MedPage Today (5/3, Gever) reports, “Draft revisions to the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) influential diagnostic manual are again open for public comment, the group announced Wednesday” in a press release (pdf). “This is the last opportunity for the general public to provide input on the fifth edition of the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5, before it is put into essentially final form at the end of this year. The formal release is slated for May 2013.” The APA is seeking public comment through June 15. The latest draft of the document and further information about it can be seen here.

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— “Input Sought Again on DSM-5,”John Gever, Medpage Today, May 2, 2012.

The Washington Times (5/3, Hill) reports, “Gov. Martin O’Malley signed bills into law on Wednesday, including legislation that will limit use of septic systems and double the state’s so-called ‘flush tax,'” which “were among several notable pieces of environmental legislation.” In addition, he “signed a bill allowing the state to set up a health benefits exchange where residents and small businesses can buy benefits from private insurers in accordance with the US Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”

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— “Environmental, health insurance bills become Md. law,”David Hill , The Washington Times, May 2, 2012.

Reuters (5/2, Pittman) reports that an analysis published May 2 in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates that many clinical trials testing medications and devices are small and the quality is not consistent.

MedPage Today (5/2, Smith) reports that investigators analyzed “the more than 95,000 studies registered since 2004” in the ClinicalTrials.gov database. The researchers found “that the database is dominated by small studies, many conducted at a single center, with significant differences that would make them hard to compare.” The investigators, “for much of the analysis…concentrated on interventional trials in three areas — oncology, cardiology, and mental illness — that included a total of 79,413 studies.”

HealthDay (5/2, Dotinga) reports that altogether, “seven percent of the studies didn’t bother to mention their purpose, while others failed to provide other important details.” The researchers found that “62 percent of the trials from 2007-2010 were small, with 100 or fewer participants.” Just “four percent had more than 1,000 participants.”

Medscape (5/2, Brown) reports, “Mental health trials were more likely than cardiovascular and oncology trials to report use of” data monitoring committees. The researchers found that “oncology trials were least likely to use randomization (64.7% didn’t use randomization, vs 26.2% for cardiovascular trials and 20.8% for mental health trials), and 87.6% of oncology trials were not blinded.”

Related Links:

— “Drug and device trials vary in size, quality: study,”Genevra Pittman , Reuters, May 01, 2012.

On the front of its Science Times section, the New York Times (5/1, D1, Louis, Subscription Publication) reports, “The frequent prescription of narcotics in emergency departments for dental pain has been quantified for the first time by research financed by the National Institutes of Health, bringing to light another way opioids get into circulation and contribute to the rampant abuse of painkillers in the United States.” The research indicates that “from 1997 to 2007, painkillers were prescribed in three of four visits to the emergency department for dental complaints; roughly half of visits resulted in a prescription for antibiotics.” During “that period, the number of painkiller prescriptions for dental patients in emergency departments rose 26 percent, and antibiotic prescriptions jumped 41 percent, according to the report, published online in January in the journal Medical Care.”

Related Links:

— “E.R. Doctors Face Quandary on Painkillers,”Catherine Saint Louis , The New York Times, April 30, 2012.

Reuters (5/1, Seaman) reports that women who undergo a hysterectomy that plunges them into immediate surgical menopause are no more likely to experience depression or anxiety than women who go through menopause naturally over a number of years, according to a study published in the May issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology. Researchers arrived at that conclusion after examining data on some 2,000 women in middle-age and following them for about a decade.

Related Links:

— “Hysterectomy not tied to greater depression risk,”Andrew M. Seaman , Reuters, April 30, 2012.