Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0599766 (functional recovery)
 13,441 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The effects of long-term alcohol consumption and withdrawal upon the structure of the rat hippocampal formation were studied by applying morphometric methods to material processed for light and electron microscopy. The somatostatinergic neurons of the hilus were also studied. Groups of 6 rats were treated as follows: (a) given alcohol for 6, 12 and 18 months; (b) paired controls; and (c) rats switched to a normal diet in the 6 months after 6 and 12 months of alcohol intake. A progressive loss of hippocampal neurons after chronic alcohol consumption was found. The loss was aggravated during withdrawal from alcohol, with the exception of the hilar cells. The dendrites of granule cells from the alcohol-treated rats displayed signs of regrowing, but they did not do so in rats withdrawn from alcohol. The synapses between mossy fibre terminals and CA3 dendrites appear to be rather resistant to alcohol insult, and evidence of morphological plasticity was found in withdrawn rats. If an homology can be established between humans and rodents then the changes observed in alcohol-fed rats can be regarded as underpinning some of the functional and behavioural alterations depicted under these circumstances. The peculiar changes found in some nerve cell populations after withdrawal of alcohol could be related to the deficient or incomplete functional recovery often seen after abstinence from alcohol.
Addiction 1993 Feb
PMID:Structural changes in the hippocampal formation after long-term alcohol consumption and withdrawal in the rat. 822 61

Substance abuse and welfare reform are among the nation's highest priorities, and research that examines linkages between the two is of extreme importance to both government policy and the community. Welfare reform will have serious implications for substance abusers as well as for the various professionals who treat them and work to move their clients into functional recovery and self-sufficiency. Within the context of welfare reform and the special needs of substance-abusing populations, the present study examines current welfare status, work status, and barriers and facilitators to gaining and maintaining employment among 100 low income women who participated in a long-term residential substance-abuse treatment program in Miami, Florida. Participants completed a face-to-face interview to assess a detailed employment history and current sources of income as well as the Addiction Severity Index. Results indicate that completers of the treatment program were more likely to be working post-discharge than non-completers. Similarly, the longer the length of stay in the program, the more likely the client was to be working post-discharge. Multivariate analysis indicates a high-school education, participation in the treatment center's aftercare program, and treatment duration of more than one year were independently related to work status. These data suggest that as welfare reform becomes a reality, continuing support of various types, particularly drug treatment, is needed to assist substance-abusing women in gaining and maintaining employment.
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PMID:Moving substance-abusing women from welfare to work. 1087 97

Neuroimaging techniques, including positron emission tomography (PET), are ideally suited for studies of addiction. These minimally invasive modalities yield information about acute and long-term drug-induced structural and functional changes in the brain over time. Changes can be observed in the brains of human and animal subjects during drug self-administration. Neuroimaging with PET allows precise quantification and visualization of the drug and its rates of movement in the body. In addition, imaging reveals recovery of function and reappearance of neuronal markers in abstinent drug users. Evidence that suggests that PET may have use in identifying individuals predisposed to become addicted is emerging. Finally, candidate pharmacotherapies for drug addiction can be critically evaluated. These unique assets clearly point to the use of these strategies for addiction studies.
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PMID:Neuroimaging in drug abuse. 1367 55

The mature brain is a highly dynamic organ that constantly changes its organization by destroying and forming new connections. Collectively, these changes are referred to as brain plasticity and are associated with functional changes, such as memory, addiction, and recovery of function after brain damage. Neuronal plasticity is sustained by the fine regulation of protein synthesis and organelle biogenesis and their degradation to ensure efficient turnover. Thus, autophagy, as quality control mechanism of proteins and organelles in neurons, is essential to their physiology and pathology. Here, we review recent several findings proving that defects in autophagy affect neuronal function and impair functional recovery after brain insults, contributing to neurodegeneration, in chronic and acute neurological disorders. Thus, an understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which the autophagy machinery is finely regulated might accelerate the development of therapeutic interventions in many neurological disorders for which no cure is available.
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PMID:The "Janus-faced role" of autophagy in neuronal sickness: focus on neurodegeneration. 2277 13

A significant hindrance to effective treatment of addiction is identifying those most likely to relapse. Cocaine addiction is characterized by deficits in inhibitory control and elevated reactivity to cocaine cues, both hypothesized to be integral to development of addiction and propensity to relapse. It follows that reduction of both impulsivity and cue-reactivity following abstinence is protective against relapse, and that persistence of these factors increases vulnerability. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined neural activation patterns in dorsal and ventral striatum in abstinent cocaine dependent (CD) individuals (N=20) and non-using controls (N=19) as they performed a cocaine craving task. We also examined activations in nodes of the response inhibition circuit (RIC) as they performed an inhibition task. At the between-groups level, no differences in RIC or striatal activation were seen in former users, in contrast to previous investigations in current users, suggesting large-scale functional recovery with abstinence. However, at the individual participant-level, abstinent CD individuals displayed an association between cocaine cue-related neural activations in the right ventral striatum and compulsive cocaine craving scores. Compulsive craving scores were also negatively correlated with duration of abstinence. Further, there was an association between motor impulsivity scores and inhibition-related activations in the right inferior frontal gyrus and pre-supplementary motor area in abstinent CD individuals. Thus, while former users as a group did not show deficits in inhibitory function or cocaine-cue reactivity, participant-level results pointed to activation patterns in a minority of these individuals that likely contributes to enduring relapse vulnerability.
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PMID:Neural correlates of craving and impulsivity in abstinent former cocaine users: Towards biomarkers of relapse risk. 2495 56