PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Stable overall suicide rate among young children obscures racial differences

2015-05-18
(Press-News.org) The overall suicide rate among children ages 5 to 11 was stable during the 20 years from 1993 to 2012 but that obscures racial differences that show an increase in suicide among black children and a decrease among white children, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.

Youth suicide is a major public health concern. However not much is known about childhood suicide because prior studies have typically excluded children younger than 10 years old and only investigated trends among older children, according to the study background.

Jeffrey A. Bridge, Ph.D., of the Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio, and coauthors examined suicide in U.S. children ages 5 to 11 by analyzing 20 years of nationwide mortality data.

The authors found that 657 children ages 5 to 11 died by suicide between 1993 and 2012 - an average of nearly 33 children per year - and 553 (84 percent) of the children were boys and 104 (16 percent) were girls. The overall suicide rate remained stable during the period going from 1.18 per 1 million to 1.09 per million. Hanging/suffocation was the predominant method of suicide, accounting for 78.2 percent (514 of 657) of the total suicide deaths, followed by firearms (17.7 percent; 116 of 657) and other methods (4.1 percent; 27 of 657), according to the results.

However, the authors observed that the stable overall rate resulted from divergent trends in suicide for black and white children during those 20 years. The suicide rate increased in black children from 1.36 per 1 million to 2.54 per 1 million, while the suicide rate decreased in white children from 1.14 per 1 million to 0.77 per 1 million.

The statistically significant racial differences were confined to both black and white boys, with an increase in the suicide rate among black boys (1.78 to 3.47 per 1 million) and a decrease in the suicide rate among white boys (from 1.96 to 1.31 per 1 million). Although the changes were not statistically significant among girls, the suicide rate among black girls increased from 0.68 to 1.23 per 1 million during the 20-year period, while the suicide rate among white girls remained stable from 0.25 to 0.24 per 1 million.

The authors suggest the racial differences prompt questions about what factors might influence increasing suicide rates among young black children, such as disproportionate exposure to violence and traumatic stress, aggressive school discipline, and an early onset of puberty. However, the authors note it remains unclear if any of these factors are related to increasing suicide rates.

"The stable overall suicide rate among U.S. children aged 5 to 11 years during 20 years of study masked a significant increase in the suicide rate among black children and a significant decline in the suicide rate among white children. From a public health perspective, future steps should include ongoing surveillance to monitor these emerging trends and research to identify risk, protective and precipitating factors associated with suicide in elementary school-aged children to frame targets for early detection and culturally informed interventions," the study concludes.

INFORMATION:

(JAMA Pediatrics Published online May 18, 2015. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.0465. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.)

Editor's Note: An author made a funding/support disclosure. Please see article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, etc.

Media Advisory: To contact corresponding author Jeffrey A. Bridge, Ph.D., call Gina Bericchia at 614-355-0495 or email MediaRelations@NationwideChildrens.org.

To place an electronic embedded link to this study in your story Links will be live at the embargo time: http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?doi=10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.0465



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Evaluating adverse cardiac events in patients with chest pain at hospital admission

2015-05-18
Patients with chest pain who are admitted to the hospital after an emergency department evaluation with negative findings and nonconcerning vital signs rarely had adverse cardiac events, suggesting that routine inpatient admission may not be a beneficial strategy for this group of patients, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Patients with potentially ischemic (restricted blood flow) chest pain are commonly admitted to the hospital or observed after a negative evaluation in the emergency department because of concern about adverse events. ...

Study examines concussion, cognition, brain changes in retired NFL players

2015-05-18
A preliminary study of retired National Football League (NFL) players suggests that history of concussion with loss of consciousness may be a risk factor for increased brain atrophy in the area involved with memory storage and impaired memory performance later in life, according to an article published online by JAMA Neurology. While most individuals recover completely from concussion within days or weeks, the potential association of concussion and the subsequent development of memory dysfunction with brain atrophy later in life remains poorly understood, according to ...

NYU researchers ID part of the brain for processing speech

2015-05-18
A team of New York University neuroscientists has identified a part of the brain exclusively devoted to processing speech. Its findings point to the superior temporal sulcus (STS), located in the temporal lobe, and help settle a long-standing debate about role-specific neurological functions. "We now know there is at least one part of the brain that specializes in the processing of speech and doesn't have a role in handling other sounds," explains David Poeppel, the paper's senior author, a professor in NYU's Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science. The ...

Study: Many people in emergency department for chest pain don't to be need admitted

2015-05-18
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Chest pain is a scary symptom that sends more than 7 million Americans to the emergency department each year. About half of them are admitted to the hospital for further observation, testing or treatment. Now, emergency medicine physicians at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Mount Carmel Health System believe that number can be significantly reduced. Their study, published in today's JAMA Internal Medicine, finds a very low short-term risk for life-threatening cardiac events among patients with chest pain who have normal cardiac blood ...

Microchip captures clusters of circulating tumor cells -- NIH study

Microchip captures clusters of circulating tumor cells -- NIH study
2015-05-18
Researchers have developed a microfluidic chip that can capture rare clusters of circulating tumor cells, which could yield important new insights into how cancer spreads. The work was funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of the National Institutes of Health. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are cells that break away from a tumor and move through a cancer patient's bloodstream. Single CTCs are extremely rare, typically fewer than 1 in 1 billion cells. These cells can take up residence in distant organs, and researchers ...

US West's power grid must be prepared for impacts of climate change

2015-05-18
TEMPE, Arizona -- Electricity generation and distribution infrastructure in the Western United States must be "climate-proofed" to diminish the risk of future power shortages, according to research by two Arizona State University engineers. Expected increases in extreme heat and drought events will bring changes in precipitation, air and water temperatures, air density and humidity, write Matthew Bartos and Mikhail Chester in the current issue of the research journal Nature Climate Change. The authors say the changing conditions could significantly constrain the energy ...

Suicide trends in school-aged children reveal racial disparity

2015-05-18
Suicide is a leading cause of death among children younger than 12 years. Suicide rates in this age group have remained steady overall for the past 20 years, but a study published today in JAMA Pediatrics from The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital is the first national study to observe higher suicide rates among black children compared to white children. "Little is known about the epidemiology of suicide in this age group," said Jeff Bridge, PhD, lead researcher of the study and principal investigator at the Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice ...

UCSF-led study explains how early childhood vaccination reduces leukemia risk

2015-05-18
A team led by UCSF researchers has discovered how a commonly administered vaccine protects against acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common type of childhood cancer. The Haemophilus influenzae Type b (Hib) vaccine not only prevents ear infections and meningitis caused by the Hib bacterium, but also protects against ALL, which accounts for approximately 25 percent of cancer diagnoses among children younger than 15 years, according to the National Cancer Society. The Hib vaccine is part of the standard vaccination schedule recommended by the Centers for Disease ...

Researchers make progress engineering digestive system tissues

2015-05-18
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - May 18, 2015 - New proof-of-concept research at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine suggests the potential for engineering replacement intestine tissue in the lab, a treatment that could be applied to infants born with a short bowel and adults having large pieces of gut removed due to cancer or inflammatory bowel disease. Lead researcher Khalil N Bitar, Ph.D., a professor at the institute, which is part of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, reported the results this week at Digestive Diseases Week in Washington, D.C. He also updated ...

Novel insights in MET-proto-oncogene might lead to optimizing cancer treatment

2015-05-18
The MET-proto-oncogene is involved in the pathogenesis of several tumors and therefore represents an interesting target for future therapies currently tested in dozens of clinical trials. Veronica Finisguerra, Andrea Casazza, Max Mazzone and colleagues from VIB, KU Leuven and UZ Leuven now reveal that MET is needed for the recruitment of anti-tumoral neutrophils and puts a mechanism into action that promotes the killing of cancer cells. This means that the efficacy of a cancer therapy targeting MET in cancer cells will partly be countered by the pro-tumoral effect arising ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Are lifetimes of big appliances really shrinking?

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

Pinning down the process of West Nile virus transmission

UTA-backed research tackles health challenges across ages

In pancreatic cancer, a race against time

[Press-News.org] Stable overall suicide rate among young children obscures racial differences