Report finds funding threat to mental illness drugs (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – European neuroscientists said on Tuesday that the withdrawal by some big drugmakers from research into illnesses like depression, schizophrenia and Alzheimer's could halt the discovery of new drugs.

A report published by the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) said brain diseases and mental disorders like depression, dementia and addiction account for more a third of the burden of disease in Europe, but public and corporate research and development (R&D) funding is being cut.

"These are dark days for brain science," David Nutt, a professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London and a former president of the ECNP told a briefing in London.

Some European big pharma companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca have in recent years backed away from brain research, citing the difficulty and expense of finding new drug candidates.

The ECNP report said public funding for research in Europe into disorders of the brain lags significantly behind similar investment in the United States.

Yet experts estimate that in any given year, almost 80 million Europeans, or 27 percent of the European Union's population, are affected by disorders of the brain.

"The issue here is not just that a very key part of Europe's knowledge economy is under serious threat, it's that the withdrawal of research resources means the slowdown, and even outright cessation in some areas, of new treatments being developed," said Guy Goodwin, a co-author of the report and head of Oxford University's psychiatry department.

"This will inevitably affect patient well-being."

Nutt and Goodwin said a major part of the problem in persuading public and private organizations to fund research into mental illness is the stigma that it carries.

Unlike research into cancer or heart disease, they said, which commands huge public support and can return a swifter profit to drugmakers who find successful treatments, research into brain diseases is seen as difficult, expensive and ultimately less fruitful.

According to the report, the economic cost to the EU region of brain diseases and mental disorders was conservatively estimated at 386 billion euros ($555 billion) a year in 2005, the last time a full costing analysis was done. That cost, the authors said, far exceeds the cost to the region of any other disease area, including heart disease and cancer.

"The human cost, in terms of illness-related work disability, social role failure and premature death, is similarly immense," they wrote. And as Europe's population ages, those costs are likely to rise further.

Alastair Benbow, executive director of the European Brain Council, said the report showed the urgency of the region's funding crisis in neuropsychiatric drug discovery.

"If steps aren't taken now ... to stimulate research and investment in both the public and private sector, the field could really suffer lasting damage," he said.

(Editing by Jon Hemming)

Study finds why smokers gain weight when they quit (AP)

WASHINGTON – Scientists say they've finally discovered why smokers tend to gain some weight when they kick the habit.

It turns out that nicotine can rev up brain cells that normally signal people to stop eating when they're full, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

The weight connection isn't huge: On average, quitters gain less than 10 pounds. Still, it's a worry that many smokers cite when asked why they don't try to quit. Now the question is whether the discovery might lead to better treatments to help them quit without worrying about weight.

Yale University associate research scientist Yann Mineur stumbled onto the connection while studying a nicotine-related substance in mice — and the animals suddenly started eating less.

Nicotine hooks onto a variety of receptors, or docking sites, on the surface of cells. That's how it triggers addiction in one part of the brain.

But when it comes to weight, the Yale research found that both nicotine and the related drug cytisine were activating a different receptor than the one involved in addiction. This one is located on a small set of neurons in the hypothalamus, a region that regulates appetite.

When they gave nicotine to mice without that cellular pathway, it didn't help them lose weight like it did normal mice.

Smoking causes cancer, heart attacks and a host of other ailments so worry about modest weight gain shouldn't deter someone from quitting. But smokers who do have that concern should try nicotine-based smoking-cessation treatments, said study senior author Marina Picciotto, a Yale professor of psychiatry and neurobiology.

The other drug used in the mouse experiments, cytisine, is sold in Eastern Europe for smoking cessation but not in the U.S., and she'd like to see if there's data on the weight of smokers abroad who've used it.

Developing a drug to target only these specific receptors would be difficult, she cautions, because they're also involved in the body's stress responses in ways that could lead to such side effects as high blood pressure.

Obesity Greater Risk for Fatty Liver Than Alcohol, Study Finds (HealthDay)

THURSDAY, June 2 (HealthDay News) -- Obesity and insulin resistance constitute a greater risk for fatty liver disease than moderate alcohol consumption, according to a new study that found drinking modest amounts of red wine posed no greater risk for developing the condition.

For their study, published online May 23 in Annals of Medicine, Swedish researchers instructed 44 people to either abstain from alcohol or drink one (women) or two (men) glasses of red wine a day for three months. At the beginning and end of the three months, the investigators collected blood samples and conducted MRIs to measure the fatty content of participants' livers.

"It turned out that the amount of fat in the liver was linked with obesity and insulin resistance and was almost not at all affected by the red wine. Specifically, after three months, none of the wine drinkers had developed fatty liver or elevated liver transaminases," Dr. Stergios Kechagias, a liver specialist at Linkoping University, said in a news release from the Swedish Research Council.

Moreover, the study found a 16 percent decrease in levels of harmful LDL cholesterol among those who drank the red wine. "There is a strong correlation between moderate intake of alcohol and decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, and our data provides a mechanism for this since LDL cholesterol was lowered to such a large extent," Dr. Fredrik Nystrom, a professor at Linkoping, concluded in the news release.

Because it's known that large amounts of alcohol contribute to liver disease, it was long thought that even moderate consumption might have a harmful effect.

Fatty liver, which is associated with diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, the researchers noted.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more information on fatty liver disease.