Newsbriefs: Hearing Loss & Anemia; the Heart’s Nervous System; Sexism & Men’s Mental Health

An Association Found Between Hearing Loss and Anemia

According to research coming out of the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, in 2014 approximately 15 percent of adults reported difficulty with hearing. Researchers evaluated associations between hearing loss and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) and found that it increased the odds of hearing loss. Researchers analyzed data from the electronic medical records of 305,339 adults ages 21 to 90 years. The association was found among several different kinds of hearing loss, including problems with the bones of the middle ear, sensorineural hearing loss (when there is damage to the cochlea or to the nerve pathways from the inner ear to the brain), deafness, and unspecified hearing loss. Because IDA is a common and easily correctable condition, further understanding of the association between IDA and all types of hearing loss may help to open new possibilities for early identification and appropriate treatment. According to the authors, the next steps are to better understand the correlation, and whether or not promptly diagnosing and treating IDA will impact adults with hearing loss. The study, Association of Iron Deficiency Anemia With Hearing Loss in US Adults, appeared online in the December 2016 issue of JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery.

Mapping the Heart’s Nervous System

More than 800,000 people in the U.S. die each year from cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure, arrhythmia and hypertension. These problems often are linked to the autonomic nervous system, the part of the nervous system that signals the heart to beat and controls breathing, digestion, and other body processes that typically happen without conscious effort. Researchers believe that modulating those electrical signals holds promise as a way to treat heart failure and other common cardiovascular problems. A consortium of seven institutions, directed by Kalyanam Shivkumar, MD, director of the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center and Electrophysiology Programs, has received a three-year, $8.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to map the heart’s nervous system. The group’s goal is to conduct research that leads to new ways to treat cardiovascular disease by targeting the nerves that influence the heart. “Understanding the nervous system’s control of the heart is such a complex problem that it requires a collaborative approach, and we’re pleased that so many experts are coming together for this initiative,” said Dr. Shivkumar. “Our goal is to precisely map the heart’s anatomy and code the function of the nerves that control the heart from a very basic level all the way to clinical studies in humans.”

Sexism May Take a Negative Toll on Men’s Mental Health

A study published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology suggests that men who see themselves as sexually promiscuous playboys or as having power over women are more likely to have psychological problems and less likely to seek psychological help compared to men who don’t conform to those masculine norms. Indiana University researchers analyzed samples from 19,453 participants that focused on the relationship between mental health and conformity to 11 norms generally considered to be masculine traits (e.g., the need for emotional control, risk-taking, desire to win, violence, and pursuit of status). “The masculine norms of being a playboy and holding power over women are the norms most closely associated with sexist attitudes,” says lead researcher Y. Joel Wong, PhD. “The robust association between conformity to these two norms and negative mental health-related outcomes underscores the idea that sexism is not merely a social injustice, but may also have a detrimental effect on the mental health of those who embrace such attitudes.” Conformity to the masculine norm of risk-taking, however, was associated with both negative and positive mental health outcomes, suggesting that risk-taking can have both positive and negative psychological consequences. According to the authors, the findings highlight the need for researchers to separate the generic construct of conformity to masculine norms and to focus instead on specific aspects of masculine norms and how they may or may not be associated with other outcomes.

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