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Mind Matters - March 2, 2010
By John Kelley, Scientific American
Answer: Yes!
In my view, both these statements are true: Antidepressants do work. And antidepressants don’t work. Not to put too fine a Clintonian point on it, but determining whether antidepressants work depends on the definition of the word “work.”
A controversial article just published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that antidepressants are no more effective than placebos for most depressed patients. Jay Fournier and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania aggregated individual patient data from six high-quality clinical trials and found that the superiority of antidepressants over placebo is clinically significant only for patients who are very severely depressed. For patients with mild, moderate, and even severe depression, placebos work nearly as well as antidepressants.
There have been at least four other review articles published in the last eight years that have come to similar conclusions about the limited clinical efficacy of antidepressants, and one of the study authors, psychologist Irving Kirsch, has recently published a book on the topic, provocatively entitled The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth.
The recent review articles questioning the clinical efficacy of antidepressants run counter to the received wisdom in the psychiatric community that antidepressants are highly effective. Indeed, it wasn’t so long ago that psychiatrist Peter Kramer wrote in his best-selling book Listening to Prozac that this miracle drug made patients “better than well.” Prozac was a Rock Star. Its extraordinary success even led to a photograph of the green and white capsule on the cover of Newsweek Magazine in 1990.
The essential facts about antidepressant efficacy are not in dispute. In double-blind, randomized controlled trials – meaning that patients are randomly assigned to receive either drug or placebo, and neither patient nor clinician knows who gets what – antidepressants show a small but statistically significant advantage over placebos. The debate is over the interpretation of these findings, and it revolves around the distinction between clinical significance and statistical significance. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Mental Health, News Articles, Recent Posts, Science on March 3, 2010 - י"ז אדר תש"ע at 7:29 am
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MSNBC.com
Popping a couple of pain pills helped Laurie J. Besden study night after night. They helped her pass the Pennsylvania bar exam. They helped her get more done in a day than many of her colleagues. Then they helped her land in jail.
Besden doesn’t seem like any drug addict you’d picture. She’s smart, motivated — and an overachiever. But she’s one of an alarming number of women who have turned to prescription pills to get ahead — or even just to keep up.
Almost 6 percent of American women, that’s 7.5 million adult women, report using prescription medicines for a boost of energy, a dose of calm or other non-medical reasons, according to the latest numbers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
While street drug use has been declining in recent years, prescription drug abuse has been up since the 1990s. The trend has been most striking in women because unlike with most drugs, which are more commonly abused by men, women are just as likely to abuse prescription drugs, says Susan R.B. Weiss, chief of NIDA’s Science Policy Branch.
Blame what some are calling the superwoman syndrome. Overworked, overwhelmed and overscheduled women juggling families, friends and careers are turning to stimulants, painkillers and anti-anxiety meds to help launch them through endless to-do lists.
“Women load their lives with so much that they get in over their heads, and some turn to prescription pills to cope,” says Talia Witkowski, a psychologist in Los Angeles.
Witkowski, 30, began abusing her prescription attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drugs in high school, and has been clean for three years.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Health Sciences, Women's Health on February 24, 2010 - י' אדר תש"ע at 11:34 am
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ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2010) — A new study weighs in on the controversy over sex education, finding that an abstinence-only intervention for pre-teens was more successful in delaying the onset of sexual activity than a health-promotion control intervention. After two years, one-third of the abstinence-only group reported having sex, compared to one-half of the control group. The study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania appears in the February 1 edition of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
While abstinence-only intervention did not eliminate sexual activity all together, this is the first randomized controlled study to demonstrate that an abstinence-only intervention reduced the percentage of adolescents who reported any sexual intercourse for a long period, in this case two years, following the intervention.
"It is extremely important to find an effective intervention that delays sexual activity; the younger someone is when they have sex for the first time, the less likely they are to use condoms," said lead author John B. Jemmott III, PhD, professor of Communication in Psychiatry and of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine and Annenberg School for Communication. "Abstinence-only interventions may have an important role in delaying sexual activity until a time later in life when the adolescent is more prepared to handle to consequences of sex. This can reduce undesirable consequences of sex, including pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections like HIV/AIDS."
There was a 33 percent reduction in self-reported sexual intercourse from the abstinence-only group, compared to the control group, by the end of the study. Of the students who reported that they were sexually active during the study, there were fewer reports of recent sexual activity from the abstinence-only intervention participants (20.6 percent) compared to the control participants (29.0 percent).
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education, Health Sciences, Recent Posts, Science on February 2, 2010 - י"ח שבט תש"ע at 5:10 am
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Incubating peace with Israel’s Arab sector |
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A flagship incubator in Israel is helping to create coexistence while ensuring that Muslim and Christian Israeli Arabs develop expertise in biotech and the life sciences.
Israel’s Muslim and Christian Arabs can develop expertise in biotech and life sciences thanks to a national business project created in 2002. While the Jewish state was founded as a home for Jewish people from all over the world, it is also home to Arab Muslim and Arab Christian minorities, mostly living in the Galilee region in the north of the country.
In the United States, equal opportunity initiatives are well developed to ensure that blacks, Asians, Latinos and every other minority can access education and find gainful employment and opportunities. Israel is providing something similar for its minorities.
Based in Jesus’ boyhood home in Nazareth, a team of seven at New Generation Technology (NGT) is doing more than providing Israeli Arabs with access to jobs. The tech incubator company, funded by the government and private investors, is amplifying the expertise in the Arab community so that its members can interact with the population at large and grow companies that will ultimately impact the world.
“We also have one IT company,” Yosi Turkaspa, CEO of NGT tells ISRAEL21c. “But most are in the area of biotech and life sciences. It was partly a strategic decision. If you look at the Arab community in Israel these are the areas in which they are educated. Most of their PhDs are in biology, medicine, pharmaceuticals and dentistry, more than electrical engineering.”
Working together as equals
An hour’s drive from Tel Aviv, the incubator houses about 20 startups. And although the focus is on the Arab sector, the companies’ management personnel come from both the Arab and Jewish sectors, making it a unique project where the two populations are encouraged to work and build together. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Business and Commerce, Education, Health Sciences, Middle East Report, Monotheistic Religions, News Articles, Recent Posts, Science and Technology on January 29, 2010 - י"ד שבט תש"ע at 3:13 am
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This is a single stem cell-derived neuron that has migrated away from the transplantation site in the cortex and grown into a mature neuron. The blue stain shows the nuclei of the endogenous neural cells in this part of the brain. (Credit: Courtesy, with permission: Weimann et al. The Journal of Neuroscience 2010.)
ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2010) — Transplanted neurons grown from embryonic stem cells can fully integrate into the brains of young animals, according to new research in the Jan. 20 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
Healthy brains have stable and precise connections between cells that are necessary for normal behavior. This new finding is the first to show that stem cells can be directed not only to become specific brain cells, but to link correctly.
In this study, a team of neuroscientists led by James Weimann, PhD, of Stanford Medical School focused on cells that transmit information from the brain’s cortex, some of which are responsible for muscle control. It is these neurons that are lost or damaged in spinal cord injuries and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). "These stem cell-derived neurons can grow nerve fibers between the brain’s cerebral cortex and the spinal cord, so this study confirms the use of stem cells for therapeutic goals," Weimann said.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Mental Health, Recent Posts, Science on January 24, 2010 - ט' שבט תש"ע at 3:16 pm
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By Health News Digest, Jan 20, 2010
(HealthNewsDigest.com) – ANN ARBOR, Mich.—School psychologists, counselors and social workers are often the first line of support for children with behavioral, emotional or family problems. Problems can range from attention deficit disorder and homelessness to depression and bullying all of which can make academic success a challenge.
The C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health asked nearly 1,100 parents across the United States to grade their children’s public schools on how well they support children with behavioral, emotional or family problems.
Thirty-seven percent of parents gave primary schools an A for support for children with ADHD and other behavioral problems, and 34 percent gave an A for support for children with emotional or family problems. Twenty-two percent of parents gave secondary schools an A for support for children with behavioral, emotional or family problems.
In contrast, for overall education 52 percent of parents gave primary schools an A and 38 percent of parents gave secondary schools an A.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Mental Health, News Articles, Recent Posts, Special Education on January 21, 2010 - ו' שבט תש"ע at 4:36 am
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Al-Bawaba, January 18, 2010
Israeli and Jewish groups continue their efforts to provide relief to the people of Haiti.
On Jan. 15, the Israel Defense Forces emergency aid team arrived in Haiti, consisting of a medical mission and search and rescue teams. The team has established a major field hospital adjacent to Port-au-Prince’s soccer stadium, which is reported to be one of the largest medical facilities currently operating in Haiti with the capacity to treat up to 500 patients per day. The field hospital is equipped with:
• Operating rooms
• An intensive care ward
• A maternity ward
• Pediatrics ward
• Incubator units
• Pharmacy
• X-ray equipment
• 10 tons of medical equipment
• 90 beds, 66 intensive care beds and two delivery beds
• Approximately 250 personnel, including 40 doctors and specialists, 20 nurses and several paramedics.
The IDF search and rescue teams include about 30 operators and dozens of operations personnel including logistics IT, communications and canine units.
The IDF rescued a 52-year old man from the ruins of a government office building Jan 17 after he communicated his location by SMS. The Israeli team worked for six hours before finally freeing him.
On Sunday, (Jan. 17), a baby boy was delivered inside the Israeli field hospital. The mother of the child said she would call him Israel.
Israeli emergency response service (ZAKA) volunteers on the ground in Haiti rescued eight students from the rubble of a flattened university building in Port au-Prince, Haiti, on Saturday (Jan. 16). Deploying a six-man team, ZAKA worked for 38 hours with a Mexican military team to rescue the students.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Judaism, Middle East, News Articles, Recent Posts on January 18, 2010 - ג' שבט תש"ע at 3:31 pm
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By Jo-Ann Heslin, MA, RD, CDN, Food & Nutrition Columnist ,Jan 17, 2010
HealthNewsDigest.com) – Carbohydrates, carbs, complex carbs, simple carbs, good carbs, bad carbs – help! In the last decade carbs have become a misunderstood nutrient. We went from high carb to low carb to being told to choose specific carbs. Before you can shop and eat wisely, you need to understand carbs.
Carbohydrates are the sugars, starches, and fibers found in food. All plant foods — fruits, vegetables, beans and grains — are rich in carbohydrates. Fruits have more sugar. Vegetables, beans and grains have more starch. Both have fiber. Sugars and starches are your body’s main sources of fuel (calories).
Sugar is a very important source of fuel. During digestion sugar molecules enter the bloodstream and travel to your body’s cells and to your brain where they are burned for energy. There are different types of sugar – simple sugars and others that are more complex.
Glucose is a simple sugar found in plants, animals, and in your blood as blood sugar. It is the only source of energy used by your brain. Fructose (fruit sugar) is also a simple sugar. Other sugars, sucrose (table sugar), lactose (milk sugar) and maltose (cereal sugar) are made up of two simple sugars that are broken apart in digestion before they can be burned for energy.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Nutrition & Fitness, Recent Posts, Science on January 18, 2010 - ג' שבט תש"ע at 4:50 am
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JERUSALEM — He can be impulsive. She has a touch of bossiness. Next-door neighbors for nearly a year, they talk, watch television and explore the world together, wandering into each other’s homes without a second thought. She likes his mother’s eggplant dish. He likes her father’s rice and lamb.
Friendship often starts with proximity, but Orel and Marya, both 8, have been thrust together in a way few elsewhere have. Their playground is a hospital corridor. He is an Israeli Jew severely wounded by a Hamas rocket. She is a Palestinian Muslim from Gaza paralyzed by an Israeli missile. Someone forgot to tell them that they are enemies.
“He’s a naughty boy,” Marya likes to say of Orel with an appreciative smile when he gets a little wild.
When Orel arrived here a year ago, he could not hear, see, talk or walk. Now he does them all haltingly. Half his brain is gone. Doctors were deeply pessimistic about his survival. Today they are amazed at his progress although unclear how much more can be made.
Marya’s spinal cord was broken at the neck and she can move only her head. Smart, sunny and strong-willed, she moves her wheelchair by pushing a button with her chin. Nothing escapes her gaze. She knows that Orel is starting to prefer boys as playmates and she makes room. But their bond remains strong. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Islam, Judaism, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts, Special Education on December 31, 2009 - י"ד טבת תש"ע at 6:46 pm
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Dr. Nirit Bourla, Dr. Nadav Belfair, December 31, 2009
MANDALAY, MYANMAR – It was 8 pm when we came out of the operating room exhausted, but satisfied. A woman came up to us and although we were unable to understand what she was saying, we could tell from her expression that she was thanking us. We had just operated on her daughter.
This scene was destined to be one of many; gratitude expressed by people who would have lost their eyesight and their place within an impoverished society that cannot care for its poor– if not for us.
The Hippocratic Oath we took when we graduated from medical school takes on a new meaning in a place like this.
We were part of a seven-person mission to Myanmar, sponsored by Eye from Zion, a non-profit humanitarian organization, founded by Israeli businessman Nati Marcus, with aim of providing medical assistance to the world’s needy.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Health Sciences, Judaism, Middle East, Recent Posts on December 31, 2009 - י"ד טבת תש"ע at 9:35 am
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