Pediatric patients who use antidepressants may have an elevated risk for type 2 diabetes, the authors of a new study report. In a retrospective cohort study of more than 119,000 youths 5 to 20 years of age, the risk for incident type 2 diabetes was nearly twice as high among current users of certain types of antidepressants as among former users, Mehmet Burcu, PhD, and colleagues report in an article published online October 16 in JAMA Pediatrics . The risk intensified with increasing duration of use, greater cumulative doses, and higher daily doses of these antidepressants. The findings point to a growing need for closer monitoring of these products, including greater balancing of risks and benefits, in the pediatric population, the authors caution. They undertook the study because, despite growing evidence of an association between antidepressant use and an increased risk for type 2 diabetes in adults, similar research in pediatric patients was scarce. "To our knowledg
Electronic health record (EHR) vendors should imbed metrics into their systems to measure how EHRs affect clinicians' work, experts write in a commentary published online October 10 in the Annals of Internal Medicine . Yumi T. DiAngi, MD, a fellow in clinical informatics at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues propose six areas metrics should cover and recommended the creation of a "national council of clinicians" to design measures and create guidelines to address privacy and other issues. "The EHR, which was intended to improve patient care, has had the ironic and unintended consequence of impairing practice efficiency, largely because of poor design, a focus on regulatory reporting, and the burden placed on clinicians by data entry," they write. EHRs have also led to high levels of burnout as physicians' satisfaction in their work has declined, they note. To gain insight into the stresses that have pro