Word: lancet
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...regular doctors really know how to identify depression? A large new scientific review published July 30 by the journal Lancet suggests they don't. In a review of 41 previous studies involving more than 50,000 patients in developed nations around the world, the authors found that general practitioners make frequent mistakes, missing true cases of depression about half the time and incorrectly diagnosing it in 19% of healthy people. (See how to prevent illness...
...lists such vague symptoms as "fatigue" and "indecisiveness" as possible markers of depression. And while the definition must be broad enough to encompass a disease that manifests in many different ways in many different patients, even mental-health specialists hotly debate what constitutes true depression. A commentary in the Lancet accompanying the new paper asks, "If the diagnosis of depression cannot be agreed satisfactorily by the best minds in psychiatry, why should we expect the general practitioner to be a reliable assessor of the condition...
...such unusually high levels - some 60% of the world's confirmed cases have occurred in people age 18 or younger - schools have become a major locus of infection. Outbreaks incubate among children in schools, then spread to the community when those kids go home. A study in the journal Lancet found that closing schools as a preventive measure in the early stages of a pandemic could sharply cut the number of cases initially, which would reduce the later surges of infections that can overwhelm hospitals...
...that would come at a cost - the Lancet researchers also estimated that a 12-week school closure could cost the U.S. as much as 6% of its GDP, and the burden would fall disproportionately on working families with few options for child care. For now, the WHO and national health agencies are hedging their bets. "School closing is one mitigation measure that could be considered by individual countries," says WHO spokesperson Alphaluck Bhatiasevi...
...example of how damaging alcohol abuse can be, a separate study in the Lancet found that drinking caused more than half of the deaths among adult Russians between 1990 and 2001, in the unstable years following the collapse of the Soviet Union. That study of some 60,000 residents in three Russian cities found excess mortality (i.e., a larger than expected number of people dying from a certain disease) not only with obvious alcohol-related illnesses such as liver cancer but also tuberculosis and pneumonia, which the study's authors say may be partly a result of weak immunity caused...