Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Far fewer people suffer from mental disorders requiring treatment than was initially indicated by two national surveys, according to a reanalysis of them. However, some researchers argue that the revision understates the reach of serious mental illnesses in the U.S. population at large.http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com
"Establishing the clinical significance of mental disorders in the community is crucial for estimating treatment need," say psychiatric epidemiologist William E. Narrow of the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education in Washington, D.C., and his colleagues. The outcome of this scientific debate is almost certain to influence political efforts aimed at expanding insurance coverage for mental illness.
Narrow and his coworkers probed the responses of 20,861 individuals surveyed from 1980 to 1985 and 8,098 volunteers interviewed between 1990 and 1992
(SN: 1/22/94, p. 55). Rates of mental disorders in these government-sponsored surveys were based solely on the presence of symptoms that met criteria for psychiatric diagnoses.http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com
Narrow's team rated mental disorders as "clinically significant" if survey participants had reported that their symptoms led them to thoughts of suicide, made them seek mental-health treatment, or interfered markedly with their daily activities. Based on these criteria, the rates of any mental ailment for 18-to-54-year-olds in the year before each survey declined from 30 percent to 25 percent in one study and from 30 percent to 21 percent in the other.http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com
These revisions represent a decrease of 13.3 million and 13.9 million people, with at least one mental illness, respectively, the researchers report in the February Archives of General Psychiatry. The adjusted rate for both data sets falls to 18.5 percent for all adults, they add, since mental disorders affect a smaller proportion of people older than 54.
Reasons for discrepancies in the rates of certain ailments between the two surveys remain unclear. For instance, the 1-year prevalence of major depression was 6.5 percent in the 1980s survey and 10.1 percent in the 1990s one. The reanalysis brought these rates closer together, to 5.2 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively.
The new study takes a necessary but still inadequate step toward assessing treatment needs of people with mental disorders, contend psychologist Jerome C. Wakefield of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., and psychiatrist Robert L. Spitzer of Columbia University, in a commentary accompanying the new report. Its clinical-significance ratings rest on self-reports, which likely understate the personal havoc wreaked by various symptoms, Wakefield and Spitzer note.
Moreover, they say, Narrow's group did not distinguish between clinically significant symptoms caused by biological disturbances and those that arose in response to stressful events.
The director of the 1990s survey, sociologist Ronald C. Kessler of Harvard Medical School in Boston, says the new report greatly underestimates the prevalence of serious mental disorders. Preliminary data from a new survey that he's conducting, which probes for symptom-related impairments more extensively than Narrow's group was able to, largely confirms the higher prevalence rates in his previous survey, Kessler says.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
study 6.stu.001 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Far fewer people suffer from mental disorders requiring treatment than was initially indicated by two national surveys, according to a reanalysis of them. However, some researchers argue that the revision understates the reach of serious mental illnesses in the U.S. population at large.http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com
"Establishing the clinical significance of mental disorders in the community is crucial for estimating treatment need," say psychiatric epidemiologist William E. Narrow of the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education in Washington, D.C., and his colleagues. The outcome of this scientific debate is almost certain to influence political efforts aimed at expanding insurance coverage for mental illness.
Narrow and his coworkers probed the responses of 20,861 individuals surveyed from 1980 to 1985 and 8,098 volunteers interviewed between 1990 and 1992
(SN: 1/22/94, p. 55). Rates of mental disorders in these government-sponsored surveys were based solely on the presence of symptoms that met criteria for psychiatric diagnoses.http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com
Narrow's team rated mental disorders as "clinically significant" if survey participants had reported that their symptoms led them to thoughts of suicide, made them seek mental-health treatment, or interfered markedly with their daily activities. Based on these criteria, the rates of any mental ailment for 18-to-54-year-olds in the year before each survey declined from 30 percent to 25 percent in one study and from 30 percent to 21 percent in the other.http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com
These revisions represent a decrease of 13.3 million and 13.9 million people, with at least one mental illness, respectively, the researchers report in the February Archives of General Psychiatry. The adjusted rate for both data sets falls to 18.5 percent for all adults, they add, since mental disorders affect a smaller proportion of people older than 54.
Reasons for discrepancies in the rates of certain ailments between the two surveys remain unclear. For instance, the 1-year prevalence of major depression was 6.5 percent in the 1980s survey and 10.1 percent in the 1990s one. The reanalysis brought these rates closer together, to 5.2 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively.
The new study takes a necessary but still inadequate step toward assessing treatment needs of people with mental disorders, contend psychologist Jerome C. Wakefield of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., and psychiatrist Robert L. Spitzer of Columbia University, in a commentary accompanying the new report. Its clinical-significance ratings rest on self-reports, which likely understate the personal havoc wreaked by various symptoms, Wakefield and Spitzer note.
Moreover, they say, Narrow's group did not distinguish between clinically significant symptoms caused by biological disturbances and those that arose in response to stressful events.
The director of the 1990s survey, sociologist Ronald C. Kessler of Harvard Medical School in Boston, says the new report greatly underestimates the prevalence of serious mental disorders. Preliminary data from a new survey that he's conducting, which probes for symptom-related impairments more extensively than Narrow's group was able to, largely confirms the higher prevalence rates in his previous survey, Kessler says.
"Establishing the clinical significance of mental disorders in the community is crucial for estimating treatment need," say psychiatric epidemiologist William E. Narrow of the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education in Washington, D.C., and his colleagues. The outcome of this scientific debate is almost certain to influence political efforts aimed at expanding insurance coverage for mental illness.
Narrow and his coworkers probed the responses of 20,861 individuals surveyed from 1980 to 1985 and 8,098 volunteers interviewed between 1990 and 1992
(SN: 1/22/94, p. 55). Rates of mental disorders in these government-sponsored surveys were based solely on the presence of symptoms that met criteria for psychiatric diagnoses.http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com
Narrow's team rated mental disorders as "clinically significant" if survey participants had reported that their symptoms led them to thoughts of suicide, made them seek mental-health treatment, or interfered markedly with their daily activities. Based on these criteria, the rates of any mental ailment for 18-to-54-year-olds in the year before each survey declined from 30 percent to 25 percent in one study and from 30 percent to 21 percent in the other.http://louis3j3sheehan3esquire.wordpress.com
These revisions represent a decrease of 13.3 million and 13.9 million people, with at least one mental illness, respectively, the researchers report in the February Archives of General Psychiatry. The adjusted rate for both data sets falls to 18.5 percent for all adults, they add, since mental disorders affect a smaller proportion of people older than 54.
Reasons for discrepancies in the rates of certain ailments between the two surveys remain unclear. For instance, the 1-year prevalence of major depression was 6.5 percent in the 1980s survey and 10.1 percent in the 1990s one. The reanalysis brought these rates closer together, to 5.2 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively.
The new study takes a necessary but still inadequate step toward assessing treatment needs of people with mental disorders, contend psychologist Jerome C. Wakefield of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., and psychiatrist Robert L. Spitzer of Columbia University, in a commentary accompanying the new report. Its clinical-significance ratings rest on self-reports, which likely understate the personal havoc wreaked by various symptoms, Wakefield and Spitzer note.
Moreover, they say, Narrow's group did not distinguish between clinically significant symptoms caused by biological disturbances and those that arose in response to stressful events.
The director of the 1990s survey, sociologist Ronald C. Kessler of Harvard Medical School in Boston, says the new report greatly underestimates the prevalence of serious mental disorders. Preliminary data from a new survey that he's conducting, which probes for symptom-related impairments more extensively than Narrow's group was able to, largely confirms the higher prevalence rates in his previous survey, Kessler says.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
ants 4.ant.000100 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . Consciousness is overrated. With tiny brains and force of numbers, social insects have achieved most of the things we consider quintessentially human—farming, warfare, air conditioning—and have taken over the world. http://louis0j0sheehan0esquire.wordpress.com Ants alone weigh as much as the planet’s people, even before you add in bees, wasps, and termites. When it comes to pollination, composting, hunting, and gathering, these insects do most of the heavy lifting, and long after we have nuked/warmed/polluted/eaten ourselves to extinction, it is likely that they will keep the place ticking just fine. http://louis0j0sheehan0esquire.wordpress.com
Renowned sociobiologists and ant experts E. O. Wilson and Bert Hölldobler go so far as to call the most advanced insect societies—like the leaf-cutting ants, which cultivate fungus in air-conditioned nests with their own hygiene and waste disposal systems—“civilized.” http://louis0j0sheehan0esquire.wordpress.com It’s hard to disagree, although these civilizations are more Alien than Star Trek, dark and squishy worlds with buildings made from living bodies or stitched together by workers using silk-extruding grubs as sewing machines. Communication is mostly by smell, and it is staggeringly efficient: A milligram of a pheromone that ants use to mark their paths would lay a trail 60 times around the earth.
So what good is a big brain? It lets you work out what these social insects do, and why. Hölldobler and Wilson have done more than most in this regard, and their books—this is the follow-up to their Pulitzer Prize–winning The Ants, from 1990—are landmarks, yielding huge rewards to anyone willing to tackle the scientific basics. These guys make you proud of your own lumbering species.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Renowned sociobiologists and ant experts E. O. Wilson and Bert Hölldobler go so far as to call the most advanced insect societies—like the leaf-cutting ants, which cultivate fungus in air-conditioned nests with their own hygiene and waste disposal systems—“civilized.” http://louis0j0sheehan0esquire.wordpress.com It’s hard to disagree, although these civilizations are more Alien than Star Trek, dark and squishy worlds with buildings made from living bodies or stitched together by workers using silk-extruding grubs as sewing machines. Communication is mostly by smell, and it is staggeringly efficient: A milligram of a pheromone that ants use to mark their paths would lay a trail 60 times around the earth.
So what good is a big brain? It lets you work out what these social insects do, and why. Hölldobler and Wilson have done more than most in this regard, and their books—this is the follow-up to their Pulitzer Prize–winning The Ants, from 1990—are landmarks, yielding huge rewards to anyone willing to tackle the scientific basics. These guys make you proud of your own lumbering species.Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Thursday, December 4, 2008
california 222.cali.0000 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire . The health of southern California kelp forests may depend more on the ecosystem's predator population than on the forest's access to nutrients, researchers report. The finding suggests that fishing practices have a profound impact on these ecosystems. http://www.soulcast.com/Louis3J3Sheehan
Kelp forests grow worldwide in shallow coastal areas with mild climates. The brown seaweed called kelp reaches from the ocean floor to the water's surface, usually spanning 10 to 20 meters, says Benjamin S. Halpern of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, Calif. Along western U.S. coasts, these ecosystems support up to 1,000 species of fish, plants, and invertebrates, he says. http://www.soulcast.com/Louis3J3Sheehan
Ecologists have long debated whether the number of predators—such as fish that feed on smaller creatures—at the top of the ecosystem's food web or the availability of nutrients at the bottom of the web more strongly influences the condition of ecosystems.
Halpern and his colleagues studied kelp forests that surround the Channel Islands, about 25 miles off the coast of Santa Barbara. The group analyzed surveys of species' abundance from 16 sites around the Channel Islands National Park. They also examined satellite data from 1999 to 2002 on chlorophyll concentrations—an indirect indication of nutrient levels—in the ocean waters surrounding the islands.
The "top-down" control accounts for 11 to 20 percent of the ecosystem's pattern of species abundance, the team reports in the May 26 Science. The predator populations have 7 to 10 times as much influence over the ecosystem as the availability of nutrients does.
"No one has tested these two factors at the same time," says Halpern. "How healthy a kelp-forest community is depends primarily on which predators and how many of them you have in the community." Overfishing that depletes these predator populations could affect the ecosystem's stability.
"I think this is a very powerful paper in terms of suggesting the strength of top-down influences," says Robert S. Steneck of the University of Maine in Orono. "As we basically fish down global food webs in all these different ecosystems, we will in essence be restructuring communities."
James Estes of the University of California, Santa Cruz agrees that the work is important to fisheries management. "It provides further evidence for the notion that overfishing has a strong effect on the ecosystem. It's not just the [fish] stocks being taken out."
But Michael H. Graham of Moss Landing (Calif.) Marine Laboratories notes that the new study may have underestimated the bottom-up effect. He points out that the 1999–2002 satellite data cover a period without an El Niño or La Niña event, two weather phenomena that can have large impacts on nutrient prevalence in kelp forests. Furthermore, the satellite measures chlorophyll concentrations near, but not in, the kelp forests. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Kelp forests grow worldwide in shallow coastal areas with mild climates. The brown seaweed called kelp reaches from the ocean floor to the water's surface, usually spanning 10 to 20 meters, says Benjamin S. Halpern of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, Calif. Along western U.S. coasts, these ecosystems support up to 1,000 species of fish, plants, and invertebrates, he says. http://www.soulcast.com/Louis3J3Sheehan
Ecologists have long debated whether the number of predators—such as fish that feed on smaller creatures—at the top of the ecosystem's food web or the availability of nutrients at the bottom of the web more strongly influences the condition of ecosystems.
Halpern and his colleagues studied kelp forests that surround the Channel Islands, about 25 miles off the coast of Santa Barbara. The group analyzed surveys of species' abundance from 16 sites around the Channel Islands National Park. They also examined satellite data from 1999 to 2002 on chlorophyll concentrations—an indirect indication of nutrient levels—in the ocean waters surrounding the islands.
The "top-down" control accounts for 11 to 20 percent of the ecosystem's pattern of species abundance, the team reports in the May 26 Science. The predator populations have 7 to 10 times as much influence over the ecosystem as the availability of nutrients does.
"No one has tested these two factors at the same time," says Halpern. "How healthy a kelp-forest community is depends primarily on which predators and how many of them you have in the community." Overfishing that depletes these predator populations could affect the ecosystem's stability.
"I think this is a very powerful paper in terms of suggesting the strength of top-down influences," says Robert S. Steneck of the University of Maine in Orono. "As we basically fish down global food webs in all these different ecosystems, we will in essence be restructuring communities."
James Estes of the University of California, Santa Cruz agrees that the work is important to fisheries management. "It provides further evidence for the notion that overfishing has a strong effect on the ecosystem. It's not just the [fish] stocks being taken out."
But Michael H. Graham of Moss Landing (Calif.) Marine Laboratories notes that the new study may have underestimated the bottom-up effect. He points out that the 1999–2002 satellite data cover a period without an El Niño or La Niña event, two weather phenomena that can have large impacts on nutrient prevalence in kelp forests. Furthermore, the satellite measures chlorophyll concentrations near, but not in, the kelp forests. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Monday, December 1, 2008
Stephen Bassett 66.ste.0002993 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
November 26, 2008 at 22:34:46 Permalink
Open Letter to Barack Obama re: Truth Embargo
Diary Entry by Stephen Bassett
This open letter is part of the Million Fax on Washington, the goal of which is to direct one million letters, faxes and emails to Barack Obama calling for the immediate end to the 61-year truth embargo on formal acknowledgement of the extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race. The Million Fax on Washington is a project of Paradigm Research Group.
::::::::
President Elect Barack Obama
[Note: this open letter is part of the Million Fax on Washington, a project of Paradigm Research Group.]
November 21, 2008
Dear Mr. President Elect:
On October 17, 2008 PRG published an open letter to the candidates callingfor them to make preparations to end the six-decade truth embargo regarding an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race. This letter reiterates that request. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
Your staff is now aware that letters, faxes and emails are arriving at your former Senate office and the Washington, DC transition headquarters. In general this correspondence will ask of you the following:
1) demand a full briefing from your military services and intelligence agencies regarding what they know and what they are doing about extraterrestrial related phenomena. If you are told you do not have the proper clearance for this information, replace that person with someone who has read the Constitution.
2) press for open and comprehensive congressional hearings to take testimony from scores of government witnesses who have already come forward with extraordinary evidence and are prepared to testify under oath.
3) formally acknowledge the extraterrestrial presence and finally end the truth embargo after 61 years.
4) make available for open development technologies which have been secretly studied and reverse engineered for decades with unlimited black budget funding. These technologies are derived from extraterrestrial vehicles and are now essential to overcome the environmental, economic and societal challenges of our time.
PRG is well aware of your intention to launch a high technology “New Deal” code named “New Apollo Project” to restore America’s economy. This massive program to subsidize green technology development, create jobs, expand the manufacturing base and reverse the trade imbalance will be likely accompanied by legislation prohibiting overseas hiring and offshore manufacturing. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
All well and good, but it will not be enough. The challenges are too great and the response to these challenges too long delayed. It is essential the paradigm breaking technologies hidden in unacknowledged special access programs and sequestered behind the extraterrestrial truth embargo be included.
If you are in need of counsel to assist you in these matters, you have but to turn to your transition co-chair, John Podesta. His efforts to end the truth embargo and release all relevant government documents date back to at least 1993 and the Rockefeller Initiative. PRG believes he is fully aware of the extraterrestrial presence and is committed to creating more open, transparent governance. In this he is in sync with the chief financial backer of his Center for American Progress think tank, George Soros.
Reach out to your party’s allies within the military services and intelligence agencies. When you take office conduct the necessary meetings with the cross agency committees managing the extraterrestrial presence issue. In the spring of 2009, before the truth embargo becomes your embargo, initiate the most profound event in human history and begin rebuilding the trust of the American people in their government and the standing of your country in the world.
Respectfully,
Stephen Bassett
Executive Director
Rockefeller Initiative: http://tinyurl.com/2o526u and www.presidentialufo.com/clinton.htm
New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/5mstsr
Coalition for Freedom of Information: www.freedomofinfo.org
Million Fax on Washington: www.faxonwashington.org
Paradigm Research Group: www.paradigmresearchgroup.org
Stephen Bassett is arguably the leading advocate in the nation for ending the 60-year government imposed truth embargo regarding an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and the planet earth. He is a political activist, lobbyist, commentator, columnist and conference producer. He is the founder of the Paradigm Research Group, the Executive Director of the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee (X-PPAC), the creator of the Paradigm Clock and the executive producer of the X-Conference. His work has been covered internationally including the Washington Post, Washington Times, New York Times, Legal Times, Roll Call, Christian Science Monitor, National Journal, Pravda and the London Sunday Express. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
Since 1996 Bassett has assisted many organizations and initiatives making the case for 1) an end to the government truth embargo, and 2) open congressional hearings to take the testimony of former military and agency employees witness to extraterrestrial-related events and evidence. He has appeared on hundreds of radio and television talk shows and in numerous documentaries delivering the message to millions of people of the likelihood and implications of "Disclosure" - the formal acknowledgement of the ET presence by the governments of the world.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Open Letter to Barack Obama re: Truth Embargo
Diary Entry by Stephen Bassett
This open letter is part of the Million Fax on Washington, the goal of which is to direct one million letters, faxes and emails to Barack Obama calling for the immediate end to the 61-year truth embargo on formal acknowledgement of the extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race. The Million Fax on Washington is a project of Paradigm Research Group.
::::::::
President Elect Barack Obama
[Note: this open letter is part of the Million Fax on Washington, a project of Paradigm Research Group.]
November 21, 2008
Dear Mr. President Elect:
On October 17, 2008 PRG published an open letter to the candidates callingfor them to make preparations to end the six-decade truth embargo regarding an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race. This letter reiterates that request. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
Your staff is now aware that letters, faxes and emails are arriving at your former Senate office and the Washington, DC transition headquarters. In general this correspondence will ask of you the following:
1) demand a full briefing from your military services and intelligence agencies regarding what they know and what they are doing about extraterrestrial related phenomena. If you are told you do not have the proper clearance for this information, replace that person with someone who has read the Constitution.
2) press for open and comprehensive congressional hearings to take testimony from scores of government witnesses who have already come forward with extraordinary evidence and are prepared to testify under oath.
3) formally acknowledge the extraterrestrial presence and finally end the truth embargo after 61 years.
4) make available for open development technologies which have been secretly studied and reverse engineered for decades with unlimited black budget funding. These technologies are derived from extraterrestrial vehicles and are now essential to overcome the environmental, economic and societal challenges of our time.
PRG is well aware of your intention to launch a high technology “New Deal” code named “New Apollo Project” to restore America’s economy. This massive program to subsidize green technology development, create jobs, expand the manufacturing base and reverse the trade imbalance will be likely accompanied by legislation prohibiting overseas hiring and offshore manufacturing. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
All well and good, but it will not be enough. The challenges are too great and the response to these challenges too long delayed. It is essential the paradigm breaking technologies hidden in unacknowledged special access programs and sequestered behind the extraterrestrial truth embargo be included.
If you are in need of counsel to assist you in these matters, you have but to turn to your transition co-chair, John Podesta. His efforts to end the truth embargo and release all relevant government documents date back to at least 1993 and the Rockefeller Initiative. PRG believes he is fully aware of the extraterrestrial presence and is committed to creating more open, transparent governance. In this he is in sync with the chief financial backer of his Center for American Progress think tank, George Soros.
Reach out to your party’s allies within the military services and intelligence agencies. When you take office conduct the necessary meetings with the cross agency committees managing the extraterrestrial presence issue. In the spring of 2009, before the truth embargo becomes your embargo, initiate the most profound event in human history and begin rebuilding the trust of the American people in their government and the standing of your country in the world.
Respectfully,
Stephen Bassett
Executive Director
Rockefeller Initiative: http://tinyurl.com/2o526u and www.presidentialufo.com/clinton.htm
New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/5mstsr
Coalition for Freedom of Information: www.freedomofinfo.org
Million Fax on Washington: www.faxonwashington.org
Paradigm Research Group: www.paradigmresearchgroup.org
Stephen Bassett is arguably the leading advocate in the nation for ending the 60-year government imposed truth embargo regarding an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and the planet earth. He is a political activist, lobbyist, commentator, columnist and conference producer. He is the founder of the Paradigm Research Group, the Executive Director of the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee (X-PPAC), the creator of the Paradigm Clock and the executive producer of the X-Conference. His work has been covered internationally including the Washington Post, Washington Times, New York Times, Legal Times, Roll Call, Christian Science Monitor, National Journal, Pravda and the London Sunday Express. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO
Since 1996 Bassett has assisted many organizations and initiatives making the case for 1) an end to the government truth embargo, and 2) open congressional hearings to take the testimony of former military and agency employees witness to extraterrestrial-related events and evidence. He has appeared on hundreds of radio and television talk shows and in numerous documentaries delivering the message to millions of people of the likelihood and implications of "Disclosure" - the formal acknowledgement of the ET presence by the governments of the world.
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Sunday, November 23, 2008
spews 33.spe.1002 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
As well as tailpipe emissions, cars and other vehicles throw off metal pollutants from wear on various parts. Despite European regulations requiring cleaner materials in vehicles, a study in Stockholm shows that tires are a significant source of cadmium, while brake pads emit a variety of other metals.
Bo Bergbäck and his colleagues at the University of Kalmar in Sweden analyzed metals in tires and brake-pad linings. http://LOUIS1J1SHEEHAN1ESQUIRE.US They used average wear and replacement patterns for the parts, along with national traffic data for 2005, to estimate the quantities of various metals dispersed into the environment. The team compared its findings with data obtained in the 1990s.
Besides being a well-studied city in terms of environmental impacts, Bergbäck says, Stockholm represents "an average city in many respects," making the data relevant to other urban areas.http://LOUIS1J1SHEEHAN1ESQUIRE.US
Tires contain zinc because of the zinc oxide used in the vulcanization process, which often has small but significant amounts of cadmium associated with it, Bergbäck says. Tires remain a major source of emissions of those two metals in Stockholm. Brake linings shed a significant amount of zinc and copper, he adds.
In general, lead and cadmium admissions decreased 90 percent between 1998 and 2005, while emissions for zinc and copper have declined more modestly, the researchers report in the Aug. 1 Environmental Science & Technology.http://LOUIS1J1SHEEHAN1ESQUIRE.US
Another group of researchers in Sweden is studying the bioavailability and biological impact of these metals. "We know that there are increased concentrations of these metals," Bergbäck says, "[but] we can't say anything about biological effects."
Bo Bergbäck and his colleagues at the University of Kalmar in Sweden analyzed metals in tires and brake-pad linings. http://LOUIS1J1SHEEHAN1ESQUIRE.US They used average wear and replacement patterns for the parts, along with national traffic data for 2005, to estimate the quantities of various metals dispersed into the environment. The team compared its findings with data obtained in the 1990s.
Besides being a well-studied city in terms of environmental impacts, Bergbäck says, Stockholm represents "an average city in many respects," making the data relevant to other urban areas.http://LOUIS1J1SHEEHAN1ESQUIRE.US
Tires contain zinc because of the zinc oxide used in the vulcanization process, which often has small but significant amounts of cadmium associated with it, Bergbäck says. Tires remain a major source of emissions of those two metals in Stockholm. Brake linings shed a significant amount of zinc and copper, he adds.
In general, lead and cadmium admissions decreased 90 percent between 1998 and 2005, while emissions for zinc and copper have declined more modestly, the researchers report in the Aug. 1 Environmental Science & Technology.http://LOUIS1J1SHEEHAN1ESQUIRE.US
Another group of researchers in Sweden is studying the bioavailability and biological impact of these metals. "We know that there are increased concentrations of these metals," Bergbäck says, "[but] we can't say anything about biological effects."
Monday, November 17, 2008
scrutiny 77.scr.11001 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
New antidepressant medications have gained widespread use in the past decade, and more await approval from the Food and Drug Administration following clinical trials. Much debate currently concerns whether it's ethical for physicians to give placebo pills to depressed volunteers in such studies, instead of providing either the drug being tested or an FDA-approved antidepressant.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
An analysis of the FDA's clinical-trial database on recently approved antidepressants now promises to enliven the controversy further. It finds that depressed patients assigned to 4 to 8 weeks of placebo treatment—typical clinical-trial lengths—exhibited no increased risk for suicide or suicide attempts and showed substantial symptom relief. Still, depression subsided to an even greater extent among those receiving antidepressants.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Placebos pack enough therapeutic punch to calm ethical qualms about their use in antidepressant studies, conclude psychiatrist Arif Khan of the Northwest Clinical Research Center in Bellevue, Wash., and his coworkers.
"Patients who are assigned to placebo treatment in clinical trials are not untreated," Khan's team concludes in the April Archives of General Psychiatry. "The capsule they receive is pharmacologically inert, but hardly inert with respect to its symbolic value and its power as a conditioned stimulus."
Like other participants, placebo patients received physical examinations, attention and guidance from a physician, opportunities to talk about their condition, and other assistance that chipped away at their depression, the researchers assert. Psychotherapy of all theoretical stripes may work primarily because of a common emphasis on these types of interventions, they propose.
Khan's group obtained FDA clinical data for the seven antidepressants approved from 1987 through 1997. These drugs, which include fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft), and paroxetine (Paxil), exert different effects on brain chemistry from those of antidepressants approved earlier.
Of the 45 studies, 23 compared a new drug with a placebo only. The rest compared a new drug with both an approved antidepressant and a placebo. In most cases, the 8,731 participants suffered from moderate depression and had no other serious physical or psychiatric conditions.
During the trials, 34 people killed themselves and 130 others tried to do so. Rates of suicide and attempted suicide were nearly the same for groups treated with placebo or with drugs, the team says.
Depression symptoms declined by 41 percent with new antidepressants, 42 percent with previously approved medications, and 31 percent with placebos.
Such findings will aid researchers and oversight boards struggling to determine the ethics of using placebos in antidepressant studies, Khan's group concludes. However, comments on the analysis, published in the same journal, offer varying interpretations of the results.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Nothing in the report raises concerns about placebo use, holds psychiatrist Paul Leber of Neuro-Pharm Group in Potomac, Md., a private research firm. Some depressed patients respond at least as well to placebos as to antidepressants, making randomized placebo-controlled trials essential, Leber argues.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Epidemiologist Karin B. Michels of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston disagrees. Antidepressants relieved symptoms better than placebos in the FDA trials, even if no disparity in suicides emerged, she says. A physician who knowingly uses placebos thus unethically deprives patients of effective treatment, in her view.
The FDA data don't adequately assess placebo effects on depressed patients, argues psychologist Helena Chmura Kraemer of Stanford University. For instance, the studies didn't test whether improvement on placebo exceeded that of depressed people given no treatment. Also, more patients dropped out of the trials than completed them, making it difficult to draw conclusions.
Studies of depression treatment lasting at least 6 months have found much higher relapse rates for placebo responders than for those who improve on antidepressants, say Frederic M. Quitkin and Donald F. Klein, both psychiatrists at Columbia University. The FDA review and some other reports (SN: 8/24/96, p. 123) underestimate antidepressants' effectiveness, they argue. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
An analysis of the FDA's clinical-trial database on recently approved antidepressants now promises to enliven the controversy further. It finds that depressed patients assigned to 4 to 8 weeks of placebo treatment—typical clinical-trial lengths—exhibited no increased risk for suicide or suicide attempts and showed substantial symptom relief. Still, depression subsided to an even greater extent among those receiving antidepressants.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Placebos pack enough therapeutic punch to calm ethical qualms about their use in antidepressant studies, conclude psychiatrist Arif Khan of the Northwest Clinical Research Center in Bellevue, Wash., and his coworkers.
"Patients who are assigned to placebo treatment in clinical trials are not untreated," Khan's team concludes in the April Archives of General Psychiatry. "The capsule they receive is pharmacologically inert, but hardly inert with respect to its symbolic value and its power as a conditioned stimulus."
Like other participants, placebo patients received physical examinations, attention and guidance from a physician, opportunities to talk about their condition, and other assistance that chipped away at their depression, the researchers assert. Psychotherapy of all theoretical stripes may work primarily because of a common emphasis on these types of interventions, they propose.
Khan's group obtained FDA clinical data for the seven antidepressants approved from 1987 through 1997. These drugs, which include fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft), and paroxetine (Paxil), exert different effects on brain chemistry from those of antidepressants approved earlier.
Of the 45 studies, 23 compared a new drug with a placebo only. The rest compared a new drug with both an approved antidepressant and a placebo. In most cases, the 8,731 participants suffered from moderate depression and had no other serious physical or psychiatric conditions.
During the trials, 34 people killed themselves and 130 others tried to do so. Rates of suicide and attempted suicide were nearly the same for groups treated with placebo or with drugs, the team says.
Depression symptoms declined by 41 percent with new antidepressants, 42 percent with previously approved medications, and 31 percent with placebos.
Such findings will aid researchers and oversight boards struggling to determine the ethics of using placebos in antidepressant studies, Khan's group concludes. However, comments on the analysis, published in the same journal, offer varying interpretations of the results.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Nothing in the report raises concerns about placebo use, holds psychiatrist Paul Leber of Neuro-Pharm Group in Potomac, Md., a private research firm. Some depressed patients respond at least as well to placebos as to antidepressants, making randomized placebo-controlled trials essential, Leber argues.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Epidemiologist Karin B. Michels of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston disagrees. Antidepressants relieved symptoms better than placebos in the FDA trials, even if no disparity in suicides emerged, she says. A physician who knowingly uses placebos thus unethically deprives patients of effective treatment, in her view.
The FDA data don't adequately assess placebo effects on depressed patients, argues psychologist Helena Chmura Kraemer of Stanford University. For instance, the studies didn't test whether improvement on placebo exceeded that of depressed people given no treatment. Also, more patients dropped out of the trials than completed them, making it difficult to draw conclusions.
Studies of depression treatment lasting at least 6 months have found much higher relapse rates for placebo responders than for those who improve on antidepressants, say Frederic M. Quitkin and Donald F. Klein, both psychiatrists at Columbia University. The FDA review and some other reports (SN: 8/24/96, p. 123) underestimate antidepressants' effectiveness, they argue. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Thursday, November 13, 2008
commission 773.com.e333 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Since 2003, fish biologist Arthur Devries of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign has not caught a single adult Antarctic toothfish—a species sometimes sold at grocery stores as Chilean sea bass. In the 1970s Devries would catch as many as 500 adults in a season as part of his research into the proteins that keep their blood from freezing.
Or so Devries and David Ainley of the environmental consulting firm H. T. Harvey Associates reported this year to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. The Commission, established in 1982 and tasked with regulating the fisheries governed by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty (which protects all the territory below 60 degrees south latitude and oceans south of the Polar Front), had a meeting of the Ecosystem Monitoring and Management working group in Moscow in July. In advance of that meeting, more than two dozen "concerned Ross Sea researchers" joined Ainley and Devries in a formal letter demanding a moratorium on fishing over the Ross Sea continental shelf and a reduction in quotas along the continental slope. http://louis-j-sheehan.com
The Commission, scientists complain, has failed to live up to its name. http://louis-j-sheehan.com Ainley says that the decline of this large, slow-growing, bottom-dwelling fish has knocked the Antarctic ecosystem out of whack and resulted in killer whales dropping in numbers, whereas silverfish have increased in abundance to compete with penguins and whales for crystal krill. Quite simply, he says, "The Southern Ocean is a mess."
Meanwhile, conservationists and policymakers have begun to voice concern about the future of the Antarctic Treaty in an oil-challenged world. The agreement set aside preexisting territorial claims of seven countries and reserved the continent for science and environmental protection, barring nations from rushing to drill for oil there. But pirate fishing boats have long been wreaking havoc on the southern oceans, and reduced sea ice has eased coastal access and stripped wildlife of their last refuge. Antarctica is headed down the path of becoming a free-market free-for-all.
Antarctica is already big business for tour operators. In the past decade the number of tourists in the area has jumped to 40,000 a year with little regulatory oversight. In 2007 one rickety Liberian-flagged tourist vessel sank off the Antarctic Peninsula and 154 passengers and crew members had to be rescued by a Norwegian cruise ship. Late last year, Britain and Australia submitted extensions to their claims of the seabed around Antarctic territories—reasserting their rights just in case the ban on drilling is one day lifted. Oil prices were at an all-time high last summer, and many observers wonder how long the Ross and the Weddell Seas—which hold some 50 billion barrels of oil—will remain the world's most pristine oceans.
"As we begin to run out of oil and gas, there's going to be increased exploration for areas where it is not being extracted," says Hugh Ducklow a biologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. "The treaty is going to be vulnerable."
But would the demise of the Treaty really be such a bad thing for environmental conservation in Antarctica? The Commission has proved toothless when it comes to the toothfish. Last week in response to the scientists' demands, CCAMLR made a small step in banning bottom trawling in two 150 square mile areas, but it has skirted the issue of designating marine protected areas that would make the most sensitive regions off limits to all forms of fishing. Considering that some treaty signatories will continue to operate fishing vessels under flags of convenience and poachers are unabashedly nabbing krill and fish, establishing national ownership of Antarctic waters may be a better route to engender sustainability.
Martin Pratt, an expert on maritime boundaries at Durham University in England, says that the only environmental protection afforded under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea relates to so-called Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) in waters within a territory extending 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from a country's coastline. "In Antarctica," he says, "there's this problem where states have claims, but those claims are frozen and the question is whether establishing an EEZ represents a violation of the treaty."
The current debate about the treaty's stability began in October 2007 when the U.K. announced that it would file a claim under the Law of the Sea extending the seabed boundaries of their Antarctic territory based on the extent of the continental shelf. The British claim already overlaps with Argentina and Chile, heightening the potential for a territorial dispute.
Argentineans are still fuming over their defeat in 1982 when they tried to reclaim South Georgia Island and the Falkland Islands from the U.K.—the closest thing we've had to an Antarctic war. Although Britain insists it will not contravene restrictions against oil, gas and mineral exploration in Antarctica, Robin Churchill, an expert in international law at the University of Dundee in England, says the move has the potential to be "quite destabilizing." That would be shame, he says, because "the Treaty has promoted scientific research by opening Antarctica up for any scientist to go anywhere, fostering a spirit of cooperation."
In February, Australia—with U.N. approval—expanded its seabed borders along the Kerguelen Plateau around Heard and McDonald islands, pushing into the Antarctic Treaty jurisdiction. Although Australia says that mineral and petroleum exploration is out of the question, some fear that this move could open the door to trawling on the seabed and bioprospecting in the region.
"Legally, it may be defensible," says Alan Hemmings, a specialist on Antarctic governance at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. "Politically, it's more problematic."
Ironically, Australia's move may serve to strengthen rather than weaken environmental protection. Back in 2002, an Australian research boat sent a Japanese whaling vessel scurrying back to its mother ship after it was spotted inside Australia's EEZ near Prydz Bay. Last December, Australia sent the Ocean Viking to monitor Japan's whaling fleet in Antarctica and by late January, an Australian federal court had ruled that it was illegal for Japanese to whale within 200 nautical (230 statute) miles of their Antarctic territory. Pratt says it is still a "tricky legal problem" and "an issue [that will] presumably [be] tested in court somewhere, sometime."
Farther north, in the southern Indian Ocean, Australia runs regular patrols around Heard Island, France patrols the Kerguelen Islands, and South Africa has a marine-protected area around its Prince Edward Islands, which are right along the northern boundary of the treaty area. Ainley says that patrolling these sovereign territories—which partially overlap with the treaty regime—is the only enforcement of fishing regulations in the region.
The Antarctic Treaty has provided a model for conservation of the terrestrial environment, but biologists agree that the marine environment has suffered under Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).
The Commission (created by the CCAMLR) provides licenses to vessels fishing in the Southern Ocean and requires licensed boats to have an observer on board to monitor catch levels. It also has the ability to set up marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean, such as one proposed for the Ross Sea. But it has yet to do so and, in general, adoption of fishing regulations proposed in the Commission's scientific working groups has moved at a glacial pace in the face of opposition from the powerful fishing industry. http://louis-j-sheehan.com
Hemmings says that proposals for Marine Protected Areas in Antarctica are "lost in a sandpit of discussion or whittled away by Russia, Japan, South Korea, and a number of other fishing states." Ainley says the newly designated vulnerable marine ecosystems are "relative pin-pricks" and it's not clear if this represents progress in establishing the marine protected areas that Antarctica desperately needs. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Thursday, September 25, 2008
सेंस ९००२२० लुईस जे. Sheehan
Ecuador Goes Animist in a Good Way
Ecuadorian voters are considering bestowing the basic rights widely granted to humans upon natural entities. This means rivers, air, tropical forests, islands, and so on, will have an inalienable right to not be abused or destroyed or treated purely as property। http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
The new law on the table is actually a new constitution–not the kind of thing we generally go in for up here in the states, but so far polls show the Ecuadorians are into it, 56% to 23%. While this might initially sound like the latest in Latin American radicalism, a lawyer from the US, Thomas Linzey, is behind the proposal. He says the upshot will be that it will be possible to sue for damages to an ecosystem if the ecosystem isn’t on your property.
Not only is this non-anthropocentric, which isn’t that new (PETA is non-anthropocentric), it’s non-animal-centric. Actually, non-life-centric.
Image: flickr/pingnews
MacArthur Highlights Day
Two green MacArthur recipients were named yesterday. (A MacArthur Fellowship, or “genius grant,” is $500,000 you can spend however you want, disbursed over the course of five years.) I keep wondering if there will be a news story about a MacArthur Fellow found floating in a pool in The Bellagio, but this never seems to happen, so they must have some kind of vetting process. Will Allen–a pro ball player turned urban farmer–is the obviously green one this year. But I think John Oschendorf counts too.
He has this group or program or something at MIT devoted to masonry. Old stone stuff. How to keep it around, what you can learn from it about making buildings sustainable. If you understand green architecture as building new, more sustainable dwellings, you’re missing a fundamental point: it’s generally greener to figure out how to modify and preserve old structures. Any young hotshot architect whose powers of invention are focused on making flying buttresses new again deserves as much attention from the green movement as an urban farmer, no matter how amazing Allen’s baby swiss chard may be.
Image: flickr/Phillie Casablanca
Burying CO2 Might Help Asia Not Destroy Us
As pessimists on climate change are fond of reminding us, China and India are catastrophically prolific builders of coal-fired power plants these days. While we’re busy greening the Emmy Awards, they are quietly doing what they feel they need to do to provide energy for their expanding economies, more than compensating for all of the West’s cute anti-warming efforts by increasing the gadrillions of tons of carbon they release into our shared atmosphere. But new carbon burying tech might help them not be so destructive.
The consulting firm McKinsey & Co has just issued a report saying that even without government funding, the technology for trapping the carbon emitted by coal plants and burying it might pay for itself by 2030. China and India probably won’t throw themselves into the new tech whole-heartedly at first, because it looks like it will add about a billion euros to the initial cost of building each new plant. But the EU has stepped up by ordering a slew of trial models built by 2015.
Of course, there’s the small problem of the rich West having already created a horrendous climate situation. Not the best dynamic for pressuring an ascendant China into good stewardship. We’re basically the parent that just got thrown out of Betty Ford trying to get junior to put down the vodka. I think that might have been what happened in Postcards from the Edge.
Image: flickr/thewritingzone
GM Chairman Loses Mind on Colbert; RIP P.E. Clapp
Last night The Colbert Report gave us one of those episodes that pivot in the middle from comedy to that transcendent, swooning, oh-my-god-real-life-is-more-absurd feeling. This took place when GM Chariman Bob Lutz (pictured below) informed Colbert’s fictional persona that 32,000 respected scientists shared his view that climate change is caused by “sunspot activity.”
If you’re done mourning David Foster Wallace, a literary ally of environmentalism, you might consider getting started on mourning Philip Clapp, who spent his career refuting ridiculousness of the Bob Lutz variety. The United States does not have an environmental lobby the same way it has a tobacco lobby, but Clapp’s National Environmental Trust was the closest thing. As its director, he pressured Clinton, Bush, and even Gore, to take serious action on climate change, advocating in vain for the Kyoto treaty. He later moved to the Pew Charitable Trusts, where he lampooned Bush’s weak, late, concession to some form of American involvement in an international treaty on emissions. Let’s take a moment to remember that environmentalism needs pinstriped Capitol Hill operators with integrity, as well as the rumpled journalists/artists/farmer types.
Image: flickr/Rockershirt
GOP Attacks Dem Drilling Bill
Everything that happens in congress now is assumed to bear on the crazily tight presidential race। So it makes sense that the House Dems just smashed through a compromise off-shore drilling bill, thus undermining a GOP line of attack. And it makes sense that the GOP lampooned it as a “figment of the imagination” (Rep. Don Young, Republican of Alaska). Louis
Also predictable: Bush just vowed to veto it। Harder to predict is whether Senate Republicans will filibuster. They’ve been shouting “Drill baby drill” at conventions. Will they be able to get away with reading from a telephone book on the floor to block a bill that enables oil companies to do just that? http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Image: flickr/PhillipC
Volt: Jesus, Finally
The first plug-in electric American car, the Chevy Volt, is going on the market in 2010. It doesn’t look like the phallus some gearheads want it to look like (they were into the old car-show model, shown here), and this is causing lamentation in the blogosphere. Pay no attention; this is very good news.
Basically, the Volt can go 40 miles without using any gasoline, and plugs into any old home socket. It takes a few hours to recharge. Only when you’re taking long trips do you need to use gas; the gas motor kicks in after 40 miles and takes you another 300. It uses less electricity a year than a fridge.
The only problem: It’s not really viable as a mass-market business proposition yet. It’ll probably cost about $40,000, and GM doesn’t expect to make a significant profit, even with that hefty price. So while in my wildest dreams it becomes illegal to make any other kind of family car in 2011, that’s not going to happen without destroying the American economy.
Image: flickr/jurvetson
Off-Shore Drilling: Resistance Looks Futile
The Democrats have been gradually retreating from their anti-off-shore-drilling stance ever since polls started to indicate that drilling is a winning issue for the GOP. Now they’re transitioning into all-out surrender. The bipartisan “Gang of 10″ congresspeople pushing for an energy bill that includes off-shore drilling has become the Gang of At Minimum 20. Even Pelosi has said she’ll let the oil companies drill near the southeastern US (far from her own California).
Pelosi has also been trying to find a way to partially salvage this apparently FUBAR piece of legislation. And she is being appropriately sneaky in her proposed compromise. Which is: in return for the ability to excavate for oil off-shore, oil companies have to contribute billions to the development of non-oil energy sources (wind, solar, etc). That allows America to try to fuel itself insofar as possible, but still forces Big Oil to contribute to its own obsolesence.
And the GOP can’t really oppose that aspect of a bill without looking completely in the pocket of Big Oil. Has that ever stopped them? Not that I know of. But it will at least force them to take the bait and lose face.
Image: flickr/barbwire55
Palin Discovers Climate Change
I can appreciate the tragedy of her situation. She denied man-made climate change quite explicitly twice. Part of her whole thing is that she’s not a duplicitous Washington type. And she’s an unconventionally-educated woman of the people. So why not stay with the ill-informed thing? But there’s only so far you can go in that direction with the moderate wing of her party, and with independents.
I feel like the Obama campaign’s fate will rest partly on whether they can knock Palin off her pedestal in the coming weeks. This should give them something to work with.
Image: flickr/zieak
Reclaiming the Segway from Toolness
I should admit here I have not been a Segway believer. Ever since I saw Will Arnett straddle one on Arrested Development I have not been able to understand any possible use of the machine other than comic prop. I realize now that this was slightly unfair.
A British MP just defied possible arrest to lead a charge of Segwayists through London, trying to get the Department of Transportation in England to clarify whether they’re legal to drive on roads or not. He points out that in a dense urban area, they go faster than the average speed cars are able to move in traffic, and emit virtually nothing.
I guess my confusion is still this: They go 12 mph. Doesn’t a bicycle go that fast? But I guess if you don’t want to get your suit sweaty… I forget that people still go to offices in suits.
Image: flickr/RobotSkirts
New iPod Nano Cleaner, But Still a New iPod
This is nice, and represents part of Apple’s response to Greenpeace’s longstanding complaints against its mediocre enviro record. (This is one of their anti-Apple posters). But it does raise a couple questions: first of all, isn’t the most impactful thing about iPods that they keep coming out with new models? So that you don’t hold on to your expensive piece of electronics for more than a year?
Second, containing “easily recyclable materials” isn’t the same as “recyclable।” I don’t know about the recycling chart in your city, but in mine, chrome things don’t appear to go into the blue bin. Somewhere at MIT, consciencious students may be disassembling iPods before they throw them out, dividing their components into tiny recyclable and non-recyclable piles. But I bet most of those easily recyclable materials aren’t getting recycled. Unless they’re being passed on to parents, homeless people, etc when a new model comes out. http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Image: Greenpeace
Friday, September 19, 2008
http://louis-j-sheehan.info
Our sun, which lies 26,000 light years from the center of the the Milky Way, may have been born in a different part of the galaxy and later migrated to its current position, about halfway towards the galaxy’s outer edge. A new study defies the conventional wisdom that stars spend their entire lifespans in the same galactic region, and calls into question astronomers’ theory that galaxies have certain fixed “habitable zones” where life is more likely to evolve.
“Our view of the extent of the habitable zone is based in part on the idea that certain chemical elements necessary for life are available in some parts of a galaxy’s disk but not others,” said [lead researcher] Rok Roskar…. “If stars migrate, then that zone can’t be a stationary place” [Astrobiology Magazine].
Astronomers simulated the formation of the Milky Way starting 10 billion years ago, when gas and dark matter from the Big Bang (about 4 billion years before) had begun to condense. By about nine billion years ago, the material for the galactic disk had mostly come together, but the actual disk formation hadn’t started. Scientists simulated the formation and evolution of the galaxy from that point [Scientific American]. As the simulated galaxy evolved on its own, researchers saw that the orbit of some stars around the galactic center changed drastically.
The migrations were a result of individual stars’ interactions with the bulk of the galaxy’s spiral arms. A star trailing close behind a spiral arm will feel an extra pull from the arm’s intense gravity. This will boost the speed of the star, sending it into orbit farther from the galactic centre. Conversely, a star moving in front of an armful of stars will get dragged backwards, prompting it to slow and move closer to the centre of the galaxy [New Scientist].
The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters [subscription required], suggests that as many of 50 percent of stars near our Sun could have originated elsewhere. Migrating stars also help explain a long-standing problem in the chemical mix of stars in the neighborhood of our solar system, which has long been known to be more mixed and diluted than would be expected if stars spent their entire lives where they were born. By bringing in stars from very different starting locations, the sun’s neighborhood has become a more diverse and interesting place, the researcher सैद।dwarf
The last remnants of a dwarf galaxy circle the spiral galaxy that tore it apart. Two rivers of stars—and possibly dark matter—are all that remain of the low-mass dwarf after it was unraveled by the gravity of the much larger spiral, NGC 5907. http://louis8j8sheehan8esquire.wordpress.com
Astronomers have noted that such streams of stars are relatively common in the outer regions of spiral galaxies, a phenomenon that has been observed on the outskirts of the Milky Way as well as around the nearby Andromeda galaxy. This image, taken by accomplished astrophotographer R. Jay Gabany in collaboration with David Martinez-Delgado from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and his international team, shows for the first time in intricate detail the aftermath of a large galaxy destroying and consuming its dwarf neighbor.
Astronomers have noted that such streams of stars are relatively common in the outer regions of spiral galaxies, a phenomenon that has been observed on the outskirts of the Milky Way as well as around the nearby Andromeda galaxy. This image, taken by accomplished astrophotographer R. Jay Gabany in collaboration with David Martinez-Delgado from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and his international team, shows for the first time in intricate detail the aftermath of a large galaxy destroying and consuming its dwarf neighbor.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
augustine
St. Augustine, a bishop and doctor of the early Christian Church was an important figure in the history of Christianity. He wrote about topics like predestination and original sin. Some of his doctrines separate Western and Eastern Christianity. St. Augustine was born on 13 November 354 at Tagaste in North Africa and died in 28 August 430, at Hippo where the Vandals were attacking the city.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
braincase
A genetic loss approximately 2.4 million years ago may have made cranial room for the bigger brains that characterize our direct evolutionary predecessors. That proposal comes from researchers who have discovered a DNA deletion that occurs in people but not in other primates.
In what started out as a search for genes linked to muscular dystrophy, a team led by surgeon Hansell H. Stedman of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia found that only people possess an inactivated version of a gene involved in facial-muscle movements. As a result, the gene fails to produce a variant of the protein, called myosin, that powers muscles used in biting and chewing, the scientists report in the March 25 Nature.
This genetic mutation explains much about why "we're the odd men out among primates regarding head shape," Stedman says. As a person grows, he argues, genetically constrained chewing muscles lead to relatively small jaws, thus permitting the deposition of additional cranial bone to encase a large brain.
After examining a segment of the particular myosin gene in people, chimpanzees, orangutans, macaque monkeys, and dogs, the researchers estimated that the gene-inactivating mutation occurred between 2.7 and 2.1 million years ago. To make this calculation, the researchers assumed, on the basis of prior molecular evidence, that the last common ancestor of people and chimps lived 7 million to
6 million years ago.
"Massive muscles of mastication that were present before this myosin-gene mutation occurred could have been constraining brain size by limiting the expansion of [cranial] plates in the developing skull," says University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine anatomist Nancy Minugh-Purvis, a coauthor of the new study.
The myosin-gene mutation appeared uniformly in DNA samples obtained by the investigators from people living in Africa, South America, Western Europe, Iceland, Japan, and Russia. The corresponding myosin gene in chimps, gorillas, orangutans, and macaques was intact and active.
The researchers determined that, in macaques, the protein made by this myosin gene appeared only in head muscles primarily used for chewing and biting.
In both macaques and people, myosin-gene products appeared only in a class of muscle fibers known as fast-twitch fibers. Mastication muscles contain mostly fast-twitch fibers, with a smaller proportion of slow-twitch fibers, Stedman says.
Other scientists welcome evidence of the mutated myosin gene but doubt that the mutation is linked to brain expansion in our ancient ancestors.
"[Stedman's team] used good genetic data to create an implausible evolutionary story," remarks developmental biologist Melanie McCollum of Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Ga. It's more likely that the inactivating myosin mutation became common as our ancestors began to eat primarily soft foods, McCollum proposes.http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
Since brain growth proceeds independently of jaw and tooth development in people today, "there's no reason to assume that the evolution of smaller mastication muscles had any effect on braincase size," McCollum holds.
Harvard University anthropologist Daniel Lieberman agrees, noting that brain growth follows a similarly autonomous path in chimps and gorillas.http://louis-j-sheehan.biz
Anthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent (Ohio) State University adds another objection. Drawing on the most recent fossil evidence, he says that chimps and humans began diverging between 9 million and 8 million years ago. If so, he says, Stedman's estimated timing of the mutation at 2.4 million years ago is much too recent.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
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SHEEHAN
Suicides among people with schizophrenia are a major public-health concern in China, according to a new report. One-tenth of all Chinese people who kill themselves suffer from this severe mental disorder, say psychiatrist Michael R. Phillips of Beijing Hui Long Guan Hospital and his coworkers. In most other countries with suicide statistics, schizophrenia accounts for a smaller proportion of the deaths.
China is the only nation studied in which a larger proportion of women than men develops schizophrenia and commits suicide, the researchers report in the Sept. 18 Lancet. People with schizophrenia in China's rural villages kill themselves far more frequently than do those in the cities, the team notes.
Schizophrenia-related suicides in China often involve married women with no previous psychiatric treatment. In Western countries, it's more common for men with schizophrenia to kill themselves shortly after being admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
About 1 in 250 Chinese citizens develops schizophrenia, compared with approximately 1 in 100 U।S. residents, the investigators say. http://louis-j-sheehan.info
The team's portrayal of schizophrenia and suicide in China derives from analyses of a 1993 national psychiatric survey, a national review of suicides recorded between 1995 and 2000 that included psychiatric interviews of surviving families and friends, and government data on mortality trends.http://louis-j-sheehan.info
collaberaTION
Older adults often find that their memories betray them. A team of Canadian psychologists, led by Michael Ross of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, offers this advice to elderly individuals with memory concerns: Don't go it alone.
Talking about recent memories with someone else, such as a spouse, works like a cognitive vacuum cleaner, in Ross' view. It sucks up many mistakes that litter memory, leaving behind a relatively clean core of accurately recalled information.
"Collaboration could help to reduce the frequency of older people's false recall in many everyday contexts," Ross says. Few researchers have examined collaborative remembering (SN: 9/13/97, p. 174).
Ross and his coworkers devised two memory tasks for 59 married couples, ages 68 to 78. The researchers randomly assigned 29 couples to collaborate on their choices and 30 to deliberate individually.
The first task involved list memory. Each couple jointly circled 25 items for purchase in a 70-item grocery catalog. About an hour later, participants were taken to a supermarket where they attempted to remember items from their shopping lists and put them into a cart. After returning home, volunteers again tried to recall items on their shopping lists.
On the second task, participants tried to name 14 highlighted but unlabeled landmarks on a map of their community.
Individuals correctly recalled about two or three more shopping items and landmarks than couples did, the researchers report in the September Applied Cognitive Psychology. However, couples usually made four or five fewer memory errors on these tasks than individuals did.
Collaborators challenged each other's mistakes, Ross theorizes. Consistent with that scenario, individuals working alone rarely picked the same wrong grocery items or made the same landmark errors as their spouses did.
Not surprisingly, when working individually, people with either lots of shopping experience or community familiarity remembered more material on these respective tasks than their less-knowledgeable spouses did. Yet the "experts" and "nonexperts" committed the same number of memory errors, Ross says.
Experts in each area drew on a rich store of memories that generated both hits and misses, he proposes. So, even for an expert, a collaborator can help weed out mistakes.
Collaboration represents a "manageable and realistic solution to a memory problem that gets increasingly onerous as we age," remarks psychologist William von Hippel of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Fears of forgetfulness contribute to memory errors by the elderly, von Hippel suggests. In Ross' shopping study, for instance, such concerns might have impelled individuals to grab any plausible or familiar item.
Although people commonly shop with a list, the new study applies to many memory challenges faced by older people, comments psychologist D। Stephen Lindsay of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Consider having to remember to stop by the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, check your blood pressure while there, and then get cash at the bank before getting a haircut. लुईस जे SHEEHAN
Sunday, August 24, 2008
cousins
A half-size Homo species that lived on an Indonesian island more than 20,000 years ago possessed a remarkably small yet capable brain. According to a new report, that brain shows organizational similarities to the larger brain of Homo erectus, a human ancestor capable of complex thinking.http://ljsheehan.livejournal.com
Dean Falk of Florida State University in Tallahassee, working with the Australian researchers who discovered the diminutive Homo floresiensis fossils (SN: 10/30/04, p. 275: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20041030/fob1.asp), took computed tomography scans of the braincase of a female skull from the island site. The researchers used those data to construct a three-dimensional surface portrait of the prehistoric individual's brain, including such details as tissue folds and blood vessels.
The scientists compared that virtual brain with portraits generated from six H. erectus skulls dating to more than 200,000 years ago, two skulls of human ancestors that lived nearly 3 million years ago, 10 modern human skulls, 10 gorilla skulls, 19 chimpanzee skulls, a skull from an adult African pygmy, and a skull from an adult whose brain was abnormally small because of a genetic disorder.http://louis-j-sheehan.info
The upshot, the researchers report in an upcoming Science, is that H. floresiensis exhibits a unique pattern of brain organization and so should be considered a separate species. Like H. erectus brains, the H. floresiensis brain had unusually large tissue expanses near its front and midpoint, relative to overall brain size. The two species thus may have been closely related, Falk's group suggests. H. floresiensis may even have evolved from a larger to a smaller size while living on the Indonesian island near H. erectus groups, the investigators say.Louis J. Sheehan
Friday, August 15, 2008
pain
Preliminary evidence indicates that people can quell either temporary or chronic physical pain by learning to use their minds to reduce activity in a key brain area.
Brain-imaging technology now enables individuals to use mental exercises to control a neural region that contributes to pain perception, say neuroscientist Sean C. Mackey of Stanford University and his colleagues.लुईस
Both healthy volunteers and chronic-pain patients "learned to control their brains and, through that, their pain," Mackey holds. "However, significantly more testing must be done before this can be considered a treatment for chronic pain."
The new findings appear in the Dec. 20 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
Mackey's team studied 32 healthy volunteers, ages 18 to 37. First, each volunteer reported when an adjustable heat pulse applied to a leg produced pain that he or she rated as 7 out of 10, with 10 being equivalent to "the worst pain imaginable." Brain imaging of participants, using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, showed that this level of pain was accompanied by pronounced blood flow—a sign of intense neural activity—in an area called the rostral anterior cingulate cortex.
Eight of the volunteers then underwent brain training. Each reclined in an fMRI machine that visually displayed activity changes in the person's rostral anterior cingulate cortex. A virtual flame dimmed as activity fell and brightened as activity surged.
While watching this display for 39 minutes, participants tried various mental strategies both to increase and to decrease their brain activity during brief periods of heat-pulse application. The experimenters suggested tactics such as focusing attention away from the pain.
By the end of the training session, the volunteers had learned to raise or lower activity in the critical brain area, the researchers say. The eight volunteers rated pain much higher during robust anterior cingulate cortex activation than during periods of lesser activity in that region.
No such brain-related pain effects occurred for the remaining 24 participants, who were instructed to change their brain activity when they were outside the fMRI machine or in the machine but receiving no feedback, when they received feedback from brain areas unrelated to pain, or when they viewed someone else's pain-related brain activity.
Next, eight chronic-pain patients completed anterior-cingulate-cortex training. Afterward, each reported much less pain—often less than half as much as usual—while he or she mentally quelled the region's activity.
Another four chronic-pain patients used physiological feedback—so-called biofeedback—to learn to control their heart rate, skin conductance, and breathing. None succeeded in lessening pain.
Neuroscientist Gary H. Duncan of the University of Montreal calls the new study "a landmark contribution of brain imaging to pain research." It demonstrates that self-control over activity in a specific brain region is possible, paving the way for explorations of neural function far beyond the treatment of chronic pain, he says.http://Louis-J-sheehan.info
Sunday, August 10, 2008
smokers
Smokers hoping to curb health risks by turning to light cigarettes are less likely to quit smoking than people who smoke regular cigarettes, according to an analysis of census data.
Although they have been marketed as delivering less tar and nicotine to smokers, light cigarettes have been shown to offer no health advantage over regular cigarettes. Nevertheless, "lights" make up 85 percent of all cigarettes sold in the United States.
To study the use of light cigarettes and their impact on smoking cessation, researchers analyzed a 2000 U.S. Census Bureau survey of more than 32,000 people, 12,000 of whom were smokers. The researchers took into account such factors as socioeconomic status, sex, and health history.
More than one-third of the smokers reported that they had regularly smoked light cigarettes to reduce health risks, says study leader Hilary Tindle of the University of Pittsburgh. These people were about 54 percent less likely to have quit smoking than were people who had smoked regular cigarettes, Tindle's team reports in the August American Journal of Public Health.
In addition, the likelihood that light-cigarette smokers would report having permanently quit shrank with age. For example, light-cigarette smokers age 65 or older were 76 percent less likely to have quit than their regular-cigarette-smoking peers.
"Some research reveals that light cigarettes were put on the market to target health-conscious smokers, and if they hinder quitting, [as] our study supports, that's a big problem," Tindle says. More than 30 million adults in the United States have switched to light cigarettes under the false belief that the move would reduce their health risks, she estimates.
The assumption that light cigarettes are low in tar and nicotine is misguided, says Peter Shields of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C. Smokers who switch to light cigarettes compensate for the reduced amount of nicotine by smoking more often, inhaling more smoke per draw, or smoking past the filter. Light cigarettes actually produce more carcinogens than regulars, and that difference has changed the type of lung cancer smokers have acquired in the past 20 years, Shields says.
Still, most smokers believe that light cigarettes are a healthy alternative to regular ones, says Andrew Hyland of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N।Y. "There's not a shred of evidence here that suggests that lights are good for you," he says. "If anything, they can be extraordinarily bad for people trying to quit." http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.wordpress.com
The new research doesn't show that smoking light cigarettes causes the failure to quit, but such a study would be almost impossible to conduct because it would require smokers to randomly switch cigarettes over time, Tindle says। http://louis1j1sheehan1esquire.wordpress.com
The study does show that some groups of people with high rates of having quit—those with higher socioeconomic status and a history of cardiovascular disease, for instance—were more likely than other groups to have cited health reasons for smoking lights. This overlap might mean some potential quitters instead keep smoking lights, and "that's a concern," Tindle says.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
ptsd
Although terror-attack survivors often rebound emotionally, their bodies stay on heightened alert long after such traumas, a new investigation suggests।
http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com
Psychiatrist Phebe M. Tucker of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City examined 60 people who had been directly exposed to the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb blast and 60 other people who lived near the bombing site but didn't witness the blast or have friends or relatives killed in the incident.
Despite exhibiting relatively good emotional health in interviews conducted 7 years after the explosion, survivors displayed substantially higher heart rates and blood pressures while discussing the bombing than members of the comparison group did, Tucker and her coworkers say in the February American Journal of Psychiatry.
The two groups of participants reported similarly low levels of depression। Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a severe anxiety response to trauma, affected 16 survivors and 1 comparison individual।
http://ljsheehan.blogspot.com
Sunday, July 20, 2008
disease
To fight off an infection or illness, the body shifts into a slow-down mode that mirrors some symptoms of depression. http://louis3j3sheehan.blogspot.comIn fact, scientists now think the immune response itself may even cause the mood disorder.
From Sick to DownImmune cells secrete cytokines (shown as red dots in this simplified drawing, click on image to see larger version) that trigger inflammatory responses. But when cytokine levels in the brain stay high fo too long, people susceptible to mood disorders may develop depression. Cytokines released in the body may enter the brain directly, by passing through leaky areas in the blood-brain barrier, or indirectly by initiating a chain reaction of "middlemen" that lead to brain cells called microglia releasing cytokines. Cytokines may alter mood by changing brain processes and levels of brain chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine. Synthetic version of interferon-alpha and interferon-beta, used to treat cancers, hepatitis C and multiple sclerosis, may engage the same pathway.Amadeo Bachar
When one of psychiatrist Andrew Miller’s patients asked about receiving the best drug available for treating hepatitis C, Miller said: “No way.” The patient — in his early 20s and accompanied by his mom to the appointment — had no job, few friends and a history of depression. While Miller knows that hepatitis C patients often benefit from the new generation of immune-boosting treatments, he’s keenly aware that those same immune therapies have a strong tendency to bring people down — and, in people predisposed to depression, dangerously down.
Certain immune proteins in the body appear to mess with the minds of otherwise healthy, but depressed people as well. Those who suffer from major depression have higher levels of cytokines, immune proteins the body makes to fend off infections and to patrol the body for disease, and which laboratories mimic. Excess cytokines have also been found lurking in the postmortem brains of suicide victims. “It raises the issue, how much of how we feel — how much of who we are as people — is dictated in terms of our immune system?” says Miller, a researcher at Emory University in Atlanta.
Though the connection between the body’s immune response and depression has only gained firm support in the last five years, it’s already catalyzing a revolution in antidepressant drug development. In hindsight, an emotional reaction to surging immune molecules does not seem so surprising. Cytokines are among the first immune proteins to respond to infection. Some direct swelling and fevers. Others order the body to rest, and so the sick take to the bed and decline party invitations, showers and even homemade dinners. The powerful molecules influence wants and needs by altering levels of substances like serotonin in the brain. Essentially, cytokines command the body to conserve energy when it’s sick. “A little depressed behavior is a survival mechanism in that sense,” Miller says. But when inflammation is artificially or erroneously triggered, prolonged sickness behavior may morph into depression and do more harm than good.
Figuring out the biology behind depression should help doctors combat the disorder, which strikes an estimated 14.8 million American adults each year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. More than one in six individuals will experience major depression in their lifetime. And when depression coincides with chronic diseases like multiple sclerosis, cancer or diabetes, patients’ conditions are less likely to improve.
Psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies have noted the downpour of evidence linking inflammation to depression। Miller says he and his colleagues have considered creating a new diagnostic category: Major Depressive Disorder with Increased Inflammation। To combat this depression, he says, researchers must find a way to alter the body’s immune response. It is a risky strategy but one that offers hope to the nearly 30 percent of all depressed patients who don’t respond to the antidepressants currently on the market. http://louis3j3sheehan.blogspot.com
Jekyll-and-Hyde changes
Cytokines emerged as the primary suspects for what’s since become known as inflammation-induced depression after Miller and others noticed that cancer patients became inexplicably upset during treatment with synthetic type 1 interferons, cytokines that block viral replication in infected cells. One of these, interferon-alpha, is among the most effective drugs for patients battling cancer and the hepatitis C virus. Yet the treatment has become notorious for causing major depression and other behavioral changes in more than half of these patients, depending on the dose of the immune booster.
Miller describes a “Jekyll-and-Hyde– type change” in one of his patients after interferon therapy. Eight weeks into it, the patient dumped his girlfriend, began dressing in black and grew a goatee. And there was another woman, Miller recalls, who took a drastic downward turn. “One of my most positive patients had been battling cancer for years, yet four weeks into the cytokine therapy she was distraught,” he says. “She told me, ‘I love my husband and my children, but I don’t want to be around them. I want to be left alone, and I don’t know why.’ ”
As observations of sadness, irritability, insomnia, fatigue and loss of appetite — all classic symptoms of depression — mounted in patients treated with immune boosters in the 1990s, papers published nearly a decade earlier in veterinary journals resurfaced. Benjamin Hart had been writing about the behavior of sick animals since the mid-1980s. “Depression was the first sign we had that an animal was sick,” says Hart, an animal behavior researcher at the
“People would call in and say that the dog is sleeping more than usual. They give the dog its favorite treat, and it only nibbles at it and then drops it, or they’d say the cat looks scruffy,” Hart explains. “Cats usually groom all the time.” He says that when he ran blood and urine tests on such animals, he usually discovered signs of bacterial or viral infection. Instead of assuming the pet acted sad because it wasn’t feeling well, he suggested that the pet’s behavior was part of its immune response. Fido’s body forced the animal to devote its energy to battling illness, instead of to chasing squirrels.
Furthermore, since all mammals act similarly when sick, Hart suggested that the behavior had been inherited from a common ancestor who survived infection better than other animals who had not evolved the behavioral response.
In the 1990s, researchers in the
Miller compares this sickness behavior to “holing up in a cave.” Although the animal has little drive to do much of anything, it does stay alert to major threats. “While in the cave, the organism rests but keeps one eye open,” he says. That may explain why people with the flu, as well as people with depression, neither leave the couch nor get the deep sleep they crave.
Connecting body to mind
Like army generals, innate immune cytokines order inflammatory molecules to prepare for war when the body is under threat from invasive bacteria or viruses, or under perceived threat in the form of stress or chronic disease. In these situations, cytokine levels rise. “It’s a good thing if you’re running from a tiger,” explained psychiatrist Dominique Musselman in May at a meeting in
“The fact that stress can activate the innate immune response has been a major breakthrough,” Miller notes. Add this to one more piece of the puzzle: Stress often leads to depression. The immune system may explain why.
In mapping out the molecular pathway between elevated cytokines in the body and chemical changes in the brain, scientists aim to provide targets for drugs intended to treat depression caused by inflammation. In the last few years, researchers have identified primary suspects. Many cytokine proteins, including tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interleukin-6 and the type 1 interferons (IFN-alpha and IFN-beta), have been accused of being the principal perpetrators in sickness behavior. They respond rapidly to foreign intruders, circulate in the bloodstream and initiate a response in the central nervous system.
Cytokines manufactured in the body can send messages through the central nervous system to induce production of cytokines in the brain. That message may be relayed when cytokines sneak into the brain through leaky regions in the blood-brain barrier, a series of structures that block most substances. In the brain, cytokines activate inflammatory middlemen who tag-team their way to affecting emotion-regulating neurotransmitters. As neurotransmitter levels change, so can mood. “Among other things, we see a drop in levels of serotonin, the feel-good chemical,” Miller says.
Attempts are underway to treat depression by blocking specific cytokines or the messages they send. A 2006 clinical trial funded in part by the biotech company Amgen found that depressed patients who suffered from psoriasis, an autoimmune skin disease associated with increased levels of cytokines, felt happier after taking the cytokine blocker etanercept (brand name Enbrel), which affects tumor necrosis factor-alpha. Another TNF-alpha blocker, infliximab (Remicade), is being tested for use in depressed patients who don’t respond to antidepressants such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors Prozac and Zoloft. Those results should be ready by 2010, says Charles Raison, a research psychiatrist at
Anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin and ibuprofen haven’t been shown to affect mood. But another anti-inflammatory, celecoxib (Celebrex), that more specifically blocks the inflammatory molecule COX-2, helped heal depression in a small clinical trial in
Developing these types of treatments isn’t easy, warns Dantzer. Compounds that interfere with immune responses have the dangerous potential to compromise the body’s resistance to infection. The goal is to temper inflammatory molecules in the brain, not the body.
Researchers will have to identify safe points to alter along the molecular pathway that runs between bodily cytokines, molecular middlemen and neurotransmitters in the brain. “The further upstream you go towards the cytokines, the more far-reaching the effects on the body. If you move downstream to block cells that are activated by the inflammation, you may have a drug that is less toxic,” Miller says.
Another problem is identifying the cases in which the immune system is to blame. “The evidence is clear at this point that inflammation events can lead to a depressed mood,” says neuroscientist Steven Maier of the
Not all people are sensitive to surges in cytokines. Some recover from the side effects of interferon therapy as gracefully as some lovers rebound from heartbreak. Variations in a couple of genes may help doctors to predict who is most susceptible to immune-related depression. Miller and collaborators found that patients with hepatitis C were more resistant to interferon-induced depression if they possessed a slight variation in the gene encoding the serotonin transporter 5-HTT, which is known to be involved in psychiatric disorders, as well as another small variation in a gene that codes for the cytokine interleukin-6. The fact that the interleukin-6 gene, involved with inflammation, has an emotional impact provides more evidence of how the body and mind interact, the researchers report in the May 6 Molecular Psychiatry.
Identifying these genes is part of a larger effort by doctors to tailor treatment to the individual. “Ideally there could be a drug where one size fits all, but that doesn’t seem to be the case,” Miller says. He thinks that while serotonin reuptake inhibitors like Prozac work for certain people, others might need an immunological approach to combat depression. “We want to bring to people’s attention the interaction between factors,” he says. “This is the idea behind personalized medicine.”
Others agree that depressed patients unaided by standard treatments may be good candidates for an immune approach. “People who don’t respond to those [therapies] seem to have increased levels of inflammatory markers,” Raison says.
As logic, and misfortune, would have it, depression caused by inflammation is most prevalent in patients who have diseases associated with increased inflammation. Rates of depression are five to 10 times higher than average in patients with disorders that involve the immune system, including infectious diseases, cancer and autoimmune disorders, say Miller and Raison in a March report that appeared online in FOCUS. Inflammation is also a risk factor for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. When these diseases coincide with depression, patient outcomes can worsen.
Sickness behavior leads to grumbling under the covers. And grumbling under the covers hinders the hope and drive that patients need to follow doctors’ orders. Depressed patents are more likely to skip appointments and stop taking their medication, Musselman said at the APA meeting. And depressed smokers are more likely to continue smoking after bypass surgery.
By treating those susceptible to depression early on, doctors may increase their patients’ chances of surviving disease. “The idea,” Maier says, “is to cut depression off at the pass.”
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