MedPage Today (8/7, George) reported, “Hearing impairment was linked to neuropathological hallmarks of dementia,” investigators concluded after assessing data from “2,755 autopsied participants age 55 and older from the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center…database.” The study revealed that “in older adults who were cognitively normal, impaired hearing was associated with tau neurofibrillary degeneration,” while “in people with dementia, hearing loss was tied to microinfarcts but not to tau tangles.” The findings were published online in Neurology.

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— MedPage Today (requires login and subscription)

Medscape (8/7, Yasgur, Subscription Publication) reported, “Emergency department (ED) visits related to mental health conditions increased nearly twofold from 2007–2008 to 2015–2016,” researchers concluded after analyzing “data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS)” that “showed that over the 10-year study period, the proportion of ED visits for mental health diagnoses increased from 6.6% to 10.9%, with substance use accounting for much of the increase.” The findings were published online July 28 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

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— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

CNN (8/6, Thomas) reports the US has the most cases of SARS-CoV-2 and deaths from COVID-19. In addition, “the US population is also suffering more mental health consequences than people in other countries, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund released on Thursday.” Dr. David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund, said, “As our country struggles with the surging number of cases and the economic havoc that the pandemic is wreaking, people in other countries are living a different, better reality. Americans should realize that our country can do better, too.”

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— “Coronavirus stresses Americans more than others, study finds, “Naomi Thomas, CNN, August 6, 2020

Psychiatric News (8/6) reports, “The factors impacting adults’ feelings of loneliness change depending on their phase in life, suggesting there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ intervention to reduce loneliness,” investigators concluded after analyzing “data from the Adult Health Monitor Limburg 2016, a population-based health survey that monitors the self-reported health of adults in the Netherlands between the ages of 19 and 65.” Researchers “split the 26,342 adult participants into three groups: young (19 to 34 years), early middle-aged (35 to 49 years), and late middle-aged (50 to 65 years).” The findings were published online Aug. 6 in BMC Public Health.

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— “Adults May Require Different Interventions for Loneliness Depending on Age, Psychiatric News, August 6, 2020

STAT (8/5, Isselbacher) reports, “As [COVID-19] drives many patients away from in-person care and toward virtual visits, experts warn that the nation’s most vulnerable members may be shut out of … telehealth.” “A pair of new studies published this week show that there are barriers to virtual visits that regulatory changes alone can’t fix.” One “paper, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that 1 in 4 Medicare beneficiaries were stranded on the far side of the digital divide in 2018, with neither a home computer with a high-speed internet connection or a smartphone with a wireless plan.” Another study, also published in JAMA Internal Medicine, “looked at [2018] data from more than [4,500] Medicare beneficiaries over 65 who were part of a national dataset,” and “found that 20% of those individuals were ‘unready’ to use telemedicine services due to difficulty hearing, seeing, or communicating, in addition to dementia.”

Related Links:

— “Telemedicine is booming — but many people still face huge barriers to virtual care, “Juliet Isselbacher, STAT, August 5, 2020