Health

The study that first showed the benefits of ADHD

Published

3 months ago

21/02/2024

pouyan

In a new study, it has been hypothesized that some genetic traits associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can actually be beneficial by increasing exploratory behaviors.

The study that first showed the benefits of ADHD

While current diagnostic definitions of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are relatively new, the condition has been recognized and defined by clinicians under various names for centuries.

According to NA, recent genetic studies have shown that this disease is highly hereditary, which means that most people with this disease genetically inherited it from their parents.

Depending on the diagnostic criteria, between 2% and 16% of children can be classified as having ADHD. In fact, the increase in diagnosis rates in recent years has led some doctors to argue that the disease is overdiagnosed.

What is relatively clear, however, is that the behavioral traits that underlie ADHD have potentially been genetically present in human populations for a long time, leading some researchers to speculate on the evolutionary advantages of this What could be the conditions?

Imagine you are part of a wandering tribe of early humans. Your group comes across a field full of one type of fruit and everyone is faced with one big question. Do you settle on a farm and exploit its fruit supply until it’s all gone, or do you quickly pick up what you can and continue exploring for more diverse foods?

This opposition to exploitation or exploration is fundamental to the survival of all animals. At what point does the risk of staying in one place outweigh the risk of moving to find what’s next?

In the early 2000s, a team of scientists studied the genetics of a unique tribe of people in northern Kenya. This tribe, known as Ariaal, has traditionally been incredibly nomadic and nomadic since ancient times, and they have continued to live in this way. Some members of the Arial tribe settled down during the 20th century and adopted modern farming methods, while others continued to live as nomadic herders.

Scientists compared the genetic and health differences between these two groups of the Arial tribe and discovered something incredibly interesting. In general, all people of the Arial tribe carry a unique genetic mutation called DRD4/7R. This genetic trait has previously been commonly identified in people with ADHD.

This genetic mutation in today’s children who have been diagnosed with ADHD is generally associated with restlessness and distraction, and in those children of the Ariel tribe who were used to the behaviors of staying still settling down, and avoiding moving, this gene was associated with health. Poor and disruptive behaviors in class were related. But in Aryalees who still lived a traditional nomadic life, this gene mutation was associated with better nutritional health and strength.

The DRD4/7R mutation is associated with increased food and drug cravings, novelty seeking, and ADHD symptoms, explained Dan Eisenberg, lead author of the 2008 study. It is possible that in a nomadic environment, a boy with this gene mutation would be able to more effectively defend livestock against invaders or find water and food sources, but these same tendencies may be limited to fixed jobs such as setting up a school, farming, or selling goods. not useful

So an interesting hypothesis emerged. Whether the genetic traits of ADHD can be somewhat beneficial to a tribe, as it predisposes some individuals to “exploration” What appears in modern times as unrest and restlessness could actually have been beneficial to tribes that were looking for food.

David Barak from the University of Pennsylvania along with a team of colleagues tested this hypothesis experimentally. They produced a unique game where players were given eight minutes to collect as many berries as possible by hovering over a bush. Each time they picked berries from a bush, the player’s harvest was reduced slightly, but if they went to a new bush, there was a time penalty.

So what did most players do? Did they stick to the original bush? Or risk wasting time trying another plant to see if it bears more fruit? The same basic question, exploration or exploitation?

About 450 people participated in this experiment and all were simultaneously screened for ADHD symptoms. Not surprisingly, the researchers found that people with higher ADHD scores reached out to new plants sooner than others, but more importantly, people with ADHD tended to collect a larger volume of berries overall.

In a recently published study, Barak and his colleagues noted that participants without ADHD traits tended to overeat individual plants.

Finally, looking at the optimal withdrawal strategy for this game, it was found that players with high ADHD scores were more successful overall.

“We found that participants who screened positive for ADHD gave up the bushes more easily and achieved higher rates of reward than participants who screened negative,” the researchers wrote in their conclusion. Given that participants stayed more on a plant in general, those with high ADHD scores made more exploratory decisions, consistent with the predictions of optimal search theory, and thus behaved more optimally.
It should be noted that these findings do not represent a definitive verdict on the possible evolutionary benefits of ADHD, but they provide compelling and plausible reasons why a small percentage of humans still have these traits.

In the 21st century, we may have pathologized ADHD as a negative disorder, but this could simply be because these characteristics no longer fit the world we have constructed. So in a different context, a person with ADHD may be the savior of a society with their restless exploration of new fields.

This new study is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Health

Discovery of 32 new cancer drugs with the help of artificial intelligence

Published

3 days ago

07/05/2024

pouyan

An artificial intelligence platform developed at the University of California San Diego was able to produce 32 new drugs to target cancer in trials.

Discovery of 32 new cancer drugs with the help of artificial intelligence

UC San Diego scientists have developed a machine learning algorithm for simulating the time-consuming chemistry of the early stages of drug discovery, which could significantly simplify the process and enable the delivery of new treatments.

According to the official website of the University of California San Diego, identifying new drugs for further improvement usually involves thousands of individual experiments, but the new AI platform can provide the same results in a fraction of the time. Scientists used this new platform to produce 32 new cancer drugs.

The technology is part of a new but growing trend in pharmaceutical science to use artificial intelligence to improve drug discovery and development.

“Trey Ideker” (Trey Ideker), a professor of the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the senior researcher of this project said: “A few years ago, artificial intelligence was a dirty word in the pharmaceutical industry, but now this trend is the opposite because biotechnology startups without addressing AIs find it difficult to raise capital in their business. AI-driven drug discovery has become a very active area in pharma, but unlike methods developed in corporations, we make our technology open-source and available to anyone who wants to use it.

The new platform, called POLYGON, is unique among drug discovery AI platforms because it can identify molecules with multiple targets. Meanwhile, existing drug discovery protocols currently prioritize single-target treatments. Multitargeted drugs are of interest to clinicians and scientists because of their potential to provide similar benefits to combination therapy while having fewer side effects.

Eidker said: Finding and developing a new drug takes years and costs millions of dollars; Especially if it is a multipurpose drug. The few multi-target drugs we have have been discovered largely by chance, but this new technology could take luck out of the equation and usher in a new generation of precision medicine.

The scientists trained POLYGON on a database of more than one million known bioactive molecules, containing detailed information about chemical properties and known interactions with protein targets. By learning from the patterns in the database, the POLYGON algorithm can generate the original chemical formulas for new drugs that are likely to have properties such as the ability to inhibit specific proteins.

Just as artificial intelligence is now very good at producing original drawings and images, such as creating images of human faces based on arbitrary characteristics such as age or gender, POLYGON can also produce original molecular compounds based on desired chemical properties. In this case, instead of telling the AI how old we want our face to be, we tell it that we want our future drug to interact with disease proteins.

To test POLYGON, scientists used it to generate hundreds of drugs that target different pairs of cancer-related proteins. Of these, they produced 32 molecules that had the strongest predicted interactions with MEK1 and mTOR proteins. These two are cell signaling proteins that are promising targets for combination cancer therapy. Inhibiting both proteins together is enough to kill cancer cells; Even if the containment of one of them is not done alone.

The researchers found that the drugs they developed had significant activity against MEK1 and mTOR, but showed few off-target reactions with other proteins. This suggests that one or more of the drugs identified by POLYGON could target both proteins as cancer therapies, providing a list of options for fine-tuning by human chemists.

“After you get the drugs, you still have to do other chemical work to make those drug options into a single, effective treatment,” Edker said. We cannot and should not try to remove human expertise from the drug discovery process, but rather shorten some of the steps in the process.

Despite this caution, scientists are optimistic about AI’s potential for drug discovery. Eidker added: It will be very exciting to see how this concept will be implemented in the next decade, both in the university and in the private sector. The capabilities of artificial intelligence are virtually endless.

This research was published in “Nature Communications” magazine.

Health

Brain cancer vaccine success in human trials

Published

3 days ago

07/05/2024

pouyan

A vaccine made with messenger RNA (mRNA) technology against glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain cancer, has shown promise in a new clinical trial.

Brain cancer vaccine success in human trials

Glioblastoma is one of the deadliest cancers for which few treatment options are available.

Now, a small human clinical trial has shown the efficacy of an mRNA vaccine that rapidly primes the immune system to fight tumors, with promising results, according to NA.

Glioblastoma is the most common form of brain cancer and unfortunately, it is also known as the most aggressive brain cancer.

Glioblastoma is the most common primary malignant tumor of the central nervous system that occurs in the spinal cord or brain. The origin of this tumor is from astrocyte cells (a type of glial cell).

Treatment for glioblastoma includes a combination of surgical removal, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, but the disease almost always recurs, and patients with it usually survive only about a year after diagnosis, with only about 5 percent of patients surviving more than five years.

A new study from the University of Florida may soon provide these patients with a better option, the mRNA cancer vaccine.

The technology, best known for COVID-19 vaccines, has been shown to quickly prime the immune system to more effectively attack glioblastoma in mice, dogs, and now humans.

As you may remember from the critical days of 2020 and 2021 due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA molecules are essentially natural blueprints that tell cells which proteins to produce and by engineering them to produce harmless versions of the proteins. Associated with pathogens, the immune system can be trained to fight off a true invader when it appears.

Following the real-world success of these treatments during the pandemic, the possibility of adapting mRNA therapies for cancer has emerged with interesting early results.

University of Florida researchers say this new version has two key improvements. First, the vaccine is personalized using samples taken from the patient’s tumor cells. Second, the delivery mechanism is more complex, which ultimately leads to a stronger immune response.

“Instead of injecting single particles, we inject clusters of particles that are wrapped around each other like the layers of an onion, like a bag full of onions,” said Elias Sayor, senior author of the study. In less than 48 hours, we can see that these tumors change from the so-called cold state, which indicates very few immune cells and a muted immune response, to a warm and highly active immune response state.

He added: This was very surprising. Given how quickly this happened, what it told us is that we were able to activate the early part of the immune system quickly against these cancers, and that’s very important for unlocking the downstream effects of the immune response.

This small clinical trial approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was designed to test safety and feasibility and included only four patients with glioblastoma. RNA was extracted from each patient’s tumor after surgical resection, then the mRNA was amplified and wrapped into particle clusters. It was then injected into patients, where it stimulated an immune response.

The team says it’s too early to fully assess the vaccine’s clinical effects, but patients spent more time disease-free and survived longer than expected.

A large-scale trial will be conducted soon, including up to 24 patients, to determine the optimal and safe dose of this vaccine. Next, the next phase of the experiment includes 25 children.

This research was published in the journal Cell.

Health

Many mental disorders have physical roots

Published

1 week ago

30/04/2024

pouyan

While psychiatrists rarely deal with physical causes in the diagnosis of mental disorders, in many cases physical causes are the root of mental problems.

Many mental disorders have physical roots

Jessica Huston’s tics started when she was just 12 years old. Over time, his condition worsened until he had a seizure and was rushed to the hospital. Doctors at a local hospital in Durham, England, dismissed his condition and said he was suffering from anxiety and probably spent a lot of time watching TikTok videos.

Jessica actually suffers from an autoimmune disease caused by a streptococcal bacterial infection. His illness was a form of pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with streptococcal infections (PANDAS). When the infection was identified and treated, her symptoms eventually began to improve.

Ms. Huston is not the only person with a brain dysfunction that is mistaken for a mental disorder. A lot of evidence shows that a series of infections can cause conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, tic, anxiety, and even psychosis. Inflammatory and metabolic disorders can also have significant effects on mental health, although they are rarely considered by psychiatrists.

Rethinking the cause of mental disorders could have profound implications for the millions of people with mental illnesses who are currently undertreated. For example, more than 90% of patients with bipolar disorder develop recurrent illnesses during their lifetime. More than 46% of children with obsessive-compulsive disorder do not recover. About 50 to 60 percent of patients with depression eventually recover after trying different drugs. A deeper understanding of the biological components of mental health can lead to more accurate diagnoses and more targeted treatments.

Infections can cause obsessive disorder, tic, anxiety, and even psychosis

For a long time, the field of psychiatry has focused on describing and classifying symptoms rather than on underlying causes. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was published in 1952 and contains descriptions, symptoms, and diagnostic criteria. Although this guide has helped unify diagnoses, it groups patients without considering the underlying mechanisms of mental disorders.

There is a lot of overlap between the symptoms of depression and anxiety, and some question whether they are really separate illnesses. At the same time, depression and anxiety exist in different forms. For example, panic disorder with and without agoraphobia are different diagnoses, but we may not find significant differences between them. This can lead to a high diversity of patients participating in drug trials, and these trials do not achieve results due to the few commonalities and large differences among the participants.

Previous attempts to find causal mechanisms for mental illness have been challenging. In 2013, the National Institute of Mental Health tried to distance itself from research based on classifications based on DSM symptoms. Huge budgets have been spent on research into brain disease processes with the hope of linking genes directly to behaviors. But this idea ultimately failed and most of the genes discovered had small effects.

Although genes may play a role in mental disorders, they are not the only answer. Many disorders such as schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, and autism can be caused by genetic disorder 22q11.2, in which part of chromosome 22 is deleted, says Ludger Tebartz van Elst, professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at Freiburg University Hospital in Germany.

In 2007, studies conducted at the University of Pennsylvania showed that 100 patients with psychiatric symptoms or cognitive deficits actually had some kind of autoimmune disease. Their bodies were making antibodies against a key receptor in nerve cells called the NMDA receptor. This leads to swelling of the brain and can cause a wide range of symptoms including paranoia, hallucinations, and aggression. The disease described was called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, and in many cases, it was treatable by removing the antibodies or using immunotherapy drugs or steroids. Studies conducted on patients who had the first episode of psychosis have shown that between 5 and 10 percent of them also had antibodies that attack the brain.

It seems that in rare cases obsessive-compulsive disorder can also be caused by the immune system. This condition is seen in childhood PANDAS, which Ms. Houston was diagnosed within 2021. This disorder is sometimes seen in adults as well. A 64-year-old man spent a lot of time mowing his lawn, but the next day he felt remorse and guilt. The researchers found that these symptoms are caused by antibodies attacking the neurons in his brain.

Recently, Belinda Lennox, director of the Department of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, conducted experiments on thousands of patients with psychosis. He has found antibodies in blood samples of about 6% of patients, which mainly target NMDA receptors. He says it’s not clear how a set of antibodies can cause clinical symptoms ranging from seizures to psychosis to encephalitis. It’s also not clear why these antibodies are made or if they can cross the blood-brain barrier (the membrane that controls access to the brain). He hypothesizes that antibodies cross the blood-brain barrier and affect memory by binding to the hippocampus, leading to delusions and hallucinations.

Studies have shown that some patients with psychological symptoms or cognitive defects have some kind of autoimmune disease

Dr. Lennox says a medical rethink is needed to understand the damage the immune system can do to the brain. He is conducting experiments in this field.

Studies of patients with immune-mediated psychosis show that a wider range of strategies, including the removal of antibodies and the use of immunotherapy drugs or steroids, can be effective treatments.

People with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (an infectious disease associated with a range of cognitive problems such as difficulty concentrating and paying attention) were once neglected or diagnosed as retarded. New research shows that myalgic encephalomyelitis is related to both immune disorders and metabolic disorders.

Metabolic disorders can also affect mental health. The brain is an extremely energy-demanding organ, and metabolic changes related to energy pathways are involved in various disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychosis, eating disorders, and major depressive disorder.

At Stanford University, there is a metabolic psychiatry clinic where patients are treated with diet and lifestyle changes along with medication. An active area of research at this clinic is the potential benefits of a ketogenic diet, where carbohydrate intake is limited.

A ketogenic diet forces the body to burn fat for energy, creating chemicals known as ketones, which can be used as a fuel source in the brain when glucose is limited.

Metabolic disorders can affect mental health

Thirteen trials are underway around the world to examine the effects of metabolic therapies on serious mental illness, says Kirk Nylen, head of neuroscience at the US charity Bazoski Group, which funds brain research.

The preliminary results have shown that a large group of patients respond to these treatments in a meaningful way. Medicines, talk therapy, brain magnetic stimulation, and maybe electroshock therapy have not been effective for this group of patients.

It is not just the understanding of the immune and metabolic systems that is improving. Massive amounts of data are now being analyzed at unprecedented speed to reveal connections that were previously hidden from view. This could ultimately lead to more personalized and better treatments.

In early October 2023, the UK Biobank published data showing that people with depressive episodes had higher levels of inflammatory proteins such as cytokines in their blood. According to another study, about a quarter of depressed patients showed evidence of mild inflammation. Knowing this can be helpful because other research shows that patients with inflammation respond poorly to antidepressants.

There are new advances in understanding the underlying causes of mental disorders. A group of researchers are investigating different ways to improve the diagnosis of ADHD; Like classifying patients into different subgroups, some of which were previously unknown. Different groups of researchers announced in three different statements in February 2024 the discovery of biomarkers that can predict the risk of dementia, autism, and psychosis.

The search for better diagnostic tools is also likely to be accelerated by the use of artificial intelligence. A company called Cognoa is using artificial intelligence to diagnose autism in children by analyzing videos of their movement behaviors in doctors’ waiting rooms.

The Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) in California has used artificial intelligence to create an entirely new map of the interactions between proteins and molecular networks involved in autism. This will greatly facilitate finding diagnostic and therapeutic tools.

The developments mentioned are promising. But many problems can be solved by reducing the gap that exists today between neurology and psychiatry. Neurology studies and treats physical, structural, and functional disorders of the brain, while psychiatry deals with mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders. Dr. Lennox envisions a future in which antibody testing is performed when a person who develops a sudden mental breakdown after a viral infection fails to recover with standard treatments.

According to Dr. Tebartz van Elst, the gap between neurology and psychiatry is greater in Anglo-Saxon countries (including the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and New Zealand). In Germany, psychiatry and neurology are closer together, so neurologists are trained in psychiatry and psychiatrists are trained in neurology for one year. This makes research work easier.

For most patients who are first diagnosed with psychosis or other severe psychiatric syndromes, Dr. Tebartz van Elst prescribes brain MRIs, electroencephalograms, laboratory tests for inflammation, and lumbar punctures in order to better treat them by finding clues to the cause of the illness. Submitted.