Psychology and psychiatry have a big problem - they are trapped in the past. While most areas of medicine have moved beyond symptom-based diagnosis, the mental health community is instead adding new symptom-based diagnoses, and as a result the National Institute of Mental Health has declared that the newest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders should be considered little more than a glossary of terms.

To fix that, psychiatry needs to progress from symptom-based (e.g. antidepressant, antipsychotic etc.) to pharmacologically based (e.g. focusing on pharmacological target (serotonin, dopamine etc.) and the relevant mode of action. Not only is it more scientific, it will stop patient's wondering why they are getting an antipsychotic for simple anxiety.

Long-term daily use of Viagra can provide protection for the heart at different stages of heart disease, with few side effects, according to a new meta-analysis published in BMC Medicine. 

Scientists from the Sapienza University of Rome carried out a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials by searching for articles published between January 2004 and May 2014 to deduce the effectiveness of  Phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor
(PDE5i) in providing cardiac protection, and to find out whether it was well-tolerated and safe. They identified 24 suitable trials for analysis from four research databases: MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Library and SCOPUS. The trials involved 1622 patients from mixed populations who were treated with PDE5i or a placebo. 

A systemic disease that causes inflammation in the spinal joints and was thought to have affected members of the ancient Egyptian royal families may have been another condition, according to a new study published in Arthritis&Rheumatology.

The authors refutes claims of Ankylosing spondylitis in royals like King Amenhotep III (1390–1352 BC), finding instead a degenerative spinal condition called diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH) in royal Egyptian mummies from the 18th to early 20th Dynasties.

I just returned from the Asian Science Park Association conference in Shiraz, Iran.[1] One Science Park official asked me, “Companies in our park cannot get any cooperation from the big petrochemical firms. What can we do?”

Without question American CO2 emissions have plummeted, even after being driven into more coal usage due to political concerns about nuclear energy. Cleaner natural gas made the difference but environmental critics say the energy emissions burden simply shifted to developing nations - poor people can't have air conditioning. 

Yet a new study in Nature Climate Change shows that environmentalists don't need to be criticizing the world's poor.  Improving household electricity access in India over the last 30 years contributed only marginally to the nation's total carbon emissions growth.   

Image: NASA

By Monica Grady, The Open University

New research into a rare pathogen has shown how a unique evolutionary trait allows it to infect even the healthiest of hosts through a smart solution to the body's immune response against it.

Scientists at the University of Birmingham have explained how a particular strain of a fungus, Cryptococcus gattii, responds to the human immune response and triggers a 'division of labour' in its invading cells, which can lead to life-threatening infections.

(Vienna, October 17, 2014) Two new pill-only regimens that rapidly cure most patients with genotype 1 hepatitis C (HCV) infection could soon be widely prescribed across Europe. Two recently-published studies1,2 confirmed the efficacy and safety of combination therapy with two oral direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs), with around 90% of patients cured after just 12-weeks of treatment.

Computer simulations show how bacteria are able to destroy antibiotics, focusing on the role of enzymes in the bacteria which split the structure of the antibiotic and stop it working, making the bacteria resistant. 

The new findings show that it's possible to test how enzymes react to certain antibiotics and thus design new antibiotics with a much lower risk of resistance, and even to choose the best medicines for specific outbreaks.

Using QM/MM - quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics simulations – the research team were able to gain a molecular-level insight into how enzymes called 'beta-lactamases' react to antibiotics.

Image: the conversation

By David Glance, University of Western Australia

In 2012, the UK’s Sunday Times reported that actor Bruce Willis was going to sue Apple because he was not legally allowed to bequeath his iTunes collection of music to his children.

The story turned out to be false (and shockingly bad journalism) but it did start a conversation about what we can, and can’t, do with our digital possessions.