The CBS Evening News (3/14, story 10, 1:35, Glor) reported, “A new study out today finds women who are physically fit may be 90 percent less likely to develop dementia.” According to medical contributor Dr. Tara Narula explained that researchers following women in their 40s found that, after testing for fitness levels and the rates of dementia over a period of nearly 40 years, women with the highest levels of fitness “on average developed dementia at a rate of about five percent.”

USA Today (3/14, Weintraub) reports that the study published online March 14 in Neurology revealed that “the few highly fit women who did develop dementia became symptomatic at age 90 on average, 11 years later than the moderately fit,” the study found.

TIME (3/14, Park) reports that in contrast, “women with lower fitness had a 41% higher risk of developing dementia than women with average fitness.” The study “involved nearly 1,500 women in Sweden who provided information on their physical activity levels and took cognitive tests for up to 44 years.”

Also covering the study are HealthDay (3/14, Gordon) and Healio (3/14, Demko).

Related Links:

— “‘Highly fit’ middle-age women nearly 90% less likely to develop dementia decades later, study finds,” Karen Weintraub, USA Today, March 14, 2018.

CNN (3/13, Christensen) reports on its website that from 1980 to 2014, “2.84 million Americans died of alcohol, drugs, suicide, domestic violence or abuse, according to a study published Tuesday in the medical journal JAMA,” indicating a more than six-fold increase. More than half a million people died from “drug use disorders” and while “the rates of death varied widely, with increases between 8.2% and 8,369.7%, drug deaths were up in nearly every single county in the United States,” CNN reports.

Related Links:

— “Drug deaths rose 8,370% in some US counties over 34 years,” Jen Christensen, CNN, March 13, 2018.

According to CNN (3/12, Lamotte), researchpublished online March 12 in JAMA Neurology “shows that excessive daytime sleepiness in cognitively normal elderly leads to a buildup of a plaque in the brain called amyloid.” CNN explains, “Depositing amyloid in brain tissue is the first known preclinical stage of Alzheimer’s and happens well before any obvious symptoms of dementia” can be seen.

TIME (3/12, Park) reports that in arriving at these findings, investigators “took advantage of a long-running study of nearly 3,000 older people in the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging.” Next, the study authors “selected 283 people without dementia who were over 70, who answered questions about their sleep habits and agreed to have several brain scans for amyloid over the seven-year study period.”

HealthDay (3/12, Reinberg) reports that after comparing “the scans in search of changes in the brain,” investigators “found increased beta-amyloids in key brain areas in participants who reported being very sleepy during the day.”

Healio (3/12, Demko) reports the authors of an accompanying editorial wrote that “at present, maintaining healthy sleep and treating clinical sleep disorders must be a current priority for mental health in older adults.”

Related Links:

— “Daytime drowsiness increases risk of Alzheimer’s in elderly, study says,” Sandee LaMotte, CNN, March 12, 2018.

HealthDay (3/12, Thompson) reports that “teenagers with any mental health problem are more prone to painkiller dependence after receiving a prescription opioid,” according to a new study published online in JAMA Pediatrics.

MedPage Today (3/12, Walker) also reports.

Related Links:

— “Certain Teens More Likely to Get Hooked on Opioids,” Dennis Thompson, HealthDay, March 12, 2018.

The NPR (3/9, Raphelson) “Here & Now Compass” blog reported that the “lack of federal funding for mental health services may be to blame” for the “growing shortage of psychiatrists across the US.” President Trump’s “2019 budget proposal doesn’t devote much funding” to mental healthcare. What’s more, “the federal government, which funds medical residency programs, put a cap on them under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997,” making it much harder to train psychiatrists to deal with a “growing and aging” population. Now, some “mental health advocates are urging Congress to act on legislation to expand medical residency training programs as a method of dealing with this crisis.”

Related Links:

— “Severe Shortage Of Psychiatrists Exacerbated By Lack Of Federal Funding,” SAMANTHA RAPHELSON, NPR, March 9, 2018.