health 70

Lower blood levels of a biomarker called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) have been associated with depression in multiple studies, mainly in non-pregnant adults. Now, in a study published in the journal  Psychoneuroendocrinology , research from The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center found that BDNF levels change during pregnancy, and can cause depression in the mother and low birth weight in the baby. "Our research shows BDNF levels change considerably across pregnancy and provide predictive value for depressive symptoms in women, as well as poor fetal growth. It's notable that we observed a significant difference in BDNF in women of different races," said Lisa M. Christian, an associate professor of psychiatry in the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center and principal investigator of the study. Researchers took blood serum samples during and after pregnancy from 139 women and observed that BDNF leve...

According to the World Health Organisation WHO, 350 million people worldwide are affected by depression. But the mental state is not all that is affected, however, and depression can also compromise the body. "Meanwhile there is little doubt that depression is a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases," explains Karl-Heinz Ladwig. He is group leader at the Institute of Epidemiology II at the Helmholtz Zentrum München, professor of psychosomatic medicine at TUM's Klinikum rechts der Isar as well as scientist of DZHK. "The question now is: What is the relationship between depression and other risk factors like tobacco smoke, high cholesterol levels, obesity or hypertension -- how big a role does each factor play?" In order to examine this question, Ladwig and his team analyzed data from 3,428 male patients between the ages of 45 and 74 years and observed their development over a period of ten years. "The work is based on a prospective population-based da...

Testimony therapy included individual counselling, whereby the clients told their life stories, including traumatic events, and counselors provided support and documented the details of the narratives. After sessions, the counselors transcribed the narratives, which were compiled into books for the clients. Next, a culturally adapted ceremony involved a Buddhist ritual and a truth-telling event to which community members and non-governmental organization representatives were invited. "We found that testimony therapy was effective at reducing the symptoms of anxiety, depression, and PTSD among Khmer Rouge survivors. This is especially notable because the intervention was brief (five days), culturally adapted (and adaptable), and was conducted in a low resource context," said Dr. Jennifer Esala, co-author of the  Journal of Traumatic Stress  study. "We hope that these findings encourage researchers to continue to study testimony therapy more closely and for practitione...

The researchers found that a protein called JNK when active, represses the generation of new neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that controls emotions and learning. By inhibiting JNK solely in newly generated nerve cells in the hippocampus, the researchers were able to alleviate anxiety and depressive behaviour in mice. This previously unknown mechanism brings fresh insight on how the brain works to regulate mood and indicates that inhibitors of JNK, such as the one used here, can provide a new avenue for anti-depressant and anxiolytic drug development. Depression and anxiety are highly prevalent disorders and represent one of the largest causes of disability worldwide. These results are important as many patients do not respond to current treatments and it has long been recognised that new mechanistic understanding of these disorders would be necessary to in order to identify drugs for treatment resistant depression. The research was funded by the EU-funded Marie Cu...

Antidepressant use throughout being pregnant has the potential to intrude with serotonin consumption by the fetus, which may end up in malformations , say investigators. Credit score: © Photographee.eu / Fotolia A brand new Université de Montréal examine within the British Medical Journal reveals that antidepressants prescribed to pregnant girls may improve the prospect of getting a child with beginning defects. The chance -- 6 to 10 %, versus three to five % in girls who don't take the medication -- is excessive sufficient to benefit warning of their use, particularly since, usually, they're solely marginally efficient, the examine says. "In being pregnant, you are treating the mom however you are fearful concerning the unborn youngster, and the profit must outweigh the danger," stated the examine's senior creator, Anick Bérard, a professor at UdeM's College of Pharmacy and researcher at its affiliated kids's hospital, CHU Sainte-Just...

The researchers also established that women with a history of depression are more than 20 times more likely to experience PPD than mothers without a previous clinical diagnosis of depression. And while gestational diabetes alone increased risk for PPD, a history of maternal depression in conjunction with gestational diabetes further increased the likelihood of PPD. "Most practitioners think of these as two isolated and very different conditions, but we now understand gestational diabetes and postpartum depression should be considered together," says Michael E. Silverman, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and lead author of the study. "While having diabetes increases PPD risk for all women, for those women who have had a past depressive episode, having diabetes during pregnancy makes it 70 percent more likely that they will develop PPD." In addition to gestational diabetes, the researchers studied more t...

The study, published in  Lancet Psychiatry , found that 14-year-old adolescents who had contact with mental health services had a greater decrease in depressive symptoms than those with similar difficulties but without contact. By the age of 17, the odds of reporting clinical depression were more than seven times higher in individuals without contact than in service users who had been similarly depressed at baseline. Researchers from the Department of Psychiatry recruited 1,238 14-year-old adolescents and their primary caregivers from secondary schools in Cambridgeshire, and followed them up at the age of 17. Their mental state and behaviour was assessed by trained researchers, while the teenagers self-reported their depressive symptoms. Of the participants, 126 (11%) had a current mental illness at start of the study -- and only 48 (38%) of these had had contact with mental health services in the year prior to recruitment. Contact with mental health services appeared to be o...

Researchers at Kings College London and the Charles University in Prague who studied people attending a stop smoking clinic in the Czech Republic, found that successful quitters had a considerable improvement in their depression . And two-thirds (66.3 per cent) of those who had moderate or severe depression when smoking described no or minimal symptoms during a one-year follow up. The researchers also found that all those who received the specialist behavioural support and medication provided by the clinic, were more likely to remain smoke free for a year if they went back for repeat visits. But they noted that people with depression were still less likely to quit successfully than those without. This highlights that different groups can benefit to different extents from the same support, and suggests that people with mental health problems need extra help. Smoking rates among people with mental health conditions are more than double those of the general population (approxim...

A security system is being developed that analyses the user's brainwaves. The system then determines whether the user is in a fit mental state and grants them access to resources only if appropriate. Such a system might be used to control entry to a building, access to computer resources or even the withdrawal of money from an automated teller machine. It could also have applications in the military, electronic learning, and healthcare , according to research published in the International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms. Most security systems simply expect a PIN or password while biometric systems look for a fingerprint, a view of the user's iris or retina or some other mundane but unique characteristic. Now, Violeta Tulceanu of the University of Iasi is adding an emotion detector to biometric security. "The true engine of motivation is our capacity to perceive pleasure and fear pain, and thus, reward and punishment," explains Tulceanu. "Our abi...

The study, published this month in the  Journal of Pain and Symptom Management , is among the first to examine the effect of anxiety and depression on survival rates for lung cancer patients. The findings build on similar previous research looking at breast cancer patients, further deepening scientists' understanding of the effect of psychosocial  factors on survival rates for patients diagnosed with cancer. "The question of whether anxiety and depression affect survival in cancer patients has been of interest to scientists for decades, but long-term research has been limited," said Andrea Vodermaier, the study's lead author and postdoctoral research fellow in the UBC department of psychology. "Our study confirms that there is indeed a link for lung cancer patients, and that it's important for health-care providers to treat not only their tumour but also focus on the full emotional experience of the patient." For the study, researchers followed 684...