BELOW ZERO

A male twin who shares the womb with a female is nearly as likely as girls from female twin pairs to develop anorexia.

Prenatal factors may play a role in anorexia risk

A male twin who shares the womb with a female is nearly as likely as girls from female twin pairs to develop anorexia. It suggests that prenatal conditions influence the likelihood of developing the eating disorder, say researchers from the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Anorexia nervosa is ten times as common in females as in males, but the reasons for this sharp gender difference in prevalence remain unclear. Some scientists have suggested that upbringing may be

a factor in the gender difference in rates of occurrence of the disorder, but studies haven’t borne this out. The latest findings could eventually lead to ways to treat and even prevent anorexia.

ZERO TO 20

Bedwetting linked to intellectual decline

Children who regularly wet the bed at night score worse on multiple measures of cognitive performance than do non-bedwetting children, researchers from Chinese University of Hong Kong reported at a meeting of International Children’s Continence Society. Cognitive function refers abilities such as intelligence, short-term memory and attention focus. The findings are important because treatment of bedwetting should help patients achieve more than getting over the stigma of being wet, said Dr Stuart Bauer, professor of urology at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

20 TO 40

Depression, anorexia, childbirth affect sex life

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Childbirth and the psychiatric disorders anorexia and depression can affect a woman’s sex life, but in different ways, a small study published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders suggests. Women with mental health conditions, including depression and eating disorders, tend to report more problems with sex life. The same has been found in studies of new mothers. Researchers Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences, New Zealand, found that women with either anorexia or depression had sex more frequently than new mothers but reported having “problems” during sex.

40 TO 60

Depressed moms’ kids at higher injury risk

Young children of depressed mothers are at heightened risk for behavioral problems and injury, new research shows. A team at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center looked at data on more than 1,100 mother/child pairs and found 94 of the children (all under age 6) suffered injuries serious enough to require medical attention. Two-thirds of the injuries occurred at home. The study, published in Injury Prevention, also found that children (especially boys) of mothers with high depression scores were much more likely to have behavioral problems.

60 AND ABOVE

Calcium levels may signal risk of mental decline

In the elderly, higher levels of calcium in the blood are associated with poorer mental function and faster decline in cognitive ability, Dutch researchers found. Some diseases that increase blood calcium — such as kidney failure, cancer and excessive parathyroid gland activity — could be a factor in the relationship, although it’s also possible that an individual’s calcium “set point” plays a role in cognitive decline with age, the researchers reported in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.