​Welcome fellow Springfielders to a new weekly series dedicated to bringing the latest advances in health science to your living rooms. As a health researcher, I am dedicated to generating the best scientific evidence to improve the health of Canadian families. As a public servant, I also feel an obligation to communicate to you the latest and greatest discoveries in health research. As most families do not have the time and energy to find and interpret the latest scientific health discoveries my goal with this editorial is to save you that time and energy. Each week, I plan to provide a brief summary on studies that I think will help us all make better health decisions and foster meaningful discussions with your health providers about the best choices for you and your family. So what’s new this week in health science?
Teen blood pressure and long-term health. High blood pressure is something we usually worry about in our spouses and parents, but don’t pay much attention to for our kids. However, one of every three teens living with obesity and 5% of all kids in Canada also have high blood pressure. A recent study led by researchers in Hamilton and one of my colleagues (Dr. Allison Dart) from the DREAM Theme at Winnipeg Children’s Hospital, followed over 150,000 teens from age 15 into their adult years and found that those with clinically elevated blood pressure (i.e. they needed medication or were referred to a specialist) were 3-times more likely to have major kidney problems by age 30. Luckily the rates of kidney disease were low in each group (1.7 vs 5.5 per 1000 kids per year). These studies remind us of two things. First, that screening for high blood pressure (and other risk factors for heart and kidney disease) in the teenage years is important (without knowing we have high blood pressure we can’t do anything about it). Second, our health as adults is grounded in our health as children, so creating healthy environments early is a great way to set up a lifetime of healthy living. This work was published in the June 24th issue of the Lancet Child and Adolescent Health.
Screen-time in childhood and teen depression. For this study, scientists in the US asked the question, Is there a link between screen time in childhood and depression risk in early adolescence? And if there is, why?” Using MRI images and questionnaires collected from nearly 1000 children aged 9-10 years from 21 cities in the US and followed to age 11-13 years, researchers compared those with the highest and lowest levels of screen time. They first found that every extra hour of time spent on screens (phone, computer, video chats, gaming and social media), the child’s depression score increased about 12%. Interestingly this link was driven by 2 things: first less sleep in the kids that had higher screen time and second, changes to the way to connections are made in their brains. These data are the first to document both the behavioural (sleep) and biological (brain connection links between screens and mental health in young teens. These discoveries reinforce the importance of keeping track of screen time use in our kids as a way to potentially prevent depression in their teen years and also how important sleep can be for the developing teen brain. This work was published in the June 23rd Issue of JAMA Pediatrics.
I hope this is something our community finds useful if not valuable and welcome feedback and ideas for future blog posts.