More Than Half of 4th-Year Medical Students and Residents Receive Drug Company Gifts
A study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine asked 1,620 medical students and 739 residents doctors-in-training across the U.S. about their contacts...
Sham Paper Published by 149 Open-Access Journals
An article ostensibly showing cancer growth inhibition by a molecule derived from lichen â but which was in fact a spoof written by an editor...
Serious Warnings on Drugs Paradoxically Increase Sales
Researchers from Tel Aviv, Singapore and New York find that  although "Warnings that a promoted product can have adverse side effects (e.g., smoking cigarettes...
Shire Seeks to Overcome European Resistance to ADHD Medication
Bloomberg reports that "The European debut of a pill to treat children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder faces a major hurdle: convincing people the...
Childhood Maltreatment Alters Neurobiology of Emotion Perception and Regulation
Martin Teicher, noted researcher of the neurobiology of child abuse, finds in an MRI study of 265 maltreated 18-25 year-olds that "Maltreatment was associated...
Int’l Task Force Doesn’t Endorse Antidepressants for Bipolar
Noting a "striking incongruity between the wide use of and the weak evidence base for the efficacy and safety of antidepressant drugs in bipolar,"...
Australia Reinforces Suicidality Warning on Strattera
Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has reinforced its warning to health professionals about the risk of suicidality associated with Straterra, after receiving reports of...
Antidepressants and Diabetes Risk
A meta-analysis by researchers from the U.K. finds an association between antidepressant use and a modestly increased risk of diabetes. âOur research shows that...
Short-Term SSRI Use Associated With Gastrointestinal Bleeding
Researchers find, through a review of records from the Taiwanese National Health Insurance Database from 1998 to 2009, that short-term (7-28 day) use of...
Congressman Looks Into Meds’ Role in Navy Yard Shooting
Representative Jeff Miller, Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, is looking into the role psychiatric medication may have played in the shootings...
No Support for Antidepressants Over Benzodiazepines for Anxiety
A review of all the relevant research comparing benzodiazepines (BDZ) to antidepressants (AD) for the treatment of anxiety was published Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics this Friday....
APA Recommends Reducing Antipsychotics for Children and Elderly Without Psychosis
The American Psychiatric Association, as part of the American Board of Internal Medicine's "Choosing Wisely" initiative, released new practice guidelines yesterday that advise against...
Federal Judge Allows Testimony on Seroquel/Tardive Dyskinesia Link
A Federal Judge ruled Monday that the science linking Seroquel to tardive dyskinesia is sufficiently reliable to be heard by a jury, saying that...
“Should We Stop Using Antipsychotic Medication?”
In a recent interview, Nancy Andreasen, former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Psychiatry, reaffirmed her earlier findings that antipsychotics shrink brain tissue. "We spent a couple...
Benzos Increase Risk of Fractures
A meta-analysis of all relevant studies on MEDLINE, EMBASE, OVID and ScienceDirect published through January 2013 finds that the use of benzodiazepines, especially short-acting,...
Cognitive Function Improved by Reducing Antipsychotics
A 28-week randomized controlled study by researchers in Japan, Canada and the United States finds that a 50% reduction of risperidone or olanzapine significantly...
Why Journals Resist Drug Trial Registration
Although publication bias is known to be a serious problem that public drug trial registration is meant to address, only a fraction of journals...
Prescription Drugs in Great Lakes Don’t Dilute as Expected
Concentrations of pharmaceuticals in Lake Michigan are undiluted two miles from treated sewage outfalls, according to research published in Chemosphere. Research has linked pharmaceuticals...
Psychiatric Times Offers “Discontinuing Medications: When, Why, and How-to”
Psychiatric Times is offering an online continuing medical education (CME) course designed to "present information on why a patient might decide to discontinue psychotropics...
Germany Rejects New ADHD Drug
Finding that Shire's study of its successor to Adderall XR, Vyvanse, (lisdexamfetamine; known in Germany as Elvanse) was too short and did not look at the drug...
5,012 Englishwomen Poisoned Last Year by Benzos, 8,501 by SSRIs
Addiction Today reports "Attention on illicit drugs has deflected focus from the gigantic scale of harms by legal, prescribed drugs. We give you the...
SSRIs Impair Learning From Negative Feedback
A study comparing the effects on cognition of major depression (MDD) vs. SSRIs finds that healthy subjects learn significantly better from positive feedback than...
Parents’ Goals Affect Choice of Medication vs. Behavior Therapy
Researchers find that parents who are focused on their child's academic achievement are twice as likely to start the child on ADHD medications as...
Color of Light Affects Mood
In research that may have implications for depression in humans, researchers at Ohio State find that hamsters exposed to blue and white light rather...
NIMH Director Thomas Insel Acknowledges That Antipsychotics May Worsen Long-Term Outcomes
Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), acknowledged yesterday in his "Director's Blog" that the long-term outcome studies of...
