NBC News (11/30, Cox) reports, “Side effects are a key reason people choose to go off their medication, but stopping the drugs can also lead to withdrawal symptoms, research indicates. Along with the growing awareness, a deprescribing movement is building up in the field of psychiatry, aimed at helping patients reduce or stop their medications when no longer considered necessary.” A study published in Psychiatry Research “found that serious withdrawal effects may be more common than previously suspected, especially with longer-term use, although the study was small with just 18% of participants responding to the survey. The results showed that among people who had been taking antidepressants for more than two years, 63% reported moderate or severe withdrawal effects, with a third describing withdrawal issues that lasted more than three months.”

Related Links:

— “Doctors seek to understand why quitting antidepressants causes withdrawal for some,”David Cox, NBC News, November 30, 2025

Healio (11/25, Monostra) reports a study suggests that “women who have thyroid dysfunction both before and during pregnancy may have increased risk for having a child diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.” Researchers observed that “women who had both chronic and gestational thyroid dysfunction had higher risk for offspring with autism spectrum disorder than women with normal thyroid function. Similarly, women with both chronic and gestational hypothyroidism had increased risk for children with autism spectrum disorder than women with normal thyroid function.” They noted that “each additional trimester of thyroid dysfunction during pregnancy raised the risk for offspring with autism spectrum disorder for women with gestational hypothyroidism only and those with both chronic and gestational hypothyroidism. The risk for having offspring with autism spectrum disorder was highest among women who had gestational hypothyroidism through all three trimesters of pregnancy.” The study was published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Related Links:

— “Thyroid dysfunction during pregnancy linked to higher autism risk for offspring,”Michael Monostra, Healio, November 25, 2025

NBC News (11/25, Bush) reports researchers say that for the first time they have “identified four distinct turning points between…phases in an average brain: at ages 9, 32, 66 and 83. During each epoch between those years, our brains show markedly different characteristics in brain architecture, they say.” The study results, “published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, suggest that human cognition does not simply increase with age until a peak, then decline. In fact, the phase from ages 9 to 32 is the only time in life when our neural networks are becoming increasingly efficient, according to the research.” They observed that “during the adulthood phase, from 32 to 66, the average person’s brain architecture essentially stabilizes without major changes, at a time when researchers think people are generally plateauing in intelligence and personality. And in the years after the last turning point – 83 and beyond – the brain becomes increasingly reliant on individual regions as connections between them begin to wither away.”

Related Links:

— “Human brains have 5 distinct ‘epochs’ in a lifetime, study finds,”Evan Bush, NBC News, November 25, 2025

The AP (11/25, Ungar) reports researchers estimate that cannabis use disorder “affects about 3 in 10 pot users and can be mild, moderate or severe.” While experts agree that “it’s an addiction – despite the common misconception” that it is not possible with marijuana – few people “who are addicted seek help for it.” A study published in Substance Use & Misuse earlier this year found that “the share of people who got treatment for cannabis use disorder from their nationally representative sample dropped from 19% in 2003 to 13% in 2019.” An earlier study “also found a marked decline and pointed to reasons that include ‘expanding cannabis legalization and more tolerant attitudes.’ Experts said people need to be educated that pot, like alcohol, can be misused and can cause real harm.”

Related Links:

— “More people are addicted to marijuana, but fewer of them are seeking help, experts say,”Laura Ungar , AP , November 25, 2025

MedPage Today (11/24, Rudd) reports, “Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination slashed cervical cancer incidence, reduced the risk of precancerous lesions and anogenital warts, and did so without increasing serious side effects, according to two large meta-analyses.” In a “meta-analysis of 225 observational studies with more than 132 million people, females ages 16 years or younger who received HPV vaccines were 80% less likely than their unvaccinated counterparts to develop cervical cancer (RR 0.20, 95% CI 0.09-0.44).” The other meta-analysis, which “included 60 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with 157,414 participants,” found that “in females ages 15-25 years, vaccination was linked to a 30% reduction in CIN2+ after 6 years regardless of HPV type (RR 0.70, 95% CI 0.56-0.88),” while “CIN2+ risk from vaccine-matched HPV types fell 60% after 6 years (RR 0.40, 95% CI 0.30-0.54).” The findings were published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

Related Links:

— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)