MedPage Today (11/13, Gever) reports, “Depression and asthma appear to go hand in hand, even in patients whose asthma is relatively mild and who report generally good health,” according to a study presented at the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology annual meeting. “Analysis of some 13,000 participants in the Cooper Institute Longitudinal Study indicated that a diagnosis of asthma was a risk factor for reports of significant current depressive symptoms with an odds ratio of 1.41 (95% CI 1.16 to 1.65, P<0.001) after adjusting for asthma severity and self-assessment of overall health status." In addition, "asthma and a previous history of depression...were significantly associated, with an odds ratio of 1.65 (95% CI 1.40 to 1.90, P<0.001)," researchers reported. Related Links:

— “Asthma Patients Often Depressed,”John Gever, MedPage Today, November 12, 2012.

Medwire (11/13, Cowen) reports, “Depressive episodes take significantly less time to develop in patients with bipolar disorder (BD) than in those with unipolar depression,” according to a studypublished Dec. 15 in the Journal of Affective Disorders. The “study of 24 BD patients and 122 with unipolar depression who were aged at least 18 years and treated for a depressive episode” revealed that “the duration of depressive episode onset among BD inpatients was slightly more than one week, compared with around one month in those with unipolar depression.”

Related Links:

— “Speed of depression onset increased in bipolar patients, “Mark Cowen, Medwire News, November 13, 2012.

The Los Angeles Times (11/11, Glover, Girion) reported that prescription medication overdoses “now claim more lives than heroin and cocaine combined, fueling a doubling of drug-related deaths in the United States over the last decade. Health and law enforcement officials seeking to curb the epidemic have focused on how OxyContin [oxycodone], Vicodin [acetaminophen and hydrocodone], Xanax [alprazolam] and other potent pain and anxiety medications are obtained illegally.” But authorities “have failed to recognize how often people overdose on medications prescribed for them by their doctors.” A Times investigation “has found that in nearly half of the accidental deaths from prescription drugs in four Southern California counties, the deceased had a doctor’s prescription for at least one drug that caused or contributed to the death.”

Related Links:

— “Legal drugs, deadly outcomes, “Scott Glover, Los Angeles Times, November 11, 2012.

HealthDay (11/11, Preidt) reports, “People with rheumatoid arthritis [RA] have higher-than-normal rates of depression, which could increase their risk of death, according to a new study” scheduled to be presented at the American College of Rheumatology annual meeting. Investigators followed 530 patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Altogether, the researchers found that patients who were depressed faced twice the risk of death during the study period compared to patients who were not depressed. The study found that “the risk of death among depressed men was twice that for depressed women.” Male patients “with depression were five times more likely to die than women without depression.”

Related Links:

— “Study: Rheumatoid Arthritis Plus Depression May Be Deadly, “Robert Preidt, Healthday, November 12, 2012.

In an op-ed for USA Today (11/12), Warren Kinghorn, MD, a psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Durham, NC, said veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are dealing with more than a medical problem. Kinghorn said VA and other healthcare systems “need adequate resources to provide medical and psychiatric care for returning combat veterans. But perhaps even more than good medical care, veterans need individuals and communities who will commit to walk patiently alongside them, allowing them to tell their stories if and when they are ready to do so, even when these stories are distressing or complex or unbearably sad.” Veterans, Kinghorn said, “need a civilian culture that refuses to distance itself from them either through reflexive condemnation or, more commonly, through reflexive valorization.”

Related Links:

— “Column: PTSD, the moral dimensions, “Warren Kinghorn, USA TODAY, November 11, 2012.