 
LONDON |
LONDON (Reuters) – An international scientific team has identified for the first time a genetic risk factor associated with common migraines and say their research could open the way for new treatments to prevent migraine attacks.
Researchers who looked at genetic data from 50,000 people from Finland, Germany and The Netherlands found that patients with a certain DNA variant affecting regulation of a particular brain chemical have a greater risk of developing migraines.
The results suggest that a buildup of that chemical, called glutamate, may play a role in the mechanism of migraines.
“This is the first time we have been able to peer into the genomes of many thousands of people and find genetic clues to understand common migraine,” said Aarno Palotie, chair of the international headache genetics consortium at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Britain, which led the study.
Migraine affects around one in six women and one in 12 men, and has been estimated to be the most expensive brain disorder to society in the European Union and the United States.
Not only is migraine painful, it also can be disabling and is often a life-long condition. The World Health Organization ranks it 19th among all causes of “years lived with disability,” and family life, social life and work capacity are negatively affected in almost all migraine sufferers.
Global sales of drugs to treat migraine were around $2.6 billion in 2009, according to analysts at Deutsche Bank.
GlaxoSmithKline’s Imitrex, Merck’s’ Maxalt, AstraZeneca’s
Zomig and Pfizer’s Relpax are among leading medicines currently on the market for migraine, but the exact causes of the condition remain unknown.
In a study published in the journal Nature on Sunday, Palotie’s team said the particular migraine risk DNA variant they had identified was on chromosome 8 between two genes known as PGCP and MTDH/AEG-1.
Their research showed that it appears to regulate levels of glutamate, a chemical known as a neurotransmitter which transports messages between nerve cells in the brain.
It does this by altering the activity of MTDH/AEG-1 in cells, which regulates the activity of the EAAT2 gene — a protein responsible for clearing glutamate from brain synapses.
Previous research has found links between EAAT2 and other neurological diseases, including epilepsy, schizophrenia and various mood and anxiety disorders.
“Until now, no genetic link has been identified to suggest that glutamate accumulation in the brain could play a role in common migraine,” Christian Kubisch of University of Ulm in Germany, who also worked on the study, said in a statement.
“This research opens the door for new studies to look in depth at the biology of the disease and how this alteration in particular may exert its effect.”
The scientists said further research would be needed into the DNA variant, and into its effect on the genes around it, to find out more about how migraines occur. Further work was also needed to search for other possible genetic links, they said.
(Editing by Michael Roddy)
Source:Â http://www.globenews24.com/EN/news,study-finds-first-genetic-link-to-common-migraine
 
ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — New research from the University of New Hampshire shows that the “gateway effect” of marijuana — that teenagers who use marijuana are more likely to move on to harder illicit drugs as young adults — is overblown.
Whether teenagers who smoked pot will use other illicit drugs as young adults has more to do with life factors such as employment status and stress, according to the new research. In fact, the strongest predictor of whether someone will use other illicit drugs is their race/ethnicity, not whether they ever used marijuana.
Conducted by UNH associate professors of sociology Karen Van Gundy and Cesar Rebellon, the research appears in the September 2010 issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
“In light of these findings, we urge U.S. drug control policymakers to consider stress and life-course approaches in their pursuit of solutions to the ‘drug problem,’ ” Van Gundy and Rebellon say.
The researchers used survey data from 1,286 young adults who attended Miami-Dade public schools in the 1990s. Within the final sample, 26 percent of the respondents are African American, 44 percent are Hispanic, and 30 percent are non-Hispanic white.
The researchers found that young adults who did not graduate from high school or attend college were more likely to have used marijuana as teenagers and other illicit substances in young adulthood. In addition, those who used marijuana as teenagers and were unemployed following high school were more likely to use other illicit drugs.
However, the association between teenage marijuana use and other illicit drug abuse by young adults fades once stresses, such as unemployment, diminish.
“Employment in young adulthood can protect people by ‘closing’ the marijuana gateway, so over-criminalizing youth marijuana use might create more serious problems if it interferes with later employment opportunities,” Van Gundy says.
In addition, once young adults reach age 21, the gateway effect subsides entirely.
Read in Full:Â http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100902073507.htm
 
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on September 2, 2010
Traditionally, depression is suspected when symptoms that suggest impaired psychosocial functioning are present for more than two weeks. Symptoms of depression include an overwhelming feeling of sadness, difficulty to experience pleasure, sleep problems, and difficulties with engaging in everyday life.
This clinical presentation of depression guides physicians to make a diagnosis and to select antidepressant treatment such as drugs or psychotherapy.
Currently, at least 40 percent of depressed patients actually benefit from antidepressant treatment, whereas 20 to 30 percent of patients may suffer from chronic depression that negatively impacts their quality of life.
Emerging research addresses the neural bases of depression as well as how treatment can induce changes in the brain. Modern brain imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are often used to view brain modulations.
This line of research expands the commonly accepted premise that depression is associated with dysfunction of specific brain regions involved in cognitive control and emotional response.
In order to improve the efficiency of treatment and reduce the burden of depressive disorders, depression clearly needs to be defined at the neurobiological level.
Read in Full:Â http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/09/02/brain-imaging-shows-brain-changes-in-depression/17541.html
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Since it is going back-to-school season, I thought I’d educate you on some alarming statistics about depression among college students. Here are the facts, just the facts:
One out of every five young people and one out of ever four college students or adults suffers from some form of diagnosable mental illness.
About 19 precent of young people contemplate or attempt suicide each year.
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among people ages 15-24, and the second leading cause of death in college students ages 20-24.
Over 66 percent of young people with a substance use disorder have a co-occurring mental health problem.
Teens diagnosed with depression are five times more likely to attempt suicide than adults.
Read in Full:Â http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/09/02/statistics-about-college-depression/
 
ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2010) — Insomnia and other sleep disorders are very common, yet are not generally well understood by doctors and other health care professionals. Now the British Association for Psychopharmacology (BAP) has released up-to-the-minute guidelines in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, published by SAGE, to guide psychiatrists and physicians caring for those with sleep problems.
BAP members, representative clinicians with a strong interest in sleep disorders and experts from the US and Europe got together in May 2009 in London, England to share their knowledge of insomnia, parasomnias and circadian rhythm disorders. As well as a chance to share literature reviews and clinical trial data, the event gave experts the opportunity to reach a consensus on the best current treatments for sleep disorders. The BAP then used this and further rounds of consultation with the event participants to create its guidelines, BAP consensus statement on evidence-based treatment of insomnia, parasomnias and circadian rhythm disorders, which the organisation hopes will present a comprehensive guide to clinicians, who are managing patients in primary or secondary medical care.
Sleep experts agree that insomnia is a condition of unsatisfactory sleep, either in terms of sleep onset, sleep maintenance or early waking. They also agree that insomnia is a disorder that impairs daytime well-being and subjective abilities and functioning, and so can be considered a ’24-hour’ disorder. Insomnia can also be viewed as a syndrome similar to pain, because it is subjective and its diagnosis is through clinical observations rather than measurements. In some cases physicians will be unable to pinpoint a cause, although this doesn’t prevent diagnosis.
Stress, life changes, a new baby, or shift work are typical factors that can trigger insomnia, but for some people this acute insomnia persists into a chronic state. Anxiety about sleep, maladaptive sleep habits and the possibility of an underlying vulnerability in sleep regulating mechanisms are all likely causes, as are other co-morbid disorders such as anxiety and depression, and diseases including cancer or arthritis. The recommendations address issues such as pregnancy, menopause, ageing, childhood disorders and other specific factors with suggestions for treatment, and an indication of the degree of agreement among experts in each case.
The good news is that insomnia can often be improved with specialist cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) targeted at insomnia, which is as effective as prescription medications for short-term treatments for chronic insomnia. In addition, CBT is more likely to have a longer-lasting effect than drug treatment. However access to this type of treatment for insomnia sufferers is not always easy to access in the UK.
Women have a higher incidence of insomnia than men, and the older we get the more likely we are to suffer from poor sleep. Around a third of adults in Western countries will experience some difficulty getting to sleep or staying asleep at least once a week, and between six and 15 percent are thought to have full-blown insomnia.
Circadian rhythm disorders occur when our internal clocks don’t match our daily lives. Caused most often by shift work and jet lag, some people also routinely have difficulty going to bed before two or three AM and waking up in the morning on time (delayed sleep phase syndrome). Others get cumulatively later as time goes, a condition known as free running sleep disorder.
Night terrors, sleep walking and violent behaviour at night are known as ‘parasomnias.’ Physicians may need to refer patients experiencing these distressing episodes to a specialist sleep centre for polysomnography and video recording for a correct diagnosis, and to discover whether the attacks occur during REM (rapid eye movement) or non-REM sleep, which can mean differing treatments.
Read in Full:Â http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100902073459.htm
 
Young people who rob themselves of sleep by spending all night surfing the internet and playing computer games are tripling their chances of developing a mental illness, according to research.
Published: 7:30AM BST 02 Sep 2010
People who sleep less than five hours a night are up to three times more likely to become mentally ill than those sleeping eight or nine hours, the report said.
A 17-24 year old sleeps on average eight to nine hours per night, but this figure has been decreasing due to the amount of time young people spend on electronic gadgets in their bedrooms.
Researchers from George Institute for Global Health in Sydney, Australia, analysed the sleeping habits of almost 20,000 people aged between 17 and 24.
They found over half of those who got fewer than six hours sleep had high levels of psychological distress, compared with one quarter of those who slept eight to nine hours a night.
Professor Nick Glozier, who led the study, said: “Over the past few decades young adults have been sleeping fewer and fewer hours, whereas the rest of us have generally been sleeping more hours.
“There’s a whole load of gadgets that kids and young adults now have in their bedrooms that they never used to have.
“Yet of course they have to get up and go to school or college or go to university at exactly the same time. So there’s a group of them who are becoming more and more sleep-deprived.”
A lack of sleep could have potentially serious effects, he said.
 
Tamara H. Sone • Special to La Quinta Sun • September 2, 2010
The La Quinta High School Theatre was filled with dancing and singing monkeys, elephants, tigers and other wild animals last weekend.
The Coachella Valley Autism Society, the local chapter of the Autism Society of America, performed Disney’s “The Jungle Book†Saturday and Sunday.
The musical theater class was formed in February as part of the society’s social recreation program, said Carolyn Russom, resource coordinator,
“We decided to put on a show, so we wrote a grant and were lucky enough to be awarded that grant by the Irene W. and Guy L. Anderson Children’s Foundation,†Russom said.
 Practices for the performance started in mid-June with 22 kids learning how to sing and dance in front of a live audience. The performers ranged in age from 4 to 17.
Cliff Plummer, who teaches musical theater, designed and directed the performance.
“I chose ‘The Jungle Book’ because all of the music is upbeat, and the energy level is up all of the time. The kids seem to be able to stay focused when there is a lot of energy involved,†Plummer said.
Children with autism tend to lack or have a delay of spoken language, show little or no eye contact and use repetitive words and/or mannerisms such as hand flapping or twirling objects.
“This program has been a good outlet for the kids. We have one boy that is nonverbal, but he will sing. He won’t speak, but he will sing words,†Plummer said.
Read in Full:Â http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20109010336
By DUFF WILSON
Published: September 1, 2010
OPELOUSAS, La. — At 18 months, Kyle Warren started taking a daily antipsychotic drug on the orders of a pediatrician trying to quell the boy’s severe temper tantrums.
Thus began a troubled toddler’s journey from one doctor to another, from one diagnosis to another, involving even more drugs. Autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia, oppositional defiant disorder. The boy’s daily pill regimen multiplied: the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac, two sleeping medicines and one for attention-deficit disorder. All by the time he was 3.
He was sedated, drooling and overweight from the side effects of the antipsychotic medicine. Although his mother, Brandy Warren, had been at her “wit’s end†when she resorted to the drug treatment, she began to worry about Kyle’s altered personality. “All I had was a medicated little boy,†Ms. Warren said. “I didn’t have my son. It’s like, you’d look into his eyes and you would just see just blankness.â€
Today, 6-year-old Kyle is in his fourth week of first grade, scoring high marks on his first tests. He is rambunctious and much thinner. Weaned off the drugs through a program affiliated with Tulane University that is aimed at helping low-income families whose children have mental health problems, Kyle now laughs easily and teases his family.
Ms. Warren and Kyle’s new doctors point to his remarkable progress — and a more common diagnosis for children of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder — as proof that he should have never been prescribed such powerful drugs in the first place.
Kyle now takes one drug, Vyvanse, for his attention deficit. His mother shared his medical records to help document a public glimpse into a trend that some psychiatric experts say they are finding increasingly worrisome: ready prescription-writing by doctors of more potent drugs to treat extremely young children, even infants, whose conditions rarely require such measures.
More than 500,000 children and adolescents in America are now taking antipsychotic drugs, according to a September 2009 report by the Food and Drug Administration. Their use is growing not only among older teenagers, when schizophrenia is believed to emerge, but also among tens of thousands of preschoolers.
A Columbia University study recently found a doubling of the rate of prescribing antipsychotic drugs for privately insured 2- to 5-year-olds from 2000 to 2007. Only 40 percent of them had received a proper mental health assessment, violating practice standards from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
“There are too many children getting on too many of these drugs too soon,†Dr. Mark Olfson, professor of clinical psychiatry and lead researcher in the government-financed study, said.
Such radical treatments are indeed needed, some doctors and experts say, to help young children with severe problems stay safe and in school or day care. In 2006, the F.D.A. did approve treating children as young as 5 with Risperdal if they had autistic disorder and aggressive behavior, self-injury tendencies, tantrums or severe mood swings. Two other drugs, Seroquel from AstraZeneca and Abilify from Bristol-Myers Squibb, are permitted for youths 10 or older with bipolar disorder.
But many doctors say prescribing them for younger and younger children may pose grave risks to development of both their fast-growing brains and their bodies. Doctors can legally prescribe them for off-label use, including in preschoolers, even though research has not shown them to be safe or effective for children. Boys are far more likely to be medicated than girls.
Dr. Ben Vitiello, chief of child and adolescent treatment and preventive research at the National Institute of Mental Health, says conditions in young children are extremely difficult to diagnose properly because of their emotional variability. “This is a recent phenomenon, in large part driven by the misperception that these agents are safe and well tolerated,†he said.
Even the most reluctant prescribers encounter a marketing juggernaut that has made antipsychotics the nation’s top-selling class of drugs by revenue, $14.6 billion last year, with prominent promotions aimed at treating children. In the waiting room of Kyle’s original child psychiatrist, children played with Legos stamped with the word Risperdal, made by Johnson & Johnson. It has since lost its patent on the drug and stopped handing out the toys.
Greg Panico, a company spokesman, said the Legos were not intended for children to play with — only as a promotional item.
Cheaper to Medicate
Dr. Lawrence L. Greenhill, president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, concerned about the lack of research, has recommended a national registry to track preschoolers on antipsychotic drugs for the next 10 years. “Psychotherapy is the key to the treatment of preschool children with severe mental disorders, and antipsychotics are adjunctive therapy — not the other way around,†he said.
But it is cheaper to medicate children than to pay for family counseling, a fact highlighted by a Rutgers University study last year that found children from low-income families, like Kyle, were four times as likely as the privately insured to receive antipsychotic medicines.
Texas Medicaid data obtained by The New York Times showed a record $96 million was spent last year on antipsychotic drugs for teenagers and children — including three unidentified infants who were given the drugs before their first birthdays.
In addition, foster care children seem to be medicated more often, prompting a Senate panel in June to ask the Government Accountability Office to investigate such practices.
In the last few years, doctors’ concerns have led some states, like Florida and California, to put in place restrictions on doctors who want to prescribe antipsychotics for young children, requiring a second opinion or prior approval, especially for those on Medicaid. Some states now report prescriptions are declining as a result.
A study released in July by 16 state Medicaid medical directors, which once had the working title “Too Many, Too Much, Too Young,†recommended that more states require second opinions, outside consultation or other methods to assure proper prescriptions. The F.D.A. has also strengthened warnings about using some of these drugs in treating children.
No Medical Reason
Kyle was rescued from his medicated state through a therapy program called Early Childhood Supports and Services, established in Louisiana through a confluence of like-minded child psychiatrists at Tulane, Louisiana State University and the state. It surrounds troubled children and their parents with social and mental health support services.
Read in Full:Â http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/business/02kids.html?_r=2&partner=TOPIXNEWS&ei=5099
 
ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2010) — Kennedy Krieger Institute have announced new study results showing an early marker for later communication and social delays in infants at a higher-risk for autism may be infrequent gazing at other people when unprompted. Published in the September issue of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, the study also found that six-month-old high-risk infants demonstrated the same level of cause and effect learning skills when compared to low-risk infants of the same age.
The study observed 25 infant siblings of children with autism (high-risk group) and 25 infants with no family history of autism (low-risk group) at six months of age in order to assess cause and effect learning as well as social engagement. Infant siblings of children with autism are considered at high-risk for the disorder, as they are 25 times more likely to develop autism. Researchers at Kennedy Krieger, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Delaware, created a novel, multi-stimuli social learning task, where infants were seated in a custom chair with an attached joystick within easy reach, a musical toy located to the right and their caregiver on the left. Researchers evaluated how quickly the infant learned that the joystick activated the toy and the infant’s level of social engagement with their caregiver.
Read in Full:Â http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100901111628.htm
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“What you call people is how you treat them. What you call my sister is how you will treat her. If you believe she’s ‘retarded’ it invites taunting, stigma. It invites bullying and it also invites the slammed doors of being treated with respect and dignity.â€
–14-year-old Nick Marcellino, Rosa’s brother, in testimony to the Maryland General Assembly
Say what you will about New Jersey. Yeah, we are called the Soprano state, and, yeah, everyone in Jersey is rumored to have an attitude. You got a problem with that? But I couldn’t be more proud of its recent legislation.
The U.S. Senate passed the bill known as Rosa’s Law in August 2010, and in September it goes before the House. Terms such as “mental retardation†and “mentally retarded†will be removed from federal education, health, and labor laws. Additionally, “a person with a disability†is preferred rather than a “disabled person.†New Jersey passed a similar law in June.
The federal government removed “feeble-minded†and replaced it with “mental retardation†over 40 years ago. It was time for a more positive change.
Read in Full:Â http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/09/01/the-r-word-sticks-stones-and-rosas-law/