Psychiatry / Psychology
Anxiety increases the risk of gastrointestinal infection and long-term complications
|
A team comprised of scientists at VIB, KU Leuven and UZ Leuven has made significant progress in uncovering the connection between psychological factors and the immune system. Their findings are based on an investigation of a massive drinking water contamination incident in Belgium in 2010, and are now published in the leading international medical journal Gut.
In December 2010, the Belgian communities of Schelle and Hemiksem in the province of Antwerp faced an outbreak of gastroenteritis, with more than 18,000 people exposed to contaminated drinking water. During the outbreak, VIB and KU Leuven set up a scientific task force to study the incident’s long-term effects, led by Guy Boeckxstaens (UZ Leuven / KU Leuven) and Adrian Liston (VIB / KU Leuven).
Seizing an unexpected opportunity
Adrian Liston (VIB/KU Leuven): “The water contamination in Schelle and Hemiksem was an ‘accidental experiment’ on a scale rarely possible in medical research. By following the patients from the initial contamination to a year after the outbreak we were able to find out what factors altered the risk of long-term complications.”
How negative stereotyping affects older people
|
The most comprehensive analysis to date of research on the effect of negative stereotypes on older people’s abilities has concluded that these stereotypes create a significant problem for that demographic.
A research team at the University of Kent’s School of Psychology carried out a review and meta-analysis of Aged-Based Stereotype Threat (ABST).
They statistically analysed international evidence from 37 research studies, both published and unpublished. They concluded that older adults’ memory and cognitive performance is negatively affected in situations that signal or remind them of negative age stereotypes. These effects affect both men and women.
The research, funded by the Economic and Social Research council (ESRC), was carried out by Ruth Lamont, working with Dr Hannah Swift and Professor Dominic Abrams. It further found that older people’s cognitive performance suffers more when the threat is induced by stereotypes rather than by facts.
Siblings of children with autism can show signs at 18 months
|
About 20% of younger siblings of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) will develop the condition by age 3. A new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers has found that 57% of these younger siblings who later develop the condition already showed symptoms at age 18 months.
Published in the October Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, this is the first large-scale, multi-site study aimed at identifying specific social-communicative behaviors that distinguish infants with ASD from their typically and atypically developing high-risk peers as early as 18 months of age.
“While the majority of siblings of children with ASD will not develop the condition themselves, for those who do, one of the key priorities is finding more effective ways of identifying and treating them as early as possible,” said lead author Katarzyna Chawarska, associate professor in the Yale Child Study Center and the Department of Pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine. “Our study reinforces the need for repeated diagnostic screening in the first three years of life to identify individual cases of ASD as soon as behavioral symptoms are apparent.”
Chawarska and her co-authors pooled data from eight sites participating in the Autism Speaks Baby Siblings Research Consortium. The team closely examined social, communicative, and repetitive behaviors in 719 infants when they were 18 months old. The team looked for patterns that might predict a later diagnosis of ASD. They then followed up when the participants were age 3.
Exploring the connection between empathy, neurohormones and aggression
|
Empathy is typically seen as eliciting warmth and compassion -a generally positive state that makes people do good things to others. However, empathy may also motivate aggression on behalf of the vulnerable other. Researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo, examined whether assessed or elicited empathy would lead to situation-specific aggression on behalf of another person, and to explore the potential role of two neurohormones in explaining a connection between empathy and aggression. The study is published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Design of the Study
Empathic impulses are aimed at reducing the suffering of the target of empathy. Sometimes aggression may be the response that is perceived to best address the need of the other, or best suited to end their suffering. This effect may, in part, be due in part to physiological changes that occur in the body as a result of empathy. The research focused on two neurohormones, oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin has been associated with empathy in previous research, and also with protective aggression. Vasopressin has been much more commonly studied in the animal literature, but has similarly been associated with aggression to defend a mate or offspring.
The first study asked participants to write and answer questions about a time in the past 12 months where they witnessed a close other being hurt physically or emotionally by a third party other than themselves. The results illustrate that empathy, not trait aggression or perceptions of emotional threat toward the self, motivated predicted aggression of the participants.
Maternal mood disorder and newborn neurobehavior
|
A great number of women experience depression or anxiety while pregnant, and exposure of the fetus to these maternal mood disorders may lead to long-term emotional and behavioral problems in the offspring. Many studies have shown that the fetal environment has a strong influence on offspring neurobehavioral outcomes by altering the developing brain, although the exact mechanisms by which this occurs are not completely understood.
Researchers from the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk, Women and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, Brown University, in Providence, RI, have now tested the influence of maternal depression and/or anxiety during pregnancy on newborn neurobehavior by specifically looking at epigenetic changes (modifications on the DNA that are different from changes in DNA sequence) in two genes expressed in the placenta that have been previously implicated in perturbations of the HPA axis (a system that controls reactions to stress and regulates many body processes).
In a study published in the December 2013 issue of Epigenetics, the authors report that specific adjustments that occur in the fetus (more specifically in the regulation of gene expression) in response to cues from the intrauterine environment, in this case an increased exposure to maternal cortisol, may lead to poor neurodevelopmental outcomes.
Study pinpoints cell type and brain region affected by gene mutations in autism
|
A team led by UC San Francisco scientists has identified the disruption of a single type of cell - in a particular brain region and at a particular time in brain development - as a significant factor in the emergence of autism.
The finding, reported in the November 21, 2013 issue of Cell, was made with techniques developed only within the last few years, and marks a turning point in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) research.
Large-scale gene sequencing projects are revealing hundreds of autism-associated genes, and scientists have begun to leverage new methods to decipher how mutations in these disparate genes might converge to exert their effects in the developing brain.
The new research focused on just nine genes, those most strongly associated with autism in recent sequencing studies, and investigated their effects using precise maps of gene expression during human brain development.
New evidence on the biological basis of highly impulsive and aggressive behaviors
|
|
Physical and chemical changes in the brain during development can potentially play a role in some delinquent and deviant behaviors, according to research released today. Studies looking at the underlying mechanisms that influence our ability to exercise self-control were presented at Neuroscience 2013, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world’s largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.
Understanding the impact of changes in specific prefrontal regions during brain development could lead to new treatments and earlier interventions for disorders in which impulsivity plays a key factor. The research may have implications for understanding and dealing with aggressive and troublesome behaviors.
Today’s new findings show that:
Child Abuse Ad Shows Hidden Message for Children
|
|
A Spanish foundation aiming to curb child abuse has a new bus ad that shows a hidden message for children under 10 years old – or rather, children under 4-foot-4.
The ANAR Foundation, which stands for Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk, has created a bus ad that shows two messages: one for adults and one for children.
“How can we get our message across, even when they are accompanied by an adult?” an ANAR Foundation YouTube video about the ad asks. “How can we get our message across, even when they are accompanied by their aggressor?”
The ad visible to adults, or people over 4-foot-4, shows a child’s face and a message that says, “Sometimes, child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.”
90 percent of pediatric specialists not following clinical guidelines when treating preschoolers with ADHD
|
|
A recent study by pediatricians from the Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York examined to what extent pediatric physicians adhere to American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) clinical guidelines regarding pharmacotherapy in treating young patients with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The results showed that more than 90 percent of medical specialists who diagnose and manage ADHD in preschoolers do not follow treatment guidelines recently published by the AAP.
“It is unclear why so many physicians who specialize in the management of ADHD—child neurologists, psychiatrists and developmental pediatricians—fail to comply with recently published treatment guidelines,” said Andrew Adesman, MD, senior investigator and chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park. “With the AAP now extending its diagnosis and treatment guidelines down to preschoolers, it is likely that more young children will be diagnosed with ADHD even before entering kindergarten. Primary care physicians and pediatric specialists should recommend behavior therapy as the first line treatment.”
Current clinical guidelines for pediatricians and child psychiatrists associated with the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) recommend that behavior therapy be the initial treatment approach for preschoolers with ADHD, and that treatment with medication should only be pursued when counseling in behavior management is not successful.
The risk of autism is not increased by ‘too many vaccines too soon’
|
|
Although scientific evidence suggests that vaccines do not cause autism, approximately one-third of parents continue to express concern that they do; nearly 1 in 10 parents refuse or delay vaccinations because they believe it is safer than following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) schedule. A primary concern is the number of vaccines administered, both on a single day and cumulatively over the first 2 years of life. In a new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers concluded that there is no association between receiving “too many vaccines too soon” and autism.
Dr. Frank DeStefano and colleagues from the CDC and Abt Associates, Inc. analyzed data from 256 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 752 children without ASD (born from 1994-1999) from 3 managed care organizations. They looked at each child’s cumulative exposure to antigens, the substances in vaccines that cause the body’s immune system to produce antibodies to fight disease, and the maximum number of antigens each child received in a single day of vaccination.
The researchers determined the total antigen numbers by adding the number of different antigens in all vaccines each child received in one day, as well as all vaccines each child received up to 2 years of age. The authors found that the total antigens from vaccines received by age 2 years, or the maximum number received on a single day, was the same between children with and without ASD. Furthermore, when comparing antigen numbers, no relationship was found when they evaluated the sub-categories of autistic disorder and ASD with regression.
Opioid prescription is on the increase
|
|
More and more opioids are being prescribed for pain relief in Germany. This is the conclusion arrived at by Ingrid Schubert, Peter Ihle, and Rainer Sabatowski, whose study of a sample of inhabitants of the state of Hesse with health insurance from a large statutory provider is published in the latest issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2013; 110(4): 45-51).
Behind this study lies the intention to improve pain treatment with opioids, particularly for patients with cancer. Prescribing too little results in inadequate alleviation of pain, while supplying too much entails the risk of addiction, especially in patients who do not have cancer.
The proportion of persons in the sample who received opioids increased between 2000 and 2010, and so did the number of daily doses per recipient. 3.7 million inhabitants of Germany received opioids in 2010, a million more than in 2000. The frequency of prescription of WHO step 3 opioids increased - most of all in noncancer patients, in spite of the lack of good evidence for this indication.
Japan tsunami stress may have brought on seizures: study
|
|
The number of seizure patients in a northern Japanese fishing community devastated by the March 11, 2011 tsunami spiked in the weeks following the disaster, according to a Japanese study.
The study, published in the journal Epilepsia, looked at 440 patient records from Kesennuma City Hospital, in a city that was devastated by the massive tsunami touched off by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake.
Thirteen patients were admitted with seizures in the eight weeks after the disaster, but only one had been admitted in the two months before March 11.
Previous research has linked stressful life-threatening disasters with an increased risk of seizures, but most case reports lacked clinical data with multiple patients.
ADHD rates creeping up in California
|
|
More children are being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) now than were a decade ago, according to new research from a large California health plan.
It’s not clear what’s behind that trend, researchers noted. Possible explanations include better awareness of the condition among parents and doctors or improved access to health care for kids with symptoms, according to Dr. Darios Getahun, the study’s lead author.
Prior research has also shown an increasing trend in ADHD diagnoses, according to Getahun, from the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Medical Group in Pasadena.
However, his team had strict criteria for determining which kids had ADHD, requiring a clinical diagnosis and prescriptions for ADHD medications. Past studies have relied on parent and teacher reports alone, Getahun noted.
Oxytocin improves brain function in children with autism
|
|
Preliminary results from an ongoing, large-scale study by Yale School of Medicine researchers shows that oxytocin - a naturally occurring substance produced in the brain and throughout the body- increased brain function in regions that are known to process social information in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).
A Yale Child Study Center research team that includes postdoctoral fellow Ilanit Gordon and Kevin Pelphrey, the Harris Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry and Psychology, will present the results on Saturday, May 19 at 3 p.m. at the International Meeting for Autism Research.
“Our findings provide the first, critical steps toward devising more effective treatments for the core social deficits in autism, which may involve a combination of clinical interventions with an administration of oxytocin,” said Gordon. “Such a treatment approach will fundamentally improve our understanding of autism and its treatment.”
Social-communicative dysfunctions are a core characteristic of autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder that can have an enormous emotional and financial burden on the affected individual, their families, and society.
Autism Affects Motor Skills, Study Indicates
|
|
Children with autism often have problems developing motor skills, such as running, throwing a ball or even learning how to write. But scientists have not known whether those difficulties run in families or are linked to autism. New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis points to autism as the culprit.
Their findings were reported in the journal Autism.
“From our results, it looks like motor impairments may be part of the autism diagnosis, rather than a trait genetically carried in the family,” says lead author Claudia List Hilton, PhD, assistant professor in occupational therapy and an instructor in psychiatry. “That suggests that motor impairments are a core characteristic of the diagnosis.”
The researchers studied 144 children from 67 families in which at least one child had a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder as well as at least one biological sibling in the same age group. Of the children families, there were 29 in which two had an autism spectrum disorder, including six identical twins; and 48 in which only one child had an autism spectrum disorder.
