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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956 from a VAI press release:
A collaborative study from research teams in Sweden, the US and Australia published in Translational Psychiatry shows that suicidal patients have a reduced activity of an enzyme that regulates inflammation and its byproducts.
It is known that people who have attempted suicide have ongoing inflammation in their blood and spinal fluid. Now, a collaborative study from research teams in Sweden, the US and Australia published in Translational Psychiatry shows that suicidal patients have a reduced activity of an enzyme that regulates inflammation and its byproducts.
[...] Currently, there are no biomarkers for psychiatric illness, namely biological factors that can be measured and provide information about the patient's psychiatric health. If a simple blood test can identify individuals at risk of taking their lives, that would be a huge step forward, said [Professor Sophie] Erhardt, a Professor at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the Karolinska Institutet, who led the work along with [Professor Lena] Brundin.
The researchers analyzed certain metabolites, byproducts formed during infection and inflammation, in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid [CSF] from patients who tried to take their own lives. Previously it has been shown that such patients have ongoing inflammation in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid. This new work has succeeded in showing that patients who have attempted suicide have reduced activity of an enzyme called ACMSD, which regulates inflammation and its byproducts.
[Continues...]
[...] The substance that the enzyme ACMSD produces, picolinic acid, is greatly reduced in both plasma and in the spinal fluid of suicidal patients. Another product, called quinolinic acid, is increased. Quinolinic acid is inflammatory and binds to and activates glutamate receptors in the brain. Normally, ACMSD produces picolinic acid at the expense of quinolinic acid, thus maintaining an important balance.
[...] Several of the researchers have indicated that they have business interests, which are recognized in the article.
Having found these results in suicidal patients, the researchers are now trying to find out if this imbalance is also present in those with severe depression. They are also seeking to develop drugs that might activate the ACMSD enzyme and restore the balance between quinolinic and picolinic acids.
The full article is available: "An enzyme in the kynurenine pathway That governs vulnerability to suicidal behavior by regulating excitotoxicity and neuroinflammation" Translational Psychiatry, published online August 2, 2016, doi: 10.1038 / TP.2016.133.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Tuesday August 16 2016, @09:57PM
it's dangerous to blindly block or enable chemical receptors without even studying their function in a healthy human. it might do what you want but the result may be completely different than you think.
(Score: 2) by Post-Nihilist on Wednesday August 17 2016, @12:55AM
NDMA blockers are quite studied alright...
. In th 1990's, after almost 20 years of demonetization for being the mechanism behind PCP hallucinogenic action. the NDMA blockers became the hots molecules in the pipeline as they prevented neurological damage after cerebrovascular accidents (a kind of strokes). Sadly, the resulting temporary psychosis or frenetic religious experiences were judged unsuitable for use in the ambulance.
But what put the final nails, on the use of NDMA blocker, to prevent brain damage after strokes, is a series of papers on the temporal lobes regions damages they caused.
However, those lesions, known as Olney's lesions, as newer tests made on rhesus monkeys, were found to only occurs at extreme dosage in rodents. Those new studies sparkled new interests in research on NDMA blockers and Mematine was commercialized as the result of renewed flame.
all that after of being used for almost a century as as anesthesiants
Be like us, be different, be a nihilist!!!