Publisher Health

Women with larger breasts tend to exercise less frequently and avoid high-intensity exercise and a new study has found much improved participation in recreational group exercises after breast reduction surgery.
The new study published in the international Journal of Reconstructive Surgery (JPRAS Open) further strengthens calls for more accessible, publicly funded breast reduction and other interventions in some cases.
Based on research at Flinders University, the questionnaire was conducted with support from the free community Parkrun UK research board, an organisation aiming to promote 5km running and walking events around the world — for all ages and fitness levels.
The survey was completed by almost 2000 women involved in the Parkrun program in Australia, England and South Africa found women with bigger breasts believe that reducing their breast size would improve their exercise performance and participation
As well, all 56 women who had undergone breast reduction surgery in the group of 1987 surveyed women reported leading more healthy and active lifestyles.
“Women who had undergone breast reduction reported increased overall frequency, enjoyment and willingness to exercise in a group,” says lead author Dr Claire Baxter, a clinical registrar in reconstructive surgery at the Flinders Medical Centre.
“Our study found that breast size affects exercise habits and that breast reduction surgery changes their willingness to exercise.”
Excluding women with a history of breast cancer, the study aimed to investigate how breast size impacts the exercise habits of women and how this compares to women who have undergone breast reduction surgery.

Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a novel aero-elastic pressure sensor, called ‘eAir’. This technology can be applied to minimally-invasive surgeries and implantable sensors by directly addressing the challenges associated with existing pressure sensors.
The eAir sensor promises increased precision and reliability across medical applications. It can potentially transform laparoscopic surgeries by enabling tactile feedback for surgeons, allowing more precise manipulation of patient tissues. In addition, the sensor can improve patient experiences by offering a less invasive means of monitoring intracranial pressure (ICP), a key health metric for individuals with neurological conditions.
Led by Associate Professor Benjamin TEE from the NUS College of Design and Engineering and NUS Institute for Health Innovation & Technology, the research team’s findings were recently published in scientific journal Nature Materials on 17 August 2023.
From lotus leaf to laboratory: Harnessing nature’s design
Conventional pressure sensors frequently struggle with accuracy. They have trouble delivering consistent readings, often returning varying results when the same pressure is applied repeatedly and can overlook subtle changes in pressure — all of which can lead to significant errors. They are also typically made from stiff and mechanically inflexible materials.
To address these challenges in pressure sensing, the NUS team drew inspiration from a phenomenon known as the ‘lotus leaf effect’ — a unique natural phenomenon where water droplets effortlessly roll off the leaf’s surface, made possible by its minuscule, water-repelling structures. Mimicking this effect, the team has engineered a pressure sensor designed to significantly improve the sensing performance.
“The sensor, akin to a miniature ‘capacity meter’, can detect minute pressure changes — mirroring the sensitivity of a lotus leaf to the extremely light touch of a water droplet,” explained Assoc Prof Tee.

A new study suggests that using big data and machine learning in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance in livestock production methods could help inform interventions and offer protections against germs that are becoming resistant to antibiotics.
Over two and a half years, researchers at the University of Nottingham analysed microbiomes from chickens, carcasses and environments. The resulting network of correlations between livestock, environments, microbial communities and antimicrobial resistance suggests multiple routes for improving antimicrobial resistance surveillance in livestock production.
The research, led by Dr Tania Dottorini, Professor of Bioinformatics, used a data-mining approach based on machine learning in ten large-scale chicken farms and four connected abattoirs from three provinces in China – one of the largest consumers of antimicrobials. The use of antimicrobials used to prevent and treat infections in livestock production on farms is associated with the rise of antimicrobial resistant (AMR) infections.
The study, published in Nature Food, identified several antimicrobial resistant genes (ARGs) that were shared between chickens and the farms they lived on that are potentially highly transmissible.
The findings also show that a core subset of the chicken gut microbiome, featuring clinically relevant bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes correlates with AMR profiles of E. coli, colonizing the gut. Notably, this core, which contains clinically high transmissible ARGs shared by chickens and environments, is influenced by environmental temperature and humidity, and correlates with antimicrobial usage.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity according to the World Health Organization. AMR threatens the effective prevention and treatment of an ever-increasing range of infections caused by bacteria, parasites, viruses, and fungi.
Around 600 million cases of food-borne disease, resulting in approximately 420,000 deaths, occurs worldwide every year. Within this, nearly 300 million illnesses and 200,000 deaths are caused by diarrheagenic E. coli globally.

Archaeologists have long been drawing conclusions about how ancient tools were used by the people who crafted them based on written records and context clues. But with dietary practices, they have had to make assumptions about what was eaten and how it was prepared. A new study published in the journal iScience on August 18 analyzed protein residues from ancient cooking cauldrons and found that the people of Caucasus ate deer, sheep, goats, and members of the cow family during the Maykop period (3700-2900 BCE).
“It’s really exciting to get an idea of what people were making in these cauldrons so long ago,” says Shevan Wilkin of the University of Zurich. “This is the first evidence we have of preserved proteins of a feast — it’s a big cauldron. They were obviously making large meals, not just for individual families.”
Scientists have known that the fats preserved in ancient pottery and the proteins from dental calculus — the hard mineralized plaque deposits on the teeth — contain traces of the proteins ancient people consumed during their lives. Now, this study combines protein analysis with archaeology to explore specific details about the meals cooked in these particular vessels. Many metal alloys have antimicrobial properties, which is why the proteins have been preserved so well on the cauldrons. The microbes in dirt that would normally degrade proteins on surfaces such as ceramic and stone are held at bay on metal alloys.
“We have already established that people at the time most likely drank a soupy beer, but we did not know what was included on the main menu,” says Viktor Trifonov of the Institute for the History of Material Culture.
The researchers collected eight residue samples from seven cauldrons that were recovered from burial sites in the Caucasus region. This region sits between the Caspian and Black Seas spanning from Southwestern Russia to Turkey and includes the present-day countries Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. They successfully retrieved proteins from blood, muscle tissue, and milk. One of these proteins, heat shock protein beta-1, indicates that the cauldrons were used to cook deer or bovine (cows, yaks, or water buffalo) tissues. Milk proteins from either sheep or goats were also recovered, indicating that the cauldrons were used to prepare dairy.
Radiocarbon dating allowed the researchers to specifically pinpoint that the cauldrons could have been used between 3520-3350 BCE. This means that these vessels are more than 3,000 years older than any vessels that have been analyzed before. “It was a tiny sample of soot from the surface of the cauldron,” says Trifonov. “Maykop bronze cauldrons of the fourth millennium BC are a rare and expensive item, a hereditary symbol belonging to the social elite.”
Although the cauldrons show signs of wear and tear from use, they also show signs of extensive repair. This suggests that they were valuable, requiring great skill to make and acting as important symbols of wealth or social position — perhaps a little like Le Creuset or Mauviel saucepans today.
The researchers would like to explore similarities and differences in the residues from a wider range of vessel types. “We would like to get a better idea of what people across this ancient steppe were doing and how food preparation differed from region to region and throughout time,” says Wilkin. Since cuisine is such an important part of culture, studies like this one may also help us to understand the cultural connections between different regions.
The methods used in this study have shown that there is great potential for this new approach. “If proteins are preserved on these vessels, there is a good chance they are preserved on a wide range of other prehistoric metal artifacts,” says Wilkin. “We still have a lot to learn, but this opens up the field in a really dramatic way.”

According to new research in the journal Immunity, T cells have a nuclear receptor doing something very odd — but very important — to help them fight pathogens and destroy cancer cells. This receptor, called retinoic acid receptor alpha (RARα), is known to control gene expression programs in the nucleus, but it also now appears to operate outside the cell nucleus to coordinate the early events triggered at the cell surface that lead to T cell activation.
A T cell (pictured) can have many roles in the immune system. (Image courtesy NIAID)
Scientists wouldn’t normally expect to see a nuclear receptor such as RARα playing this role outside the cell nucleus. And yet the new findings suggest T cells cannot begin to fight disease without a form of RARα on the scene in the cytoplasm.
“Cytoplasmic retinoic acid receptors turn out to be central for a T cell to link sensing at the cell surface with downstream signaling cascades and gene expression programs that transform the T cell to become an active fighter,” says Professor Hilde Cheroutre, Ph.D., who led the new study at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) with LJI Assistant Professor Samuel Myers, Ph.D., LJI Professor Mitchell Kronenberg, Ph.D., and LJI Professor Emeritus Amnon Altman, Ph.D.
The study is also the result of a successful collaboration with scientists at the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences in Japan and local teams at UC San Diego and the Salk Institute.
Helping T cells respond to danger
To understand this finding, it helps to picture the geography of a T cell. The cell nucleus (with its bundled-up DNA) sits in the middle of the cell. Other molecules and cellular structures called organelles float in the cytoplasm outside the nucleus surrounded by a membrane at the border of the cell (cell membrane).

The Maui wildfires are an ongoing human tragedy. At least 111 people have died, more than 1,000 people are unaccounted for, and many have been displaced from their homes.But such fires also put animals at risk. Wildlife, livestock and pets often perish in fires. Flames can destroy critical habitats for endangered species and set back conservation efforts. (The Hawaii fires threatened the Maui Bird Conservation Center, which is home to some of the world’s most endangered birds.) And all creatures that breathe air are susceptible to smoke.“Birds are especially vulnerable, because they have an incredibly efficient respiratory system, which is designed to deliver enough oxygen to power flight,” said Olivia Sanderfoot, an ecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies how smoke affects birds and other wildlife. The avian respiratory system is especially adept at drawing oxygen out of the air, but if there are pollutants wafting around, birds take those up readily, too.Precisely how smoke affects birds is still a nascent field of research, with many unanswered questions. But studies have shown that smoke can damage birds’ lungs and make them more vulnerable to respiratory infections. And the fine particulate matter that is present in smoke — and causes well-documented health problems in humans — can also accumulate in birds’ airways. “We know that air pollution, and smoke specifically, causes respiratory distress and makes it more difficult for birds to breathe,” Dr. Sanderfoot said.Plumes of smoke may also disrupt the journeys of migrating birds, many of which are under threat. In 2020, tule geese, which summer in Alaska, began their fall migrations in the middle of a record wildfire season on the West Coast. The geese needed more than double the usual time to arrive at their traditional Oregon stopover site, and their flight paths were nearly 500 miles longer, scientists found.Smoke rose from Lahaina on the Hawaii island of Maui the morning after wildfires swept through.Richard Olsten/Air Maui Helicopters, via Reuters“We’re beginning to see that birds have to make hard choices when they come across thick smoke,” said Andrew Stillman, an ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who studies how major fires affect birds.Birds can sit and wait for the smoke to clear, which can leave them stranded for days in unfamiliar territory and delay their migration. They can fly around the smoke, making detours that extend their journeys and use up precious energy reserves. Or they can continue to fly through, gulping down smoke as they go. “Either way, the migrating birds are worse off when they finally arrive,” Dr. Stillman said. “And not everybody survives that perilous journey.”Dr. Sanderfoot is exploring how smoke alters bird behavior and how those responses vary according to species and circumstance. (Some birds of prey seem to be attracted to fires, perhaps because fleeing or injured small animals make for an easy dinner.) Which species are most vulnerable to wildfires? Do birds with larger home ranges find escape easier than do those with smaller territories? Do birds that live in fire-prone areas respond differently than those inhabiting places where wildfires are a newer threat? Do responses vary at different times of year?“And all of this work is geared toward answering questions that I hear over and over from birders in our community,” Dr. Sanderfoot said. “Folks want to know what’s happening to birds when it’s smoky.”She is also enlisting amateur bird watchers to help her answer these questions. One new effort, called Project Phoenix, is now seeking California residents who are willing to spend 10 minutes a week observing their local birds through the fire season. Dr. Sanderfoot hopes to learn how birds alter their habitat use in response to smoke, and whether providing bird feeders and baths “could help them thrive as smoke persists on the landscape,” she said. “I’m hoping to put that all together and really help us learn, from a policy standpoint, what we can do to help birds as we see more and more smoke.”

Published2 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, SWNSBy Dan O’Donoghue, Judith Moritz, Lauren Hirst & Rachael LazaroBBC NewsNurse Lucy Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven babies on a neonatal unit, making her the UK’s most prolific child serial killer in modern times. The 33-year-old has also been convicted of trying to kill six other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.Letby deliberately injected babies with air, force fed others milk and poisoned two of the infants with insulin.She refused to appear in the dock for the latest verdicts.They have been delivered over several hearings. Reporting restrictions have now been lifted allowing the BBC to report all the verdicts.Letby broke down in tears as the first guilty verdicts were read out by the jury’s foreman on 8 August after 76 hours of deliberations. She cried with her head bowed as the second set of guilty verdicts were returned on 11 August. Follow live updates after nurse convicted of killing babies in her careThe defendant was found not guilty of two attempted murder charges and the jury was undecided on further attempted murder charges relating to four babies.Nicholas Johnson KC, prosecuting, asked the court for 28 days to consider whether a retrial would be sought for the remaining six counts of attempted murder.This video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.During the trial, which started in October 2022, the prosecution labelled Letby as a “calculating and devious” opportunist who “gaslighted” colleagues to cover her “murderous assaults”.She was convicted following a two-year investigation by Cheshire Police into the alarming and unexplained rise in deaths and near-fatal collapses of premature babies at the hospital. Before June 2015, there were fewer than three baby deaths per year on the neonatal unit.Her defence team argued the deaths and collapses were the result of “serial failures in care” in the unit and she was the victim of a “system that wanted to apportion blame when it failed”.The trial lasted for more than 10 months and it is believed to be the longest murder trial in the UK.As the judge discharged the jury, he told the panel of four men and seven women that it had “been a most distressing and upsetting case” and they were excused from serving on juries in the future. One of the babies’ family members left the courtroom when the jury foreman said it was not possible to return verdicts on the remaining six counts while a couple of jurors appeared upset. Who is baby serial killer Lucy Letby? ‘Letby took everything from us’ – twins’ parentsDoctors’ warnings ignored as Letby killed more babiesSenior Crown Prosecutor Pascale Jones said the nurse “did her utmost to conceal her crimes, by varying the ways in which she repeatedly harmed babies in her care”.She said Letby “sought to deceive her colleagues and pass off the harm she caused as nothing more than a worsening of each baby’s existing vulnerability”.”She perverted her learning and weaponised her craft to inflict harm, grief and death.”Letby will be sentenced at Manchester Crown Court on Monday. This video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.ukMore on this storyWho is baby serial killer Lucy Letby?Published29 minutes agoThe text messages Letby sent as she killed babiesPublished13 minutes agoTwins’ parents: ‘Letby took everything from us’Published32 minutes agoDoctors’ warnings ignored as Letby killed more babiesPublished24 minutes agoWatch: Lucy Letby’s first police interview. Video, 00:00:27Watch: Lucy Letby’s first police interviewPublished32 minutes ago0:27Watch moment police arrest Lucy Letby. Video, 00:00:43Watch moment police arrest Lucy LetbyPublished34 minutes ago0:43Lucy Letby jury can return majority verdictsPublished8 AugustJury considers verdicts in Lucy Letby murder trialPublished10 JulyWhat has Lucy Letby’s trial heard about alleged attacks?Published28 AprilRelated Internet LinksHM Courts ServiceThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Published5 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Girmay Gebru in Mekelle & Mercy Juma in NairobiBBC NewsAt least 1,400 people have starved to death in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray since food aid was suspended because it was being stolen, an official has said.The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) and the US’s leading aid agency halted food aid to Tigray about four months ago.A subsequent investigation by Tigrayan authorities found that almost 500 people were involved in the theft, the official told the BBC. Tigray was hit by a brutal conflict in 2020, causing famine-like conditions.The conflict ended last November after the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) signed a peace deal brokered by the African Union (AU).Eritrean troops fought in the conflict on the side of the Ethiopian army.For much of the war the region was under blockade, which largely halted humanitarian aid.AU envoy, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, said around 600,000 people died in the two-year conflict. Researchers put the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths down to fighting, starvation and lack of health care.BBC Africa Live: Updates from the continentWFP and USAid rallied to assist some six million Tigrayans, but announced a “pause” in food aid after discovering in April that their donations were being diverted to local markets. They did not say who was behind the diversion. “We simply could not turn a blind eye to the criminal activity and continue to deliver,” a WFP spokesperson told the BBC this week.The BBC has seen food with emblems of aid agencies such as the WFP and USAid on packaging at markets in cities and towns in Tigray, including the capital, Mekelle. However, it is unclear whether the food aid was corruptly “diverted” or whether it had been sold to market owners by aid recipients who were in desperate need of cash. WFP and USAid also announced a suspension of food aid to the rest of Ethiopia in June. USAid is the country’s largest food donor, helping millions of people struggling because of conflict, drought and the high cost of living.A leaked memo by an independent donor group, quoted by several media outlets in June, said there had been a “co-ordinated and criminal scheme” apparently orchestrated by federal and regional government entities, with military units across the country benefiting.Ethiopia’s government has said it is investigating the allegations, but its findings have not yet been released. Ethiopia’s army has denied its troops benefited from any stolen food aid.The Tigray interim government’s commissioner for disaster risk management, Gebrehiwet Gebrezgabher, told the BBC that since food aid had been halted, 1,411 people had starved to death in three zones alone – the east, north-west and south-east.Data from Tigray’s other three zones had not yet been collated, and the death toll would prove to be much higher once this was done, Dr Gebrehiwet said.He added that 492 suspects were under investigation, and 198 had so far been charged for their alleged involvement in the scam. Among the suspects were government officials, staff of non-governmental organisations, co-ordinators at camps built for people displaced by conflict, and “partners who are distributors of the food aid”, Dr Gebrehiwet said.”Business people, especially those who own food store and mills, are also involved,” he added, pointing out that their investigation had almost concluded. The BBC visited Shire, one of the biggest towns in Tigray, to see the effects of hunger.An anaemic mother of three, Mebrhit Hailay, said she was now forced to beg because of a lack of food.”Most days, we eat injera [a pancake-like fermented bread] with salt. The doctors advise me to have a balanced diet, but from where do I get it?” the 28-year-old said.Her two children, aged five and two-and-a-half years, looked thin, their eyes sunken and their bony limbs stuck out from their clothes.If lucky, they ate one meal a day, but on other days they went to bed hungry, Ms Mebrhit said. Ms Mebrhit was heavily pregnant when the BBC met her. A few days later, she told the BBC she had given birth to a baby girl who, fortunately, was healthy. At the local hospital, nurse Kibra Mebrahtu said that many mothers could not breastfeed because of hunger, and “many children are near death when they are brought to this hospital”. “We lost four this month only. The effects of the conflict, lack of food, lack of transport, are quite evident,” she said. The BBC saw eight-year-old Rahel Tewelde, with ribs exposed, at the hospital. She weighed only 10kg (22lb), the weight of an average one-year-old. Her mother, Hiwet Lebasi, said she believed that corruption led to the suspension of food aid.”Had it been distributed properly, it wouldn’t have stopped,” she said. In June, USAid said it would resume food aid only when it was “confident that assistance will reach the intended vulnerable populations”. The WFP spokesperson said the agency was speeding up efforts to resume food aid. It had, in fact, started distributing a limited amount of food in some areas to test stringent new measures being put in place to “make sure food will not fall into the wrong hands again”. “WFP is deeply concerned about the impact any pause in assistance may have on the lives of the families it assists. Therefore, we’re putting every practical safeguard in place to ensure food assistance reaches and is used by the intended beneficiaries,” the spokesperson added.More on this storyThe fighting is over. The rapes continuePublished15 February’I’m not even sure if my family is alive or not’Published4 MayWhy Ethiopia peace deal is triumph for prime ministerPublished3 November 2022Around the BBCFocus on Africa podcasts

Our movements are controlled by multiple neural pathways that connect the brain and spinal cord. In particular, neurons in the cerebral cortex send commands to the motor neurons in the spinal cord and then to the muscles, thus eliciting the required movement. However, this flow of neural information is compromised in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) — a widespread progressive neurodegenerative disease in which the muscles gradually atrophy, making movement and breathing difficult. Moreover, a protein called TDP-43 has been found to abnormally accumulate in the neurons affected by ALS, leading to the degeneration of these neurons and motor dysfunction.
In patients with ALS, the motor dysfunction symptoms usually appear in one part of the body, such as the limbs, and then progress to others. This further suggests that degeneration starts in one type of motor neuron and, thereafter, propagates to other motor-related neurons. Previous studies have highlighted the accumulation of TDP-43 in motor neurons as a co-occurrence with ALS. Given these seemingly disparate but related findings, researchers from the Brain Research Institute at Niigata University couldn’t help but ask: could TDP-43 be responsible for propagating degeneration in ALS?
To address this question, the researchers developed ALS mouse models that primarily accumulate TDP-43 in the cortical motor neurons, spinal motor neurons, or skeletal muscles. They then examined how the TDP-43 in specific motor neurons initiates disease progression to other motor-related neurons. Their study was published in Acta Neuropathologica on Aug 9, 2023.
“TDP-43 accumulation is seen in most of the patients with ALS, but there has been a long-standing debate on whether it propagates through the motor pathway and causes disease progression,” says senior author Dr. Osamu Onodera, professor at the Department of Neurology, Brain Research Institute at Niigata University.
The researchers found that TDP-43 induced in the cortical neurons of the mouse ALS models caused mild degeneration. They further found that TDP-43 was transported along the axons and transferred to the oligodendrocytes — non-neuronal cells that support neurons by enwrapping axons with a protective layer called myelin to facilitate neuronal signal transmission.
In contrast, TDP-43 induced in the spinal motor neurons did not spread to other cortical or spinal neurons but broadly induced cell death in the motor neurons and other neighboring neurons in the spinal cord. In addition, it led to severe atrophy of the muscles, which further led to motor dysfunction.
Regarding their findings, co-senior author Dr. Masaki Ueno, a professor in the same institute, says, “Our findings suggest that pathogenic TDP-43 has multiple properties to propagate degeneration in the motor pathways in ALS, probably by spreading itself and inducing other toxic events such as degeneration and inflammation.”
Their data revealed that TDP-43 spreads across neuroglial connections in the motor pathway and causes different pathological events to degenerate the spinal cord, suggesting that TDP-43 has distinct mechanisms for degeneration in the motor circuits of ALS.

The NewsBinge drinking among adults aged 35 to 50 occurred at record prevalence in 2022, according to research funded by the National Institutes of Health. A new study found that nearly 30 percent of people in this age group reported binge drinking in 2022, continuing a consistent upward trend in the behavior. In 2012, 23 percent of such adults reported binge drinking.Use of marijuana in this group also reached historical levels, with 28 percent reporting the behavior, up from 13 percent in 2012. In 2022, 4 percent of adults in this group reported using a hallucinogen, double the figure in 2021.The survey also looked at behavior among adults 19 to 30 years old. For this group, use of marijuana in 2022 was significantly greater, at 44 percent, up from 28 percent in 2012. But their self-reported binge drinking had fallen to 30.5 percent, down from 35.2 percent a decade earlier.A recent study found that alcohol-related deaths among women are rising at a faster rate than among men.Damian Dovarganes/Associated PressWhy It Matters: Alcohol-related deaths have risen among people 65 and older.Different generations use different drugs and at different levels. “Drug use trends evolve over decades and across development, from adolescent to adulthood,” said Megan Patrick, a research professor at the University of Michigan and principal investigator on the study, known as Monitoring the Future.The research has been supported since 1975 by the National Institutes of Drug Abuse, or NIDA, which is a part of the N.I.H. NIDA typically draws attention for its study of behavior and drug use patterns among young people in middle and high school. But the research also follows people throughout their lives, looking at the use of alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes and other substances.“It’s important to track this so that public health professionals and communities can be prepared to respond,” Dr. Patrick said.The implications of what drugs a generation tends to use can be significant. For instance, a recent study found that alcohol-related deaths continued to increase among people 65 and older, with deaths among women in this age group rising at a faster rate than among men.What’s NextThe study suggests that substance-use behavior is heavily influenced by the culture of a generation and the legal status of various drugs at various periods of life. For instance, among the adults aged 35 to 50, the 50-year-olds had tried marijuana the least — only 68 percent of them reported having used it sometime in their life. “These respondents graduated from high school in 1990, when marijuana and other drugs were at or near historical lows across the past four decades, suggesting a cohort effect,” the study noted.Nora Volkow, the director of NIDA, said in a news release that the data from this study and others like it can inform how health officials and individuals address the risks posed at different life stages. “We want to ensure that people from the earliest to the latest stages in adulthood are equipped with up-to-date knowledge to help inform decisions related to substance abuse,” Dr. Volkow said.