MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Sunni Mumford PhD
Earl Stadtman Investigator in the DESPR Epidemiology Branch
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Health and Human Development
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Mumford:Depressive symptoms in healthy women who don’t have diagnosed clinical depression isn’t related to reproductive hormone levels, like estrogen, or impaired ovulation.
Medical Research: What was most surprising about the results?Dr. Mumford: Earlier research indicates that changes in estrogen may be associated with depression, for instance during the menopausal transition. Our study identified significant associations between estrogen and depressive symptoms in models that didn’t account for confounding factors, but this relationship was completed eliminated when adjustments were made for common confounding factors like age, race, BMI, and also stress level in these premenopausal women. Another interesting finding was that a score describing mood-related menstrual symptoms indicated that such symptoms are highest in the premenstrual phase, but remain lower throughout the rest of women’s cycles. This tells us that altered mood symptoms are most frequent prior to menstruation.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Professor Pranas Serpytis
Vilnius University Hospital Santariskiu Clinic
Vilnius, Lithuania
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Professor Serpytis:The main findings of the study were that women are more likely to develop anxiety and depression after acute myocardial infarction. In our study depression was assessed by HADS scale: no depression (0-7 score), possible depression (8-10 score), definite depression (11+ score). The mean score of assessing depression were 6.87 (± 4.6) among men and 8.66 (± 3.7) among women (p <.05). Cardiovascular disease risk factors such as smoking increases patients anxiety levels, and low physical activity is associated with an increased risk to suffer from depression.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Glenn T. Konopaske, MD
McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts
Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Boston, Massachusetts
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Konopaske: Using postmortem human brain tissue this study did reconstructions of basilar dendrites localized to pyramidal cells in the deep layer III of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Tissue from individuals with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or controls was examined. Dendritic spine density (number of spines per μm dendrite) was significantly reduced in bipolar disorder and also reduced in schizophrenia at a trend level. The number of dendritic spines per dendrite and dendrite length were significantly reduced in subjects with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Karl Ole Köhler, Research assistant
Department of Clinical Medicine
The Department of General Psychiatry
Aarhus University
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Response: We found that anti-inflammatory drugs and ordinary analgesics, which mainly are used against physical disorders, may have treatment effects against depression when used in combination with antidepressants. Thereby, our results furthermore support the hypothesis regarding a comorbidity between inflammatory diseases and depression, i.e. a connection between somatic and mental disorders.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Chitra Lal, MD. Assistant Professor
Medical University of South Carolina
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Lal:We studied the prevalence of cognitive problems in early postmenopausal women (age 45-60 years) with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS+) and without obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS-) using a questionnaire called the Mail-In Cognitive Function Screening Instrument (MCFSI).
We found that the mean MCFSI scores after adjusting for depression were significantly higher in obstructive sleep apnea syndrome+ then the OSAS- group, indicating more self-reported cognitive difficulty in OSAS+ women
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MedicalResearch.com: Interview with:Edward I. Ginns, MD, PhD, Director
Program in Medical Genetics and
Lysosomal Disorders Treatment and Research Program
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Reed Rose Gordon Building, Room 137
Shrewsbury, MA 01545
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Ginns: Our study identified that sonic hedgehog signaling, an important brain pathway, is involved in bipolar affective disorder.
This finding shows a mechanism and provides new targets for drug development. It suggests that sonic hedgehog signaling can be modulated to help manage bipolar symptoms in adults by using drugs already being studied in clinical trials for other medical conditions.
The new findings were uncovered by decades of translational research in the Old Order Amish families of Pennsylvania, where in a few special families in the Amish Study there is a high incidence of both bipolar disorder and a rare genetic dwarfism, Ellis van‐Creveld (EvC) syndrome. No person with EvC had bipolar disorder despite forty years of documented research across multiple generations, suggesting that the genetic cause of this rare dwarfism was protective of bipolar affective disorder.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:John A. Naslund, MPH – PhD Student at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Stuart W. Grande, PhD, MPA – Post–doctoral fellow at The Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Naslund: In this study we explored whether people with severe mental illness such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or bipolar disorder, use a popular social media website like YouTube to naturally provide and receive peer support. We found that people with severe mental illness use YouTube to feel less alone and to find hope, to support and to defend each other, and to share personal stories and strategies for coping with day-to-day challenges. Dr. Grande: They also sought to learn from the experiences of others about using medications and seeking mental health care. YouTube appears to serve as a platform that helps these individuals to overcome fears associated with living with mental illness, and it also creates a sense of community among them. (more…)
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Joanna Martin, PhD student
MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics
Institute of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences,
Cardiff University School of Medicine, Cardiff
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?
Response: In this study, we found that genetic risks which are collectively important for ADHD diagnosis also predict higher levels of traits of hyperactivity/impulsiveness, inattention and pragmatic language difficulties in childhood in the general population.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Phil Tully PhD
Early Career Research Fellow, Discipline of Medicine
University of Adelaide Australia and
Abteilung für Rehabilitationspsychologie und Psychotherapie
Institut für Psychologie, Universität Freiburg Freiburg Germany
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Response: The systematic review indicated that anxiety disorders ascertained by clinical interview are highly prevalent in patients with verified coronary heart disease. Also, approximately 50% of anxiety disorders were comorbid with depression. There was however some uncertainty in prevalence estimates with high level heterogeneity observed between studies. It was also evident that studies measuring generalized anxiety disorder in outpatient samples reported an increased prognostic risk for major adverse cardiac events in the longer term, when adjusted for confounding factors, however there was limited data. There were no randomized controlled trials targeting anxiety disorders in this population.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Bret R Rutherford, MD
Assistant Professor ,Clinical Psychiatry Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
Division of Geriatric Psychiatry
New York State Psychiatric Institute
New York, NY 10032
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Rutherford: In this meta-analysis of 105 trials of acute antipsychotic drugs for schizophrenia, the placebo response was shown to be significantly increasing from 1960 to the present. Conversely, the treatment change associated with effective dose medication significantly decreased over the same time period. The average participant of a randomized clinical trial (RCT) receiving an effective dose of medication in the 1960s improved by 13.8 points in the BPRS, whereas this difference diminished to 9.7 BPRS points by the 2000s. The consequence of these divergent trends was a significant decrease in drug-placebo differences from 1960 to the present.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Christoph U. Correll, MD
Professor of Psychiatry and Molecular Medicine
Hofstra North Shore LIJ School of Medicine
Medical Director, Recognition and Prevention (RAP) Program
The Zucker Hillside Hospital Investigator
Feinstein Institute for Medical Research
North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Correll: The main findings of the study of 398 patients with first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum disorders who were on average in their mid twenties are that:
1) despite their young age, an average of only 47 days lifetime antipsychotic exposure and overweight/obesity figures that were comparable to similarly aged US population members, there was a clear pattern of increased smoking and several metabolic risk parameters compared to similarly aged persons in the general US population;
2) dyslipidemia, a constellation of at least one relevant abnormal blood fat value, was as frequent as in a 15-20 years older general US population;
3) body composition related risk markers were significantly associated with longer total psychiatric illness duration, whereas metabolic risk markers were significantly associated with the overall very short mean lifetime antipsychotic treatment duration; and
4) relevant for treatment choice and recommendations for patients, significantly higher continuous metabolic risk factor values were associated with olanzapine treatment and, less so, with quetiapine treatment.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Sven Haller, M.D.
University of Geneva in Geneva, Switzerland.
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Haller:The main finding is that some elderly individuals with intact cognitive function at baseline already have visible alterations of the brain perfusion measured in Arterial Spin Labeling(ASL) MRI, which is similar to patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This elderly individual may initially maintain intact cognitive functions due to the activation of their cognitive reserve, yet eventually the cognitive reserve is exhausted and those individuals develop subtle cognitive decline at follow-up 18 months later.
Consequently, Arterial Spin Labeling MRI may predict the very earliest form of cognitive decline.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Lena Johansson, PhD, MSc, RN
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology
Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry
Sahlgrenska Academy at Gothenburg University
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Johansson:We found that a higher degree of neuroticism in midlife was associated with increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease over 38 years. On the 24 point scale, the risk increased with 4% per each step. Women who score high on the neuroticism scale were more likely to experience feelings such as anxiety, nervousness, worry, and irritability, and they were more moodiness and stress-prone.
The association between neuroticism and Alzheimer’s disease diminished after adjusting for longstanding perceived distress symptoms, which suggest that the associations was at least partly depended on long-standing distress symptoms.
When the two personality dimensions were combined, women with high neuroticism/low extraversion had a double risk of Alzheimer’s disease compared to those with low neuroticism/high extraversion.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Stewart Agras, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus
Stanford University School of Medicine
MedicalResearch: What was the study about?
Dr. Agras: Family-based treatment (FBT) has been shown to be more effective than individual psychotherapy for the treatment of adolescent anorexia nervosa. This treatment focuses on helping the family to re-feed their child. The question posed in this study was whether Family-based treatment would have any advantages over Systemic family therapy (SyFT) focusing on family interactions that may affect the maintenance of the disorder. The participants were 164 adolescents with anorexia nervosa and their families – one of the largest studies of its type.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Richard J. Kryscio, PhD, Professor
Sanders-Brown Center on Aging
University of Kentucky
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Kryscio: We followed 531 elderly over time assessing their cognition annually; of these 105 (about 20%) eventually were diagnosed with a serious cognitive impairment (either a mild cognitive impairment or a dementia) and 77% of the latter declared a subjective memory complaint prior to the diagnosis of the impairment. In brief, declaration of a memory problem put a subject at three times the risk of a future impairment.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Rebecca J. Schmidt, M.S., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Public Health Sciences
The MIND Institute School of Medicine
University of California Davis
Davis, California 95616-8638
MedicalResearch: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Schmidt: Women who had children with autism reported taking iron supplements during pregnancy and breastfeeding less often than women who children who were typically developing. Mothers of children with autism also had lower average iron intake.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Philippe Courtet MD PhD
Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire de Montpellier, Institut National de la Santé et de la Récherche Médicale ,
Université Montpellier, Montpellier, France
Fondation Fondamental, Créteil, France
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Courtet: Depressed outpatients who are beginning the treatment with a SSRI at higher dose than recommended present an increased risk (x2) of worsening of suicidal ideation during the first 6 weeks of treatment.
This is consistent with the study by Miller et al published in the same journal few weeks ago, reporting a double risk of suicide attempt in young subjects (<24 yrs) who are begun an SSRI at higher dose than recommended.
Our results showed that the increased suicide risk with the high dose of SSRI is not restricted to youngsters and is independent of the severity of the depression.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Susan Mason, PhD, MPHAssistant Professor
Division of Epidemiology and Community Health
Minneapolis, MN 55454
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. Mason: We examined 49,408 women enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study II to see if those who had experienced PTSD symptoms at some point in their lives were more likely than those without PTSD symptoms to meet the criteria for food addiction, a measure of perceived dependence on food. We found that the 8% of women with the most lifetime PTSD symptoms were about 2.7 times as likely to meet the criteria for food addiction as women with no lifetime PTSD symptoms. This translates to an elevation in food addiction prevalence from about 6% among women with no PTSD symptoms to about 16% in women with the most PTSD symptoms.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Anthony P. Kontos, Ph.D.
Assistant Research Director
UPMC Sports Medicine Concussion Program
Associate Professor
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
University of Pittsburgh
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Kontos: Our new Vestibular/Ocular Motor Screening (VOMS) examination was able to accurately identify nearly 90% of patients with a concussion. In our study of 64 concussed patients approximately five days post-injury and 78 healthy control-group patients who were administered VOMS by trained clinicians, we also found that more than 60% of patients with a concussion reported symptoms or had impairment on the VOMS following their injury. The VOMS, which was developed in conjunction with an interdisciplinary team of experts, assesses five areas of the vestibular ocular system: smooth pursuits, saccades (rapid eye movement), horizontal vestibular ocular reflex (VOR), visual motion sensitivity (VMS), and near-point-of-convergence (NPC) distance.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Dr Oliver J Robinson Ph.D.
Section on Neurobiology of Fear and Anxiety,
National Institute of Mental Health, NIH, Bethesda, MD,
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
University College London, London, UK
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Robinson: This study is looking at a symptom of anxiety disorders known as “negative affective bias”. This describes the tendency of people with anxiety disorders to focus on negative or threatening information at the expense of positive information.
We completed a number of previous studies looking at so called “adaptive” anxiety in healthy individuals – this is the normal, everyday anxiety that everyone experiences; walking home in the dark, for instance (in these prior studies we used unpredictable electrical shocks to make people anxious and stressed). When we made healthy people transiently anxious in this way we showed that this was also associated with negative affective bias and driven by a specific brain circuit: the dorsal medial prefrontal (anterior cingulate) cortex—amygdala aversive amplification circuit.
In this study we showed that the same circuit that was engaged by transient anxiety in our healthy sample was actually engaged ‘at baseline’ (i.e. without stress) in our patient group. This suggests that this mechanism which can be temporarily activated in healthy controls becomes permanently ‘switched on’ in our patient group. This might explain why people with anxiety disorders show persistent ‘negative affective biases’.
Furthermore, the extent to which this circuit was turned on correlated with self-reported anxiety. That is to say the more anxious an individual said they were, the greater the activity in this circuit. Therefore, there seems to be more of a dimension or scale of anxiety, rather than a simple well/unwell diagnosis.
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MedicalResearch.com: Interview with: Anilkumar Pillai, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry
Medical College of Georgia, Georgia Regents University
(Formerly Georgia Health Sciences University)
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Pillai: GABA receptors are responsible for binding GABA, the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the human brain. Recent studies have indicated a potential role for alterations in GABAA receptors in the pathophysiology of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the mechanism of regulation of GABAA receptor in Autism Spectrum Disorder is not known. Our study shows that GABAA levels are altered at the protein level, but not at the mRNA level in the middle frontal gyrus of Autism Spectrum Disorder subjects. Our study also finds that Synoviolin 1 (SYVN1) plays a critical role as an E3 ligase in GABAAα1 degradation. SYVN1 has been previously determined to function as a removal system of inappropriately folded or unfolded proteins from the ER to the cytosol of the cell for degradation. Our study ultimately provides a mechanism for GABAAα1 deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder subjects and possible new treatment strategies to reverse deficits seen in ASD and other related disorders.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Patrick Corrigan Psy.D.
Distinguished Professor of Psychology
Illinois Institute of Technology
PI: National Consortium on Stigma and Empowerment
www.NCSE1.org
Medical Research: What are the main findings of this review?Dr. Corrigan: People with serious mental illness often do not seek out services, or drop out early, when in need. Stigma is a major reason for why this happens. Stigma refers to the stereotypes about a group that undermine status and lead to discrimination. Discrimination refers to the behaviors that block the opportunities of group members. Some employers do not hire people with mental illness, some landlords do not rent to them, and some primary care practitioners offer a substandard of care. Stereotypes and discrimination undermine engagement in mental health services in three ways (Corrigan, 2005):
Label Avoidance: In order to escape the pernicious effects of stigma, people avoid settings where they are labeled mentally ill; for example, people coming out of a psychiatrist’s office may be perceived as “nuts.”
Self-Stigma: Some people who internalize stereotypes suffer diminished self-esteem and self-efficacy leading to the “why try” effect. “Why should I try to get a job? Someone like me is not worthy.” “Why should I try to get mental health treatment? I am not able to benefit from it.”
Structural Stigma: Stereotypes and discrimination become institutionalized in the laws and practices of government and business. For example, insurance coverage for mental health services was significantly below that for most other conditions. (more…)
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Sophie Billioti de Gage PharmD
University of Bordeaux Segalen
FranceMedical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Answer: The risk of Alzheimer’s disease was found increased by 43-51% in persons (>65) having initiated a treatment with benzodiazepines in the past (>5 years before). Risk increased with the length of exposure and when long acting benzodiazepines were used.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Sean Clouston Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Core Faculty, Program in Public Health
Department of Preventive Medicine
Stony Brook University Health Sciences Center
Stony Brook, NY 11794
Medical Research: What is the background for this study:
Dr. Clouston: A number of epidemiological studies have found that suicide rates have decreased rapidly with the widespread distribution of SSRI antidepressants. Our group has found that proliferation of preventive medicine has, with regard to other causes of death, tended to occur unequally. We hypothesized that if SSRI antidepressants prevent suicide by treating depression, then suicide might also be susceptible to such inequality. Our study used mortality data to show that decreases in suicide were concentrated in regions with higher socioeconomic status.
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Clouston We used the best available data from the US and found that socioeconomic inequalities have increased dramatically in conjunction with the proliferation of SSRI antidepressants.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sandra M. Meier, PhD
The Lundbeck Foundation Initiative for Integrative Psychiatric Research, iPSYCH,
National Centre for Register-Based Research
Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Meier: People with an obsessive-compulsive disorder are at a 6 to 7 times higher risk of developing schizophrenia than people without an obsessive-compulsive disorder. If the parents are diagnosed with an obsessive-compulsive disorder, their offspring experience a 3 to 4 times higher chance to develop schizophrenia.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Nenette M. Jessup MPH, CCRP
Research Associate/Project Manager TASK II
Indiana University School of Nursing
Indianapolis, IN 46202
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Jessup: Similar to others, we found that females and non-African American caregivers experienced more depressive symptoms and females perceived greater task difficulty. Because female caregivers comprise the largest group of caregivers in the United States, the consistency of this finding has implications for continued social policy efforts to improve their plight. However, our results also suggested an interaction effect between race and type of relationship, with African American spouses experiencing the most difficulty with tasks of caregiving. Inconsistencies in the existing literature about this finding signal the need for a greater understanding of group differences. Individualized interventions may also be of benefit for stroke caregivers.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Chuanhai Cao Ph.D.
Neuroscientist at the Byrd Alzheimer's Institute
and the USF College of Pharmacy.
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Cao:The major goal of this study was to investigate the effect of Ä9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), a major component of marijuana, on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology. THC has long been known to have anti-inflammatory effects, but we were looking to determine whether THC directly affected amyloid beta (Aâ). Aâ aggregation is considered one of the key pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Our study showed that extremely low doses of THC were able to decrease Aâ production, inhibit Aâ aggregation, and enhance mitochondrial function in a cellular model of AD. Decreased levels of amyloid beta, coupled with THC’s inhibitory effect on aggregation may protect against the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Manpreet K. Singh, MD MS
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang Faculty Scholar in Pediatric Translational Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Singh: Our research team used a monetary incentive delay paradigm to measure fronto-limbic activity and connectivity associated with anticipation and receipt of reward and loss in healthy offspring of parents with bipolar I disorder. We found that compared to youth offspring without any family history of psychopathology, high-risk offspring had aberrant prefrontal and cingulate activations and connectivity during reward processing. Further, greater striatal, amygdalar, and insula activations while anticipating and receiving rewards and losses were associated with greater novelty-seeking and impulsivity traits in high-risk youth.
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MedicalResearch.com Interview with:Li-Shan Chou, Ph.D
Professor and Department Head Department of Human Physiology
University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403-1240
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Prof. Li-Shan Chou:The findings from this study indicate that pre return-to-activity (RTA), the adolescents with concussion reduced their medial/lateral displacement and velocity during dual-task walking, suggesting an improvement in gait balance control, while significantly increasing these frontal plane motion variables during dual-task walking post RTA, suggesting a worsening of frontal plane COM control following RTA. These data suggest that frontal plane motion during dual-task walking are sensitive to the effects of return to activity following concussion and may reveal a possible regression in gait stability following return to activity.
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Medical Research Interview with: Neha P. Gothe, PhD
Division of Kinesiology, Health and Sport Studies
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI 48202.
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?Dr. Gothe: The yoga group was speedier and more accurate on tests of information recall, mental flexibility and task-switching than it had been before the intervention. Participants in the yoga group showed significant improvements in working memory capacity, which involves continually updating and manipulating information. They were also able to perform the task at hand quickly and accurately, without getting distracted.
(more…)
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