Dr. Dan Iosifescu’s patient had a history of depression and had done well for a number of years. But the illness returned with a vengeance. “They truly tried to get better with a series of different medications, and none of them did anything. If anything, they were experiencing a lot of side effects,” Iosifescu said, rendering them “unable to take part in their normal life routines, becoming more estranged from their family, unable to do even their daily routines.” Then the patient was given ketamine, and everything changed. “The treatment with ketamine over a span of just a few weeks was dramatic, essentially 180-degree resolution of all these symptoms where the person, as if by miracle, essentially returned to their previous level of functioning and previous level of relatively good mood,” said Iosifescu, a psychiatry professor at NYU School of Medicine in New York City. Ketamine has been examined for several years as a way to treat depression, a major cause of disability worldwide. The drug is a “dissociative” anesthetic. A new study conducted in Australia and New Zealand found that a low-cost version of ketamine helped 20% of participants with severe depression achieve total remission from their symptoms, while a third had symptoms improve by at least 50%. By comparison, only 2% of the control group achieved total remission from their symptoms. The trial…  read on >  read on >

In areas where Black Americans have been historically affected by discriminatory housing practices, there is higher heart failure risk, according to new research. Researchers studying more than 2.3 million U.S. adults between 2014 and 2019 found that heart failure today was linked to “redlining,” which began in the 1930s. Heart failure risk for Black people who lived in these redlined ZIP codes was higher than for those who did not. “Although discriminatory housing policies were effectively outlawed nearly a half-century ago, the relationship between historic redlining practices and people’s health today gives us unique insight into how historical policies may still be exerting their effects on the health of many communities,” study co-author Dr. Shreya Rao said in an American Heart Association news release. Rao is a cardiologist and assistant professor in the department of internal medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. For the study, the researchers used data from the Medicare Beneficiary Summary Files. Study participants were age 71, on average. More than 801,000 participants were Black. The investigators mapped historical redlining maps onto modern day maps of 1,044 ZIP codes in the United States. They sorted them into four groups ranging from least to most exposed to redlining. “Ultimately, we were most interested in assessing the difference in risk of heart failure between individuals from communities with…  read on >  read on >

While nursing home residents are at high risk for bad outcomes if they get COVID-19, use of antiviral treatments, such as monoclonal antibodies, was low through most of 2021 and 2022. The authors of a new study, led by Brian McGarry, a health services researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, called that fact alarming. Using data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Healthcare Safety Network for May 2021 to December 2002, McGarry and collaborators at Harvard University found that just 18% of COVID-19 cases in nursing homes were treated with antiviral medicine. Even after easier-to-administer and widely available oral treatments were authorized, only 1 in 4 nursing home residents received these life-saving medications, the investigators found. The study considered more than 763,000 COVID-19 cases in more than 15,000 U.S. nursing homes. Everyone in a nursing home meets current clinical guidelines to be considered for antiviral treatment. By the end of last year, however, 40% of nursing homes reported that they had never used any of the antiviral treatments. And for-profit and lower-quality facilities, as well as those with higher shares of Medicaid and non-white residents, were less likely to use antivirals, the study authors noted. This likely contributed to disparities in COVID hospitalizations and deaths, the researchers suggested in a university news release. The report was…  read on >  read on >

A new study offers the first-ever county-level estimates of Alzheimer’s disease in the United States. It shows that the East and Southeast have the highest prevalence of Alzheimer’s dementia, which researchers said may owe in part to the higher percentages of older people, and Black and Hispanic residents in those regions. The study covered all 3,142 U.S. counties. “These new estimates add more granular data to our understanding of Alzheimer’s prevalence across the country,” said Kumar Rajan, a professor of internal medicine at Rush Medical College, in Chicago. “This information, in addition to raising awareness of the Alzheimer’s crisis in specific communities, may help public health programs better allocate funding, staffing and other resources for caring for people with Alzheimer’s and all other dementia.” Data came from the Chicago Health and Aging Project and U.S. government population estimates. The highest rates of Alzheimer’s, in counties with 10,000 or more seniors, were in Miami-Dade County, Fla.; Baltimore City, Md.; and Bronx County, N.Y., with 16.6% each. Close behind were Prince George’s County, Md., at 16.1%; Hinds County, Miss., 15.5%; Orleans Parish, La., 15.4%; Dougherty County, Ga., 15.3%; Orangeburg County, Ca., 15.2%; and Imperial County, Ca. and El Paso County, Texas, each at 15%. Age is a primary risk factor for Alzheimer’s. Older Black Americans are about twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s or other dementias as…  read on >  read on >

The national 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline has hit its one-year anniversary, and it appears that the public is increasingly turning to the number in times of darkness. The most recent statistics show a substantial increase in call volume, with nearly 160,000 more crisis calls, chats and texts in May 2023 compared to May 2022 — two months before 988’s activation on July 16. Compared to a year before, calls answered in May increased by 45%; chats answered increased by 52%; and texts answered increased by 938%, according to 988 performance stats monitored by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Overall, 988 operators have answered more than 2.3 million calls and nearly 600,000 texts in the past year, Chuck Ingoglia, president and CEO of the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, said in a council news release. “It was a great idea to begin with and has delivered a lot of its promise already,” said Dr. Petros Levounis, president of the American Psychiatric Association. “More and more people know about 988, and what’s truly great about it is when you call 988, you get a human being to talk with you, not a robot but a trained person who knows how to deal with crisis.” But experts say more progress needs to be made for 988 to reach its full potential. Most Americans…  read on >  read on >

A new study from Australia tied some dangerous and unsettling issues to sleep disorders in young people. The research found links to daytime drowsiness, mental health issues and motor vehicle accidents and noted that as many as 20% of younger people are affected by sleep disorders. Workplace productivity losses were up to 40% greater among 22-year-olds with clinical sleep disorders compared to their peers with no sleep disorders. “This is equivalent to total workplace productivity loss [followed up on multiple occasions across 12 months] of about four weeks for young people with clinically significant sleep disorders, compared with less than one week for those without,” said study leader Amy Reynolds, an associate professor in clinical sleep health at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. The study drew on 554 22-year-old workers who were part of the multigenerational Raine Study, examining lifelong health and quality of life in Western Australia. “The Raine study previously showed that about 20% of the young adults surveyed had a common clinical sleep disorder. … We wanted to know how much of an impact these disorders have on workers in their workplaces,” Reynolds said in a university news release. “The take-home message is just how prevalent sleep disorders are in young adults, and that these disorders are having an impact on our young adults and their workplaces,” she said. That changes across…  read on >  read on >

It’s commonly thought that having a companion animal — be it a dog, cat or bird — is good for the owner’s mental health. A new study suggests that’s not so, at least for people with severe mental illness and for pets that aren’t trained therapy animals. Pets may, however, be an important part of the social network for folks with severe mental illness. Having pets was not significantly associated with the well-being, depression, anxiety or loneliness scores for owners with a range of severe mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and psychosis, according to the study published July 14 in the journal Human-Animal Interactions. This research followed up on a 2021 survey, in which researchers found a self-reported decline in mental health with animal ownership. This may have been due to pandemic restrictions and the challenges of looking after the animal in lockdown. “In the absence of COVID-19 restrictions, a possible explanation for our current findings could be that the added responsibility of animal ownership may still exacerbate other potential stressors experienced by people living with severe mental illness. This includes the cost of food, veterinary bills and uncertainty over housing,” lead author Dr. Emily Shoesmith, a research fellow at the University of York in the United Kingdom, said in a journal news release. “Our findings may also imply that animal ownership and the…  read on >  read on >

The color of the oceans has changed over the past two decades, which has scientists concerned about the impact of climate change. “I’ve been running simulations that have been telling me for years that these changes in ocean color are going to happen,” said study co-author Stephanie Dutkiewicz, senior research scientist in Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “To actually see it happening for real is not surprising, but frightening. And these changes are consistent with man-induced changes to our climate,” Dutkiewicz added in a school news release. Though subtle to the human eye, these color changes have happened over 56% of the world’s oceans — an expanse that is larger than the total land area on Earth, the researchers said. Tropical ocean regions near the equator have become steadily greener over time. This suggests that ecosystems within the surface ocean must also be changing, the authors said. “This gives additional evidence of how human activities are affecting life on Earth over a huge spatial extent,” said study lead author B.B. Cael of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, England. While deep blue water reflects very little life, greener waters indicate ecosystems, including plant-like microbes known as phytoplankton that contain the green pigment chlorophyll. The pigment helps plankton harvest sunlight, which they use to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.…  read on >  read on >

Racial discrimination may drive health inequities from an early age, according to researchers who found that it puts kids at risk for obesity. “Exposure to racial discrimination must be acknowledged as both a social determinant of obesity and a significant contributor to obesity disparities among children and adolescents,” said lead researcher Adolfo Cuevas. He is an assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences at the NYU School of Global Public Health in New York City. Specifically, the new study found that children who experience racial discrimination were more likely to develop a larger waistline and higher body mass index (BMI). BMI is an estimate of body fat based on height and weight. Black and Hispanic youth have higher rates of obesity, a problem that is a major health issue overall in children and teens in the United States, the study authors noted. A growing body of research underscores the negative effects of racial discrimination. Among those: It puts people at risk for sleep problems, high levels of the stress hormone cortisol and poor mental health. And it has previously been linked to higher BMI in adults. For this study, the researchers used data for nearly 6,500 kids aged 9 to 11 years who were participants in a study of adolescent brain development from 2017 to 2019. These young people were asked whether they were treated…  read on >  read on >

Ticks may be responsible for the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in Wisconsin’s deer population, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that ticks can harbor transmissible amounts of the protein particle that causes CWD, a fatal neurological disease seen in deer, elk and moose. The pathogen, prion, can pass through soil or through bodily fluids, including feces. Prion can prompt certain proteins to fold abnormally, particularly in the brain. That can prevent these proteins from carrying out their normal functions. Over time, the CWD prion can cause severe brain damage and eventually death in deer, the study explained. While a lot of CWD studies focus on the role of soil in the disease’s spread, researcher Heather Inzalaco was curious about other means of transmission. She’s a researcher in the Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, housed in the UW–Madison department of forest and wildlife ecology. “Deer live these secret lives; we don’t see everything that they do,” Inzalaco said in a university news release. Inzalaco wondered if one possibility might be ticks. The arachnids acquire blood from CWD-infected deer, but she wondered if they could also host the prions. “Deer will groom one another to get places that they can’t reach on their own through self-grooming,” Inzalaco said. “If they’re grooming each other and they’re doing that to…  read on >  read on >