Mental Health News
Can one neuron release more than one neurotransmitter? Why is it comforting to discuss problems with others?
Can one neuron release more than one neurotransmitter?--Marvin Shrewsbury, Wailuku, Hawaii
[More]Nicotine Replacement Drug's Bad Trip
As the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer was reminded in May, arriving first has its rewards, but they come with the risks of venturing into uncharted territory. This past spring the Federal Aviation Administration banned pilots and air traffic controllers from taking the company’s popular smoking-cessation aid, varenicline, which is sold in the U.S. as Chantix. Amid 6.5 million prescriptions written worldwide since 2006, the drug had spawned highly publicized reports of acute psychiatric episodes that included seizures, psychosis and suicidal depression. In May the nonprofit Institute for Safe Medication Practices documented 988 such “adverse events,” prompting the aviation ban.
The Food and Drug Administration has now added strong warning language to varenicline’s medication guide, and Pfizer is reviewing evidence that might help explain the rare but severe incidents. Although the bad publicity may dampen sales of the drug, observers say that some adverse events are not unexpected when a new drug hits the market, especially one that is the first of its kind. Varenicline is not just a novel smoking-cessation tool; it is the first of an entire class of medications specifically designed to target a powerful family of receptors on the surface of brain cells. Known as neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, they can mediate pain, mood, memory, attention and other cognitive functions.
[More]Tougher Laws Needed to Protect Your Genetic Privacy
In years gone by, if colon cancer ran in your family all you could do was wait and worry about whether you might get it, too. Today a genetic test can determine whether you have inherited a greater-than-average risk of the disease and so could benefit from preventive care. The more doctors know about your genes, the better able they are to prevent, treat or cure illnesses.
Excitement about such prospects surrounded the start of the Human Genome Project in 1990. But the enthusiasm was soon tempered by widespread concern about the need to protect the privacy of a person’s genetic information. Simple tests that could readily reveal an individual’s genetic endowment could also readily cause embarrassment or stigma. Furthermore, insurers could deny people health coverage or raise the premiums they have to pay. And employers seeing the results could deny people jobs or fire them. At the same time, scientists and public health officials recognized that the potential to improve health care based on genetic studies across large populations could never be achieved if legions of people refused to participate out of fear that the results could be misused.
[More]Arranging for Serenity: How Physical Space and Emotion Intersect
I am a New Age skeptic. I used to be a New Age cynic, so this change shows how far I have come in opening my mind to things I do not understand. I no longer dismiss channeling and crystals and acupuncture as so much hocus-pocus, nor do I embrace these practices. I simply await proof.
I have to admit, though, that there is one New Age practice that has always had some intuitive appeal to me, and that’s feng shui. Feng shui is the ancient Chinese art of placement, which is based on the belief that space and distance and the arrangement of objects can affect our emotions and our sense of well-being. This idea makes sense to me on a gut level: I know that I feel a greater sense of psychological equilibrium in some spaces than I do in others. I just do not know why.
[More]150 Years Ago: The First Transatlantic Telegraph
AUGUST 1958BERYLLIUM-- “The story of berylliosis is one of the most fascinating, contradictory, infuriating and controversial episodes in medical history. Some medical people argue even now that beryllium is incapable of causing disease. When one examines the clinical, biochemical and toxicological evidence, however, one cannot escape the fact that beryllium has caused at least 500 cases of poisoning in the U.S. alone during the past two decades. The story of beryllium highlights the whole problem of occupational disease in the present era. Advances in technology now develop so rapidly that the rare material of yesterday becomes the widely used material of today.”
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