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Best school drug prevention programs teach life skills, studies find

Programs that teach middle-school students how to resist peer pressure, to become more assertive and to make better decisions are the most successful kind of drug use prevention programs in schools, according to a new review of recent studies.

19 Apr 2005

Eat your fruits and veggies - your body will thank you and your mother will be happy!

Eat your fruits and veggies - your body will thank you and your mother will be happy! And if that's not reason enough, a new study suggests antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables may limit brain damage from stroke and other neurological disorders.

12 Apr 2005

Findings could lead to improved treatments for schizophrenics, amphetamine abusers

An Oregon Health & Science University researcher is among an international team closing in on why many people with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders are "supersensitive" to the powerful neurotransmitter dopamine.

10 Apr 2005

Harm caused by alcohol consumption among college students may exceed previous estimates of the problem

Researchers report that unintentional fatal injuries related to alcohol increased from about 1,500 in 1998 to more than 1,700 in 2001 among U.S. college students aged 18-24.

21 Mar 2005

What risk factors influence teenagers to start experimenting with marijuana?

Involvement with other substances (alcohol and cigarettes), delinquency and school problems have been established as the three most important risk factors in identifying teenagers at risk of continued involvement with marijuana by a Cardiff University scientist, in collaboration with a colleague in the USA.

16 Mar 2005

Active brains stave off Alzheimer's signs

Mice who keep busy playing with toys also keep their brains and bodies active; more importantly, they also have lower levels of the peptides and brain plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease, compared to mice raised in environments not "enriched" with chew toys, running wheels,and tunnels, according to a new study in the 11 March issue of the journal Cell.

13 Mar 2005

College students not at a greater risk for alcohol dependence problems

Although college students had higher rates of yearly, monthly, and weekly alcohol use than their peers not attending college, they did not appear to be at a greater risk for alcohol dependence problems, according to an article in the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

7 Mar 2005

Smoking prevention programs in junior high or high school have little influence on whether teens choose to light up

"Our study shows there is little evidence to suggest that existing school-based smoking prevention programs produce long-term reductions in smoking prevalence among youth," says the study's first author, Sarah Wiehe, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of pediatrics, Division of Children's Health Services Research at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

3 Mar 2005

Youth with HIV take more risks after new meds introduced

Teens with HIV are having more risky sex with more partners than their counterparts did in the years before powerful new medications for HIV were introduced in 1996, according to a new report in the American Journal of Health Behavior.

28 Feb 2005

New York City Health statement on rare strain of HIV in a New York City resident

On February 11, 2005, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) reported a case of HIV infection with a strain that is resistant to many drugs in three classes of HIV medications, and which appears to have progressed to AIDS within 4 to 20 months after infection.

27 Feb 2005

Good Behavior Game dramatically reduced aggressive behavior and helped children stay on task in the classroom

When Laura Bush visited an inner city Baltimore classroom earlier this month, she observed first-grade students playing a game that promotes good behavior as they worked on a reading assignment. The First lady’s words of praise for the “Good Behavior Game” shined the national spotlight on a classroom management technique little known outside academic circles.

21 Feb 2005

Key insight into the process of normal synapse development may lead to improved treatment of conditions such as drug addiction and epilepsy

Communication in the brain travels from one nerve cell to another through critical connections called synapses. These neuron-to-neuron junctions form early in brain development, and their construction was thought to be guided by the nerve cells themselves.

13 Feb 2005

Dialogue instead of lecture best when advising teens about alcohol

Parents can more effectively advise teens about alcohol and drug use if, first, they try dialogue instead of lecture and, second, they set an everyday example, rather than give the one-time drug sermon, according to a Penn State researcher.

13 Feb 2005

Need for routine voluntary screening for HIV

A new cost-effectiveness analysis has led researchers from Duke University Medical Center and the Veterans Affairs (VA) Palo Alto Health Care System to recommend that routine voluntary screening for HIV

10 Feb 2005

Expanded HIV screening can increase patient life span

Expanded HIV screening can increase patient life span, prevent the spread of the disease, and is cost effective, researchers at Yale, Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital report in the February 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

10 Feb 2005

Chronic nicotine exposure worsens some Alzheimer’s-related brain abnormalities

UCI researchers have determined that chronic nicotine exposure worsens some Alzheimer’s-related brain abnormalities, contradicting the common belief that nicotine can actually be used to treat the disease.

9 Feb 2005

Marijuana changes blood flow in the brain

People who smoked marijuana had changes in the blood flow in their brains even after a month of not smoking, according to a study published in the February 8 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

7 Feb 2005

New way to assess the potentially damaging effects of prenatal drug exposure

Scientists have demonstrated a new way to assess the potentially damaging effects of prenatal drug exposure--a technique that could also be used to monitor a fetus's response to therapeutic drugs--using sophisticated, noninvasive medical imaging tools.

7 Feb 2005

Living in a disadvantaged neighborhood may increase HIV risk

Living in a disadvantaged urban neighborhood can increase a male residents’ risk of contracting HIV, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their study related disadvantaged neighborhoods to stress and stress to increased injection drug use in male study participants.

24 Jan 2005

Modafinil may be a possible medicinal treatment for cocaine dependence

Cocaine dependence is a major public health problem affecting thousands of people around the globe. Despite years of active research there are still no approved medications for the treatment of this life-shattering addiction.

10 Jan 2005