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An Australian study has flagged an important truth for the medical research community. Like their human counterparts, male and female mice are not only different, their respective genetic responses can often be the reverse of what you’d expect from pharmacological results. This has important ramifications for laboratory and clinical testing.
Dr Tim Karl, behavioural neuroscientist at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, found the opposite of what he expected in female mice when he investigated the anxiety behaviours of males and females in specific mouse models.
His results were reported recently in the European Journal of Neuroscience
.
"There’s a neurotransmitter in the brain known as NPY, and we know that it buffers behavioural consequences of stress, lowering anxiety levels," explained Karl. "Pharmacological tests show that when you introduce NPY to an animal in a stressful situation, its stress levels decrease."
"Studies in the past have shown that male mice created without NPY are more anxious than normal mice, which is hardly surprising. What is surprising is that female mice without NPY, while still more anxious than normal mice, are less anxious than the males without NPY."
"Knowing that normal female mice respond in a different way to stress than normal male mice, in the same way that women respond differently to stress than men - they are at least twice as prone to anxiety disorders for example - we didn’t expect what we found."
"The outcomes tell us that you have to do both genetic studies and pharmacological studies to get the whole picture and see what your gene of interest is really doing."
"Buy synthroid without prescription You also have to look at males and females because we operate differently. Women show a better response to certain antipsychotics than men, for example."
"Using female mice in research is complicated by the females’ oestrus cycle - it impacts on neuro-physiological parameters, including behaviour and perception of stress. For these reasons, and because of the additional time and cost involved in taking such variations into account, people often avoid using females in their research."
"But when a sexual difference has bearing on the physiological response under investigation, it becomes vital to look at males and females, both in animals and in humans."
Note
While not directly relevant to the above study, Dr Tim Karl’s work while at Garvan has also been supported by the Schizophrenia Research Institute.
ABOUT GARVAN
The Garvan Institute of Medical Research was founded in 1963. Initially a research department of St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, it is now one of Australia’s largest medical research institutions with approximately 400 scientists, students and support staff. Garvan’s main research programs are: Cancer, Diabetes & Obesity, Immunology and Inflammation, Bone, and Neuroscience. The Garvan’s mission is to make significant contributions to medical science that will change the directions of science and medicine and have major impacts on human health. The outcome of Garvan’s discoveries is the development of better methods of diagnosis, treatment, and ultimately, prevention of disease.
www.garvan.org.au
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A report released by the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) suggests that as many as a third of elementary and middle school students in Oklahoma are involved in bullying. The report presents findings from a 2005 survey, the Oklahoma Anti-Bullying Survey, of 7,848 third, fifth, and seventh grade students from 85 school districts. Fourteen percent of the students reported that they had been victims of bullying, 12 percent had been bullies, and seven percent had been both a bully and a victim.
The most common place for bullying to occur was on the playground (70 percent), followed by on the bus (42 percent), in halls (36 percent), bathrooms (28 percent), classrooms (23 percent), and the cafeteria (23 percent).
More than 90 percent of the students felt that bullying others was hurtful to some degree. Children who were bullied worried more frequently than children who were not bullied. When asked what adults could do to make students feel safer at school, nearly two-thirds of children who were frequently bullied and half of children who had not been bullied wanted better adult supervision. Frequently bullied children wanted their teachers to take action by making and enforcing rules, and teaching lessons about how to get along better.
Other studies have shown that bullying can result in health problems and adjustment difficulties that may continue into adulthood. Bullying behavior in childhood has also been linked to antisocial and violent behavior in adulthood. In one study, 60 percent of those characterized as bullies in middle school had at least one criminal conviction by age 24. A U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Buy cipro pills Department of Education study of 37 school shooting incidents from years 1974 - 2000 found that 71 percent of the shooters had felt bullied, threatened, attacked or persecuted.
"Bullying at school can lower a student’s academic performance and negatively impact health," said Secretary of Health and Commissioner of Health Dr. Michael Crutcher. "Working to prevent bullying and violence in schools is also an important step toward preventing violence in adulthood."
The Oklahoma Bullying Prevention Act, which was passed in 2002 and amended this year, requires each school to have a policy that addresses bullying prevention and establish a procedure for investigating incidents (?§70-24-100.4). Each school is required to have a Safe School Committee to make recommendations to the principal regarding unsafe conditions, bullying, school violence and professional development needs of faculty and staff (?§70-24-100.5).
The Oklahoma State Department of Education (SDE) provides an anonymous hotline available 24-hours a day (1-877-SAFE-CALL extension OK-1 or 1-877-723-3225 ext. 651) and Web site to report harassment, intimidation and other forms of violence at or near a school. The SDE provides website resources, videoconference training on school health and safety issues, and sponsors an annual conference.
The 10th Annual Safe and Healthy Schools Conference will be held Nov. 10, 2008, in Oklahoma City. More information is available online at www.sde.state.ok.us or by phone at (405) 521-2107. Additionally, free bullying prevention resources and programs are available online at www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.govindex.asp.
The OSDH can provide information on bullying prevention and resources as well. For more information on implementing bullying prevention programs in elementary or middle schools contact the OSDH Injury Prevention Service at (405) 271-3430 or 1-800-522-0204.
The Injury Update report "Bullying Perceptions of Third, Fifth, and Seventh Grade Students in Oklahoma Public Schools, 2005," can be accessed online at and click on "Injury Update."
Oklahoma State Department of Health
www.ok.gov/health/index.html
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Despite performing equally to their male peers in the classroom and the clinic, female medical students consistently report decreased self-confidence and increased anxiety, particularly over issues related to their competency. A new study published in the September 2008 issue of Patient Education and Counseling found that female medical students also appeared less confident to patients.
"We observed third-year medical students interacting with individuals simulating patients and gave the students a battery of tests measuring non-verbal sensitivity. Buy clomid pills Female medical students self reported less self confidence than the male medical students and were also observed by trained raters to be less confident. Despite objective test performance that is equal to or greater than their male classmates there was something about the way in which the female medical students were observed and experienced their communication with patients that made them less confident" said the study’s senior author Richard M. Frankel, Ph.D., professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine and a Regenstrief Institute research scientist.
Observing the female medical students and finding that they actually appeared less confident in their interaction with patients than male counterparts answered the important question of whether women were simply more willing than men to admit that they are feeling anxious, stressed or that they lack confidence in their abilities.
Women now comprise more than half of the applicants to medical schools in the United States but medical educators may not be aware of gender differences in their student population, the study authors note.
"Our finding of decreased confidence among female medical students is important because it makes it very clear that somewhere in the training of future physicians, the issue of confidence needs to be addressed. Accomplishing this may be as straightforward as increasing faculty sensitivity and changing some simple learned behavior, but we will need more research to fully understand this phenomenon and its implications for medical education," said Dr. Frankel, a medical sociologist who studies both medical education and the doctor-patient relationship.
A literature survey by the study authors, which accompanied their observational report and analysis, shows that while there is no consistent gender difference in academic performance, female medical students tend to underestimate their abilities while males tend to overestimate theirs.
The literature survey also found that by the end of medical school, male students had achieved a greater level of identification with the role of doctor than female students with the same medical school experience. Interestingly, only female students reported thinking about confidence in their knowledge when asked to assess their identification with the role of doctor.
In a future study the research team hopes to observe how doctors’confidence in their abilities change over time from medical school through residency training to medical practice.
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Authors of the current study are Danielle C. Blanch and Judith A. Hall of Northeastern University, Debra L. Roter of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study was funded by the Fetzer Institute of Kalamazoo, Mich.
Source: Cindy Fox Aisen
Indiana University
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Deployed peacekeeping veterans with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have significant impairments in health-related quality of life according to research by Dr. J. Donald Richardson of The University of Western Ontario and his co-investigators.
The research, published this month in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, found anxiety disorders such as PTSD are associated with impaired emotional well-being, and this applies just as much to peacekeeping veterans as to combat veterans. "This finding is important to clinicians working with the newer generation of veterans, as it stresses the importance of including measures of quality of life when evaluating veterans to better address their rehabilitation needs," says Dr. Richardson. "It is not enough to measure symptom changes with treatment; we need to objectively asses if treatment is improving their quality of life and how they are functioning in their community."
Richardson is a consultant psychiatrist with the Operational Stress Injury Clinic at Parkwood Hospital, part of St. Joseph’s Health Care, London and a psychiatry professor with the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western. His team studied 125 male, deployed Canadian Forces peacekeeping veterans who were referred for a psychiatric assessment. generic lexapro online buy The average age of these men was 41, and they averaged 16 years of military service. The most common military theatre in which they served were the Balkan states (Bosnia, Croatia, former Yugoslavia, and Kosovo), with 83 per cent having exposure to combat or a war zone.
While the relationship among PTSD and physical and mental health impairment is well developed in combat veterans, it is less studied among the deployed peacekeeping veteran population. Peacekeepers are exposed to traumatic events which they are helpless to prevent under the United National rules of engagement, which state soldiers must show restraint and neutrality. The feeling of being unable to control a situation at the time of trauma is an important risk factor for developing PTSD.
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Source: Kathy Wallis
University of Western Ontario
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Long-term survivors of adult cancers are almost twice as likely to report psychological distress severe enough to cause moderate to serious problems functioning in social, work or school situations, compared to the general population, according to a large, national study presented September 24, 2008, at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology’s 50th Annual Meeting in Boston.
Findings also show that younger long-term cancer survivors, those less than 65 years old, were more likely to experience severe psychological distress, than those survivors aged 65 and older. The study also found that there was no difference in the number of years since the cancer diagnosis and the increased risk of distress. Long-term cancer survivors are individuals who have lived five years or more beyond their initial cancer diagnosis.
"We hope these findings will raise awareness of the psychosocial needs of long-term cancer survivors and encourage routine psychological screening of these survivors," Karen Hoffman, M.D., lead author of the study and a radiation oncologist at the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said. "Quick, low-cost psychological screening tests are available that can and should be performed during clinic visits."
There are an estimated 12 million cancer survivors living in the United States. These survivors may face many stresses as a result of their cancer experience, including adjustment to physical disabilities, changes in their social support system and fear of the cancer returning or of dying from cancer. Researchers identified individuals with severe psychological distress based on how frequently they felt nervous, restless, hopeless, worthless and that everything was an effort.
The study involved 4,712 long-term survivors of adult-onset cancer and 126,841 respondents never diagnosed with cancer using the 2002-2006 National Health Interview Survey, an in-person health survey of the U.S. population. Generic ultram pills no prescription Among survivors, the mean age at cancer diagnosis was 47 years and the mean age at the interview time was 62 years. The majority were survivors of breast, gynecologic, male genitourinary and colorectal cancer.
Cancer survivors were more likely to report severe psychological distress than adults never diagnosed with cancer. In addition to other findings, survivors who were not married or living with a partner, had less than a high school education, were uninsured, were current or former smokers, or had difficulty with instrumental activities of daily living were more likely to experience severe distress than those without these characteristics.
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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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For more information on radiation therapy for cancer, visit
The abstract, "Psychological Distress in Long-term Survivors of Adult-Onset Cancer: Results from a National Survey," will be presented in a scientific session at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 24, 2008.
Source: Nicole Napoli
American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology
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