Lifestyle « Weekly Gravy

A single hardwired brain circuit might be responsible for male sexual drive, a new mouse study reports. Researchers have singled out in lab mice a brain region that controls sexual interest, libido, mating behavior and pleasure, said senior researcher Dr. Nirao Shah, a professor of psychiatry and neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, in California. This region uses sensory input from the environment to recognize the sex of another mouse — “Aha, this is a female, maybe I can mate if she’s willing,” Shah said. “That recognition is then transformed into the desire to mate and the act of mating by this circuit,” he added. “Also, the circuit enables the behavior to be pleasurable so animals will seek to do it again, which is very important, because for a species to survive, animals need to reproduce.” While this study was in mice, Shah said similar brain structures have been found in other mammals — and perhaps even humans. “There are analogous anatomical counterparts we think in the human brain, but of course their function in the human brain remains to be determined,” he noted. For their experiments, Shah’s team used adult virgin male mice that had not seen a female mouse after being weaned at about 3 weeks of age. That way, the brain activity and behavior they observed would not have been shaped… read on > read on >

The mental health crisis hitting Americans shows no sign of abating, with provisional numbers for 2022 showing suicides rose by another 2.6% last year. That follows on an overall 5% increase in suicides in 2021, noted officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which on Thursday released the early data for 2022. Overall, 49,449 Americans lost their lives to suicide last year, up from 48,183 deaths in 2021, the agency reported. “Today’s report underscores the depths of the devastating mental health crisis in America,” U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said in a CDC news release. “Mental health has become the defining public health and societal challenge of our time. Far too many people and their families are suffering and feeling alone.” The ongoing rise in mental health issues spurred the launch a year ago of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which is available 24/7 to anyone who feels they are in crisis. According to the latest CDC data, there was one glimmer of hope in the new statistics: An 8.4% drop in 2022 for suicides among the very young (ages 10 to 24), and a 6.1% drop among one group hit particularly hard by mental health issues and suicide, American Indian/Alaska Native people. Still, most demographics saw a rise in suicide rates. “The troubling increase in suicides requires immediate action… read on > read on >

People with autism are over three times more likely than their peers without the developmental disorder to experience self-injury, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, or death by suicide, new research shows. “In general, I think there needs to be more support for individuals with autism. And this shows that there are life-threatening consequences in terms of suicide and self-harm,” said Alycia Halladay, chief science officer for the Autism Science Foundation. She was not involved in the study. The researchers agreed. “The presence of psychiatric illnesses substantially accounts for these increased risks,” said lead study author Dr. Meng-Chuan Lai, staff psychiatrist and clinician scientist with the Child and Youth Mental Health Collaborative at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) at the University of Toronto. “We know that many self-harm and suicide-related events could be prevented when people have access to tailored mental health supports and services, and this is crucial for autistic people,” he said in a CAMH news release. Megan Pilatzke is an advocate and a woman living with autism. ”Autistic people are continually forced to mask and hide who we are to accommodate a world that generally does not accept our traits,” Pilatzke said in the release. “I want people to understand that autistic people are struggling because our needs are just not being met throughout society.” Broken down by gender, females with… read on > read on >

Modern antidepressants could be effective for long-term treatment of some patients with bipolar disorder, a new trial suggests. Current guidelines discourage use of antidepressants in these patients, over concerns that the drugs will trigger a manic episode. But bipolar patients who remained on antidepressants for a whole year had fewer mood episodes than those who were switched to a placebo after two months, the investigators found. These results “should change practice and it should convert more people that were nonbelievers to saying, yeah, at least for some patients, continuing antidepressants is a good strategy,” said lead researcher Dr. Lakshmi Yatham, head of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, in Canada. However, the clinical trial doesn’t provide cut-and-dried support for antidepressants. The trial failed its primary goal of showing a statistically significant benefit for using antidepressants long-term versus short-term, because too few patients participated, noted Dr. Michael Thase, a psychiatrist with Penn Medicine in Philadelphia. “You have an effect on the main primary outcome that is in the direction of a clinically meaningful effect in favor of staying on the antidepressants, but it’s below the threshold of statistical significance because the study didn’t get to the size that it was supposed to be,” explained Thase, who was not part of the research. Depressive episodes are of great concern to doctors because they bring with them… read on > read on >

It may not get the publicity of some better-known vitamins like D, but vitamin K — found in leafy green vegetables — may boost lung health. A new, large study — published Aug. 10 in ERJ Open Research — suggests that people who have low levels of this vitamin also have less healthy lungs. They are more likely to report having asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and wheezing. “Our results suggest that vitamin K could play a part in keeping our lungs healthy,” said researcher Dr. Torkil Jespersen of Copenhagen University Hospital and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. “On their own, our findings do not alter current recommendations for vitamin K intake, but they do suggest that we need more research on whether some people, such as those with lung disease, could benefit from vitamin K supplementation,” Jespersen said in a journal news release. In addition to leafy greens, vitamin K is found in vegetable oils and cereal grains. It has a role in blood clotting, helping the body heal wounds, but researchers know very little about its role in lung health. To study this, the Danish researchers recruited more than 4,000 Copenhagen residents, ages 24 to 77. Study participants underwent lung function testing, called spirometry, which measures the amount of air a person can breathe out in one second (forced expiratory volume… read on > read on >

Microplastics appear to be everywhere, including within the tissues of the human heart. A new Chinese report describes doctors finding microplastics in heart tissue both before and after heart surgery. The researchers also noted there is evidence suggesting that microplastics may have been unexpectedly introduced during the heart procedures. The researchers, who included Kun Hua and Xiubin Yang from Capital Medical University in Beijing, collected heart tissue samples from 15 people during cardiac surgeries. They also gathered blood samples from the patients both before and after surgery. These plastic fragments, about the size of a pencil eraser or smaller, can enter the human body through mouths, noses and other body cavities. The full extent of microplastics inside the body isn’t known because most organs and tissues are fully enclosed within the body. In this study, the team analyzed the samples with laser direct infrared imaging, identifying 20- to 500-micrometer-wide particles made from eight types of plastic. These included polyethylene terephthalate, polyvinyl chloride and poly(methyl methacrylate). Most tissue samples had tens of thousands of individual microplastic pieces. The blood samples also contained plastic particles. However, the average size of those particles decreased after surgery. The findings were reported recently in the American Chemical Society’s Environmental Science & Technology journal. The study was small but provides preliminary evidence that microplastics can accumulate and persist in the heart.… read on > read on >

A large new study challenges the long-held idea that depression makes people more vulnerable to cancer, finding no association between the mental health condition and most types of cancer. The study, of more than 300,000 adults, found that neither depression nor chronic anxiety were linked to increased odds of developing cancer in the coming years. And when researchers looked at specific types of cancer, the findings were largely the same. The one exception was a slightly increased risk of cancers that are strongly linked to smoking, including lung cancer. And the analysis suggests that smoking — as well as alcohol and heavy body weight — are the real culprits, rather than depression or anxiety themselves. Experts said the study, published online Aug. 7 in the journal Cancer, may offer reassurance to people who’ve blamed a cancer diagnosis on their mental health struggles. “Our findings show that there is no evidence for this,” said study leader Lonneke van Tuijl, a health psychology researcher at University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, that kind of self-blame “comes up a lot,” said Dr. William Breitbart, chief of psychiatry at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. “There are many patients who feel guilt, who say ‘I gave this to myself,’” said Breitbart, who was not involved in the study. The reality, he said, is that… read on > read on >

It seems obvious that texting and walking can be a dangerous duo, but now a new Australian study offers solid evidence of the dangers. Emergency room doctors Dr. Michael Levine and Dr. Matthew Harris, who were not involved in the study, weren’t surprised by the findings. “I think we’ve had, this summer, several people who either have been distracted while walking and have been hit by a car or been hit by a bicycle,” said Harris, from Northwell Health in New Hyde Park, N.Y. “I’ve definitely seen people stepping off curbs when they were not supposed to, not seeing cars come… because they were too busy looking at their phone when they should have realized where the sidewalk ended,” added Levine, from UCLA Health. “So, I’ve seen all different permutations of people getting injured from texting and walking across the street.” For the study, Australian researchers recruited 50 students from the University of New South Wales and had them go through four exercises. One was to text while sitting, another was to walk without texting, another was to have them walk and text, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” and the last one was to have students walk and text the same message while going through a walkway specifically designed by one of the scientists to have tiles slip out of place.… read on > read on >

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are living in an environment that contains higher levels of potentially harmful chemicals than seen in American homes, new research reveals. The discovery is important because it could guide the design of future spacecraft. “Our findings have implications for future space stations and habitats, where it may be possible to exclude many contaminant sources by careful material choices in the early stages of design and construction,” said study co-author Stuart Harrad, from the University of Birmingham, in the United Kingdom. “While concentrations of organic contaminants discovered in dust from the ISS often exceeded median values found in homes and other indoor environments across the U.S. and western Europe, levels of these compounds were generally within the range found on Earth,” he explained in a university news release. Among the contaminants found in this “space dust” were polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), hexabromocyclododecane (HBCDD), “novel” brominated flame retardants (BFRs), organophosphate esters (OPEs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). BFRs and OPEs are used in many countries to meet fire safety regulations in consumer and commercial applications, such as electrical and electronic equipment, building insulation, furniture fabrics and foams, according to the study. PAH can be found in hydrocarbon fuels and emitted from combustion processes. PCBs were used in building and window sealants and in electrical… read on > read on >

An investigation into a high number of cancers at a Montana nuclear missile base has led to the discovery of unsafe levels of a likely carcinogen. The hundreds of cancer cases appear to be connected to underground launch control centers at Malmstrom Air Force Base. Levels of PCBs, an oily or waxy substance that is considered a likely carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), were higher than the agency’s recommended threshold. The finding “is the first from an extensive sampling of active U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile bases to address specific cancer concerns raised by missile community members,” Air Force Global Strike Command said Monday in a news release. Gen. Thomas Bussiere, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, has directed “immediate measures to begin the cleanup process for the affected facilities and mitigate exposure by our airmen and Guardians to potentially hazardous conditions.” At least nine current or former missileers at Malmstrom have been diagnosed with a rare blood cancer that uses the body’s lymph system to spread, according to a military briefing obtained by the Associated Press. A grassroots group of former missile launch officers and their surviving family members, the Torchlight Initiative, has said there are at least 268 people who served at the nuclear missile sites or their family members who have been diagnosed with cancer, blood diseases or other… read on > read on >