Reuters (7/31, Rapaport) reports researchers found that “the volume of damaged white matter in” female soccer players who frequently headed the ball “was five times greater than it was for” their male counterparts. The researchers used diffusion tensor imaging to examine the brains of “49 male and 49 female amateur soccer players who reported a similar number of headings during the previous year.” The findings were published in Radiology.

NPR (7/31, Watson) reports lead author Michael Lipton, a neuroradiologist and neuroscientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said, “The most important finding here is that we see that in women’s brains, actually looking at brain tissue, there seems to be a greater sensitivity to repetitive, very low-level injury relative to men.”

Related Links:

— “Soccer headings may damage women’s brains more, “Lisa Rapaport, Reuters, July 31, 2018.

Healio (7/31, Demko) reports, “Using substance abuse and anxiety assessments at the enrollment of collaborative care treatment for depression can help identify teenagers with depression at risk for treatment failure,” researchers concluded in a study involving “182 teens aged 12 years to 17 years with depressive disorder.” The findings were published online July 17 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Teens with depression may benefit from collaborative care treatment, “Savannah Demko, Healio, July 31, 2018.

The NBC News (7/31, Fox) website reports, “At least 90 percent of teens and young adults with symptoms of depression said they had gone online for information about mental health issues, compared with 48 percent of those without any symptoms, according to the survey [pdf]” conducted “by Hopelab, a foundation set up to help young people with chronic illnesses, and the Well Being Trust, which is focused on mental, social and spiritual health.” Included in the “national survey” were “more than 1,300 people aged 14 to 22 in all 50 states.”

Related Links:

— “Depressed teens turn to social media to cope, survey finds, “Maggie Fox, The NBC News, July 31, 2018.

The NPR (7/30, Aubrey) “Shots” blog reports that researchers found in a 33-study review that being mildly dehydrated may cause “a range of subtle effects – from mood changes to muddled thinking.” The findingswere published online July 10 in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise.

Related Links:

— “Off Your Mental Game? You Could Be Mildly Dehydrated, “Allison Aubrey, NPR, July 30, 2018.

Reuters (7/30, Carroll) reports, “How the media reports on suicides may impact whether others decide to kill themselves in the days following the original death,” researchers concluded after gathering and analyzing “print and online reports published in the Toronto media market from 2011 to 2014,” then looking at “a list of people who died by suicide in Toronto between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2014.” The findings were published online July 30 in CMAJ.

According to TIME (7/30, Ducharme), the study suggested that “some specific journalistic practices – such as including lots of details about a death by suicide, or glamorizing these incidents – may make suicide contagion worse.”

HealthDay (7/30) reports the author of an accompanying editorial said, “I think everybody should think twice about sharing stories about a suicide.” The editorialist added, “Sharing positive stories with information about how to get help has the potential to be really helpful.” But, “stories about a celebrity suicide or stories that describe a suicide method could be very dangerous.

Related Links:

— “Suicide details reported by the media may lead others to copy, “Linda Carroll, Reuters, July 30, 2018.

On its website and on its “Morning Edition” program, NPR (7/26, Mann) reports that “the overwhelming majority of gun deaths in America” are “caused by people deliberately harming themselves,” often in a “highly impulsive act.” Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal that from 2006 through 2016, “roughly 218,000 Americans ended their lives using a firearm over that period.” Psychiatrist Paul Nestadt, MD, who studies suicide at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, said, “As I looked into suicide more and more, it became very clear that access to lethal means, specifically guns, was one of the most important risk factors that we could address.” Data indicate that “having a gun available in the home or workplace make those attempts at self-harm far more likely to succeed.”

Related Links:

— “Sharp Increase In Gun Suicides Signals Growing Public Health Crisis, “Brian Mann, NPR, July 26, 2018.

Healio (7/26, Demko) reports, “Young people at very high risk for psychosis seemed to show cognitive deficits,” researchers concluded in a study that “evaluated 173 young adults at ultra-high risk for psychosis and 384 healthy controls aged 14 to 29 years.” The study did reveal, however, that young people “whose high-risk status remitted appeared to recover cognitively.” The findings were published online July 25 in JAMA Psychiatry. The author of an accompanying editorial called for further “research in treating cognitive deficits in patients on the schizophrenia spectrum,” according to Healio.

Related Links:

— “Cognitive deficits may identify youth most likely to develop psychosis, “Savannah Demko, Healio, July 26, 2018.

MedPage Today (7/25, George) reports researchers found that “people who had orthostatic hypotension at an average age of 54 demonstrated a higher risk of dementia and ischemic stroke as they aged than people who didn’t have orthostatic hypotension.” The findings were published in Neurology.

Related Links:

— “Orthostatic Hypotension at Midlife Tied to Dementia, “Judy George, MedPage Today, July 25, 2018.

Medscape (7/25, Anderson, Subscription Publication) reports the sleep drugs zaleplon, zolpidem, and zopiclon may increase the risk of fractures in patients with dementia, according to a study presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2018. In the study that included people “who had received a Z-drug prescription (n = 2952) and those who had not (n = 1651),” the researchers found that the “so-called Z drugs were found to increase overall fracture risk by 40% and the risk for hip fracture by 59%.” HealthDay (7/25, Preidt) also covers the story.

Related Links:

— “Sleeping Pills May Be Poor Choice for Dementia Patients, ” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, July 25, 2018.

USA Today (7/25, Weintraub) reports researchers have found that “aggressively lowering blood pressure in people at high risk for heart attacks and stroke also reduced their likelihood of developing mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition that often leads to dementia.” The researchers found that patients who were “treated to reduce their systolic blood pressure…to 120 mm Hg were 19 percent less likely to develop mild cognitive impairment than those whose blood pressure was targeted to 140 mm Hg.”

The Wall Street Journal (7/25, Loftus, Subscription Publication) reports the findings were presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

Bloomberg News (7/25, Cortez) reports that based on the study’s results, drugs that lower blood pressure could “reduce the risk of memory loss and dementia.”

Related Links:

— “Aggressively lowering blood pressure could reduce risk of developing dementia, study finds, “Karen Weintraub, USA TODAY, July 25, 2018.