Health | WPN World People News

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health plan to determine whether elevated blood sugar during pregnancy, a less–severe condition than gestational diabetes, influences later levels of body fat in children and development of diabetes in mothers after giving birth.

Many synthetic chemicals, untested for their disrupting effects on the hormone system, could have significant health implications according to the State of the Science of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, a new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and WHO.

As a growing number of countries tackle the fiscal challenge of providing universal health coverage (UHC) for their citizens, the World Bank released a set of 22 case studies of countries that have significantly expanded access to health care in the last decade, with the aim of helping countries make more informed health policy and program choices.

Soldiers preoccupied with threat at the time of enlistment or with avoiding it just before deployment were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in a study of Israeli infantrymen. Such pre-deployment threat vigilance and avoidance, interacting with combat experience and an emotion-related gene, accounted for more than a third of PTSD symptoms that emerged later, say National Institutes of Health scientists, who conducted the study in collaboration with American and Israeli colleagues.

More people are meeting recommended goals in the three key markers of diabetes control, according to a study conducted and funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Adults with some form of mental illness have a smoking rate 70 percent higher than adults with no mental illness, according to a Vital Signs report released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in collaboration with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The report finds that 36 percent of adults with a mental illness are cigarette smokers, compared with only 21 percent of adults who do not have a mental illness.

New reports by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) find that overall, from 2002 to 2011, the percentage of adolescents receiving substance abuse prevention messages in the past year from media fell significantly from 83.2 percent in 2002 to 75.1 percent in 2011. School-based prevention messaging also dropped from 78.8 percent in 2002 to 74.5 percent in 2011. The report also finds that roughly 40 percent of adolescents did not talk with their parents in the past year about the dangers of substance use.