Reuters (6/28, Rapaport) reports that research suggests individuals “with heart disease are at risk of dying sooner when they suffer from chronic depression and anxiety.” Investigators looked at “data on 950 people in Australia and New Zealand with stable coronary artery disease.” Approximately “four percent of participants reported regularly suffering from moderate or severe psychological distress over the first four years of the study, and they were” about “four times more likely to die of heart disease and almost three times more likely to die from any cause during the next 12 years compared to people with no distress.” The findings were published online June 26 in the journal Heart.

Related Links:

— “Mental distress tied to higher odds of early death for heart patients,” Lisa Rapaport, Reuters, June 28, 2017.

STAT (6/27, Blau) reports that opioids could “kill nearly half a million people across America over the next decade as the crisis of addiction and overdose accelerates,” according to an expert panel assembled by STAT. According to the experts’ “worst-case scenario,” the death toll due to opioids “could spike to 250 deaths a day, if potent synthetic opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil continue to spread rapidly and the waits for treatment continue to stretch weeks in hard-hit states like West Virginia and New Hampshire.” The projections are based upon expert analysis and “a review of presentations from top Trump administration health officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, and the acting chiefs of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Related Links:

— “STAT forecast: Opioids could kill nearly 500,000 Americans in the next decade,” MAX BLAU, STAT, June 27, 2017.

STAT (6/26, Caruso) reports that over half of all prescriptions for opioid pain medications in the US “are written for people with anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders,” according to a study [pdf] published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. According to the study, 19 percent “of the 38.6 million Americans with mood disorders use prescription opioids, compared to 5 percent of the general population — a difference that remained even when the researchers controlled for factors such as physical health, level of pain, age, sex and race.”

Kaiser Health News (6/26, Connor) reports that patients with mental health disorders are particularly vulnerable to developing addiction to opioid pain medications. One of the study’s authors “suggested that physicians consider using different criteria when prescribing opioids for people with mental illness.”

Related Links:

— “51 percent of opioid prescriptions go to people with depression and other mood disorders,” CATHERINE CARUSO, STAT, June 26, 2017.

TIME (6/26, MacMillan) reports a study published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease found “people who did more moderate-intensity physical activity were more likely to have healthy patterns of glucose metabolism in their brains—a sign of healthy brain activity—than those who did less.” The authors found large doses of high-intensity exercise may be needed to offer the benefits of “a modest increase” in moderate activity, “suggesting that you don’t have to exercise to the extreme to get brain benefits.” Lead author Ozioma Okonkwo, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Public, says, in general, the evidence suggests that “light activity is insufficient, and vigorous activity might be unnecessary.”

Related Links:

— “How Exercise May Protect the Brain From Alzheimer’s Disease,” Amanda MacMillan, Time, June ,26 2017.

In “Well,” The New York Times (6/26, Brody, Subscription Publication) reports that symptoms of anxiety or depression can “masquerade as an as-yet undiagnosed physical disorder.” Psychiatric Times recently published a “partial listing” of 47 medical illnesses that may first present as anxiety and a “partial listing” of 30 categories of medications that could cause anxiety, including antidepressants like SSRIs. The lists were included in an article “meant to alert mental health practitioners to the possibility that some patients seeking treatment for anxiety or depression may have an underlying medical condition that must be addressed before any emotional symptoms are likely to resolve.”

Related Links:

— “When Anxiety or Depression Masks a Medical Problem,” JANE E. BRODY, New York Times, June 26, 2017.