Could the breast cancer drug tamoxifen also treat bipolar disorder? Journal Watch Psychiatry currently highlights results of a pilot study to test that hypothesis. Five out of eight men who took tamoxifen had a 50% reduction in mania scores; just one person out of eight responded to placebo. The only side effect appeared to be appetite loss.
Continue reading 'A breast cancer drug to treat... mania?' >
Nobody cheer leads their drug of choice more than ravers -- according to them, your ticket to complete and utter bliss is only a dolphin-shaped pill away. Generally, I have trouble following the advice of a 24-year-old adult dressed like an infant who survived a clown explosion, but maybe they really are on to something. The first government-sanctioned experiments in two decades into the potential for psychedelic drugs to treat psychiatric disorders shows that the active ingredient in ecstasy, MDMA, can be quite effective at healing post-traumatic stress disorder.
If more research backs this up, I guess we should start handing out pacifiers and rainbow jumpsuits to soldiers as soon as they step off the plane from Iraq.
Continue reading 'Ecstasy shows promise in treating PTSD, lame dance parties' >
More bad news for drug warriors: another new study! This one finds that teens who smoke marijuana but not cigarettes are emotionally healthier in some ways than those who abstain entirely and than those who use both.
Although the debate over the causes of autism is still vexed, arguments over the nature of the disorder itself rage, too. In the November 1 issue of Frontiers In Neuroscience [hat tip to Frontal Cortex for blogging it on 10/25], Henry Markram, Tania Rinaldi and Kamila Markram propose a new unifying theory. They call it “The Intense World Syndrome” and the basic idea is that the core problem in autism is not difficulty recognizing other people’s thoughts and motivations (the “theory of mind” theory), but a hyper-responsive brain that encodes most sensory input as overwhelming.
