Marijuana does many magical things, not the least of which is make dubstep listenable. In Los Angeles, we use it pretty much legally for back pain, nausea and hot tubbing.

But a new study from Germany says that, in U.S. states like California where marijuana has become medically legit, rates of suicide have gone down.

The researchers note that suicide is often triggered by “stressful life events.” And you know what can take away the pain?

No. Not Enrique Iglesias. Stress! Or rather, chronic. Depending.

The academics note that “California includes anxiety as a qualifying condition” to obtain medical pot, “while Delaware and New Mexico both allow the use of medical marijuana for post traumatic stress disorder … ”

The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, with the help of American researchers such as Daniel I. Rees of the University of Colorado’s Department of Economics, recently published their findings in a paper called High on Life? Medical Marijuana Laws and Suicide (PDF):

Our results suggest that the passage of a medical marijuana law is associated with an almost 5 percent reduction in the total suicide rate, an 11 percent reduction in the suicide rate of 20- through 29-year-old males, and a 9 percent reduction in the suicide rate of 30- through 39-year-old males.

The study takes some wild guesses, and one of them is that maybe medical marijuana users are cutting out the alcohol, which can be depressive:

The strong association between alcohol consumption and suicide related outcomes found by previous researchers (Markowitz et al. 2003; Carpenter 2004; Sullivan et al. 2004; Rodriguez Andres 2005; Carpenter and Dobkin 2009) raises the possibility that medical marijuana laws reduce the risk of suicide by decreasing alcohol consumption.

The academics cite research on animals where there was “a potent anti-depressant effect” when they were injected with low doses of synthetic cannabinoid.

Of course this flies in the face of tons of research — not to mention what Dr. Drew Pinsky has said several times — that cannabis and depression go together like milk and cookies.

And, it seems clear to us, the only solid argument to be made here is there might be a correlation between medical marijuana states and lower rates of suicides.

Hmm. National suicide rates have been decreasing across the board.

Researchers say they focused mostly on young men because most medical marijuana patients in states like Arizona, Colorado and Montana are males, and roughly half are under 40. Data on women, apparently, was weak. (Women are four times less likely to commit successful suicide in general).

The German study’s rosy conclusion:

… The legalization of medical marijuana leads to an improvement in the psychological well being of young adult males, an improvement that is reflected in fewer suicides.

Author

Thanks to the Informer

Damage caused by a heart attack has been healed using stem cells gathered from the patient’s own heart, according to doctors in the US.

The amount of scar tissue was halved in the small safety trial reported in the Lancet medical journal.

The authors said there was also an “unprecedented” increase in new heart muscle.

The British Heart Foundation said it was “early days”, but could “be great news for heart attack patients”.

A heart attack happens when the organ is starved of oxygen, such as a clot blocking the flow of blood to the heart.

As the heart heals, the dead muscle is replaced with scar tissue, but because this does not beat like heart muscle the ability to pump blood around the body is reduced.

Doctors around the world are looking at ways of “regenerating” the heart to replace the scar tissue with beating muscle. Stem cells, which can transform into any other type of specialised cell, figure prominently in their plans.

This trial, at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, was designed to test the safety of using stem cells taken from a heart attack patient’s own heart.

This is the second group of doctors to report using cells taken from a heart to heal a heart.

In November 2011, another safety trial showed the cells could be used to heal the hearts of heart failure patients who were having heart bypass surgery.

The heart is not the only source for these stem cells and other fields are much further ahead.

The largest ever trial of stem cell therapy in heart attack patients is about to get under way in Europe.

The BAMI trial will inject 3,000 heart attack patients with stem cells taken from their bone marrow within five days of the heart attack.

Within a month of a heart attack, a tube was inserted into a vein in the patient’s neck and was pushed down towards the heart. A sample of heart tissue, about “half the size of a raisin”, was taken.

This was taken to the laboratory where the stem cells were isolated and grown. Up to 25 million of these stem cells were then put into the arteries surrounding the heart.

Twenty five patients took part in the trial. Before the treatment, scar tissue accounted for an average of 24% of their left ventricle, a major chamber of the heart. It went down to 16% after six months and 12% after a year.

Healthy heart muscle appeared to take its place. The study said the cells, “have an unprecedented ability to reduce scar and simultaneously stimulate the regrowth of healthy [heart] tissue”.

One of the researchers Dr Eduardo Marban said: “While the primary goal of our study was to verify safety, we also looked for evidence that the treatment might dissolve scar and regrow lost heart muscle.

“This has never been accomplished before, despite a decade of cell therapy trials for patients with heart attacks. Now we have done it.

“The effects are substantial, and surprisingly larger in humans than they were in animal tests.”

Dr Iqbal Malik: ”This is one small step”

However, there was no increase in a significant measure of the heart’s ability to pump – the left ventricle ejection fraction: the percentage of blood pumped out of the left ventricle.

Prof Anthony Mathur, who is co-ordinating a stem cell trial involving 3,000 heart attack patients, said that even if the study found an increase in ejection fraction then it would be the source of much debate.

He argued that as it was a proof-of-concept study, with a small group of patients, “proving it is safe and feasible is all you can ask”.

“The findings would be very interesting, but obviously they need further clarification and evidence,” he added.

Prof Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “It’s the first time these scientists’ potentially exciting work has been carried out in humans, and the results are very encouraging.

“These cells have been proven to form heart muscle in a petri dish but now they seem to be doing the same thing when injected back into the heart as part of an apparently safe procedure.

“It’s early days, and this research will certainly need following up, but it could be great news for heart attack patients who face the debilitating symptoms of heart failure.”

Author

Thanks to the BBC

Looks like there may be some hope.

Many have tried and failed to create a vaccine that could prevent infection with HIV. Now, Canadian researchers say they’re working on one that takes a different approach.

Researchers from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont. say they have developed an HIV vaccine that uses the whole HIV virus, unlike other attempts that have used just certain genes or proteins from the virus.

The virus has been genetically engineered to be “non-pathogenic,” meaning it can’t actually cause HIV in recipients. The idea is the vaccine would prime the body’s T-cells to destroy any cells that might become infected with HIV.

So far, the vaccine has been shown to stimulate a strong immune response in preliminary toxicology tests in lab animals, the university reports. But it will be several years before researchers know whether it’s effective in humans.

The team announced Tuesday they have just received approval from regulators with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin testing the experimental vaccine on humans. The Phase I clinical trial will begin in January using 40 volunteers who already have HIV. That phase will test the safety of the vaccine.

If all goes well, the next phases of study would test whether the vaccine is actually effective.

Phase II would measure immune responses to the vaccine in people who are HIV negative. Phase III would test the effectiveness of the vaccine in a larger group of about 6,000 volunteers who are at risk of becoming infected. Half would be given the vaccine and half given a placebo. Participants would then be tracked for three years to see how many in each group become infected.

The vaccine, dubbed SAV001, was developed by Dr. Chil-Yong Kang and his team over the last 10 years, and is the only HIV vaccine currently under development in Canada.

The vaccine was developed with support from Sumagen Canada, a biotech company established in 2008 specifically to support clinical development of Kang’s vaccine. Sumagen Canada is a subsidiary of Sumagen Co. Ltd., a Korean-based pharmaceutical venture company.

A number of pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers around the world have tried to develop a vaccine against HIV, but all have ended in failure.

One large study in Thailand showed an experimental vaccine offered some protection against infection, but only in about a third of recipients. Researchers continue to work on that vaccine to improve it.

Earlier this year, researchers halted a study that was testing a daily HIV prevention pill called Truvada in thousands of African women, after partial results showed the pill was ineffective.

The World Health Organization estimates that 34 million people are living with HIV around the world, and that 2.7 million people are newly infected every year.

Author

Thanks to CTV News

Susan Elmer juggles the many needs of her 15-year-old son, Timothy, who has lived most of his life with Asperger’s syndrome, a condition considered on the spectrum of autism disorders.

The telltale signs of Asperger’s — which include communication difficulties, obsession with narrow subjects and a difficulty picking up on certain social cues — make crucial activities like learning in a school setting a challenge.

But for Timothy, it’s not just Asperger’s. Elmer said doctors have also diagnosed Timothy with learning disabilities, bipolar disorder, and attention deficit and hyperactive disorder.

Elmer, who is president of the Families for Autistic Children Education and Support in Ventnor, N.J., said she’s never been sure whether Timothy’s problems come from this combination of disorders, or whether they can be attributed wholly to his autism spectrum disorder.

“I’ve always wondered how much should I go looking into these other diagnoses or just lump them under Asperger’s,” she said.

The difference? According to a new study, additional mental disorders, such as learning disabilities, speech problems and epilepsy, could help predict which children might grow out of their autism diagnosis as they age.

In other words, if Timothy’s challenges come from conditions other than his Asperger’s, his doctors may be able to treat these other conditions and improve his chances of a normal life.

Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health studied more than 1,300 children who had been diagnosed with autism. The researchers found that certain disorders distinguished children who had a current autism diagnosis from those who had fallen out of the autism category as they aged.

The disorders varied for autistic children of different ages. In children ages 3 to 5, those with autism were 11 times as likely to have a learning disability and nine times as likely to have a developmental delay as those children who had grown out of an official autism diagnosis.

Autistic children ages 6 to 11 were nearly four times as likely to have past speech problems and 3.5 times as likely to have moderate to severe anxiety.

Autistic teenagers were 10 times as likely to have seizures or epilepsy as children who were no longer classified as autistic.

The symptoms of these different disorders greatly overlap with the symptoms of autism, which is defined by a broad spectrum of behavioral, social and communication deficits. But the researchers say the study suggests that separate diagnoses of learning disabilities or speech problems appeared to predict which kids would continue to be autistic and which ones might grow out of the diagnosis.

“This doesn’t mean that a child who has a co-illness is definitely going to change their diagnosis status,” said Heather Close, one of the study’s authors. “But we were able to establish some associations with different disorders.”

Lori Warner, director of the HOPE Center for Autism at the Beaumont Children’s Hospital Center in Royal Oak, Mich., said that kind of information could prove valuable to therapists studying and treating autistic children.

“We’re always looking for anything that helps us potentially predict who’s going to continue to have a diagnosis and who won’t,” she said.

It’s not uncommon for children to grow out of an autism diagnosis as they age. One study found that 40 percent of children who had been diagnosed at some point no longer fit the disorder’s criteria years later.

Having an actual diagnosis of autism means a lot for parents who must navigate a complicated system of treatments, educational support and social services to help their children succeed. A child who has a diagnosed speech problem will have different treatment and support options than a speech-challenged child with only an autism diagnosis.

Elmer said her son’s diagnosis of ADHD means that he can have access to medications that help with his behavioral problems. But she said his Asperger’s diagnosis qualifies him for certain programs at school that would be unavailable to children with an ADHD diagnosis alone.

“It’s more difficult to single out the different disabilities. Autism is the umbrella. There are a lot of things are thrown under there,” Elmer said. “It’s hard to find a doctor that will look for more than one diagnosis.”

Li-Ching Lee, one of the authors of the study, said singling out those different disabilities will help ensure that children get the help that best fits their condition.

“We would suggest that clinicians, in addition to core symptoms of autism, they also need to provide an evaluation on these co-existing conditions and recognize that the conditions vary depending on the age of the child,” Lee said. “That way, the best intervention for the child can happen as early as possible.”

Author

Thanks to abc news

Interesting article in The Daily Beast

Go ahead, shoot me. I like the status quo on health care in the United States. I’ve got health insurance and I don’t give a damn about the 47 million suckers who don’t. Obama and Congress must be stopped. No bill! I’m better off the way things are.

I’m with that woman who wrote the president complaining about “socialized medicine” and added: “Now keep your hands off my Medicare.” That’s the spirit!

Why should I be entitled to the same insurance that members of Congress get? Blue Dogs need a lot of medical attention to treat their blueness. I’m just a regular guy and definitely deserve less.

I had cancer a few years ago. I like the fact that if I lose my job, I won’t be able to get any insurance because of my illness. It reminds me of my homeowners’ insurance, which gets canceled after a break-in. I like the choice I’d face if, God forbid, the cancer recurs—sell my house to pay for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment, or die. That’s what you call a “post-existing condition.”

I like the absence of catastrophic insurance today. It meant that my health-insurance plan (one of the better ones, by the way) only covered about 75 percent of the cost of my cutting-edge treatment. That’s as it should be—face cancer and shell out huge amounts of money at the same time. Nice.

I like the “lifetime limits” that many policies have today. Missed the fine print on that one, did you? It means that after you exceed a certain amount of reimbursement, you don’t get anything more from the insurance company. That’s fair.

Speaking of fair, it seems fair to me that cost-cutting bureaucrats at the insurance companies—not doctors—decide what’s reimbursable. After all, the insurance companies know best.

Yes, the insurance company status quo rocks. I learned recently about something called the “loading fees” of insurance companies. That’s how much of every health-care dollar gets spent by insurance companies on things other than the medical care—paperwork, marketing, profits, etc. According to a University of Minnesota study, up to 47 percent of all the money going into the health-insurance system is consumed in “loading fees.” Even good insurance companies spend close to 30 percent on nonmedical stuff. Sweet.

The good news is that the $8,000 a year per family that Americans pay for their employer-based health insurance is heading up! According to the Council of Economic Advisers, it will hit $25,000 per family by 2025. The sourpusses who want health-care reform say that’s “unsustainable.” Au contraire.

And how could the supporters of these reform bills believe in anything as stupid as a “public option”? Do they really believe that the health-insurance cartel deserves a little competition to keep them honest? Back in the day, they had a word for competition. A bad word. They called it capitalism. FedEx versus the U.S. Postal Service, CNN versus PBS—just because it’s government-backed doesn’t mean you can’t compete against it. If they believed in capitalism, the insurance companies would join the fray and compete.

I’m glad they don’t. I prefer the status quo, where the for-profit insurance companies suck at the teat of the federal government. Corporate welfare’s what we’ve got, and it’s a damn good system. Through a wonderful program called Medicare Advantage, the insurance companies receive hundreds of billions of dollars in fees to administer a program that the government is already running. Don’t touch that baby. You’d be messing with the handiwork of some fine lobbyists.

You know what part of the status quo I like best? It’s a longstanding system for paying doctors called “fee for service.” That’s where doctors get paid for each procedure they perform, as if my auto dealer got paid separately for the steering wheel, brakes, and horn instead of for the car. Fee-for-service is why the medical care at that doc-in-a-box at my mall is so superior to the Mayo Clinic or Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where the doctors are on salary. Who would want to mess with that?

OK, if you really press me, I’m for one change. It’s the one that Republicans trot out to prove they’re “reformers,” too. We could save our whole system if we just capped malpractice awards. Two of our biggest states—California and Texas—did it a few years ago and nothing has changed there, but who cares? It sounds good.

So tell your congressmen and senators when they’re home for the summer recess that it’s too soon to address this issue. We’ve only been debating it for 97 years, since Theodore Roosevelt put national health insurance in the Bull Moose Party platform of 1912. We’ve only had 745 congressional hearings on the subject (I made that number up, but it’s got to be close). That’s not enough! Let’s study this problem more before we do anything about it.

Did I say “problem”? Who said there was a problem? Not me. I like the status quo.

Author

One in 12 people self-harm in their teenage years, a long-term study has found.

For most people the problem will resolve before adulthood but for 10% it will continue into their adult lives.

Teenage girls are more likely to self-harm than boys and are at greater risk of continuing as young adults.

The Lancet study findings have important implications for the treatment of mental health issues and prevention of suicide in young adults.

The study looked at almost 2,000 adolescents in Australia, repeatedly surveying them over a period of 15 years.

Researchers found that anxiety, depression, heavy alcohol use, cigarette smoking and cannabis use were all associated with self-harm.

The study suggests that self-cutting and burning were the commonest forms of self-harm during adolescence.

As 90% of teenagers who self-harmed stopped before they reached adulthood, the research should offer some reassurance to families, schools and clinicians, the authors of the study say.

But, Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity SANE, said:

“The figures showing that 90% have stopped by the time they reach their twenties should not seduce us into thinking that self harm is just a phase that young people will grow out of”.

Suicide risk?

“Our research shows that counter to common perception, people self-harm and continue to self-harm at times throughout their lives to protect themselves from attempting suicide and their families and friends from experiencing their mental pain.”

Because of the association between self-harm and suicide, the researchers suggest treating common teenage mental health problems could be part of an “important and hitherto unrecognised component” of preventing suicide in adults.

“Self-harm is one of the most significant predictors of completed suicide, ” a lead author, Dr Paul Moran, of King’s College London, said.

Of the people who have died by suicide, around 50-60% have a known history of self-harm, according to Professor Keith Hawton, Director of the Centre for Suicide Research, University of Oxford.

How many people who have self-harmed die due to suicide, is less clear.

‘Hidden population’

But Professor Keith Hawton, who was not involved in the study, said the findings could broaden the focus of the Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, which he is working on.

In cases of self-harm it is vital to discover what is driving the child to take such drastic action ”

“We now know from studies like this one….. that there is a very large population of youngsters who are self-harming in the community. And we estimate about one in eight of them go to hospital. So this is the hidden population,” he said.

“Though a focus on hospital management is crucial, what we should perhaps be thinking more of is the management of self-harm at a community level, particularly how schools respond and how families can be helped to respond,” he said.

The authors say it is important that people living or working with young people are able to spot signs of distress and find the help they deserve.

“Otherwise there may be persistent ramifications in later life,” Dr Paul Moran said.

Sue Minto, Head of ChildLine, which last year dealt with 30,000 contacts from children about self-harm, suicide and depression, said:

“In cases of self-harm it is vital to discover what is driving the child to take such drastic action. Something is obviously making them extremely unhappy or frightened and until this is resolved it is likely they will continue to injure themselves or, in extreme cases, be driven to suicide”.

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