MedPage Today (3/11, George) reported, “Peripheral nerve impairments in older adults were tied to a higher risk of subsequent dementia,” investigators concluded after examining “data on 2,174 people who were 70 to 79 years old and dementia-free when they enrolled in the National Institute on Aging’s Health ABC study.” Research revealed that “combined sensory and motor impairments in the lower leg doubled the risk of subsequent dementia…compared with people who had no leg impairments,” while “sensory nerve impairments alone were associated with a 1.4 times higher dementia risk.” The findings were published online in the journal Neurology.

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Psychiatric News (3/11) reported, “Older patients who survive severe COVID-19 have a much higher risk of cognitive decline compared with their peers who do not get COVID-19,” researchers posited after analyzing “data from 1,438 COVID-19 survivors older than 60 years who were discharged from three COVID-19–designated hospitals in Wuhan, China, from February 10 to April 10, 2020, including 260 who had severe illness and 1,178 who had nonsevere illness.” Serving as controls were “438 uninfected spouses of infected patients.” The findings were published online March 8 in JAMA Neurology.

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— “COVID-19 Raises Risk of Cognitive Decline in Older Patients, Study Finds, Psychiatric News, March 11, 2022

The Hill (3/10, Weixel) reports that in 2021, “about 2.55 million combined U.S. middle and high school students” reported current use of tobacco products, “according to the government’s National Youth Tobacco Survey.” The findingspublished in the CDC’s Morbidity and Morality Weekly Report found that “more than 5 million high school students, and more than 1 million middle schoolers reported using tobacco products at any time in 2021, and the majority of students said they received the product from a friend.” The figures “are down considerably from the 4.47 million tobacco users in 2020.”

CNN (3/10, Nedelman) reports, “Students identifying as LGBT more frequently reported current use of tobacco products: about 14% of lesbian, gay and bisexual students and about 19% of transgender students.” The “numbers were also higher among students experiencing severe psychological distress: 14.2% versus 5.5% among those reporting no distress.”

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— “CDC: 2.5M middle and high school students used tobacco products last year “Nathaniel Weixel, The Hill, March 10, 2022

Psychiatric News (3/10) reports, “At age 45, people who reported using cannabis weekly or more frequently over the past year showed greater cognitive decline than those who never used cannabis,” investigators concluded after having “analyzed data from the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, a birth cohort of participants (93% white) born between April 1972 and March 1973 in Dunedin, New Zealand.” Each participant was “assessed regularly starting at age three until age 45.” The findings were published online March 8 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, a publication of the American Psychiatric Association.

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— “Long-Term Cannabis Use Associated With Cognitive Deficits in Midlife, Psychiatric News, March 10, 2022

Healio (3/10, Herpen) reports, “Postpartum unwanted intrusive thoughts based on intentional infant-related harm or obsessive-compulsive disorder [OCD] were not associated with elevated risk of harm to infants,” investigators concluded in a study that “drew from a prospective, province-wide sample of 763 English-speaking women who had just given birth and were aged 19 years and older,” to which “a total of 388 participants responded.” The findings were published online in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Related Links:

— “Postpartum thoughts of infant-related harm, OCD unrelated to risk of maternal aggression “Robert Herpen, Healio, March 10, 2022