Health & Medicine
Health Watch: Help Mom, Help Child
There may be a new way to relieve childhood depression: Treat moms. In a study published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from all over the country found that alleviating a mother's depression eased her child's depression, anxiety, or behavior disorder and helped keep healthy kids healthy. In the group of children whose mothers improved, four out of 12 with depression or a related disorder got better in three months without additional treatment. In the group whose mothers did not improve, five healthy children developed a problem.
The kids and the moms were part of a larger, government-funded study on antidepressants. In that study, reported in last week's New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that switching antidepressants or adding new medications could help people who did not initially respond to treatment in about 25 percent of cases. Still, nearly half of the patients in the study remained depressed, showing just how hard the disease can be to beat.
Health Watch: Way Too Many Liquid Calories; A Hole in a Cancer Screen; Fitness Doesn't Trump Fatness
Way Too Many Liquid Calories
American adults drink one fifth of their daily calories--twice what the World Health Organization recommends. Barry Popkin, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, is spearheading a reform effort by health and obesity experts: Their "Healthy Beverage Guidelines," in March's American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, say two servings of nonfat or 1 percent milk daily are OK, plus one glass of 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice or a sports drink. Sugary soda? One a day. Stick with water and calorie-free beverages, Popkin says, and you could lose a pound or more a week. - Caroline Hsu
A Hole in a Cancer Screen
Women who carry mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes face an extremely high risk of breast and ovarian cancers, so it's crucial that the test for the mutations be accurate. A study in last week's Journal of the American Medical Association says as many as 12 percent of very high-risk women--those whose family tree includes four others with these cancers--may get a false all-clear. The test's maker, Myriad Genetics, is working on a more sensitive version and notes that the rate of false negatives among all women tested is much smaller. Meanwhile, women considering the test should discuss its limitations with their doctor. - Katherine Hobson
Fitness Doesn't Trump Fatness
Looks as if it's not OK after all to be heavy as long as you exercise. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston studied 27,000 women and found that increased body weight and inactivity each independently affects such risk factors for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes as high cholesterol and inflammation. But it's healthier to be a skinny slacker than a fat fitness buff. Thin couch potatoes had a 20 percent greater chance than normal-weight, active women of having high "bad" cholesterol, while obese but active women had a 230 percent greater likelihood, for example. Still, overweight women who got at least 30 minutes of modest exercise most days were in better health than sedentary women of the same weight. - C.H.
This story appears in the April 3, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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