Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Having 5 Or More Babies Increases Women's Chance Of Being Diagnosed With Alzheimer's By 70 Percent
Women who have given birth five or more times may be 70% more likely to develop Alzheimer's later in life than those who have fewer births, according to a new study of more than 3,500 women in South Korea and Greece. Even women without dementia who had given birth five or more times scored lower on a commonly used cognitive test than those with fewer children. (LaMotte, 7/18)
The kids aren鈥檛 kids anymore. And they鈥檙e still all right. The children of a first generation of lesbian women to take family-building into their own hands and conceive children through sperm donation are young adults now. And on Wednesday, the New England Journal of Medicine published new findings from the first study to comprehensively track those children鈥檚 mental health trajectories and compare them to those of kids in other U.S. households.y (Healy, 7/18)
Now it's a certain pasta salad that consumers shouldn't be eating. Consumers should avoid a spring pasta salad sold in 244 of Hy-Vee grocery stores in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to federal health officials. Of the 21 people who have been sickened thus far by salmonella infections linked to the salad, five have been hospitalized. No deaths have been reported. (Sun, 7/18)
The incidence of heart failure has declined overall in both sexes in recent years and remains higher in men. But women are more likely to die from the disease. A study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal included 90,707 new diagnoses of heart failure among Ontario residents from 2009 to 2014. Almost 17 percent of women died within a year of follow-up, compared with just under 15 percent of men. Rates of hospitalization decreased over the study period in men and increased in women. (Bakalar, 7/18)
Growing up with a working mom may have some benefits for both daughters and sons later in life. A team of researchers from the United States and the United Kingdom analyzed data on more than 100,000 men and women across 29 countries to determine whether a mother's employment status has any link to her children's outcomes in adulthood. (Howard, 7/18)
A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine has found urgent care centers are prescribing antibiotics to nearly half of patients with colds or the flu. Generally antibiotics are effective against bacterial infections like pneumonia. ... Medical researchers worry inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics can harm individual patients and contribute to the growing problem of bacterial resistance or what鈥檚 commonly called super bugs. (Gorenstein, 7/18)
A New Zealand firm that let its employees work four days a week while being paid for five says the experiment was so successful that it hoped to make the change permanent. The firm, Perpetual Guardian, which manages trusts, wills and estates, found the change actually boosted productivity among its 240 employees, who said they spent more time with their families, exercising, cooking, and working in their gardens. (Graham-McLay, 7/19)