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"Our findings are the first results in living depressed patients to suggest that this microglial activation is most prominent in those with suicidal thinking," said Dr. Talbot. Previous studies suggesting this link have relied on brain tissue collected from patients after death. "This paper is an important addition to the view that inflammation is a feature of the neurobiology of a subgroup of depressed patients, in this case the group with suicidal ideation," said Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. "This observation is particularly important in light of recent evidence supporting a personalized medicine approach to depression, i.e., that anti-inflammatory drugs may have antidepressant effects that are limited to patients with demonstrable inflammation." In the study, first author Dr. Sophie Holmes and colleagues assessed inflammation in 14 patients with moderate-to-severe depression who were not currently taking any antidepressan...

The research, published in  Molecular Cell , builds on previous work by McGill professor Nahum Sonenberg, one of the senior authors of the new study. Cells in our body grow in size, mass and numbers through a process governed by a master regulator known as mTOR (Mechanistic Target of Rapamycin). Sonenberg discovered years ago that mTOR also controls protein expression in all human cells. In particular, mTOR targets the selective synthesis of proteins destined for the mitochondria, the bacteria-like structures in all our cells that generate the energy needed for cells to grow and divide. In collaboration with the research labs of McGill scientists Heidi McBride and John Bergeron, Sonenberg and his team have now shown that mTOR also controls the expression of proteins that alter the structure and function of mitochondria -- thereby protecting cells from dying. Their work has implications for cancer therapy, since new drugs that act on mTOR are currently in clinical trials ...

Using implant-specific cutoff points resulted in fewer missed cases of ARMD compared to using fixed thresholds currently recommended by US and UK regulatory authorities, according to the report by Gulraj S. Matharu BSc(Hons), MRCS, MRes, DPhil of University of Oxford and colleagues. Their findings offer a refined approach to predicting the risk of ARMD i n patients with two widely used types of metal-on-metal hip replacements: the Birmingham Hip Resurfacing (BHR) implant and the Corail-Pinnacle implant. Blood Metal Ion Levels Identify Patients at Low Risk of ARMD Patients can develop adverse reactions to the metal debris generated from the implant surfaces sliding over each other in the artificial joint. Measuring levels of chromium and cobalt ions in the blood -- reflecting the presence of small particles from the worn implant surfaces -- is recommended as part of patient follow-up for early detection of ARMD. However, there is no agreement as to the specific blood metal ion lev...

Staph frequently causes skin infections but occasionally can lead to deadly conditions such as sepsis, pneumonia and bloodstream infections, particularly in hospitalized patients whose immune systems could be weakened by illness. One strain of the bacterium, the superbug  methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) , is considered one of the top drug-resistant threats in the U.S., causing more than 11,000 deaths per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, the superbug kills more Americans than HIV. "Widespread  MRSA  infections have prompted routine use of once last-line antibiotics, and this is making the antibiotic resistance problem worse," said George Liu, MD, PhD, co-lead author of the study and a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Cedars-Sinai's Maxine Dunitz Children's Health Center and the F. Widjaja Foundation Inflammatory Bowel and Immunobiology Research Institute. "Our study focuses on why  MRSA...

FULL STORY On this , an epileptic affected person is implanted with depth electrodes to localize the seizure onset zone for potential resection. On these uncommon events, sufferers are sometimes keen to take part in cognitive experiments. The recorded alerts can then be harnessed to sort out primary analysis questions, e.g., in regards to the neuronal correlates of acutely aware notion. Credit score: Courtesy of Reber et al. When folks see a picture of an individual they acknowledge -- the well-known tennis participant Roger Federer or actress Halle Berry, for example -- specific cells mild up within the mind. Now, researchers reporting in  Present Biology  on September 21 have discovered that these cells mild up even when an individual sees a well-recognized face or object ho...

In many Asian countries, JE is associated with significant mortality; nearly a third of cases are fatal in some places, and up to half of survivors are left with neuropsychiatric sequelae. There is no treatment for JE, but vaccines can prevent disease. In the Nepalese campaign, t he SA 14-14-2 J E vaccine was first administered in 23 districts with the highest JE rates, and then expanded to additional districts as well as integrated into the normal childhood vaccine schedule. An impact assessment in 2010 found that the post-campaign JE rate was 72% lower than expected without any immunizations, but data in some districts was still early and limited. In the new work, Shyam Upreti of the Ministry of Health in Nepal, along with colleagues from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others, used a more complete dataset, collected through Nepal's routine surveillance system from 2004 through 2014. At least three years of post-vaccination campaign data were availa...

The new findings address a long-standing challenge in HIV treatment: While antiretroviral therapy can successfully stave off disease progression, the virus can silently persist in some cells for many years, so an infected person must be vigilantly treated for the rest of their life. Previous studies have explored potential ways to eliminate latently infected cells, such as by stimulating them to produce some viral particles ("kick"), followed by cell death via the immune system or the virus itself ("kill"). A molecule called bryostatin 1 holds the potential to trigger a "kick and kill" response, but it is costly to obtain from its source, a marine animal known as Bugula neritina. To address this challenge, Matthew Marsden and Jerome Zack of UCLA and Wender Group colleagues at Stanford have designed synthetic molecules capable of imitating the activity of bryostatin 1 and perhaps even improving on its function. In the new study, the team tested SUW...

A number of sclerosis impacts about 2.three million folks worldwide and is the commonest neurological illness in younger adults. Credit score: © klublu / Fotolia A number of sclerosis could be inhibited or reversed utilizing a novel gene remedy method that stops the illness's immune response in mouse fashions, College of Florida Well being researchers have discovered. By combining a brain-protein gene and an current treatment, the researchers had been in a position to forestall the mouse model of a number of sclerosis. Likewise, the therapies produced near-complete remission within the animal fashions. The findings, which researchers mentioned have vital potential for treating a number of sclerosis and different autoimmune problems, are printed within the journal  Molecular Remedy . ...

In the randomized clinical trial, 230 adults with fibromyalgia received one of three treatments , each of which was presented for eight weekly sessions to small groups of patients. The new therapy, which Lumley and co-developer Howard Schubiner, M.D., director of the Mind Body Medicine Program at Providence Hospital, call Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy (EAET), helps patients view their pain and other symptoms as stemming from changeable neural pathways in the brain that are strongly influenced by emotions. EAET helps patients process emotional experiences, such as disclosing important struggles, learning how to adaptively express important feelings -- especially anger and sadness but also gratitude, compassion, and forgiveness -- and empowering people to be more honest and direct in relationships that have been conflicted or problematic. The EAET intervention was compared to both an educational intervention as well as the gold standard psychological approach in the fie...

Results show that preterm children displayed more medical sleep problems such as nocturnal movement, restlessness during the night and breathing problems, compared with those born at full term. However, a lower degree of behavioral sleep problems were present in preterm children. "Preterm children needed less support to fall asleep and fell asleep more often alone in their own bed compared to those born at full term," said principal investigator Dr. Barbara Caravale, a researcher in the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology at Sapienza University in Rome, Italy. "However, preterm children showed more frequent sleep difficulties, such as restlessness and breathing problems during the night." Study results are published in the September 15 issue of the  Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine . The study involved 51 preterm children with normal cognitive, language, and motor development, and 57 full-term children. Their average age was 21 months. Mothe...