(Press-News.org) ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Fewer Americans may be feeling the blues, with rates of depression in people over 50 on the decline, according to a new University of Michigan Health System study.
Between 1998 and 2008, rates of severe depression fell among the majority of older adults, especially the elderly, who have historically been a higher risk group for depression, new findings show. Meanwhile, late middle agers between ages 55-59 appeared to experience increased depression over the 10 year period.
The nationally representative study appears in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
"Over that decade, we saw a significant decrease in depression among older adults, and we need further studies to explore whether this is the result of improved treatment," says lead author Kara Zivin, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry in the U-M Medical School and research investigator at the VA Center for Clinical Management Research.
"Even with signs of progress, however, a significant percent of our population is still experiencing severe symptoms of depression, and we need to do more to ensure all of these groups have proper access to treatment."
Late-life depression has been a major area of concern among health providers, with studies showing increased depression at a time when many face death of loved ones, isolation, medical problems or changes in economic status. The new study, however, suggests improvements in this trend, with the most pronounced drop in depressive symptoms in people in the 80-84 age group.
Increases in depression rates were concentrated among people in late middle age between ages 55-59 – a group that hasn't traditionally been focused on as an at-risk group.
"It's unclear whether this shift is an indication of a sicker population not being treated adequately, a burden on people of that age at that particular time or something else, which is why we need to do more research to better understand these patterns," Zivin says.
Researchers used data from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally-representative sample of older Americans that is conducted by the U-M Institute for Social Research on behalf of the National Institute of Aging.
"We were pleased to see that there appears to be an overall improvement in depressive symptoms in the US, which is most likely related to better recognition and treatment. We are hopeful that our findings highlight the importance of depression diagnosis and treatment, and that we continue to make progress in developing better ways to systematically improve the outcomes of patients with depression," says senior author Sandeep Vijan, M.D., M.S., associate professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School and a research scientist at the Ann Arbor VA Health System.
INFORMATION:
Additional authors: Paul A. Pirraglia, M.D.; Ryan J. McCammon, A.B.; Kenneth M. Langa, M.D., Ph.D.
Funding: National Institute on Aging (P01 AG031098 and U01 AG09740) and the Department of Veteran Affairs, Health Services and Development (CD2 07-206-1 and VA IIR 10-176-3).
Disclosures: None.
Reference: "Trends in Depressive Symptom Burden Among Older Adults in the United States from 1998 to 2008," Journal of General Internal Medicine, July , 2013 2013, DOI:10.1007/s11606-013-2533-y.
END
NEW YORK, JULY 10, 2013 — Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, together with collaborators in Germany, have developed a new method for identifying the cell of origin of intracellular and secreted proteins within multicellular environments.
The technique, named cell type specific labeling using amino acid precursors (CTAP), exploits the inability of vertebrate cells to synthesize essential amino acids normally required for growth and homeostasis. The research was published online in the journal Nature Methods on June 30, 2013.
This technological advance ...
Everyone knows that as we grow older our bones become more fragile. Now a team of U.S. and German scientists led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley has shown that this bone-aging process can be significantly accelerated through deficiency of vitamin D - the sunshine vitamin.
Vitamin D deficiency is a widespread medical condition that has been linked to the health and fracture risk of human bone on the basis of low calcium intake and reduced bone density. ...
New research in the Journal of Newborns & Infant Nursing Reviews concludes that so-called "kangaroo care" (KC), the skin-to-skin and chest-to-chest touching between baby and mother, offers developmentally appropriate therapy for hospitalized preterm infants.
In the article, "Kangaroo Care as a Neonatal Therapy," Susan Ludington-Hoe, RN, CNM, PhD, FAAN, from Case Western Reserve University's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, describes how KC delivers benefits beyond bonding and breastfeeding for a hospital's tiniest newborns.
"KC is now considered an essential ...
Preparing semiconductor quantum dots is sometimes more of a black art than a science. That presents an obstacle to further progress in, for example, creating better solar cells or lighting devices, where quantum dots offer unique advantages that would be particularly useful if they could be used as basic building blocks for constructing larger nanoscale architectures.
Andrew Greytak, a chemist in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina, is leading a research team that's making the process of synthesizing quantum dots much more systematic. ...
Today, the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) announced that its scientists have successfully completed the first full-scale simulation of an operating nuclear reactor. CASL is modeling nuclear reactors on supercomputers to help researchers better understand reactor performance with much higher reliability than previously available methods, with the goal of ultimately increasing power output, extending reactor life, and reducing waste.
Simulation results from the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) program, developed by CASL, ...
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have discovered that a protein used by cancer cells to evade death also plays a vital role in heart health. This dual role complicates efforts to develop cancer drugs that target the protein, but may lead to new therapies for heart muscle damage. The research appeared in the June 15 edition of the scientific journal Genes & Development.
The protein, MCL1, is currently the focus of widespread cancer drug development efforts. MCL1 is best known as an inhibitor of death via the cell's suicide pathway in a process called apoptosis. ...
Cyberbullying in the college environment can pose serious consequences for students' living and learning environments, including physical endangerment, according to newly published research by a UT Arlington associate education professor.
Jiyoon Yoon, director of the Early Childhood – Grade 6 Program for the UT Arlington College of Education and Health Professions, co-authored the paper "Cyberbullying Presence, Extent, and Forms in a Midwestern Post-secondary Institution," which appears in the June 2013 issue of Information Systems Education Journal.
The researchers ...
Thresher sharks hunt schooling sardines in the waters off a small coral island in the Philippines by rapidly slapping their tails hard enough to stun or kill several of the smaller fish at once, according to research published July 10 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Simon Oliver of the Thresher Shark Research and Conservation Project, and colleagues from other institutions.
The researchers tracked shark activity with handheld video cameras and analyzed 25 instances of tail-slapping to stun prey. Sharks seemed to initiate the behavior by drawing their pectoral fins ...
On July 9, 2013, at 11:09 a.m. EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later. These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground.
Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 375 miles per second, which is a fairly ...
The population of the critically endangered large primate known as the drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus) has been largely reduced to a few critical habitat areas in Cameroon, according to a recently published study by researchers with the San Diego Zoo's Institute for Conservation Research. The study highlights the challenges faced by this species as its living area becomes ever more fragmented by human disturbance. In addition, the report directs conservation efforts towards key areas where the populations continue to survive and thrive.
"The drill is one of Africa's ...
