IN: Half of the People Taking Antidepressants Aren't Depressed: Study
Millions of people take antidepressants as a way to treat depression, but a new study reveals that some physicians are prescribing antidepressants for off-label uses that are not depression-related.

In the study, published Tuesday in the journal JAMA, researchers looked at nearly 10 years’ worth of electronic medical records for antidepressant prescriptions. In total, they reviewed over 100,000 prescriptions for antidepressants written by close to 160 doctors for nearly 20,000 people. They found that nearly 50% of the prescriptions were made for a disorder that was not depression. Instead, many of these prescriptions were made for issues like anxiety, insomnia, pain, attention-deficit disorders (ADD) and even bulimia.

“It’s an interesting phenomenon,” says study author Jenna Wong, a Ph.D. candidate at McGill University in Montreal. “We had heard that in the scientific community there has been a suspicion among doctors that physicians are commonly prescribing antidepressants for uses other than depression. We also found that for the major classes of antidepressants, there was an increasing prescribing trend over time.”

There are a few reasons why the new findings raise some concern among the authors. First, if scientists wanted to know whether antidepressants are increasingly being prescribed over time for depression, Wong says that data may be warped since the drugs are also commonly being prescribed for other uses. Wong also argues that some of the uses that are being prescribed are not based in scientific evidence. Some drugs are prescribed off-label because there is data to suggest they work for other medical problems, but in the case of issues like migraines and ADD, Wong says the science is not solid for using antidepressants as treatment. “It raises the question of why they are prescribing them,” she says.

The researchers did not look at why doctors are prescribing depression drugs for other uses, but they suspect it could be a last-resort measure. “Some of these conditions are things where there is no exact treatment,” says Wong. “The patients may be desperate for something to treat their ailments.”

It should also be noted that scientists do not fully understand how antidepressants work for depression. While evidence does suggest they work to alleviate some symptoms, how the drugs achieve that is still unclear. The researchers of the new trial say the trend of prescribing for other indications should be more fully explored, to understand the reasons why people are being given the drugs for reasons that are even less clear cut.
What is a short summary of the above article?

OUT: Study finds doctors are widely prescribing antidepressants off-label


IN: Apple iOS 10.3 Release, It's A Big One
has its hands full with the ongoing iPhone ‘30% Bug’ which I exclusively revealed last month, especially with iOS 10.2 making it worse. But it looks like the company has still had time to focus on making iOS 10.3 a major release…

In a pair of tweets my good friend and famed Apple leaker Sonny Dickson revealed once again he has his finger on the pulse as he revealed iOS 10.3 will begin testing on January 10th. He also said the release will centre around the introduction of a new feature called ‘Theatre Mode’.

iOS 10 has received updates and fixes faster than any previous iOS generation. Image credit: Apple

Theatre Mode will be added to the Control Center on iPhones and iPads and, appropriately enough, its icon will be popcorn shaped. Little is known at this stage how Theatre Mode will work. The name suggests it could be related to movie playback (perhaps an optimised video viewing mode), but instead Dickson believes it is going to be a form of enhanced Dark Mode.

If Dickson is correct, the assumption is it will be a one button option to both dim the screen and mute audio and notifications thereby making a device acceptable for use in the theatre. A personal aside here: whatever Theatre Mode delivers, NO use of smartphones or tablets is EVER acceptable in a theatre - your life can be put on hold for a few hours!

Sonny Dickson has a strong track record of Apple leaks over several years. Image credit: Twitter

Dickson also offered up one more small titbit: iOS 10.3 is being developed under the codename of ‘Erie’.

Theatre Mode And The Big Picture

iOS 10.3 looks set to continue Apple’s pattern of using major point releases (iOS 10.x) for new features and minor point releases (iOS 10.x.x) for bug and security fixes. But, for a growing number users, there is likely to be more widespread interest in iOS 10.2.1 than iOS 10.3.

The former is expected during early January and, while Apple has not released a single detail of what the update contains despite several beta releases, it is assumed to contain a fix for the 30% bug which has outraged affected iPhone 5 to iPhone 6S Plus owners. In fact even the Chinese government is complaining.

Remarkably Apple has still not publicly acknowledged the problem to be wider than a small batch of iPhone 6S models - despite even Tony ‘Father of the iPod’ Fadell tweeting about the issue:

Ex-Apple senior executive Tony Fadell confirms the battery problems with his iPhone 6S Plus. Image credit: Twitter

Then again, if iOS 10.2.1 can successfully fix the issue, Apple may well get away with its stony silence. But if not there could be a heavy price to pay, so it’s a gamble.

Despite this one thing remains clear: Apple is clearly intent on delivering iOS 10 updates at a breakneck pace and iOS 10.3 will be the eighth iOS 10 update in four months. A release rate which is faster than any iOS generation in history and would put Apple on course for 24 iOS 10 updates before iOS 11 debuts in September 2017.

Consequently I think a good New Year’s resolution of “more care, less haste” should be adopted at Cupertino, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to get it…

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What is a short summary of the above article?

OUT:
Apple is adding a significant feature to iPhones and iPads...