Drug abuse

TUESDAY, Sept. 17, 2024 -- Deprivation, neglect and abuse during childhood can increase a person’s long-term risk of health problems, a new study warns. “ Stress is implicated in nine of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States today,” said senior researcher Dr. George Slavich , director of the UCLA Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research. “It’s about time we take that statistic seriously and begin screening for stress in all pediatric and adult clinics nationwide.” For the study, published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity , researchers analyzed data on more than 2,100 participants in a long-range study funded by the National Institute on Aging. The team looked at different childhood traumas reported by the participants -- financial distress, abuse, neglect, frequent moves, living apart from parents and receiving welfare. The participants also provided samples that allowed researchers to calculate 25 different disease biomarkers, and said whether they’d been diagnosed with 20 different major health conditions. Results showed that the risk of health problems in men and women increased with the amount of childhood stress they endured. Researchers also found that the effects of stress differed between men and women. Childhood stress tended to have greater effects on the metabolism of women than men, results show. On the other hand, emotional abuse and neglect appear to have greater health effects on men than women when it comes to blood disorders, mental and behavioral health issues, and thyroid problems. The findings underscore the need to integrate stress history into a person’s medical record, to better track their future risk of health problems, Slavich said. “Most people who have experienced significant stress or early-life trauma never get assessed,” Slavich said in a UCLA news release. “These findings highlight the critical importance of screening for stress in clinical settings. They also move us beyond a one-size-fits-all approach and toward a precision medicine approach based on patients’ sex and specific stress profile.” Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.

August 14, 2024 -- Researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Clinical Center and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute have developed and tested a new imaging method that will allow specific detection of Aspergillus fumigatus fungal infections in a timely manner in the future, without the need for invasive procedures. Delays in diagnosing fungal infections caused by Aspergillus and other fungi can put immunocompromised patients at risk for more serious illnesses or even death. Due to their presence in the environment, many fungi evolved to use other sources of fuel besides glucose, such as by breaking down complex sugars into simple ones to produce energy. Aspergillus can break down a specific sugar, cellobiose, into two glucose molecules, while most other microbes and human cells cannot. The researchers developed a radioactive version of cellobiose which when injected in the blood, it can be visualized in the body using positron emission tomography (PET) scanners. In this study, radioactive cellobiose ([ 18 F]-Fluorocellobiose, [ 18 F]-FCB) was injected in mice with fungal infections which were then imaged using a specialized PET scanner for small animals. The mice showed accumulation of radioactivity, while mice with bacterial infections or with noninfectious inflammation did not. Researchers also found that the same radioactive tracer, [ 18 F]-FCB, can determine if the mice with fungal infections are responding to treatment through PET images taken before and after starting treatment. The study was funded by the Center for Infectious Disease Imaging (CIDI), a joint initiative between Radiology and Imaging Sciences (RIS) at the NIH Clinical Center and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in collaboration with the Chemistry and Synthesis Center (CSC) at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Dima A. Hammoud, M.D., Tenured Senior Investigator, NIH Clinical Center Dima A. Hammoud, MD, et al. Development and preclinical validation of 2-Deoxy 2-[18F] Fluorocellobiose as an Aspergillus-specific PET tracer. Science Translational Medicine. August 14, 2024. DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adl5934 . About the NIH Clinical Center (CC): The NIH Clinical Center is the world’s largest hospital entirely devoted to clinical research. It is a national resource that makes it possible to rapidly translate scientific observations and laboratory discoveries into new approaches for diagnosing, treating, and preventing disease. Over 1,600 clinical research studies are conducted at the NIH Clinical Center, including those focused on cancer, infectious diseases, blood disorders, heart disease, lung disease, alcoholism and drug abuse. For more information about the Clinical Center, visit www.cc.nih.gov. About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov . Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 7, 2024 -- Remember your besties from high school? Sure, they made a lasting impression, but science suggests they influenced the trajectory of your health, too. It's not that far-fetched: Your friends carry genes that may or may nor predispose them to mental health issues ranging from addiction to anxiety and depression . That can influence the mental health of the people in their friend circle, according to researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “Peers’ genetic predispositions for psychiatric and substance use disorders are associated with an individual's own risk of developing the same disorders in young adulthood,” said study lead author Jessica Salvatore . “What our data exemplifies is the long reach of social genetic effects,” she said in a Rutgers news release. Salvatore is an associate professor of psychiatry at the university. It's a relatively new field of research called socio-genomics: How one person's genetic makeup ("genotype") can influence a wider network of people. Just how powerful is the socio-genomic effect? To find out, Salvatore's group looked at Swedish data on over 1.5 million individuals born in Sweden between 1980 and 1998. They then pinpointed exactly where everyone went to school in their teen years. That was followed up by a deep dive into local medical, pharmacy and legal registries that documented any history of substance use and mental health disorders for the same individuals in adulthood. Sophisticated computer modeling was then used to assess whether the genetic predispositions of a person's peer group was associated with aspects of that person's mental health. The result: Clear links were seen between a close friend's genetic predispositions and an individuals’ likelihood of developing a substance use or psychiatric disorder, the team reported. The effects were stronger between people who went to school together versus simply growing up in the same locale, Salvatore's group added. The researchers could even pinpoint which years were most crucial to the effect: A period between the ages of 16 and 19 for kids engaged in the same vocational or college-preparatory track in high school. For school-based peers, the genetic effect was especially strong for drug and alcohol use disorders, the study found. The findings were published Aug. 7 in the American Journal of Psychiatry . According to Salvatore, tackling problems like drug abuse, anxiety and depression in youth may mean widening the focus beyond one individual. “If we want to think about how to best address these socially costly disorders, we need to think more about network-based and social interventions,” she said. “It’s not enough to think about individual risk.” Salvatore stressed that the effects can last long after graduation day. "Peer genetic influences have a very long reach,” she said. Whatever your topic of interest, subscribe to our newsletters to get the best of Drugs.com in your inbox.