One major television network, two television websites, two national newspapers, one major wire source and several consumer medical websites cover a new study indicating that Alzheimer’s deaths are seriously undercounted due to inaccurate information entered on death certificates. Currently, Alzheimer’s is listed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the sixth-leading cause of death. The new study, however, calculates that it may actually be the third-leading cause of death.

In a segment on the NBC Nightly News (3/5, story 6, 2:40, Williams), chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman, MD, reported that according to a study (3/5) issued by the Rush University Medical Center, “the actual number of deaths each year from Alzheimer’s disease may be as many as half a million,” a figure “six times more than the 83,000 currently reported.” The discrepancy may arise because “death certificates are notoriously inaccurate, focusing only on the immediate cause of death.”

Bloomberg News (3/6, Cortez) focuses on the study’s methodology, pointing out that researchers “tracked two groups of people who enrolled in long-term studies and agreed to donate their brains after death,” noting “who developed Alzheimer’s and who didn’t, and then compar[ing] death rates among the two groups.” None of the 2,566 older adults tracked had dementia at the start of the study. Eventually, investigators “calculated the number of deaths that could be ascribed to Alzheimer’s by comparing the number of expected deaths based on those without the disease to the number of people who actually did die after an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.”

Related Links:

— “Alzheimer’s Estimated to Be No. 3 Killer Disease in U.S.,” Michelle Fay Cortez, Bloomberg News, March 5, 2014.

The AP (3/4, Sherman) reports that a majority of Supreme Court justices on Monday indicated “that states should look beyond an intelligence test score in borderline cases of mental disability to determine whether a death row inmate is eligible to be executed.” The court “heard arguments about how states evaluate claims of mental disability that, if substantiated, protect inmates from being put to death,” and five justices “pointed repeatedly to the margin of error inherent in IQ and other standardized tests” and “voiced skepticism about the practice in Florida and certain other states of barring an inmate from claiming mental disability when his IQ score is just above 70.”

USA Today (3/4, Wolf) reports that the key issue in the case at bar “is whether states such as Florida can apply a rigid test score cutoff without including the ‘standard error of measurement’ relied on by the tests’ designers and endorsed by two key clinical groups.” The court’s decision in the Florida case “will mark the first time it has returned to its landmark 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia that said executing people with intellectual disabilities violates their 8th Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment.”

Related Links:

— “Justices lean toward defendant in mental disability case
,” Richard Wolf, USA Today, March 3, 2014.

USA Today (3/4, Zoroya) reports that the largest study ever conducted on suicide in the military has found that suicide rates “soared among soldiers who went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan and those who never left the United States.” The ongoing, $65 million study, “scanned records from nearly a million soldiers,” and “produced three separate research papers published online Monday by The Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry.” The study found that “while suicide rates for soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan more than doubled from 2004 to 2009 to more than 30-per-100,000, the trend among those who never deployed nearly tripled to between 25- and 30-per-100,000.”

The New York Times (3/4, Carey, Subscription Publication) reports that the research found that “most of the Army’s enlisted men and women with suicidal tendencies had them before they enlisted, and that those at highest risk of making an attempt often had a long history of impulsive anger.” According to the study, “about one in 10 soldiers qualified for a diagnosis of ‘intermittent explosive disorder,’ as it is known to psychiatrists – more than five times the rate found in the general population.”

Related Links:

— “Study: High suicide rates for soldiers in, out of war,” Gregg Zoroya, USA Today, March 3, 2014.

Medscape (3/1, Brauser) reported that “depression should join the ranks of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and smoking as an official heart disease risk factor, according to an expert panel convened by the American Heart Association (AHA).” This “recommendation is based on an extensive literature review examining the risks for depression conducted by the panel.” According to Medscape, “The AHA Scientific Statement notes that the combined findings support the call to formally “elevate depression to the status of a risk factor” for adverse outcomes, such as all-cause and cardiac mortality, in patients who have acute coronary syndrome (ACS).”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

The Boston Globe (3/3, Salahi) reports in “Be Well” that research published in Sleep suggests that “children who often have nightmares or night terrors may be more likely to experience psychotic episodes such as hallucinations by early adolescence.”

HealthDay (3/1, Dallas) reported that investigators “analyzed a group of children six times between the ages of 2 and 9.” The investigators “found that children who had frequent nightmares before age 12 were three and a half times more likely to have psychotic experiences early in their teen years,” with the risk being even higher among those who had night terrors.

BBC News (3/1, Gallagher) pointed out that in the study, “nearly 6,800 people were followed up to the age of 12.”

Related Links:

— “Nightmare frequency linked to later psychotic episodes, ” Lara Salahi, Boston Globe, March 3, 2014.