Tuesday, July 26, 2005

New FDA-Approved Device Offers Hope to Depressed Patients Medical News Today story - "The Saint Louis University Health Sciences Center medical team involved in the research and development of an innovative therapy for depression - vagal nerve stimulation (VNS) - is starting a new clinic for patients who have treatment-resistant depression. The vagal nerve stimulator was approved Friday by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment-resistant depression following clinical trials around the United States, including Saint Louis University."  
  

Quetiapine Seen Safe, Well Tolerated for Bipolar Depression Reuters Health story at Medscape - "Monotherapy with the atypical antipsychotic quetiapine is safe and effective for bipolar depression, according to a report in the July issue the American Journal of Psychiatry. ... 'In an unexpected post hoc analysis, quetiapine was found to be twice as effective as placebo in reducing suicidal thinking, and this improvement was evident as early as the first time point, the end of the first week, and at each and every time point thereafter,' Dr. Calabrese told Reuters Health. 'To my knowledge this is the first time any drug has been shown to have an ability to reduce suicidal thinking in a short-term study of bipolar depression.' " [Viewing Medscape resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Neuroscientists identify how trauma triggers long-lasting memories in the brain  University of California - Irvine press release at EurekAlert - "A research team led by UC Irvine neuroscientists has identified how the brain processes and stores emotional experiences as long-term memories. The research, performed on rats, could help neuroscientists better understand why emotionally arousing events are remembered over longer periods than emotionally neutral events, and may ultimately find application in treatments for conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. The study shows that emotionally arousing events activate the brain's amygdala, the almond-shaped portion of the brain involved in emotional learning and memory, which then increases a protein called 'Arc' in the neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in processing and enabling the storage of lasting memories. The researchers believe that Arc helps store these memories by strengthening the synapses, the connections between neurons. The study will appear in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "