Support Pullquote, upgrade to Pro!
(Or just tweet your Pullquote for free!)
With Pullquote Pro, you'll get to:
- share on Facebook
- schedule tweets
- tweet from multiple accounts
- edit quotes
- customize colors
- change fonts
- save and index quotes
- private quotes
Choose a plan: $5/month $50/year (includes free access to any new features)
Recent quotes:
New clues why gold standard treatment for bipolar disorder doesn't work for majority of patients -- ScienceDaily
"Only one-third of patients respond to lithium with disappearance of the symptoms," says Renata Santos, co-first author on the study and a Salk research collaborator. "We were interested in the molecular mechanisms behind lithium resistance, what was blocking lithium treatment in nonresponders. We found that LEF1 was deficient in neurons derived from nonresponders. We were excited to see that it was possible to increase LEF1 and its dependent genes, making it a new target for therapeutic intervention in BD."
Lithium can reverse radiation damage after brain tumor treatment -- ScienceDaily
"We're only just beginning to understand lithium's effects on the brain's ability to repair itself," says Ola Hermanson, researcher at the Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet. "In this study we observed that only irradiated cells are affected by lithium. Healthy cells were left relatively untouched. This is an interesting and promising result."
Breakthrough sensor to help people with bipolar disorder monitor lithium levels -- ScienceDaily
ithium is an antipsychotic drug used to treat mood conditions such as bipolar disorder and depression. The drug must be carefully monitored when given to patients, as the wrong dose could prove to be highly toxic. Lithium levels initially need to be checked five to seven days after the first dose, followed by weekly checks until levels stabilise between two doses -- after which levels are typically monitored every three months.
The new miniature sensors were shown to quickly and accurately detect lithium concentration levels -- from clinically effective, to toxic concentration limits. The sensor is able to detect lithium concentration in the blood even if there is a high concentration of sodium.
Lithium treatment for bipolar disorder linked to lowest risk of rehospitalization -- ScienceDaily
During an average follow-up time of more than seven years, lithium treatment was associated with the lowest risk of rehospitalisation in mental or physical disease, with a risk reduction of about 30 per cent compared with no treatment at all. Long-acting injections of antipsychotic drugs were also effective. The risk of re-admission was around 30 per cent lower if patients were treated with long-acting injections compared to their receiving the same antipsychotic medication but orally. The most commonly prescribed antipsychotic drug for bipolar disorder, quetiapine (Seroquel), which is given in tablet form, reduced the risk by only 7 per cent.
Published in the journal Neuroscience online Nov. 26, and led by researchers at NYU School of Medicine, the new study found that giving the drug to newborn mice 15 minutes after "binge" alcohol consumption eliminated the hyperactivity and sleep deficits seen when rodents exposed to alcohol became adults. Moreover, the researchers report, lithium chloride-treated mice were much less likely to show the 25 percent drop in memory and cognitive test scores seen in untreated mice given the same amount of alcohol.
Trace elements of lithium in drinking water linked to longer life in Alzheimer's patients -- ScienceDaily
"We found counties that had above the median level of lithium in tap water (40 micrograms per litre) experienced less increases in Alzheimer's disease mortality over time, whereas counties below that median level had even higher increases in Alzheimer's deaths over time," says Fajardo.
The frequency of obesity and Type 2 diabetes also went down when the drinking water contained similar lithium levels, the researchers found.
Fajardo says he and his team focused on Texas because data on lithium levels were "freely available."
Previous studies have demonstrated lithium's ability to protect against Alzheimer's disease, obesity and diabetes.
Bipolar disorder: New method predicts who will respond to lithium therapy -- ScienceDaily
Wondering whether the differences could be predictive, the team trained a computer program to recognize the variations between the profiles of responders and nonresponders using the firing patterns of 450 total neurons over six independent training rounds. In each round, they started fresh with the neurons of five of the patients to train the system. They then tested the system with the neurons of the sixth patient, whose lithium status was known to the team but not to the program. They repeated the process five more times, which allowed them to build essentially six independent models. Each model was trained on the data from five out of the six patients, leaving a different patient out of the training data each time, and then letting the model classify this remaining patient as a responder or nonresponder. Using the firing patterns of just five of any patient's neurons, the system identified the person as a responder or nonresponder with 92 percent accuracy.
Fruit flies live longer on lithium
The benefits of lithium were also seen when it was used as a transient and one-off treatment. Flies that received a one-off dose near the end of their lives lived a maximum of 13% longer and young flies given low doses of lithium chloride for 15 days before switching to a control for the remainder of their lives also lived longer.
"We studied the responses of thousands of flies in different conditions to monitor the effects of lithium and how it extends life. We found low doses not only prolong life but also shield the body from stress and block fat production for flies on a high sugar diet. Low doses also protect against the harmful effects of higher, toxic doses of lithium and other substances such as the pesticide paraquat," said co-author Dr Ivana Bjedov from the UCL Cancer Institute.
