The voices in my head approve!............
Posted on 02/25/2008 6:25:58 AM PST by shrinkermd
...The trial results were a major breakthrough in neuroscience, says Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. For 50 years, all medicines for the disease had worked the same way — until Dr. Schoepp and other scientists took a different path.
“This drug really looks like it’s quite a different animal,” Dr. Insel says. “This is actually pretty innovative.”
Dr. Schoepp and other scientists had focused their attention on the way that glutamate, a powerful neurotransmitter, tied together the brain’s most complex circuits. Every other schizophrenia drug now on the market aims at a different neurotransmitter, dopamine.
The Lilly results have fueled a wave of pharmaceutical industry research into glutamate. Companies are searching for new treatments, not just for schizophrenia, but also for depression and Alzheimer’s disease and other unseen demons of the brain that torment tens of millions of people worldwide.
Driving the industry’s interest is the huge market for drugs for brain and psychiatric diseases. Worldwide sales total almost $50 billion annually, even though existing medicines have moderate efficacy and have side effects that range from reduced libido to diabetes.
The glutamate researchers warn that their quest for new treatments for schizophrenia is far from complete. The results of the Lilly trial covered only 196 patients and must be validated by much larger trials, the last of which may not be finished until at least 2011. Other glutamate drugs are even further away from approval. And even if the drugs win that approval, they may be viewed skeptically by doctors who have been disappointed by side effects in other drugs that were once been hailed as breakthroughs.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I’m of two minds on this subject ...
I’m enthusiastic, but the voices in my head are skeptical.
However, the insight about glutamate is intriguing.
The voices in my head approve!............
And so am I.
Chinese restaurants everywhere will now have signs:
NOW WITH DOUBLE MSG!...................
Was that an American Idol band? They suck!
This is good news. It is very sad to see people struggle with mental illness.
I wonder if this drug would be useful in the treatment of autism????
Note to self: Do not ever eat at Josh Higgins house.
But, but, but....
I thought that the pharmaceutical companies, especially the big four - Merck, Pfizer, Glaxo SmithKline, and Eli Lilly, were the embodiment of corporate evil?
I’m reminded of the film A Brilliant Mind and the potential for finding some semblance of peace; surely the wife gave him the strength and space he needed.
According to the film his will and the newer drugs both helped a lot!
The movie was idealized, to put it mildly. Nash's wife did everything possible for him, but she divorced him in the early '60s and they lived apart for several years. She took him back though, when he literally had no place else to go. Through the great kindness of the mathematical community he's made a great improvement, but the Nashs' only son is also diagnosed with schizophrenia now.
A relative of mine has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, although it appears to be a mild form. We have noticed that she thinks much more clearly when we get her to eat plenty of protein. I figure that she must need more of some particular amino acid than most people, but I don’t know which one. Maybe it is glutamate.
A psychiatrist charged me $200 for a visit and told me I was schizophrenic. I paid him $100 and told him to collect the rest from the other guy!
Funny thing happened... the schizophrenics lost all their symptoms while on kidney dialysis, meaning their kidneys were evidently not removing some waste product from their blood that was causing their hallucinations.
The research was very promising, but since the purpose of all pharmaceutical research is to turn human misery into a drug-revenue stream, there was no obvious way to make money from any cure that might be found, so the project was shut down.
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