Reuters (3/22, Rapaport) reported that a review suggests children “with school attendance or truancy problems might be suffering from anxiety.” Investigators came to this conclusion after reviewing “eight previously published studies with a total of almost 26,000 young students from Europe, North America and Asia.” The findings were published online Feb. 27 in Child and Adolescent Mental Health.
Related Links:
— “Childhood anxiety tied to school absences, “Lisa Rapaport, Reuters, March 22, 2019
Reuters (3/21, Carroll) reports, “People who are terrified of heights may be able to conquer their phobia using a virtual reality [VR] app and an inexpensive set of cardboard VR goggles,” research indicated.
Healio (3/21, Demko) reports there were 193 participants in the randomized study. The findings were published online March 20 in JAMA Psychiatry.
Psychiatric News (3/21) reports, “The strong symptom improvements were maintained at a follow-up assessment three months later.”
Related Links:
— “Phone app may help conquer fear of heights, “Linda Carroll, Reuters, March 21, 2019
Reuters (3/20, Rapaport) reports that “opioids account for more than 90 percent of the painkillers used after plastic surgery, according to a U.S. study” published in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery. The study “examined data on 466,677 people who had plastic and reconstructive procedures” from 2007 to 2015, and found that “almost 55 percent of patients received” pain medication “prescriptions afterwards, and 92 percent of the prescriptions filled were for opioids.” The findings also indicated that “patients who filled an opioid prescription shortly before or after surgery were about three times as likely as those who didn’t to still be using opioids up to six months or even a year later
Related Links:
— “Opioid prescriptions after plastic surgery tied to long-term use, “Lisa Rapaport, Reuters, March 20, 2019
The Washington Post (3/20, Achenbach) reports that “the synthetic opioid fentanyl has been driving up the rate of fatal drug overdoses across racial and social lines in the United States, with the sharpest increase among African Americans, according to a new analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” Data show the African American death rate “from fentanyl-involved drug overdoses rose 141 percent each year, on average, from 2011 to 2016, the study showed.” Meanwhile, the overdose death rate “for Hispanics rose 118 percent in that period every year on average, and 61 percent for non-Hispanic whites.”
The Los Angeles Times (3/20, Healy) reports that during the study period, 2011 to 2016, “more than 36,000 Americans died with fentanyl in their systems” and the “majority of those deaths – 18,335 – occurred in 2016 alone.” The Times adds that “fentanyl was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration back in 1968.”
NPR (3/21, Bebinger) reports that the study also indicates “men are dying after opioid overdoses at nearly three times the rate of women,” and there is “an especially steep rise in the number of young adults ages 25 to 34 whose death certificates include some version of the drug fentanyl.”
Related Links:
— “Fentanyl drug overdose deaths rising most sharply among African Americans, “Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post, March 20, 2019
TIME (3/20, Park) reports “in one of the largest studies looking at the potential effects of pesticide exposure on still-developing fetuses and newborns, scientists found that exposure to the most commonly used pesticides was linked to higher risk of autism spectrum disorder.” The study “found that women who were pregnant and who lived within a 2,000 meter radius of” an area highly sprayed with pesticides “were anywhere from 10% to 16% more likely to have children diagnosed with autism than women who lived in places farther away from sprayed areas.” The findings were published in BMJ.
Related Links:
— “A Mother’s Exposure to Pesticides During Pregnancy May Raise Children’s Autism Risk, “Alice Park, TIME, March 20, 2019
Reuters (3/20, Emery) reports, “Children and young adults with” attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) “who are treated with the stimulants amphetamine or methylphenidate face a small but significant risk of developing psychosis, with amphetamine products twice as likely to spark a problem,” researchers concluded. The study revealed that “among 110,923 patients getting amphetamine (Adderall, Adzenys XR-ODT, others), 237 subsequently received a psychosis diagnosis, or 0.21 percent.” Meanwhile, “in the same-sized group prescribed methylphenidate (Concerta, Ritalin, Daytrana, others), there were 106 episodes, or 0.10 percent,” the study revealed. According to HealthDay, 12 years ago, “the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required stimulant manufacturers to warn that their products might unexpectedly cause psychotic or manic symptoms.” The findings were published online March 20 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
MedPage Today (3/20, Hlavinka) reports the author of an accompanying editorial “emphasized this study’s findings ‘should not be considered definitive,’ as it was not possible to exclude certain confounding factors.” For instance, “certain individuals might have lower or higher vulnerabilities to the onset of psychosis when taking stimulants, he wrote.” As a result, “whether psychosis is due to stimulant use, to inherent vulnerability to psychosis, or to the interaction of those two factors remains unclear,’” the editorialist observed. Also covering the story are CNBC (3/20, Bursztynsky), Medscape (3/20, Brauser, Subscription Publication), and HealthDay (3/20, Norton).
Related Links:
— “With ADHD, amphetamine has double the psychosis risk of methylphenidate, “Gene Emery, Reuters, March 20, 2019
HealthDay (3/19, Norton) reports, “Some toddlers thought to have mild autism ‘outgrow’ the diagnosis, but most continue to struggle with language and behavior,” researchers concluded after examining “records for 569 children who were diagnosed with autism at the researchers’ center between 2003 and 2013.” Thirty-eight of these children “no longer met the diagnostic criteria” for autism “four years later.” The findings were published online March 12 in the Journal of Child Neurology.
Related Links:
— “Can Some Children Outgrow Autism?, ” Amy Norton, HealthDay, March 19, 2019
Bloomberg (3/19, Tanzi) reports more than one third of adults in the US between the ages of 18 and 64 who did not have health insurance “did not take their prescription medication as prescribed in the past 12 months in order to reduce costs, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” Furthermore, about one fifth of all US adults “asked their doctor for alternative medication to lower the cost.”
Additional coverage is provided by CNN (3/19, Luhby), Fortune (3/19, Sherman), FierceHealthcare (3/19, Landi), and The Hill (3/19, Sullivan).
Related Links:
— “One in Five U.S. Adults Ask Doctor for Lower Cost Medication, “Alexandre Tanzi, Bloomberg, March 19, 2019
The AP (3/19, Cheng) reports, “Smoking high-potency marijuana every day could increase the chances of developing psychosis by nearly five times,” researchers concluded in a study comprised of “about 900 people who were diagnosed with a first episode of the disorder at a mental health clinic, including those with delusions and hallucinations,” who “were compared with more than 1,200 healthy patients.” The findings were published online March 19 in The Lancet Psychiatry.
Also covering the study are Reuters (3/19, Kelland), The Guardian (UK) (3/19, Davis), BBC News Online (UK) (3/20, Roberts), the Philadelphia (PA) Inquirer (3/19, Wood), The Hill (3/19, Burke), the NPR (3/19, Chatterjee) “Shots” blog, NBC News (3/19), and HealthDay (3/19, Thompson).
Related Links:
— “Smoking strong pot daily raises psychosis risk, study finds, “Maria Cheng, AP, March 19, 2019
Psychiatric News (3/18) reports, “About 12% of adolescents who had suicidal thoughts or engaged in self-harm at age 16 went on to attempt suicide by age 21, but the risk factors for transition differed from established thinking on the subject,” investigators concluded in “a large, longitudinal study of adolescents” published online March 14 in The Lancet Psychiatry. In “participants with suicidal thoughts at age 16, the following factors strongly predicted a suicide attempt by age 21, all of which were associated with two to three times higher risk of suicide attempt: Nonsuicidal self-harm; cannabis use; other illicit drug use,” and “higher levels of the personality type intellect/openness.”
Related Links:
— “Study Suggests Factors Linked to Teens’ Suicide Attempts, Psychiatric News, March 18, 2019