Lifeboat Foundation

Childhood trauma such as neglectful parenting causes physical scarring to the brain and increases the risk of severe depression, a new study has found.

For the first time, scientists have linked changes in the structure of the brain both to traumatic early-years experiences and poor mental health in later life.

Published in the Lancet, the study found a “significant” link between adults who had experienced maltreatment as children with a smaller insular cortex, part of the brain believed to help regulate emotion.

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The newest FDA-approved medication to treat severe depression, a nasal spray based on the anesthetic (and misused hallucinogenic party drug) ketamine, will soon be available to veterans treated within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In a move that may help thousands of former service members with depression that has not improved with other treatments, VA officials announced Tuesday that the department’s doctors are now authorized to prescribe Spravato, the brand name for esketamine, a molecular variation of ketamine.

The decision to offer a drug hailed by many as a breakthrough in treatment for its speedy results — often relieving symptoms in hours and days, not weeks — shows the VA’s “commitment to seek new ways to provide the best health care available for our nation’s veterans,” Secretary Robert Wilkie said in a release.

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A team of researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology invented a “toilet seat-based cardiovascular monitoring system” that could help hospitals monitor patients for risk of congestive heart failure — a toilet, in other words, that detects whether your heart is about to give out.

“This system will be uniquely positioned to capture trend data in the home that has been previously unattainable,” reads the paper, published in the journal JMIR Mhealth Uhealth.

Integrated into the seat is a device that measures heart rate, blood pressure, and blood oxygenation levels. Algorithms will take in all that data and notify health practitioners if the patient’s condition deteriorates.

It’s cliché to describe something very noisy as “louder than a jet engine.” But supersonic jet engines, like those powering fighters flown by the U.S. military, are so much louder than regular jet engines that scientists have a special term for their sound—” broadband shock-associated noise.”

Now, a team of faculty and students from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kansas will design and test innovative technologies to cut noise from supersonic military jets. The U.S. Department of Defense’s Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), the DoD’s environmental science and technology program, is supporting a one-year, $200,000 effort at KU, with the potential to expand that support in the years ahead.

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Imagine that… The earth is round.

Many people view pollutants and pathogens as separate causes of illness. However, recent research indicates that the two can interact, changing how people and animals respond to infectious diseases. According to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, environmental pollutants appear to weaken the immune system, reduce vaccine efficacy and increase pathogen virulence.

More than 20 years ago, researchers showed that exposing mice to low levels of a dioxin called 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo–p-dioxin made them more susceptible to influenza virus. Since then, several studies have suggested that other chemicals, such as perfluorooctanoic acid, mercury and arsenic, can also alter animals’ immune responses and decrease their resistance to infectious diseases. And epidemiological studies in humans have linked chemical exposure in the womb to a child’s increased risk of infectious disease. However, scientists are only now beginning to unravel how this happens, Senior Editor Britt Erickson writes.

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These activity levels “may be easy to achieve by most adults.”

Researchers with the Stanford University School of Medicine found in a study sponsored by Apple and released Saturday that the company’s smartwatches can detect irregular heart rhythms.

Of the approximately 400,000 participants using Apple Watches in the eight-month study, 0.5 percent, or about 2,000 people, were sent irregular heart rhythm notifications.

“The results of the Apple Heart Study highlight the potential role that innovative digital technology can play in creating more predictive and preventive health care,” Lloyd Minor, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine, said in a statement.

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