In a study of whether neuropsychological changes occur following deployment to war zones, post-traumatic stress disorder appeared to be associated with attention deficits in soldiers one year after returning from Iraq, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. In addition, intense combat experiences were associated with faster reaction times regardless of how recently a soldier was deployed.

Previous research has suggested that as soldiers face prolonged stressful and life-threatening situations, changes in their brains direct their cognitive (thinking, learning and memory) resources toward survival, according to background information in the article. For instance, they may respond to dangerous events more quickly while losing the ability to pay attention, learn and remember events not related to combat. "However, it remains unknown whether deployment-related neuropsychological changes persist over time, are associated with stress-related factors (e.g., combat intensity, posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD] symptoms and depressive reactions) or are better accounted for by demographic and contextual variables," the authors write.

Brian P. Marx, Ph.D., of Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System and Boston University School of Medicine, and colleagues studied 268 male and female regular active-duty soldiers who served between 2003 and 2006. All the soldiers were given neuropsychological tests measuring response time, attention and memory before and after deployment. A group of 164 was assessed both immediately and one year following their return, whereas a second group of 104 returned more recently and were assessed before deployment and then a median (midpoint) of 122 days after returning. The assessments also documented demographic and military information, risk factors for neuropsychological disorders and combat intensity and emotional distress.

Childhood bullying and victimization appear to predict future psychiatric problems in both males and females although females appear more likely to be affected regardless of pre-existing psychiatric problems, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

"Bullying can be defined as an aggressive act embodying an imbalance of power in which the victims cannot defend themselves accompanied by an element of repetition," according to background information in the article. "Bullying and victimization are associated with poorer family functioning, interparental violence and parental maltreatment" and often result in troubled outcomes for both bullies and victims. Although there have been studies on the effects of bullying, "there are no previous population-based studies that examined late adolescence or adulthood outcomes of childhood bullying among both males and females."

Andre Sourander, M.D., Ph.D., of Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland, and colleagues studied associations between bullying and victimization in childhood (at age 8) and later psychiatric hospitalization and treatment with antipsychotic medication (from ages 13 to 24) in 5,038 Finnish children who participated in the nationwide Finnish 1981 Birth Cohort Study. Information was gathered from parents, teachers, participants' self-reports and a national register of hospital and medication records.

Similar submicroscopic variations and rearrangements appear in the genetic material of individuals with schizophrenia, autism and mental retardation, suggesting that the three disorders may share a developmental pathway, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

New technologies to compare genomes have enabled researchers to detect genetic alterations known as copy number variations-deletions or duplications that change the number of copies of specific DNA segments, according to background information in the article. "Recently, this approach has been widely used in neurologic and psychiatric disorders, including mental retardation, autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia," the authors write. "Findings from these studies suggested that several genes involved in similar neurodevelopmental pathways may be associated with these conditions. However, so far only rare structural variants, sometimes present in a single case, have been identified."

Audrey Guilmatre, Ph.D., of Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire de Recherche Biomédicale, Rouen, France, and colleagues analyzed genetic material from 247 individuals with mental retardation, 260 with autism spectrum disorders, 236 with schizophrenia and 236 controls with no psychiatric diagnoses. They focused on 28 candidate loci (points on a chromosome where a gene is located) found to be associated with these conditions in previous studies.

In the first functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of its kind, neurologists and psychiatrists at Columbia University have identified an area of the brain involved in the earliest stages of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders.

Activity in this specific region of the hippocampus may help predict the onset of the disease, offering opportunities for earlier diagnosis and for the development of drugs for schizophrenia prevention.

Details of the findings were published in the September 7, 2009, issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

In the study, the researchers scanned the brains of 18 high-risk individuals with "prodromal" symptoms, and followed them for two years. Of those individuals who went on to develop first-episode psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, 70 percent had unusually high activity in this region of the hippocampus, known as the CA1 subfield.

School lunch is most colorfully described by students.

"Disgusting," said freshman Kiley Baker. "The macaroni and cheese tasted like barf."

Seventh-grader David Frederick said the food tasted "fake, like it was made in a factory."

Baker and Frederick live in Cedar Falls, amid the rich heartland soils that grow food, and attend Malcolm Price Laboratory School.

"Why should a school serve canned corn in the middle of Iowa? asked one parent, Rob Stanley. So last week, the barf and canned corn were replaced.

A retrovirus known to cause leukemia and cancerous tumors in animals has for the first time been found in malignant prostate cells -- raising the intriguing question of its role in prostate cancer.

The retrovirus -- called Xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV -- was found in 27 percent of prostate cancers, compared to 6 percent of benign tissues examined by University of Utah and Columbia University researchers.

It also was associated with more aggressive kinds of tumors.

"We're not saying this virus causes cancer," said Ila R. Singh, associate professor of pathology at the U. and the senior author of a study published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The best we can say is it is associated with prostate cancer."

Bromides are a common endocrine disruptor. Because bromide is also a halide, it competes for the same receptors that are used in the thyroid gland (among other places) to capture iodine. This will inhibit thyroid hormone production resulting in a low thyroid state.

Iodine is essential for your body, and is detected in every organ and tissue. There is increasing evidence that low iodine is related to numerous diseases, including cancer. Various clinicians and researchers have found iodine effective with everything from goiter to constipation.

Bromide can be found in several forms. Methyl Bromide is a pesticide used mainly on strawberries, found predominantly in the California areas. Brominated Vegetable Oil (BVO) is added to citrus drinks to help suspend the flavoring in the liquid.

Potassium Bromate is a dough conditioner found in commercial bakery products and some flours.

Food and drugs just can't leave their wrappings behind

Earlier this year, when Germans were cracking open boxes of chocolate muesli - a common breakfast cereal in their country - it's unlikely their thoughts slid to the chemical 4-methylbenzophenone, much less to the fact that this component of printing ink had slipped from the outside of the cardboard box and into the cereal. That is, until the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was asked to look into the matter.

Sufferers display mood instability, fear of abandonment, impulsive behavior, anger and suicidal or self-injurious acts. People with the disorder also may misperceive the actions of others.

They have the thinnest skin, the shortest fuses and take the hardest knocks. In psychiatrists' offices, they have long been viewed as among the most challenging patients to treat.

They are the kind of people who drive a friend away for interfering and subsequently berate that friend for abandonment.

But almost 20 years after the designation of borderline personality disorder as a recognized mental health condition, some understanding and hope have surfaced for people with the condition and their families.

Sticking with what you know often comes at the price of learning about more favorable alternatives.

Managing this trade-off is easy for many, but not for those with conditions such as Alzheimer's disease or obsessive-compulsive disorder who are trapped in simple routines.

Using brain scans in monkeys, Duke University Medical Center researchers are now able to predict when monkeys will switch from exploiting a known resource to exploring their options.

"Humans aren't the only animals who wonder if the grass is greener elsewhere, but it's hard to abandon what we know in hopes of finding something better," said John Pearson, Ph.D., research associate in the Duke Department of Neurobiology and lead author of a study published in this week's Current Biology.