Bloomberg News (6/1, Hallam) reported, “Older people who undergo general anesthesia for major surgery have a 35 percent higher risk of developing dementia later in life,” according to research to be presented at the European Society of Anaesthesiology’s annual meeting. “The findings are based on information from the Three-City Study, which included thousands of people age 65 and older in Bordeaux, Dijon and Montpellier starting in 1999.” Bloomberg News added, “In a subpopulation of 7,008 citizens, 632 participants developed dementia over the course of the study, and those patients were more likely to have had general anesthesia than those who didn’t develop mental deterioration.” Also covering the story were the Daily Telegraph (UK) (6/1, Donnelly) and the Daily Mail (UK) (6/1, Hope).

Related Links:

— “Dementia Risk Raised 35% by General Anesthesia in Study, ” Kristen Hallam, Bloomberg News, May 31, 2013.

MedPage Today (5/31, Boyles) reports, “Women who experience both sexual and physical abuse during childhood had a more than twofold increased risk for food addiction in adulthood,” according to a study published online in the journal Obesity and sponsored by grant money from the National Institutes of Health. “The analysis of data on 57,321 women enrolled in the Nurses Health Study II (NHSII) revealed that severe physical and sexual abuse were each associated with a roughly 90% increased risk for food addiction (physical abuse relative risk [RR] 1.92, 95% CI 1.76-2.09; sexual abuse RR 1.87, 95% CI 1.69-2.05),” and “suffering both severe physical and sexual abuse during childhood was associated with a 2.40 relative risk (95% CI 2.16-2.67) for food addiction later in life.”

Related Links:

— “Abused Girls May Binge on Food as Adults,” Salynn Boyles, MedPage Today, May 30, 2013.

HealthDay (5/31) reports that, according to research published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, individuals “who experience post-traumatic stress disorder following a heart attack may find it hard to get a good night’s sleep.” Investigators “examined the link between PTSD and sleep in almost 200 patients who suffered a heart attack.” The researchers “found that the more PTSD symptoms people experienced following a heart attack, the worse their self-reported sleep was in the month after their heart attack.”

Related Links:

— “ PTSD After Heart Attack Linked to Poor Sleep , ” Mary Elizabeth Dallas, HealthDay, May 30, 2013.