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The average video gamer is not the stereotypical adolescent locked to a computer screen 24/7. The real players, according to a new U.S. survey, are 35-year-old adults, many of whom are overweight, socially introverted and possibly depressed.

The surprising findings also show that the health consequences of video gaming differ by gender, according to the research, which is published in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The Internet-based survey, one of the first to look at this age group, used 562 adults between the ages of 19 and 90 from the Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington state, the 13th largest media market in the United States with the highest Internet usage in the nation.

Forty-five percent of those sampled described themselves as video-game players — more men (55.9 percent) than women (44.1 percent).

Female players had a higher rate of depression and much lower overall “health status” than female non-players. The researchers postulated that playing video games may be a type of “digital self-medication,” a form of distraction for women.

Men who identified themselves as regular video-game players had a much higher body mass index (BMI) than male non-players, not surprising given the sedentary nature of the activity. Male video-game players also used the Internet overall considerably more often than their non-playing counterparts.

All the video gamers, despite gender, reported a greater reliance on the Internet for social support, according to the findings.

“Internet community support and time spent online distinguished adult video-game players from non-players, a finding consistent with prior research pointing to the willingness of adult video-game enthusiasts to sacrifice real-world social activities to play video games,” the researchers reported.

Despite these negative health consequences, the lead author of the study said the picture is not black or white and could one day lead to positive ways to use this medium to benefit health.

“This helps us see better how adults play video games. It’s not so much pros and cons,” said the author, James B. Weaver III, a health communications specialist at the National Center for Health Marketing, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “It’s too soon to draw conclusions because these are just correlations, not evidence of causality.”

But he added, “The public health community may need to think about the characteristics of players and tailor [health] interventions to their needs.”

Much of the prior research into what has become an extremely popular pastime has focused on video-game players 18 and younger, suggesting that 59 percent to 73 percent in this age group are avid players.

In addition, a recent study found that 8.5 percent of young video-game players exhibit signs of being addicted to the activity. And younger players may also have a higher risk of aggression, being overweight and performing poorly in school.

But even though half of all American adults aged 18 to 49 play video games, as do 25 percent of those aged 50 and older, little research has been conducted on the health effects of their video gaming.

Outside experts stressed that this new portrait of Internet gaming is not all bad. (Indeed, a 2008 study found that playing video games may help older folks stay mentally sharp).

“We are often very much behind the curve when it comes to newer forms of media. They come out so quickly we don’t have time to study everything,” said Dr. Brian Primack, the author of an accompanying commentary in the journal and an assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “Whenever a new technology comes out, there are potential benefits of it and potentially harmful things. It’s good that we’re starting to say, ‘these are things we need to look out for’… Also to ask, ‘what are the potential ways we could use this as a tool for health,’ rather than say ‘get rid of them all.’ ”

“In general, this is like everything. Balance is the key,” said Marcia Ory, Regents professor of social and behavioral health at the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health in College Station.

But she added, people need to keep in mind that the average age of people in this study is 35, not the 65- or 70-year-old widow who may benefit more from this type of activity.

“One needs to understand the social context in which people are engaging in these games,” Ory said. “There are a lot of older people who are socially isolated, and Internet and gaming actually helps them with social support.”

The growing popularity of video games, according to the journal commentary, can be illustrated by the fact that the video game “Halo 3″ made more money on its first day than either the last “Harry Potter” movie or the recent “Star Wars” movie.

Many teenagers may be sharing their prescription medications with their friends, putting them at risk of drug side effects or having a health problem go undiagnosed, a new survey finds.

The survey, of 592 12- to 17-year-olds from across the U.S., found that 20 percent admitted to having lent a prescription drug to a friend, while a similar percentage said they had done the borrowing.

The most commonly shared prescriptions were allergy drugs and narcotic pain relievers like Oxycontin and Darvocet, followed by antibiotics, acne medications like Accutane, and mood drugs such antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications.

What’s more, the study found, three-quarters of prescription “borrowers” said they did so instead of seeing a doctor. Some eventually did make a trip to the doctor, but, in 40 percent of cases, failed to mention the borrowed medication.

The findings, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, also point to the potential safety risks teens face when they share prescriptions.

Less than half said their borrowed medication came with written instructions on how to use it safely. And more than one-third of teens who borrowed prescriptions said they had suffered an allergic reaction or other side effect.

Teenagers are not alone in the practice of prescription sharing.

Previous research has suggested that almost 40 percent of U.S. adults have lent or borrowed a prescription to a family member or friend.

“However, prior to our study, no one had asked adolescents how often they shared prescription medications, which meds they shared and what some of the outcomes were,” lead researcher Dr. Richard Goldsworthy, of Academic Edge, Inc., in Bloomington, Indiana, noted in a written statement.

The findings, he and his colleagues conclude, suggest that doctors need to talk to teenage patients about the risks of using other people’s prescriptions. Given the high rate of prescription sharing among adults, many parents likely need the same advice, the researchers note.

Wider efforts — like public health campaigns or warnings about medication sharing on product packaging — might also be worthwhile.

Providing palliative care at the same time that advanced cancer patients are undergoing treatment improves their quality of life and mood, a new study shows.

It included 322 patients randomly selected to receive either usual cancer care or a palliative care program consisting of four weekly educational sessions followed by monthly sessions until they died or the study ended. The palliative program was designed to encourage patient self-management and empowerment.

The study appears in the Aug. 19 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The patients’ quality of life, symptom intensity and mood were assessed at the start of the study, at one month, and then every three months until death or study completion.

The palliative care program “demonstrated higher quality of life, lower depressed mood, but limited effect on symptom intensity scores and use of resources in intervention participants relative to those receiving usual cancer care,” Marie Bakitas of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., and colleagues wrote in a journal news release. “The intervention had no effect on the number of days in the hospital and ICU, the number of emergency department visits, or anti-cancer treatment because the proportions of participants in each group receiving these therapies were similar.”

Regarding patients’ symptom intensity, the researchers wrote that “there may be little room for improvement because usual care participants also reported relatively low symptom intensity scores compared with patients with advanced cancer in other studies. It may be unrealistic to expect to reduce symptoms further in the setting of progressive disease.”