More than 15 million U.S. adults have ADHD; eating less could lead to longer life span; Georgia reinstates six-week abortion ban – Morning Medical Update

More than 15 million U.S. adults have ADHD

According to a U.S. study released on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, about 15.5 million adults have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), with most struggling to gain access to treatment for the condition. Only about one-third of adults with ADHD reported that they had received a prescription for a stimulant drug used to treat it in the past year.

Additionally, it was found that nearly three-quarters of those with a prescription for the condition had difficulty getting it filled because the medication was unavailable. Adderall, an amphetamine drug, is the first-line or initial option most commonly used to treat adults with ADHD.

Researchers believe prescribing of the stimulant has increased since the pandemic, but shortages of the drug and other stimulants have affected patients who need it. Read more about the study here.

Eating less could lead to longer life span

Research from The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, and Calico Life Sciences in South San Francisco, California, discovered through a mouse model that while eating fewer calories may help extend life span, those that lived longer lost the least amount of weight while on a calorie-restricting diet.

The research also reported that certain genetic factors, such as genetically encoded resilience, could play a larger role in extending life span rather than diet.

Gary Churchill, one of the researchers, said, “It has been proposed that caloric restriction works to extend life span by reducing obesity and prediabetes traits in mice. Improving metabolic health is important for humans in modern societies, and so it seems reasonable to think that life span extension in mice might be due to reducing obesity and its negative health effects.”

Georgia reinstates 6-week abortion ban

Last Monday, ABC reported the Georgia Supreme Court reinstated its six-week abortion ban after a lower court allowed abortions to resume in the state. The lower court ruling will stay in place as the court awaits the state’s appeal, which was filed by Christopher Carr, Georgia’s Republican attorney general.

Justice John J. Ellington dissented in part with the ruling, arguing against the ban’s reinstatement: “Fundamentally, the state should not be in the business of enforcing laws that have been determined to violate fundamental rights guaranteed to millions of individuals under the Georgia Constitution. The 'status quo' that should be maintained is the state of the law before the challenged laws took effect.”

On Sept. 30, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled that the ban was unconstitutional, arguing that “the Georgia state constitution guaranteed the right to “liberty,” which includes a “woman’s right to control what happens to and within her body.” Georgia appealed the decision two days later.

More information about the state of abortion access in Georgia can be found here.