New course on youth mental health for primary care clinicians; cosmetic surgeries to tighten skin on the rise; how “bad” cholesterol works in the body – Morning Medical Update

Author(s):

Austin Littrell

Key Takeaways

The REACH Institute is launching a virtual CBT course for primary care clinicians to improve pediatric mental health care.
Cosmetic surgeries, such as breast lifts and tummy tucks, are increasing in popularity with the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drug usage.
NIH researchers have detailed how LDL cholesterol binds to its receptor, enhancing understanding of its role in cardiovascular disease.

The top news stories in medicine today.

New program for primary care clinicians intended to enhance pediatric mental health care

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, roughly 4.1 million young people, aged 12 to 17, in the United States are affected by depression. In spite of this, just 41% of those young people receive any treatment. The Resource for Advancing Children’s Mental Health (REACH) Institute has announced the addition of a new course to its Child/Adolescent Training in Evidence-Based Psychotherapy (CATIE) for primary care clinicians. The new course, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for Depression in Pediatric Primary Care, will be held virtually on January 24, 2025. More on the course can be found here.

Cosmetic surgeries to tighten skin surge in popularity alongside weight-loss drugs

A KFF study from May 2024 determined that one in eight US adults had used a GLP-1 drug at some point in their life, and half of them—6% of adults or more than 15 million people—are currently using prescriptions. With this, breast lift and tummy tuck procedures, which are intended to lift and tighten skin, increased 30% and 37%, respectively, from 2019 to 2022. Upper arm lifts increased 23% over that same period, as did facelifts, lower body lifts and buttock lifts, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgery. The procedures ticked up again in 2023 and are expected to continue to grow in popularity as usage of GLP-1 drugs becomes more common. CNN Health has the full story.

How “bad” cholesterol works in the body

Low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) is considered “bad” cholesterol. For the first time, researchers from the National Institute of Health (NIH) were able to show how the main structural protein of LDL binds to its receptor – which is the first step in clearing LDL from the blood – and what happens when the process gets impaired. Published in Nature, these findings provide a deeper understanding of how LDL contributes to heart disease and opens the door to potential new treatments.

“LDL is one of the main drivers of cardiovascular disease, which kills one person every 33 seconds, so if you want to understand your enemy, you want to know what it looks like,” Alan Remaley, MD, PhD, co-senior author on the study, said in a news release.