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By Nancy Lapid, Health Science Editor

Hello Health Rounds readers! A new study topples the idea that depression or anxiety increases a person’s risk for cancer – a finding the researchers hope will alleviate feelings of self-blame in some patients. A separate study shows that people without any heart attack symptoms can still have proteins in their blood that indicate heart muscle damage, and these people are at higher risk for death in the next few years. And finally, new data suggests another reason for cleaning polluted air: where the air is dirtiest, bacteria are most able to resist treatment with antibiotics. 

In breaking news, see these stories from our Reuters journalists: Novo’s Wegovy shows heart benefit alongside weight loss in trial; Arizona groups launch bid to put abortion rights on 2024 ballot; women over 70 risk breast cancer overdiagnosis with screening; and new pregnancy bias law broadly protects workers, US agency says.

As air pollution gets worse, so does bacterial resistance to antibiotics, a new study shows. REUTERS/George Frey

Depression and anxiety do not make people more vulnerable to cancer, a large analysis has found.

Experts had suspected that these mental health conditions may increase cancer risk by affecting health-related behaviors or by having biological effects on the body that support cancer development, but studies so far have had mixed results.

For the new analysis, researchers pooled data from 18 individual research teams that have been tracking more than 300,000 adults in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Norway and Canada for up to 26 years. They found no associations between depression or anxiety on risk of cancer overall or of cancers in the breast, prostate, colon or rectum, according to a report published on Monday in the journal Cancer.

There was also no effect of depression or anxiety on the risk of developing alcohol-related cancers.

Depression or anxiety were, however, linked with a 6% higher risk of developing lung cancer and smoking-related cancers, but this risk was substantially reduced after accounting for other cancer-related risk factors including smoking and alcohol use.

“Our results may come as a relief to many patients with cancer who believe their diagnosis is attributed to previous anxiety or depression,” study leader Lonneke van Tuijl of University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands said in a statement.

Blood levels of cardiac troponin proteins that are used to determine whether someone has experienced a heart attack might also identify a higher medium-term mortality risk in people without any heart attack symptoms, according to a new study.

Researchers at one large hospital in the United Kingdom tracked 20,000 adults who had a troponin blood test between June and August 2017. Fewer than one in 10 were tested because they were having symptoms of a heart attack. The others were tested only for purposes of the study.

Cardiac troponin proteins, which are released when heart muscle has been damaged, were present in high levels in about 5.5% of patients. Roughly two years later, 45% of those with high troponin levels had died, compared with 12% of those with levels in the normal range, according to a report published on Monday in the journal Heart.

After accounting for patients’ other risk factors, such as age and kidney function, a high cardiac troponin level was independently associated with a 76% higher risk of later death from cardiovascular disease or from other causes.

The link between high troponin levels and death was found to be strongest in study participants who had the tests done only as part of the study, not because they were having heart attack symptoms.

The study was not designed to prove that high troponin levels caused the higher risk of death. More likely, high troponin levels reflect a broad spectrum of health issues – not only heart attacks – that increase a patient’s risk of dying, the researchers said.

Reducing air pollution could help curb the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, according to a new study.

Researchers analyzed air pollution data collected from 116 countries between 2000 to 2018. In total, they had data on more than 11.5 million test samples involving nine types of bacteria and 43 types of antibiotics. They focused specifically on so-called PM2.5 pollution, which refers to fine inhalable particles with diameters of 2.5 micrometers and smaller.

Every 1% rise in PM 2.5 air pollution was linked with increases in antibiotic resistance of between 0.5 and 1.9%, depending on the pathogen, they reported on Monday in The Lancet Planetary Health. The observed association became stronger over time, with changes in PM2.5 levels leading to larger increases in antibiotic resistance in more recent years.

The analysis links antibiotic resistance resulting from air pollution to an estimated 480,000 premature deaths in 2018 in the 116 countries and to economic costs of $395 billion.

“The benefits of controlling air pollution could be two-fold: not only will it reduce the harmful effects of poor air quality, it could also play a major role in combating the rise and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria,” study leader Hong Chen of Zhejiang University in China said in a statement.

This newsletter was edited by Will Dunham.

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