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People with rheumatoid arthritis today feel better and have an easier time with daily life than those diagnosed 20 years ago, a study finds. The study included 1,151 people. They were diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis between 1990 and 2011. Researchers kept track of them for 3 to 5 years. After those few years of treatment, about 23% of people diagnosed 20 years ago reported anxiety. About 25% were depressed. Just over half reported physical disability. These problems were cut in half for people diagnosed just a few years ago. In this group, about 12% reported anxiety and 14% were depressed after 3 to 5 years of treatment. About 31% were disabled. Researchers noted that patients today receive earlier and more intensive treatment. They are encouraged to be physically active. Medicine options also have expanded.

Some problems in pregnancy and birth increase a child’s odds of having an attention disorder, a new study suggests. Researchers from Australia did the study. They used data on nearly 13,000 children. Records showed that they were taking medicine for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Researchers also looked at information from a pregnancy database. Then they randomly chose another 30,000 children from that database. This group was used for comparison. Mothers of children with ADHD were more likely to have smoked or had a urinary tract infection while they were pregnant. Some problems related to labor also occurred more often for children with ADHD. They were more likely to have been born after induced labor. Threats of going into early labor also were more common. Their mothers also were more likely to have had a problem called preeclampsia during pregnancy.

The H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic of 2009 killed about 11 times as many people as previously reported, a new study finds. The World Health Organization (WHO) had said there were 18,500 deaths. But this included only people whose infection with H1N1 was confirmed by a laboratory. Many other flu deaths may not have been confirmed. The new study involved 60 researchers in 26 countries. They looked at numbers for virus activity and deaths caused by respiratory illness in 20 countries. These countries totaled more than one-third of the world’s population. They found that these deaths were far above normal in 2009. They also were much more likely than usual to occur among young adults. H1N1 tended to cause the most severe illness among younger people. Based on these numbers, the researchers estimated that H1N1 caused 123,000 to 203,000 deaths worldwide.