Widely available drug reduces head injury deaths

A low cost and widely available drug could reduce deaths in traumatic brain injury patients by as much as 20%, depending on the severity of injury, according to a major study. The researchers say that tranexamic acid (TXA), a drug that prevents bleeding into the brain by inhibiting blood clot breakdown, has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives.

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Scientists find gender-distinct circuit for depression

Depression affects women nearly twice as much as men, but unraveling the brain's blueprint that regulates this behavior, let alone identifying specific molecular differences between sexes, has proven difficult. Researchers, however, have found and flipped a switch in the brain, revealing a single circuit in mice that activates during stress and is controlled by testosterone.

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Important questions on how mental illness is currently diagnosed

This research raises questions as to whether current diagnoses accurately reflect the underlying neurobiology of mental illness. The findings, just published in the leading peer-reviewed medical journal, JAMA Psychiatry, highlight the need for more individualised approaches to defining mental illness.

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Children bullied by friends and siblings are more likely to think about suicide in their early 20s

Depression, self-harm and suicidal ideation are more prominent in adults in their early twenties if they were bullied at home and at school, a study has found. Researchers stress that intervention is needed to educate people in bullying to reduce it.

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Impact of police stops on youth's mental health

New research looks into the impact police stops have on the mental health of youth. Researchers reveal that youth experiencing intrusive police stops are at risk of heightened emotional distress. The researchers found that youth who were stopped more often by police officers were more likely to report emotional trauma.

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Who is telling the truth about their health?

When researchers or policymakers ask health related questions — which they do a lot — they often rely on self-reported rather than tested health data. Researchers looked into how reliable this type of data is for research and found that, depending on country or age, self-reported data could be highly biased.

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The effectiveness of electrical stimulation in producing spinal fusion

Researchers performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of published data on the effect of electrical stimulation therapies on spinal fusion. They found significant improvement overall in the rates of bone fusion following a course of electrical stimulation in both preclinical (animal) and clinical (human) studies.

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