Intensive psychotherapy benefits bipolar patients
Patients treated with drugs for bipolar disorder benefit greatly from the addition of intensive psychotherapy, according to findings published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
“Bipolar disorder is an extremely debilitating illness, in large part because of the difficulty in treating bipolar depressive disorders,” Dr. David J. Miklowitz, of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and colleagues write. Clinical trials support the effectiveness of adding psychotherapy to drug treatment for preventing the recurrence of depressive and manic episodes. However, the effectiveness of various strategies has been unclear.
Allergic diseases don’t affect fertility in women
Women with asthma, hay fever or eczema are no less fertile than their peers who don’t suffer from these allergic conditions, UK researchers report. In fact, they may be slightly more likely to have children.
“This is an important finding for women with allergic disease and their clinicians,” Dr. L. J. Tata of the University of Nottingham and colleagues write in their report, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
First ever study predicts outcome for limb-threatening infections in diabetes
Researchers from the University of Washington, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, Merck Laboratories, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine have released a study suggesting that specific laboratory and clinical tests can predict outcome of antibiotic therapy for infections in persons with diabetes.
“This study is unique in a couple of ways,” said Dr. David G. Armstrong, Professor of Surgery at Scholl’s Center for Lower Extremity Ambulatory Research (CLEAR) at Rosalind Franklin University. “It comes from the largest-ever clinical trial of antibiotics for this type of infection, and it used very specific, day-to-day measures that can be done in any hospital, world wide.”
