In continuing coverage, on ABC World News (12/9, story 7, 1:10, Muir), chief medical editor Richard Besser, MD, reported on a study from Express Scripts that looked at 36 million prescriptions and found that “nearly half of those patients who are described a narcotic and took it for more than 30 days, they were still on it three years later.” Dr. Besser said these medicines “are meant for short-term use,” and according to the CDC, “46 people die from narcotic overdose, when they are combined with anxiety medication or sleeping pills” every day.

Related Links:

— “Study: A Nation in Pain,” Express Scripts, December 9, 2014.

The CBS News (12/10, Firger) website reports that according to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics, “children born to mothers who had preeclampsia during pregnancy are as much as twice as likely to develop autism spectrum disorder (ASD).” The study, which “involved 1,000 children age two and three years old,” all of whom had mothers with a history of preeclampsia, revealed that “the sicker a mother was with the disease, the more likely autism may occur in” her child.

Related Links:

— “Preeclampsia during pregnancy raises autism risk,” Jessica Firgir, CBS News, December 9, 2014.

HealthDay (12/6, Preidt) reported that according to a study published Dec. 5 in the journal PLoS One, “text reminders improve the chances that patients will stick with their medication regimen.” The study, which involved 300 patients who had been prescribed medications to lower cholesterol or control hypertension and who had been divided into a group receiving reminder texts and another group receiving no texts, revealed that “only nine percent of patients in the text message group stopped taking their medications, compared with 25 percent of patients who did not receive text messages.” Also covering the story were BBC News (12/6) and The Telegraph (UK) (12/5, Knapton).

Related Links:

— “Text Messages Remind People to Take Medications,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, December 5, 2014.

HealthDay (12/6, Preidt) reported that according to a study published online in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, “young adults who skip college are more likely to abuse prescription painkillers than their degree-bound peers.” Researchers arrived at this conclusion after analyzing “data collected between 2008 and 2010 from nearly 37,000 participants, aged 18 to 22, in the annual US National Survey on Drug Use and Health.” Notably, the association “between education and painkiller abuse among young adults was much stronger among women than among men,” the study also found.

Related Links:

— “Painkiller Abuse More Likely for Those Who Skip College: Study,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, December 5, 2014.

Medscape (12/6, Helwick) reported that according to research presented last month at the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting, “a survey of school shootings in the United States revealed that only 17% of the perpetrators had a diagnosis of mental illness, but several risk factors emerged that could have served as warning signs.” After identifying “157 school shooting incidents from 2005 to 2012, involving 403 students,” researchers found that the “most common motivating factors were an argument or fight (22%), gang-related or other crime (20%), and stalking or intimate partner violence (10%).”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

The Washington Post (12/6, Maese) reported that “science increasingly points to a strong link between head injuries and psychiatric and mood disorders.” For example, in one study involving 70 youngsters ranging in age from five to 14 who were tracked after having had a concussion, researchers found that “in the first six months, 36 percent…experienced a new onset of psychiatric disorders,” with 10 percent experiencing a “full depressive disorder.”

Another study published earlier this year in the Journal of Adolescent Health revealed that “repeatedly concussed teens to be three times more likely to develop depression.” That study examined health information from some 36,000 teens.

Related Links:

— “Concussions and depression: Questions renewed over whether there’s a link,” Rick Maese, Washington Post, December 6, 2014.

Reuters (12/8, Doyle) reported that teenagers who use hookah or snus, a smokeless tobacco product, are more likely to use cigarettes, according to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics. The study, which surveyed more than 2,500 youths during 2010 and 2011, found that those who had used snus and hookah at the time of the first survey were two to three times more likely to be cigarette smokers by the second survey.

Related Links:

— “Teen hookah and snus users more likely to move on to cigarettes,” Kathryn Doyle, Reuters, December 8, 2014.

The New York Times (12/9, Thomas, Subscription Publication) reports on a study released by pharmacy benefits managed Express Scripts that found that “nearly half the people who took the painkillers for over 30 days in the study’s first year were still using them three years later,” which may be “a sign of potential abuse.” Additionally, the report also found “nearly 60 percent of patients taking the painkillers to treat long-term conditions were also being prescribed muscle relaxants or anti-anxiety drugs that could cause dangerous reactions.”

According to Dr. Glen Stettin, a senior vice president at Express Scripts, “Not only are more people using these medications chronically, they are using them at higher doses than we would necessarily expect,” and “they are using them in combinations for which there isn’t a lot of clinical justification.”

Related Links:

— “Patients Prescribed Narcotic Painkillers Use More of Them for Longer, Study Finds,” Katie Thomas, New York Times, December 9, 2014.

US News & World Report (12/9) reports that the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has issued its State Mental Health Legislation report for 2014, which points out that this year, “Congress did not pass mental health care reforms and states slowed in their response to the issue.” The report, which analyzed “state spending on mental health and looks at what legislation states passed to address mental illness disparities,” revealed that even “though 27 states and the District of Columbia increased funding in 2014, this was a lower total than in 2013, when 37 states and the District of Columbia increased funding after three straight years of cuts.”

Related Links:

— “Two Years After Sandy Hook: Mental Health Funding Still Lags,” Kimberly Leonard, US News & World Report, December 9, 2014.

The Washington Post (12/8, Levingston) “Health & Science” blog reported that according to the Institute of Medicine, “by 2030, there will be as many as 14 million American seniors with mental health or substance abuse disorders, up from five million to eight million today.” Even now, “depressive disorders, along with dementia-related behavioral and psychiatric symptoms, are the most common maladies facing that group,” making depression an undertreated and underrecognized condition in seniors. Unfortunately, “the despair and withdrawal of depression can spark a rapid, functional decline, including problems with concentration.”

Related Links:

— “Depression is often undertreated in seniors,” Suzanne Allard Levingston, Washington Post, December 8, 2014.