Adolescence is a particularly vulnerable neurodevelopmental period marked by high rates of engagement with risky alcohol use. This review summarizes the cognitive and neural consequences following ...alcohol use during adolescence from longitudinal design studies in humans and animals. Findings from human adolescent studies suggest that binge drinking and heavy alcohol use is associated with poorer cognitive functioning on a broad range of neuropsychological assessments, including learning, memory, visuospatial functioning, psychomotor speed, attention, executive functioning, and impulsivity. Alcohol use during adolescence is associated with accelerated decreases in gray matter and attenuated increases in white matter volume, and aberrant neural activity during executive functioning, attentional control, and reward sensitivity tasks, when compared to non-drinking adolescents. Animal studies in rodents and non-human primates have replicated human findings, and suggest cognitive and neural consequences of adolescent alcohol use may persist into adulthood. Novel rodent studies demonstrate that adolescent alcohol use may increase reward responsiveness of the dopamine system to alcohol later in life, as well as disrupt adolescent neurogenesis, potentially through neuroinflammation, with long-lasting neural and behavioral effects into adulthood. Larger longitudinal human cognitive and neuroimaging studies with more diverse samples are currently underway which will improve understanding of the impact of polysubstance use, as well as the interactive effects of substance use, physical and mental health, and demographic factors on cognition and neurodevelopment.
•Adolescence is a critical neurodevelopmental period marked by rising alcohol use.•This review summarizes the neural and cognitive effects of alcohol use.•Adolescent alcohol use is related to changes in brain structure and function.•Heavy alcohol use is associated with poorer cognitive functioning.
As states move to target trans people, proposed regulations from the Biden administration would set a national standard for access to care, regardless of gender identity.
The fate of Russell Toomey’s case against Arizona, and of other transgender Americans’ access to care, depends on the influence of
Bostock v. Clayton County.
Meanwhile, the new administration and ...Congress should undo recent damage to transgender rights protections.
Current treatments for adolescent alcohol use disorder (AUD) are mainly psychosocial and limited in their efficacy. As such, pharmacotherapies are being investigated as potential adjunctive ...treatments to bolster treatment outcomes. N-acetylcysteine is a promising candidate pharmacotherapy for adolescent AUD because of its tolerability and demonstrated ability to modulate glutamatergic, GABAergic, and glutathione systems. The primary objective of this double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subjects crossover preliminary investigation was to measure potential changes within glutamate + glutamine (Glx), GABA, and glutathione levels in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy during 10-days of N-acetylcysteine (1200 mg twice daily) compared to 10-days of placebo in non-treatment seeking adolescents who use alcohol heavily (N = 31; 55% female). Medication adherence was confirmed via video. Effects on alcohol use were measured using Timeline Follow-Back as an exploratory aim. Linear mixed effects models controlling for baseline metabolite levels, brain tissue composition, alcohol use, cannabis use, and medication adherence found no significant differences in Glx, GABA, or glutathione levels in the dACC after N-acetylcysteine compared to placebo. There were also no measurable effects on alcohol use; however, this finding was underpowered. Findings were consistent in the subsample of participants who met criteria for AUD (n = 19). The preliminary null findings in brain metabolite levels may be due to the young age of participants, relatively low severity of alcohol use, and non-treatment seeking status of the population investigated. Future studies can use these findings to conduct larger, well-powered studies within adolescents with AUD.
Against Health Metzl, Jonathan; Kirkland, Anna
11/2010, Letnik:
18
eBook
You see someone smoking a cigarette and say,Smoking is bad for your health, when what you mean is, You are a bad person because you smoke. You encounter someone whose body size you deem excessive, ...and say, Obesity is bad for your health, when what you mean is, You are lazy, unsightly, or weak of will. You see a woman bottle-feeding an infant and say,Breastfeeding is better for that child's health, when what you mean is that the woman must be a bad parent. You see the smokers, the overeaters, the bottle-feeders, and affirm your own health in the process. In these and countless other instances, the perception of your own health depends in part on your value judgments about others, and appealing to health allows for a set of moral assumptions to fly stealthily under the radar.Against Health argues that health is a concept, a norm, and a set of bodily practices whose ideological work is often rendered invisible by the assumption that it is a monolithic, universal good. And, that disparities in the incidence and prevalence of disease are closely linked to disparities in income and social support. To be clear, the book's stand against health is not a stand against the authenticity of people's attempts to ward off suffering. Against Health instead claims that individual strivings for health are, in some instances, rendered more difficult by the ways in which health is culturally configured and socially sustained.The book intervenes into current political debates about health in two ways. First, Against Health compellingly unpacks the divergent cultural meanings of health and explores the ideologies involved in its construction. Second, the authors present strategies for moving forward. They ask, what new possibilities and alliances arise? What new forms of activism or coalition can we create? What are our prospects for well-being? In short, what have we got if we ain't got health? Against Health ultimately argues that the conversations doctors, patients, politicians, activists, consumers, and policymakers have about health are enriched by recognizing that, when talking about health, they are not all talking about the same thing. And, that articulating the disparate valences of health can lead to deeper, more productive, and indeed more healthy interactions about our bodies.
Current research has demonstrated the definitive presence of oxidative stress in multiple sclerosis (MS). This finding has led to clinical trial research which has indicated that specific ...antioxidants have the ability to effectively reduce markers of oxidative stress. However, few interventions testing antioxidant supplements have shown efficacy for reducing the symptom burden in the disorder. This paper quickly reviews what is currently known about oxidative stress and antioxidants in MS, explains which nutrients are critical for the creation and maintenance of the myelin sheath, describes potential negative effectors in the diet which may be contributing to oxidative stress, and how these aspects of diet, combined with current knowledge on antioxidants, may be able to be combined into a whole food dietary intervention which can be tested for efficacy in MS.
Substance use often begins, and noticeably escalates, during adolescence. Identifying predictive neurobehavioral vulnerability markers of substance use and related problems may improve targeted ...prevention and early intervention initiatives. This review synthesizes 44 longitudinal studies and explores the utility of developmental imbalance models and neurobehavioral addiction frameworks in predicting neural and cognitive patterns that are associated with prospective substance use initiation and escalation among young people. A total of 234 effect sizes were calculated and compared. Findings suggest that aberrant neural structure and function of regions implicated in reward processing, cognitive control, and impulsivity can predate substance use initiation, escalation, and disorder. Functional vulnerability markers of substance use include hyperactivation during reward feedback and risk evaluation in prefrontal and ventral striatal regions, fronto-parietal hypoactivation during working memory, distinctive neural patterns during successful (fronto-parietal hyperactivation) and failed response inhibition (frontal hypoactivation), and related cognitive deficits. Structurally, smaller fronto-parietal and amygdala volume and larger ventral striatal volume predicts prospective substance misuse. Taken together, the findings of this review suggest that neurobehavioral data can be useful in predicting future substance use behaviors. Notably, little to no research has empirically tested the underlying assumptions of widely used theoretical frameworks. To improve the reliability and utility of neurobehavioral data in predicting future substance use behaviors, recommendations for future research are provided.
This article is part of the special issue on ‘Vulnerabilities to Substance Abuse.’
•Substance use often begins, and noticeably escalates, during adolescence.•This review summarizes neural and cognitive vulnerability markers of substance use.•Aberrant prefrontal and striatal structure and function predicts escalating use.•Executive functioning deficits increase vulnerability to substance use.•Prevention initiatives should target these neural networks and cognitive functions.
Decreased NAD
levels have been shown to contribute to metabolic dysfunction during aging. NAD
decline can be partially prevented by knockout of the enzyme CD38. However, it is not known how CD38 is ...regulated during aging, and how its ecto-enzymatic activity impacts NAD
homeostasis. Here we show that an increase in CD38 in white adipose tissue (WAT) and the liver during aging is mediated by accumulation of CD38
immune cells. Inflammation increases CD38 and decreases NAD
. In addition, senescent cells and their secreted signals promote accumulation of CD38
cells in WAT, and ablation of senescent cells or their secretory phenotype decreases CD38, partially reversing NAD
decline. Finally, blocking the ecto-enzymatic activity of CD38 can increase NAD
through a nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN)-dependent process. Our findings demonstrate that senescence-induced inflammation promotes accumulation of CD38 in immune cells that, through its ecto-enzymatic activity, decreases levels of NMN and NAD
.
Gulf War Illness is a chronic multi-symptom disorder with severe cognitive impairments which may be related to glutamate excitotoxicity and central nervous system dysfunction. The low glutamate diet ...has been proposed as a comprehensive intervention for Gulf War Illness. We examined the effects of the low glutamate diet on verbal working memory using a fMRI N-back task. Accuracy, whole-brain blood oxygen level dependency (BOLD) response, and task-based functional connectivity were assessed at baseline and after 1 month on the diet (N = 24). Multi-voxel pattern analysis identified regions of whole-brain BOLD pattern differences after the diet to be used as seeds for subsequent seed-to-voxel functional connectivity analyses. Verbal working memory accuracy improved after the diet (+ 13%; p = 0.006). Whole-brain BOLD signal changes were observed, revealing lower activation within regions of the frontoparietal network and default mode network after the low glutamate diet. Multi-voxel pattern analysis resulted in 3 clusters comprising parts of the frontoparietal network (clusters 1 and 2) and ventral attention network (cluster 3). The seed-to-voxel analyses identified significant functional connectivity changes post-diet for clusters 1 and 2 (peak p < 0.001, cluster FDR p < 0.05). Relative to baseline, clusters 1 and 2 had decreased functional connectivity with regions in the ventral attention and somatomotor networks. Cluster 2 also had increased functional connectivity with regions of the default mode and frontoparietal networks. These findings suggest that among veterans with Gulf War Illness, the low glutamate diet improves verbal working memory accuracy, alters BOLD response, and alters functional connectivity within two networks central to working memory.
Alcohol misuse and alcohol use disorder (AlUD) have neurobiological consequences. This meta-analysis of proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) studies aimed to assess the differences in brain ...metabolite levels in alcohol misuse and AUD relative to controls (PROSPERO registration: CRD42020209890). Hedge's g with random-effects modeling was used. Sub-group and meta-regression techniques explored potential sources of demographic and MRS parameter heterogeneity. A comprehensive literature review identified 43 studies, resulting in 69 models across gray and white matter (GM, WM). Lower N-acetylaspartate levels were found in frontal, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), hippocampal, and cerebellar GM, and frontal and parietal WM, suggesting decreased neuronal and axonal viability. Lower choline-containing metabolite levels (all metabolites contributing to choline peak) were found in frontal, temporal, thalamic, and cerebellar GM, and frontal and parietal WM, suggesting membrane alterations related to alcohol misuse. Lower creatine-containing metabolite levels (Cr; all metabolites contributing to Cr peak) were found in temporal and occipital cortical GM, while higher levels were noted in midbrain/brainstem GM; this finding may have implications for using Cr as an internal reference. The lack of significant group differences in glutamate-related levels is possibly related to biological and methodological complexities. The few studies reporting on GABA found lower levels restricted to the ACC. Confounding variables were age, abstinence duration, treatment status, and MRS parameters (echo time, quantification type, data quality). This first meta-analysis of proton MRS studies consolidates the numerous individual studies to identify neurometabolite alterations within alcohol misuse and AUD. Future studies can leverage this new formalized information to investigate treatments that might effectively target the observed disturbances.
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