MedPage Today (4/20, D’Ambrosio) reports, “Gun-related deaths increased significantly among children and adolescents in 2020, becoming the leading cause of mortality among youth, researchers said.” According to the researchers, “the crude rate of firearm-related deaths among individuals ages 1 to 19 years increased by 13.5% from 2019 to 2020, surpassing motor vehicle-related deaths for the first time since 1999.” The findings published in The New England Journal of Medicine also revealed “drug overdoses and poisonings increased by 83.6% among children and adolescents, making it the third leading cause of death for this group.”

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Healio (4/20, Marabito) reports, “Adults with a history of abuse contacted their general practitioner 1.5 times more often than those without a history of abuse,” researchers concluded in a survey study that analyzed responses from “11,140 patients…among whom 1,271 indicated a history of abuse.” The findings were published online April 5 in the European Journal of General Practice.

Related Links:

— “Adults with a history of abuse more likely to seek care from general practitioner “Maria Marabito, Healio, April 20, 2022

Healio (4/20, Herpen) reports, “Communities with greater social vulnerability did not have greater geographic access to medication for opioid use disorder [OUD],” researchers concluded in a “cross-sectional geospatial analysis of more than 198 million individuals between the ages 18 and 64 years, within 32,432 U.S. ZIP code tabulation areas.” The findings were published online April 19 in JAMA Network Open.

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— “Communities with greater social vulnerability lack geographic access to opioid medication “Robert Herpen, Healio, April 20, 2022

Psychiatric News (4/20) reports, “Nearly a third of patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP) had recovered at 10-year follow-up based on a standard clinical definition of recovery,” researchers concluded in a study using “a standard clinical definition of recovery focusing on remission of psychotic symptoms and adequate functioning to evaluate 142 patients” who “were recruited for the Thematically Organized Psychosis” study, as well as 117 healthy controls. Investigators also found that “recovery rates were higher still among FEP patients who had been diagnosed with bipolar spectrum disorder, with 50% meeting the criteria for recovery.” The findings were published online April 14 in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin.

Related Links:

— “Study Examines Patient Recovery 10 Years After First-Episode Psychosis, Psychiatric News, April 20, 2022

The New York Times (4/19, Mueller) reports, “Unvaccinated children from 5 to 11 years old were hospitalized with COVID at twice the rate of vaccinated children during the winter Omicron variant surge, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Tuesday.” Furthermore, the study, “based on data from hospitals serving about 10% of the U.S. population across 14 states, also offered some of the strongest evidence to date that racial disparities in childhood vaccination might be leaving Black children more exposed to severe illness from COVID.”
Reuters (4/19, Khandekar) reports the study found that “for every 100,000 unvaccinated children in the age group, 19.1 per were hospitalized with COVID-19 between mid-December and late February, compared with 9.2 per 100,000 vaccinated kids.”

Related Links:

— “Omicron Was More Severe for Unvaccinated Children in 5-to-11 Age Group, Study Shows ” Benjamin Mueller, The New York Times, April 19, 2022