The New York Times today reported that researchers writing for the journal, Nature, found that There are now thousands of fake open-access journals, about as many as legitimate ones. The authors created a fake 'Editor" that they then applied to numerous 'scientific journals.' The applicant’s nom de plume was not [...]
Deep brain stimulation, an established therapy that modifies the brain's circuitry to treat symptoms of depression, Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders, is attracting fresh attention from medical-device makers who believe it is underused. St. Jude Medical Inc. recently introduced a new DBS system in the U.S., and Boston Scientific [...]
Charles Marmar, a 71-year-old psychiatrist in New York, has spent his career studying post traumatic stress disorder, which has symptoms such as sleep disruption and vivid flashbacks of the traumatic experience. PTSD is often associated with war: Between 11% and 20% of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have [...]
Although past research has shown a link between renal dysfunction and cognitive impairment, a new systematic review shows that the presence of albuminuria specifically is also associated with an increased risk of developing cognitive impairment. The meta-analysis of 22 studies, each with at least 100 participants, was carried out to [...]
Seven years after safety concerns altered the trajectory of Pfizer’s stop-smoking med Chantix, the FDA has pulled its black-box warning from the drug’s label, according to a well known online pharmaceutical news site, FiercePharma. FDA officials removed the warning after weighing data from the EAGLES postmarketing study showing that Chantix [...]
Trends in Marijuana Use Among Pregnant and Nonpregnant Reproductive-Aged Women, 2002-2014 Qiana L. Brown, Aaron L. Sarvet, Dvora Shmulewitz Methods The Columbia University Medical Center institutional review board waived review of this study. Informed oral consent was obtained from each participant. Data from women aged 18 through 44 years from the annual National Survey on [...]
Researchers have identified six regions of the human genome that are significantly linked to personality traits, and some show significant correlations to certain psychiatric disorders as well. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, is based on a meta-analysis of genome-wide association [...]
Psychiatrist Anna Lembke, chief of addiction medicine at Stanford University’s medical school, has spent her career helping patients battle their addiction to opioid drugs, from Vicodin to heroin. Out of this experience comes “Drug Dealer, MD,” a short and feisty book in which, among much else, she calls out practitioners [...]
Every breath we take, especially the slow, deep breathing used in meditation, stimulates the vagus nerve to calm the body. Scientists also believe stimulating the nerve with small electrical impulses can have far reaching potential to treat medical conditions including migraines, rheumatoid arthritis and strokes. Targeting nerves for treatment is [...]
Giving severely depressed patients the arthritis drug celecoxib (brand name Celebrex) dramatically boosted the effectiveness of their antidepressant medication, according to new research. Patients were randomly assigned to receive the antidepressant escitalopram (Lexapro) plus celecoxib or Lexapro plus a placebo. The study found that 78 percent of the patients in the [...]