Therapy without drugs may suffice to ward off psychosis

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Young adults at very high risk of psychotic illness should receive talk therapy rather than antipsychotic drugs as an initial treatment, a new study suggests.

The results might ease fears about overtreating people who have warning signs of psychosis but not a full-blown disease, but the study findings were not conclusive because the number of participants was too small.

“This shows it’s quite safe and reasonably effective … to offer supportive psychosocial care to these patients,” Dr. Patrick McGorry, an author of the study, told Reuters Health. There is “no evidence to suggest that antipsychotic medications are needed in first-line” treatment, he said.

The clinical trial included 115 clients of a Melbourne, Australia, clinic for young people deemed to be at “ultra-high risk” for a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia.

The study was open to individuals between the ages of 14 and 30 who met at least one of three criteria: having low-level psychotic symptoms, having had previous brief episodes of psychotic symptoms that went away on their own or having a close relative with a psychotic disorder along with low mental functioning during the past year.

The study compared three regimens: talk therapy focused on reducing depression symptoms and stress while building coping skills plus a low dose of the antipsychotic risperidone, or talk therapy plus a placebo pill or therapy emphasizing social and emotional support plus a placebo.

The goal was to see how many participants in each group progressed to full-blown psychosis.

After a year, there was no notable difference between the groups, however about 37 percent of the participants dropped out during the study. McGorry said if the trial had included more people, significant differences between the groups might have emerged.

The study appears online in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Researchers have been working to identify people at risk of developing psychotic disorders. “The importance of detecting early signs and symptoms of a serious mental illness is not controversial,” said Dr. Matcheri Keshavan, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “But the best way of treating or preventing it remains controversial.”

McGorry, a professor at the Centre for Youth Mental Health at The University of Melbourne, said that only about 36 percent of high-risk individuals will likely progress to psychosis within three years. So many health professionals worry about the prospect of treating everyone at risk with drugs, which come with side effects.

Another concern is that individuals will carry the label of mental illness unnecessarily.

McGorry said that the “vast majority” of the at-risk young adults in the study, most of them university-age, met the requirement for some kind of mental illness. That’s why all the participants received some level of care, even if it was just basic emotional and social support and coping skills.

The rates of progression to full-blown psychosis – which ranged from about 10 percent to about 22 percent – were lower in all three groups than in previous studies.

It’s not clear why, but McGorry said it’s possible that more participants will develop psychosis after the end of the 12-month study period. Many of the study participants were also taking antidepressants, which may have eased psychotic symptoms.

As with many trials, most participants showed poor adherence to the medications used, which may have influenced the results, the authors note.

McGorry was also an author of a 2010 study that found fish oil supplements might prevent psychosis in the same type of at-risk individuals. That research continues, he said.

Going forward, “what is needed is some way of finding predictive biomarkers that can tell who might be at the highest risk,” said Keshavan. “We need to understand their brains.”

McGorry and some of his co-authors have served as consultants or received research funding from pharmaceutical companies. One of them, Janssen-Cilag, which developed risperidone, partially funded the study.

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, online November 27, 2012.

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Labor market brightens, consumers step up spending

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits fell sharply last week to a near four-year low and retail sales rebounded in November, hopeful signs for the struggling economic recovery.

Initial claims for state unemployment aid fell for a fourth straight week, dropping 29,000 to a seasonally adjusted 343,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. They are now at their lowest level since early October, and within a hair of territory last seen in early 2008.

Another report suggested consumer spending picked up last month despite fears Washington will fail to avoid harsh austerity measures that could trigger a recession. Worries over this “fiscal cliff” hit sentiment hard in early December.

“It is hard to detect material evidence that fiscal cliff uncertainties are weighing on consumer behavior,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.

A slow but steady improvement in the labor market has helped support consumer spending, which propped up economic growth in the third quarter when business investment sagged.

Economic growth is expected to slow in the fourth quarter, hurt by slower inventory building and a pull back in investment by companies worried about the fiscal cliff.

However, the economy does appear to be moving quickly past the headwinds presented by superstorm Sandy, which hit the East Coast in late October and led to a spike in jobless claims.

The four-week moving average for new claims, which irons out weekly volatility, dropped 27,000 to 381,500.

“The labor market might be improving a bit quicker than expected,” said David Sloan, an economist at 4Cast in New York.

U.S. stocks dipped despite the data. Investors appeared cautious about making aggressive bets in the midst of negotiations in Washington to slow or avoid the $ 600 billion in spending cuts and tax hike set to take hold early next year.

CORE SALES MEASURE MARCHES HIGHER

The Commerce Department said retail sales rose 0.3 percent last month, rebounding from October’s 0.3 percent decline.

The increase fell short of the consensus forecast in a Reuters poll of economists, but a measure of core sales exceeded expectations.

Core retail sales, which strip out automobiles, gasoline and building materials rose 0.5 percent in November. The government uses this measure, which was flat in October, to calculate consumer spending.

Despite the improvement, growth in spending is still seen slowing in the fourth quarter.

“Consumers have recovered somewhat … but the trend has been declining since last June,” said Joseph Trevisani, a market strategist at Worldwide Markets in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.

GDP growth is expected to slow to a 1.2 percent annual rate in the last three months of the year, a Reuters poll showed on Wednesday, down from a 2.7 percent rate in the third quarter.

The rise in overall retail sales was tempered by a 4 percent decline in receipts at gasoline stations, the biggest drop since December 2008. That likely reflects a fall in gasoline prices during the month, which left consumers with more money to spend on other things.

The Labor Department said separately that prices received by the nation’s farms, factories and refineries dropped 0.8 percent in November as gasoline prices fell by the most since March 2009.

So-called core producer prices, which strip out volatile energy and food costs, rose a modest 0.1 percent.

The report underscored a general lack of inflation pressure in the economy, giving the Federal Reserve room to continue with efforts to bring down the nation’s 7.7 percent unemployment rate.

The Fed announced a new round of monetary stimulus on Wednesday, taking the unprecedented step of indicating interest rates would remain near zero until unemployment falls to at least 6.5 percent.

In a packed day for government data on the economy, the Commerce Department also said business inventories, which are a key component of economic growth, rose 0.4 percent in October, in line with expectations.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Additional reporting by Chris Reese and Nick Olivari in New York; Editing by Neil Stempleman and Tim Ahmann)

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Cuban lawmakers meet to consider economy, budget

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban lawmakers are holding the second of their twice-annual sessions with a year-end report expected on the state of the country’s economy.

Legislators are also to approve next year’s budget.

Cuban leaders have sometimes used the parliamentary gatherings to make important announcements or policy statements.

Observers will be watching for word on the progress of President Raul Castro‘s economic reform plan and efforts to promote younger leaders.

The unicameral parliament will reconvene in February with a new membership following elections. It is then expected to name Castro to another five-year term.

State-run media said Castro presided over Thursday’s session.

It was not open to international journalists.

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Most Googled in 2012: Whitney, PSY, Sandy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The world’s attention wavered between the tragic and the silly in 2012, and along the way, millions of people searched the Web to find out about a royal princess, the latest iPad, and a record-breaking skydiver.

Whitney Houston was the “top trending” search of the year, according to Google Inc.’s year-end “zeitgeist” report. Google‘s 12th annual roundup is “an in-depth look at the spirit of the times as seen through the billions of searches on Google over the past year,” the company said in a blog post Wednesday.

People around the globe searched en masse for news about Houston‘s accidental drowning in a bathtub just before she was to perform at a pre-Grammy Awards party in February.

Google defines topics as “trending” when they garner a high amount of traffic over a sustained period of time.

Korean rapper PSY’s “Gangnam Style” music video trotted into second spot, a testament to his self-deprecating giddy-up dance move. The video is approaching a billion views on YouTube.

Superstorm Sandy, the damaging storm that knocked out power and flooded parts of the East Coast in the midst of a U.S. presidential campaign, was third.

The next biggest trending searches globally were a pair of threes: the iPad 3 tablet from Apple Inc. and Diablo 3, a popular video game.

Rounding out the Top 10 were Kate Middleton, who made news with scandalous photos and a royal pregnancy; the 2012 Olympics in London; Amanda Todd, a Canadian teen who was found dead of an apparent suicide in October after being bullied online; Michael Clarke Duncan, the “Green Mile” actor who died of a heart attack in September at age 54; and “BBB12,” the 12th edition of “Big Brother Brasil,” a reality show featuring scantily clad men and women living together.

Some trending people, according to Google, were:

— Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian skydiver who became the first to break the sound barrier without a vehicle with a 24-mile plummet from Earth’s stratosphere;

— Jeremy Lin, the undrafted NBA star who exploded off the New York Knicks bench and sparked a wave of “Linsanity”;

— Morgan Freeman, the actor whose untimely death turned out not to be true.

The Internet also continued its rise as a popular tool for spreading addictive ideas and phrases known as “memes.” Remember LOL? If you don’t know what it means by now, someone may “Laugh Out Loud” at you.

This year, Facebook said its top memes included “TBH (To Be Honest),” ”YOLO (You Only Live Once),” ”SMH (Shake My Head).” Thanks to an endlessly fascinating U.S. presidential campaign, “Big Bird” made the list after Republican candidate Mitt Romney said he might consider cutting some funds for public broadcasting.

Yahoo said its own top-searched memes for the year included “Kony 2012,” a reference to the short film and campaign against Ugandan militia leader Joseph Kony; “stingray photobomb” for an unusual vacation snapshot that went viral; and “binders full of women,” another nod to Romney for his awkward description of his search for women cabinet members as Massachusetts’ governor.

And people were happy to pass on popular Twitter posts by retweeting them. According to Twitter, the year’s most popular retweets were President Barack Obama‘s “Four more years,” and Justin Bieber’s farewell to six-year-old fan Avalanna Routh, who died of a rare form of brain cancer: “RIP Avalanna. i love you”.

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Germany passes law to protect circumcision after outcry

BERLIN (Reuters) – German politicians passed a law on Wednesday to protect the right to circumcise infant boys in a show of support for Muslims and Jews angered by a local court ban on the practice in May.

The ban – imposed on the grounds that circumcision amounted to “bodily harm” – triggered an emotional debate over the treatment of Jews and other religious minorities, a sensitive subject in a country still haunted by its Nazi past.

The outcry prompted Germany‘s centre-right government and opposition parties to draw up legislation confirming the practice was legal – overruling the decision by a court in the western city of Cologne.

The new law passed by an overwhelming majority in Bundestag lower house said the operation could be carried out, as long as parents were informed about the risks.

Jewish groups welcomed the move.

“This vote and the strong commitment shown … to protect this most integral practice of the Jewish religion is a strong message to our community for the continuation and flourishing of Jewish life in Germany,” said Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress.

Germany’s Catholic Bishops Conference said it hoped the bill would help safeguard religious freedoms. No comment was immediately available from the country’s Central Council of Muslims.

PAIN MINIMISED

The May ruling centered on the case of a Muslim boy who bled after the procedure and the ban only applied to the area around Cologne.

But some doctors in other parts of Germany started refusing to carry out circumcisions, saying it was unclear whether they would face prosecution.

Under the new law, a doctor or trained expert must conduct the operation and children must endure as little pain as possible, which means an anesthetic should be used. The procedure cannot take place if there is any doubt about the child’s health.

Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said no other country in the world country had made the religious circumcision of boys an offence.

“In our modern and secular state, it is not the job of the state to interfere in children’s’ upbringing,” she said.

Child welfare group Deutsche Kinderhilfe disagreed, saying the government had “(pushed) through the legalization of the ritual of genital circumcision … against the advice of child right campaigners and the medical profession.”

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Edited by Stephen Brown and Andrew Heavens)

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Fed sends clearer signal on keeping rates low

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve sent its clearest signal to date Wednesday that it will keep interest rates super-low to boost the U.S. economy even after the job market has improved significantly.

The Fed says it plans to keep its key short-term rate near zero at least until the unemployment rate drops below 6.5 percent — as long as expected inflation remains no more than 2.5 percent. Unemployment is now 7.7 percent. Annual inflation is about 2 percent.

That plan adds detail to what the Fed had said before: that it expects to keep the rate low until at least mid-2015.

In a statement Wednesday after its final policy meeting of the year, the Fed also said it will keep spending $ 85 billion a month on bond purchases to drive down long-term borrowing costs and stimulate economic growth.

The Fed will spend $ 45 billion a month on long-term Treasury purchases to replace a previous bond-purchase program of an equal size. And it will keep buying $ 40 billion a month in mortgage bonds.

“The Fed has become more explicit and more transparent,” said Steven Wood, chief economist at Insight Economics. “This should provide the markets with much more clarity around monetary policy action in the upcoming year.”

With its new purchases of long-term Treasurys, the Fed’s investment portfolio, which is nearly $ 3 trillion, would swell to nearly $ 4 trillion by the end of 2013 if its bond purchase programs remain in place.

The policies are intended to help an economy that the Fed says is growing only modestly.

Stocks and bond yields rose after the Fed’s statement was released. The Dow Jones industrial average was little changed just before the Fed news crossed at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time and jumped 69 points shortly after.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose to 1.69 percent from 1.65 percent as investors sold ultra-safe investments and moved money into stocks.

The Fed’s plan to keep stimulating the economy at least until unemployment has reached 6.5 percent is intended to reassure consumers, companies and investors, said Joseph Gagnon, a former Fed official who is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Having only a target date of mid-2015 for any increase in interest rates “sounded gloomy,” as if the economy would remain weak until then, Gagnon said. Specifying an unemployment rate — close to a normal rate of 6 percent or less — makes clear that the Fed will keep stimulating the economy even after the job market has strengthened.

“This is trying to get away from that sense of ‘Oh, my God, this is all about gloom and doom,’ ” Gagnon said.

The Fed’s new plan to link any rate increase to specific levels of unemployment and inflation mirrors a proposal pushed by Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Updated forecasts that the Fed released Wednesday illustrate why it thinks it should continue stimulating the economy. It expects unemployment to remain at least 7.4 percent next year and 6.8 percent by the end of 2014. The earliest it sees unemployment dropping below 6.5 percent is the end of 2015.

It expects the economy to grow no more than 3 percent next year before picking up to 3.5 percent in 2014 and 3.7 percent in 2015.

The Fed said it can pursue the aggressive stimulus programs because inflation remains below its target. Its statement was approved on an 11-1 vote. Jeffrey Lacker, president of Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, objected for the eighth time this year.

The meeting was held against the backdrop of the looming “fiscal cliff,” the sharp tax increases and spending cuts that will hit the economy in January if Congress and President Barack Obama are unable to reach an agreement this month to avert them.

Bernanke has said that the Fed’s efforts will not be able to rescue the economy if the budget negotiations fail and the country does go over the fiscal cliff.

Fears of the cliff have led some U.S. companies to delay expanding, investing and hiring. Manufacturing has slumped. Consumers have cut back on spending. Unemployment remains elevated. If higher taxes and government spending cuts were to last for much of 2013, most experts say the economy would sink into another recession.

The latest bond-buying program would replace an expiring program called Operation Twist. With Twist, the Fed sold $ 45 billion a month in short-term Treasurys and used the proceeds to buy the same amount in longer-term Treasurys.

Twist didn’t expand the Fed’s investment portfolio, it just reshuffled the holdings. But the Fed has run out of short-term securities to sell. So to maintain its pace of long-term Treasury purchases and to keep long-term rates low, it must spend more and increase its portfolio.

The Fed’s portfolio totals nearly $ 2.9 trillion — more than three times its size before the 2008 financial crisis.

The Fed has launched three rounds of bond purchases since the financial crisis hit. In announcing a third program in September, the Fed said it would keep buying mortgage bonds until the job market improved substantially.

Skeptics note that rates on mortgages and many other loans are already at or near all-time lows. So any further declines in rates engineered by the Fed might offer little economic benefit.

Inside and outside the Fed, a debate has raged over whether the Fed’s actions have helped support the economy over the past four years, whether they will ignite inflation later and whether they should be extended.

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The Hobbit: Richard Armitage Talks Preparations For Playing Thorin Oakenshield

British actor Richard Armitage admitted it wasn’t a walk in the park to play a J.R.R. Tolkien character in Peter Jackson’s reimagining of “The Hobbit,” the first installment of which is on its way into theaters.

Upon touching down in New Zealand, where the trilogy was shot, the cast had a lot of character preparation to do.

PLAY IT NOW: Martin Freeman Discusses The Hobbit’s ‘Good Chemistry’ & Playing Bilbo Baggins

“We arrived in February 2011 and we went straight into a training program, which was called ‘Dwarf Bootcamp,’ which was literally boots — these huge boots. We learned how to walk, we wrestled with each other, we did archery together, we did sword fighting, hammer fighting, horse riding — everything you could possibly think of,” Richard, who plays Thorin Oakenshield in the film told Access Hollywood at the film’s junket.

In addition, the cast, which includes his former “Cold Feet” co-star James Nesbitt as Bofur, found ways to get to know each other better off set.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — New York City Premiere

“We went round to each other’s houses and we cooked food together, we went to the pub and got drunk together, so there was an incredibly great bonding time between the dwarves,” he said.

Richard had plenty of experience sword fighting and horse riding in the BBC America series “Robin Hood,” but it was something else that came in handy during the long days on set.

“I’d done a number of shows where I’d had to use sword fighting and I’d also done horse riding. I’d also pulled guns out of my pocket. That was less useful,” he laughed, likely referring to his recent role in the PBS-import series “MI-5,” where he played a British spy. “But, yeah, you draw on everything. I’d worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company, so the vocal work was really useful to kind of pull that from there. I’d worked in a circus, there were… all sorts of things that were really useful, but the one thing that I do have — for lack of talent — is stamina and that’s the one thing I think everybody needed on this job.”

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Meet ‘The Hobbit’ Cast!

An imagination was useful also, but Richard said what turned out on the big screen was still wilder – and more beautiful – than he dreamed of.

“So many moments… Actually, apart from the eagles — which every single time I’ve seen this film absolutely blows my mind and I can barely keep the tears back and [it has] nothing to do with the pathos of the scene, just that feeling of flight moves me — is the throne of Aragorn, in the beginning of the prologue,” he told Access of the moment that moved him most. “When it got to [filming] that scene, I walked on and… it was just a green cross on the floor with a tiny green chair… [But in the film], they just made this incredible, almost space aged, sort of suspended seat in the middle of this stalagmite. It just blows my mind when I see that.”

VIEW THE PHOTOS: The Brit Pack: Hot Shots Of Stars From The UK!

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” hits theaters on December 14, 2012, followed by “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” on December 13, 2013 and “The Hobbit: There and Back Again,” on July 18, 2014.

– Jolie Lash

Copyright 2012 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Web host Go Daddy appoints former Yahoo executive as CEO

(Reuters) – Go Daddy, one of the world’s biggest Internet hosting firms, appointed Yahoo Inc‘s former Chief Product Officer Blake Irving as chief executive.

He will take over from interim CEO Scott Wagner on January 7. Irving left Yahoo, where he headed a centralized products group that straddled several client types, on April 27.

“Blake Irving’s deep technology experience and his history of developing new cutting-edge products and leading large global teams make him a … compelling choice to drive Go Daddy to the next level of its … growth,” said Bob Parsons, Go Daddy’s executive chairman and founder.

Irving also served in various positions at Microsoft Corp from 1992 to 2007.

Go Daddy, which describes itself as the top provider of domain names, filed to go public in 2006 but withdrew its IPO due to poor market conditions.

(Reporting by Neha Alawadhi in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das, Maju Samuel)

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FX orders “Tyrant” from “Homeland” producers

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – FX has ordered the Middle Eastern drama pilot “Tyrant” from “Homeland” producers Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff, as well as “Six Feet Under” and “Lost” producer Craig Wright.

The pilot follows an American family drawn into the troubles of a turbulent Middle Eastern nation. The series, written and created by Raff, was developed by Gordon and Wright. The pilot comes from Gordon’s shingle at 20th Century Fox Television, Teakwood Lane.

Gordon, Raff and Wright are executive producers in association with Keshet Broadcasting. If “Tyrant” becomes a series, Wright will serve as showrunner.

“We are thrilled to bring ‘Tyrant’ to FX,” said Nick Grad, FX’s executive vice president of original programming. “The brilliant and wholly original concept just blew us all away. It’s pretty amazing when you read a script and can instantly imagine it becoming one of the best shows on television. We’re grateful to the producers for choosing to bring it to FX and look forward to continuing our partnership with our friends at Fox 21.”

“‘Tyrant’ is exactly the type of project we aim to do at Fox 21 – working with extremely talented writer/creators to create provocative material with big, breakout characters and themes,” said Bert Salke, president of Fox 21. “This script has excited everyone who’s read it and it’s particularly gratifying to be back working with FX, with whom we have had such a successful partnership on the fantastic ‘Sons of Anarchy.’”

Production is tentatively slated to begin in the spring.

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APNewsBreak: DA investigating Texas cancer agency

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas prosecutor responsible for investigating public corruption among state officials says he has opened an investigation into the state’s troubled $ 3 billion cancer-fighting agency.

Gregg Cox is director of the Travis County district attorney‘s public integrity unit. He told The Associated Press on Tuesday that an investigation has begun into the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. The agency is also under investigation by the Texas attorney general’s office after an $ 11 million grant to a private company did not receive the proper review.

Cox says his office is starting an investigation not knowing “what, if any, crime occurred.”

Cox’s unit prosecutes crimes related to the operation of state government.

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