A book published by Ben Goldacre this year has drawn attention to the fact that drug trials producing negative or nil results are simply not published, thereby making the drugs appear to be more successful than they really are. Goldacre is spearheading a movement to force drug companies into publishing all their results and ensuring […]
Read moredrugs
One of the common criticisms made about the use of drugs to treat mental disorder is that they don’t act as a cure, they simply offer temporary relief from disabling symptoms. New research challenges this. Prof Shitij Kapur and his team at King’s College London ( Vernon et al. 2012 ) have produced evidence that certain drugs change brain structure. […]
Read more
According to today’s Guardian “The use of antidepressants has risen by more than a quarter in England in just three years, amid fears that more people are suffering from depression due to the economic crisis. The number of prescriptions for antidepressants increased by 28% from 34m in 2007-08 to 43.4m in 2010-11, according to the NHS information centre”. But […]
Read more
Whilst it’s been known for years that lithium drugs help many bipolar patients to manage their disorder, it hasn’t been known how lithium acts. But now there is a clue! Laboratory studies show a link between lithium and an enzyme known as PO*. This enzyme controls a group of genes which affect brain cells’ sensitivity […]
Read more
There really are some beautiful charts and diagrams here …. truly ‘descriptive statistics’. I can’t really do any of it justice by cramming it into a tiny blog post, but it’s well worth having a look at this venn diagram about drugs, for example. Or this interactive representation of the link between stress and work.
Read more