Recovery Michigan

Around half of end-stage liver disease cases, also known as livercirrhosis, are caused by alcohol.

Overall, liver cirrhosis is the 10th biggest killer in the US.

Science already has an understanding of how alcohol can directly impact the liver's health; the metabolic products of the breakdown of alcohol are toxic to the liver.

Additionally, the inflammation that these secondary compounds produce can be harmful to the organ's functioning.

New research published this week in Cell Host & Microbe shows how a secondary mechanism, involving bacteria in the gut, also plays a significant role in the liver's downfall.

Dr. Bernd Schnabl and his team at the University of California found that alcohol can suppress antibacterial defense systems within the intestines, causing further damage to the liver.

They return to the United States with multiple types of trauma, and suffer from one of the highest rates of chronic pain of any population in the United States. They are U.S. veterans. A major challenge for health care providers is how to help them alleviate pain that will last a lifetime. Now, a new study suggests veterans may be empowered to help themselves with the practice of meditation.

A small pilot study conducted at the Washington, D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center reveals that veterans who practiced meditation reported a 20 percent reduction in pain intensity (how bad pain hurts or feels), as well as pain interference, how pain interferes with everyday aspects of life, such as sleep, mood, and activity level. The reductions were consistent across several methods by which doctors commonly measure pain in patients.

"Meditation allows a person to accept pain and to respond to pain with less stress and emotional reactivity. Our theory is that this process increases coping skills, which in turn can help veterans to self-manage their chronic pain," said Thomas Nassif, Ph.D., a professorial lecturer in American University's Department of Health Studies, researcher at the D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and lead author of the new study published in Military Behavioral Health.

Researchers of a new study published in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry report successful reduction of depressive symptoms in patients using a novel non-invasive method of vagus nerve stimulation, or VNS.

Despite the growing number of medications and neurostimulation approaches available, residual symptoms may be both distressing and disabling. Traditional vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is a neurostimulation technique that has been used to alleviate treatment-resistant symptoms of depression. Clinical trials suggested that it produced modest benefit that emerged over long periods of time. However, it was also costly and required risky neurosurgery to implant the vagal nerve stimulators.

In this new study, Drs. Peijing Rong and Jiliang Fang at the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, collaborating with Jian Kong's research team at Harvard Medical School, investigated a new, modified form of VNS called transcutaneous VNS, which instead stimulates the vagus nerve through electrodes clipped onto the ear, similar to how headphones rest inside the ear.

Patients with major depressive disorder who volunteered for the study received either transcutaneous VNS or sham (placebo) VNS and underwent a functional neuroimaging scan both before and after one month of treatment.

Compared to patients who received sham VNS, the patients who received real VNS showed significant improvement of their depressive symptoms. This improvement was associated with increased functional connectivity between the default mode network and precuneus and orbital prefrontal cortex, an important network in the brain known to be altered in depression.

The researchers found that in patients with SAD, brain volume and activity in the amygdala decrease as a result of ICBT. The results are presented in Translational Psychiatry, a Nature publication.

"The greater the improvement we saw in the patients, the smaller the size of their amygdalae. The study also suggests that the reduction in volume drives the reduction in brain activity", says doctoral student Kristoffer NT Månsson, who led the study together with Linköping colleague Gerhard Andersson and researchers from the Karolinska Institutet, Uppsala University, Umeå University and Stockholm University.

The study comprised 26 individuals treated over the internet for nine weeks, making it a relatively small study. However, it is unique in that it investigates multiple factors at the same time: post-treatment changes in both brain volume and brain activity.

"Although we didn't look at that many patients, this work provides some important knowledge - especially for all the sufferers. Several studies have reported that certain areas of the brain differ between patients with and without anxiety disorders. We've shown that the patients can improve in nine weeks - and that this leads to structural differences in their brains", says Kristoffer NT Månsson.

A 7 minute video about the relative risk of antipsychotics to cause weight gain, high cholesterol and/or type 2 diabetes. I made this video because the information is desperately needed by our peers in order to make informed decisions about treatment. I can't believe this information is not out there already!

Using an anesthetic drug that also has antidepressant properties, and another drug that raises levels of a mood-enhancing natural chemical in the brain, the researchers found that they could alleviate depressive-like symptoms in a mouse model ofalcoholism.

The findings, published online this month in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, could set the stage for development of novel treatments for mood and anxiety disorders that are induced by withdrawal from alcohol.

Depression is highly associated with alcohol abuse disorders. Yet before these findings can be applied to humans, "much work remains to be done," said senior author Danny Winder, Ph.D., professor of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics and of Psychiatry.

Clinical studies in which both conditions have been treated at the same time are "woefully lacking," he and his colleagues wrote. In addition, commonly used antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) are not very effective in this population.

The Vanderbilt researchers validated a previously established mouse model in which the animals exhibit depression-like behavior following withdrawal of alcohol.

They then tested ketamine, an anesthetic drug that blocks the NMDA receptor in the brain and which has been shown to have rapid and long-lasting antidepressant effects in humans. When the mice were given ketamine, the depressive symptoms were reversed.

Mostly interesting because there were efforts to retrain people who had damage to areas in the corpus callosum from brain injury not related to schizophrenia in the 60's and 70's. The approaches were cognitive retraining to improve use of both hemispheres in problem solving...

The tests conducted on the schizophrenic subjects revealed that they had various abnormalities in certain parts of their corpus callosum, a bundle of neural fibers that connects the right and left cerebral hemispheres and is considered essential for effective interhemispheric communication.

As Igor Zwir points out: "The current study provides further evidence that schizophrenia is a heterogeneous group of disorders (DUH!), as opposed to a single illness, as was previously thought to be case."

The researchers believe that, in the future, analyzing how specific gene networks are linked to specific brain features and individual symptoms, will be of fundamental importance and will help to ensure that treatments are adapted effectively to each patient's specific disorder. Currently, treatments for schizophrenia tend to be generic, regardless of the symptoms exhibited by each individual patient.

In order to conduct the analysis of both the gene groups and brain scans, the researchers developed a new, complex analysis of the relationships between different types of data and recommendations concerning new data. The system is similar to that used by companies such as Netflix in order to determine the films they wish to broadcast.

Professor Zwir explains: "To conduct the research, we did not begin by studying individuals who had certain schizophrenic symptoms in order to determine whether they had the corresponding brain anomalies. Instead, we first analyzed the data, and that's how we discovered these patterns. This type of information, combined with data on the genetics of schizophrenia, will someday be of vital importance in helping doctors treat the disorders in a more precise and effective way."