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Children of teen mothers have raised suicide risk
Last Updated: 2004-09-24 10:23:13 -0400 (Reuters Health)
LONDON (Reuters) - Babies of teenage mothers and infants who have a low birth weight have a higher risk of committing suicide later in life than other children, Swedish scientists said Friday.
In a study of more than 700,000 young adults, researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found that infants born to young mothers or those who weighed 4.4 pounds at birth were twice as likely to try to kill themselves.
"We need to monitor and support young mothers during pregnancy and to follow-up their newborn children to help them with emotional and practical support when needed," Dr. Danuta Wasserman, who worked on the study, said in an interview. "Prevention needs to start before a child is born."
Social and economic conditions, stress during pregnancy, poor parenting and poor maternal health are thought to be contributing factors to an increased suicide risk.
The researchers studied young adults in Sweden who were born between 1973 and 1980 and monitored them until 1999 to identify factors associated with suicide or attempted suicide.
Almost 2,000 men and more than 4,700 women in the study attempted suicide. Nearly 400 men and 166 women succeeded.
Children from big families or whose mothers had a low level of education also had a higher risk of taking their own life. But having a mother who was 29 years or older at the time of birth seemed to have a protective effect against suicide.
In a commentary on the research, Dr. Maria Oquendo and Dr. Enrique Baca-Garcia of Columbia University in New York said it was another step forward in understanding suicidal behavior.
They added that it opens a new line of inquiry focused on the interaction between conditions in the womb and at birth and additional factors, such as the parents' psychiatric and suicide history and parenting styles.
SOURCE: The Lancet, September 25, 2004.
Copyright © 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
Obese women who diet not at risk for binge eating
Last Updated: 2004-09-23 10:48:35 -0400 (Reuters Health)
By Charnicia E. Huggins
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Obese women who are considering restricting their calorie intake to shed pounds should not be dissuaded by those who believe dieting may increase their risk of developing a binge-eating disorder, new study findings suggest.
In fact, obese women who dieted for 10 months were no more likely to develop a binge-eating disorder than obese women who did not diet.
"We believe that findings of the adverse effects of dieting in persons of average weight or in those with bulimia nervosa or anorexia nervosa have, in some cases, been inappropriately generalized to overweight and obese individuals who seek to lose weight by caloric restriction," write study author Dr. Thomas A. Wadden of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia and his colleagues.
"Overweight and obese individuals should not be deterred from trying to lose weight by following sensible diet and exercise recommendations," Wadden told Reuters Health.
Wadden and his team examined the risk of binge eating in 123 dieting obese women who were followed for 40 weeks. At the start of the trial, the women did not binge eat and had no significant symptoms of depression or other mood disturbance.
The subjects were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups. One group restricted their caloric intake to 1,200-1,500 kilocalories per day, based on the Food Guide Pyramid; the second group consumed 1,000 kcal/day mainly through a liquid diet for about 12 weeks, followed by caloric restriction for the remaining weeks; and the last group did not diet.
All of the women also participated in first weekly and later biweekly 90-minute group sessions led by a clinical psychologist.
Half way into the study, women on the liquid diet had lost an average 12 percent of their initial weight, Wadden and his team report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The other dieters had lost about eight percent of their initial body weight by this 20-week mark and the non-dieters had lost less than one percent.
A few women, particularly those in the liquid diet group, had binging episodes by week 28, the researchers note. Yet, Wadden and his team found no differences in binge eating among the three groups at the end of the study, or at 65-week follow-up.
At no point during the study did any of the women develop a binge-eating disorder, the report indicates.
Women in both diet groups had greater decreases in depressive symptoms than did their non-dieting peers. Women in all three groups were also much less dissatisfied with their body image by the end of the study than they were initially.
"The present findings indicate that concerns about the possible adverse effects of dieting should not dissuade overweight and obese individuals from pursuing weight loss," Wadden and his colleagues conclude.
"These findings will not make it any easier for people to diet or lose weight," Wadden told Reuters Health. "However, they should reduce individuals' worries that dieting is harmful in precipitating binge eating or other adverse consequences."
Tara Geise, a registered dietitian and Florida-based spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association said that only once in about five years of practice has she seen a case of an obese person developing an eating disorder after dieting.
"The potential benefits of putting someone on a diet "definitely outweigh the risks," she told Reuters Health.
SOURCE: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, September 2004.
Copyright © 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
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