first opinion
Psychiatric drug development needs to stop throwing the baby out with the bathwater
Adobe
Drug development in psychiatry has been slow and reliant on guesswork for decades, writes Amit Etkin in a First Opinion. Potentially good drug candidates are often discarded as trials move onto the next best drug, and no attention is paid to whether the medication itself was ineffective or was simply studied on too heterogeneous a group.
To move forward in a more productive way, Etkin argues, research needs to focus on identifying brain biomarkers that can effectively guide the development of precision psychiatry rather than relying on symptoms for diagnosis. This would ensure that every drug candidate's benefits are investigated to their fullest extent, and on the right population, before they are discarded. "I hope those we aim to serve will finally be able to say, 'Here's what's going on in my brain, and this is why I'm taking this medication,'" writes Etkin. More here.
patient perspective
"To say my body is diseased is an imposition"
Sonya Rio-Glick was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at the age of 2. But she refuses for her condition to be referred to as a disease. Instead, Rio-Glick, who published her first full-length documentary at 17 and has choreographed several dance pieces and worked for the theater, used it to fuel her activism and art, writes Isabella Cueto, who interviewed the activist in the latest installment of her Living With series.
In the interview, Rio-Glick talks about her internship at the first fully disabled professional theater company, the meeting that changed her view of cerebral palsy, navigating an all-girls school where her disability was essentially ignored, and finding safety and belonging among friends who showed they cared for her. More here.
public health
Unsupervised ingestion of melatonin keeps sending children to the ER
Between 2019 and 2022, 11,000 babies and children were taken to the emergency room after ingesting melatonin, making up 7% of all pediatric visits for accidental drug ingestion, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A large number of incidents included gummies and other flavored formulations of melatonin, a hormone often taken as a supplement to help with sleep.
This represents an increase of 420% in ER visits for unsupervised melatonin ingestion since 2009. Further, between 2012 and 2021, poison control calls for pediatric exposure to melatonin went up by 520% — a measure proportional to the increase in adult use of melatonin. The report follows a 2022 publication sharing concerns about the variability of melatonin contents across available over-the-counter products, and it points to the need for better educating parents on the importance of keeping all medications, including supplements, away from children.
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