The New York Times (5/4, Baumgaertner ) reported, “Thanks to advancements in medicine and insurance, mortality rates for children in the United States had been shrinking for decades. But last year, researchers uncovered a worrisome reversal: The child death rate was rising.” Now, “a new study, published Saturday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, revealed growing disparities in child death rates across racial and ethnic groups.” Specifically, “Black and Native American youths ages 1 to 19 died at significantly higher rates than white youths – predominantly from injuries such as car accidents, homicides and suicides.”

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— “The New York Times (requires login and subscription)

CNN (5/4, McPhillips ) reported, “Deaths from drug overdoses and firearm-related injuries have reached record levels in the United States in recent years, and it’s created a ‘double burden’ for children who face an increased risk of losing their parents and of dying themselves, according to the authors of a new study” published in JAMA. Over “1 million children have lost a parent to a fatal drug overdose or gun violence over the past two decades, according to the study, published Saturday…and the burden has increased significantly over time.” Almost “100,000 children lost parents to a drug overdose or gun violence in 2020 alone – almost three times more than in 1999, the study found. These two causes of death accounted for 23% of all parental loss in 2020, nearly double the share from 1999.”

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— “Nearly 100,000 children in the US lost a parent to a drug overdose or gun violence in 2020, study finds,”Deidre McPhillips, CNN, May 4, 2024

Psychiatric News (5/3) reports, “There is still not enough evidence to support the use of pharmacogenetic tests in the treatment of depression, according to updated recommendations from APA’s Workgroup on Biomarkers and Novel Treatments.” For the recommendations published in AJP in Advance, “the workgroup examined data from 11 pharmacogenetic clinical trials conducted between 2017 and 2022, as well as six meta-analyses that combined individual results.” Workgroup members wrote in the updated recommendations, “Despite expert opinions, warnings, and policy statements regarding their limitations for predicting antidepressant treatment response, the popularity of [pharmacogenetic] testing products has grown, with at least 35 U.S. commercial entities providing them by 2020.”

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— “Evidence Base for Pharmacogenetic Tests Still Lacking, APA Workgroup Finds, Psychiatric News, May 3, 2024

Medscape (5/3, Bender, Subscription Publication) reports, “Serious mental illness (SMI), including bipolar disorder or schizophrenia spectrum disorders, is associated with a twofold increased risk for comorbid physical illness, results of a new meta-analysis showed.” Researchers “conducted a meta-analysis of 82 observational studies comprising 1.6 million individuals with SMI and 13.2 million control subjects to determine the risk for physical or psychiatric multimorbidity.”The results were published in The Lancet Psychiatry.

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— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

The New York Times (5/2, Philipps) reports that a “120-millimeter heavy mortar…unleashes enough explosive force to hurl a 31-pound bomb four miles,” and “the heads of the soldiers who fire it are just inches from the blast.” Yet, “the military says that those blasts are not powerful enough to cause brain injuries.” Meanwhile, “soldiers say that the Army is not seeing the evidence sitting in its own hospital waiting rooms.” In more than two dozen interviews, the Times found that “soldiers who served at different bases and in different eras said that over the course of firing thousands of mortar rounds in training, they developed symptoms that match those of traumatic brain injury, including headaches, insomnia, confusion, frayed memory, bad balance, racing hearts, paranoia, depression and random eruptions of rage or tears.” However, nothing was reported.

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— “The New York Times (requires login and subscription)