Role of Depression in Diabetes and Osteoporosis

I've usually thought about osteoporosis being a fairly independent thing-you have low calcium intake or other risk factors (age, gender, ethnicity, family history) and you have a higher chance of having lower bone mass. Seems straightforward.

Well, maybe not. A recent study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine recently found that premenopausal women who are depressed have an elevated risk of developing osteoporosis-so much so that the initial findings indicate that clinicians should consider even mild depressive disorder to be a risk factor on par with smoking, low exercise, and low calcium intake. As usual, BBC.com has a good article on the topic.

In addition, a Canadian study looking at SSRI use in post-menopausal women doubled the risk of fracture. This article was also published in the Archives of Internal Medicine back in January. There is also a BBC article on it as well.

Osteoporosis isn't the only disease that is affected by depression-diabetes is as well. A study out of the University of Pennsylvania found that being more aggressive with depression treatment in patients with both depression and diabetes prolonged their lives. It's interesting to not that the patients in the study that died weren't dying of suicide-most were related to cardiovascular death. I was only able to find the abstract out of Diabetes Care on this one, and here's the blog article where I first saw the topic.

Chantix follow-up

I mentioned this last week, but I saw a follow-up story and thought I'd drop it on the blog as well. A family in Britain is blaming Chantix (called Champix in Britain) for the suicide of Omer Jama. A Pfizer representative states that no studies have linked suicidal thoughts to the use of Chantix, and that nicotine withdrawal can exacerbate underlying psychiatric problems.

Who's at fault?

Dennis Quaid is an actor, a pretty good one actually. He and his wife also have newborn twins. While in the hospital, the hospital staff used heparin to flush out the babies' catheters. Nothing unusual there. But what was unusual was the strength of heparin used: 10,000 units/ml instead of 10 units/ml. Yeah, that's not good. Luckily, it appears they were given protamine soon after to reverse the heparin effects, and things came out all right. Here's an article with more info.

However, the story doesn't end there. The Quaid's are suing, but they are not suing the hospital (which took full liability) they are suing the company that supplied the heparin-Baxter. Here's a good video from CNN. Now at first blush, this seems like the typical American use of the legal system: I'm going to SUE you!!! But here's what I think is pretty cool: They are only suing for $50,000. Obviously, they're not doing it for the money-they merely want Baxter to change the problematic packaging (three newborns died in Indianapolis last year with the same mixup) and admit their mistake. I think this is very admirable, and shows the power that publicity has to do good. Maybe I will have to check out The Alamo after all....