By JoAnna Novak “U guys I had this awesome thing for dinner,” my little sister texts our family. “ICE CREAM HEHE.” After 20 years of dealing with an eating disorder, recovered-me has a response and sick-me has a response, but neither seems right. My siblings, my mom and I chat all day in our “Fam” text thread. Morning roll call? Check. Terrier on kitchen table? Yep. Food talk? A feast of food talk. Actually, not just talk. And not just food. “Did 74 min on tread,” my sister texts. “Exhausted.” I know. She started 2018 with a goal to lose 20 lingering college pounds, and she’s been in lifestyle-overhaul ever since. Often she calls me post-workout, breathless, gushing endorphins. Other times she sends sports bra selfies. (“Get it,” my mom responds.) She shares meal pics, too, plates of sheet-pan chicken or “healthy” comfort food (turkey hot dogs, cauli-mac and cheese), a latte pink with beet juice, a splurge. (That ice cream she had was Halo Top, which is low in calories and high in protein.) I was buying blue cheese for burgers last week when she said she was 10 pounds from her target. I picked up the Roquefort and blinked off memories of closing in on a number, those hazy promises that, soon, everything might change. “That’s amazing,” I said. “I’m proud of you.” She’d gained so much confidence over the last year; she was already feeling more comfortable in her skin, she said. “You know what I mean.” In a way, I did. It’s a conversation I’d never thought we’d be having, one where my sister trusts me enough to share anxieties about her body and I’m recovered enough to listen. I went on my first diet when she was 5 and I was 12. A few months later she was crying, begging newly anorexic me to eat a canned peach. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 26031 - Posted: 03.14.2019

Text by David Gonzalez When the medical journal The Lancet asked Matthieu Zellweger to photograph any psychiatric condition that intrigued him, he thought of a close friend who has been living with bipolar disorder. He knew how his friend lamented that it was an “invisible handicap” that you couldn’t just snap out of, as some well-meaning but frustrated people would suggest. But Mr. Zellweger also recognized something in his friend that led him to propose a photo essay on bipolar disorder. “I’ve been around him quite a bit,” Mr. Zellweger said. “And the one thing that definitely surprised me is that — let’s face it — very intelligent people are overrepresented among bipolar people. A lot of them are very lucid about their disease. They have thought about how it impacts their lives. It was very stimulating to talk with them.” Mr. Zellweger spent 18 months in Switzerland, where he lives, and in Britain, photographing people with bipolar disorder, as well as their relatives or lovers who accompanied them, as they struggle with manic highs and depressive lows. He sought out subjects through patient advocacy groups and treatment centers who were open to sharing their experiences. “There are so many misconceptions about the disorder that a lot of the patients were happy to dispel that,” he said. “There is such a general stigma around mental disorders. One of the patients told me that when she told her friend about being bipolar, her friend said, ‘Oh, are you going to run after me with an ax?’ People think bipolar patients are uncontrollable or dangerous. But the only aggressive behavior I saw was people being aggressive against themselves.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 26030 - Posted: 03.13.2019

Nicola Davis “Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts,” Marlon Brando once said. But for scientists, working out what is going on in an actor’s head has always been something of a puzzle. Now, researchers have said thespians show different patterns of brain activity depending on whether they are in character or not. Dr Steven Brown, the first author of the research from McMaster University in Canada, said: “It looks like when you are acting, you are suppressing yourself; almost like the character is possessing you.” Character building and what makes a truly great actor Read more Writing in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Brown and colleagues report how 15 method actors, mainly theatre students, were trained to take on a Shakespeare role – either Romeo or Juliet – in a theatre workshop, and were asked various questions, to which they responded in character. They were then invited into the laboratory, where their brains were scanned in a series of experiments. Once inside the MRI scanner, the actors were asked to think about their response to a number of fresh conundrums that flashed up on screen, and which might well have occurred to the star-crossed lovers, such as: would they gatecrash a party? And would they tell their parents that they had fallen in love? Each actor was asked to respond to different questions, based on four different premises assigned in a random order. In one, they were asked for their own perspective; in another, they were asked to say how they thought a particular close friend would react, while in a third, they were asked to respond as though they were either Romeo or Juliet. = © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Attention; Brain imaging
Link ID: 26029 - Posted: 03.13.2019

By Simon Makin Around a third of people complain of some sleeplessness, and one in 10 meets diagnostic criteria for clinical insomnia. The costs, in terms of well-being, physical health and productivity, are enormous. From twin studies, researchers know the inability to fall or stay asleep has a genetic component, but the identities of the culprits were mostly unknown. Now, two studies published Monday in Nature Genetics provide first peeks at the biological basis of insomnia, implicating specific brain regions and biological processes, and revealing links with heart disease and psychiatric disorders like depression. Both are genome-wide association studies (GWASs), which examine DNA from many thousands of individuals to determine where genetic markers related to health, disease or a particular trait reside. The first study, from a team led by geneticist Danielle Posthuma of Vrije University Amsterdam, analyzed the genomes of over 1.3 million people, making it the largest GWAS of any complex trait to date. They used data from the UK Biobank, a large, long-term genetics project, and from the direct-to-consumer genetics company 23andMe to identify 202 areas of the genome linked to insomnia, implicating 956 genes, a big advance from the seven found previously. “I’m pretty confident the vast majority of these are real,” says geneticist Stephan Ripke, a GWAS expert at the Berlin Institute of Health who was not involved in either study. “But we need to confirm this in more, separate cohorts from different countries and researchers.” © 2019 Scientific American

Keyword: Sleep; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 26028 - Posted: 03.13.2019

By Matt Richtel Should you pick your nose? Don’t laugh. Scientifically, it’s an interesting question. Should your children pick their noses? Should your children eat dirt? Maybe: Your body needs to know what immune challenges lurk in the immediate environment. Should you use antibacterial soap or hand sanitizers? No. Are we taking too many antibiotics? Yes. “I tell people, when they drop food on the floor, please pick it up and eat it,” said Dr. Meg Lemon, a dermatologist in Denver who treats people with allergies and autoimmune disorders. Advertisement “Get rid of the antibacterial soap. Immunize! If a new vaccine comes out, run and get it. I immunized the living hell out of my children. And it’s O.K. if they eat dirt.” Dr. Lemon’s prescription for a better immune system doesn’t end there. “You should not only pick your nose, you should eat it,” she said. She’s referring, with a facetious touch, to the fact our immune system can become disrupted if it doesn’t have regular interactions with the natural world. “Our immune system needs a job,” Dr. Lemon said. “We evolved over millions of years to have our immune systems under constant assault. Now they don’t have anything to do.” She isn’t alone. Leading physicians and immunologists are reconsidering the antiseptic, at times hysterical, ways in which we interact with our environment. Sign up for Science Times We’ll bring you stories that capture the wonders of the human body, nature and the cosmos. Why? Let us turn to 19th-century London. The British Journal of Homeopathy, volume 29, published in 1872, included a startlingly prescient observation: “Hay fever is said to be an aristocratic disease, and there can be no doubt that, if it is not almost wholly confined to the upper classes of society, it is rarely, if ever, met with but among the educated.” Hay fever is a catchall term for seasonal allergies to pollen and other airborne irritants. With this idea that hay fever was an aristocratic disease, British scientists were on to something. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 26027 - Posted: 03.13.2019

Aimee Cunningham How active a person’s immune system is soon after a stroke may be tied to later mental declines, a new study finds. Researchers took blood samples from 24 stroke patients up to nine times over the course of a year. Twelve of the patients also completed a mental-skills test at four points during that time. Patients who had highly active immune cells on the second day after a stroke were more likely to see their test scores decline a year later, researchers report online March 12 in Brain. “The people who either got better on the task or stayed the same had less of an immune response at day 2 [after the stroke], and the people who had more of an immune response at day 2 were more likely to decline and do worse later,” says study coauthor Marion Buckwalter, a neuroscientist at Stanford University School of Medicine. A stroke occurs when the brain loses oxygen, due to a blocked or burst blood vessel. Buckwalter and her colleagues used a technique called mass cytometry that analyzes thousands of immune cells and their signaling molecules — which indicate how active a cell is — from blood samples of patients who had suffered a stroke. The researchers also tested patients’ memory, concentration, language skills and other thinking skills using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. It’s unclear why some patients have a more active immune response than others in the days after a stroke. But with more research, it’s possible that the response may be a way to predict which patients will fare worse after a stroke, the researchers say. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2019

Keyword: Stroke; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 26026 - Posted: 03.13.2019

By Frank Bruni How many studies do you have to throw at the vaccine hysterics before they quit? How much of a scientific consensus, how many unimpeachable experts and how exquisitely rational an argument must you present? That’s a trick question, of course. There’s no magic number. There’s no number, period. And that’s because the anti-vaccine crowd (or anti-vaxxers) aren’t trafficking in anything as concrete, mundane and quaint as facts. They’re not really engaged in a debate about medicine. They’re immersed in a world of conspiracies, in the dark shadows where no data can be trusted, nothing is what it seems and those who buy the party line are pitiable sheep. And, boy, are they living at the right time, when so much information and misinformation swirl by so quickly that it’s easy to confuse the two and even easier to grab hold and convince yourself of whatever it is you prefer to believe. With Google searches, you find the ostensible proof you seek. On social media, you bask in all the affirmation you could possibly want. The parents who are worried or sure about grave risks from vaccines reflect a broader horror that has flickered or flared in everything from the birther movement to “Pizzagate,” that nonsense about children as Democratic sex slaves in the imagined basement of a Washington pizza joint. Their recklessness and the attendant re-emergence of measles aren’t just a public health crisis. They’re a public sanity one, emblematic of too many people’s willful disregard of evidence, proud suspicion of expertise and estrangement from reason. Again and again, until blue in the face, medical authorities have debunked the renegade assertion that there’s a link between the M.M.R. vaccine, so named because it inoculates against measles, mumps and rubella, and autism. On Tuesday, a group of Danish researchers who looked at more than 650,000 children over 10 years announced that they had found no such association. © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 26025 - Posted: 03.11.2019

Alix Spiegel There's a before, and there's an after. In the before, it was a relatively normal night. The kind of night any 14-year-old girl might have. Devyn ate dinner, watched TV and had small, unremarkable interactions with her family. Then, around 10 o'clock, she decided to turn in. "I went to bed as I normally would, and then all of a sudden ... my hips... they just hurt unimaginably!" Devyn says. "I started crying, and I started shaking." It was around midnight, but the pain was so intense she couldn't stop herself — she cried out so loudly she woke her mother, Sheila. Together, they did everything they could to neutralize the pain — stand up, lie down, hot bath, pain medication. But there was no escape, not for Devyn, and so not for Sheila. "You go to cancer first, right? It's like, 'OK, maybe you have cancer, maybe it's a tumor?' " Sheila says. When she was calm enough to reason with herself, Sheila decided cancer was improbable but wondered what was going on? The only thing they could think of was that the hip pain was somehow related to the minor knee surgery Devyn had gotten a few months before — she had broken the tip of her distal femur one day during dance practice. So as usual, Sheila snapped to attention to solve the problem. It was 2016 — surely modern medicine could fix this. (NPR is not using Devyn's or Sheila's last name to protect Devyn's privacy as a minor discussing her medical treatment.) They started by calling Devyn's surgeon, but the surgeon had no explanation for the pain. He renewed Devyn's prescription for Percocet and wrote a new prescription for tramadol. But the pain only got worse, so they lined up more appointments: their pediatrician, a naturopath, a pain specialist, a sports medicine doctor. © 2019 npr

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 26024 - Posted: 03.11.2019

Jacob Stegenga Your grief and guilt overwhelm you. You are so tired you cannot think straight. Your simple joys are lost in an invisible agony. You have pain in your head and back and stomach, real pain. The swamp of your soul suffocates you with despair. All this is your fault, you are worthless, and you might as well die. This is how depression can feel, though people’s experiences of it, including the severity of symptoms, can vary widely. This terrible disease affects about one person in 10 at some point in life and, to treat it, many millions of people have taken antidepressants. Unfortunately, we now have good reasons to think that antidepressants are not effective. To know if antidepressants work we must, of course, pay close attention to the best evidence about these drugs. There have been many empirical trials of antidepressants, and in the past 10 years or so there have been some good meta-analyses of these trials (a meta-analysis pools data from multiple trials into a single analysis). However, there is a problem: experts disagree about the merits and problems of these empirical studies, and about what we should conclude based on them. Philosophy can help. Philosophy of science is the discipline that studies the concepts and methods of science, and offers a lens through which we can understand what scientific evidence shows us about the world. After witnessing the darkness of depression and the struggle by some of my dearest friends and family to treat this disease with drugs, I began to use my training as a philosopher to understand the evidence about antidepressants. Diving into the details of how antidepressant data are generated, analysed and reported tells us that these drugs are barely effective, if at all. © Aeon Media Group Ltd. 2012-2019.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 26023 - Posted: 03.11.2019

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent Patients with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder have shown remarkable improvements after undergoing an experimental procedure in which electrodes are placed inside the brain. The first UK trial of deep brain stimulation for OCD involved six people who were extremely severely affected by the condition. The patients each had four electrodes surgically inserted through the skull into the brain. These are used to electrically stimulate brain circuits with the aim of bringing the illness under control. One of the patients, a woman who is now in her 40s, described how her life was entirely dominated by her illness for a decade before taking part in the trial. Her OCD rituals meant it took up to 14 hours to go to the toilet, several hours to get out of bed and she lived in a psychiatric unit. She was terrified of poisons and contamination and would sob in frustration for hours each day because her situation felt so unbearable. “It was paralysing,” said the woman, who wants to remain anonymous. She said her life had been transformed beyond recognition by the procedure. Six years after having the electrodes permanently placed inside her brain, she lives independently in a flat, is in a relationship and does regular voluntary work. “For me it’s just been a miracle,” she said. “Every day when I wake up, I can’t believe my luck, I can’t get used to it.” © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Link ID: 26022 - Posted: 03.09.2019

John D. Loike, Martin Grumet On February 18, 2019, The Asahi Shimbun reported, “Ministry [of Health, Labor and Welfare in Japan] OKs 1st iPS [induced pluripotent stem] cell therapy for spinal cord injuries.” This announcement disseminated at a press conference has been viewed as an exciting clinical trial on the use of stem cells to treat spinal cord injury. However, caution is warranted here, for at least three reasons: the uncertainty of the stem cell type to be used in their clinical trial, the safety of transplanting stem cells into humans, and the responsibility of scientists and the press to communicate clearly the benefits and risks of the stem cell treatments, especially to desperate patients who would seek such unproven treatments. First, reports of the announcement by the lead scientist Hideyuki Okano of Keio University School of Medicine provide no indication where this trial is described or registered. It is of concern that it is not listed at clinicaltrials.gov or Japanese registries including UMIN Clinical Trials Registry (UMIN-CTR) and the Japan Medical Association Center for Clinical Trials (JMACCT). Second, Okano’s group reported in a study on mice that transplanted human iPSC-derived neural stem/progenitor cells (NSPC) retain unwanted proliferative characteristics, which they attributed to karyotype abnormalities. To protect against these abnormalities, Okano and colleagues have developed a “Fail-Safe System against Potential Tumorigenicity after Transplantation of iPSC Derivatives,” to quote the title of their report. Based on their results, they stated in the study that their technique “may serve as an important countermeasure against post-transplantation adverse events in stem cell transplant therapies.” However, they also caution that “a number of problems . . . need to be resolved, and at present [the Fail-Safe System] is still not suitable for clinical application.” © 1986 - 2019 The Scientist

Keyword: Stem Cells; Regeneration
Link ID: 26021 - Posted: 03.09.2019

Hadley Freeman Like everyone else at this point, I have many questions about Brexit, starting with “why” and going from there. For example: are concerns about how Britain is going to cope merely “project fear”, as some Brexity folk still have it? Is it going to be like the blitz, as other Brexity people have promised enthusiastically? Such people include someone called Ant Middleton from Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, who said last year in a tweet (since deleted): “A ‘no deal’ for our country would actually be a blessing in disguise. It would force us into hardship and suffering which would unite & bring us together, bringing back British values of loyalty and a sense of community!” Truly, there are few things as touching as a grown man playing soldiers by waxing nostalgic for a time he didn’t live through. And by “touching” I mean “nauseating”. I try to avoid writing about Brexit for the same reason I avoid eating my hair: you just end up choking on the pointlessness of it all. But one question has become too pressing to ignore: just how self-centred do you have to be to think the risk of making it harder for people to get necessary medications is an irrelevant niggle while you achieve your masturbatory fantasy of “sovereignty”? Sure, talk of insulin supplies, say, is a bummer when you are entertaining dreams of sailing victoriously back from Brussels beneath a St George’s flag, like George Washington crossing the Delaware in Emanuel Leutze’s painting, only less American (although, given that our supermarkets may soon be stuffed with chlorinated chicken from the US, maybe not). But for those who have long been dependent on certain drugs, these niggly questions make a no-deal Brexit less of a blessing in disguise. © 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 26020 - Posted: 03.09.2019

Catherine Offord One of the functions of sleep may be to repair DNA damage that has built up in the brain during waking hours, according to a study published yesterday (March 5) in Nature Communications. By using time-lapse imaging to observe the brains of zebrafish, researchers in Israel found that chromosome dynamics associated with DNA repair increased in neurons during sleep, and that sleep deprivation prevented this repair from happening efficiently. Study coauthor Lior Appelbaum of Bar-Ilan University notes in a statement that sleep is found across the animal kingdom and that this repair role might be one of the reasons “sleep has evolved and is so conserved.” To study what is going on in individual neurons during sleep, Appelbaum and colleagues genetically engineered zebrafish larvae to have fluorescent chromosomes in their neurons. They then used a high-resolution microscope to monitor the movements of those chromosomes when the transparent fish were awake and asleep. The researchers found that when the fish were awake, chromosomes were relatively static and accumulated double-strand breaks. But once the zebrafish went to sleep, the chromosomes became more dynamic, and the DNA damage began dissipating. Further experiments showed that manipulating zebrafish sleep could influence the repair process. For example, keeping the fish awake by tapping on their tank promoted the accumulation of more double-strand breaks, while inducing sleep with a drug pumped through the tank allowed the cells to repair their DNA. © 1986 - 2019 The Scientist

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 26019 - Posted: 03.09.2019

By Nicholas Bakalar Eating a heart-healthy diet beginning in your 20s may provide brain benefits in middle age, new research suggests. The study, in Neurology, ranked 2,621 people on their degree of adherence to three different diets considered to be good for the heart. All emphasize vegetables, fruits and whole grains and minimize saturated fat consumption: the Mediterranean diet, which involves mainly plant-based foods and moderate alcohol intake; a research-based diet plan that rates food groups as favorable or not; and the DASH diet, which stresses low-sodium foods. Researchers tracked their diet compliance at ages 25, 32 and 45, and tested mental acuity at 50 and then again at 55. Those who adhered most strictly to the Mediterranean or the food group diet scored higher than those who did not, especially on tests of executive function, which involves organizing and planning. After adjusting for many health and behavioral factors, people with the strictest adherence to these diets had a 46 to 52 percent lower risk of poor cognitive function. But adherence to the DASH diet, which does not consider alcohol consumption, was not associated with cognitive test scores. Which diet is best? “We can say at this point that a heart-healthy diet like the Mediterranean diet is a good option,” said the lead author, Claire T. McEvoy, a dietitian and epidemiologist at Queen’s University Belfast. “It’s palatable and adaptable, and in that respect it’s a pretty good dietary pattern.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 26018 - Posted: 03.09.2019

Philip Ball Some problems in science are so hard, we don’t really know what meaningful questions to ask about them — or whether they are even truly solvable by science. Consciousness is one of those: Some researchers think it is an illusion; others say it pervades everything. Some hope to see it reduced to the underlying biology of neurons firing; others say that it is an irreducibly holistic phenomenon. The question of what kinds of physical systems are conscious “is one of the deepest, most fascinating problems in all of science,” wrote the computer scientist Scott Aaronson of the University of Texas at Austin. “I don’t know of any philosophical reason why [it] should be inherently unsolvable” — but “humans seem nowhere close to solving it.” Now a new project currently under review hopes to close in on some answers. It proposes to draw up a suite of experiments that will expose theories of consciousness to a merciless spotlight, in the hope of ruling out at least some of them. If all is approved and goes according to plan, the experiments could start this autumn. The initial aim is for the advocates of two leading theories to agree on a protocol that would put predictions of their ideas to the test. Similar scrutiny of other theories will then follow. Whether or not this project, funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, narrows the options for how consciousness arises, it hopes to establish a new way to do science for difficult, contentious problems. Instead of each camp championing its own view and demolishing others, researchers will collaborate and agree to publish in advance how discriminating experiments might be conducted — and then respect the outcomes. © 2019 Quanta Magazine

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 26017 - Posted: 03.07.2019

By Jan Hoffman and Abby Goodnough Three years ago this month, as alarms about the over-prescription of opioid painkillers were sounding across the country, the federal government issued course-correcting guidelines for primary care doctors. Prescriptions have fallen notably since then, and the Trump administration is pushing for them to drop by another third by 2021. But in a letter to be sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday, more than 300 medical experts, including three former White House drug czars, contend that the guidelines are harming one group of vulnerable patients: those with severe chronic pain, who may have been taking high doses of opioids for years without becoming addicted. They say the guidelines are being used as cover by insurers to deny reimbursement and by doctors to turn patients away. As a result, they say, patients who could benefit from the medications are being thrown into withdrawal and suffering renewed pain and a diminished quality of life, even to the point of suicide. The letter writers form an uneasy alliance spanning differing positions on opioids — professors of addiction medicine as well as pain specialists, some patient representatives who have taken money from the pharmaceutical industry, and the former drug czars, from the Obama, Clinton and Nixon administrations. Michael Botticelli, who served as the drug czar under President Obama and now leads the Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center, said he signed the letter because “there has been enough anecdotal evidence to raise the alarm bells” about the misuse of the guidelines leading to pain patients losing effective treatment. “The C.D.C. really does need a rigorous evaluation of this because we don’t know how big the problem is,” he said. “Minimally, we need some level of clarification on appropriate use of the guidelines.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26016 - Posted: 03.07.2019

GPs are urging women not to be alarmed by research linking long-term hormone replacement therapy (HRT) use with a small increased risk of Alzheimer's. They say HRT is an effective and safe treatment for most women with menopause symptoms and the risk is "extremely low". The BMJ research looked at data on 170,000 women in Finland over 14 years. It found a 9%-17% increased risk for Alzheimer's, particularly in women taking HRT for more than 10 years. This equates to between nine and 18 extra cases of the disease per year in every 10,000 women aged between 70 and 80, the researchers said. But the study was observational and, as a result, it cannot be said for certain that other factors had not affected the results. Other studies have found that HRT actually improves brain function. The Royal College of GPs said the research does not prove that HRT causes Alzheimer's disease, and women currently taking it should continue to do so. Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairwoman of the College, said: "Hormone replacement therapy can be of greatest benefit to many women who are suffering from some of the unpleasant side-effects of the menopause, such as hot flushes and night sweats - and there is a large body of evidence that shows it is an effective and safe treatment for most women. "We would urge patients not to be alarmed by this research - as the researchers state, any risk is extremely low - and if they are currently taking HRT, to continue doing so as prescribed by their doctor. " However, she said there were risks with any medication and it was important that women were aware of them. "To minimise any risk, best practice for most women is to prescribe the lowest possible dose of hormones for the shortest possible time in order to achieve satisfactory relief of symptoms," Prof Stokes-Lampard said. © 2019 BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 26015 - Posted: 03.07.2019

By Elizabeth Pennisi Cowbirds are the quintessential deadbeat parents. They, and about 90 other bird species, abandon their eggs in other birds’ nests, leaving the burden of chick care to others. An arms race is the result: Cuckolded foster parents keep evolving ways to fight back, and deadbeats evolve countermeasures. Now, researchers have discovered how spots on an egg play a crucial role in a parent’s decision to keep an egg—or boot it from the nest. One of the shiny cowbird’s (Molothrus bonariensis) most common victims is the chalk-browed mockingbird (Mimus saturninus). The mockingbird’s eggs are blue-green and spotted, whereas the cowbird’s eggs vary from pure white to brown and spotted. Researchers had assumed mockingbirds reject cowbird eggs that don't look like their own, in pattern and color. But the new study finds it’s not that simple. To get a better sense of how mockingbirds decide which eggs to boot, evolutionary ecologist Daniel Hanley at Long Island University in Brookville, New York, and colleagues painted 70 3D-printed eggs a range of colors and put spots on half of them. They distributed these eggs among 85 mockingbird nests and checked several days later to see which eggs were still there. Spots tended to make the mockingbirds hedge their bets and keep an egg, even if the color wasn’t “right,” Hanley and his colleagues report in the April issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. For example, the mockingbirds removed unspotted brown eggs—a “wrong” color and pattern—90% of the time. But the birds were less sure when the egg had spots. They removed brown eggs with spots just 60% of the time, for example. In general, mockingbirds were more accepting of very blue eggs, even those that were much bluer than their own eggs. And when these blue eggs had spots, parents kept them more than 90% of the time. © 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 26014 - Posted: 03.07.2019

By Carolyn Y. Johnson and Laurie McGinley The Food and Drug Administration approved a novel antidepressant late Tuesday for people with depression that does not respond to other treatments — the first in decades to work in a completely new way in the brain. The drug, a nasal spray called esketamine, has been eagerly anticipated by psychiatrists and patient groups as a powerful new tool to fight intractable depression. The spray acts within hours, rather than weeks or months as is typical for current antidepressants, and could offer a lifeline to about 5 million people in the United States with major depressive disorder who haven’t been helped by current treatments. That accounts for about one in three people with depression. “This is undeniably a major advance,” said Jeffrey Lieberman, a Columbia University psychiatrist. But he cautioned much is still unknown about the drug, particularly regarding its long-term use. “Doctors will have to be very judicious and feel their way along,” he said. The label for the drug will carry a black box warning – the most serious safety warning issued by the FDA. It will caution users they could experience sedation and problems with attention, judgment and thinking, and that there’s potential for abuse and suicidal thoughts. People who take esketamine will have to be monitored for at least two hours after receiving a dose to guard against some of these side effects. The medicine has a complex legacy because it is a component of ketamine, which was approved years ago as an anesthetic and was once popular as a party drug called Special K. Esketamine must be administered under medical supervision and can only be used in a certified doctor’s office or clinic, according to the conditions of the FDA approval. It is to be taken with an oral antidepressant. © 1996-2019 The Washington Post

Keyword: Depression; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 26013 - Posted: 03.06.2019

By Benedict Carey Thousands, perhaps millions, of people who try to quit antidepressant drugs experience stinging withdrawal symptoms that last for months to years: insomnia, surges of anxiety, even so-called brain zaps, sensations of electric shock in the brain. But doctors have dismissed or downplayed such symptoms, often attributing them to the recurrence of underlying mood problems. The striking contrast between the patients’ experience and their doctors’ judgment has stirred heated debate in Britain, where last year the president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists publicly denied claims of lasting withdrawal in “the vast majority of patients.” Patient-advocacy groups demanded a public retraction; psychiatrists, in the United States and abroad, came to the defense of the Royal College. Now, a pair of prominent British psychiatrists has broken ranks, calling the establishment’s position badly mistaken and the standard advice on withdrawal woefully inadequate. In a paper published Tuesday in the Lancet, the authors argued that any responsible withdrawal regimen should have the patient tapering off medication over months or even years, depending on the individual, and not over four weeks, the boilerplate advice. The paper is by far the strongest research-backed denunciation of standard tapering practice by members of the profession. “I know people who stop suddenly and get no side effects,” said Dr. Mark Horowitz, a clinical research fellow at Britain’s National Health Service and King’s College London, and one of the paper’s authors. But many people, he said, “have to pull apart their capsules and reduce the dosage bead by bead. We provided the science to back up what they’re already doing.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 26012 - Posted: 03.06.2019