Trending News: Being Overweight, Obese at 3-years Old Leads to Higher Risk of Trait Later in Life

Fewer individuals died from heroin or synthetic opioids in states that expanded Medicaid, but these same areas had more deaths from methadone, according to The American Journal of Managed Care. The study authors calculated that Medicaid expansion saved up to 8100 lives between 2014 and 2016, when the Affordable Care Act took effect. Overdoses with natural opioids and semisynthetic opioids caused the largest share of deaths, followed by heroin, synthetic opioids other than methadone, and methadone.

In New York City, the estimated time from HIV seroconversion to antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation was reduced by 42% between 2006 and 2015, according to Contagion. Researchers used AIDS and HIV surveillance conducted by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which included 32,556 New York City residents diagnosed with HIV who were aged >13 years at diagnosis and had laboratory information reported through June 30, 2017. The researchers saw expanded HIV prevention and treatment efforts as fruitful given the reduction of time from seroconversion to ART initiation but pointed to a need for quicker diagnosis upon seroconversion.

Being overweight or obese at 3-years old presents a higher risk of the same physical trait at 15 years old, according to MD Magazine. Researchers in Japan studied more than 1500 mother-child pairs, examining whether there was an association between maternal prepregancy excess weight or obesity and the same trait in children at 15 years old. They found that being overweight or obese at 3 years old was associated with a more than 4 times higher risk at 15 years old.