Stop it, yer killing me! Next they'll be saying this is a weighty topic or the study's thin on hard facts...
PING!
Posted on 06/13/2006 11:58:07 PM PDT by neverdem
One of the most widely used treatments for the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, the antidepressant Prozac, works no better than dummy pills in preventing recurrence in young women who have recovered from it, researchers are reporting today.
The study, the most rigorous to date to test the use of medication for anorexia, should alter treatment for an illness that is often devastatingly chronic and that has a higher mortality than any other psychiatric disorder, experts said. Fewer than a third of the study's participants, who also received regular psychotherapy, remained healthy for a year or more, whether they received drug treatment or not, the study found.
An estimated 1 percent of Americans, or about three million people, mostly young women, will at some point suffer from the self-starvation and obsessive anxiety about weight that characterize anorexia, and surveys find that about two-thirds of them receive treatment with Prozac or similar antidepressants, which are considered generally interchangeable.
Research suggests that the drugs can be useful in helping people recover from bulimia nervosa, an eating disorder involving bingeing and purging that causes less dramatic weight loss than anorexia. But the new findings put to rest hopes from earlier work that these benefits might carry over to anorexia, experts said.
"Physicians who are trying to help people with anorexia remain symptom-free should not count on getting substantial benefits from antidepressants," said Dr. B. Timothy Walsh, the lead author of the study, who is director of eating disorders research at the New York State Psychiatric Institute at the Columbia University Medical Center.
"Doctors should be looking at other things, like good psychological treatments," Dr. Walsh said.
In the study, appearing in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from Columbia and the University of Toronto monitored 93 women, ages 16 to 45, who...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Stop it, yer killing me! Next they'll be saying this is a weighty topic or the study's thin on hard facts...
PING!
Scientists progress on livers, stem cells (isolated liver stem cells from human fetuses)
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Thanks for giving us the skinny on this subject, something we should all bone up on.
I knew before I posted y'all were probably hungry for knowledge on the topic.
Are they saying it's a waist of time? Maybe they should take some time and flesh this out.
Usually I can't stomach this kind of story, but this one really offers food for thought.
No time right now to devour this article. Will wait until I have more time to digest the information.
Some of these scientists should just stuff it already. You can't forcefeed this to the public. It's just too depressing.
You all are starving for a good pun thread. Watch for the next one coming up! Much more enjoyable...even if we've been there before!!
I predict this thread will be purged of all these insensitive comments.
Definately gives you some interesting ideas to chew over.
You are all on quite a pun binge. That's OK, though: the pickings have been slim lately.
As usual, I pull up to the table for a thread pun after all the good puns have been gobbled up.
I have to admit I am just waiting for someone to insist this is a serious subject and that we must stop yakking it up over here. I think that's a bunch of barf. If some folks are starved of a sense of humor, that's no reason we have to swallow ours.
You must admit we do tend to regurgitate some bad puns.
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