Anxiety

...ba href=/anxiety/a/b disorders, and depression."Improved knowledge of SERT's role in OCD raises the possibility of improved screening, treatment, and medications development for that disorder," said Ting-Kai Li, M.D., Director, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

"It also provides an important clue to the neurobiologic basis of obsessive-compulsive disorder and the compulsive behaviors often seen in other psychiatric diseases, including alcohol dependence."Approximately 2 percent of U.S.

adults (3.3 million people) have obsessive-compulsive disorder, the fourth most prevalent mental health disorder in the United States.

Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder have intrusive, disturbing thoughts or images (obsessions) and perform rituals (compulsions) to prevent or banish those thoughts.

Many other individuals demonstrate obsessive-compulsive behaviors that do not meet OCD diagnostic criteria but alter the individuals' lives.Drs.

David Goldman, Chief, and Xianzhang Hu, Research Scientist, in NIAAA's Laboratory of Neurogenetics discovered the linkage aided by new functional analyses of the SERT genetic variant.

The researchers first compared the genotypes of 169 obsessive-compulsive disorder patients to those of 253 controls in a large U.S.

patient population and found that the obsessive-compulsive disorder patients were twice as likely to have the variant.

Then they studied transmission and non-transmission of the variant in a Canadian population of 175 OCD parent-ch...

...ba href=/anxiety/a/b and obsessive-compulsive disorders.

The proposed settlement between the attorneys general and GSK would resolve the states' concerns that the company used frivolous litigation to delay the introduction of generic competition to paroxetine hydrochloride, sold by GSK under the name Paxil.

As a result of those delays, Medicaid programs paid too much for the drug because a generic equivalent wasn't available, according to the release.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Paxil in 1992, giving GSK a five-year monopoly under the law for the drug.

In 1998, GSK filed the first of several lawsuits for patent infringement against competing drug companies that sought to introduce a generic version of Paxil.

The lawsuits caused automatic extensions of the monopoly; the attorneys general allege the lawsuits were baseless and were primarily intended to preserve GSK's monopoly for Paxil.

The proposed settlement was entered Tuesday for the approval of the federal district court in Pennsylvania.

Other users of Paxil previously obtained a class action settlement with GSK in a Pennsylvania case, the release said.

That settlement, however, excluded Medicaid and other government programs from reimbursement.

On March 23, the Missouri Medicaid got the state's share of a $124 million nationwide settlement with pharmaceutical company King Pharmaceuticals.

That settlement resolved allegations that King Pharmaceuticals incorrectly reported prices for its generic drugs, resulting in low...

...ba href=/anxiety/a/b in the U.S.

about the resulting character of these nascent, freely elected governments.

Fear is growing that radicals may hijack democracy.

Recent Islamist electoral successes in Iran, Egypt and the Palestinian territories have given rise to questions about the ability of liberal forces to prevail against fundamentalism.

For the United States, the fear is real, though perhaps tinged with a bit of Islamophobia: How terrible an irony it would be if this grand effort to spread liberty abroad resulted in anti-U.S.

Islamic states imposing Sharia, or Islamic law, on their people.

There are some who say that "stability" not liberty is what the U.S.

should be promoting throughout the Islamic world.

Their view is that championing electoral democracy does not immediately serve U.S.

interests abroad, particularly in the war on terrorism.

They say the war against terrorism must be waged with an iron hand, not kid gloves woven from the fabric of constitutional liberties.

These views on democracy and stability in the Muslim world are not only wrong but carry grave consequences.

In a way, Washington's strategy may be viewed as expiation for past sins, when the U.S.

was a stumbling block to democracy in the Middle East.

Iran was a democracy in 1953 when the CIA engineered the coup that transformed it into an absolute monarchy.

The U.S.

also has supported other tyrants in the region, including, of course, Saddam Hussein.

All of this in the name of stability and security in the ...