by Steven P. James, M.D., M.B.A., and Wallace B. Mendelson, M.D., Psychiatric Times A significant number of Americans are looking at alternatives to mainstream medicine for treating various ills, and lifetime use of complementary and alternative medicine is steadily increasing (Kessler et al., 2001). In 1997, 42.1% of participants in a national survey said they had used at least one of 16 alternative treatments in the preceding 12 months, up from 33.8% in 1990 (Eisenberg et al., 1998). In addition, 12.1% were using herbal medicines in 1997, up from 2.5% in 1990. Alternative therapies were used most frequently for such conditions as fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, depression and headaches. Despite the popularity of alternative approaches, efficacy data are often lacking or are negative. A meta-analysis of more than 500 studies of acupuncture, for instance, found that although it may have benefits in some specialized situations such as controlling chemotherapy-induced nausea, efficacy data for its most widespread applications, including back pain and headaches, are "equivocal and contradictory" (Kaptchuk, 2002). The use of largely untested alternatives may have significant health consequences. Last May, the World Health Organization (WHO) created a special program to track unconventional medicine. This action followed warnings about liver damage resulting from use of the herb Kava Kava (Piper methysticum) to treat, among other things, anxiety, sleeplessness and menopausal symptoms (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 2002) and reports of heart attacks and strokes following administration of the ephedrine-containing herb Ma-Huang (Ephedra sinica) (McNeil, 2002). © 2003 Psychiatric Times. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 4558 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Nikolaos Scarmeas, M.D., and Yaakov Stern, Ph.D., Psychiatric Times The cognitive reserve (CR) hypothesis suggests that there are individual differences in the ability to cope with Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology (Stern, 2002). For example, Katzman et al. (1989) described cases of cognitively normal, elderly women who were discovered to have advanced AD pathology in their brains at death. About 25% of subjects who fulfilled pathologic criteria for AD and were assessed and followed in well-characterized cohorts were clinically intact during life (Neuropathology Group, 2001). Factors thought to mediate CR have included education, occupation and IQ. Epidemiological data supporting the cognitive reserve hypothesis include observations that lower educational and occupational attainment is associated with increased risk for incident dementia (Stern et al., 1994). Similarly, lower linguistic ability in early life and childhood mental ability scores are strong predictors of poor cognitive function and dementia in late life (Whalley et al., 2000). Factors other than IQ, education and occupation might also provide reserve and influence the incidence of AD. It has been theorized that changes in everyday experiences and activity patterns may result in disuse and consequent atrophy of cognitive processes and skills. Does the stimulation provided by typical everyday activities facilitate the maintenance and improvement of general cognitive skills in a manner that is analogous to exposure to cognitive training? © 2003 Psychiatric Times. All rights reserved

Keyword: Alzheimers; Intelligence
Link ID: 4557 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Janet Munro, M.B.B.S., M.R.C.Psych., Psychiatric Times In the late 19th century, German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, M.D., described dementia praecox, an illness of organic origin that began during puberty (praecox) and led to a progressive deterioration of intellectual functioning (dementia). Eugen Bleuler, M.D., coined the term schizophrenia to replace dementia praecox, as he observed that some patients recovered without serious intellectual decline and others developed the illness beyond their adolescent years. The DSM-IV subtypes are defined by the predominant symptomology, and intellectual function is not a feature of current classifications. However, an argument exists that cognitive dysfunction is the core of the disorder and thus, schizophrenia is better characterized by cognitive deficits than by symptoms (Elvevag and Goldberg, 2000). Kraepelin and Bleuler recognized that schizophrenia often is preceded by non-psychotic behavioral abnormalities. Despite this recognition of premorbid abnormalities, the relationship between the child and adult illness received scant attention until much later. The concept of neurodevelopmental schizophrenia proposes that some abnormality in brain development, possibly occurring in utero, causes delay or deviance in the development of childhood skills, later cognitive deficits, and behavioral and social deviance, and--at some critical developmental point--major psychopathology and psychosis (Murray, 1994). Critical review and evidence support this neurodevelopmental hypothesis at all life stages (Marenco and Weinberger, 2000). © 2003 Psychiatric Times. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Intelligence
Link ID: 4556 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NEW ORLEANS --Glial cells once had a reputation as the support staff for neurons, the real movers and shakers in the nervous system. In recent years, however, researchers have gleaned hints that glia, which comprise about 90% of the cells in the brain, do more than just maintenance work. New findings presented here last week at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience suggest that in the crucial task of building synapses--the contact points that allow neurons to talk to one another--glia may even run the show. The study firms up earlier evidence that glial cells called astrocytes instruct neurons to make synapses and identifies the first extracellular signal known to spur synapse formation in the brain. "That's a pretty big deal," says Michael Ehlers, a neuroscientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. A clue that glia might be the source of the signal to build synapses came in 2001, when Ben Barres and colleagues at Stanford University reported that lab-grown rat neurons make more synapses in the presence of astrocytes (Science , 26 January 2001, p. 657). To hunt for the chemical messenger, postdocs Karen Christopherson and Erik Ullian in Barres's lab grew astrocytes in culture and filtered the solution bathing the cells before adding it to neurons. To their surprise, these experiments indicated that the chemical that spurs synapse building was a whopper--more than 300 kilodaltons. Copyright © 2003 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 4555 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Proteomic signature for ALS identified MILAN, Italy, – Detection of protein abnormalities in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) may allow physicians to more rapidly diagnose and better monitor drug efficacy in clinical trials for the disease, according to a novel study presented by a University of Pittsburgh researcher in Milan, Italy, today. These findings may lead to the first test for early stage ALS, also know as Lou Gehrig's disease. The study, presented by Robert Bowser, Ph.D., of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine at the 11th annual meeting of the International Alliance of ALS/MND Associations and 14th International Symposium on ALS/MND, identified ALS-specific biomarkers by protein profiling of cerebrospinal fluid from 25 ALS patients and 35 control subjects.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 4554 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have known for many years that auditory cues such as song can influence hormone release and the growth of gonads in songbirds, but how the brain picks out specific sounds, interprets them correctly and translates them into hormonal and behavioral signals has remained a mystery. New evidence suggests a third form of a key reproduction hormone could be a link between song and enhanced procreation in songbirds. It's a long-held tenet of avian biology that songbirds have just two types of a key reproduction hormone, gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), and only one actually triggers a seasonal "puberty" each spring in preparation for reproduction. But the new research shows a third form of the hormone, called lamprey GnRH-III-like hormone because it was first identified in lampreys, is also present in songbird brains. The work by scientists from the University of Washington and the University of New Hampshire shows GnRH-III can trigger the release of luteinizing hormone from the pituitary gland and influence gonad growth, something only one of the other forms of GnRH does under normal conditions.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 4553 - Posted: 11.18.2003

CHICAGO – Three mutations in genes associated with Alzheimer disease (AD) are described by researchers in the November issue of The Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Alzheimer disease (AD) is a complex neurodegenerative disorder often affecting the elderly and characterized by gradual loss of memory and cognitive decline, according to the article. AD is often accompanied by a buildup of certain proteins or plaques in the brain. Since 1991, the results of genetic studies have led to the identification of gene mutations and variations that can either cause AD or increase the risk for developing the disease. Familial Alzheimer disease (FAD), which accounts for approximately 5 percent to 10 percent of all cases of AD, has been found to influenced by mutations on genes coding for presenilin. Presenilin is a protein that has been associated with plaque formation. Sandro Sorbi, M.D., of the University of Florence, Italy and colleagues obtained DNA samples from 45 individuals with FAD. Participants were outpatients from the neurology departments at the Universities of Florence and Parma, and the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The authors conducted genetic studies to screen certain genes for mutations associated with FAD.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 4552 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By TOM SIEGFRIED / The Dallas Morning News NEW ORLEANS – Eating a spinach salad for lunch every day might be smarter than you think – it could make you think smarter. If you don't like spinach, try a cup of blueberries instead. Unless you plan on flying to Mars – or otherwise exposing yourself to cosmic rays. In that case forget the blueberries – snarf down a daily pint of strawberries. OK, this all sounds a little suspiciously like the dietary advice you get from those paid TV or radio shows pushing "miracle" medicines that supposedly maintain your mind in a perpetually youthful condition. But actually it's what real brain scientists are finding out about food for thought. If you want to keep your brain healthy and wise as you age, you don't need to be making the health-food-fad industry wealthy. ©2003 Belo Interactive

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 4551 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new study has for the first time identified differences in brain metabolism of heterosexual and homosexual men. University of Chicago researchers gave Prozac to a group of eight exclusively gay males and seven exclusively straight men. Then they measured how the Prozac, which increases brain levels of serotonin, affected glucose metabolism in the hypothalamus, which controls sexual behavior. Presented at last week's annual meeting of the Society For Neuroscience, the study found that the heterosexual group showed a larger decrease in glucose metabolism than the homosexual group. The researchers are not sure whether the difference contributes to sexual orientation or is somehow caused by it. Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4550 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Some doctors concerned about growing 'off-label' use of drug Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer Six times a week, before her morning workout and her hot cup of oatmeal, 56-year-old Hanneke Hops starts her day with a shot of recombinant human growth hormone, fresh from the refrigerator, injected into her thigh. She said the needle never hurts. The tiny dose of genetically engineered protein, slipped just under the skin, causes no sensation of pleasure or pain. But after only two months on the drug, which costs about $23 a day, the Hayward woman said she is feeling stronger, healthier and happier. "It makes me feel good,'' said Hops, who has lost 16 pounds since she started the regime of diet, exercise and human growth hormone. "I don't smoke and I seldom drink. The addictions I have in life are running, riding a horse and flying.'' ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Muscles
Link ID: 4549 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists say they have successfully restored feeling to patients paralysed for at least two years. A team from the University of San Paulo in Brazil said 12 out of 30 spinal cord patients responded to electrical stimulation of their paralysed limbs. The researchers harvested stem cells from the patients' blood, and reintroduced them into the artery supplying the area which was damaged. The results raise hopes that paralysed people could one day walk again. Lead researcher Professor Tarciscio Barros said: "Two to six months after treatment, we found that patients were showing signs of responding to tests. "We still hope we may yet see improvements in the other patients too but already this is a real breakthrough." Stem cells - immature "master" cells which have the ability to turn into many different types of tissue - are thought by scientists to a potent source of potential new treatments for many diseases. (C) BBC

Keyword: Regeneration; Stem Cells
Link ID: 4548 - Posted: 11.17.2003

HIV may still be able to attack the brains of patients even if they are taking a powerful cocktail of drugs, claim researchers. However, experts in the UK say that there is no evidence that patients on long-term treatment are falling prey to brain illnesses linked to HIV. US researchers described, in the journal NeuroReport, finding signs of damage in patients on anti-HIV drugs. It is not clear if this damage happened before or after treatment started. Many antiretroviral drugs - designed to suppress levels of HIV in the body - do not work in the brain, because they cannot get past the "blood brain barrier", a filter designed to protect the organ from large, potentially toxic molecules. This theoretically means there is more chance that HIV might be found at higher levels in the brains of patients, even though the virus has been reduced to undetectable levels in the rest of the body. (C) BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4547 - Posted: 11.17.2003

The Department of Health has drawn up plans to allow more people with vCJD to receive an experimental treatment which may help to slow the disease. Officials want "a small number" of NHS hospitals to start offering the drug pentosan to people with the disease. The unlicensed drug was first given to a Belfast teenager last year. Experts say it may have improved his condition. However, the treatment only started after a lengthy court battle, something ministers want to avoid in future. Jonathan Simms had been given only months to live before the experimental drug pentosan polysulphate (PPS) was injected into his brain last year. In September, experts attending a meeting to review the initial results of his case, said the drug appears to be safe and may have improved his condition. (C) BBC

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 4546 - Posted: 11.17.2003

HANOVER, N.H. – A new Dartmouth study reveals that interracial contact has a profound impact on a person's attention and performance. The researchers found new evidence using brain imaging that white individuals attempt to control racial bias when exposed to black individuals, and that this act of suppressing bias exhausts mental resources. Published in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience on Nov. 16, the study combines the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures brain activity, with other behavioral tests common to research in social and cognitive psychology to determine how white individuals respond to black individuals. "We were surprised to find that brain activity in response to faces of black individuals predicted how research participants performed on cognitive tasks after actual interracial interactions," says Jennifer Richeson, Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, the lead author on the paper. "To my knowledge, this is the first study to use brain imaging data in tandem with more standard behavioral data to test a social psychological theory."

Keyword: Brain imaging; Miscellaneous
Link ID: 4545 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GREG MYRE PETAH TIKVA, Israel, — The ailing infants, some near death, began arriving daily at Israeli hospitals in early November with almost identical symptoms: persistent vomiting, spasms, eyes that could not focus, listlessness. At Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel, doctors might see a few such cases a year. But 4 babies in the same condition were admitted in 5 days, and a total of 17 similarly ill babies were admitted countrywide. All but a few were from the Tel Aviv area, with several from Petah Tikva, a comfortable, middle-class suburb east of the city that is popular among young couples. "This was a highly unusual cluster," said Dr. Itamar Shalit, head of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Unit at Schneider, which is in Petah Tikva and regarded as the country's leading children's hospital. "We knew we had to act quickly and open our minds to all sorts of possibilities." Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4544 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Short-circuiting your nerves By Eric Haseltine Why does your head hurt when you scarf down ice cream too quickly, or your left arm ache when your heart is in trouble? Neuroscientists think that misplaced sensations, called referred pains, arise when sensory fibers from different parts of the body connect to the same nerve cells in the spinal cord or brain stem, confusing your brain about which part of your body the message came from. And, as you are about to learn, these cross-connects are not limited to pain. Experiment 1 Place a teaspoon of black pepper (freshly ground works best) under your nose and inhale until you sneeze. Observe that no matter how hard you try, you cannot keep your eyes open while sneezing. Just as sensory inputs streaming into your brain can sometimes become sidetracked, so too can motor impulses. In this instance, your brain’s commands to the sneeze muscles in both your diaphragm and your throat are cross-connected to the outgoing motor pathways that closed your eyes. © 2003 The Walt Disney Company.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 4543 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LISA SANDERS, M.D. ''Doctor, I think I look like a man.'' The young woman sat on the examining table. She stared at the ground as she spoke, then looked up, her eyes shiny with tears that didn't spill. ''Really, doctor, I know I look like a man, and I don't understand why.'' She was a young woman with dark curly hair and a pleasant but clearly masculine face and bearing. I'd noticed -- anyone would have -- but I'd been hesitant to bring it up. Somehow, it felt too awkward in our first appointments. I was comfortable asking her intimate details -- was she involved in a sexual relationship? Did she use drugs? Had she ever been the target of abuse? Yet to raise a topic as potentially painful as her appearance felt too intimate -- as if I needed to get to know her better. But it was time to approach the topic, and I was grateful she had brought it up. She explained that she had always been tall and on the heavy side. But in the past few years, she'd put on a lot of weight, though she wasn't sure why. And while she had never gone in for dresses or makeup, she had never been mistaken for a man until the past year. She quit a receptionist job after only a few weeks because so many people called her ''Mr.'' Then, not long ago, while standing in line at the grocery store, a little girl asked her if she was a man or a woman. The child's mother apologized. ''But it didn't make me feel any better,'' she said. ''I just want whatever it is that's happening to me to stop.'' She roughly brushed away the escaping tears. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4542 - Posted: 11.16.2003

By ANDREW POLLACK ANAHEIM, Calif.,— An experimental drug can slow the loss of vision caused by a maddening eye disease that is the leading cause of blindness among the elderly, doctors reported on Saturday. But in a large trial, the drug did not meaningfully improve vision, they said. That contradicts previously reported results that had sent patients flocking to eye doctors for what they thought might be a miracle cure. The drug, called Macugen, is intended to treat the wet form of age-related macular degeneration, a disease that can rob people of the ability to read, drive, recognize faces or watch television. More than 200,000 cases of wet macular degeneration are diagnosed each year in the United States. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 4541 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Progestins, synthetic progesterone analogs, joined estrogen as part of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) some two decades ago, to reduce perceived risks of endometrial cancer from estrogen alone. But for almost as long, researchers have suspected that progestins block some benign effects of estrogen replacement, increasing the risk of breast cancer, diminishing estrogen's beneficial effects on the cardiovascular system, and souring mood. So, researchers continue to study progestins in search of safer HRT. Jon Nilsen and Roberta Brinton, University of Southern California, recently showed how natural estrogen and progesterone protect hippocampal neurons from glutamate toxicity. But at least one progestin, medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), blocks that protection.1 MPA is the progestin component of Prempro, the HRT used in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) clinical trials. The US government shut down that arm of the WHI study in July 2002--three years early--after discovering small increases in breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and pulmonary embolism in women taking the drug. No one argues that MPA is solely responsible for those risk increases, but many argue that the results would have been different for progesterone or different progestins.2 Researchers are not unanimous on MPA, but even its backers concede that the future is gloomy. "The whole idea that progestin is bad and has been responsible for some of the negative findings of the WHI, I really think, is an overextrapolation," says Duke University's Donald McDonnell. He acknowledges candidly, however, that MPA partisans can't overcome its increasingly bad reputation. "There has to be a shift toward a newer progestin purely to address that marketing need," McDonnell says. ©2003, The Scientist Inc.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 4540 - Posted: 06.24.2010

To everyone but a frog, one croak probably sounds very like another. But analysis of different croaks has revealed that at least one species of amphibian has developed regional accents in its mating calls. The accented croaks are thought to have developed during the last ice age when populations of pool frogs were separated for thousands of years. The discovery was made during a project to return an extinct species of pool frog to wetlands in Eastern England. The discovery of the frog accents was made by amphibian expert Julia Wycherley who was trying to find out which exact sub-species of pool frog (Rana lessonae) had been living in East Anglia before it became extinct. Ms Wycherley has spent a lot of time listening to frog calls and was convinced that she could hear subtle differences in their mating sounds. (C) BBC

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 4539 - Posted: 11.15.2003