"Health & Medical News"

Rates of post-storm addiction and mental-health problems among Hurricane Katrina and Rita survivors can be directly correlated to how long they were displaced from their homes, according to new research from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

The study found that while most survivors displayed great resiliency after the storms, the rate of addiction and mental-health programs was much higher among those who had been forced from their homes for two weeks or more.

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Up to 1% of autism cases may be blamed on too much or too little of a particular strand of an estimated 25 genes on chromosome 16, according to a pair of recent papers. Understanding how this creates the developmental disorder eventually may lead to improved treatment of autistic children, including those who don’t carry these mutations.

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Youths and young adults who experienced a major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year are more likely to have also used alcohol or illicit drugs for the first time in the past year, according to a recent analysis of data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).

Among youths ages 12 to 17 who had not previously used alcohol, those who had experienced a past year MDE were nearly twice as likely to have used alcohol for the first time in the past year as those who did not experience a MDE. Likewise, youths who experienced a MDE in the past year were more than twice as likely to initiate illicit drug use.

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In an effort to crack down on establishments that may serve drinks to already intoxicated customers, New Jersey is instructing police officers to ask motorists they stop on suspicion of drunk driving where they consumed their last drink, USA Today reported on Nov. 27.

Police then send the information to the New Jersey Alcoholic Beverage Control Agency, who are sending investigators to the establishments most frequently cited by drivers as the location of their last drink.? 

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Youths and young adults who binge on alcohol raise their risk of developing myriad serious health problems later in life, including heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes, Newswise reported Nov. 20.

Researcher Marcia Russell of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) found that not only did young binge drinkers face more health risks as they age than moderate drinkers and those who start drinking later, the risk is independent of total alcohol consumed over a lifetime.

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Doctors now can share their views on American Medical News articles with thousands of their colleagues on Sermo, an online community for physicians only.

Current and recent articles in the American Medical News online edition — amednews.com — carry links that instantly connect readers to the free Sermo site (www.sermo.com). Established Sermo member physicians then need only log in. First-time physician users can access the Sermo community after a simple registration procedure, taking about two minutes, that includes verification of their MD or DO degree.

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More than 50 percent of the current asthma cases in the U.S. are the result of allergies, especially to cats, according to a new National Institutues of Health (NIH) study

Coping with cat allergies
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New results from a substudy of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Estrogen-Alone Trial show that younger postmenopausal women who take estrogen-alone hormone therapy have significantly less buildup of calcium plaque in their arteries compared to their peers who did not take hormone therapy. Coronary artery calcium is considered a marker for future risk of coronary artery disease.

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