Healio (10/15, Demko) reports researchers found in an analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “that a 1% point increase in state-level depression diagnoses was tied to a 26% increase in opioid analgesic-related deaths.” The findings were published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology.

Related Links:

— “Strong link between depression rates, opioid-related deaths, “Savannah Demko, Healio, October 15, 2018.

Medscape (10/11, Davenport, Subscription Publication) reports on a study presented at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology Congress and published in Psychoneuroendocrinology finding that “childhood trauma, particularly sexual abuse, is more common in those with anxious depression and causes permanent biological changes that may explain poorer responses to standard treatment in this patient population.” The study included 144 “patients with major depressive disorder” and found “that those with anxious depression were almost twice as likely to have suffered sexual abuse in childhood and were 1.3 times more likely to have experienced emotional neglect than those with depression that was not accompanied by anxiety.”

Related Links:

— Medscape (requires login and subscription)

Reuters (10/11, Lehman) reports on a study published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice finding, “Women who have asthma during their pregnancies are more likely to experience postpartum depression.” The study included “the health histories of more than 35,000 pregnant women with asthma and almost 200,000 women without asthma who delivered babies in Quebec between 1998 and 2009.”

Related Links:

— “Asthma during pregnancy tied to postpartum depression risk, “Shereen Lehman, Reuters, October 11, 2018.

Newsweek (10/10, Gander) reports that researchers “have found a link between” atrial fibrillation “and the risk of developing dementia.” The findings were published in Neurology.

Reuters (10/10, Carroll) reports that the investigators “found that atrial fibrillation raises the overall risk of developing dementia by 40 percent and the risk of vascular and mixed dementias by nearly 90 percent.” However, people with atrial fibrillation “who got anti-clotting drugs were 60 percent less likely than those who didn’t get the drugs to develop dementia.”

Related Links:

— “Irregular heart beat tied to increased risk for dementia, “Linda Carroll, Reuter, October 10, 2018.

USA Today (10/5, O’Donnell) reported, “Medical professionals and researchers have long” examined how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) affect “lifelong mental health and addiction.” Currently, “awareness is growing of the link between childhood trauma on long-term physical health.” In fact, “the more ACEs a person suffers as a child – divorce, domestic violence, family members with addiction – the higher the risk of problems later in learning, mental and physical health, even early death.” Individuals “with ACEs are more likely to experience ‘toxic stress’ – repeated, extreme activation of their stress response.”

Related Links:

— “‘Toxic stress’ on children can harm their lifelong learning, mental and physical health, “Jayne O’Donnell, USA Today, October 5, 2018.