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NEWS:
Pregnant Women With Obesity And Diabetes May Be More Likely To Have A Child With ADHD
Children of women with gestational diabetes and obesity may be twice as likely to develop attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) compared to those whose mothers did not have obesity, according to new research published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
The estimated number of children aged 3–17 years ever diagnosed with ADHD is 6 million, according to data from 2016-2019. A major risk factor for ADHD in children is maternal obesity. Roughly 30% of women have obesity at their first doctor’s visit during pregnancy, and this number increases to 47% in women with gestational diabetes. Excessive weight gain during pregnancy in this population is a risk factor for children developing ADHD.
“Our study found pregnant women with obesity and gestational diabetes had children with long-term mental health disorders such as ADHD,” said Verónica Pere
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Arterial Stiffness Raises Blood Pressure In Adolescents Via Insulin Resistance
In the young population, arterial stiffness, an emerging risk factor for hypertension, indirectly raises blood pressure via an increase in insulin resistance but not via an increase in body fat, a paper published in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine concludes.
There is a global effort aimed at screening, identification, and early diagnosis of hypertension in order to prevent this “silent killer disease” and its sequelae from early life. There remain missing gaps in knowledge on pathways through which blood pressure is raised even in normal-weight populations who are physically active and have healthy lifestyle choices.
It is well known that obesity increases the risk of hypertension. Researchers have recently shown that arterial stiffness, which has been established as a causal risk factor for hypertension in adults, is also implicated in the young population. Arterial stiffness may
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Sex Differences and AFib: New Study Flips Conventional Wisdom
Science has long shown that men are at greater risk for developing atrial fibrillation (AFib) than women; but it has never been fully understood why women would be protected from developing the condition. New research from the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai challenges this conventional wisdom by demonstrating that women--when height is accounted for--have a 50% higher risk of developing the abnormal heart rhythm disturbance when compared to men.
The novel findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Cardiology, suggest medical practitioners must remain vigilant in promoting AFib prevention--and early interventions--among both female and male patients.
"This is the first study to show an actual flip in the risk of atrial fibrillation," said Christine Albert, MD, MPH, chair of the Department of Cardiology in the Smidt Heart Institute and senior author of the JAMA Cardiol
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SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Levels Linked To Patient Outcomes
The amount of SARS-CoV-2 antigen measured in the blood of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 is associated with illness severity and other clinical outcomes, according to a new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Following the ACTIV-3 trial of COVID-19 therapeutics in people hospitalized with COVID-19, researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and their collaborators analyzed levels of SARS-COV-2 antigen in blood samples taken from study participants and assessed the association of those levels with disease progression. Higher levels of viral antigen in the blood, which could indicate ongoing SARS-CoV-2 replication, correlated with more severe disease. The authors suggest that SARS-CoV-2 antigen levels hold promise as a biomarker, or a measurable substance, to predict which patients hosp
