Grassley Vows to Pressure NIH Over Grants

The ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee wants the National Institutes of Health to revoke grants to academic scientists who fail to report financial conflicts of interest to their institutions, the Iowa Senator tells The Chronicle of Higher Education.

His remarks come after targeting Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of Cincinnati, because some academics underreported their own financial interests in research projects supported by the NIH. Institutions are required by federal regulation to report the existence of those conflicts to the agency. Grassley is seeking info from 20 other institutions about financial conflicts among their scientists, including Brown University’s Martin Keller, and the American Psychiatric Association.

Since 1995, an NIH regulation has required scientists to report to their universities any “significant financial interests” they hold in research projects financed by the agency. Those are defined as income or equity interest of $10,000 from a company or 5-percent ownership of its stock. The universities, in turn, are required to tell the NIH whether they were able to manage or eliminate the conflicts in order to avoid bias in the research findings, the paper notes.

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NIH study reveals incidence, precursors and psychiatric sequelae of major psychiatric disorders

A new study by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) presents results on the first onset of substance use disorders (i.e., alcohol and drug abuse and dependence) and major mood and anxiety disorders, based on Wave 2 of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC).

This landmark survey is the first conducted in the U.S. to identify rates of first episodes (i.e., incidence) of these disorders in the U.S. population. In addition, it provides information on sociodemographic and psychopathologic risk factors for those disorders—information critical for developing evidence-based preventive interventions—and estimates risk for subsequent comorbid disorders.

Bridget Grant, Ph.D., Chief of NIAAA’s Laboratory of Biometry and Epidemiology, and her colleagues found that 1-year incidence rates were highest for DSM-IV alcohol dependence (1.70%), alcohol abuse (1.02%), major depressive disorder (1.51%) and generalized anxiety disorder (1.12%), followed by panic disorder (0.62%), bipolar I disorder (0.53%) and specific phobia (0.44%). One-year incidence rates of DSM-IV social phobia (0.32%), bipolar II (0.21%) and drug abuse (0.28%) and drug dependence (0.32%) were lower but not insignificant. These rates are comparable to or exceed corresponding incidence rates for other common medical diseases such as lung cancer (0.06%), stroke (0.45%) and cardiovascular disease (1.5%).

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Improvement Following ADHD Treatment Sustained In Most Children

Most children treated in a variety of ways for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) showed sustained improvement after three years in a major follow-up study funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Yet increased risk for behavioral problems, including delinquency and substance use, remained higher than normal.

The study followed-up children who had participated in the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (MTA).

Initial advantages of medication management alone or in combination with behavioral treatment over purely behavioral or routine community care waned in the years after 14 months of controlled treatment ended. However, Peter Jensen, M.D., Columbia University, and colleagues emphasized that "it would be incorrect to conclude from these results that treatment makes no difference or is not worth pursuing."

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Older schizophrenia drug works, costs less: study

A new study finds that an older antipsychotic drug is cheaper and equally effective for some patients with schizophrenia, sending makers of newer drugs scrambling to defend their products on Friday.

The American Journal of Psychiatry study concluded that the older, first-generation antipsychotic drug perphenazine was less expensive and as effective as newer medications such as AstraZeneca Plc's Seroquel and Eli Lilly and Co.'s Zyprexa.

Funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the $42.6 million study suggests doctors should consider the use of older antipsychotics as a first choice for patients with schizophrenia, a group of psychotic diseases marked by delusions and hallucinations.

"There could be a very useful role -- from a clinical and cost-effectiveness standpoint -- for greater utilization of some older-generation medications," said Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, a psychiatrist at Columbia University Medical Center and the study's lead author.

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