{"id":53887,"date":"2015-02-02T16:54:19","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T21:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=53887"},"modified":"2015-02-03T05:21:34","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T10:21:34","slug":"specularama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2015\/02\/02\/specularama\/","title":{"rendered":"specula·rama…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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1boringoldman
Continuing Medical Education Syllabus<\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
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UNIT I: the breakthrough<\/em><\/font><\/strong><\/div>\n
1. 09\/28\/14: Girls under stress age more rapidly, new Stanford study reveals<\/a><\/div>\n
2. 09\/30\/14: Telomere length and cortisol reactivity in children of depressed mothers<\/a><\/div>\n
3. 10\/23\/14: NIMH Director’s Blog: Depression, Daughters, and Cellular Aging<\/a><\/div>\n
4. 11\/24\/14: Are healthy girls affected physically by their mothers’ depression?<\/a> <\/div>\n

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UNIT II: the breakdown<\/em><\/font><\/strong>   <\/div>\n
5. 01\/21\/15: NIMH Biomarker Porn: Depression, Daughters, and Telomeres Part 1<\/a><\/div>\n
6. 01\/23\/15: Comment 1: Bernard Carrol [HPA]<\/a><\/div>\n
7. 01\/29\/15: Biomarker Porn: From Bad Science to Press Release to Praise by NIMH Director<\/a><\/div>\n
8. 01\/31\/15: Comment 2: Bernard Carroll [Insel\/NIMH]<\/a><\/div>\n

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Of course 1boringoldman isn’t in the CME business and certainly can’t offer any kind of credits, but reading the articles in the series above [all freely available full text on-line] is definitely a valuable educational experience about any number of things. <\/p>\n

UNIT I<\/font><\/strong> opens with a press release [1]<\/a><\/sub> written by an "intern at Stanford News Service<\/em>" enthusiastically announcing a controlled study of the biological impact on daughters of depressed mothers reporting morphologic changes in chromosomes, premature aging, depression, susceptibility to disease, and dysregulation of the HPA [Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal] axis. Next comes the article itself [2]<\/a><\/sub>:<\/div>\n
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Telomere length and cortisol reactivity in children of depressed mothers<\/a><\/div>\n
by I H Gotlib, J LeMoult, N L Colich, L C Foland-Ross, J Hallmayer, J Joormann, J Lin and O M Wolkowitz<\/div>\n
Molecular Psychatry. doi: 10.1038\/mp.2014.119.<\/div>\n
[full text on-line<\/a>]<\/div>\n

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\"TELOMERE\"A growing body of research demonstrates that individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) are characterized by shortened telomere length, which has been posited to underlie the association between depression and increased instances of medical illness. The temporal nature of the relation between MDD and shortened telomere length, however, is not clear. Importantly, both MDD and telomere length have been associated independently with high levels of stress, implicating dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and anomalous levels of cortisol secretion in this relation. Despite these associations, no study has assessed telomere length or its relation with HPA-axis activity in individuals at risk for depression, before the onset of disorder. In the present study, we assessed cortisol levels in response to a laboratory stressor and telomere length in 97 healthy young daughters of mothers either with recurrent episodes of depression (i.e., daughters at familial risk for depression) or with no history of psychopathology. We found that daughters of depressed mothers had shorter telomeres than did daughters of never-depressed mothers and, further, that shorter telomeres were associated with greater cortisol reactivity to stress. This study is the first to demonstrate that children at familial risk of developing MDD are characterized by accelerated biological aging, operationalized as shortened telomere length, before they had experienced an onset of depression; this may predispose them to develop not only MDD but also other age-related medical illnesses. It is critical, therefore, that we attempt to identify and distinguish genetic and environmental mechanisms that contribute to telomere shortening.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The study was funded by the NIMH [MH074849<\/a>, $4½ M over 8 years], and Dr. Insel’s NIMH Director’s Blog [3]<\/a><\/sub> reported the study enthusiastically, ending with treatment implications of the findings:<\/div>\n