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Why Do Schizophrenics Smoke Cigarettes?
For health care workers in psychiatric hospitals, it is no secret: one of the major issues confronting psychiatric facilities seeking to institute blanket no-smoking policies concerns chronic inpatients with schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia are almost always heavy cigarette smokers, given a choice. As Edward Lyon wrote in an analysis of studies and surveys performed throughout the 1990s: “Many patients in psychiatric hospitals would smoke two, three, or even four packs of cigarettes a day if an unlimited supply of cigarettes were available.” … [visit site to read more]
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Prevention of Adolescent Depression
Children and adolescents of depressed parents are four to six times more likely to develop depressive symptoms themselves than children of non-depressed parents. This translates to approximately 61% of children of parents with depression developing a psychiatric disorder during their life. Strikingly, more than one-quarter of children in America will experience at least one episode of depression by the time they reach adulthood. Overall, an estimated 1 in 5 Americans will experience depression sometime in their lives, equating to a large number of children with depressed parents. Many studies have focused on the treatment of depression in both adults and children and adolescents, but few focus on its prevention. A new study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) examines the efficacy of preventive interventions in adolescents with depressed parents. … [visit site to read more]
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Drugs and Pharmacology, Sixteenth Edition
Welcome to the sixteenth edition of Drugs and Pharmacology. Today, we discuss the myth of antioxidants, the not-so-bad side effects of common medications, and meditation vs. medication for ADHD.
Remember, we review the latest blogs related to drugs — medicinal, recreational, interactional, personal, professional, or any other aspect. If you were left out in this round, just leave a comment with your blog entry. You can check out the archives for every edition of this carnival. … [visit site to read more]
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Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends
Scientists love to solve the unanswerable questions in life, wrapping up tidy answers with equations or charts or definitions, leaving no gray area. Unfortunately for some researchers, not everything is so black and white. Can we really define love? Is success simply the sum of the right variables put into the right equation? Does happiness have a graph or flow-chart that guarantees statistically significant results? … [visit site to read more]
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Communication is Key to Appropriate Antibiotic Use
The misuse of antibiotics around the world is increasing due, in part, to diagnostic uncertainty and patient expectations. One of the most common causes of antibiotic use in the United States, as well as other industrialized nations, is lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs). Unfortunately, LRTIs are, for the most part, unresponsive to antibiotics. The inappropriate use of such antibiotics, therefore, increases medical costs, increases the risk for side effects and drug interactions, and — most importantly — increases the risk for the development of antimicrobial resistance. … [visit site to read more]
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Time for a Change – Gender Reassignment
I still remember him plainly: middle-aged, married, paunchy around the middle. He didn’t come in to the clinic because he was sick or had a chronic medical illness. He came in because he wanted to be a woman.
Gender reassignment was not something I had learned about in medical school. It was mentioned in passing, but there were no lectures about how to correctly dose estrogen for the male-to-female transsexual. I frankly had no idea what to do. I think my surprise and confusion were apparent, as the man blushed a little and suggested that I might want to refer him to a specialist. … [visit site to read more]
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Common Treatment Ineffective for Autism
The growing prevalence of autism worldwide has parents and clinicians searching for effective treatment options. Though not approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of autism, a common class of antidepressants is often prescribed to treat the symptoms of autism in children. The selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are among the most widely used drugs for autism treatment, even though the effectiveness to date has been questionable. A new study published in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry reports that, not only are SSRIs ineffective, they may actually cause unintended side effects. … [visit site to read more]
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Marijuana Withdrawal Syndrome
There are now several clinical trials showing that mice and dogs show evidence of cannabis withdrawal. (For THC-addicted dogs, it is the abnormal number of wet-dog shakes that give them away.) Today, scientists have a much better picture of the jobs performed by anandamide, the body’s own form of THC. This knowledge helps explain a wide range of THC withdrawal symptoms. … [visit site to read more]
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NSAIDs – Prevention or Just Delay of Dementia?
Many epidemiological and observational studies have reported that the use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) reduces the risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in the elderly. To date, there have been no clinical trials to support these claims, and there are just as many studies that report conflicting results. In a recent issue of Neurology, study authors reported that heavy NSAID use was actually associated with an increased risk for dementia. … [visit site to read more]
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What is Proprioception?
Everyone learns in school about the five senses: vision (sight), audition (sound), olfaction (smell), taction (touch), and gustation (taste). These senses are responsible for our interaction with the external world. Additionally, we have several senses that are responsible for our internal functioning. One of the most important internal senses is called proprioception, or position sense. Proprioception affects our lives every moment of every day, and allows us to accomplish complex tasks that would otherwise be impossible. The sense is so fundamental to our functioning that we take its existence for granted. … [visit site to read more]
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