In The Hill (11/15) Congress Blog, former Surgeon General and Director of the CDC David Satcher, MD, wrote that people should be more frightened by Alzheimer’s disease than by Ebola. “While there is virtually no chance of contracting Ebola in the US right now, the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s or needing to care for someone with Alzheimer’s is staggering.” But, according to Dr. Satcher, “progress on Alzheimer’s is being held back by limited funding,” as evidenced by the fact that “for every $26,500 Medicare and Medicaid spend on Alzheimer’s care, the NIH spends only $100 on research.” Earlier this year in testimony before Congress, NIH Director Francis Collins, MD, said that Alzheimer’s research is “unfortunately limited by resources.”

Related Links:

— “Alzheimer’s is greater public health crisis than Ebola,” David Satcher, MD, The Hill, November 14, 2014.

Major newspapers, wire sources, Internet and consumer medical outlets cover the findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Youth Tobacco Survey revealing that 22.9 percent of high school students are currently using a tobacco product. The survey, published Nov. 13 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, also found that 4.5 percent of high school students used e-cigarettes in the previous month in 2013, up from 2.8 percent in 2012 and 1.5 percent in 2011.

USA Today (11/14, Szabo) reports that nearly “12% of high-school kids and 3% of middle schoolers had tried” e-cigarettes “at least once.” USA Today explains that children “are experimenting with a variety of tobacco products beyond cigarettes — from cigars to hookahs, chewing tobacco and pipes.” In fact, almost 23 percent “of high-school students use some sort of tobacco product, according to the CDC.” For instance, nearly 12 percent of high-school students smoke cigars, up slightly from 2011, the paper adds.

Related Links:

— “E-cigarette use triples among high schoolers,” Liz Szabo, USA Today, November 13, 2014.

Roll Call (11/14, Jenks) reports the National Institute of Mental Health “has decided to update its strategic plan.” With the last plan having been formulated in 2008, “the institute has decided that there has been substantial advances in mental health care since then and a new plan is in order. The public can comment on the new draft, which sets research priorities for the next five years.”

Related Links:

— “NIH Forges a Mental Health Research Plan,” Paul Jenks, Roll Call, November 13, 2014.

The New York Times (11/14, Bakalar) “Well” blog reports that according to a study published Nov. 13 in the Journal of Critical Sleep Medicine, “37 percent of” 7,000 firefighters tested “screened positive for at least one sleep disorder, most for obstructive sleep apnea.” After controlling for confounding factors, investigators “found that compared with sound sleepers, those with a sleep disorder were about twice as likely to have a motor vehicle crash, to nod off while driving, and to have cardiovascular disease or diabetes.” In addition, the firefighters faced a threefold higher risk of having anxiety and depression.

Related Links:

— “Firefighter Accidents Are Linked to Sleep Problems,” Nicholas Bakalar, New York Times, November 13, 2014.

HealthDay (11/14, Haelle) reports that according to a survey sponsored by the group Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, approximately 20 percent of college students abuse “prescription stimulants.” In the online survey of some 1,600 young people ranging in age from 18 to 25, about a 1,000 of whom were attending college, young adults reported using the medicines “to help them stay awake, study or improve their work or school performance.” Notably, “the most commonly abused stimulants are those typically prescribed for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD)…the survey found.”

Related Links:

— “ADHD Stimulant Drug Abuse Common Among Young Adults: Survey,” Tara Haelle, HealthDay, November 13, 2014.