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"These findings are important because depression is common in patients with type 2 diabetes," said lead investigator Sirimon Reutrakul, M.D., an associate professor at Mahidol University Faculty of Medicine, Bangkok, Thailand. "Also, previous studies show that untreated depression is related to worse patient outcomes, including diabetes self-care, blood glucose control and diabetes complications." In the general public, people with a later "chronotype," meaning a preference to go to bed late and wake up late, tend to have more symptoms of depression than do people who go to bed early and wake up early (early chronotype or morning preference), past studies have found. Reutrakul and her co-investigators wanted to study people with type 2 diabetes, who have an increased risk of depression, to learn whether a late r chronotype , or preference for evening activity, was independently associated with greater depression symptoms. Because chronotype may diffe...

The study, "Sex-dependent effects of mild brain blast injury on neuroendocrine stress response," was funded by the Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine at USU. The findings will be presented at the upcoming Endocrine Society's annual meeting by lead author Ashley Russell, a Neuroscience PhD candidate in the F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine at USU, and USU research assistant Elizabeth Shupe. Almost every tissue in the body is affected by the interaction between the nervous and endocrine systems. They produce the hormones that regulate sleep, mood and metabolism. USU researchers, in collaboration with colleagues at C olorado State University, sought to better understand why it is that blast brain injuries have a different impact on women and men, specifically in the neuroendocrine system. They conducted hormonal, behavioral and anatomical studies measuring the integrity of the body's major neuroendocrine system, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HP...

About 1.5 million people are diagnosed with traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year. Blast injuries are particularly common in the military population. Between 15 percent and 30 percent of soldiers who experience a TBI are later diagnosed with neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Even though men are more likely to experience a TBI, women have an elevated risk of developing mental health disorders due to the injury. The study examined how blast injuries disrupt the stress axis, specifically the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, a signaling pathway involved in the body's stress response. The hormones produced by the glands in the stress axis affect parts of the brain involved in regulating fear and anxiety. "The study suggests that mild blast traumatic brain injuries dysregulate the neuroendocrine stress axis differently in women and men," said Ashley Russell, the first author and a Neuroscience Ph.D...

Genetics play a strong role in risk for depression, but the identification of specific genes contributing to the disorder has eluded researchers. "By sequencing all of the DNA that codes for mRNA and ultimately, proteins, Dr. Amin and colleagues found a single gene that may account for as much as 4% of the heritable risk for depression," said Doctor John Krystal, Editor of  Biological Psychiatry . To identify the gene, the researchers assessed data from the Erasmus Rucphen Family study, which was composed of a collection of families and their descendents living in social isolation until the past few decades. In a population like this, genetic isolation leads to an amplification of rarely occurring variants with little other genetic variation, providing a more powerful cohort for the discovery of rare variants. Nearly 2,000 people who had been assessed for depressive symptoms were included in the analysis. Using whole-exome sequencing to examine portions of DNA contain...

In fact, a recent study published in  PLOS One  indicates that only about half of scientific discoveries will be replicated and stand the test of time. So perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that new research led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that an influential 2003 study about the interaction of genes, environment and depression may have missed the mark. Since its publication in Science, that original paper has been cited by other researchers more than 4,000 times, and some 100 other studies have been published about links between a serotonin-related gene, stressful life events and depression risk. It indicated that people with a particular variant of the serotonin transporter gene were not as well-equipped to deal with stressful life events and, when encountering significant stress, were more likely to develop depression. Such conclusions were widely accepted, mainly because antidepressant drugs called selective serotonin reuptake...

Hallucinogens have many different effects on the psyche ; among other things, they alter perception, thought, and temporal and emotional experience. After the Basel-based chemist Albert Hofmann discovered lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in the 1940s, there was a huge amount of interest in the substance, particularly in psychiatry. It was hoped, for example, that it could provide insights into the development of hallucinations, and studies were conducted on its effectiveness on illnesses such as depression or alcohol dependency. In the 1960s, LSD was declared illegal worldwide, and medical research on it came to a standstill. In the last few years, however, interest in researching hallucinogens for medical purposes has been revived. Psychoactive substances such as LSD, particularly in combination with psychotherapies, could offer an alternative to conventional medication. It is now known that hallucinogens bind to a receptor of the neurotransmitter serotonin; how the changes of co...