Antipsychotics and Teens

Over half a million US children, teens now taking antipsychotics, FDA report says.
On its front page, the New York Times (9/2, A1, Wilson) reports, "More than 500,000 children and adolescents in America are now taking" antipsychotics, "according to a September 2009 report by the Food and Drug Administration." Recently, another study "found a doubling of the rate of prescribing antipsychotic drugs for privately insured two- to five-year-olds from 2000 to 2007. Only 40 percent of them had received a proper mental health assessment, violating practice standards from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry." Many experts now believe that prescribing antipsychotics for young children may be risky for the development of both their bodies and their brains.
Mental health leads list of top 5 concerns at colleges. Under the headline "5 Big Health Issues On Campus," NPR (9/1, Wyckoff) reported on "what health concerns are topping the agenda now," according to college health officials and Dr. Al Glass, president of the American College Health Association. The issues, in order, are mental health, because "stress is a biggie," followed by sleep issues; the "perennial concern" of infectious diseases such as flu; exercise needs to prevent obesity, and alcohol abuse.

Teens and Substance Abuse

Teens from different ethnic groups may abuse substances for different reasons.
The CNN (8/30, Hellerman) "The Chart" blog reported that "teens of different ethnic groups use alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes for different reasons and educators should use different strategies to keep them clean," according to a new study funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The study, published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, "analyzed roughly 5,500 responses from seventh- and eighth-graders in Southern California to surveys that were distributed by researchers from the RAND Corporation." Hispanic "students were the most likely to report having tried alcohol, cigarettes, or marijuana," followed by "African-American students" and then Caucasians. The blog entry also noted that Asian-American students "were substantially less likely" to have tried any substance.

Embryonic Stem Cell News

NIH orders halt to its human embryonic stem cell research.
The Washington Post (8/31, Stein) reports at "The Checkup" blog, "The National Institutes of Health Monday ordered all of its researchers conducting research on human embryonic stem cells to immediately halt their experiments." Also noted is that "NIH Director Francis Collins announced last week that the ruling was forcing the agency to shelve any requests for new funding for the research from scientists at universities, colleges, research institutes and elsewhere around the country." At present, "the NIH has eight research projects that use human embryonic stem cells, as well as a unit that characterizes lines added to the NIH registry of approved cells." The decision is in response to "the recent preliminary injunction ordered by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in the matter of Sherley v. Sebelius."

Zoning Out

Zoning out, daydreaming may play key role in mental well-being.
The Los Angeles Times (8/30) reports, "Some scientists wonder whether unstructured mental time -- time to zone out and daydream -- might also play a key role in our mental well-being." Researchers now studying the brain's "default mode network" say that understanding it "may do more than lend respectability to the universal practice of zoning out: It may one day help diagnose and treat psychiatric conditions as diverse as Alzheimer's disease, autism, depression, and schizophrenia." Notably, brain scan studies have revealed that "the brain parts constituting the default mode network are uniquely vulnerable to the tangles, plaques and metabolic disturbances of Alzheimer's disease," indicating that default mode network is integral to people's sense of self.
Brain's default mode network may work differently in people with psychiatric disorders. In a related story, the Los Angeles Times (8/30, Healy) reports, "A series of studies published in recent years suggests that in people with depression, autism, schizophrenia, and post-traumatic stress disorder, the default mode network, that curious pattern of brain activity that ramps up when we daydream, works differently than it does in healthy control subjects." Interestingly, "in each condition, the malfunctions look slightly different, holding out the prospect of better psychiatric diagnoses down the line." For example, in people who are depressed, fMRI studies have "found the default mode network to be 'hot-wired' to brain regions that process emotions or help focus attention on demanding mental tasks and that connections over-fire or fire unreliably."

Breastfeeding and Type II Diabetes

Breastfeeding may lower a woman's lifetime risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
The Los Angeles Times (8/27, Roan) "Booster Shots" blog reported that, according to a study published in the Sept. issue of the American Journal of Medicine, "breastfeeding a newborn for even one month will lower a woman's lifetime risk of developing type 2 diabetes." After examining "data from 2,233 women in California's Kaiser Permanente healthcare system," researchers discovered that "27% of the mothers who did not breastfeed developed type 2 diabetes." What's more, "these women were almost twice as likely to develop the disease, compared with women who had breastfed or who had never given birth."
The study authors speculated that "breastfeeding helps moms lose the abdominal fat they gain during pregnancy more efficiently," Time (8/27, Park) reported. "While abdominal -- or visceral -- fat is important for the gestating baby's development, it can be detrimental to a mother's health if it continues to build after delivery, since it's been linked to greater risk of metabolic disorders such as insulin resistance and heart disease as well as diabetes."
According to MedPage Today (8/27, Fiore), lactation also "suppresses gonadotropin levels and has been associated with lower and slower responses to growth hormone."
WebMD (8/27, Doheny), and the Orlando Sentinel (827, Shrieves) "Vital Signs" blog also covered the story.
America's 2009 birth rate hits historical low. The Washington Post /AP (8/28, Marchione) reported that data from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics reveal that the "birth rate dropped for the second year in a row since the recession began in 2007." Specifically, the rate "fell to 13.5 births for every 1,000 people last year," which is "down from 14.3 in 2007 and way down from 30 in 1909." The "situation is a striking turnabout from 2007, when more babies were born in the United States than any other year in the nation's history."
According to Bloomberg News (8/27, Randall), "detailed data on mothers' ages in 2009 won't be available until next year and will give a greater indication of the link between the recession and the declining births in America, according to the CDC." The Washington Post (8/27, Stein) "The Checkup" blog also covered the story.
Testicular cancer may be linked with abnormal fetal development. Bloomberg News (8/30, Gale) reports, "Testicular cancer may be linked with abnormal fetal development," according to a paper in Human Reproduction. "Until now, it has been impossible to study testicular development during pregnancy in humans" but after developing a viable "model," UK scientists hope to eventually "understand the processes that can lead to the onset of testicular germ cell cancer in young adult life.

Emergency Room Expectations

Survey indicates 80% of patients expect to be attended to by physicians in EDs.
American Medical News (8/30, O'Reilly) reports, "Nurse practitioners and physician assistants account for at least 10% of outpatient visits and increasingly are being used to handle patient care in emergency departments." However, a new paper appearing in the American Journal of Bioethics reveals that "80% of patients expect to see a physician when they come to the ED." In addition, the "survey of 507 ED patients at three teaching hospitals in Pittsburgh and Dallas found that, even for a minor complaint such as a cold symptom, only 57% would agree to see a nurse practitioner and 53% would see a physician assistant." Respondents also "preferred to see a fully trained physician compared with a medical resident, but not by as wide a margin as their desire to avoid nonphysicians."

Medial Home and Family Practice

"Medical home" concept recasts primary-care practices.
NPR (8/26, Rovner) profiled the concept of the "medical home," an idea it says is "spreading around the nation" and involves changes in medical practice that range from where healthcare professionals are located in an office to the use of EMRs to profile patient populations' treatment and compliance on charts and graphs. NPR focused on Martin's Point, Maine, to describe how the "medical home" works. A key concept within the home "is to have everyone 'practicing at the top of their license' or doing what they are most trained to do," says physician Lisa Letourneau, who says another fundamental is "to hand off some of the less specialized -- and often time-consuming -- tasks to others."