At some time during their lives, more than 30 percent of U.S. adults surveyed in 2001-2002 had met current diagnostic criteria for an alcohol use disorder (AUD), according to an article in the current issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. Many of those persons never received treatment, and many others did not receive treatment until well after AUD onset.
Analyses of a national sample of individuals with alcohol dependence (alcoholism) reveal five distinct subtypes of the disease, according to a new study by scientists at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Girls who suffered childhood sexual abuse are more likely to develop alcoholism later in life if they possess a particular variant of a gene involved in the body’s response to stress.
Crystal methamphetamine use among young adults in the United States is considerably higher than previous surveys indicate, according to new research funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health.
An international research consortium today published a set of papers that promise to reshape our understanding of how the human genome functions. The findings challenge the traditional view of our genetic blueprint as a tidy collection of independent genes, pointing instead to a complex network in which genes, along with regulatory elements and other types of DNA sequences that do not code for proteins, interact in overlapping ways not yet fully understood.
New research supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) shows that the anticonvulsant medication gabapentin, which is used for certain types of seizures, can be an effective treatment for the pain and other symptoms associated with the common, often hard-to-treat chronic pain disorder, fibromyalgia.
Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a component of the National Institutes of Health, have discovered a survival mechanism in a common type of bacteria that can cause illness. The mechanism lets the bacteria protect itself by warding off attacks from antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), which are defense molecules sent by the body to kill bacteria.
An international team reports using antibodies derived from immune cells from recent human survivors of H5N1 avian influenza to successfully treat H5N1-infected mice as well as protect them from an otherwise lethal dose of the virus.
Children appear to approach adult levels of performance on many basic cognitive and motor skills by age 11 or 12, according to a new study coordinated by the National Institutes of Health. The NIH Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Study of Normal Brain Development is tracking brain and behavioral development in about 500 healthy American children, from birth to age 18. A report published online today by the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society contains the first glimpse of behavioral data — covering IQ, motor dexterity, language, computation, and social skills — collected from children ages 6 to 18.
Nutritionists have long endorsed fish as part of a heart-healthy diet, and now some studies suggest that omega-3 fatty acids found in the oil of certain fish may also benefit the brain by lowering the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. In order to test whether an omega-3 fatty acid can impact the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, researchers supported by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, will evaluate one in a clinical trial, the gold standard for medical research.
People infected with the hepatitis C virus are at an increased risk of developing certain lymphomas (cancers of the lymphatic system), according to a study published in the May 8, 2007, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Whippets are bred for speed and have been clocked at speeds approaching 40 miles per hour over a 200-yard racing course. Scientists at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have now discovered a genetic mutation that helps to explain why some whippets run even faster than others. Published in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics, their findings will make for a fascinating experiment in applied genetics and human nature: what will dog breeders do with this information, and what are the implications for human athletic performance?
A part of the brain first affected by Alzheimer’s disease is thinner in youth with a risk gene for the disorder, a brain imaging study has found. A thinner entorhinal cortex, a structure in the lower middle part of the brain’s outer mantle, may render these youth more susceptible to degenerative changes and mental decline later in life.
Researchers supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), part of the National Institutes of Health, have engineered a portable, phone-sized test that in minutes measures proteins in saliva that may indicate a developing disease in the mouth or possibly elsewhere in the body.