Only few children suffering from anxiety disorders undergo treatment. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have looked into how many children who suffer from the most common yet treatable anxiety disorders that are actually diagnosed in the psychiatric system in Denmark. According to the researchers, the number is surprisingly low compared to other western countries, indicating that anxiety disorders in children and youth are disregarded in Denmark.
Only 5.7 per cent of Danish children suffering from anxiety disorders were diagnosed within the ‘Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’ in Denmark from 2004 to 2007, while the corresponding figures from other western countries reach between 27 and 45 per cent measured in clinical populations. According to the researchers, these results are indicative of a significant lack of reporting of cases of anxiety disorders in Danish children:
‘Knowing how easy and quickly children suffering from anxiety disorders may be treated if a disorder is discovered in due time, it is incomprehensible that Denmark does not have available treatment options for children who suffer from the most common anxiety disorders,’ says Barbara Hoff Esbjørn, associate professor and PhD at the University’s Psychology Clinic, University of Copenhagen.
According to the researchers there is no reason to believe that Danish children are significantly different from countries with similarities to Denmark. They believe, that the low number of diagnoses indicate that way too few Danish children in general are treated for their anxiety disorders. A treatment that not necessarily has to be undertaken by the Danish ‘Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’.
Based on data from among others the National Council for Children, the researchers estimate that 60-100,000 Danish children between the age of seven and 17 years suffer from anxiety disorders. The researchers have analysed data on diagnoses registered in the national data bank ’Børne- og Ungdomspsykiatri – Danmark’ (UK: ‘Child and Adolescent Psychiatry – Denmark’) within the period of 2004 to 2007. They have examined the most frequently occurring anxiety disorders; e.g. separation anxiety, simple phobia, social phobia and generalised anxiety.
The researchers have no doubt that untreated anxiety may in time have serious consequences for the children. The majority of them will experience reduced quality of life during their childhood, suffer from learning difficulties in school and, later, while studying. As adults, they risk developing severe mental health disorders, such as depression.
Despite grave consequences, way too few children undergo treatment. According to Associate Professor Ingrid Leth from the Department of Psychology, it is preferable to treat anxiety in children in their immediate environment compared to employing psychiatric treatment. She points to lack of knowledge and tools to detect anxiety disorders as major factors for the fact that it does not happen to any significant degree:
‘It may be difficult to spot children with anxiety disorders, as they do not react outwardly as do children suffering from for example ADHD. The children are often withdrawn and, essentially, behave as expected. Luckily, we experience a profound will among school teachers, kindergarten teachers, psychologists and medics, who all would like to do more, but who lack the necessary knowledge and tools to ’screen’ anxiety disorders,’ says Ingrid Leth. University of Copenhagen

To solve a modern health crisis, Jon Graff, MD, PhD, is looking back millions of years. Dr. Graff, Professor of Developmental Biology, and his colleagues genetically alter fruit flies to have diabetes or obesity.
Jon Graff, MD, PhD: ‘We’re interested in unraveling the basis of metabolism,’ Dr. Graff said. ‘Our ability to control fat and glucose levels are basic, ancient functions. We try to explore the evolutionary underpinnings.’ At the center of Dr. Graff’s work is the concept of evolutionary conservation—the principle that once a gene appears in a species, it remains similar in other species that evolve from it. Ancestral mammals diverged from ancestral flies about 300 million years ago, but today, modern humans and modern flies share many genes.
Dr. Graff and his colleagues focus on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the roundworm C. elegans, and mice.
By inducing mutations and selecting for flies that have disorders in sugar metabolism—a condition he calls ‘flyabetes’—the researchers can identify genes that may prove relevant to human disease. Flies don’t have blood, having instead a blood-like substance called hemolymph, but fundamentally, their glucose regulation is comparable to a mammal’s.
In Drosophila and mice, the researchers found that a single gene called adipose regulates fat and insulin resistance. In mice, they found that fat stem cells reside in the blood vessel walls of fatty tissue, but not in vessels of other types of tissues.
‘If we understand how adipocytes (fat cells) form and how they function, we can hopefully find therapeutic targets to treat obesity-related diseases in humans,’ Dr. Graff said. For instance, if the triggers can be found that signal stem cells to become fat cells, it may be possible to turn off the process.
His research involves animal models, but Dr. Graff keeps humans and human health in mind. ‘We have our eyes on what could be of use clinically,’ he said.
He cofounded a company called Reata Pharmaceuticals that now has an experimental anti-inflammatory drug, bardoxolone methyl, in Phase III clinical trials. The trial is testing the efficacy and safety of bardoxolone methyl in people with chronic kidney disease and type 2 diabetes.
‘We’re trying to understand a public health problem of obesity and diabetes,’ he said. ‘The problem is well enumerated, and the vast majority of people understand that this is a burden physically, socially, and medically. It’s a huge cost for the country.’ T Southwestern Medical Center 　

A new study led by University of Kentucky researchers shows a new way to precisely detect a single chemical at extremely low concentrations and high contamination.
The study was carried out in the laboratory of Peixuan Guo, the William S. Farish Endowed Chair in Nanobiotechnology at the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center. The study shows that the phi29 DNA packaging nanomotor connector can be used to sense chemicals with reactive thioesters or maleimide using single channel conduction assays based on three observable fingerprints. This channel system could be further developed into very sensitive sensing devices.
The ability to detect a chemical at a low concentration and high contamination is especially important for environmental surveillance, homeland security, athlete drug monitoring, toxin/drug screening, and earlier disease diagnosis.
In the case of disease diagnosis, the production of an unusual metabolic product is a feature of disease, but in early stages, the concentration of this product is very low. Single molecule detection will facilitate the early detection of disease such as cancer, so as to facilitate earlier treatment.
‘Sensitivity of detection is a major challenge in the diagnosis of many diseases,’ said Guo. ‘Our next step is to find one metabolic product of one disease and determine the reality in earlier disease diagnosis.’
‘The proof-of-principle studies described in this study will be extended in the future to engineer multiple probes within a single pore for concurrent detection of multiple targets at the single molecule level in real time,’ said Farzin Haque, research assistant professor at the UK College of Pharmacy, and first author on the paper. EurekAlert

Psoriasis is an independent risk for Type 2 Diabetes, according to a new study by researchers with the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, with the greatest risk seen in patients with severe psoriasis. Researchers estimate that an additional 115,500 people will develop diabetes each year due to the risk posed by psoriasis above and beyond conventional risk factors.
‘These data suggest that patients with psoriasis are at increased risk for developing diabetes even if they don’t have common risk factors such as obesity,’ said senior author Joel M. Gelfand, MD, MSCE, associate professor of Dermatology in the Perelman School of Medicine. ‘Patients with psoriasis should eat a healthy diet, get regular exercise, and see their physician for routine preventative health screenings such as checks of blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar.’
Psoriasis is a common inflammatory skin disease affecting over 7.5 million Americans and causes thick, inflamed, scaly patches of skin. The disease has previously been associated with increased risk of myocardial infarction, stroke, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular mortality.
This research builds on previous work demonstrating a diverse set of increased health risks for people with psoriasis,’ said lead author Rahat S. Azfar, MD, MSCE, adjunct assistant professor of Dermatology in the Perelman School of Medicine. ‘In addition to having an increased risk of diabetes, people with psoriasis are more likely to have metabolic syndrome, high triglycerides, and raised glucose levels, even if they are not overweight or have other common risk factors for these conditions. Both patients with psoriasis, especially those with severe psoriasis, and their treating physicians should be aware of the potential for systemic metabolic complications associated with this skin disease.
Both psoriasis and diabetes are diseases caused by chronic inflammation. A shared pathway — TH-1 cytokines — can promote insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, and promote inflammatory cytokines known to drive psoriasis.
The study compared 108,132 people with psoriasis to 430,716 matched patients without psoriasis, and determined patients with mild psoriasis had an 11% increased risk of diabetes and patients with severe psoriasis had a 46% higher risk compared to patients without psoriasis. The study also looked at treatments used by those diagnosed with diabetes, and found that the patients with both psoriasis and diabetes were more likely to require pharmacological treatment of diabetes, compared to diabetics without psoriasis.
Researchers noted that future studies should look into the extent to which psoriasis and its treatment play a role in the development of Type 2 Diabetes and its complications. University of Pennsylvania School of Medicin

An international group of researchers, including those from Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., have published a paper reviewing the results of a study that analysed mutations in 18 genes of 398 patients who had acute myeloid leukemia (AML). They found that several mutated genes predicted improved outcomes when patients with certain gene mutations were given high-dose induction chemotherapy. Their findings suggest that mutational profiling could potentially be used for both risk stratification and also in helping health care providers make therapeutic decisions for some AML patients.
‘Previous studies have found that AML is a highly heterogenic disorder,’ said study co-author Hugo F. Fernandez, a senior member at Moffitt and associate chief of Moffitt’s Blood and Marrow Transplantation Division. ‘Moreover, recent studies have revealed that a number of genetic mutations in AML patients might have prognostic value. The question of the presence of these gene mutations altering outcomes based on current therapy had not been answered to date.’
Their paper cites a clinical trial carried out by the Eastern Co-operative Oncology Group (ECOG) in which dose-intensified chemotherapy improved outcomes in two age sets of AML patients. Based on these findings, the research team hypothesised that carrying out mutational analysis of all known molecular alterations occurring in more than 5 percent of patients with AML might allow for the identification of distinct, molecularly defined subgroups of patients who might benefit from dose-intensified chemotherapy.
The laboratory research team subsequently performed a mutational analysis on diagnostic samples from 398 patients enrolled in the ECOG clinical trial they cited and used patients’ frozen sample cells for extraction and profiling. The researchers validated the results of this latter group of 104 patients.
‘We found that intensification of the dose of anthracycline significantly improved outcomes and overall survival in patients with mutations in DNMT3A, NPM1 or MLL translocations,’ said Fernandez. ‘This finding suggests that mutational profiling could be used to determine which AML patients will benefit from dose-intensive induction therapy.’
‘Most importantly,’ said Fernandez, ‘this study demonstrates how integrated mutational profiling of samples from a clinical trial cohort can advance understanding of the biologic characteristics of AML.’ Moffitt Cancer Center