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F.D.A. Authorizes E-Cigarettes to Stay on U.S. Market for the First Time

By Matt Richtel and Sheila Kaplan The Food and Drug Administration for the first time on Tuesday authorized an electronic cigarette to be sold in the United States, a significant turn in one of the most contentious public health debates in decades. In greenlighting a device and tobacco-flavored cartridges marketed by R.J. Reynolds under the brand name Vuse, the agency signaled that it believed that the help certain vaping devices offer smokers to quit traditional cigarettes is more significant than the risks of ensnaring a new generation. “The authorized products’ aerosols are significantly less toxic than combusted cigarettes based on available data,” the F.D.A. said in a statement announcing the decision. The statement concluded, “The F.D.A. determined that the potential benefit to smokers who switch completely or significantly reduce their cigarette use, would outweigh the risk to youth.” The watershed decision could pave the way for authorization of some other electronic cigarettes, including those of the once-dominant maker Juul, to stay on the market. For more than a year, the manufacturers of e-cigarettes have been in a holding pattern — most of their products on the market but awaiting official authorization — as the F.D.A. has investigated whether they were a benefit or a danger to public health. “The importance of the F.D.A. authorizing a vaping product as ‘appropriate for the protection of public health’ should not be understated,” said Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, an industry group. He added, “Now that the F.D.A. has acted, we are hopeful that adult consumers and health communicators will begin to understand the harm reduction benefits offered by these and other smoke-free products.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 28032 - Posted: 10.13.2021

Meth overdose deaths in the U.S. almost tripled from 2015 to 2019

By Erin Blakemore Methamphetamine overdoses are on the rise, a study published in JAMA Psychiatry says. When researchers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed data from 2015 to 2019, they found that meth overdose deaths in the United States had almost tripled. During that time span, meth-related overdoses rose from 5,526 to 15,489. This was accompanied by a 43 percent increase in people reporting meth use. Researchers believe over 2 million adults used meth during the period, up from 1.4 million. They used data from the National Vital Statistics System, which tracks births, deaths and the reasons people die. Then they looked at data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which analyzes a random sample of adults in the United States. Advertisement The study shows stark differences in who uses meth. American Indians and Alaska Natives were the most likely to report methamphetamine-use disorder, meth injection and overall meth use. Black people who don’t inject meth also experienced a sharp rise in meth use, which increased more than tenfold. Gay men had the highest prevalence of meth injection. More than three times the women who reported meth use in previous years said they used the drug between 2015 and 2019. Age was a factor, too. Young adults 18 to 23 showed a fourfold increase in meth use without injection. Overall, the number rose by nearly half for all U.S. adults.

Researchers trained mice to control seemingly random bursts of dopamine in their brains

David Kleinfeld My colleagues and I recently found that we were able to train mice to voluntarily increase the size and frequency of seemingly random dopamine impulses in their brains. Conventional wisdom in neuroscience has held that dopamine levels change solely in response to cues from the world outside of the brain. Our new research shows that increases in dopamine can also be driven by internally mediated changes within the brain. Dopamine is a small molecule found in the brains of mammals and is associated with feelings of reward and happiness. In 2014, my colleagues and I invented a new method to measure dopamine in real time in different parts of the brains of mice. Using this new tool, my former thesis student, Conrad Foo, found that neurons in the brains of mice release large bursts of dopamine – called impulses – for no easily apparent reason. This occurs at random times, but on average about once a minute. Pavlov was famously able to train his dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell, not the sight of food. Today, scientists believe that the bell sound caused a release of dopamine to predict the forthcoming reward. If Pavlov’s dogs could control their cue-based dopamine responses with a little training, we wondered if our mice could control their spontaneous dopamine impulses. To test this, our team designed an experiment that rewarded mice if they increased the strength of their spontaneous dopamine impulses. The mice were able to not only increase how strong these dopamine releases were, but also how often they occurred. When we removed the possibility of a reward, the dopamine impulses returned to their original levels. In the 1990s, neuroscientist Wolfram Schultz discovered that an animal’s brain will release dopamine if the animal expects a reward, not just when receiving a reward. This showed that dopamine can be produced in response to the expectation of a reward, not just the reward itself – the aforementioned modern version of Pavlov’s dog. © 2010–2021, The Conversation US, Inc.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 27993 - Posted: 09.15.2021

Drug Overdose Deaths in 2020 Were Horrifying

By Nora D. Volkow The provisional drug overdose death statistics for 2020 confirmed the addiction field’s worst fears. More people died of overdoses in the United States last year than in any other one-year period in our history. More than 93,000 people died. The increase from the previous year was also more than we’ve ever seen—up 30 percent. These data are telling us that something is wrong. In fact, they are shouting for change. It is no longer a question of “doing more” to combat our nation’s drug problems. What we as a society are doing—putting people with drug addiction behind bars, underinvesting in prevention and compassionate medical care—is not working. Even as we work to create better scientific solutions to this crisis, it is beyond frustrating—it is tragic—to see the effective prevention and treatment tools we already have just not being used. The benefits of providing effective substance use disorder treatments—especially medication for opioid use disorder—are well-known. Yet decades of prejudice against treating substance use disorders with medication has greatly limited their reach, partly accounting for why only 18 percent of people with opioid use disorder receive medications. Historical reluctance to provide these treatments and of insurers to cover them reflects the stigma that has long made people with addiction a low priority. We must eliminate the attitudes and infrastructure barring treating people with substance use disorders. This means making it easier for clinicians to provide life-saving medications, expanding models of care like digital health technologies and mobile clinics that can reach people where they are, and ensuring that payers cover treatments that work. © 2021 Scientific American

'Dopamine Nation,' Overabundance Keeps Us Craving More

Terry Gross Human beings are programmed to approach pleasure and avoid pain. It's an instinct that dates back millions of years, to a time when people needed to actively seek food, clothing and shelter every day, or risk death. But psychiatrist Anna Lembke says that in today's world, such basic needs are often readily available — which changes the equation. "Living in this modern age is very challenging. ... We're now having to cope with: How do I live in a world in which everything is provided?" Lembke says. "And if I consume too much of it — which my reflexes compel me to do — I'm going to be even more unhappy." Lembke is the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. Her new book, Dopamine Nation, explores the interconnection of pleasure and pain in the brain and helps explain addictive behaviors — not just to drugs and alcohol, but also to food, sex and smart phones. Lembke says that her patients who are struggling with substance abuse often believe their addictions are fueled by depression, anxiety and insomnia. But she maintains that the reverse is often true: Addictions can become the cause of pain — not the relief from it. That's because the behavior triggers, among other things, an initial response of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which floods the brain with pleasure. But once the dopamine wears off, a person is often left feeling worse than before. "They start out using the drug in order to feel good or in order to experience less pain," Lembke says. "Over time, with repeated exposure, that drug works less and less well. But they find themselves unable to stop, because when they're not using, then they're in a state of a dopamine deficit." © 2021 npr

How Should We Do Drugs Now?

By Michael Pollan After a half century spent waging war on drugs, Americans seem ready to sue for peace. The 2020 elections brought plenty of proof that voters have leapt ahead of politicians in recognizing both the failures of the drug war and the potential of certain illicit drugs as powerful tools for healing. Ballot initiatives in five states — four of them traditionally red — legalized some form of cannabis use. By substantial margins, Oregon passed two landmark drug reform initiatives: Fifty-nine percent of voters supported Measure 110, which decriminalized the possession of small quantities of all drugs, even hard ones like heroin and cocaine. A second proposal, Measure 109, specifically legalized psilocybin therapy, directing the state’s health department to license growers of so-called magic mushrooms and train facilitators to administer them beginning in 2023. In the past two years, a new drug policy reform movement called Decriminalize Nature has persuaded local governments in a half dozen municipalities, including Washington, D.C., to decriminalize “plant medicines” such as psilocybin, ayahuasca, iboga and the cactuses that produce mescaline. Last month, the California State Senate passed a bill that would make legal the personal possession, use and “social sharing” of psychedelics, including LSD and MDMA, a.k.a. Ecstasy or Molly. Political opposition to all these measures has been notably thin. Neither party, it seems, has the stomach for persisting in a war that has achieved so little while doing so much damage, especially to communities of color and our civil liberties. But while we can now begin to glimpse an end to the drug war, it is much harder to envision what the drug peace will look like. How will we fold these powerful substances into our society and our lives so as to minimize their risks and use them most constructively? The blunt binaries of “Just say no” that have held sway for so long have kept us from having this conversation and from appreciating how different one illicit drug is from another. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 27907 - Posted: 07.14.2021

Juul Is Fighting to Keep Its E-Cigarettes on the U.S. Market

By Sheila Kaplan Sales have plunged by $500 million. The work force has been cut by three-quarters. Operations in 14 countries have been abandoned. Many state and local lobbying campaigns have been shut down. Juul Labs, the once high-flying e-cigarette company that became a public health villain to many people over its role in the teenage vaping surge, has been operating as a shadow of its former self, spending the pandemic largely out of the public eye in what it calls “reset” mode. Now its very survival is at stake as it mounts an all-out campaign to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to allow it to continue to sell its products in the United States. The agency is trying to meet a Sept. 9 deadline to decide whether Juul’s devices and nicotine pods have enough public health benefit as a safer alternative for smokers to stay on the market, despite their popularity with young people who never smoked but became addicted to nicotine after using Juul products. Major health organizations, including the American Heart Association, American Lung Association, American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network, have asked the agency to reject Juul’s application. “The stakes are high,” said Eric Lindblom, a senior scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, and a former F.D.A. adviser on tobacco. “If the F.D.A. blows it on this one, they will face public health lawsuits.” Juul is sparing no expense to push back. Last week, the company agreed to pay $40 million to settle just one lawsuit (with North Carolina) out of thousands lodged against it, avoiding a looming jury trial. The company had urgently sought the deal to avoid courtroom testimony from parents and teenagers while the F.D.A. is reviewing its vaping products. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Psychedelics open a new window on the mechanisms of perception

By Anil Ananthaswamy “Everything became imbued with a sense of vitality and life and vividness. If I picked up a pebble from the beach, it would move. It would glisten and gleam and sparkle and be absolutely captivating,” says neuroscientist Anil Seth. “Somebody looking at me would see me staring at a stone for hours.” Or what seemed like hours to Seth. A researcher at the UK’s University of Sussex, he studies how the brain helps us perceive the world within and without, and is intrigued by what psychedelics such as LSD can tell us about how the brain creates these perceptions. So a few years ago, he decided to try some, in controlled doses and with trusted people by his side. He had a notebook to keep track of his experiences. “I didn’t write very much in the notebook,” he says, laughing. Instead, while on LSD, he reveled in a sense of well-being and marveled at the “fluidity of time and space.” He found himself staring at clouds and seeing them change into faces of people he was thinking of. If his attention drifted, the clouds morphed into animals. Seth went on to try ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew made from a shrub and a vine native to South America and often used in shamanistic rituals there. This time, he had a more emotional trip that dredged up powerful memories. Both experiences strengthened Seth’s conviction that psychedelics have great potential for teaching us about the inner workings of the brain that give rise to our perceptions. He’s not alone. Armed with fMRI scans, EEG recordings, computational models of the brain and reports from volunteers tripping on psychedelics, a small but growing number of neuroscientists are trying to take advantage of these drugs and the hallucinations they induce to better understand how the brain produces perceptions. © 2021 Annual Reviews, Inc

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 8: General Principles of Sensory Processing, Touch, and Pain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 27883 - Posted: 06.29.2021

Addiction treatment had failed. Could brain surgery save him?

By Lenny Bernstein MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — After nearly two decades of hardcore drug addiction — after overdoses and rehabs and relapses, homelessness and dead friends and ruined lives — Gerod Buckhalter had one choice left, and he knew it. He could go on the same way and die young in someone’s home or a parking lot, another casualty in a drug epidemic that has claimed nearly 850,000 people like him. Or he could let a surgeon cut two nickel-size holes in his skull and plunge metal-tipped electrodes into his brain. More than 600 days after he underwent the experimental surgery, Buckhalter has not touched drugs again — an outcome so outlandishly successful that neither he nor his doctors dared hope it could happen. He is the only person in the United States to ever have substance use disorder relieved by deep brain stimulation. The procedure has reversed Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and a few other intractable conditions, but had never been attempted for drug addiction here. The device, known as a deep brain stimulator, also is recording the electrical activity in Buckhalter’s brain — another innovation that researchers hope will help locate a biomarker for addiction and allow earlier intervention with other people. Buckhalter, 35, is a walking, talking laboratory for the outer edge of drug addiction therapy, a living experiment in what may be possible someday. Yet for all the futuristic prospects, he is also proof of how difficult treatment of addiction remains. Quelling it with a scalpel helps refute the false belief that substance use disorder is a weakness or a moral failing, rather than a brain disease. But it does not address the psychological, social and socioeconomic factors that complicate the disease.

A Psychedelic Drug Passes a Big Test for PTSD Treatment

By Rachel Nuwer In an important step toward medical approval, MDMA, the illegal drug popularly known as Ecstasy or Molly, was shown to bring relief to those suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder when paired with talk therapy. Of the 90 people who took part in the new study, which is expected to be published later this month in Nature Medicine, those who received MDMA during therapy experienced a significantly greater reduction in the severity of their symptoms compared with those who received therapy and an inactive placebo. Two months after treatment, 67 percent of participants in the MDMA group no longer qualified for a diagnosis of PTSD, compared with 32 percent in the placebo group. MDMA produced no serious adverse side effects. Some participants temporarily experienced mild symptoms like nausea and loss of appetite. “This is about as excited as I can get about a clinical trial,” said Gul Dolen, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. “There is nothing like this in clinical trial results for a neuropsychiatric disease.” Before MDMA-assisted therapy can be approved for therapeutic use, the Food and Drug Administration needs a second positive Phase 3 trial, which is currently underway with 100 participants. Approval could come as early as 2023. Mental health experts say that this research — the first Phase 3 trial conducted on psychedelic-assisted therapy — could pave the way for further studies on MDMA’s potential to help address other difficult-to-treat mental health conditions, including substance abuse, obsessive compulsive disorder, phobias, eating disorders, depression, end-of-life anxiety and social anxiety in autistic adults. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Psychedelic drugs without the trip? This sensor could help seek them out

Ariana Remmel Scientists in search of psychedelic drug treatments have developed a way to determine whether a molecule is likely to cause hallucinations, without testing it on people or animals. Growing evidence suggests that psychedelic compounds, which are active in the brain, have potential to treat psychiatric illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but researchers are trying to find out whether there is a way to keep the beneficial properties of these drugs without the hallucinogenic side effects, which can complicate treatment. It is currently almost impossible to predict whether a potential drug will cause hallucinations before it is tested on animals or people. “That really slows down drug discovery,” says David Olson, a chemical neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis. To address this, a team led by Olson and neuroscientist Lin Tian, also at Davis, designed a fluorescent sensor to predict whether a molecule is hallucinogenic, based on the structure of a brain receptor targeted by psychedelics. Using their approach, the researchers identified a psychedelic-like molecule without hallucinogenic properties that they later found had antidepressant activity in mice1. The discovery adds “more fuel for the fire” of efforts to make drugs from psychedelic-like molecules without side effects, says Bryan Roth, a molecular pharmacologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill. © 2021 Springer Nature Limited

What’s Behind the Growth in Alcohol Consumption?

By Nambi Ndugga and Austin Frakt American deaths from misuse of substances, including alcohol, have increased over the past two decades, but not uniformly across various demographic groups. Overall rates of alcohol abuse and related deaths have consistently and significantly increased for white non-Hispanic Americans, while Black Americans have experienced a much slower and less significant incline, and some other groups have had declines. More recently, alcohol use has been up during the pandemic, with one study showing a greater increase in misuse among women than among men. (For men, heavy drinking is considered more than four drinks per day and 14 drinks per week, and for women, more than three drinks per day and seven drinks per week, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.) “Alcohol kills many more people than many may realize,” said Yusuf Ransome, an assistant professor at Yale’s School of Public Health. “It is a major contributor to deaths linked to physical injuries, interpersonal violence, motor vehicle crashes, self-harm and other harmful outcomes.” One reason for this might be that alcohol is often viewed as socially acceptable. “Alcohol use has been normalized because it is consumed sometimes at family and communal gatherings, casual outings, and that’s the type of drinking that is typically seen or showed within the media,” he said. “We rarely see the long-term health impacts of excessive alcohol use, nor do we show the acute dangers of alcohol misuse and abuse.” Between 2000 and 2016, according to research published in JAMA, alcohol-related deaths continually increased for white men (2.3 percent per year on average) and white women (4.1 percent), with middle-aged white Americans accounting for the highest increase in deaths. Rapid increases during this period in mortality related to alcohol and drugs like opioids among white Americans — particularly those without a college degree — have been termed “deaths of despair.” Sign up for The Upshot Newsletter: Analysis that explains politics, policy and everyday life, with an emphasis on data and charts. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 27779 - Posted: 04.21.2021

The Data On Legalizing Weed

Greg Rosalsky Last month, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed three bills making it official: marijuana will soon be growing legally in the gardens of the Garden State for anyone over 21 to enjoy. The bills follow through on a marijuana legalization ballot initiative that New Jerseyans approved overwhelmingly last year. New Jersey is now one of a dozen states, plus the District of Columbia, which have let loose the magic dragon — and more states, like Virginia, may be on the way. It's been almost a decade since Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana. That's given economists and other researchers enough time to study the effects of the policy. Here are some of the most interesting findings: Legalization didn't seem to substantially affect crime rates — Proponents of legalizing weed claimed it would reduce violent crimes. Opponents said it would increase violent crimes. A study by the CATO Institute finds, "Overall, violent crime has neither soared nor plummeted in the wake of marijuana legalization." Legalization seems to have little or no effect on traffic accidents and fatalities — Opponents of marijuana legalization argued it would wreak havoc on the road. A few studies have found that's not the case. Economists Benjamin Hansen, Keaton S. Miller & Caroline Weber, for instance, found evidence suggesting it had no effect on trends in traffic fatalities in both Colorado and Washington. © 2021 npr

This Drug Gets You High, and Is Legal (Maybe) Across the Country

By Matt Richtel Texas has one of the most restrictive medical marijuana laws in the country, with sales allowed only by prescription for a handful of conditions. That hasn’t stopped Lukas Gilkey, chief executive of Hometown Hero CBD, based in Austin, Texas. His company sells joints, blunts, gummy bears, vaping devices and tinctures that offer a recreational high. In fact, business is booming online as well, where he sells to many people in other states with strict marijuana laws. But Mr. Gilkey says that he is no outlaw, and that he’s not selling marijuana, just a close relation. He’s offering products with a chemical compound — Delta-8-THC — extracted from hemp. It is only slightly chemically different from Delta 9, which is the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. And that small distinction, it turns out, may make a big difference in the eyes of the law. Under federal law, psychoactive Delta 9 is explicitly outlawed. But Delta-8-THC from hemp is not, a loophole that some entrepreneurs say allows them to sell it in many states where hemp possession is legal. The number of customers “coming into Delta 8 is staggering,” Mr. Gilkey said. “You have a drug that essentially gets you high, but is fully legal,” he added. “The whole thing is comical.” The rise of Delta 8 is a case study in how industrious cannabis entrepreneurs are pulling apart hemp and marijuana to create myriad new product lines with different marketing angles. They are building brands from a variety of potencies, flavors and strains of THC, the intoxicating substance in cannabis, and of CBD, the nonintoxicating compound that is often sold as a health product. With Delta 8, entrepreneurs also believe they have found a way to take advantage of the country’s fractured and convoluted laws on recreational marijuana use. It’s not quite that simple, though. Federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, are still considering their options for enforcement and regulation. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Why a Columbia Neuroscientist Acknowledged Using Heroin

By Tom Bartlett The stimulant hexedrone — known more commonly as “bath salts” — is the kind of drug Carl Hart believes would be ideal to take right before a hellish academic reception or departmental holiday party. He’ll do cocaine and ecstasy from time to time and is a fan of the opioids oxycodone and morphine for the “pleasurable calmness” they induce. But after a long day, there are few things that Hart, a neuroscientist and psychology professor at Columbia University, enjoys more than a few lines of heroin by the fireplace. Hart has long pushed back against what he sees as the demonization of certain drugs and those who take them, particularly Black users, who are incarcerated at higher rates than white users. He has questioned the prevailing opinion that methamphetamine interferes with cognition and presented findings that suggest marijuana has minimal impact on the working memory of regular smokers. In his 2013 memoir, High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society, Hart makes the case for decriminalizing narcotics and argues that “we’re too afraid of these drugs and of what we think they do.” In a 2014 talk at the TEDMed conference, he argued that “science should be driving our drug policy and our drug education, even if that makes you and me uncomfortable.” In his new book, Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear, the former chairman of Columbia’s psychology department goes a step further, revealing that he has used — and continues to use — a number of illegal drugs. In fact, Hart recently said on a podcast that he was on methamphetamine when he delivered that TEDMed talk and that he’s given some of his best interviews the day after using heroin. Hart, who is 54, tried heroin for the first time in his 40s and has used it regularly — and responsibly, he contends — for years. “I am an unapologetic drug user,” he writes. “I take drugs as part of my pursuit of happiness, and they work. I am a happier and better person because of them.” He is not, he writes, an addict, and his book is not about addiction. Hart says that his stressful recent stint as department chairman was more damaging to his health than any substance he has ingested. © 2021 The Chronicle of Higher Education

Even occasional smokers are 27 percent more likely than nonsmokers to suffer a stroke

By Linda Searing People who smoke even occasionally are more likely than nonsmokers to have a serious type of stroke caused by a ruptured blood vessel — 27 percent more likely if they smoke up to 20 packs a year, according to research published in the journal Stroke. The average American smoker, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smokes 14 cigarettes daily, which means about 255 packs a year. The type of stroke examined by the researchers, known as a subarachnoid hemorrhage, occurs when a weakened blood vessel ruptures and bleeds into the space between a person’s brain and skull. Most often, this results from an aneurysm, an abnormal bulge in a blood vessel. A subarachnoid hemorrhage is not as common as an ischemic stroke, which is caused by a blood clot, but it also can lead to neurological problems or be life-threatening without immediate treatment to stop the bleeding. To focus on the effect that smoking may have on people’s risk for this type of stroke, the researchers analyzed data on 408,609 adults, about a third of whom smoked regularly. During the study period, 904 participants had a subarachnoid hemorrhage. The more people smoked, the greater their risk for this type of stroke, prompting the American Stroke Association to note that the findings “provide evidence for a causal link” between smoking and subarachnoid hemorrhage. washingtonpost.com © 1996-2021

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 27707 - Posted: 02.28.2021

Coffee Drinking Tied to Lower Risk of Heart Failure

By Nicholas Bakalar A large analysis looked at hundreds of factors that may influence the risk of heart failure and found one dietary factor in particular that was associated with a lower risk: drinking coffee. Heart failure, sometimes called congestive heart failure, occurs when the heart muscle becomes weakened and can no longer pump blood efficiently. It can be caused by high blood pressure, heart valve disease, heart attack, diabetes and other diseases and conditions. The analysis included extensive, decades-long data from three large health studies with 21,361 participants, and used a method called machine learning that uses computers to find meaningful patterns in large amounts of data. “Usually, researchers pick things they suspect would be risk factors for heart failure — smoking, for example — and then look at smokers versus nonsmokers,” said the senior author, Dr. David P. Kao, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Colorado. “But machine learning identifies variables that are predictive of either increased or decreased risk, but that you haven’t necessarily thought of.” Using this technique, Dr. Kao and his colleagues found 204 variables that are associated with the risk for heart failure. Then they looked at the 41 strongest factors, which included, among others, smoking, marital status, B.M.I., cholesterol, blood pressure and the consumption of various foods. The analysis is in Circulation: Heart Failure. In all three studies, coffee drinking was associated more strongly than any other dietary factor with a decreased long-term risk for heart failure. Drinking a cup a day or less had no effect, but two cups a day conferred a 31 percent reduced risk, and three cups or more reduced risk by 29 percent. There were not enough subjects who drank more than three cups daily to know if more coffee would decrease the risk further. © 2021 The New York Times Company

81,230 overdoses set record for such deaths in a 12-month period, CDC says

By Linda Searing A surge in the number of U.S. residents who have died of a drug overdose — 81,230 in the 12 months ending last May — set a record for the most such deaths in a one-year span, according to a report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, drug overdose deaths jumped by 18 percent from the previous year, with increases recorded in 46 states (by more than 20 percent in 25 of those states) and just four states recording a decrease. Deaths attributed to synthetic opioids, mainly fentanyl, increased 38 percent nationwide, but 98 percent in 10 western states. Overdose deaths tied to cocaine use, often involving co-use or mixing with fentanyl or heroin, increased about 26 percent, and deaths linked to psychostimulants, such as methamphetamine, increased 35 percent. The CDC noted that the death rate from drug overdoses accelerated as the coronavirus pandemic set in, disrupting daily life and leading to isolation, depression, anxiety and economic distress for many, including people with a substance use disorder. In a health alert, the CDC urged broader distribution and use of naloxone, a medication that can block the effects of an overdose, as well as expanded prevention and treatment for those struggling with drug use. A free and confidential hotline, offering information and treatment referral, can be reached by calling the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration at 800-662-4357.

Your Cat Isn’t Just Getting High Off Catnip

By Katherine J. Wu For a lesson in euphoria, look no further than a house cat twined around a twig of silver vine. When offered a snipping of the plant, which contains chemicals similar to the ones found in catnip, most domesticated felines will purr, drool and smoosh their faces into its intoxicating leaves and stems, then zonk out in a state of catatonic bliss. But the ecstatic rush might not be the only reason felines flock to these plants, new research suggests. Compounds laced into plants like silver vine and catnip might also help cats ward off mosquitoes, equipping them with a DIY pest repellent that’s far more fun to apply than a greasy coat of DEET. Other papers have pointed to the insect-deterring effects of catnip and similar plants. But the new study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, is the first to draw a direct link between the plants and their protective effects on cats. “It’s a really interesting observation, that such a well-known behavior could be having this unappreciated benefit for cats,” said Laura Duvall, a mosquito researcher at Columbia University in New York who wasn’t involved in the study. Botanically speaking, catnip and silver vine are distant cousins. But both contain iridoids, a suite of chemicals that seem to potently tickle pleasure circuits in cats. To pinpoint the evolutionary roots of this plant-feline connection, a team of researchers led by Masao Miyazaki, a biochemist and veterinary scientist at Iwate University in Japan, corralled a menagerie of cats — some domestic, some wild — and monitored their responses to an iridoid extracted from silver vine, which thrives in many mountainous parts of Asia. Presented with scraps of paper dosed with iridoid, most of the cats initiated a ritualized rolling and rubbing. Some cats were so eager to engage with the compounds that they climbed up the sides of their cages — some of which were nearly four feet tall — to anoint themselves with chemical-soaked paper secured to the ceiling. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Progress Toward A Safer Psychedelic Drug To Treat Depression And Addiction

Jon Hamilton Root extracts from the African shrub iboga have long been used in traditional healing rituals and more recently as an experimental treatment for depression and to reduce drug cravings in addiction. Scientists now are working on a version of the extract that doesn't cause heart attacks or hallucinations as side effects. Steeve Jordan/AFP via Getty Images A chemically tweaked version of the psychedelic drug ibogaine appears to relieve depression and addiction symptoms without producing hallucinations or other dangerous side effects. The results of a study in rodents suggest it may be possible to make psychedelic drugs safe enough to become mainstream treatments for psychiatric disorders, the authors report Wednesday in the journal Nature. "What we need is a medicine that is so safe that you can take it home and put it in your medicine cabinet just like you would aspirin," says David Olson, the paper's senior author and an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. "And that's really what we were trying to achieve." The success with ibogaine is "a promising first step," says Gabriela Manzano, a postdoctoral fellow at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and a co-author of a commentary on the study. "This provides a road map on how we could start tweaking these chemical compounds to make them very useful in the clinic," she says. "Keep the good parts, get rid of the bad parts." For decades, psychedelic drugs, including ketamine and psilocybin, have shown promise in treating people with mental health problems including addiction, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. But doctors and researchers have been wary of using the drugs because of their side effects. © 2020 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 0: ; Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
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