Doctors have been issued with new guidance on the prescribing of antidepressants. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidelines say doctors should exercise more caution in prescribing the drugs. Separate advice from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority calls for stronger warnings on drugs such as Prozac and Seroxat. It says advice on potential withdrawal symptoms should be reinforced. One woman in 15 and one man in 30 are affected by depression each year. And around 44 adults in every thousand are estimated to have an anxiety disorder. The NICE guidelines say no type of antidepressant should be used in the initial treatment of mild depression. But for patients with moderate to severe depression who are deemed to need antidepressants, drugs such as Prozac and Seroxat should be favoured above other types because they are less likely to be discontinued due to side-effects. Both belong to a family of drugs known as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). Around 13 million prescriptions are written for SSRIs in Britain annually. They have become increasingly popular over the last decade, as doctors considered them safer than the older tricyclic drugs which carried a high risk of overdose. However, last year the MHRA banned the prescription of all SSRIs except Prozac to under 18s after concerns the drugs could make some suicidal. People who are on SSRIs are advised not to stop taking them, or reduce their dose, without speaking to their GP. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 6537 - Posted: 12.06.2004

An antibiotic used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis is showing promise as a therapy for Parkinson's disease. In laboratory tests, rifampicin was found to prevent the formation of protein fibrils associated with the death of brain cells in Parkinson's. Researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, also found the drug dissolved existing fibrils. The research, which is still at an early stage, is published in the journal Chemistry and Biology. The researchers studied the effects of rifampicin in test-tube experiments and are currently doing studies with cell cultures and mice to see if the same effects occur in living cells. Researcher Professor Anthony Fink said: "Clearly more work is needed to determine if this would work therapeutically, but if it does it would probably be most useful as a prophylactic therapy used in the early stages of the disease, before there is general neurological damage. "The disaggregation of existing fibrils is probably the most interesting and novel finding in this study. "If it works in people, that would really open up the possibility of stopping the progression of Parkinson's disease when it is first diagnosed." Parkinson's is a progressive movement disorder resulting from the death of nerve cells in the brain which produce a key chemical called dopamine. It is thought a critical step in the development of the condition is the collection of a protein, known as alpha-synuclein, into insoluble fibrils. Certainly, deposits called Lewy bodies, composed mostly of alpha-synuclein fibrils, appear in affected nerve cells. Some people believe the fibrils themselves are toxic and cause brain cells to die, others that the toxic agents are smaller component parts formed earlier in the process. Previous research has found that rifampicin may also prevent the formation of the protein deposits associated with Alzheimer's disease. (C)BBC

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 6536 - Posted: 12.06.2004

Scientists believe they have worked out exactly how we recognise a face when we see it. Experts have known for some time that there is something special about faces that draws us to look at them, even after the first few hours of birth. A brain region called the fusiform face area (FFA) has been pinpointed as key. Now a team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology say in the journal Neuron that they have figured out how the FFA processes this visual information. To find out what was going on in the brain, the researchers asked volunteers to take part in an experiment. The volunteers were asked to look at pictures of different faces and also pictures of an inanimate object - a house. At the same time, the volunteers' brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which shows up which areas of the brain are active at any given time. Some of the faces that the volunteers looked at were completely normal, while others had features that were spaced differently or had features that were replaced by those of different faces, such as a different nose or mouth. (C)BBC

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 6535 - Posted: 12.06.2004

By CATHRYN JAKOBSON RAMIN A few months ago, as I trudged down the stairs of my office building, deep in my thoughts, I noticed a dark-haired woman waving to me from the window of her car. She looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place her. Like quite a few others, she had slipped out of my mental Rolodex. In my brain, the synaptic traces that connected us had frayed. Yet again, I had misplaced an entire human being. ''So wonderful to see you,'' she said, inquiring by name after every member of my family, including the two dogs. Apparently she was not a casual acquaintance. Fending off panic, I proceeded through a mental list: Work? School? Synagogue? I couldn't visualize her in these places. I was about to cut and run with a quick ''nice to see you, too'' when the rear window slid down, revealing a toothy grin. ''We've been to the orthodontist,'' she said. The minute I saw Sam's freckled face, the mystery was solved. Our sons were best pals in nursery school and kindergarten. I had sat in her kitchen, discussing birthday parties. I remembered her backyard dotted with Little Tikes plastic play furniture. I knew what she did for work, and the name of her Portuguese nanny. ''Lisa,'' I said, as if her identity had never eluded me, ''it's terrific to see you.'' Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 6534 - Posted: 12.06.2004

Mark Peplow A preservative commonly found in cosmetics such as shampoo and moisturizers harms developing nerve cells, according to a controversial study. But claims that the compound may therefore pose a risk to unborn babies have provoked concern from other scientists, who are worried that such assertions may create unnecessary panic. Methylisothiazolinone (MIT) is widely used in hand creams, shampoos and other cosmetics. It kills bacteria, making it easier to store the lotions for longer periods of time without colonies of microbes developing. Safety tests have previously found that the chemical may cause slight skin irritation in susceptible people1. But Elias Aizenman, a neurobiologist at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says that he could not find any information about the chemical's impact on developing nerve cells. So his research team has been studying how the chemical affects neurons taken from the brains of rat embryos. Preliminary research published in 2002 found that relatively large doses of MIT killed most of the neurons within ten minutes2. Many chemicals are toxic in high enough doses, however, so Aizenman's group went on to test much lower doses over longer periods of time. This mimics the occupational exposure of people who work with MIT every day, for example in factories that make cosmetic products. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 6533 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON -- New MRI-based studies present more evidence that the brains of chimpanzees are human-like in terms of the relationships among brain asymmetry, handedness and language, according to research undertaken at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Understanding our evolutionary cousins helps us to understand what makes us human. Two related reports appear in the December issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, which is published by the American Psychological Association (APA). In the first study, Hani Freeman, BA, Claudio Catalupo, PhD (also with Georgia State University), and William Hopkins, PhD (also with Berry College), took magnetic resonance images of 60 chimpanzees to measure the anatomy of two key structures in their brains' limbic systems, an early-evolving central region that includes the hippocampus and amygdala. In the MRI pictures, the hippocampus (which regulates learning and consolidation of spatial memory, mood, appetite and sleep) was asymmetrical, its right half significantly larger than its left. This asymmetry was bigger in males. These findings are consistent with studies of human hippocampi, which are also asymmetrical. At the same time, just as in humans, the amygdalas of the chimps were symmetrical. Studies such as this confirm that human and chimp brains are not only asymmetrical, but asymmetrical in the same way. The findings echo previous looks at the non-limbic parts of chimpanzee brains, which also appear human-like in their patterns of asymmetry. This fact, especially if studied in the context of functional behaviors that reflect asymmetries, may help scientists get a better fix on the evolution of the limbic system in all primates, including humans.

Keyword: Laterality
Link ID: 6532 - Posted: 12.06.2004

Heather Tomlinson A multiple sclerosis treatment made from cannabis has been rejected by UK regulators, outraging patient groups who say it has benefits for sufferers. The news that Sativex cannot go on sale sent the shares of GW Pharmaceuticals, the company developing the drug, down 25% to close at 106.5p. The news precedes a meeting between Home Office and Department of Health ministers next week. The meeting was prompted by MPs' concerns that MS sufferers are having to buy cannabis off the street to relieve their symptoms. The meeting had planned to look at ways of getting the treatment out more quickly. "The [regulator] has failed to listen to those with MS who reported positive and sustained benefit from Sativex, in a properly designed and statistically significant trial," said Christine Jones, the chief executive of the MS Trust. "I hope the [regulator] will reconsider their position and give some thought to the impact of this decision on the lives of those with painful, chronic disease." The MS Society said the news was "extremely disappointing". Sativex is a nasal spray made from extracts of cannabis plants, which the Home Office allows GW to farm for medical purposes. It contains THC - the compound in cannabis that causes the "high". © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6531 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Cost and Risk Questions Mount in Face Of Overall Surge in Prescription Drugs By Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post Staff Writer One in 10 American women takes an antidepressant drug such as Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft, and the use of such drugs by all adults has nearly tripled in the last decade, according to the latest figures on American health released yesterday by the federal government. Those numbers are among a broad array of changes in health and health care use in the United States identified in the report. It confirmed that prescription drug costs are soaring faster than any other area of medical care as ever-increasing numbers of Americans take drugs for psychiatric conditions, to lower their cholesterol, to control asthma and for a wide range of other reasons. In 2002, the latest year for which data were available, the total tab for health care soared to $1.6 trillion -- of which prescription drugs accounted for $162 billion, the report found. Drug costs rose by 15 percent over the year before, driven by a combination of more expensive medicines and increased use. The report comes at a time when questions are growing about the costs and safety of many prescription drugs. The Food and Drug Administration recently concluded that antidepressants can increase the risk of suicidal behavior among children, and the manufacturer of Vioxx abruptly recalled the popular painkiller for safety reasons. A senior FDA official testified in Congress last month that he believes five other approved drugs are dangerous and should be taken off the market. © Copyright 1996-2004 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 6530 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Salvation Army bells, the blare of shopping mall carols, restaurants roaring with holiday cheer. These aren't sounds likely to send nerves into an irritated frenzy. But the days following gift giving might, as a dazzling display of the latest electronics enters some homes, decibels blazing, adding to a cacophony that researchers say is only getting worse. "Just about everything is making extra noise nowadays," says Purvis Hobson Bedenbaugh, a neuroscientist at the McKnight Brain Institute at the University of Florida. "Just all kinds of things like refrigerators, electric razors, hairdryers, bigger cars with bigger engines, more cars on the freeway." Bedenbaugh conducted research on how background noise effects lab rats and believes that a bombardment of sound might not only disturb the peace, it may also scramble some people's brain signals. To reveal how, his team wired rats' auditory thalamus, the part of the brain that helps process sound. As rats listened to a strong foreground noise they also heard three types of background noise—one similar to static, one to the murmur of conversation and one akin to the whir of a rewinding tape recorder. Bedenbaugh recorded the rats' brain responses and compared them with the response of the same rats when they weren't listening to background noise. The process went awry in rats that listened to background noise. © ScienCentral, 2000- 2004

Keyword: Hearing; Stress
Link ID: 6529 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Susan Milius After more than 10 years of searching, researchers have identified a compound produced by the senior workers in a honeybee colony that prolongs the time that teenage bees stay home babysitting. Honeybee workers spend their first few weeks as young adults tending the colony's brood and then shift jobs to foraging for food outside the colony. Studies had predicted that established foragers pass along a pheromone that slows their younger sisters' career change, according to Gene E. Robinson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. That pheromone turns out to include ethyl oleate, possibly conveyed to the teens during mouth-to-mouth food transfer, Robinson and an international team of colleagues report in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The pheromone guides the division of labor. "When we think about this with a human bias, it seems like a problem that requires centralized control. But it's decentralized," says Robinson. Should the colony run low on mature foragers, the supply of grow-slow pheromone dwindles, and young bees mature rapidly to fill in the ranks. When foragers abound, an abundance of the pheromone slows the replacement process. Copyright ©2004 Science Service.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 6528 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Christen Brownlee A new study puts evidence behind the old adage that stressful experiences can give a person gray hairs. Scientific data now indicate that prolonged psychological stress might cause a person's cells to age, and possibly die, significantly faster than normal. Previous research had shown that protein-DNA complexes called telomeres serve as a cell's timekeeper, telling it how long to live. Telomeres protect the ends of chromosomes, much as plastic tips protect shoelaces. Each time a cell divides, enzymes chew off a tiny portion of its telomeres. When the caps are whittled down to nubs, cells cease dividing and soon die. Scientists have long known that stress can harm a person's health by, for instance, lowering immunity or raising blood pressure. "We wanted to look at some of the molecular underpinnings of why that might be true. No one actually has clear ideas," says Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco. Blackburn and her colleagues examined whether telomeres might play a role. Her team recruited 58 healthy women between the ages of 20 and 50. While all the women were mothers of at least one child, 39 members of the group were primary caregivers for a child who was chronically ill with a disease such as cerebral palsy. Copyright ©2004 Science Service.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 6527 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Paralysed dogs given an unusual treatment for spinal cord injury have shown some success in being able to walk again, a new study reveals. Dogs rendered paraplegic by severe spinal cord injuries regained significant neurological function after treatment with a polymer called polyethylene glycol, or PEG, say researchers at Purdue University in Indiana, US. Dogs admitted to two veterinary hospitals with paraplegia - caused by naturally occurring mishaps leading to “explosive” ruptures of spinal discs - were initially treated with intravenous injections of PEG. This was followed by standard treatments, such as surgery to relieve pressure on the spinal cord and remove stray bone fragments, and steroids to reduce inflammation. The team, led by Richard Borgens of Purdue’s Center for Paralysis Research, reports that the PEG-treated animals showed marked improvement compared to “historical controls” - paraplegic dogs whose progress had been documented at the hospitals following standard treatments in the 1990s. Within 48 hours, the PEG-treated dogs scored far better than the historical controls on neurological and behavioural tests designed to measure early functional recovery. And by six weeks after treatment 68% of the PEG-treated dogs were able to walk, compared with only 24% of the historical controls. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 6526 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Juveniles may find it harder than adults to foresee the consequences of their actions. The finding may explain why teenagers act compulsively and take more risks. It has been seized on by campaigners who want to ban the death penalty for under-18s in the US. We know teenagers can be a bit gawky while they are still learning to coordinate their bodies, says Abigail Baird, a cognitive scientist from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, US. “We mustn’t forget that cognition is doing the same.” Teenagers take more risks, because they do not foresee the consequences as adults do, she says. Several bodies, including the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association, have submitted evidence in a test case before the US Supreme Court arguing against the death penalty for juveniles, and including some of Baird’s ideas. While 31 states ban the execution of juvenile offenders, 23 under-18s have been executed to date, more than half of them in Texas. The test case concerns Christopher Simmons, who was sentenced to death for a murder he committed when he was 17. In August 2003, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned his sentence on the grounds that it violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In July 2004, Simmons’s lawyers asked the US Supreme Court to uphold the lower court’s decision. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Aggression
Link ID: 6525 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON - In a move that could chill excitement about experimental drugs to treat female sexual dysfunction, federal advisers refused to endorse a new testosterone patch for women. Procter & Gamble sought to market the Intrinsa patch to women with impaired libido due to surgical removal of their ovaries. The company told a Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) advisory panel that the drug had not raised significant safety concerns in clinical trials. However, the advisory committee was unanimous Thursday: More research was needed. The FDA (news - web sites) is not bound by the committee's recommendation, though the agency usually follows such guidance. An FDA decision on Intrinsa is expected in a few weeks. Panel member Dr. Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic Foundation cardiologist, said he worried about exposing millions of American women to heart attack and stroke risks to gain a marginal increase in sexual satisfaction. Clinical trials showed that women who applied the patch to their abdomen twice weekly had one more "satisfying sexual event" per four weeks than did women given a placebo, according to the data presented to the advisory panel. Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press. Copyright © 2004 Yahoo! Inc.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 6524 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Study finds evidence mind is connected to changes in body David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor Researchers at UC San Francisco say they have found the first direct evidence that severe and chronic emotional stress can age people biologically. Everyone knows that stress is tough, and prolonged stress can be even worse -- it can disrupt the human immune system, increase the risk of heart disease and take its toll on the body in many other ways. Now the scientists think they know why: Stress, or the perception of stress, can alter key genetic molecules in a cell. In a controlled experiment involving mothers caring for chronically ill children, a team from UCSF and other research centers found that mothers who perceived that they were under persistent psychological stress aged by the equivalent of a full decade -- their cells were damaged and even killed by their own perceptions of stress. The scientists focused on key protein molecules in the body's cells called telomeres that cap the ends of chromosomes and on an enzyme called telomerase that controls the length of those telomeres. ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 6523 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By KAREN W. ARENSON Nicole Thompson had been at Columbia University for only a few weeks when she went out drinking with a group of friends downtown last year and became separated from them. She had skipped her medication for bipolar disorder. Now it was 3 a.m. and, crying and in a panic, she called friends; she told them, she said, that she "just wished the traffic would take me out." Although she made it back to campus safely, her friends had already notified Columbia that they were worried about her. For Columbia officials, it was the first clue that Ms. Thompson faced any kind of mental health problems. "I wasn't on Columbia's radar at all," said Ms. Thompson, who is back on campus now after being forced to take a medical leave. Increasingly, college officials and mental health experts have come to realize that many of the most vulnerable students - the ones prone to self-injury and suicide - are like Ms. Thompson: they never go near the counseling centers or reveal anything about their experience before college. As a result, colleges are stepping up efforts to find them and to get them into treatment, sometimes forcing them to leave temporarily. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Depression
Link ID: 6522 - Posted: 12.03.2004

By Alex Stone Faced with a threat to their young, mothers often act as if they feel no fear. A new study shows why. Neurobiologist Stephen Gammie of the University of Wisconsin at Madison notes that levels of corticotropin-releasing hormone, a chemical that causes nervousness, are suppressed in mothers of newborn children. “During normal lactation, corticotropin-releasing hormone decreases,” Gammie says. “We hypothesized that if they had low fear and anxiety, that might increase the likelihood that they would defend their offspring.” To test this idea, he and his colleagues experimented on several groups of mice that had recently given birth, injecting them with different doses of the hormone. When faced with male intruders who menaced their brood, mothers with low levels of corticotropin-releasing hormone confronted the threat with ferocious displays of hostility. In contrast, those who received high doses of the hormone quavered in their cages. Abnormal levels of the hormone have been linked to mood disorders in humans; Gammie hopes his research might help explain why some mothers suffer postpartum depression, and in rare cases even neglect their infants after giving birth. © 2004 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Aggression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 6521 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A successful method for healing spinal injuries in dogs has been developed by Purdue University researchers, offering hope for preventing human paralysis. Lab tests have shown that an injection of a liquid polymer known as polyethylene glycol (PEG), if administered within 72 hours of serious spinal injury, can prevent most dogs from suffering permanent spinal damage. Even when the spine is initially damaged to the point of paralysis, the PEG solution prevents the nerve cells from rupturing irrevocably, enabling them to heal themselves. "Nearly 75 percent of the dogs we treated with PEG were able to resume a normal life," said Richard Borgens, Mari Hulman George Professor of Applied Neuroscience and director of the Center for Paralysis Research in Purdue's School of Veterinary Medicine. "Some healed so well that they could go on as though nothing had happened." The research, performed at Purdue, Indiana University—Purdue University Indianapolis, and Texas A&M University, appears in the December issue of the Journal of Neurotrauma.

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 6520 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---For Marcel Proust, the taste of a madeleine conjured remembrance of the distant past. In today's multi-tasking, hyper-speed world, it can be a trick to remember what we did yesterday. But a new method of reconstructing the previous day's activities not only helps people remember how they spent their time, it also captures how they really felt about their activities. The technique, described in the Dec. 3 issue of Science, provides insight into what people actually enjoy and what kinds of factors affect how happy we are with our lives. Some of the findings confirm what we already know while others are counter-intuitive. The researchers assessed how people felt during 28 types of activities and found that intimate relations were the most enjoyable, while commuting was the least enjoyable. More surprisingly, taking care of their children was also among the less enjoyable activities, although people generally report that their children are the greatest source of joy in their lives. "When people are asked how much they enjoy spending time with their kids they think of all the nice things---reading them a story, going to the zoo," said University of Michigan psychologist Norbert Schwarz, a co-author of the Science article. "But they don't take the other times into account, the times when they are trying to do something else and find the kids distracting. When we sample all the times that parents spend with their children, the picture is less positive than parents expect. On the other hand, we also find that people enjoy spending time with their relatives much more than they usually assume."

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 6519 - Posted: 12.03.2004

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Researchers at Northwestern University have discovered a molecular mechanism -- a tiny protein attacking nerve cells -- that could explain why the brain damage in early Alzheimer's disease results in memory loss and not other symptoms such as loss of balance or tremors. The research team, led by William L. Klein, professor of neurobiology and physiology, found that toxic proteins, called "amyloid ß-derived diffusible ligands" (ADDLs, pronounced "addles"), from the brain tissue of individuals with Alzheimer's disease specifically attack and disrupt synapses, the nerve cell sites responsible for information processing and memory formation. These results, which show that only particular neurons and synapses are targeted by the neurotoxins, were published Nov. 10 in the Journal of Neuroscience. An understanding of how ADDLs disrupt synapses without killing neurons could lead to the development of new therapeutic drugs capable of reversing memory loss in patients who are treated early, in addition to preventing or delaying the disease. "Memory starts at synapses, so it was probable that Alzheimer's disease would be a synapse failure," said Klein. "Our work, which shows that ADDLs bind with great specificity to synapses, is the first demonstration of that.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 6518 - Posted: 12.02.2004