Behavioral health

Addiction, the continuous misuse of addictive material, causes long-term dysfunction in the neurological system. It substantially affects the control strength of reward, memory, and motivation. Addictive substances (alcohol, marijuana, caffeine, heroin, methamphetamine (METH), and nicotine) are highly active central nervous stimulants. Addiction leads to severe health issues, including cardiovascular diseases, serious infections, and pulmonary/dental diseases. Drug dependence may result in unfavorable cognitive impairments that can continue during abstinence and negatively influence recovery performance...

INTRODUCTION: Methamphetamine (MA) use disorder is an important public health concern. MA withdrawal is often the first step in ceasing or reducing use. There are no evidence-based withdrawal treatments, and no medication is approved for the treatment of MA withdrawal. Lisdexamfetamine (LDX) dimesilate, used in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and binge eating disorder has the potential as an agonist therapy to ameliorate withdrawal symptoms, and improve outcomes for patients...

This study underlines the importance of cinnamon, a commonly used natural spice and flavoring material, and its metabolite sodium benzoate (NaB) in attenuating oxidative stress and protecting memory and learning in an animal model of Alzheimer's disease (AD). NaB, but not sodium formate, was found to inhibit LPS-induced production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in mouse microglial cells. Similarly, NaB also inhibited fibrillar amyloid beta (Aβ)- and 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium(+)-induced microglial production of ROS...

Studies have demonstrated the beneficial therapeutic effects of sarcosine, benzoate, and ketamine (including esketamine and arketamine) on depression. These drugs mainly act by modulating N-methyl-d-aspartate glutamate receptors (NMDARs) and reducing inflammation in the brain. Although ketamine, benzoate, and sarcosine act differently as the antagonists or coagonists of NMDARs, they all have demonstrated efficacy in animal models or human trials. In vitro and in vivo studies have indicated that sarcosine, benzoate, and ketamine exert their anti-inflammatory effects by inhibiting microglial activity...

Advancing age is recognized as the primary risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD); however approximately one third of dementia cases are attributable to modifiable risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, smoking, and obesity. Recent research also implicates oral health and the oral microbiome in AD risk and pathophysiology. The oral microbiome contributes to the cerebrovascular and neurodegenerative pathology of AD via the inflammatory, vascular, neurotoxic, and oxidative stress pathways of known modifiable risk factors...

OBJECTIVES: This study investigated the therapeutic effect of red hot pepper ( Capsicum annuum) methanolic extract in induced Alzheimer's disease using AlCl3 in male rats. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Rats were injected with AlCl3 intraperitoneally (IP) daily for two months. Starting from the 2nd month of AlCl3 , rats received, in addition, IP treatments with Capsicum extract (25 and 50 mg/kg) or saline. Other groups received only saline or Capsicum extract at 50 mg/kg for two months...

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) belongs to the family of neurotrophins, which are growth factors with trophic effects on neurons. BDNF is the most widely distributed neurotrophin in the central nervous system (CNS) and is highly expressed in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus. Its distribution outside the CNS has also been demonstrated, but most studies have focused on its effects in neuropsychiatric disorders. Despite the advances in medicine in recent decades, neurological and psychiatric diseases are still characterized by high drug resistance...

The psychosomatic interview is a patient-focused dialogue between physician and patient. It differs from the traditional disease-focused encounter in that the psychosomatic approach includes the biological, psychological, and sociocultural domains irrespective of the patients initial complaint, whether somatic or psychological. The process of dyadic interaction and the techniques of open questions are reviewed. Specific issues such as the alexithymic patient and breaking bad news are challenges in such communications...

The notion that personality variables can affect vulnerability to specific diseases has been widely promoted in psychosomatic medicine. Over the time, some personality patterns have been extensively studied. Among them, alexithymia, type A, and type D personality are the most relevant. However, also temperament and character has increasingly been object of studies. Alexithymia is currently recognized as a risk factor for medical, psychiatric, or behavioral problems; type A personality is recognized to increase the risk for coronary artery disease, and type D personality has been related to adverse cardiac events and cardiovascular outcomes...

Psychodermatology is an underappreciated field that studies psychocutaneous disorders, which are conditions that have both dermatologic and psychiatric characteristics. Underlying psychiatric comorbidity is estimated to occur in up to one-third of dermatologic patients, and psychiatric illness may either be the cause or the consequence of dermatologic disease. Psychodermatologic patients lack insight and often do not recognize a psychiatric etiology for their symptoms and therefore comprise some of the most challenging cases to treat...

Orexin A and B, also known as hypocretin 1 and 2, are excitory neuropeptides synthesized in the perifornical and lateral hypothalamic areas. Following their discovery in 1998, orexins are now known to be involved in feeding, sleep, stress response, and reward processing. Most importantly, orexin deficiency has been linked to narcolepsy, a neurological sleep-wake disorder. Patients with narcolepsy also present overlapping symptoms with psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety and depressed mood, and even hallucinations, which often lead to misdiagnosis in the initial assessment...

Traditional clinical toxicology involves the analysis of patient urine samples by immunoassays designed to detect opiates/opioids, amphetamine/methamphetamine, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, cocaine metabolite and tetrahydrocannabinol. Expanded drug screens may also include assays for oxycodone, buprenorphine, methadone, 6-monoacetylmorphine, phencyclidine and fentanyl. Patient samples that are positive are commonly reflexed to be run on a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry confirmatory assay, as are samples that are negative for drugs that are prescribed to the patient...

BACKGROUND: Item specification is foundational to measurement development but rarely reported in depth. We address this gap by explicating our use of qualitative methods to ground and develop items for a new recovery capital measure, the Multidimensional Inventory of Recovery Capital. METHOD: We recruited a diverse sample of service providers ( n = 9) and people in recovery from alcohol problems ( n = 23) to provide feedback on an item pool assessing social, human, physical, community, and cultural capital...

BACKGROUND: Probiotics have shown potential antidepressant effects. This study evaluated the effect and probable mechanisms of bifid triple viable capsules (BTVCs) on a rat model of chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Rats were randomly divided into Normal, CUMS model, fluoxetine hydrochloride (FLX), BTVCs, and FLX+BTVCs groups. Depressive-like behaviours, pathological changes in the hippocampus, changes in serum metabolites and potential biomarkers, and metabolic pathways were detected via behavioural tests, haematoxylin-eosin staining, nissl staining, non-targetted metabolomics, and ingenuity pathway analysis (IPA)...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects millions of people worldwide. Growing evidence suggests that the gut microbiome (GM) plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of AD through the microbiota-gut-brain axis (MGB). Alterations in GM composition and diversity have been observed in both animal models and in human patients with AD. GM dysbiosis has been implicated in increased intestinal permeability, blood-brain barrier (BBB) impairment, neuroinflammation and the development of hallmarks of AD...

The factors determining a drug's success are manifold, making de novo drug design an inherently multi-objective optimisation (MOO) problem. With the advent of machine learning and optimisation methods, the field of multi-objective compound design has seen a rapid increase in developments and applications. Population-based metaheuris-tics and deep reinforcement learning are the most commonly used artificial intelligence methods in the field, but recently conditional learning methods are gaining popularity. The former approaches are coupled with a MOO strat-egy which is most commonly an aggregation function, but Pareto-based strategies are widespread too...

Optimization of the choice of neuroprotective therapy regimens in patients with cerebrovascular diseases (CVD), taking into account the synergism of drug interactions, is a basic approach in clinical practice. Unfortunately, modern pharmacology has no unified way of establishing synergistic spectra of drug actions, which would allow systematic investigation of the effects of combinations of drugs. An approach based on studying detailed mechanisms of action suggested combinations of drugs with the greatest possible synergism (by summation and potentiation of effects) for various directions in the treatment of neurological diseases...

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In this month's edition of our evidence-based clinical psychopharmacology journal club, Dr. Leslie Citrome will interview Dr. Sheldon Preskorn, lead author of a pivotal trial assessing the efficacy of sublingual dexmedetomidine for the treatment of acute agitation associated with bipolar disorder. This will be a live event at 11:30 AM EST on the 25th of January 2023, hosted by MedscapeLIVE! and QxMD, with opportunity for questions and interaction. Click the 'Full Text Web' button below to register. Pharmacological strategies to address agitation include a number of intramuscular agents...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder, comprising 70% of dementia diagnoses worldwide and affecting 1 in 9 people over the age of 65. However, the majority of its treatments, which predominantly target the cholinergic system, remain insufficient at reversing pathology and act simply to slow the inevitable progression of the disease. The most recent neurotransmitter-targeting drug for AD was approved in 2003, strongly suggesting that targeting neurotransmitter systems alone is unlikely to be sufficient, and that research into alternate treatment avenues is urgently required...