Алкоголизм, наркомания, порнозависимость - а с мозгом что?

Отличная статья о разнице в функционировании мозга при наличии зависимостей разного рода. Алкоголь, никотин, психотропные вещества всяческой природы, еда, порно или азартные игры - всё это приносит удовольствие в момент присутствия и боль при отсутствии. Но много ли общего в формировании звисимостей от разных факторов?
Вот и рассуждения на эту увлекательную тему - https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/scicurious/addiction-showcases-brain-flexibility

Вечный цикл у ученых

Либо есть идеи, но нет мотивации, либо наоборот

Кофе вместо обезболивающих?

Очередное подтверждение полезности кофе:

Now comes word that a cuppa joe reduces physical pain. The surprising finding is based on a study involving 48 volunteers who agreed to spend 90 minutes performing fake computer tasks meant to mimic office work. The tasks were known to cause pain in the shoulders, neck, forearms and wrists, and the researchers wanted to compare how people with chronic pain and those who were pain-free tolerated the tasks. As a matter of convenience, the scientists allowed people to drink coffee before taking the test "to avoid unpleasant effects of caffeine deprivation, e.g. decreased vigor and alertness, sleepiness, and fatigue," they reported. But when it came time to analyze the data, the researchers from Norway's National Institute of Occupational Health and Oslo University Hospital noticed that the 19 people who drank coffee reported a lower intensity of pain than the 29 people who didn't. In the shoulders and neck, for instance, the average pain intensity was rated 41 (on a 100-point scale) among the coffee drinkers and 55 for the coffee abstainers. Similar gaps were found for all pain sites measured, and coffee's apparent pain-mitigation effect held up regardless of whether the subjects had chronic pain or not. The authors of the study, which was published this week in the journal BMC Research Notes, cautioned that since the study wasn't designed to test coffee's influence on pain, the results come with many uncertainties. For starters, the researchers don't know how much coffee the coffee drinkers consumed before taking the computer tests. They also doubt that the coffee drinkers and abstainers were similar in all respects except for their java consumption. Problems like these tend to undermine the importance of the findings. But those reservations are unlikely to trouble the legions of coffee drinkers looking for any reason not to cut back on their daily caffeine habit. (c)2012 Los Angeles Times Distributed by MCT Information Services
Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-benefit-coffee-pain.html#jCp

Очередные новости об избавлении от опиатной зависимости

Действительно интересно. оказывается, на подходе очередное средство борьбы с героиновой и морфиновой наркоманией. Более того, учёные утверждают, что с помощью новейших подходов можно не только избавиться от зависимости, но и не страдать от болезненных ощущений. Подробности:

Unlike the heroin-specific vaccine we covered last year, an international team of scientists from the University of Adelaide in Australia and the University of Colorado Boulder has now found a way to block addiction to various opioid drugs, including heroin and morphine. Importantly, the new approach doesn’t negatively affect the pain-relieving properties of these drugs.
The central nervous system and the immune system both play important roles in the development of an addiction, with opioid drugs such as heroin and morphine binding to an immune receptor known as Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) in a similar way to the normal immune response to bacteria. Dr. Mark Hutchinson, ARC Research Fellow in the University of Adelaide’s School of Medical Sciences says, “The problem is that TLR4 then acts as an amplifier for addiction.”
In studies on rats using (+)-naloxone, a drug that automatically shuts down the opioid addiction by altering brain chemistry to stop production of the feel-good chemical dopamine, the researchers found that blocking the immune response is all that is required to prevent cravings for opioid drugs.
“Our studies have shown conclusively that we can block addiction via the immune system of the brain, without targeting the brain’s wiring,” said Hutchinson, who was lead author of the study.
“This work fundamentally changes what we understand about opioids, reward and addiction,” adds senior author Professor Linda Watkins, from the Center for Neuroscience at CU-Boulder. “We’ve suspected for some years that TLR4 may be the key to blocking opioid addiction, but now we have the proof.
“The drug that we’ve used to block addiction, (+)-naloxone, is a non-opioid mirror-image drug that was created by Dr. Kenner Rice in the 1970s,” Watkins said. “We believe this will prove extremely useful as a co-formulated drug with morphine, so that patients who require relief for severe pain will not become addicted but still receive pain relief. This has the potential to lead to major advances in patient and palliative care.”
The researchers say clinical trials may be possible within the next 18 months.
The results of their study are being published in the August 15 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience.
Source: University of Adelaide

За инфу спасибо http://www.gizmag.com/opioid-addiction-immune-system/23706/ 

Опять результаты исследований эффектов экстази

Ну, в общем, читайте: экстази и память, некоторые новые данные.

Though ecstasy is known to cause health risks such as depression, sleep problems, severe anxiety and increasing other drug cravings, there has been a considerable amount of debate questioning whether or not government officials have over-reacted to ecstasy.

Анимашка - распространение депрессии

 

raneynickelcatalyst:

Animation of cortical spreading depression. Cortical spreading depression is a wave of electrophysiological hyperactivity followed by a wave of inhibition, usually in the visual cortex.Increased extracellular potassium ion concentration and excitatory glutamate contribute to the initiation and propagation of cortical spreading depression, which is the underlying cause of migraine aura.

source: wikipedia

Две дофаминовых новости

Дофаминушка опять в новостях. Первое сообщение - о трудоголизме и распределении дофамина в разных участках мозга, а второе - о влиянии этого нейромедиатора на процессы запоминания и забывания информации. 

Наслаждайтесь.

1 из 5 американцев сидит на психоактивных лекарствах

Оптимистичненько так. Называется, сделай сам - настроение? - а зачем, ведь есть таблетки, которые создадут любое настроение.
Вот такой интересный материал на http://blisstree.com/feel/1-in-5-americans-on-mental-health-drugs-overmedicating-817/ советую вам почитать для размышлений:

Almost half of all Americans take at least one prescription drug, and now a new report tells us that more than 20% of us take at least one medication to treat a mental health problem–a number that is up 22% since 2001. It’s an alarming trend for sure, and has us wondering: Are all of these drugs really necessary, or are Americans over-medicated?
Granted, mental health disorders are a serious illness which require serious treatment. According to the statistics released by Medco Health Solutions, more than a quarter of us suffer from mental health problems which have us taking antidepressants, antipsychotics, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drugs or anti‐anxiety treatments every year. And women are far more likely to take a drug to treat a mental health condition than men with those over 45 showing the highest use.
And yet, the World Health Organization says this doesn’t necessarily mean that we are over-medicated.
So what does it mean? Are more Americans just getting diagnosed with depression, anxiety or other mental health disorders? Are these conditions becoming more prevalent? Or, are doctors simply taking the easy way out and prescribing more drugs than necessary without exploring other alternate treatments first for less severe cases?
In Charles Barber’s Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation, the New York Times stated that he makes a case for Americans being “vastly overmedicated for often relatively minor mental health concerns”. There is also the theory to the sharp rise in mental health medications: We are asking for them. TheNY Times also suggested that we are a self-drugging society in many respects. We are often too quick to pop pills when something doesn’t feel quite right. Many of us use alcohol to numb feelings of stress, anxiety and depression. It was even suggested that some Americans are taking mental health medications for “ficticious concerns”. For that, we can point a finger to all of the marketing and advertising that the drug companies are doing (over $5 billion a year) that suggest we may have a problem (even though we thought we were fine until we saw their commercial telling us how depressed we are).
In a recent Blisstree post, I talked about the fact that some doctors think depression could actually be good for usbecause it forces us to face our issues and dissect exactly what is happening in our lives and in our head. Because of this, some doctors still think that other mental health treatments like talk therapy should be explored first because putting a pharmaceutical bandage over our depression or anxiety can often preclude us from uncovering our source of true happiness. Other experts have also suggested that a healthy diet, stress-reduction and even yoga can help bring us back to a positive mental state.
Tell us what you think. Are Americans too quick to take mental health medications?

Про мужчин и восприимчивость к алкоголю

Читаем:

Alcohol is one of the most commonly abused substances, and men are up to twice as likely to develop alcoholism as women. Until now, the underlying biology contributing to this difference in vulnerability has remained unclear. A new study published in Biological Psychiatry reveals that dopamine may be an important factor.
Researchers from Columbia and Yale studied male and female college-age social drinkers in a laboratory test of alcohol consumption. After consuming an alcoholic or non-alcoholic drink, each participant underwent a specialized positron emission tomography (PET) scan, an imaging technique that can measure the amount of alcohol-induced dopamine release.
Dopamine has multiple functions in the brain, but is important in this context because of its pleasurable effects when it is released by rewarding experiences, such as sex or drugs. Despite similar consumptions of alcohol, the men had greater dopamine release than women. This increase was found in the ventral striatum, an area in the brain strongly associated with pleasure, reinforcement and addiction formation.
"In men, increased dopamine release also had a stronger association with subjective positive effects of alcohol intoxication," explained Dr. Nina Urban, corresponding author for this study. "This may contribute to the initial reinforcing properties of alcohol and the risk for habit formation." Dr. Anissa Abi-Dargham, senior author on this project, notes that "another important observation from this study is the decline in alcohol-induced dopamine release with repeated heavy drinking episodes. This may be one of the hallmarks of developing tolerance or transitioning into habit."
These findings indicate that the ability of alcohol to stimulate dopamine release may play an important and complex role in its rewarding effects and abuse liability in humans. This identification of an in vivo neurochemical mechanism that could help explain the sex difference in alcoholism is an exciting step forward in alcoholism research.
Source : Elsevier

http://www.molecularstation.com/forum/science-news-views/83485-why-men-more-susceptible-alcoholism.html 

Прощай, Прозак, Привет, Микроб!

В сфере поиска новых эффективных антидепрессантов - революция. Вероятно, что состав микрофлоры кишечника может влиять на ментальное состояние достаточно сильно. Поэтому приём правильных пробиотиков, в определённом смысле, сможет снизить потре6ность в традиционных антидепрессантах.
Читаем подробнее статью Elizabeth Nolan Brown на http://blisstree.com/feel/goodbye-prozac-hello-microbial-bacteria/:

Probiotics are the good-for-you bacteria found in things such as yogurt and kombucha (plus in myriad dietary supplement forms) and alleged to help with digestion, immune-system functioning, stomach issues, diarrhea, lactose intolerance and irritable bowel syndrome. Mark Lyte, a professor at Texas Tech University interested in the intersection of microbiology and neuroscience, thinks neurochemicals (such as serotonin) delivered directly to the gut via probiotics could help not just with gastrointestinal health but also psychological well-being.

Lyte’s theory, which was published in the July issues of BioEssays, has yet to be tested in humans. In a commentary in the same issue of BioEssays, though, Dr. Gregor Reid of the University of Western Ontario says the idea is supported by studies. “Could this mean that adjunct treatment for people suffering from certain types of mental health problems is a fecal transplant? Food for thought,” writes Reid (scientist humor!). Research on mice has shown microbial bacteria can produce and respond to neurochemicals, and that the connection between gut microbes and the nervous system provides “a viable route for influencing neurological function.”

Хроническое употребление кетамина разрушает клетки мочевого пузыря

Chronic ketamine use kills bladder cells - health - 15 June 2011 - New Scientist - статейка о новом исследовании о вреде кетамина, который раньше массово использовали для наркоза, а совсем недавно предлагали использовать как антидепрессант даже для лечения детей (в минимальных дозах). Внезапно оказалось, что это вещество способно необратимо изменять состояние клеток мочевого пузыря.

О том, как в мозгу генерируется музыка!

Creativity and the Brain: Learning From Jazz Musicians and Rappers

Category: Nifty Fifty
Posted on: April 1, 2011 10:00 AM, by Joanna Pool


How does the brain create and perceive music? More specifically, what goes on inside the heads of musicians when they're in the groove composing a song or improvising with their instruments or voice? These questions have long intrigued researcher Charles Limb, and to find answers he's turned to studying the brains of some likely individuals: jazz musicians and rap artists.

In this quest, Charles brings some interesting credentials. He's an auditory surgeon by training, specializing in a surgery called cochlear implantation - a way to help deaf people hear again. He currently practices at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore where he is Associate Professor of Otolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery. Charles is also a musician, playing the sax, piano and bass, and serves on the faculty of Johns Hopkins' Peabody Conservatory of Music.

Says Charles: "I feel really lucky to be able to combine all of these passions in searching for a better understanding of how the mind perceives complex auditory stimuli such as music, and what parts of the brain are involved in musicians when they are deep in the process of creating and improvising."

In conducting his research, he uses functional brain imaging (fMRI) -- a technique that can measure the changes in blood flow within the brain, indicating neural activity -- to study musicians' brain regions as they improvise music on a small keyboard. For the past decade, he's been working with jazz piano players, revealing astonishing new data about the way the brain creates art.

His research has also recently branched into a new genre: hip-hop. Although originally
more of a jazz and classical music fan, Charles became increasingly intrigued by hip-hop's raw, grassroots characteristics the more he heard the music. He also soon realized striking similarities between jazz and rap which he found relevant for his study.

Read more about Charles here.

Watch a bit about studying how the brain reacts to creative situations. What activities do you think would be interesting to understand how the brain works during those activities?

Статья с http://scienceblogs.com/usasciencefestival/2011/04/creativity_and_the_brain_learn.php там же можно посмотреть видео

О лечении пристрастия к кокаину

Радикальный метод - прямое влияние на мозг:

Статья опубликована в  http://blog.the-scientist.com/2011/02/15/cocaine/ By Cathryn Denney

It’s clearly no longer just the drug of the young, rich and trendy: a decrease in street value over the years has led to a marked rise in usage and availability of cocaine, and it’s an ever-present favourite with the media. The BBC news website alone has dozens of cocaine-related news results since the beginning of the year (who knew the Highland Games were such a rave!).

The short lived euphoric effects of cocaine and subsequent come down lead to a physical and psychological addiction that cause a user to increase their frequency of intake. Using rats that could self-administer cocaine, Christelle Baunez and colleagues at the French National Center for Scientific Research looked at the effects of lesions in the subthalamic nucleus (STN) on addiction.
Following on from earlier work demonstrating that deep brain stimulation of the STN can reduce motivation of rats to work to get the drug¹, but increase motivation to work for food, they tested the hypothesis that lesions in the STN could prevent an escalation in cocaine intake. As described in a poster presented at the Neuroscience 2010 meeting, they found that treated rats decreased the number of times they helped themselves to cocaine, but with no ill effects on memory or locomotion.
“This has potential implications for the treatment of addicts,” suggests F1000 Section Head Trevor W. Robins of the University of Cambridge, in his evaluation of the poster. Baunez adds, “Before translating it to human addicts, the best thing will be to test the effects of STN inactivation in monkeys, which is one of our plans for the future.”

Ряд новых идей о шизофрении

Эта неделя оказалась урожайной на новости о генезе шизофрении.


Например, появились вот такие замечательные статьи:

GABAergic interneuron origin of schizophrenia pathophysiology. Nakazawa K, Zsiros V, Jiang Z, Nakao K, Kolata S, Zhang S, Belforte JE.

The viral theory of schizophrenia revisited: Abnormal placental gene expression and structural changes with lack of evidence for H1N1 viral presence in placentae or brains of exposed offspring from infected mice. Fatemi SH, Folsom TD, Rooney RJ, Mori S, Kornfield TE, Reutiman TJ, Kneeland RE, Liesch SB, Hua K, Hsu J, Patel DH.

Schizophrenia and tobacco smoking comorbidity: nAChR agonists in the treatment of schizophrenia-associated cognitive deficits. D'Souza MS, Markou A.

Contributions of the d-serine pathway to schizophrenia. Labrie V, Wong AH, Roder JC.

Behavioral and neurochemical consequences of cortical oxidative stress on parvalbumin-interneuron maturation in rodent models of schizophrenia. Powell SB, Sejnowski TJ, Behrens MM.

Adenosine hypothesis of schizophrenia - opportunities for pharmacotherapy. Boison D, Singer P, Shen HY, Feldon J, Yee BK.

Наслаждайтесь :)

Антипсихотики в США

PRESCRIPTIONS for antipsychotic drugs have more than doubled in the US over the past 15 years, often given for conditions for which there is scant evidence they work.

Expensive antipsychotics were originally approved to treat schizophrenia. They are now also prescribed for conditions including anxiety disorders and dementia, even though the Food and Drug Administration has not approved these off-label uses. The side effects of such drugs can include diabetes, weight gain and an increased risk of heart disease.

Caleb Alexander at the University of Chicago and colleagues analysed the results of a survey of visits to doctors between 1995 and 2008. In the sample population, the prescriptions of antipsychotics went from 6.2 million in 1995 to 16.7 million in 2006 and fell to 14.3 million in 2008. Off-label prescriptions also doubled during this time (Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, DOI: 10.1002/pds.2082).

Alexander points to ways to combat the trend, such as reducing heavy drug marketing and raising awareness of off-label prescribing.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927952.500-antipsychotic-drug-prescriptions-triple-in-the-us.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news 

У двух психов вероятность родить третьего повышается

Мда... Читаем на http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/jaaj-oot022510.php:
Offspring of 2 psychiatric patients have increased risk of developing mental disorders


Offspring of two parents with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder appear more likely to develop the same illness or another psychiatric condition than those with only one parent with psychiatric illness, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

The offspring of two parents with psychiatric illness represent an extremely high-risk group, according to background information in the article. Studying these children permits researchers to assess the risk associated with two sources of genetic predisposition to mental disorders. "Such risks will be of use to genetic counselors to inform personal decisions with regard to marriage, family formation, adoption and health insurance planning," the authors write.

Irving I. Gottesman, Ph.D., Hon.F.R.C.Psych., of the University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, and colleagues studied a population-based cohort of 2.7 million individuals born in Denmark. The researchers matched records in a general registry of the population with a database of psychiatric admissions. They identified individuals whose parents had both been admitted to psychiatric facilities for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and compared the rate of psychiatric admissions for these individuals to those of offspring with one or no parents admitted to psychiatric facilities.

Rates of schizophrenia were highest among offspring of two parents with schizophrenia. Of the 196 couples who both had schizophrenia, 27.3 percent of their 270 children were admitted to a psychiatric facility, increasing to 39.2 percent when schizophrenia-related disorders were included. This compared with a rate of 7 percent among 13,878 offspring of 8,006 couples in which one parent had schizophrenia and 0.86 percent in 2.2 million offspring of 1 million couples in which neither parent was admitted for schizophrenia.

Similarly, the risk of bipolar disorder was 24.9 percent in 146 offspring of 83 parent couples who were both admitted for bipolar disorder (increasing to 36 percent when unipolar depressive disorder was also included). This compared to a risk of 4.4 percent among 23,152 offspring of 11,995 couples with only one parent ever admitted for bipolar disorder and 0.48 percent in 2.2 million children of 1 million couples with neither parent ever admitted.

When one parent had bipolar disorder and the other had schizophrenia, offspring had a 15.6 percent risk of schizophrenia and an 11.7 percent risk of bipolar disorder.

The risks in this population "are of such a magnitude that they command clinical and national public health attention in countries with health care roughly similar to Denmark's," the authors write.

"It is important to keep in mind that the yields from genetic epidemiology and the strategies implemented are applicable to groups of people, not to the individuals themselves," they conclude. "However, by joining advances in molecular genetics that are adapted for use in epidemiological genetic screening, our kinds of data with the risk groups described might lead to a large and rapid step forward in the understanding of the etiologies of major mental disorders."

Три новых статьи об эффектах наркотических веществ

http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/2010/02/synthetic_marijuana_k2_spice_j.php - о синтетической марихуане
http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_articles/does_recreational_drug_use_damage_memory - о проблемах с памятью у употребляющих психотропные вещества
http://scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey/2010/02/as_many_dependent_on_cannabis.php - о связи курения марихуаны и употребления героина

Ген, ответственный за биполярное расстройство

О своём, о маниакально-депрессивном... На http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_articles/faulty_rorb_genes_may_explain_bipolar_disorder_children
A team of researchers said this week that they may have identified the genes responsible for bipolar disorder in children. Their study, published in BMC Psychiatry, implicates malfunctioning circadian clock genes, four alterations of the RORB gene to be specific, in the development of the disorder.

Scientists studied the RORA and RORB genes of 152 children with Bipolar and 140 control children. They found four alterations to the RORB gene that were positively associated with being bipolar. "Our findings suggest that clock genes in general and RORB in particular may be important candidates for further investigation in the search for the molecular basis of bipolar disorder," explained co-author Alexander Niculescu.

RORB is mainly expressed in the eye, pineal gland and brain. Its expression is known to change as a function of circadian rhythm in some tissues, and mice without the gene exhibit circadian rhythm abnormalities.

According to Niculescu, "Bipolar disorder is often characterized by circadian rhythm abnormalities, and this is particularly true among pediatric bipolar patients. Decreased sleep has even been noted as one of the earliest symptoms discriminating children with bipolar disorder from those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It will be necessary to verify our association results in other independent samples, and to continue to study the relationship between RORB, other clock genes, and bipolar disorder".

Pediatric bipolar disorder is a controversial diagnosis characterized by alternating bouts of depression and mania in children, although it does not affect all young people in the same way and the duration and severity of the disorder can vary enormously.

Citation: Casey L McGrath, Stephen J Glatt, Pamela Sklar, Helen Le-Niculescu, Ronald Kuczenski, Alysa E Doyle, Joseph Biederman, Eric Mick, Stephen V Faraone, Alexander B Niculescu, Ming T Tsuang, 'Evidence for Genetic Association of RORB with Bipolar Disorder',
BMC Psychiatry 2009, doi:10.1186/1471-244X-9-70

Новое лекарство от шизофрении

Интересно, как обычно на этом блоге! Статья с http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2009/09/iloperidone_approved_for_treat.php?utm_source=combinedfeed&utm_medium=rss
The new drug is called iloperidone; the brand name in the USA will be Fanapt. It is yet another antipsychotic that blocks D2 and 5HT2 receptors. Although there is no universally accepted way of classifying drugs into families, it will be referred to as an atypical or second-generation antipsychotic. This designation will indicate a loose kind of similarity to risperidone, aripiperazole, ziprasidone, quetiapine, olanzapine, clozapine, and paliperidone.

It turns out that there is a Wikipedia page for iloperidone. It is not one of the better pages on Wikipedia.

Iloperidone is a monoamine directed towards acting upon and antagonizing specific neurotransmitters.

Iloperidone does act upon the transmitter. It blocks the receptor, which causes the transmitter to be ineffective, or less effective, at transmitting whatever message it otherwise would have transmitted.

There are several other quibbles I have with the Wikipedia page. If I were unemployed, I would edit it. But it is going to take a lot of work.

Anyway, I could write the kind of blog post that I usually have written when potentially-interesting new drugs come out. But it turns out that there is already a good, concise article in an open-access journal. It says all the things I would have said.

Iloperidone for schizophrenia
Peter J. Weiden, MD, and Jeffrey R. Bishop, PharmD, BCPP
Current Psychiatry Online
Vol. 8, No. 9 / September 2009

Iloperidone is a second-generation (atypical) antipsychotic the FDA approved in May 2009 for treating acute schizophrenia in adults (Table 1). Iloperidone is not a derivative (metabolite, isomer, or different formulation) of any other antipsychotic. Clinical trials have shown that iloperidone is efficacious and suggest that for some patients its side-effect profile may be more favorable than that of other antipsychotics.

It is expected to be available later this year. It is not possible for me, or anyone else, to say exactly when this will be.

The high points are: oral bioavailability 95%, half-life about 18 hours, protein binding about 95%, high affinity for D2 and 5HT2A, low for H1, minimal for muscarinic, and moderate for NEα1. The cost will be too high, but I don't know exactly how high. The manufacturer, Vanda Pharmaceuticals, reportedly is working on a long-acting injectable product.

The one sort of interesting thing has to do with the alpha-1 antagonism. This is a nuisance sometimes, because it can cause orthostatic hypotension (dizziness upon standing up, due to drop in blood pressure). This is a side effect, which may or may not happen in a given individual. It is potentially an adverse effect.

Prazosin is an antihypertensive drug that blocks alpha-1 receptors. Prazosin has been used, off-label, to reduce nightmares in persons with PTSD.

Could iloperidone have a similar effect? If so, it would be a side effect, but not an adverse effect. It would be a beneficial side effect. It remains to be seen whether this will turn out to be the case. In general, it is tricky to anticipate clinical effects, based upon the in vitro pharmacology of a drug, when it comes to the effects in the brain.

Новые лекарства от шизофрении!

Ангельская пыль может быть очень полезна... для исследований. Прочитала на http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/four-experiment.html
Angel Dust Inspired a New Schizophrenia Drug
By Aaron Rowe EmailSeptember 15, 2008 | 11:32:36 PMCategories: Big Pharma, Chem Lab, Chemistry, Medicinal Chemistry, Psychiatry

Pcp

When scientists learned that PCP, also known as angel dust, can cause every single symptom of schizophrenia, they wondered if chemicals that have the opposite effect could fight mental disorders. That insight led to them to discover a new class of antipsychotic medications.

To understand how the recreational drug plays tricks on the mind, neuroscientists gave it to lab rats. Those researchers could counteract the strange behavior of their furry assistants by stimulating brain proteins called glutamate receptors. Big drug companies, including Eli Lilly, took note of that discovery and started searching for molecules that can push the same psychological buttons in humans.

In the Sept. 15 issue of Chemical and Engineering News, Carmen Drahl told that story, along with the tales of three other experimental medications that could turn the tide against schizophrenia. Each compound operates in a completely different way, and all of them have been tested on human volunteers.

That is really big news because doctors have been stuck using the same class of pills -- dopamine blockers -- since the 1950's.

Drahl got the scoop on the new treatments during a special seminar about schizophrenia, which took place last month during the American Chemical Society meeting in Philadelphia.

LY404039 was discovered by Eli Lilly and works by activating glutamate receptors. It is furthest along in the approval process. Unlike other schizophrenia drugs, it does not cause excessive weight gain.
DCCCyB was developed by Merck, and it does the job by blocking glycine transporters
PF-2545920 was tested by Pfizer, and it gums up a phosphodiesterase enzyme.
TC-5619 was invented at Targacept and it excites nicotine receptors with far more precision than the finest cigarettes. Schizophrenics tend to medicate themselves by smoking, and new drugs may offer them a similar kind of relief without the serious health risks that come from tobacco products.

If these drugs are approved by the FDA, the social implications could be profound: A great deal of homelessness is caused by psychological problems. Perhaps some of these new substances will allow people with serious mental illness to become functional and live somewhat normal lives.