, kids’ toys, and food and drink packaging could be raising the risk of type 2 diabetes among women, new research suggests. To study the impact of these chemicals, known as phthalates, researchers followed just over 1,300 U.S. women for six years to see if exposure contributed to the incidence of diabetes. About 5% of the women developed diabetes during the study period. The researchers found that white women exposed to high levels of some phthalates had a 30% to 63% higher chance of developing diabetes. The harmful chemicals were not linked to diabetes risk in Black or Asian women. Exposure to these endocrine-disrupting chemicals has previously been associated with reduced fertility and other endocrine disorders. “Our research found phthalates may contribute to a higher incidence of diabetes in women, especially white women, over a six-year period,” said Sung Kyun Park, an associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, in Ann Arbor. “People are exposed to phthalates daily, increasing their risk of several metabolic diseases. It’s important that we address [endocrine-disrupting chemicals] now as they are harmful to human health,” Park said in a news release from the Endocrine Society. The study, which was published online Feb. 8 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, received funding from…  read on >  read on >