Nervous system

• THE WOODLANDS, TX, Jan. 04, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Autonomix Medical, Inc. (“Autonomix” or the “Company”) a medical device company focused on advancing innovative technologies to revolutionize how diseases involving the nervous system are diagnosed and treated, today provided a business overview and highlighted upcoming milestones.
• Lori Bisson, Chief Executive Officer of Autonomix, commented, “Autonomix is dedicated to dramatically improving the quality of millions of lives by empowering the nerve-directed treatments of tomorrow.
• Achieving “proof-of-concept” in this area could open the door to blockbuster diseases, expanding the horizons for the Company’s technology.
• The smaller and shorter clinical trials potentially translate to more efficient resource utilization, minimizing overall development costs.

Human medicines European public assessment report (EPAR): Vimpat, lacosamide, Date of authorisation: 29/08/2008, Revision: 47, Status: Authorised

Human medicines European public assessment report (EPAR): Briumvi, ublituximab, Date of authorisation: 31/05/2023, Revision: 2, Status: Authorised

• But during some of the most anxiety-ridden months of the COVID pandemic in early 2020, that rate of decline slowed almost to a stop.
• A recent study suggests that the social disruption, boredom and stress brought about by the pandemic may have contributed to a rise in young people taking up smoking.

Smoking as stress relief

• For some, it was the drug of modernity, as its soothing effects (caused by nicotine) were the ideal antidote to the stress and tension that came with the machine age.
• The invention of new technology such as the telegraph and railways made life more fast-paced and stressful.
• At the turn of the 20th century, even medical journal The Lancet suggested that smoking could ease the “restlessness and irritability” that accompanied urban life.

• In earlier conflicts, including the Boer war (1899-1902) and the Crimean war (1853-56), many military and medical writers had said much the same thing.
• But the machine-made cigarette made smoking more accessible.

Concerns about young smokers

• As I’ve found when reading journals from the early 1900s at the British Library, smoking was seen by some doctors and anti-tobacco activists to cause bad manners and antisocial behaviour in idle young boys.
• Smoking was endangering the health of the next generation and, by extension, the health and longevity of the British empire.
• Much like the young soldiers who had to endure a mix of intense stress and numbing boredom in the major wars of the modern era, the new, youthful smokers of the pandemic perhaps lit their first ever cigarette to deal with life in lockdown.

Michael Reeve does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.