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The research is important because “NSAIDs are arguably the most commonly used anti-inflammatory medications,” said principal investigator Craig B. Wilen, Assistant Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Immunology, Yale University School of Medicine.

In addition to taking NSAIDs for chronic conditions such as arthritis, people take them “for shorter periods of time during infections, and [during] acute inflammation as experienced with COVID-19, and for side effects from vaccination, such as soreness, fever, and malaise,” said Dr. Wilen. “Our work suggests that the NSAID meloxicam dampens the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

The research also suggests that the consequences of NSAID use during natural infection and vaccination should be evaluated in humans, said Dr. Wilen. “This data likely exists, particularly in the clinical trials for the vaccines, so it should be mined to see if it produces antibody responses in people.”

“Taking NSAIDs during COVID-19 could be harmful or beneficial, depending on the timing of administration,” said Dr.Wilen. The potent anti-inflammatory, dexamethasone (not an NSAID), is detrimental to COVID-19 sufferers when taken early in the infection, but beneficial when administered during later stages of COVID-19, said Dr. Wilen.

Similarly, NSAIDs’ anti-inflammatory activity might be detrimental early in SARS-CoV-2 infection, because at this stage, inflammation is usually helpful. That changes at later stages of COVID-19, particularly if the patient undergoes an intense inflammation known as a cytokine storm. A cytokine storm is an immune response of inflammatory compounds that often occurs in COVID-19 patients, can lead to complications, need for the intensive care unit, and even death.

A reduction in neutralizing antibodies caused by NSAIDs might be benign, or it might blunt the immune system’s ability to fight the disease during the early stages of infection. It could also reduce the magnitude and/or length of protection from either natural infection or vaccination, said Dr. Wilen.

The initial motivation to investigate NSAIDs’ effect on COVID-19 “was a twitter thread, suggesting NSAIDs should not be used during COVID-19,” said Dr. Wilen. “This seemed suspicious to us, so we wanted to investigate.”

Dr. Wilen and his team expected that there would be little to no effect of NSAIDs on viral infection, which turned out to be correct.They also thought that NSAIDs would not significantly affect the antibody response to natural infection. “In fact, we initially didn’t even carefully look at the antibody response, because we didn’t expect it to be altered by NSAIDs. This turned out to be wrong, said Dr. Wilen.

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Materials provided by American Society for Microbiology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A new Flinders University study of 1040 online participants from five western countries published in PLOS ONE explores people’s response to the stresses of the escalating pandemic, finding more than 13% of the sample had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related symptoms consistent with levels necessary to qualify for a clinical diagnosis.

With ongoing economic and social fallout, and death toll of more than 2 million, the team of psychology researchers warn more needs to be done to cope with the potential short and long-term spike in PTSD cases resulting from the pandemic — as well as related mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, psychosocial functioning, etc.

“While the global pandemic does not fit into prevailing PTSD models, or diagnostic criteria, our research shows this ongoing global stressor can trigger traumatic stress symptoms,” says lead researcher Associate Professor Melanie Takarangi, from Flinders Psychology.

“We found that traumatic stress was related to future events, such as worry about oneself or a family member contracting COVID-19, to direct contact with the virus, as well as indirect contact such as via the news and government lockdown — a non-life threatening event,” says co-author Victoria Bridgland, who is undertaking a PhD studying the triggers of PTSD.

PTSD is a set of reactions, including intrusive recollections such as flashbacks, that can develop in people exposed to an event that threatened their life or safety (e.g., sexual assault, natural disaster).

“Our findings highlight the need to focus on the acute psychological distress — including the perceived emotional impact of particular events — associated with COVID-19 and build on other research from the past year that demonstrates the damaging psychological impact of COVID-19 on mental health,” says Ms Bridgland.

Comprehensive long-term documentation of COVID-19 related traumatic stress reactions will allow health professionals to help people who could otherwise fall through the cracks, the research team concludes.

The online survey examined a range of responses to common post-traumatic stress symptoms, such as repeated disturbing and unwanted images, memories or thoughts about the COVIC-19 pandemic.

COVID-19’s psychological fallout has been dubbed the “second curve,” predicted to last for months to years, the paper notes.

“Notably, while most of our participants reported experiencing some form of psychological distress and 13.2% of our sample were likely PTSD positive when anchoring symptoms to COVID-19, only 2% of our total sample reported they had personally tested positive to COVID-19, and only 5% reported that close family and friends had tested positive.

“It therefore seems likely that the psychological fallout from COVID-19 may reach further than the medical fallout,” the paper concludes.

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Materials provided by Flinders University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Lupus, an autoimmune disease that can cause inflammation of the joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, brain, heart and lungs, is caused when the immune system attacks its own tissue.

Previous research has established that in up to 80 percent of lupus patients, sunlight exposure can trigger both local skin inflammation and systemic flares, including kidney disease. But little has been understood about the underlying mechanisms that drive this process.

To define how UV light triggers kidney inflammation, the research team investigated the role of neutrophils — a type of white blood cell abundantly found in the body that acts as a first responder to any kind of inflammation and has been linked to skin and kidney tissue injury in lupus patients.

In the study, the researchers looked for markers of inflammation and injury in the skin, the blood, and the kidney at different time points following UV light exposure in mice. They were able to demonstrate that neutrophils not only infiltrated the UV light-exposed skin, but also dispersed throughout the circulatory system and migrated to the kidney.

“Interestingly, one subset of these neutrophils, the ones that we think are more damaging, first went to the skin that was exposed to the UV light and then turned around and went to the kidney,” says Sladjana Skopelja-Gardner, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at Geisel who worked with Keith Elkon, MD, at UW on the study. “That’s a bit unusual — we normally think of neutrophils as short-lived cells that sort of zoom to where the inflammation is and then die off there.”

The investigators found that a single exposure of skin to UV light stimulates inflammatory and injury processes in the kidney, including transient proteinuria, even in normal, healthy mice.

“To be clear, normal, healthy mice don’t get the clinical type of kidney disease that you see in lupus patients,” explains Skopelja-Gardner. “They get what we call subclinical injury, meaning there is an inflammatory and injury process happening in the kidney that is not visible by pathology or looking at the tissue itself. The mice recover and are fine afterwards.

“However,” she adds, “this subclinical injury may lead to pathologic consequences in the vulnerable setting of pre-existing inflammation in lupus patients, and lead to kidney disease flare after exposure to sunlight.”

Importantly, the inflammatory and injury markers they detected in the mouse kidneys following UV light exposure were very similar to the renal injury markers that are associated with more severe kidney damage in lupus patients. In addition, the exposure to UV light also triggered an immune response that is often expressed in most lupus patients — the type 1 interferon response — in both the skin and kidney.

“Overall, I think what our research demonstrates is that skin exposure to UV light can be the source of inflammatory pathways that are relevant to lupus, and that neutrophils play an important role as a pathogenic mediator in this process, contributing to kidney damage,” says Skopelja-Gardner.

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Materials provided by The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Original written by Timothy Dean. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

While most people with MS are first diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS, marked by symptom flare-ups followed by periods of remission, many people with relapsing-remitting MS eventually transition to secondary progressive MS, which does not have wide swings in symptoms but instead a slow, steady worsening of the disease.

The study involved autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplants, which use healthy blood stem cells from the participant’s own body to replace diseased cells.

“So far, conventional treatments have prevented people with MS from experiencing more attacks and worsening symptoms, but not in the long term,” said study author Matilde Inglese, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Genoa in Italy and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. “Previous research shows more than half of the people with MS who take medication for their disease still get worse over a 10-year period. Our results are exciting because they show hematopoietic stem cell transplants may prevent someone’s MS disabilities from getting worse over the longer term.”

The study looked at 210 people with MS who received stem cell transplants from 1997 to 2019. Their average age was 35. Of those people, 122 had relapsing-remitting MS and 86 had secondary progressive MS and two had primary progressive MS.

Researchers assessed participants at six months, five years and 10 years after their transplants.

Five years into the study, researchers found that 80% of the people experienced no worsening of their MS disability. At the 10-year mark, 66% still had not experienced a worsening of disability.

When looking at just the people with the most common form of MS, researchers found 86% of them experienced no worsening of their disability five years after their transplant. Ten years later, 71% still experienced no worsening of their disability.

Also, people with progressive MS benefited from stem cell transplants. Researchers found that 71% of the people with this type of MS experienced no worsening of their disability five years after their transplants. Ten years later, 57% experienced no worsening of their disability.

“Our study demonstrates that intense immunosuppression followed by hematopoietic stem cell transplants should be considered as a treatment for people with MS, especially those who don’t respond to conventional therapy,” Inglese said.

Limitations of the study include that it was retrospective, did not include a control group and the clinicians who helped measure participants’ disability were aware that they had received stem cell transplants, so that could have led to bias. Inglese said these limitations will be addressed in future research.

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Materials provided by American Academy of Neurology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Ionis Pharmaceuticals are taking a new, targeted approach to myeloma treatment — silencing IRF4, a gene that allows myeloma stem cells and tumor cells to proliferate and survive. Past studies have shown that high IRF4 levels are associated with lower overall survival rates for patients with the disease.

In a study published January 20, 2021 in Cell Stem Cell, the team details their successes inhibiting IRF4 with an antisense oligonucleotide, an engineered piece of DNA specifically designed to bind the genetic material coding for IRF4, causing it to degrade. The oligonucleotide — an investigational antisense medicine developed by Ionis and known as ION251 — lowered disease burden, reduced myeloma stem cell abundance and increased survival of mice bearing human myeloma, according to preclinical study data.

Authors say the results support a Phase I clinical trial recently launched to assess the safety and efficacy of ION251 to treat humans with myeloma.

“As scientists, we don’t usually have direct contact with patients, as a daily reminder of what our research could do, or why it’s important,” said co-senior author Leslie Crews, PhD, assistant professor in the Division of Regenerative Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “But I’ve been working with a local support group for patients with multiple myeloma. They inspire me. They ask the most insightful questions, and it really makes it personal. I hope this work will eventually give them new potential treatments to prevent relapse, and ultimately get better.”

UC San Diego School of Medicine and Ionis Pharmaceuticals have a long history of collaborating on the development of investigational antisense medicines. Several Ionis antisense drugs have been commercially approved, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved SPINRAZA, a therapy for spinal muscular atrophy. In addition, several other therapies are currently in clinical trials.

One challenge myeloma researchers face is that myeloma cells don’t grow well in laboratory dishes. To study the disease and test new treatments, the best method, Crews said, is to transplant human myeloma cells into mice that lack an immune system and thus won’t reject the human cells — making avatars of each unique patient, in a way.

The team tested ION251 on these myeloma mouse avatars. Compared to untreated mice, the treated mice had significantly fewer myeloma cells after two to six weeks of treatment. What’s more, 70 to 100 percent of the treated mice survived, whereas none of the untreated control mice did. There were 10 mice in each treatment or control group and they received daily doses of ION251 or a control for one week, followed by three doses per week.

In separate experiments using human cells isolated from myeloma or healthy donor samples, doses of ION251 used were enough to eradicate the myeloma stem cells while sparing healthy blood cells.

“The results of these preclinical studies were so striking that half the microscopy images we took to compare bone marrow samples between treated and untreated mice kept coming back blank — in the treated mice, we couldn’t find any myeloma cells left for us to study,” said Crews, who is also associate member of the Moores Cancer Center and member of the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute at UC San Diego. “It makes the science more difficult, but it gives me hope for patients.”

In addition to working on its own, the treatment improved myeloma tumor cell sensitivity to standard-of-care cancer therapeutics. The researchers also drilled down to the mechanisms at play and described the molecular effects of IRF4 inhibition — information that both clarifies how myeloma forms in the first place, and how the treatment works.

“These proof-of-principle studies will enable rapid clinical development of anti-sense oligonucleotide-mediated IRF4 inhibition to prevent myeloma relapse driven by drug-resistant cancer stem cells,” said co-senior author Catriona Jamieson, MD, PhD, Koman Family Presidential Endowed Chair in Cancer Research, deputy director of Moores Cancer Center, director of the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center and director of the CIRM Alpha Stem Cell Clinic at UC San Diego Health.

The Phase I clinical trial to assess the safety of ION251, sponsored by Ionis Pharmaceuticals, is now recruiting participants at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health and elsewhere. More information is available at clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04398485.

“This collaboration exemplifies the power of combining Ionis’ antisense technology to target previously un-druggable factors in cancer, with world-class academic, translational and clinical research from institutions such as UC San Diego to rapidly bring promising drugs to patients desperately in need,” said co-senior author A. Robert MacLeod, PhD, vice president and franchise head of Oncology at Ionis Pharmaceuticals.

According to the National Cancer Institute, multiple myeloma is the second most common blood cancer in the United States, with more than 32,000 new cases predicted in 2020 and a five-year survival of only 53.9 percent.

Additional co-authors of the study include: Phoebe K. Mondala, Ashni A. Vora, Elisa Lazzari, Luisa Ladel, Caitlin Costello, UC San Diego; Tianyuan Zhou, Xiaolin Luo, and Youngsoo Kim, Ionis Pharmaceuticals.

“This increase in drinking, particularly among people with anxiety and depression, is consistent with concerns that the pandemic may be triggering an epidemic of problematic alcohol use,” said Ariadna Capasso, a doctoral student at NYU School of Global Public Health and the study’s lead author.

People often drink to cope with stress and traumatic events; a 2002 study found that a quarter of New Yorkers increased their alcohol consumption after the September 11 terrorist attacks. COVID-19 has created many stressors, including isolation and the disruption of routines, economic hardship, illness, and fear of contagion, and studies suggest that people are drinking more during the pandemic.

Individuals with existing mental health conditions are particularly susceptible to increased alcohol use during stressful events. To understand the pandemic’s impact on this population, NYU researchers created and administered an online survey in March and April 2020, using Facebook to recruit U.S. adults from all 50 states. The researchers asked participants about their alcohol use during the pandemic, gathered demographic information, and measured symptoms of depression and anxiety based on self-report.

Of the 5,850 survey respondents who said that they drink, 29 percent reported increasing their alcohol use during the pandemic, while 19.8 percent reported drinking less and 51.2 percent reported no change. People with depression were 64 percent more likely to increase their alcohol intake, while those with anxiety were 41 percent more likely to do so.

Drinking behaviors varied by age. In general, younger adults under 40 were the most likely to report increased alcohol use (40 percent) during the pandemic, compared to those 40-59 years old (30 percent) and adults over 60 (20 percent). However, older adults (40 and older) with symptoms of anxiety and depression were roughly twice as likely to report increased drinking during the pandemic compared to older adults without mental health issues.

“We expected that younger people and those with mental health issues would report drinking as a coping mechanism, but this is the first time we’re learning that mental health is associated with differences in alcohol use by age,” said study author Yesim Tozan, assistant professor of global health at NYU School of Global Public Health.

The researchers support increasing mental health and substance use services during COVID-19 — using telehealth to overcome barriers to accessing care — and actively reaching out to people with mental health issues who may engage in unhealthy drinking in response to stress. They also recommend tailoring public health messaging by age group to more effectively communicate the risks of excessive alcohol use.

“Lessons we’ve learned from previous disasters show us that intervening early for unhealthy substance use is critical and could help lessen the pandemic’s impact on mental health,” said Ralph DiClemente, chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at NYU School of Global Public Health and the study’s senior author. Additional study authors include postdoctoral associate Joshua Foreman and doctoral students Shahmir Ali and Abbey Jones of NYU School of Global Public Health.

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Materials provided by New York University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

But the first person a teen confides in may not always be an adult — they may prefer to talk to another teen.

And three-quarters of parents in a new national poll think peers better understand teen challenges, compared to teachers or counselors in the school. The majority also agree that peer support leaders at school would encourage more teens to talk with someone about their mental health problems, according to the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health at Michigan Medicine.

“Peers may provide valuable support for fellow teens struggling with emotional issues because they can relate to each other,” says Mott Poll Co-Director Sarah Clark, M.P.H.

“Some teens may worry that their parents will overreact or not understand what they’re going through. Teachers and school counselors may also have limited time to talk with students in the middle of other responsibilities.”

Previous research suggests that as many as half of children and teens who have at least one treatable mental health disorder may not receive treatment due to several barriers. But teens who don’t have a diagnosed condition may still experience occasional problems with emotions, peer and family relationships, anxiety, academic challenges, substance abuse or other issues negatively impacting self-esteem.

These type of situations may increase risk of developing or triggering depression during tween and teen years, experts say.

Some schools have instituted peer support leaders to give teens safe channels to share problems. Teens who serve as mentors in these programs are trained with oversight from teachers, counselors or mental health professionals. They are available to talk with their fellow students on a walk-in basis at a designated place at school or by referral from school staff.

“We have seen strong examples of school programs that prepare teens to be good listeners and to identify warning signs of suicide or other serious problems,” Clark says.

“The peer support mentors’ role is to listen, suggest problem solving strategies, share information about resources, and, when appropriate, encourage their fellow student to seek help. The most essential task is to pick up on signs that suggest the student needs immediate attention, and to alert the adults overseeing the program. While this doesn’t replace the need for professional support, these programs offer young people a non-threatening way to start working through their problems.”

The nationally-representative poll report included responses from 1,000 parents of teens ages 13-18 about their views on programs like peer support leaders.

Weighing Benefits and Concerns of Peer Support

Most parents say they see benefits to peer mentor programs. Thirty-eight percent believe if their own teen was struggling with a mental health problem, their teen would likely talk to a peer support leader and 41% of parents say it’s possible their teen would take advantage of this option. Another 21% say it’s unlikely their child would seek support from a peer mentor.

However, parents did express some concerns about peers providing mental health support to fellow teens as well. Some worried about whether a peer would keep their teen’s information confidential (62%), if the peer leader would know when and how to inform adults about a problem (57%), if the peer leader would be able to tell if their teen needs immediate crisis help (53%), and if teens can be trained to provide this kind of support (47%).

“Some of parents’ biggest concerns pertained to whether the peer leader would be able to tell if their teen needed immediate professional intervention and how to initiate those next steps,” Clark says.

Despite these concerns, a third of parents still say they “definitely favor” having a peer support leaders program through their teen’s school, while 46% say they would probably support such a program.

A quarter of parents also say their teen’s school already has some type of peer support program — and these parents are twice as likely to favor such efforts.

“This suggests that parent support increases once they understand how peer support programs work,” Clark says. “Most parents agree with the rationale for peer support programs but may be uncertain until they see how they operate and benefit students.”

Two in three parents, or 64%, would also allow their teen to be trained as a peer support leader, recognizing the benefits to the community, the school and their child’s individual growth.

However, roughly half of parents worried whether there would be sufficient training and that their teen may feel responsible if something bad happened to a student using the program. About 30% weren’t sure if their teen was mature enough to serve as a peer support leader.

“Most parents approve of their teen being trained as a peer support leader, seeing it at as an opportunity to develop leadership skills and better understand the challenges that different teens face,” Clark says. “But many also wanted reassurance that teens in these roles would have the adult guidance and support necessary to deal with difficult emotional situations.”

“Close connection to knowledgeable adults is an essential part of any school-based peer mental health program, particularly in regards to suicide prevention,” she says.

Clark says parents of teens considering service as a peer support leader may want to learn more about the training and resources offered, including whether the peer support leaders receive counseling and support in the event of a negative outcome.

She adds that when it comes to young people’s mental health, “it takes a village” to support them and help identify warning signs that they may be in trouble.

“The adults in teens’ lives — including parents, teachers and other mentors — serve critical roles during challenging times,” Clark says. “But peers may also be an untapped resource to help teens who need someone to talk to.”

To assist these efforts, researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and UW Health have developed a tool (https://www.hipxchange.org/COVIDvaccine) that incorporates a person’s age and socioeconomic status to prioritize vaccine distribution among people who otherwise share similar risks due to their jobs. The tool helps identify those who are at greater risk of severe complications or death from COVID-19.

UW Health has implemented the prioritization algorithm to equitably provide limited doses to frontline health care workers. Other organizations can also access the freely available tool to guide their own vaccine distribution plans.

While the UW-Madison tool was designed with the first phase of eligible recipients in mind, it could be used as vaccine distribution expands to larger populations. As the eligible population increases, the gap between initial supply and demand could grow, making such prioritization tools even more helpful.

“Knowing we’re going to have limited vaccine for some time, we wanted to develop an algorithm to equitably distribute vaccinations within these risk groups,” says Grace Flood, the director of clinical analytics and reporting in the Office of Population Health at UW Health, who helped lead development of the tool along with the Health Innovation Program within SMPH.

In addition to age, the algorithm uses the Social Vulnerability Index to measure a person’s susceptibility to severe COVID-19 based on where they live. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed the SVI metric to help emergency responders identify which neighborhoods and towns will require the most support following natural disasters or public health emergencies.

The SVI incorporates 15 measures in four categories: socioeconomic status, housing composition and disability, minority status and language, and housing and transportation. Race and ethnicity have been closely correlated with higher COVID-19-related hospitalizations and mortality.

Flood and her team incorporated the SVI in accordance with a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that recommended using the index to fairly distribute vaccines. Because Wisconsin publishes data about COVID-19 deaths at the census-tract level, “we were able to determine the relationship for risk of mortality between age and SVI,” says Flood. This relationship allowed the researchers to verify that age and SVI combined provide an accurate estimate of an individual’s risk.

Since age and SVI are readily available pieces of information about an individual and each contributes to COVID-19 risk, an algorithm that incorporates both elements may serve as one of the best ways to distribute vaccines until supply catches up to demand, says Flood.

The researchers have published their algorithm (https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/163774) in the Annals of Family Medicine COVID-19 collection and made it available for download on the project’s website.

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Materials provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison. Original written by Eric Hamilton. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Scientists know that microbiota — the trillions of beneficial microbes living harmoniously inside our gut — can protect people from bacterial infections, but little is known about how they provide protection. Scientists are studying the microbiota with an eye to finding or enhancing natural treatments to replace antibiotics, which harm microbiota and become less effective as bacteria develop drug resistance.

The scientists observed that microbiota that had experienced prior infection and transferred to germ-free mice helped prevent infection with Kpn. They identified a class of bacteria — Deltaproteobacteria — involved in fighting these infections, and further analysis led them to identify taurine as the trigger for Deltaproteobacteria activity.

Taurine helps the body digest fats and oils and is found naturally in bile acids in the gut. The poisonous gas hydrogen sulfide is a byproduct of taurine. The scientists believe that low levels of taurine allow pathogens to colonize the gut, but high levels produce enough hydrogen sulfide to prevent colonization. During the study, the researchers realized that a single mild infection is sufficient to prepare the microbiota to resist subsequent infection, and that the liver and gallbladder — which synthesize and store bile acids containing taurine — can develop long-term infection protection.

The study found that taurine given to mice as a supplement in drinking water also prepared the microbiota to prevent infection. However, when mice drank water containing bismuth subsalicylate — a common over-the-counter drug used to treat diarrhea and upset stomach — infection protection waned because bismuth inhibits hydrogen sulfide production.

Scientists from NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases led the project in collaboration with researchers from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences; the National Cancer Institute; the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases; and the National Human Genome Research Institute.

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Materials provided by NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

The record-based case-control study was carried out at the University of Turku in collaboration with the University of Eastern Finland. The study examined the occurrences of previously diagnosed psychotic disorders and schizophrenia in over 25,000 Finnish Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients treated in 1996-2019.

In the study, patients with Parkinson’s disease were noted to have previously diagnosed psychotic disorders and schizophrenia more often than the control patients of the same age not diagnosed with PD.

– Previous studies have recognised several risk factors for PD, including age, male sex, exposure to insecticides, and head injuries. However, the current understanding is that the development of PD is due to a joint effect of different environment, hereditary, and patient-specific factors. According to our results, a previously diagnosed psychotic disorder or schizophrenia may be one factor that increases the risk of PD later in life, says Doctoral Candidate Tomi Kuusimäki from the University of Turku who was the main author of the research article.

Study changes conception of the association between Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia

PD is currently the most rapidly increasing neurological disorder in the world. It is a neurodegenerative disorder that is most common in patients over 60 years of age. The cardinal motor symptoms include shaking, stiffness and slowness of movement. In Finland, circa 15,000 patients are currently living with a PD diagnosis.

In Parkinson’s disease, the neurons located in the substantia nigra in the midbrain slowly degenerate, which leads to deficiency in a neurotransmitter called dopamine. As for schizophrenia, the dopamine level increases in some parts of the brain. In addition, the pharmacotherapies used in the primary treatment of PD and schizophrenia appear to have contrasting mechanisms of action. PD symptoms can be alleviated with dopamine receptor agonists, whereas schizophrenia is commonly treated with dopamine receptor antagonists.

– The occurrence of Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia in the same person has been considered rare because these diseases are associated with opposite alterations in the brain’s dopamine system. Our study changes this prevailing conception, says Kuusimäki.

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Materials provided by University of Turku. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.