HealthDay (3/23, Preidt) reports that research suggests individuals “who develop depression after being diagnosed with heart disease may be more likely to have a heart attack or die than those without depression.” Researchers looked at data on approximately “23,000 heart patients in…Ontario who were diagnosed with heart disease.” The investigators found that over “an average follow-up of three years, those with depression were 83 percent more likely die of any cause and 36 percent more likely to have a heart attack than those without depression.” The research was scheduled to be presented at the American College of Cardiology meeting.

Related Links:

— “Depression Tied to Worse Outcomes for Heart Patients,” Robert Preidt, HealthDay, March 23, 2016.

Medscape (3/17, Harrison) reports that researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) are “sounding the alarm over a possible increase in unknown cognitive and behavioral harms that widespread cannabis use may unmask.” A clinical review conducted by NIDA Director Nora Volkow, MD, revealed that “as legalization of” cannabis “for recreational and medical use spreads, vulnerable populations, especially adolescents, are exposed to toxic effects of the drug.” Dr. Volkow “explained that young brains are engaged in a protracted period of ‘brain programming,’ in which everything an adolescent does or is exposed to can affect the final architecture and network connectivity of the brain.” The findings were published in the March issue of JAMA Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

Reuters (3/21, Seaman) reports that the percentage of US seniors taking at least five supplements or medications has risen, research published online March 21 in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests. With this rise comes an increase in the number of serious and major medication interactions, the study revealed.

The CBS News (3/21, Vernon) website reports that 47 percent of “Americans age 75 and older took five or more prescription drugs in 2011, nearly double the 24 percent that did so in 1999, just 12 years earlier.” For people in the age range of 65 to 74, the percentage is comparable at 33 percent for 2011 and 23 percent in 1999.

Related Links:

— “Older Americans taking more medications,” Andrew M. Seaman, Reuters, March 21, 2016.

Medscape (3/21, Davenport) reports, “Psychiatry is facing an ongoing crisis because pharmaceutical companies are not investing in” research into new psychiatric medications, “warned an investigator who has turned to nonpsychiatric” medicines “in a bid to find optimally effective treatments for his patients with mental illness.” At the European Psychiatric Association’s 24th Congress, Dominik Wincewicz, MD, of Poland’s Medical University of Bialystok suggested that “researchers…look beyond psychiatry into other specialties, such as cardiology, where already approved drugs have shown benefits in managing stress and cognitive impairment.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

The AP (3/22, Finley) reports that some veterans are “increasingly using cannabis” to manage their post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) “even though it remains illegal in most states and is unapproved by the Department of Veterans Affairs because major studies have yet to show it is effective against PTSD.” Even though studies have “been contradictory and limited, some former members of the military say pot helps them manage their anxiety, insomnia and nightmares.”

Related Links:

— “VETERANS ARE USING POT TO EASE PTSD, DESPITE SCANT RESEARCH,” Ben Finlay, Associated Press, March 22, 2016.