HealthDay (6/29, Doheny) reports that a new study appearing in Social Science & Medicine finds that “the more work-related stress parents experience, the more likely their children are to eat unhealthy meals.” According to HealthDay, the researchers found that “those mothers employed full time had fewer meals as a family, served more fast-food meals and encouraged their teens to eat healthy less often… The fathers’ only difference by employment status was that full-time workers had fewer hours of food preparation than those who worked part time or were not employed.”

Related Links:

— “Job Worries for Parents May Mean Poorer Nutrition for Kids, “Kathleen Doheny, HealthDay, June 28, 2012.

Medscape (6/29, Lowry) reports, “Good physical fitness at age 18 years is associated with a reduced risk for serious depression later in life,” according to a study involving some 1.1 million men in Sweden that was published online June 14 in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Notably, “after controlling for factors that included body mass index, conscription test center, and familial factors, the hazard ratio (HR) associated with lower cardiovascular [CV] fitness at age 18 for serious depression in adulthood was 1.96 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.71 – 2.23).” However, “there was no such association found for bipolar disorder (HR, 1.11; 95% CI, 0.84 – 1.47).”

The UK’s Telegraph (6/28, Adams) reports, “Researchers have discovered that teenagers who are ostracised at school are more likely to be at risk of developing heart disease and diabetes when they enter middle age.” And “girls appear much more susceptible to the ruthless social world of adolescence than boys, according to the Swedish study, which followed almost 900 students in the north of the country from 16 to 43.” It was published in the journal PLoS One. “The academics, from the universities of Umea and Stockholm, found those who had the worst time at school socially – being bullied, cast out orf isolating themselves – tended to be at the highest risk of poor health by their early 40s.”

Related Links:

— “Bullied girls ‘suffer poorer health in middle age’, “Stephen Adams, The Telegraph, June 28, 2012.

MedWire (6/28, Cowen) reports, “Results from a US study show that more than half of patients with bipolar disorder (BD) have a significant burden of comorbid medical illnesses.” The 264-patient study revealed that “medical comorbidity most commonly affected the musculoskeletal/integumentary (33%), the respiratory (27%), and the endocrinologic/metabolic (25%) systems, and the most common individual conditions were migraine (25%), history of head trauma with loss of consciousness (19%), and hypertension (16%).” In addition, investigators “found that 31% (n=87) of patients were overweight, with a body mass index (BMI) of 25.0-29.9 kg/m2, and 38% (n=105) were obese, with a BMI of more than 30.0 kg/m2.” The findings were presented earlier this month at the annual meeting of the New Clinical Drug Evaluation Unit in Phoenix, Arizona.

Related Links:

— “High medical illness rates in bipolar disorder, “Mark Cowen, MedWire News, June 28, 2012.

Reuters (6/28, Norton) reports that according to a study published online Jun3 13 in the journal Fertility and Sterility, women who undergo unsuccessful attempts to have a baby through in vitro fertilization (IVF) may be at increased risk for depression or a clinical anxiety disorder in the months immediately following the failed procedure. A second study also appearing online June 13 in the same journal found that women who were anxious and depressed while trying to conceive through natural methods appeared to have about the same chances of becoming pregnant naturally as their less stressed and depressed peers.

Related Links:

— “Failed IVF attempt tied to depression, anxiety, “Amy Norton, Reuters, June 27, 2012.