July-August 2011 Update

I n this column, I would like to make the readership aware of an important update. Recently, there has been much talk that the development pipeline for new psychopharmacologic agents seems to be drying up. However, it seems there is at least one new agent being considered for the attention deficit hyperactivity population. A product is being studied by P2D Bioscience. This is a startup company, which is conducting preclinical testing on its product, code named PD2005. Funding seems to have come from a grant issued by the National Institutes of Health. The mechanism of action of this agent is a dopamine transport inhibitor. The results of the early studies seem to demonstrate the agent is effective in the domains of working memory and sustained attention and is touted not to have addictive properties.

On another note, at the end of March an advisory was posted by Greenstone pharmaceuticals announcing a recall of its citalopram product labeled lot number FI0510058-A. Apparently, incorrect labels may have been placed on the bottles from this lot. The bottles may actually contain finasteride, which is employed in the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia. It should be noted that pregnant women should not handle or ingest finasteride because of the possibility that it may cause abnormalities to the external genitalia of developing male fetuses. Patients in possession of bottles of either citalopram or finasteride with the above mentioned lot number should return them immediately.

Keeping with our tradition, I would like to breakdown some very interesting findings from a recently published article. In the article by Wolmer, Hamiel and Laor (2011) a group of 748 fourth and fifth grade students were provided a preventive stress inoculation training (SIT) administered by teachers and were compared to a comparable control group of 740 children. Both groups were exposed to repeated rocket attacks during a three week conflict in southern Israel and the Gaza strip. SIT consists of educational, skill acquisition, rehearsal and application components. The intervention is usually delivered biweekly over 8 sessions. It is stated that the intervention was provided before rather than after the exposure, though the time frame prior to exposure is not disclosed. The overall effect was measured 3 months after the attack. On the scales used in this study (UCLA Reaction Index and the Stress/Mood scale) the actively treated group had significantly lower ratings on both scales than controls. Most of this effect seemed to be loaded on the difference in scores of the males in the samples. The study has very important implications especially for populations where there are repeated risks for certain natural disasters. Nevertheless, a number of basic issues remain about the intervention for example, how long in advance can the interventions be delivered and still remain effective and the question as to why the difference in effect of inoculation across the genders persists?

The following conference will be of interest to our readers:

• The 58^th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry will be held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada from October 18–23, 2001, contact (202) 966–7300.