Progress Towards a Blood Test for Depression

A blood test for depression? 07/22/2010. Blood tests have been extremely important tools aiding doctors in making medical diagnoses and in guiding the treatment of many diseases. However, psychiatry is one area of medicine where there are few diagnostic blood tests.
New scientific fields may someday generate blood tests that can be used for these purposes. Some of the areas under increasingly intensive study are genetics, the study of variations in the genes (DNA) that can be extracted from blood cells, and genomics like proteomics, the measurement of the levels of specific proteins in the blood, and gene expression profiling, which measures the levels of RNA produced from DNA as an indication of the level of the "activity" of particular genes.

Using the latter approach, Dutch researchers evaluated blood gene expression profiles in healthy individuals and patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder, or MDD. They identified a set of seven genes in whole blood that was able to distinguish un-medicated MDD patients from healthy controls. Eurekalert!

Gulf War Illness Funding Approved

VA approves $2.8M for Gulf War Veterans' illness research program 07/22/2010.  The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has approved $2.8 million to fund three new research projects that focus on testing or developing new treatments for illnesses affecting Veterans who served in the Gulf War 1990-1991. The research incorporates recommendations of the department's Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses Task Force .The Medical News

Rates of PTSD Peak Later in women Than in Men

Women in their 50s more prone to PTSD than men 07/21/2010. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rates peak in women later than they do in men. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Annals of General Psychiatry found that men are most vulnerable to PTSD between the ages of 41 and 45 years, while women are most vulnerable at 51 to 55. PhysOrg.com

Soldiers With TBI Have Increased Risk of Epilepsy Later in Life

Soldiers with Brain Injuries at Higher Risk of Epilepsy Decades Later 07/20/2010.  Soldiers who receive traumatic brain injuries during war may be at a higher risk of epilepsy even decades after the brain injury occurred. The new research is published in the July 20, 2010, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Newswise

Stellate Ganglion Block for PTSD

Obama Loves This Freaky PTSD Treatment; the Pentagon, Not So Much 07/19/2010. Military-backed efforts to find an effective treatment for post-traumatic stress are making sluggish progress. The Pentagon is funding all kinds of ideas — from yoga to telepsychology. All have their limitations. But one doctor is convinced he’s found a viable way to treat the estimated 20 percent of troops now coming home with PTSD — if only the Pentagon would give it a shot. Dr. Eugene Lipov, a Chicago-based anesthesiologist, pioneered the modern-day use of stellate-ganglion block (SGB) in 2004, to eliminate hot flashes among post-menopausal women. SGB, which has been used to relieve migraines and chronic pain since the 1920s, involves a single injection into the sympathetic nerve tissue on the right side of a cervical vertebra. Wired

How Anxiety Manifests During Stressful Situations

Battlefield psychologists investigate stress in combat and after 07/19/2010.  Psychologists aren't usually called to the battlefield, but the 2008-09 Gaza War gave Tel Aviv University researchers a unique picture of how anxiety manifests during stressful situations. In a new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Prof. Yair Bar Haim of TAU's Department of Psychology reports that people confronted with acute stress -- daily rocket attacks -- tend to dissociate from threats instead of becoming more vigilant. This research overturns accepted convention and may lead to better understanding of the mechanisms underlying acute stress reactions, he says. Eurekalert!

Ecstacy for PTSD?

MDMA (Ecstasy)-assisted psychotherapy relieves treatment-resistant PTSD 07/19/2010.  MDMA (±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, also known as Ecstasy), may one day offer hope for individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), even people for whom other treatments have failed. Clinical trial results out today in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, published by SAGE, suggests that MDMA can be administered to subjects with PTSD without evidence of harm and could offer sufferers a vital window with reduced fear responses where psychotherapy can take effect. PhysOrg.com