Men with strong macho attitudes appear to demonstrate the risky behavior. The theory will be present at a seminar about humor and its scientific applications (’International Summer School and Symposium on Humor and Laughter: Theory, Research and Applications’) that will be held in Granada.

In order to carry out this research work, the scientists applied several questionnaires to a group of 109 university male students aged between 18 and 26 years old.

They showed them two series of jokes, one of them with sexist jokes where women were denigrated and another one with common jokes, without any kind of sexist content.

Next, the researchers proposed them several scenes with different cases of battering against women, from minor to serious attacks, to ask them how they would react in this kind of situation.

They are more tolerant with violence

The work proved that those who had listened to sexist jokes were much more tolerant with male battering than those who had not, this is, that this kind of humour favors the mental mechanisms tolerant with violent behaviour towards women.

However, the researchers warn those individuals affected by sexist humour showed a previous tendency to tolerate violence against women, as we can gather from a survey which weighed up sexist attitudes against women.

Some of the items of the scale used by the scientist to measure men’s sexist attitudes were: “Deep down, feminist women intend women to be more powerful than men”, “Most of the women do not fully appreciate what men do for them” or “There are many women who make sexual insinuations to men and later they reject their advances just to make fun of them”.

Source: University of Granada

A series of ultrasound experiments, described in BioMed Central’s open access journal Cardiovascular Ultrasound, also found that this dilatory reflex was absent in people with high blood pressure.

University of Southern California and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center researchers evaluated carotid artery reactivity and brain blood flow in response to mental stress in 10 healthy young volunteers (aged between 19 and 27 years), 20 older healthy volunteers (aged 38 to 60 years) and in 28 patients with essential hypertension (aged 38 to 64 years).

They found that in healthy subjects, mental stress caused vasodilation. This was accompanied by a net increase in brain blood flow. In hypertensive subjects, mental stress produced no vasodilation and no significant change in brain blood flow.

During the experiments, the volunteers were set a series of tasks designed to provoke mental stress, including reading, arithmetic and anger recall tests. The researchers used ultrasound imaging to measure the effects of this activity on the carotid artery and an artery within the brain, while also measuring blood pressure and heart rate.

According to the authors, “Inappropriate vasoconstriction, or lack of dilation in response to mental stress in stable coronary heart disease, contributes to the genesis of myocardial ischemia and confers an increased risk in patients with coronary artery disease.

“It will be interesting to see whether the lack of mental stress induced dilation we found defines subjects at increased risk of future cerebral events”.

Lack of required blood flow increase to the brain during mental activities may potentially affect cognition and cerebral performance during complex cerebral tasks.

Source: BioMed Central

Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health researchers found that early education reduces health behavioral risk factors by enhancing educational attainment, health insurance coverage, income, and family environments.

However, since the follow-up survey was conducted at age 40, the cohort may still be too young for these reductions in behavioral risk factors to translate into improvements in overall physical health outcomes.

The study, available online in the American Journal of Public Health, will be published in the August 2009 issue.

The researchers followed children between the ages of 3 and 4 years and through the age of 40 years. Considered a critical window for children’s intellectual and socioemotional development, these prekindergarten years are thought to be especially important for children whose parents have a limited amount of education.

“Earlier research indicates that prekindergarten programs targeting children from low-income households produce lifelong improvements in schooling, income, family stability, and job quality,” says Peter Muennig, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at the Mailman School of Public Health and principal investigator.

“These intertwined improvements in social circumstances may, in turn, improve health through reductions in behavioral risk factors, enhanced job safety, better health insurance coverage, safer neighborhoods of residence, better access to healthy foods, and lower levels of psychological stress.”

Dr. Muennig also says the findings are consistent with those of nonrandomized studies in which high levels of educational attainment have been shown to directly improve health status.

“Some have questioned whether education leads to reductions in behavioral risk factors, arguing that most people are aware that risky behaviors are bad for their health, and that higher educational attainment as well as better health can be attributed to other factors. Our findings challenge such theories.”

Initiated in 1962, data from “Effects of a Prekindergarten Educational Intervention on Adult Health: 37-Year Follow-Up Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial,” is based on a study of 123 preschool-aged (3 or 4 years) children in the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program, who were recruited from low-income, predominantly African American neighborhoods in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Source: Columbia University

A new study has found that overweight children, especially girls, show signs of the negative consequences of being overweight as early as kindergarten.

“We found that both boys and girls who were overweight from kindergarten through third grade displayed more depression, anxiety and loneliness than kids who were never overweight, and those negative feelings worsened over time,” said Sara Gable, associate professor of human development and family studies in the College of Human Environmental Sciences at the University of Missouri.

“Overweight is widely considered a stigmatizing condition and overweight individuals are typically blamed for their situation. The experience of being stigmatized often leads to negative feelings, even in children.”

MU researchers used the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) to examine the social and behavioral development of 8,000 school-age children from kindergarten entry through third grade. The researchers evaluated factors that have not been studied previously: age at becoming overweight and length of time being overweight.

“Girls who were consistently overweight, from kindergarten through third grade, and girls who were approaching being overweight were viewed less favorably than girls who were never overweight,” said Gable, an MU State Extension Specialist.

“Teachers reported that these girls had less positive social relations and displayed less self-control and more acting out than never-overweight girls.”

The results indicate that larger than average children, especially girls, experience social and behavioral challenges before they reach the 95th percentile of the Body Mass Index and are classified as being overweight. More research is needed to develop alternative approaches for categorizing children’s weight and creating effective intervention programs, Gable said.

“Most appearance-based social pressure likely originates in the eye of the beholder,” Gable said.

“Therefore, intervention and prevention efforts should be designed for everyone. All kids should learn what constitutes a healthy weight and healthy lifestyle.”

MU researchers will continue to use the ECLS-K to study the implications of being overweight for children’s development.

The study, “Implications of Overweight Onset and Persistence for Social and Behavioral Development between Kindergarten Entry and Third Grade,” was published in Applied Developmental Science, and was funded by the United States Department of Agriculture, Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Programs.

Source: University of Missouri

A new study suggests that postpartum depression may aggravate an already impaired sleep quality.

The findings, published in the July 1 issue of the journal SLEEP note that experiencing difficulties with sleep is a symptom of depression.

Twenty-one percent of depressed postpartum women included in the study reported having also been depressed during pregnancy and 46 percent reported at least one previous depressive episode prior to conception, suggesting that new mothers diagnosed with postpartum depression are not merely reporting symptoms of chronic sleep deprivation.

Results indicate that two months after delivery, poor sleep was associated with depression when adjusted for other significant risk factors, such as poor partner relationship, previous depression, depression during pregnancy and stressful life events.

Sleep disturbances and subjective sleep quality were the aspects of sleep most strongly associated with depression. Overall, nearly 60 percent of the postpartum women experienced poor global sleep quality, and 16.5 percent had depressive symptoms.

According to lead author Karen Dørheim, MD, PhD, psychiatrist at Stavanger University Hospital in Norway, depression after delivery is often not identified by new mothers, whereas tiredness and lack of sleep are common complaints. These symptoms may be attributed to poor sleep, but the tiredness could also be caused by depression.

“It is important to ask a new mother suffering from tiredness about how poor sleep affects her daytime functioning and whether there are other factors in her life that may contribute to her lack of energy,” said Dørhei.

“There are also helpful depression screening questionnaires that can be completed during a consultation. Doctors and other health workers should provide an opportunity for postpartum women to discuss difficult feelings.”

Data were collected between October 2005 and September 2006 from 2,830 women who gave birth to a live child at Stavanger University Hospital in Norway. Sleep was measured using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and depressive symptoms using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS).

The mean self-reported nightly sleep duration was 6.5 hours, and sleep efficiency was 73 percent. The mean age of the mothers at the time of reply was 30 years, and the mean age of the infants was 8.4 weeks.

Depression, previous sleep problems, being a first time mother, not exclusively breastfeeding or having a younger or male infant were factors associated with poor postpartum sleep quality. Better maternal sleep was associated with the baby sleeping in a different room.

According to authors, the first three months after delivery are characterized by continually changing sleep parameters. Women who are tired during this period may attribute this to poor sleep, but the tiredness could alternatively be caused by depression; thus talking about sleep problems may provide an entry point for also discussing the woman’s overall well-being.

Individual women may react differently to shorter sleep duration and lower sleep efficiency during the postpartum period, and that the sleep of women with a history of depression may be more sensitive to the psychobiological (hormonal, immunological, psychological and social) changes associated with childbirth.

Source: American Academy of Slep Medicine

Snacking is believed to be a major factor in the obesity crisis with children often a key target.

The research appears in the July issue of the journal Health Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

In one experiment, seven- to 11-year-old children who watched a cartoon that included food commercials ate 45 percent more snack food while watching the show than children who watched the same cartoon with non-food commercials.

From only a half hour of television viewing a day, the increase in snacking caused by food advertising would lead to a weight gain of nearly 10 pounds a year, unless mitigated by reduced consumption of other foods or increased physical activity.

In a second experiment, the researchers found that adult participants exposed to unhealthy food advertisements in TV programming also ate significantly more than those who saw ads with a nutrition or healthy food message. Additionally, these effects persisted after the television viewing.

In the experiments with both children and adults, food advertising increased eating for all available foods, even foods that were not specifically presented in the advertisements.

“This research shows a direct and powerful link between television food advertising and calories consumed by adults and children,” said lead author Jennifer Harris, PhD, Director of Marketing Initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale.

“Food advertising triggers automatic eating, regardless of hunger, and is a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic. Reducing unhealthy food advertising to children is critical.”

Source: Yale University

The effects of each of these genetic changes, innocuous on its own, add up to a significant risk for developing both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

The finding, published online July 1, 2009, in the journal Nature, suggests that schizophrenia is much more complex than previously thought, and can arise not only from both rare genetic variants but also from a significant number of common ones.

“This is an enormous first for our field,” said co-author Patrick Sullivan, M.D., Ray M. Hayworth and Family Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry in the department of genetics at the UNC School of Medicine.

“You could say that we now have the outline of the puzzle, and we just need to take all of these pieces that we have identified and see how they fit them together.”

Schizophrenia is a chronic and often devastating mental illness that affects one person in every 100 in the course of their lives. Scientists have long recognized that the disease – which can run in families –has a strong genetic component.

However, only recently have they begun to pinpoint the exact spots in our genetic material that contribute to the illness. Last year, the International Schizophrenia Consortium found that rare chromosomal structural variants elevate the risk of developing schizophrenia.

In this study, Sullivan and other investigators in the Consortium used “genechip” technology to identify 30,000 genetic variants (single nucleotide polymorphisms or “SNPs”) that were more common in 3,000 individuals with schizophrenia than in 3,000 comparison subjects without schizophrenia.

This pattern was found in three separate samples of individuals with schizophrenia and two samples with bipolar disorder – indicating a previously unrecognized overlap between the two diseases. These risk variants were not present in patients with other non-psychiatric diseases, such as hypertension or diabetes.

Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder share genetic roots that appear to be specific to serious mental disorders, and are not shared by non-psychiatric illnesses. Bars representing different study samples show that the same genetic variations that account for risk in both mental disorders account for virtually none of the risk for coronary artery disease (CAD), Crohn’s disease (CD), hypertension (HT), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), or Type 1 (T1D) or Type 2 (T2D) diabetes.

“While our study finds a surprising number of genetic effects, we fully expect that future work will assemble them into meaningful pathways that will teach us about the biology of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,” says senior author Pamela Sklar, MD, PhD, associate director of the Department of Psychiatry and Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and a senior associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

The researchers are also investigating how genes and environment interact to cause the disease. One additional finding of their study was the identification of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) locus as a possible risk factor.

Because this region plays an important role in immune response to infection, it could suggest that exposure to an infectious agent increases risk of developing psychiatric disease.

Genetic Details of the Findings

Three schizophrenia genetics research consortia reported separately on their genome-wide association studies. However, the SGENE, International Schizophrenia (ISC) and Molecular Genetics of Schizophrenia (MGS) consortia shared their results — making possible meta-analyses of a combined sample totaling 8,014 cases and 19,090 controls.

All three studies implicate an area of Chromosome 6 (6p22.1), which is known to harbor genes involved in immunity and controlling how and when genes turn on and off. This hotspot of association might help to explain how environmental factors affect risk for schizophrenia. For example, there are hints of autoimmune involvement in schizophrenia, such as evidence that offspring of mothers with influenza while pregnant have a higher risk of developing the illness.

Among sites showing the strongest associations with schizophrenia was a suspect area on Chromosome 22 and more than 450 variations in the suspect area on Chromosome 6. Statistical simulations confirmed that the findings could not have been accounted for by a handful of common gene variants with large effect or just rare variants. This involvement of many common gene variants suggests that schizophrenia in different people might ultimately be traceable to distinct disease processes, say the researchers.

Still, most of the genetic contribution to schizophrenia, which is estimated to be at least 70 percent heritable, remains unknown.

The MGS consortium pinpointed an association between schizophrenia and genes in the Chromosome 6 region that code for cellular components that control when genes turn on and off. For example, one of the strongest associations was seen in the vicinity of genes for proteins called histones that slap a molecular clamp on a gene’s turning on in response to the environment. Genetically rooted variation in the functioning of such regulatory mechanisms could help to explain the environmental component repeatedly implicated in schizophrenia risk.

The MGS study also found an association between schizophrenia and a genetic variation on Chromosome 1 (1p22.1) which has been implicated in multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disorder.

The SGENE consortium study pinpointed a site of variation in the suspect Chromosome 6 region that could implicate processes related to immunity and infection. It also found significant evidence of association with variation on Chromosomes 11 and 18 that could help account for the thinking and memory deficits of schizophrenia.

Source: University of North Carolina

A new grant from the National Institute on Aging will study the effects of caregiving on familial caregivers.

Steven Zarit, a Penn State professor and department chair will look at people who care for family members with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. His study will focus on how adult day care impacts the stress levels of all individuals involved.

People with dementia experience progressive memory loss, which can lead them to act out in ways that are not always easy to handle. They may try to leave the house, struggle with dressing, reject help and become agitated.

This erratic behavior requires constant surveillance and any lapses in vigilance could lead to danger.

Trained professionals are more prepared to deal with these types of behaviors and often experience less stress than family members.

“Using adult day care can reduce stress for family members by lifting the burden of responsibility from them for a few hours,” said Zarit. “At the same time, day care provides stimulating activities that promote sleep and well-being in those being cared for.”

Zarit will interview and collect saliva samples from caregivers on eight consecutive days to test both self-perceptions of stress and physiological stress. Because adult day care is typically used only three or four days a week, he will be able to assess how stress levels fluctuate when day care is used or not used.

“In many studies that test stress in individuals, the subjects might only have one day that they experience high stress,” said Zarit.

“In this experiment, though, participants will experience several days of high stress. This should give us a better understanding of the mechanism through which stress affects our health and it will be able to tell us what happens physiologically when someone reports having a good or bad day.”

Through his research, Zarit will be able to assess whether or not using day care truly improves the health of people suffering from dementia and their family members. He will work with 180 participants over three years, primarily with adult day care centers in New Jersey, which are known for providing excellent day care service.

Source: Penn State

The warning highlights the increased risk of serious mental health concerns — including changes in behavior, depressed mood, hostility, and suicidal thoughts.

“The risk of serious adverse events while taking these products must be weighed against the significant health benefits of quitting smoking,” said Janet Woodcock, M.D., director, the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

“Smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States and we know these products are effective aids in helping people quit.”

Similar information on mental health events will be required for buproprion marketed as the antidepressant Wellbutrin and for generic versions of buproprion. These drugs already carry a Boxed Warning for suicidal behavior in treating psychiatric disorders.

Woodcock said health care professionals who prescribe Chantix and Zyban should monitor their patients for any unusual changes in mood or behavior after starting these drugs. She added that patients should immediately contact their health care professional if they experience such changes.

The FDA’s request for the additional warnings is based on a review of reports submitted to the agency’s Adverse Event Reporting System since the time the products were marketed and on an analysis of information from clinical trials and scientific literature.

The analyses revealed that some who have taken Chantix and Zyban have reported experiencing unusual changes in behavior, become depressed, or had their depression worsen, and had thoughts of suicide or dying. In many cases, the problems began shortly after starting the medication and ended when the medication was stopped. However, some people continued to have symptoms after stopping the medication. Also, in a few cases, the problems began after the medication was stopped.

Neither Chantix nor Zyban contain nicotine and some of these symptoms may be a response to nicotine withdrawal. People who stop smoking may experience symptoms such as depression, anxiety, irritability, restlessness, and sleep disturbances.

However, some patients who were using these products experienced the reported adverse events while they were still smoking.

In addition to the Boxed Warning, the FDA also is requesting more information in the Warnings section of the prescribing information and updated information in the Medication Guide for patients that further discuss the risk of mental health events when using these products.

Manufacturers also will be required to conduct a clinical trial to determine how often serious neuropsychiatric symptoms occur in patients using various smoking cessation therapies, including patients who currently have psychiatric disorders. The FDA’s review of adverse events for patients using nicotine patches did not identify a clear link between those medications and suicidal events.

Chantix is manufactured by New York-based Pfizer Inc. Zyban is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, Brentford, Middlesex, United Kingdom.

Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration

The test helps to understand how Parkinson’s disease can alter people’s ability to learn about the consequences of the choices they make.

Test developer Dr. Mark Gluck found that nonmedicated patients in the early stages of Parkinson’s were selectively impaired at learning from reward. His findings will be published in the journal Brain.

“What we are seeing in recently diagnosed patients is that prior to being put on any medications, they exhibit a selective impairment in their ability to learn from positive (rewarding) outcomes while their sensitivity to learning from negative (or punishing) outcomes is normal,” says Gluck, director of Rutgers’ Center for Collaborative Research on Cognition and Parkinson’s Disease.

This selective deficit in learning from reward is not surprising, says Gluck, because scientists have long known that dopamine is used to carry reward information throughout the brain. Parkinson’s patients, however, have lost most of their dopamine-producing cells by the time they are first diagnosed with the disease.

This decrease in their ability to process rewarding outcomes could be one reason why many Parkinson’s patients experience depression, says Gluck. “It’s not just that they have an awful disease, but they have lost the ability to process the rewarding aspects of life.”

Gluck and colleagues found that this reward-learning deficit in unmedicated Parkinson’s patients is in direct contrast to what is seen in patients once they begin treatment with dopamine agonists, a standard therapy for treating the disease’s motor symptoms.

On dopamine agonists, a patient’s ability to learn from positive rewarding outcomes improved to normal levels. But there was a catch – their ability to learn from negative (or punishing) outcomes, which had previously been normal, was now impaired.

Gluck explains that an increased sensitivity to learning from events that results in positive outcomes, coupled with a decrease in the ability to learn from negative outcomes, could explain why some Parkinson patients treated with dopamine agonists develop impulse-control disorders, including pathological gambling, hypersexuality, alcoholism, and compulsive eating and shopping.

All of these behaviors can be understood as reward-seeking behaviors in the absence of appropriate sensitivity to their negative consequences.

“For example,” notes Gluck, “if your ability to learn from negative outcomes is reduced and you play the slot machines and win $10 for a few rounds but lose many more times in between, what you may recall best is the thrill of winning. As such, you will be hampered in your ability to learn that gambling can also have negative consequences.”

The ability to test the effects on feedback learning in early onset Parkinson’s disease could provide additional insight into the impact of dopamine loss on cognition and behavior. It also could pave the way for identifying which Parkinson’s patients are most likely to experience agonist-related feedback problems so they can be treated with alternate medications.

Source: Rutgers

In contrast, stressed women moderate their behavior and may be less likely to make risky choices, the study found.

“Evolutionarily speaking, it’s perhaps more beneficial for men to be aggressive in stressful, high-arousal situations when risk and reward are involved,” said Nichole Lighthall of the University of Southern California Davis School of Gerontology and lead author of the paper.

“Applied to financial risk taking, it’s akin to competition for territory or other valuable resources.”

The researchers asked participants to play a game called the Balloon Analogue Risk Task in which inflating a balloon earns money (five cents per pump). Participants were told that they could cash out their earnings by clicking a “Collect $$$” button at any point in the game.

However, the balloon would explode if it was inflated beyond its randomly determined breakpoint. All winnings for exploded balloons would be lost.

“One valuable aspect of the [balloon task] is its predictive validity for real-world impulsivity,” Lighthall explained.

“Some risk taking was necessary to make gains, but excessive risk was associated with diminishing returns. If you always clicked and never cashed out, you would lose every time.”

The balloon task has been previously used to assess tolerance for risky behavior among inner-city adolescents and substance abusers, among others.

“Obviously, there are situations in the real world where risky behavior would not be beneficial,” Lighthall said. “Sometimes being conservative, thoughtful and taking it slow are good things.”

In the control group, men and women displayed statistically similar levels of risk taking, inflating the balloon about 40 times on average.

However, women in the stressed group only inflated the balloon an average of 32 times – more than 30 percent less often than their stressed male counterparts, who inflated the balloon an average of 48 times.

“Men seem to enter more risky financial situations than women, which was part of the impetus for our study,” Lighthall said. “But only in the stressed condition did we see any statistical differences in risky behavior between men and women.”

Stressful experiences have been shown to stimulate the release of cortisol, commonly known as the “stress hormone.”

Participants randomly assigned to the stress group held a hand in ice-cold water, which raised cortisol levels, particularly among female participants. No participants were using hormonal birth control.

According to Lighthall, future research might use neuroimaging to explore how the brain processes stress or examine whether psychological stress, such as anticipating giving a speech, would yield similar results as the physical stress manipulation used in this study.

The findings will be published July 1 in the journal PLoS One.

Source: USC

Lead investigator Iris Borowsky, M.D., Ph.D. of the University of Minnesota Medical School and colleagues analyzed data collected by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationally representative sample of more than 20,000 youth in grades 7 through 12 during three separate study years.

In the first set of interviews, nearly 15 percent of adolescents predicted they had a 50/50 chance or less of living to age 35. Those who engaged in risky behaviors such as illicit drug use, suicide attempts, fighting, or unsafe sexual activity in the first year were more likely in subsequent years to believe they would die at a young age.

Those who predicted that they’d die young during the first interview were more likely in later years to begin engaging in these same risky behaviors and have poor health outcomes. Notably, these teens were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with HIV/AIDS just six years later, regardless of their sexual preference.

“While conventional wisdom says that teens engage in risky behaviors because they feel invulnerable to harm, this study suggests that in some cases, teens take risks because they overestimate their vulnerability, specifically their risk of dying,” Borowsky said.

“These youth may take risks because they feel hopeless and figure that not much is at stake.”

Nearly 25 percent of youth living in households that receive public assistance and more than 29 percent of American-Indian, 26 percent of African-American, 21 percent of Hispanic, and 15 percent of Asian youth reported believing they would die young—compared to just 10 percent of their Caucasian peers.

“Our findings reinforce the importance of instilling a sense of hope and optimism in youth,” Borowsky said. “Strong connections with parents, families, and schools, as well as positive media messages, are likely important factors in developing an optimistic outlook for young people.”

She also notes that study findings support physician screening of adolescents for this perceived risk of early death. “This unusually common pessimistic view of the future is a powerful marker for high-risk status and thus deserves attention.”

There was no significant relationship between perceived risk of dying before age 35 and actual death from all causes during the six year study period.

Source: University of Minnesota

The recent study of nearly, 4,430 infants showed that only a small percentage — 2.5 percent — of the infants showed signs of excessive crying at 2 months of age. Excessive crying was defined as crying more than 3 hours a day, and more than 3 days a week. Colicky babies usually get better on their own without any type of intervention before 6 months of age.

In the group of infants who cried excessively, 30% of their parents showed signs of depression.

After taking into account the mother’s depressive symptoms and other factors — such as the child’s gestational age, multiple births and family income — researchers in the new study reported a 1.29 times higher risk of excessive infant crying for fathers who reported being depressed during their wife’s pregnancy.

“Our findings indicate that paternal depressive symptoms during pregnancy might be a risk factor for excessive infant crying,” noted Mijke van den Berg, the lead author and a child psychiatrist at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands.

“Although our findings are subject to some limitations and need to be replicated, they emphasize the importance of taking paternal factors into account when studying early infant behavior such as excessive crying.” A father’s depression is important to take into account even during the mother’s pregnancy.

The researchers could not pinpoint why a father’s depression might be linked to a baby’s colic behavior, but suggested it might be related to a lack of quality interactions between the baby and their father, genetics, and stress from work, family or financial issues.

The report is published in the July issue of Pediatrics.

Source: Pediatrics

But does having a major clinical depressive episode — or the drugs used to treat depression, called antidepressants — increase the risk of becoming obese?

Researchers looked at data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey (NPHS), a longitudinal study over 10 years of a representative sample of household residents in Canada.

The incidence of obesity, defined as a body mass index (BMI) of 30, was evaluated in respondents who were 18 years or older at the time of a baseline interview in 1994. Major depression was assessed using a brief diagnostic instrument.

The researchers found that the risk of obesity was not increased in association with being diagnosed with a major clinical depressive episode.

The strongest predictor of obesity was a BMI in the overweight (but not obese) range. Effects were also seen for (younger) age, (female) sex, a sedentary activity pattern, low income and exposure to antidepressant medications.

Unexpectedly, the researchers found significant effects for a specific type of newer antidepressant medications — serotonin-reuptake-inhibiting antidepressants (SSRIs) and venlafaxine. The researchers did not find any significant effects for older tricyclic antidepressants nor antipsychotic medications.

The researchers concluded that clinical depression in itself does not appear to increase the risk of obesity.

The previous cross-sectional associations that have been reported in the research literature probably represent an effect of obesity on depression risk, said the researchers. Treatment of depression with antidepressants medications may be associated with an increased risk of obesity, and strategies to offset this risk may be useful in clinical practice.

Source: Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics

In the report published online by the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, University of California at Davis researchers warn recovering substance abusers, their families and drug-treatment specialists that it can take an extended period of time for the brain functions critical to recovery to improve.

“Recovery from meth abuse does not happen overnight,” said Ruth Salo, lead author of the study and a UC-Davis assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

“It may take a year — or even longer — for cognitive processes such as impulse control and attentional focus to improve. Treatment programs need to consider this when monitoring recovering addicts’ progress during their early periods of abstinence.”

Salo specializes in the behavioral, neuropsychiatric and cognitive outcomes of methamphetamine addiction — a particularly difficult condition to treat, primarily due to prolonged, intense cravings for the drug. During her career, she has worked with hundreds of methamphetamine addicts.

“All of them want to know if there is hope,” Salo said.

“We used to think most, if not all, effects of meth addiction were permanent. This study adds to the growing evidence that this assumption is not true. I can confidently tell patients that the longer they stay in a structured rehabilitation program and remain drug free, the more likely it is that they will recover some important brain functions.”

For the current study, Salo used the widely-validated, computer-based Stroop attention test to measure the abilities of 65 recovering methamphetamine abusers to use cognitive control — or direct their attention to specific tasks while ignoring distractors.

Study participants had been abstinent for a minimum of three weeks and a maximum of 10 years, and they had previously used the drug for periods ranging from 24 months to 28 years. The data for the 65 individuals were compared to Stroop attention test data from 33 participants who had never used methamphetamine.

“The test taps into something people do in everyday life: make choices in the face of conflicting impulses that can promote a strong but detrimental tendency,” Salo explained.

“For meth users, impairments in this decision-making ability might make them more likely to spend a paycheck on the immediate satisfaction of getting high rather than on the longer-term satisfaction gained by paying rent or buying groceries.”

The study analyzed cognitive control in terms of the amount of time since methamphetamine was last used as well as total time spent using the drug. The researchers found that those who were recently abstinent (three weeks to six months) performed significantly worse on the Stroop test than those who had been abstinent one year or longer.

In addition, there was no statistical difference between test results for those abstinent at least one year and non-drug using controls. Longer-term methamphetamine use was associated with worse test scores. Similarly, longer-term abstinence was connected to improved test performance.

According to Salo, the new study mirrors previous magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies she and her colleagues published in 2005 showing a partial normalization of chemicals in selected brain regions after one year of methamphetamine abstinence.

“Together, the studies provide strong evidence that, eventually, meth abusers in recovery may be able to make better decisions and regain the impulse control that was lost during their drug use period,” she said.

Salo said that more research is needed to determine just how the brain recovers from methamphetamine addiction and if behavioral treatments can hasten that recovery. She plans to continue neuroimaging studies to further define the brain functions affected by the drug. Her ultimate goal is to provide information essential to refining treatment programs for this population of drug users.

“Meth use worldwide is pandemic,” she said, referring to the estimated 35 million people who have used the neurotoxic stimulant or similar drugs. “Recovery is difficult, but possible. The point of my research is to better understand the neural and behavioral consequences of this toxic drug along with the brain and behavior changes that are possible with long-term abstinence.”

The research was supported by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Source: University of California - Davis