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The study performed magnetic resonance imaging of the brain structure on young and healthy, but heavy-drinking adults who had been heavy drinkers throughout their adolescence, as well as on age-matched light-drinking control participants. They participated in three cross-sectional studies conducted over the course of ten years, in 2005, 2010 and 2015. The participants were 13 to 18 years old at the onset of the study. All participants were academically successful, and the prevalence of mental healt h problems did not differ between the two groups. Although the heavy-drinking participants had used alcohol regularly for ten years, approximately 6-9 units roughly once a week, none of them had a diagnosed alcohol use disorder. Magnetic resonance imaging of the brain revealed statistically significant differences between the groups. Among the heavy-drinking participants, grey matter volume was decreased in the anterior cingulate cortex bilaterally as well as in the right insula. ...

The study, "Maternal Deaths from Suicide and Overdose in Colorado, 2004-2012," found that of 211 maternal deaths, 30 percent were from self-harm, defined as suicide and nonintentional overdose deaths occurring during pregnancy and the first year after giving birth. In Colorado, the mortality rate from self-harm during the period was 9.6 per 100,000 live births. About 90 percent occurred in the postpartum period. It is not known how the demographics and characteristics of maternal deaths in Colorado compare to other states or if such self-harm deaths are becoming more common. According to the study, in 2012 suicide was overall the most common cause of death in Colorado among those age 10 to 44. "There is focus nationally on reduction in maternal mortality, and the majority of this effort has focused on in-hospital causes of death such as postpartum hemorrhage," said lead author Torri Metz, MD, assistant professor of maternal fetal medicine at the CU School of ...

A new study by researchers at the Penn Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS) at the Annenberg School for Communication found that warning labels featuring photos of real smokers who were harmed by their habit are more effective in getting smokers to quit than the text-only labels currently in use. At least 77 nations around the world use images as a part of their cigarette warning labels. The United States does not. In 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was poised to roll out a series of pictorial warning labels for use on tobacco products as mandated by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA). However, a legal challenge by the tobacco industry led to t hese labels being rejected in large part because they were emotional rather than factual. These images showed things like fictional photographs of smokers and simulations of diseased body parts. In response, the FDA withdrew their original labels and began a research campaign to rethin...