mental disorders Archives - Amazing Health Advances

New Study Shows Bidirectional Link Between Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Depression

AHA Publisher — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 07:00:12 +0000

University of Southern California (USC) Health Sciences via Newswise – Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic condition involving inflammation of the digestive tract, affecting some 1.6 million Americans. Depression affects more than 16 million Americans. A new study from Keck Medicine of USC shows that patients diagnosed with IBD were nine times as likely to develop depression than the general population. In addition, their siblings who did not suffer from IBD were almost two times as likely to develop depression. Conversely, patients with depression were two times as likely to develop IBD, and their siblings without depression were more than one and a half times as likely to develop IBD. “This research reveals a clinical overlap between both conditions, and is the first study to investigate the two-way association between IBD and depression in siblings,” said Bing Zhang, MD, a gastroenterologist with Keck Medicine and co-lead author of the study. Zhang and his fellow researchers analyzed the data of more than 20 million people from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database, which contains comprehensive medical information on more than 99% of Taiwanese residents. For 11 years, they tracked patients with either IBD or depression and their siblings without either condition, comparing onset of depression or IBD with a control group of people without either condition, but with similar age, sex and socioeconomic status. Zhang hypothesizes that many factors may contribute to the bidirectional nature of the disorders, including environmental stressors, the gut microbiome (consisting of bacteria, fungi and viruses) and genetics. “The finding that people with IBD are more prone to depression makes sense because IBD causes constant gastrointestinal symptoms that can be very disruptive to a patient’s life,” he said. “And the elevated depression risk among siblings of IBD patients may reflect caregiver fatigue if the siblings have a role in caring for the patient.” What surprised researchers was that patients with depression were prone to IBD. Zhang speculates that this discovery may have to do with what is known as the gut-brain axis, a scientifically established connection between the gastrointestinal system and the central nervous system, which consists of the spinal cord and the brain. For example, he said, inflammation of the brain, which plays a role in depression, may be linked to the inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, a hallmark of IBD. The researchers are not sure why siblings of patients with depression are more likely to be diagnosed with IBD. Zhang surmises that there may be a shared genetic susceptibility for either disease that presents differently in family members. Zhang hopes that the study findings will encourage health care professionals to take both family history and the relationship between gastrointestinal and mood disorders into consideration when evaluating or treating patients with either IBD or depression. Through more research and better understanding of the gut-brain axis, he envisions leveraging the newfound connection between the conditions to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of IBD and mental disorders. The study was supported by grants from the Taipei Veterans General Hospital and the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan. To read the original article click here.

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Virtual Reality Environments Reveal Neural Signatures of Anxiety Disorders

AHA Publisher — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 08:00:22 +0000

University of Rochester Medical Center via News-Medical – Imagine you are in a meadow picking flowers. You know that some flowers are safe, while others have a bee inside that will sting you. How would you react to this environment and, more importantly, how would your brain react? This is the scene in a virtual-reality environment used by researchers to understand the impact anxiety has on the brain and how brain regions interact with one another to shape behavior. “These findings tell us that anxiety disorders might be more than a lack of awareness of the environment or ignorance of safety, but rather that individuals suffering from an anxiety disorder cannot control their feelings and behavior even if they wanted to,” said Benjamin Suarez-Jimenez, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester and first author of the study published in Communications Biology. “The patients with an anxiety disorder could rationally say – I’m in a safe space – but we found their brain was behaving as if it was not.” Watching Anxiety in the Brain Using fMRI, the researchers observed the brain activity of volunteers with general and social anxiety as they navigated a virtual reality game of picking flowers. Half of the meadow had flowers without bees, the other half had flowers with bees that would sting them – as simulated by a mild electrical stimulation to the hand. Researchers found all study participants could distinguish between the safe and dangerous areas, however, brain scans revealed volunteers with anxiety had increased insula and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex activation – indicating their brain was associating a known safe area to danger or threat. “This is the first time we’ve looked at discrimination learning in this way. We know what brain areas to look at, but this is the first time we show this concert of activity in such a complex ‘real-world-like’ environment. These findings point towards the need for treatments that focus on helping patients take back control of their body.” Benjamin Suarez-Jimenez, Ph.D., assistant professor, Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience, University of Rochester The brain differences were the only differences seen in these patients. For example, sweat responses, a proxy for anxiety, which was also measured, failed to reveal any clear differences. Suarez-Jimenez’s Research Understanding the neural mechanisms by which the brain learns about the environment is the focus of Suarez-Jimenez’s research, particularly how the brain predicts what is threatening and what is safe. He uses virtual reality environments to investigate neural signatures of anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). His goal is to understand how people build maps in the brain that are based on experience, and the role of those maps in psychopathologies of stress and anxiety. Expanding Research to Other Disorders “For next steps in this recent research, we still need to clarify if what we found in the brain of these patients is also the case in other disorders, such as PTSD. Understanding the differences and similarities across disorders characterized by deficits in behavioral regulation and feelings in safe environments, can help us create better personalized treatment options.” To read the original article click here.

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A Smartphone Technology to Diagnose Psychiatric Diseases

AHA Publisher — Fri, 23 Jul 2021 07:00:52 +0000

ISRAEL21c Staff via Israel21c – According to the World Health Organization, more than 300 million people worldwide suffer from diagnosable psychiatric disorders such as clinical depression or schizophrenia. But they can only be diagnosed based on the observation and description of symptoms. That’s the problem Israeli medical startup Montfort (Mon4T) aims to solve with its newly launched Brain Profiler. This science-based method looks at mental disorders as brain disturbances that can be accurately diagnosed in a clinical manner. Developed by practicing psychiatrist and Technion lecturer Dr. Abraham Peled, the approach bridges between classical psychiatry and computational neuroscience. “We cannot fix a system if we do not know exactly what is wrong with it. It is absolutely critical that we discover the causes of mental disorders if we ever hope to cure them,” Peled said. “The frustration of not being able to truly cure these patients drove me to change my approaches and connect to the digital world and to algorithms, including Montfort’s EncephaLog application.” Montfort already uses smartphone technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide FDA-cleared digital neurological tests for patients with conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease. As a result of the cooperation with Peled in the past year, Montfort added to its test protocol indicators assessing anxiety, depression and more. Montfort translates the collected digital indicators into terms that psychiatrists are familiar with, such as depression, anxiety or psychosis, and suggests a neurological explanation, said Peled. “As a next step, the diagnosed network disturbance will be demonstrated by EEG, a procedure that was previously very complicated to conduct and therefore available only in hospitals, but is now available to any patient at home.” The Brain Profiler will also be used far from home soon, as it was selected as one of the technologies to accompany Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe on his journey to the International Space Station at the beginning of 2022. The astronauts will use the Montfort app to do motor and cognitive self-tests while physicians on Earth monitor their functioning in real time. Montfort CEO Dr. Ziv Yekutieli said, “With the complexity of the human brain in general, and psychiatric disorders in particular, psychiatrists have a hard time keeping up with advances in other medical fields. A practitioner has to take clinical decisions based on subjective and non-quantitative data, which is gathered at random, short clinical visits, that do not reflect the patient’s actual status throughout his or her daily life. These difficulties limit the psychiatrist’s ability to treat the patient optimally, and limit pharmaceutical companies’ ability to develop new drugs.” To read the original article click here. For more articles from Israel21c click here.

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Infant Sleep Problems Can Signal Mental Disorders in Adolescents

AHA Publisher — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 07:00:39 +0000

University of Birmingham via EurekAlert– Specific sleep problems among babies and very young children can be linked to mental disorders in adolescents, a new study has found. A team at the University of Birmingham’s School of Psychology studied questionnaire data from the Children of the 90s, a UK-based longitudinal study which recruited pregnant mothers of 14,000 babies when it was set up almost three decades ago. They found that young children who routinely woke up frequently during the night and experienced irregular sleep routines were associated with psychotic experiences as adolescents. They also found that children who slept for shorter periods at night and went to bed later, were more likely to be associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD) during their teenage years. Lead researcher, Dr Isabel Morales-Muñoz, explained: “We know from previous research that persistent nightmares in children have been associated with both psychosis and borderline personality disorder. But nightmares do not tell the whole story – we’ve found that, in fact, a number of behavioural sleep problems in childhood can point towards these problems in adolescence.” The researchers examined questionnaire data from more than 7,000 participants reporting on psychotic symptoms in adolescence, and more than 6,000 reporting on BPD symptoms in adolescence. The data analysed is from the Children of the 90s study (also known as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) birth cohort) which was set up by the University of Bristol. Sleep behaviour among participants was reported by parents when the children were 6, 18 and 30 months, and assessed again at 3.5, 4.8 and 5.8 years old. The results, published in JAMA Psychiatry, show particular associations between infants at 18 months old who tended to wake more frequently at night and who had less regular sleep routines from 6 months old, with psychotic experiences in adolescence. This supports existing evidence that insomnia contributes to psychosis, but suggests that these difficulties may be already present years before psychotic experiences occur. The team also found that children who had less sleep during the night and went to bed later at the age of three-and-a-half years were related to BPD symptoms. These results suggest a specific pathway from toddlers through to adolescents with BPD, which is separate from the pathway linked with psychosis. Finally, the researchers investigated whether the links between infant sleep and mental disorders in teenagers could be mediated by symptoms of depression in children aged 10 years old. They found that depression mediated the links between childhood sleep problems and the onset of psychosis in adolescents, but this mediation was not observed in BPD, suggesting the existence of a direct association between sleep problems and BPD symptoms. Professor Steven Marwaha, senior author on the study, added: “We know that adolescence is a key developmental period to study the onset of many mental disorders, including psychosis or BPD. This is because of particular brain and hormonal changes which occur at this stage. It’s crucial to identify risk factors that might increase the vulnerability of adolescents to the development of these disorders, identify those at high risk, and deliver effective interventions. This study helps us understand this process, and what the targets might be. “Sleep may be one of the most important underlying factors – and it’s one that we can influence with effective, early interventions, so it’s important that we understand these links.” To read the original article click here.

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