Sleep duration declines in early adulthood until age 33, and then picks up again at age 53, according to the findings published in Nature Communications.

The study, involving 730,187 participants spread over 63 countries, revealed how sleep patterns change across the lifespan, and how they differ between countries.

Study participants were playing the Sea Hero Quest mobile game, a citizen science venture designed for neuroscience research, created by Deutsche Telekom in partnership with Alzheimer's Research UK, UCL, UEA and game developers Glitchers. Designed to aid Alzheimer's research by shedding light on differences in spatial navigational abilities, over four million people have played Sea Hero Quest, contributing to numerous studies across the project as a whole.

In addition to completing tasks testing navigational ability, anyone playing the game is asked to answer questions about demographic characteristics as well as other questions that can be useful to neuroscience research, such as on sleep patterns.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12-people-early-30s-50s.html

This finding comes from a study by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) (link in Norwegian).

Previous studies suggest that being married later in life protects against dementia, and that being single in old age increases the risk of dementia. The new results support this.

“There's a correlation between being married in midlife and a lower risk of dementia as an elderly person. Our data also shows that divorced people account for a significant proportion of dementia cases,” the first author of the study, Vegard Skirbekk says. He is a senior researcher at the Department of Physical Health and Ageing and the Centre for Fertility and Health at the NIPH.

The researcher’s starting point was looking at the marital status of 8,706 adults in the age group 44-68 who were registered in various Norwegian national registers. They then saw how many of these developed dementia after the age of 70.

One explanation for the lower risk of dementia among married people may be that marriage is an important source of social contact.

“In several studies, it has been shown that social isolation is related to an increased risk of dementia. Marriage has also been shown to be a particularly important protective factor against dementia for men. However, in our study marriage was equally important for both men and women,” Skirbekk says.

The increased risk of dementia for unmarried people could largely be attributed to childlessness.

https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/AMG4ZUJHMMEFDKDGRIMU/full

An area of salt marsh twice the size of Singapore has disappeared since the turn of the century, NASA scientists determined by analyzing satellite images from around the globe. Severe storms were partially responsible for the loss, which resulted in “significant” carbon emissions, according to a recent study based on the maps.

The study, published in the journal Nature in late November, showed that the world lost 2,733 square kilometers (1,055 square miles) of marsh over the 19-year period between 2000 and 2019 and recovered 1,278 km2 (493 mi2), some as a result of restoration by people. This resulted in a net loss of 1,453 km2 (561 mi2). Globally, salt marshes declined at a rate of 0.28% per year, according to the study.

Previously, up-to-date information on the rates and “hotspots” of salt marsh loss at the global level was limited, as were estimates of the resulting carbon emissions, Anthony Campbell, the paper’s lead author, told Mongabay in an interview. Past estimates suggested much higher salt marsh losses of between 1% and 2% per year.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05355-z

The latest omicron boosters are 84% effective at keeping seniors 65 and older from being hospitalized with Covid-19 compared with the unvaccinated, according to a study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday.

And seniors who received the omicron booster had 73% more protection against hospitalization than those who only received two or more doses of the original vaccines that were not updated to target omicron, according to the CDC.

The study was conducted from September through November when omicron BA.5 and the even more immune evasive BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 variants were dominant. About 800 seniors with a median age of 76 were included in the analysis.

In a larger study that looked at more than 15,000 adults ages 18 and older, the omicron booster was 57% effective at preventing hospitalization. Adults who received the booster had 38% additional protection compared with people who only received the original shots.

Neither study examined how well people were protected against hospitalization if they were vaccinated and had natural immunity from a previous Covid infection.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/16/omicron-boosters-are-84percent-effective-at-keeping-seniors-from-being-hospitalized-with-covid-cdc-says.html

A Geisinger study of more than 90,000 patients revealed that approximately one in 100 carried at least one rare gene variant known to increase risk for neuropsychiatric disorders (NPD), such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder, and that a third of those with a variant had a diagnosed mental health condition

The results, published online by the American Journal of Psychiatry, confirm a strong link between genetics and NPD.

The Geisinger team, led by Christa L. Martin, Ph.D., analyzed genetic and electronic health record (EHR) data from a subset of 90,595 participants enrolled in Geisinger's MyCode Community Health Initiative. Researchers evaluated the sequenced exomes for 94 genes that have been linked to an increased risk for NPD and compared the prevalence of these genes with de-identified linked EHR diagnosis codes for NPD, including autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Genetic variants were found in more than 1% of patients in the study group, and a third of those with a variant had been diagnosed with a corresponding NPD.

"This study confirms the important role of rare genetic variants in neuropsychiatric disorders and highlights the use of DNA-based approaches in studying and diagnosing these conditions," Dr. Martin said. "Given that one in 100 MyCode participants were found to have one of these genetic variants, efforts to incorporate genetic screening into routine healthcare have the potential to improve the treatment and care of individuals with neuropsychiatric disorders."

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-12-link-genetics-neuropsychiatric-disorders.html

A large study of military members led by researchers at Duke Health and the Durham VA identified four genes that are linked to an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

While more work is needed to determine whether identification of the genetic markers might lead to targeted treatments, the findings advance the understanding of how inherited risk factors play a role in the pathology of suicidal thoughts and actions.

“It’s important to note that these genes do not predestine anyone to problems, but it’s also important to understand that there could be heightened risks, particularly when combined with life events,” said Nathan Kimbrel, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Duke and co-lead author of the study publishing online Dec. 14 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

Kimbrel and colleagues, including co-lead author Allison Ashley-Koch, professor in the Department of Medicine at Duke, conducted a large, diverse, genome-wide analysis using data from 633,778 U.S. military veterans. Of the participants, 71.4% were of European ancestry; 19.1% African ancestry; 8.1% Hispanic; 1.3% Asian. Study participants were primarily male, with 9% female.

Within that group of veterans, 121,211 cases of suicidal thoughts or actions were identified from medical records. Participants were classified as controls if they had no documented lifetime history of self-harm behaviors.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2799487

Inadequate pollination has led to a 3-5% loss of fruit, vegetable, and nut production and an estimated 427,000 excess deaths annually from lost healthy food consumption and associated diseases, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and certain cancers, according to research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It is the first study to quantify the human health toll of insufficient wild (animal) pollinators on human health.

“A critical missing piece in the biodiversity discussion has been a lack of direct linkages to human health. This research establishes that loss of pollinators is already impacting health on a scale with other global health risk factors, such as prostate cancer or substance use disorders,” said Samuel Myers, principal research scientist, planetary health, Department of Environmental Health and senior author of the study.

The study will be published December 14, 2022 in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Increasing human pressure on natural systems is causing alarming losses in biodiversity, the topic of the COP 15 UN Biodiversity Conference currently taking place in Montreal. This includes 1-2% annual declines of insect populations, leading some to warn of an impending “insect apocalypse” in the coming decades. Key among insect species are pollinators, which increase yields of three-fourths of crop varieties and are critical to growing healthy foods like fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Changes in land-use, use of harmful pesticides, and advancing climate change threaten wild pollinators, imperiling human supply of healthy foods

https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP10947

It’s a scene many parents have experienced – just as they’re trying to cook dinner, take a phone call or run an errand, their child has a meltdown.

And sometimes, handing a fussy preschooler a digital device seems to offer a quick fix. But this calming strategy could be linked to worse behavior challenges down the road, new findings suggest.

Frequent use of devices like smartphones and tablets to calm upset children ages 3-5 was associated with increased emotional dysregulation in kids, particularly in boys, according to a Michigan Medicine study in JAMA Pediatrics.

“Using mobile devices to settle down a young child may seem like a harmless, temporary tool to reduce stress in the household, but there may be long term consequences if it’s a regular go-to soothing strategy,” said lead author Jenny Radesky, M.D., a developmental behavioral pediatrician at University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

“Particularly in early childhood, devices may displace opportunities for development of independent and alternative methods to self-regulate.”

The study included 422 parents and 422 children ages 3-5 who participated between August 2018 and January 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic started. Researchers analyzed parent and caregiver responses to how often they used devices as a calming tool and associations to symptoms of emotional reactivity or dysregulation over a six-month period.

Signs of increased dysregulation could include rapid shifts between sadness and excitement, a sudden change in mood or feelings and heightened impulsivity.

Findings suggest that the association between device-calming and emotional consequences was particularly high among young boys and children who may already experience hyperactivity, impulsiveness and a strong temperament that makes them more likely to react intensely to feelings like anger, frustration and sadness

“Our findings suggest that using devices as a way to appease agitated children may especially be problematic to those who already struggle with emotional coping skills,” Radesky said.

https://www.newswise.com/articles/study-frequently-using-digital-devices-to-soothe-young-children-may-backfire

According to new psychology findings, the strategies we used to regulate our emotions can influence our dream experiences. The study, published in the journal Dreaming, found that cognitive reappraisal appeared to reduce dream intensity by lowering negative state and trait emotions.

Negative emotions from our waking lives seem to make their way into our dreams. Some researchers have proposed that dreaming might serve to downregulate our negative emotions. More recently, scholars have noted that dreams tend to contain not just negative emotions, but other intense emotions from our waking lives, including positive ones.

Study authors Sam Siu-Sing Wong and Calvin Kai-Ching Yu wondered how our emotion regulation tendencies might influence dreaming. Presumably, if dreaming helps us regulate emotions from our waking lives, there should be some link between our dreaming and our emotion regulation tendencies. There is indeed some evidence that the coping strategies we use can influence our dreams. For example, research suggests that suppressing unwanted thoughts while awake can cause these thoughts to “rebound” during dreaming.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-87423-001