About 100 boys each year are born with DMD, which mostly affects only males. Sufferers are usually confined to a wheelchair by the age of 11, and those with the condition have a life expectancy of 30.  Patients do not produce dystrophin, a protein in muscles that helps to protect them from injury as they contract and relax during normal activity, and their muscles eventually stop working.  The newly approved drug is Translarna, also known as ataluren. 

Daily Mail, May 7, 2016

Participants who joined gangs reported higher levels of depressive symptoms and were nearly two times as likely to report suicidal thoughts, compared with those who did not join gangs. Youth who became gang members were three times more likely to report attempting suicide in the last year compared with non-gang youth. "Together, this body of work suggests that gang membership has the potential to desensitize youth to violence while providing increased access to the tools most likely to lead to a completed suicide. Based on this growing body of literature, the intersection of violence, mental health, and access to weapons among gangs and gang members is an area for future exploration," the researchers concluded. 

Helio Psychiatric Journals, May 6, 2016

Rutgers students should consider getting new meningitis shot, school says

Rutgers University students should consider getting a new vaccine for meningitis B after a student was diagnosed with the strain of the contagious disease, campus officials said. The serogroup B strain is not covered by the routine meningitis vaccine that students living in college housing are required to get under state law. That vaccine only protects against serogroups A, C, W and Y. Rutgers officials recommended students consider getting a new "MenB" vaccine designed to protect against meningitis B.  The vaccines have the trade names Bexsero and Trumenba.

NewJersey.com, May 6, 2016

China's Childhood Obesity Epidemic Due To Western Lifestyles 

A 29-year study in nearly 28,000 children and adolescents published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology shows that 17 percent of boys and nine percent of girls were obese in 2014, compared to less than one percent of children and adolescents in 1985. The authors speculate that boys may be fatter than girls because of a societal preference for sons.

Asian Scientist, May 6, 2016

Weight loss surgery could help severely obese teenage boys reduce their risk for heart disease by increasing their levels of "good" cholesterol, a preliminary study suggests. The surgery also enhances the protective effects of HDL cholesterol, the researchers said. "We already knew that weight loss surgery improves weight and cholesterol numbers. This new research shows that there are actually changes in the way HDL functions in adolescents, which may lead to a reduction in long-term cardiovascular risk," study author Dr. Amy Shah, a pediatric endocrinologist at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, said in an American Heart Association news release.

The Journal Times, May 5, 2016

 

The Jewish Healthcare Foundation and the Eye & Ear Foundation are collaborating on a community-wide HPV Vaccination Initiative to increase uptake of one of the few vaccines in the world proven to prevent cancer. The initiative is mobilizing healthcare providers, parents, young adults, community activists, and policy-makers in the Pittsburgh region to shield boys and girls from the consequences of HPV. Coach Rhodes - an HPV-related oral cancer survivor - is among those who has rallied behind the initiative. Diagnosed with HPV-related oral cancer in 2015, Rhodes has since served as a mentor to a Duquesne guard Derrick Colter, who battled non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in the summer of 2014, and has shown his support for preventing HPV-related cancer - both by vaccinating his own children, and becoming a public advocate.

Go Duquesne, May 3, 2016

Nova Scotia has one of the best HPV vaccination rates in the country with boys getting the vaccine at the same rate as girls, the province's chief public health officer says. In 2008, Nova Scotia started offering the vaccine to Grade 7 girls to protect against cancer. In 2015, it expanded the program to offer it to boys, too. Strang said he has no official data yet, but frontline reports show boys and girls are getting the vaccine at equal rates.

More effective, timely HPV vaccine recommendations effective at increasing coverage rates

 

"By now, many people are probably aware that the HPV vaccination rates for teenagers in this country are quite low, lagging way behind our goals as clinicians," Landon B. Krantz, MD, of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, in Ohio, said in an interview. "Our clinic performed a quality improvement project to increase HPV vaccination rates by first doing a self-audit of our own barriers to vaccination, and then implementing interventions to improve our providers' recommendations for the vaccine." According to Krantz and his colleague, Mary Carol Burkhardt, MD, MHA,also of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, a self-audit can provide clinicians with specific data on which to craft appropriate interventions to increase HPV vaccine completion rates.

Helio, May 2, 2016

The Weekly News Roundup is produced by The Partnership for Male Youth and is released every Monday. 

For more information contact Dennis J. Barbour, JD. News Roundup editor and President/CEO of the Partnership, at [email protected].

The  Partnership for Male Youth is a collaboration among 23 national organizations and representation from six federal agencies. It is led by a multidisciplinary and multispecialty steering committee and advisory council. The Partnerships's flagship effort, released in January 2014, is  The Health Provider Toolkit for Adolescent and Young Adult Males.