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A California company has asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve MDMA, the active ingredient in party drugs like molly and ecstasy, as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). When announcing the new drug application (NDA) filing on Tuesday, MAPS Public Benefit Corp. noted it has been studying the drug for this use for years. The FDA has 60 days to decide whether whether MDMA will be accepted for review and whether it will be fast-tracked through the approval process, the company said. The drug would be given in concert with talk therapy. “The filing of our NDA is the culmination of more than 30 years of clinical research, advocacy, collaboration and dedication to bring a potential new option to adults living with PTSD, a patient group that has experienced little innovation in decades,” MAPS CEO Amy Emerson said in a company news release. “If approved, MDMA-assisted therapy would be the first psychedelic-assisted therapy, which we hope will drive additional investment into new research in mental health.” MDMA belongs to a class of psychoactive drugs that produce experiences of emotional connection, relatedness and emotional openness. Meanwhile, roughly 13 million Americans suffer from PTSD each year, the company said. The symptoms can be debilitating, and patients can also suffer anxiety, depression and substance use disorder. That doesn’t include the economic burden of treating PTSD,… read on > read on >

An overwhelming majority of older Americans think health insurers and Medicare should cover the cost of weight-loss medications like Ozempic, Wegovy or Zepbound, a new survey has found. More than four out of five older adults (83%) think insurance companies should pay for drugs that help obese people manage their weight, according to poll results from over 2,600 people ages 50 to 80. And about three in four (76%) believe Medicare should cover weight-loss drugs, researchers at the University of Michigan National Poll and Healthy Aging found. “Our data show the strong awareness and interest in these medications, and in access to them through insurance, alongside coverage for other weight-focused care including nutrition counseling, exercise programs and bariatric surgery,” said researcher Dr. Lauren Oshman, an obesity medicine specialist and associate professor in the University of Michigan Department of Family Medicine. Weight-loss drugs have been in the spotlight since the approval of Wegovy, an injectable drug initially approved for treating type 2 diabetes under the name Ozempic. The FDA has since approved Zepbound for weight loss, a diabetes drug previously approved under the name Mounjaro. These new medications are pricey, costing more than $12,000 a year for people who pay out of their own pockets. But the drugs are nearly as effective as bariatric surgery in helping people with obesity lose 10% or more of their… read on > read on >

A healthy plant-based diet can reduce a person’s risk of type 2 diabetes by 24%, a new study has found. Eating plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains has this protective effect even in people with a genetic predisposition for diabetes or risk factors like obesity, advanced age or lack of physical activity, researchers report. And for the first time, researchers identified specific health improvements from a plant-based diet that would shield a person from obesity, according to their report published in the January issue of the journal Diabetes and Metabolism. These included improved processing of blood sugars, as well as better liver and kidney function, researchers said. That means the protective effects of a plant-based diet go far beyond simply losing weight and dropping fat, researchers said. “Our study is the first to identify biomarkers of central metabolic processes and organ functions as mediators of the health effects of a plant-based diet,” said lead researcher Tilman Kühn, a professor of public health nutrition at the Medical University of Vienna and the University of Vienna in Austria. However, researchers noted that there’s such a thing as an unhealthy plant-based diet. Those that are still high in sweets, refined grains and sugary drinks are associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, researchers found. For the study, Kuhn and colleagues reviewed data on more… read on > read on >

A study involving twins suggests that if you have a sibling who develops dementia, that might not bode well for your life span. That’s true even if you don’t go on to develop dementia yourself, according to a study from U.S. and Swedish researchers. One investigator was surprised by the finding. “We expected a different result. We expected that, in twins where one developed dementia and the other did not, the difference in life span would be just like we see in unrelated people,” said lead study author Jung Yun Jang. She led the trial as part of her doctoral studies in the department of psychology at the University of Southern California (USC), in Los Angeles. The object of the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was to assess typical life span after a dementia diagnosis. “One of the most frequently asked questions when a family member receives a diagnosis of dementia is: How much time do we have?” Jang noted in a USC news release. The study involved 90 pairs of identical twins (who share all their genes) and 288 pairs of fraternal twins, all from a 40-year database out of Sweden known as the Swedish Twin Registry. In all sets of twins used in in the new study, one twin had developed dementia while the other had not. As has been… read on > read on >

Gun advocates often claim that mental illness is the driving force behind mass shootings in the United States. But new research argues that gun violence is more likely driven by the massive numbers of firearms available throughout the country, providing easy access to anyone with a homicidal bent. In the study, investigators compared mental illness and gun violence between three countries — the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. The United States has a rate of mental illness not much different than those of the U.K. or Australia, the researchers said. Nearly 16% of Americans had some sort of mental illness in 2019, compared with about 18% in Australia and 14% in the U.K. But in the first half of 2023, the United States had experienced about 21,000 gun homicides among a population of 335 million, compared to 225 murders among 26.4 million in Australia and about 200 killings among 67.7 million in the U.K. “The U.S. is experiencing more than 10 times higher death rates from gun violence than Australia and more than 40 times higher death rates than the U.K.,” said researcher Dr. Charles Hennekens, a professor with the Florida Atlantic University Schmidt College of Medicine in Boca Raton. What is different between the three countries is the number of firearms freely available, his team noted. There are about 393 million guns owned… read on > read on >

The diabetes and weight-loss drug Ozempic does not appear to harm a developing fetus when taken by pregnant women, a new study reports. Researchers found no elevated risk of birth defects among newborns of women who took medications to control their type 2 diabetes, compared with those who took insulin. During the decade-long study, researchers saw an increase in people trying to control their diabetes using drugs rather than relying on insulin injections. In particular, medications within the same class as Ozempic (semaglutide) – GLP-1 receptor agonists – became more popular as time went on. “As type 2 diabetes becomes a more common condition among women of reproductive age, and with the recent approval of GLP-1 receptor agonists such as semaglutide to treat obesity, the number of exposed pregnancies is likely to increase. Our findings provide initial reassurance of safety for infants prenatally exposed to these medications,” said lead researcher Carolyn Cesta, an assistant professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. GLP-1 receptor agonists work by mimicking the function of GLP-1, a naturally occurring hormone produced by the small intestine. Both the hormone and the drug slow stomach emptying, increase the feeling of fullness after eating, and control hormones related to blood sugar levels like insulin and glucagon. For the study, Cesta and her colleagues examined the outcomes of more than 3.5 million pregnancies in… read on > read on >

Many women and men begin new relationships never dreaming they could later be enmeshed in a cycle of intimate partner violence. Now, a new study finds there are early behavioral warning signs from a partner that suggest the risk for violence is there. And the more signs a person sees in the partner, the higher the potential risk. “These red flags could eventually be used in interventions to help people learn how to avoid abusive relationships or support loved ones who may be at risk for abuse,” said study lead author Nicolyn Charlot, of the University of Western Ontario in Canada. The study had two parts. In the first part, Charlot’s group presented 147 young couples who had been together an average of six months with a list of 200 abusive and non-abusive thoughts, feelings and behaviors based on prior research. The participants then told researchers how often any of those had occurred since they started dating their partner. In the second part, this time with 355 young couples who had been together an average of about four months, Charlot’s team identified thoughts, feelings and behaviors that appeared to predict violence in the relationship six months later. Some of the warning signs in a partner uncovered by the study were: a sense of arrogance or entitlement negative reactions when a person said no to something discounting… read on > read on >

Folks who take the blockbuster weight-loss med tirzepatide (Zepbound) may regain much of the weight they lost soon after discontinuing it, new research shows. A trial funded by Eli Lilly, the injected drug’s maker, found that “in patients with obesity or overweight, withdrawing tirzepatide led to substantial regain of weight.” On the other hand, continuing on with tirzepatide kept the weight off, over the full two years of the trial. Of course, sticking with drug could mean big bills for users. Medicare and Medicaid do not cover the drug, and if your private insurance doesn’t cover Zepbound, it can cost over $1,000 per month. Lilly says certain commercial card savings programs it offers can reduce the monthly cost to about $550, or even lower, however. Zepbound was approved for weight loss by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Nov. 8, and Lilly announced its availability to consumers on Dec. 6. To trigger weight loss, tirzepatide mimics two hormones, GLP-1 and GIP, which stimulate the release of insulin in the body. It quells appetite and slows the rate at which food moves through the stomach, helping patients feel full. It’s the first drug in its class to compete with another weight-loss blockbuster, Wegovy. Wegovy, made by Novo Nordisk, uses a similar active ingredient, semaglutide, which only focuses on GLP-1. That difference appears to translate to… read on > read on >

Chronic fatigue syndrome strikes more Americans than many might think: In a first national estimate, new government data puts that number at 3.3 million. The condition clearly “is not a rare illness,” and is being fueled in part by patients who now suffer from long COVID, report author Dr. Elizabeth Unger, chief of the chronic viral diseases branch at the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, told the Associated Press. In reality, that count could be even higher, because experts believe only a fraction of the people with chronic fatigue syndrome are ever diagnosed, said Dr. Daniel Clauw, director of the University of Michigan’s Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center. “It’s never, in the U.S., become a clinically popular diagnosis to give because there’s no drugs approved for it,” he told the AP. “There’s no treatment guidelines for it.” Further clouding the picture, the tally likely included some patients with long COVID who were suffering from prolonged exhaustion, CDC officials said. Long COVID is defined as chronic health problems that persist for weeks, months or years after a COVID infection. Symptoms can vary, but patients often complain of the same symptoms seen in people with chronic fatigue syndrome. “We think it’s the same illness,” Dr. Brayden Yellman, a specialist at the Bateman Horne Center in Salt Lake City, told the AP. But long COVID is more accepted… read on > read on >

Loss of the “happiness” brain hormone serotonin might play a role in the decline of brain function as a person ages, a new study reports. People with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) had up to 25% lower levels of serotonin than healthy people in key regions of the brain associated with memory, problem-solving and emotion, researchers reported recently in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. Those patients also had higher levels of amyloid beta, a protein that forms toxic clumps in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, the researchers added. “The correlation we observed between lower serotonin transporters and memory problems in MCI is important because we may have identified a brain chemical that we can safely target that may improve cognitive deficits and, potentially, depressive symptoms,” said researcher Gwenn Smith, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. “If we can show that serotonin loss over time is directly involved in the transition from MCI to AD [Alzheimer’s disease], recently developed antidepressant medications may be an effective way to improve memory deficits and depressive symptoms and thus, may be a powerful way forward to slow disease progression,” Smith added in a Hopkins news release. For this study, researchers recruited 49 volunteers with mild cognitive impairment and 45 healthy adults aged 55 and older to undergo brain scans. The… read on > read on >

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FDA Asked to Consider Party Drug MDMA as Treatment for PTSD

Most Older Americans Think Medicare Should Cover Weight-Loss Meds: Poll

Plant-Based Diets Cut Diabetes Risk by 24%

A Sibling’s Dementia May Mean Shorter Life Span for Brothers, Sisters

Firearm Access Drives High Rate of U.S. Gun Deaths, International Study Finds

No Sign that Ozempic, Wegovy Pose Threat to the Fetus: Study

Is Violence a Risk With Your New Romantic Partner? Watch for These Warning Signs

Pounds Return Once Zepbound Users Quit the Weight-Loss Drug: Study

Over 3 Million Americans Struggle With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Brain Serotonin Levels May Play Role in Alzheimer’s Onset

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