Medical Bulletin 30/November/2023

Here are the top medical news of the day:

ADHD in older adults heightens car crash risk

ADHD is a chronic neurodevelopmental condition with symptoms such as inattentiveness, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.

In a study on the prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and its association with crash risk among older adult drivers, researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health found that older adult drivers with ADHD are at a significantly elevated crash risk compared with their counterparts without ADHD.

Reference: Yuxin Liu, Stanford Chihuri, Thelma J. Mielenz, Howard F. Andrews, Marian E. Betz, Carolyn DiGuiseppi, David W. Eby, Linda L. Hill, Vanya Jones, Lisa J. Molnar, David Strogatz, Guohua Li. Motor Vehicle Crash Risk in Older Adult Drivers With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. JAMA Network Open, 2023; 6 (10): e2336960 DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.36960

Migraine and complications in pregnancy linked together?

For gestational high blood pressure, 7% of pregnancies among women with migraine developed this condition compared to 5% among pregnancies in women without migraine.

Women with migraine may have a higher risk of pregnancy complications like preterm delivery, gestational high blood pressure and preeclampsia, according to a preliminary study released today, February 24, 2022, that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 74th Annual Meeting being held in person in Seattle, April 2 to 7, 2022 and virtually, April 24 to 26, 2022.

Researchers also found that women with migraine with aura may have a somewhat higher risk of preeclampsia than women with migraine without aura. Auras are sensations that come before the headache, often visual disturbances such as flashing lights. Preeclampsia involves high blood pressure with additional symptoms, such as protein in the urine, during pregnancy, which can threaten the life of the mother and baby.

Reference: American Academy of Neurology. "Is migraine tied to complications in pregnancy?." ScienceDaily.

Young kids rarely get very sick from COVID-19, finds a new study

As a rule, infants and young children rarely develop severe or enduring cases of COVID-19. And those who do almost invariably suffer from some other serious medical problem.

It's not that kids don't get infected. They do. More than 90% of kids age 4 and under in the United States test positive for previous or current infection by SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes this respiratory infection.

"For almost every infectious disease, the most vulnerable populations are at the extremes of age -- the very young and the very old," said Stanford Medicine professor of microbiology and immunology and of pathology Bali Pulendran, PhD. "But with COVID-19, the young are spared while the old are emphatically not. That's been a mystery."

Reference: Florian Wimmers, Allison R. Burrell, Yupeng Feng, Hong Zheng, Prabhu S. Arunachalam, Mengyun Hu, Sara Spranger, Lindsay E. Nyhoff, Devyani Joshi, Meera Trisal, Mayanka Awasthi, Lorenza Bellusci, Usama Ashraf, Sangeeta Kowli, Katherine C. Konvinse, Emily Yang, Michael Blanco, Kathryn Pellegrini, Gregory Tharp, Thomas Hagan, R. Sharon Chinthrajah, Tran T. Nguyen, Alba Grifoni, Alessandro Sette, Kari C. Nadeau, David B. Haslam, Steven E. Bosinger, Jens Wrammert, Holden T. Maecker, Paul J. Utz, Taia T. Wang, Surender Khurana, Purvesh Khatri, Mary A. Staat, Bali Pulendran. Multi-omics analysis of mucosal and systemic immunity to SARS-CoV-2 after birth. Cell, 2023; 186 (21): 4632 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.08.044