GLG News by Addiction Medicine Psychiatrists (US)

Manipulation of the nicotinic receptor is a novel way to treat ADHD which has significant potential to modify the symptoms of this disorder and to enhance learning and memory.  We have had some difficulty with side effects of varenicline which is a nicotinic partial agonist used in smoking cessation...

Although the concept is exciting--an inverse agonist at the cannabinoid-1 (CB-1) receptor to reduce appetite, this medicine has a lot of bad press from rimonabant to overcome.  The major problem with rimonabant was psychopathological reactions in patients.  We do not yet know whether this...

Fluovoxamine is perhaps the last participant in the SSRI explosion of the 1980's.  It is also the least used and hence, least profitable entry in the SSRI horse race, primarily because of timing rather than any particular pharmacological deficiency.  To believe that this attempt to rejuvenate...

Smoking cigarettes is a serious health problem throughout the world and smoking cessation is an important clinical problem.  Stopping smoking is tremendously difficult for some because of the highly addictive nature of nicotine, but also because of the predominant use of smoking as a form of self-medication...

I believe publications such as these are probably useful reactions to over-prescribing antidepressants for anything that ails you (which is what has been occuring until the recent suicide scare in adolescents).  Nevertheless, such generalizations have significant influence even though they are...

The focus of Memory Pharmaceuticals & Roche Expansion of their Development Program for MEM 3454 in schizophrenia is symptomatic of a trend in schizophrenia research that has identified cognitive deficits as the fundamental abnormality in brain functioning.  It is an eminently reasonable...

Long-acting neuroleptics are extremely beneficial in treatment of non-compliant chronically mentally ill because it allows more medical oversight and assurance of compliance with pharmacotherapy.  Olanzapine is a particularly bad atypical (new generation) neuroleptic when it comes to weight gain...

When varenicline (Chantix) first became available for use in patients, I was incredibly impressed by how effective it was.  I had one patient who was so addicted to cigarette smoking that he could not sleep through the night without a smoke--he would awake every hour or two and then go back to...

Doxepin was developed as an antidepressant nearly 40 years ago.  It has been used by generations of psychiatrists for its sedating and sleep promoting actions, much as many other of the sedating antidepressants of yore.  Now it is being developed as a treatment of insomnia--the one twist is...

MAOI's really work very well in patients in whom tricyclic and newer and safer variations of the theme (blockade of norepinephrine, serotonin, and dopamine uptake) do not.  It is about time that the focus has shifted to a safer version of MAOIs, the selective and reversible novel class of drugs...