An extract of the Chinese herb kudzu may be useful in treating alcoholism and curbing binge drinking, according to a new study by McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School researchers.

Components found in kudzu root can reduce alcohol consumption without adverse side effects, said David Penetar, Ph.D., of the Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory at McLean Hospital, and the lead author of the study.

In the study, published in the latest issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, researchers looked at one of the major components of the kudzu root — the isoflavone puerarin — to determine whether it would reduce alcohol consumption.

According to Penetar, puerarin was selected over other kudzu root components because its safety and efficacy have already been established in humans, particularly in China where it is approved for intravenous injection to treat coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, and angina. Puerarin is also less potent than other parts of the kudzu plant, so it has few side effects and has none of the estrogenic activity found in other components, making it safe for women, he added.

In the study, the researchers recruited 10 men and women, all in their 20s, who reported regularly consuming alcohol. A laboratory was set up as an apartment, with TV, DVD player, reclining chair, and other amenities, including a refrigerator stocked with each subject’s favorite beer and other non-alcoholic beverages.

In an initial 90-minute session in the “apartment,” each subject was allowed to consume as many beers as he or she wanted — up to a maximum of six. After the session, each was given either puerarin or a placebo and told to take it daily for a week. Then, they returned to do the experiment again. Two weeks later, the subjects returned for a third session to see if they had returned to their baseline drinking levels. After that, each subject was given the pill he or she didn’t get the first time and told to take it for a week. Each then returned for a fourth and final drinking session.

The study showed that subjects taking puerarin drank fewer beers, dropping from 3.5 beers on average to 2.4.

“This was a simulation of a binge drinking opportunity and not only did we see the subjects drinking less, we noted that their rate of consumption decreased, meaning they drank slower and took more sips to finish a beer,” said Penetar.

“While we do not suggest that puerarin will stop drinking all together, it is promising that it appears to slow the pace and the overall amount consumed. Further research is needed, but this botanical medication may lead to additional methods to treat alcohol abuse and dependence.”

Source: McLean Hospital

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An extract of the Chinese herb kudzu may be useful in treating alcoholism and curbing binge drinking, according to a new study by McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School researchers.

Components found in kudzu root can reduce alcohol consumption without adverse side effects, said David Penetar, Ph.D., of the Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory at McLean Hospital, and the lead author of the study.

In the study, published in the latest issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, researchers looked at one of the major components of the kudzu root — the isoflavone puerarin — to determine whether it would reduce alcohol consumption.

According to Penetar, puerarin was selected over other kudzu root components because its safety and efficacy have already been established in humans, particularly in China where it is approved for intravenous injection to treat coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, and angina. Puerarin is also less potent than other parts of the kudzu plant, so it has few side effects and has none of the estrogenic activity found in other components, making it safe for women, he added.

In the study, the researchers recruited 10 men and women, all in their 20s, who reported regularly consuming alcohol. A laboratory was set up as an apartment, with TV, DVD player, reclining chair, and other amenities, including a refrigerator stocked with each subject’s favorite beer and other non-alcoholic beverages.

In an initial 90-minute session in the “apartment,” each subject was allowed to consume as many beers as he or she wanted — up to a maximum of six. After the session, each was given either puerarin or a placebo and told to take it daily for a week. Then, they returned to do the experiment again. Two weeks later, the subjects returned for a third session to see if they had returned to their baseline drinking levels. After that, each subject was given the pill he or she didn’t get the first time and told to take it for a week. Each then returned for a fourth and final drinking session.

The study showed that subjects taking puerarin drank fewer beers, dropping from 3.5 beers on average to 2.4.

“This was a simulation of a binge drinking opportunity and not only did we see the subjects drinking less, we noted that their rate of consumption decreased, meaning they drank slower and took more sips to finish a beer,” said Penetar.

“While we do not suggest that puerarin will stop drinking all together, it is promising that it appears to slow the pace and the overall amount consumed. Further research is needed, but this botanical medication may lead to additional methods to treat alcohol abuse and dependence.”

Source: McLean Hospital

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An extract of the Chinese herb kudzu may be useful in treating alcoholism and curbing binge drinking, according to a new study by McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School researchers.

Components found in kudzu root can reduce alcohol consumption without adverse side effects, said David Penetar, Ph.D., of the Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory at McLean Hospital, and the lead author of the study.

In the study, published in the latest issue of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, researchers looked at one of the major components of the kudzu root — the isoflavone puerarin — to determine whether it would reduce alcohol consumption.

According to Penetar, puerarin was selected over other kudzu root components because its safety and efficacy have already been established in humans, particularly in China where it is approved for intravenous injection to treat coronary heart disease, myocardial infarction, and angina. Puerarin is also less potent than other parts of the kudzu plant, so it has few side effects and has none of the estrogenic activity found in other components, making it safe for women, he added.

In the study, the researchers recruited 10 men and women, all in their 20s, who reported regularly consuming alcohol. A laboratory was set up as an apartment, with TV, DVD player, reclining chair, and other amenities, including a refrigerator stocked with each subject’s favorite beer and other non-alcoholic beverages.

In an initial 90-minute session in the “apartment,” each subject was allowed to consume as many beers as he or she wanted — up to a maximum of six. After the session, each was given either puerarin or a placebo and told to take it daily for a week. Then, they returned to do the experiment again. Two weeks later, the subjects returned for a third session to see if they had returned to their baseline drinking levels. After that, each subject was given the pill he or she didn’t get the first time and told to take it for a week. Each then returned for a fourth and final drinking session.

The study showed that subjects taking puerarin drank fewer beers, dropping from 3.5 beers on average to 2.4.

“This was a simulation of a binge drinking opportunity and not only did we see the subjects drinking less, we noted that their rate of consumption decreased, meaning they drank slower and took more sips to finish a beer,” said Penetar.

“While we do not suggest that puerarin will stop drinking all together, it is promising that it appears to slow the pace and the overall amount consumed. Further research is needed, but this botanical medication may lead to additional methods to treat alcohol abuse and dependence.”

Source: McLean Hospital

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A new study has found that weak head and neck control in infants is a red flag for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as well as language and social developmental delays.

Researchers at the Kennedy Krieger Institute suggest that a simple “pull-to-sit” task — a simple measure of posture control in infants — could be added to existing developmental screenings at pediatric well visits to improve early detection of developmental delays.

The researchers studied two groups of infants. The first consisted of 40 infants, ages 5.6 to 10 months, considered to be at high genetic risk because a sibling had autism. The research team examined the baby’s ability to maintain head alignment when being carefully, yet firmly, pulled by the arms from lying flat on his or her back to a sitting position.

Infants were scored according to whether their head maintained alignment with the spine, or was in front of the spine, during the task. Lack of this head control indicated head lag, according to Rebecca Landa, Ph.D., study author and director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at Kennedy Krieger Institute.

The researchers also tested the children for head lag at 14 and 24 months, as well as at 30 and 36 months, the age that a diagnosis of ASD is considered definitive.

The study found that:

• 90 percent of those diagnosed with ASD exhibited head lag as infants;
• 54 percent of children meeting criteria for social or communication delay had exhibited head lag as infants, and;
• 35 percent of children not meeting the criteria for social or communication delay or ASD exhibited head lag at 6 months.

In the second group, researchers examined 6-month-olds at a single point in time for the presence of head lag. They found that 75 percent of high-risk infants exhibited head lag, compared to 33 percent of low-risk infants.

“Our findings show that the evaluation of motor skills should be incorporated with other behavioral assessments to yield insights into the very earliest signs of autism,” said Landa.

Source: Kennedy Krieger Institute

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The number of teens who have experienced mania— a hallmark of bipolar disorder, characterized by excessive energy, a lack of sleep and sometimes risky behaviors – is close to the number of adults estimated to have the disorder, suggesting that in many cases, the illness begins during adolescence, according to a new study.

“The traditional wisdom has been that mania begins in your 20s and 30s,” said Kathleen Ries Merikangas, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and chief of the genetic epidemiology branch at the National Institute of Mental Health.  ”I think the important thing is for people to recognize that mania does occur in adolescents.”

Typically, bipolar disorder includes alternating cycles of mania and depression, although one type of bipolar diagnosis involves mania alone.

Merikangas said that previous smaller studies have estimated how common mania is among children, but she and her team wanted to better determine the national rate of bipolar disorder in youth.

For the study, over 10,000 teenagers were interviewed extensively regarding their moods and behavior. The researchers found that 2.5 percent met the criteria for having had mania and depression, and 2.2 percent of teens had experienced it within the last 12 months.

Furthermore, during the year previous to the survey, 1.3 percent of the teens had mania alone and 5.7 percent had experienced depression.

“I think that our data suggest that bipolar disorder is more common in adolescents than previous studies had shown,” said Merikangas.

Perhaps this is because the interview questions were somewhat broader than what earlier surveys had asked, she said. But all teens considered to have a mood disorder in her study met the criteria for diagnosis in the DSM-IV, the standard diagnostic manual for psychiatry.

Merikangas and her colleagues point out that the rates of mood disorders found among teens in this study is close to what is seen in adults.  According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 2.6 percent of adults have experienced bipolar disorder in the last 12 months.

In the study, mood disorders appeared more frequently with age. For example, 1.4 percent of 13 and 14 year olds met the criteria for mania whereas nearly twice as many 17 and 18 year olds had the disorder.

Approximately one-fifth of the teens with mania and depression had attempted suicide, and over half also had an anxiety or behavior disorder. Only about half of kids with mania and depression had been treated for the disorder.

“The take home message is that adolescence is when we really see bipolar disorder begin, so we should shift our focus of prevention and intervention earlier in the lifespan,” Merikangas said.

The study is published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Source: Archives of General Psychiatry

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A new study has found that early drug and alcohol use is associated with lower levels of educational achievement.

A study of 6,242 twins shows a link between fewer years of schooling and the onset of drinking before age 14, report researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Health Care System.

The study looked at male twins who served in the military during the Vietnam era, discovering that those who began drinking or using drugs as young teens or who became dependent on alcohol, nicotine or marijuana were less likely to finish college than those who didn’t use alcohol or drugs until later in life and never became dependent.

“We can’t say that substance dependence or early substance use causes lower educational achievement, but we do see a strong association,” said lead author Julia D. Grant, Ph.D., research assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine. “Even after we statistically controlled for the genes and the environmental factors that twins share, we found a relationship between substance use and educational achievement.”

She noted that studying identical and fraternal twins is useful for examining things like substance use and education “because we can assess the extent to which a given behavior is influenced by genetic factors and by factors related to family and environment. Since identical twins share all of their genes and fraternal share about half, we can set up statistical comparisons to tease many of those factors apart.”

In the analysis, the researchers found that when the men began to drink or use drugs early in their teen years or if they became a drug addict or alcoholic, they were less likely to complete 16 years of education.

The men were surveyed when most were in their late 30s or early 40s, a point in their lives when it was less likely they would further their education, Grant added.

Veterans, she says, were a particularly good group to follow because it is rare for anyone to serve in the military without finishing high school or earning a GED. In addition, because of the G.I. Bill, veterans are less likely to have financial constraints that would prevent them from attending college.

The findings provide more evidence that early drug and alcohol use is associated with a large number of problems later in life, according to Grant.

“Drugs and alcohol affect many lifetime milestones, such as marriage, parenthood and employment, which are closely linked to education,” she said. “These events in later life all are influenced by early substance use, and this study provides further evidence that as a society, we need to continue our public-health efforts to reduce underage drinking, smoking and use of drugs.”

Source: Washington University School of Medicine

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New research has found that parents are happier than people who are not parents.

In the study, “In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated With More Joy Than Misery,” researchers from the University of British Columbia, the University of California-Riverside, and Stanford University say that while the findings contrast sharply with popular beliefs, parenthood comes with “relatively more positives than negatives, despite the added responsibilities.”

The researchers also note that the study dovetails with emerging evolutionary perspectives that suggest parenting may be a fundamental human need.

“This series of studies suggest that parents are not nearly the ‘miserable creatures’ we might expect from recent studies and popular representations,” said University of British Columbia psychology professor Elizabeth Dunn.

Over three studies, the researchers tested whether parents are happier overall than their childless peers, if parents feel better moment-to-moment than nonparents, and whether parents experience more positive feelings when taking care of children than during their other daily activities. The consistency of their findings, based on data and participants in both the U.S. and Canada, provides strong evidence challenging the notion that children are associated with reduced well-being, the researchers said.

A key factor in that parental happiness is age and marital status, the researchers note.

“We find that if you are older — and presumably more mature — and if you are married — and presumably have more social and financial support — then you’re likely to be happier if you have children than your childless peers,” says co-author Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at UC-Riverside. “This is not true, however, for single parents or very young parents.”

Fathers, in particular, expressed greater levels of happiness, positive emotion and meaning in life than their childless peers.

“Interestingly, the greater levels of parental happiness emerged more consistently in fathers than mothers,” says Dunn. “While more research is needed on this topic, it suggests that the pleasures of parenthood may be offset by the surge in responsibility and housework that arrives with motherhood.”

The researchers also found that the stresses associated with single parenthood did not wipe out the greater feelings of meaning and reward associated with having children.

“We are not saying that parenting makes people happy, but that parenthood is associated with happiness and meaning,” Lyubomirsky says. “Contrary to repeated scholarly and media pronouncements, people may find solace that parenthood and child care may actually be linked to feelings of happiness and meaning in life.”

Source: University of British Columbia

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Genes play a greater role in forming character traits — such as self-control, decision-making or sociability — than was previously thought, new research suggests.

Psychologists at the University of Edinburgh say that genetically influenced characteristics could well be the key to how successful a person is in life. A study of more than 800 sets of twins found that genetics were more influential in shaping key traits than a person’s home environment and surroundings.

The study of twins in the U.S. — most over the age of 50 — used a series of questions to test how they perceived themselves and others. Questions included “Are you influenced by people with strong opinions?” and “Are you disappointed about your achievements in life?” The results were then measured according to the Ryff Psychological Well-Being Scale, which assesses and standardizes these characteristics.

The research team found that identical twins — whose DNA is exactly the same — were twice as likely to share traits as non-identical twins.

The researchers say the findings are significant because the stronger the genetic link, the more likely it is that these character traits are carried through a family.

Researchers found that genes affected a person’s sense of purpose, how well they get on with people, and their ability to continue learning and developing.

The genetic influence was strongest, however, on a person’s sense of self-control, according to psychologist Dr. Timothy Bates of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences.

“Ever since the ancient Greeks, people have debated the nature of a good life and the nature of a virtuous life,” he said. “Why do some people seem to manage their lives, have good relationships and cooperate to achieve their goals while others do not? Previously, the role of family and the environment around the home often dominated people’s ideas about what affected psychological well-being. However, this work highlights a much more powerful influence from genetics.”

The study, which builds on previous research that found that happiness is underpinned by genes, is published online in the Journal of Personality.

Source: University of Edinburgh

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Planning how to achieve goals can actually interfere with actually achieving those goals, according to new research.

The research found that setting goals and making a specific plan to achieve that goal works only when the person has just one goal. More than one goal? People get overwhelmed, said researchers Amy Dalton, Ph.D., of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Stephen Spiller, Ph.D., of the University of California-Los Angeles.

“Research has shown that forming specific plans for a single goal makes success more likely,” the researchers said in their study, which was published in the Journal of Consumer Research. “Most of us, however, are juggling multiple goals in our lives and jobs and managing a busy schedule is difficult. This raises the question of whether forming specific plans can help us accomplish more of the tasks we set out to do.”

The research involved laboratory and field experiments that manipulated whether people plan in advance how they will implement their goals and the number of goals participants tried to achieve.

In one study, the researchers gave participants a to-do list of “virtuous activities” to complete over the course of five days. Some had one activity, but others had six. Half the participants were encouraged to plan specifically how, when, and where they would carry out the to-do list each day. The more goals, the less successful the planning was. A second study, which involved a computer task, yielded similar results.

Why is planning less effective when applied to a number of goals? The researchers believe that planning reminds people of all the obstacles and constraints that stand in the way of achieving their goals.

In an interesting twist, the researchers found that people came to see their goals as more manageable if they thought other people were juggling more goals than they were.

“These people framed their goals as relatively easy to carry out and were more likely to benefit from planning,” the researchers said.

Source: Journal Of Consumer Research

Goals photo by shutterstock.

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Young people who tend to overuse alcohol are much more likely to suffer from severe depression, anxiety or stress, according to a new study.

About 6,000 school-attending teens (ages 12 to 19) and 8,000 young adults (ages 17 to 25) were surveyed for the study by the youth mental health organization Headstrong and psychologists at University College Dublin.

Of the 14,000 participants, 38 percent reported harmful drinking behaviors and 7 percent showed signs of alcohol dependence. Of the latter group, a quarter had symptoms of severe or very severe depression.

“For young people we now see there is a link between excessive drinking and mental health,” said Barbara Dooley, Ph.D., research director at Headstrong and lecturer at UCD School of Psychology.

In fact, increased drinking corresponded with an increase in the severity of mental health problems. Severe or very severe depressive symptoms were found in 27 percent of adolescents with possible alcohol dependency, compared to 6 percent of adolescents with no drinking problems.

The report also showed a strong link between self-harm and depression, anxiety and stress. One-fifth of young adults reported self-harm without wanting to take their life. More than a quarter who self-harmed had severe or very severe depressive symptoms.

Seven percent of young adults reported they had attempted suicide. Fewer than half of these sought help after their attempt, the study noted.

Of these, one-third found it difficult or very difficult to get the support they needed. Support from a trustworthy adult was found to have a significant impact on lowering the chances of self-harm and attempted suicide.

Source: University College Dublin

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