6% of individuals ages sixty-five and older are deficient in vitamin B-12 and 20% experience marginal depletion. It makes sense then that older people should include vitamin B in their supplement regiment. According to a study published in the August issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, boosting intake of two B vitamins may actually help to stave off depression in older people as well. The study followed 3,000 individuals ages 65 and over and found that increasing levels of vitamin B-6 and B-12 was associated with a slight reduction in risk for depression (P=0.01 and P=0.05, respectively) during following-up extending to 12 years. “In the assessment and treatment of depressive symptoms in older adults, clinicians and other healthcare professionals should be mindful of the patient’s nutritional status in general, and whether there are vitamin insufficiencies in these nutrients before treatment,” Kimberly A. Skarupski, MD, of Rush University in Chicago, and colleagues, wrote. Click here to read an article from Pharmacy News that discusses this study more.

Depression among men with hemophilia is significantly higher than general populations. According to Alison Stopeck, MD, Director of the Arizona Hemophilia Treatment Center, in Tucson, 37% of men treated at her facility between September 2008 and April 2010 were diagnosed with a history of depression compared to 4% of men in the general population. This rate is similar to rates of depression among people who suffer other chronic diseases, approximately 33%. Among patients with hemophilia, 20% were diagnosed with mild depression, 11% with moderate depression, and 5% with severe depression. Stopeck explained during her poster presentation at the Hemophilia 2010 World Congress, “The biggest risk factors for depression among men with hemophilia appear to be the absence of social support and/or lack of employment.” About 11% of patients in the study that mentioned a lack of social support were diagnosed with depression. Click here to read an article from Medpage Today that discusses this study more.

Children and late adolescents/early adults that spend more than three hours a day watching TV or playing video games via a console or computer are significantly more likely to have attention problems. The 13 month study composed of 1,323 participants found similar effects on attention span in children ages 6-12 and young adults ages 18-24. The cohort, interestingly, was composed of an equal numbers of male and female participants. 3.86 hours in front of the screen among the middle childhood cohort was associated with an odds ratio for developing attention problems of 1.81 (95% CI, 1.56 to 2.11). Among adolescents that spent a total of 4.36 hours in front of the screen, the odds ratio for attention problems was 2.04 (95% CI, 1.45 to 2.88). Edward Swing, MS, of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, and colleagues, mentioned that the results would suggest that limiting television and video games to less than a collective 2 hours per day would decrease the associated lessening of attention span in these groups. Click here to read an article from The Examiner that discusses this study more.

In 2006 several major food companies vowed to stop marketing unhealthy foods directly to children, this after a tremendous amount of public pressure as part of an effort to decrease child obesity. According to findings reported online in the July issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, these efforts may have now paid off. The study, which analyzed TV ratings in 2003, 2005 and 2007, found that children ages 2 to 5 years old saw 21.9% to 41% less TV advertising for snacks, sodas and other sugary drinks, cereals and candies by 2007. Similar decreases in adverting were seen in some categories among adolescents. Cola ads saw a 26.6% decrease among adolescents and a 30% decrease among 2 to 11 year olds from 2003 to 2007. According to Lisa M. Powell, PhD, of the University of Illinois in Chicago, and colleagues, “A number of positive changes have occurred in children’s exposure to food advertising… but children still see plenty of television advertisements that promote unhealthy eating habits.” Click here to read an article from the Los Angeles Times that discusses this study more.

A report from the CDC, resulting from what may be their first formal investigation into the under-reported public health problem of club drugs, has found that use of the hallucinogenic ecstasy is on the rise. The investigation found that after a Los Angeles New Year’s Eve rave 18 patients received emergency hospitalization due to an overdoes of the street drug. Another 24 year-old-man who was previously in good health was found dead in his home 12 hours after the rave. A second cluster of events occurred less than six months later in the San Francisco Bay Area in which 8 people were hospitalized and two died from ecstasy after a rave. Police had suspected that these drugs were tainted causing the deaths; however, an examination of the pills found no contamination indicating that the drugs themselves are extremely volatile. “This conclusion is supported, in part, by the lack of a common description of the ecstasy tablets ingested by patients and the finding of MDMA, but no known toxic contaminants, in the ecstasy tablet from one of the patients,” they wrote. Click here to read an article from Medpage Today that discusses this study more.

Many studies have associated physical activity with lessened chances of cognitive impairment during late life. A new study focusing on women has found that physical activity as a teenager is more highly associated with a lessened risk of late life cognitive impairment than at any other age. The study found that physical activity in women measured at age 30, age 50, and after age 65 significantly lowered the odds of impaired cognition later in life as well as during the teenage years. Laura Middleton, PhD, of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, in Toronto, and colleagues concluded that women should be encouraged to exercise throughout life as a deterrent to impaired cognition and that this encouragement should begin at an early age. Middleton stressed, “if we’re going to have exercise interventions to reduce the risk of dementia… it might be most important to target those people who have been inactive lifelong.” Click here to read an article from Medpage Today that discusses this study more.