People with acne are at substantially higher risk for depression in the first years after the condition appears.

Researchers used a British database of 134,427 men and women with acne and 1,731,608 without and followed them for 15 years. Most were younger than 19 at the start of the study, although they ranged in age from 7 to 50. The study is in the British Journal of Dermatology.

Over the 15-year study period, the probability of developing major depression was 18.5 percent among patients with acne and 12 percent in those without. The scientists found that the increased risk for depression persisted only for the first five years after diagnosis. The risk was highest in the first year, when there was a 63 percent increased risk of depression in a person with acne compared with someone without.

Stand up at work for (modest) weight loss

Researchers calculate that standing instead of sitting for six hours would use an extra 54 calories a day. In other words, about the same number of calories in an orange.

That expenditure would theoretically translate to a weight loss of 5½ pounds in a year. The study also found that men tend to burn twice as many calories per minute as women while standing.

For the study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, researchers pooled data from 46 studies involving 1,184 people. "The benefit is modest," said the lead author, Dr. Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine. "But it shows that the body doesn't ask you for much."

Two prostate cancer drugs show promise

They are among the most challenging prostate cancer patients to treat: about 150,000 men worldwide each year whose cancer is aggressive enough to defy standard hormonal therapy, but has not yet spread to the point where it can be seen on scans.

For the first time, researchers have results from two independent clinical trials showing that two different drugs help these patients — giving them about two more years before their cancer metastasizes. That means two additional years before pain and other symptoms spread and they need chemotherapy or other treatments.

The studies, each involving more than 1,200 patients, used androgen receptor inhibitors, which block testosterone from binding to prostate cancer cells and entering them. The study of an experimental drug called apalutamide was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The other study, of a drug called enzalutamide, has not yet been peer-reviewed, the authors said.

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