Login
Should depressed teens receive AI therapy?
AI as a Mental Health Therapist for Adolescents; JAMA Pediatrics, Oct. 16, 2023.
With adolescent mental health in crisis and our mental health system overburdened, companies are pitching conversations with artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots as an easy solution.
In this viewpoint article, the authors said AI therapists can offer an accessible and stigma-free solution, but they warned that AI chatbots lack key ethical guardrails.
Conversational artificial intelligence (CAI) chatbots like Woebot and Wysa can ask teens about symptoms and apply AI to diagnose and formulate treatment strategies based on standard therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy.
A 2020 review reported that online AI tools are marginally effective in alleviating mild depression symptoms — but AI has evolved significantly since 2020.
While increased access to therapeutic interventions meets a need, AI chatbots, when compared to human counselors, sidestep accountability on issues like consent, data privacy protections and the duty to prevent self-harm or harm to others.
There are also concerns these bots, based on the datasets used to train them, could bake in communication style, cultural, racial, gender or other biases that worsen mental health disparities.
For now, experts argue chatbots are better suited to complement human therapists, not fully replace them. Important ethical questions remain about unleashing chatbots on troubled teens.
Why COVID barely affects kids
Multi-omics analysis of mucosal and systemic immunity to SARS-CoV-2 after birth; Cell, Oct. 12, 2023.
Researchers led by Bali Pulendran, Ph.D., an immunologist at Stanford University, investigated why children were spared the worst effects of COVID-19.
From blood tests, they found that infants and young children exposed to the virus mount “atypical” antibody responses that persisted for up to 300 days. Adult antibody-based immunity wanes faster, according to the study group.
Infected children also showed high levels of interferon-alpha, an immune stimulator, and chemokines — chemicals that recruit immune cells to infection sites — but no signs of dangerous inflammation.
Inflammation leading to a “cytokine storm” was a leading cause of death in COVID-19 patients.
Nasal swabs revealed that infants mounted a strong mucosal immune response characterized by the release of chemicals that promote beneficial inflammatory responses and activation of immune system cells.
Understanding early childhood COVID-19 immunity helps inform how we protect our youngest kids. More work is still needed to fully unravel the unique immune response of babies and toddlers.
Is austim overdiagnosed?
Persistence of Autism Spectrum Disorder From Early Childhood Through School Age; JAMA Pediatrics, Oct. 2, 2023.
A new study upends the conventional assumption that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is lifelong and unchanging.
Researchers followed over 200 kids — more than 80% of whom were boys ages 1-3 — with ASD and re-evaluated them at about age 6. They determined more than one-third no longer met the diagnostic criteria.
All of the children received therapy such as applied behavior analysis, but the treatment amount did not affect ASD persistence.
Instead, children with higher initial IQ and adaptive skills — almost two-thirds of the girls and one-third of the boys — were more likely to “grow out” of the diagnosis.
The research suggests that the highest performing children may have initially been misdiagnosed, and highlights the need to monitor children’s development over time rather than presume an early ASD diagnosis is permanent.
On immunity, bats beat humans
Long-Read Sequencing Reveals Rapid Evolution of Immunity- and Cancer-Related Genes in Bats; Genome Biology and Evolution, Sept. 20, 2023.
Bats may hold the key to unlocking new treatments for viral diseases and cancer in humans.
A new genome study reveals bats have undergone remarkable genetic changes that bolster their innate immune systems and cancer defenses.
Researchers sequenced the genomes of two bat species from Belize — the Jamaican fruit bat and the Mesoamerican mustached bat. They found the bats’ genomes evolved rapidly to allow them to carry, with no apparent ill effects, viruses that normally sicken other animals.
Tumor suppressor and DNA repair genes showed signs of rapid evolution. These changes likely helped bats gain robust immunity to viruses and resistance to cancer, extraordinary adaptations that evolved alongside traits like flight.
Understanding the genetic basis of bats’ unique defenses could eventually lead to novel therapies for human viral infections and malignant diseases.
