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Week 45
Pregnant women who are lesbians
want to be treated like any other expectant mother
Midwives often struggle to meet the needs of pregnant women who are lesbians, with
patients reporting that the focus is often on their sexuality rather than the fact that
they are expecting a baby, according to research in the November issue of the Journal of
Advanced Nursing.The findings have led Swedish researchers from Linkopings University and
Uppsala University Hospital to call for special training for midwives, more neutral
healthcare routines and forms and special education groups for pregnant women who are
lesbians and their partners. "Ten lesbian women aged from 30 to 46 were
interviewed" says lead author Dr Gerd Rondahl, a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the
University. "All were open about their sexuality with healthcare staff, all had
experience of antenatal care, childbirth or postnatal care in Sweden and eight of them
were in a relationship with another woman at the time of the study. "Our study showed
that none of the women were offered any childbirth and parenting education and some
assumed that this was because the midwife did not know how to handle two mothers rather
than the mother and father unit normally seen in traditional parenting groups. "Some
reported positive experiences but others felt vulnerable and defenceless because of the
way that healthcare staff reacted to them. However, the majority felt that healthcare
staff focused more on their sexuality than their needs as pregnant women and prospective
parents."
Regulating emotion after
experiencing a sexual assault
After exposure to extreme life stresses, what distinguishes the individuals who do and do
not develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)? A new study, published in the October
1st issue of Biological Psychiatry, suggests that it has something to do with the way that
we control the activity of the prefrontal cortex, a brain region thought to orchestrate
our thoughts and actions. Researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine examined women
who had been the victims of violent sexual assault, some of whom developed PTSD and others
who did not develop any serious emotional symptoms afterwards. Using a brain imaging
technique, they evaluated the ability of these women to voluntarily modify their own
responses to unpleasant emotional stimuli and found that it was the trauma history itself,
not how well they endured this sort of trauma, that influenced their ability to dampen
subsequent emotional responses. Surprisingly, however, the ability of the subjects to
amplify their emotional responses to unpleasant stimuli was related to psychological
outcome after the sexual assault. The resilient individuals, that is, those who endured
sexual assault without developing emotional symptoms, were able to enhance the activation
of emotional brain circuitry in response to unpleasant stimuli more than either those with
PTSD or healthy controls who had never experienced a serious sexual assault. Corresponding
author Dr. Antonia New explained the findings: "This raises the possibility that the
ability to focus on negative emotions permits the engagement of cognitive strategies for
extinguishing negative emotional responses, and that this ability might be related to
resilience. This is important, since it has implications for how we might enhance
resilience." These findings suggest that exposure to extremely stressful situations
may leave an "emotional scar" that may influence the capacity to be resilient to
the impact of subsequent stressors, even when one does not develop PTSD. "These data
seem to support an idea that has emerged from clinical descriptions of resilient people,
i.e., that people who are resilient are able to be flexible in the way that they respond
to changing emotional contexts. It would be helpful to know how we can enhance the
flexible activation of these prefrontal cortex networks in people with compromised
resilience," commented Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry.
Getting on 'the GABA receptor
shuttle' to treat anxiety disorders
There are increasingly precise molecular insights into ways that stress exposure leads to
fear and through which fear extinction resolves these fear states. Extinction is generally
regarded as new inhibitory learning, but where the inhibition originates from remains to
be determined. Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the primary inhibitory chemical messenger
in the brain, seems to be very important to these processes. A new article in Biological
Psychiatry examined whether during the extinction of fear learning, GABA receptors may be
inserted into the cell surface to reduce the excitability of the amygdala. Researchers
inactivated a protein that links GABAA receptors to the cell surface. They found that this
protein prevented fear extinction training and the local application of NMDA from
increasing the number of GABAA receptors on the cell surface and enhancing the inhibition
of amygdala nerve cells. Lin and colleagues show that during fear conditioning, the number
of GABAA receptors on the surface of neurons in the amygdala decreases, reducing the
extent of inhibition of the neurons in this brain "fear center." When fear is
extinguished by dissociating fear cues from unpleasant stimuli, the number of GABAA
receptors on the cell surface of the amygdala neurons increases. How does this happen? The
study provides evidence of molecular mechanisms that shuttle GABAA receptors to the cell
surface during extinction. The researchers showed that by inactivating a protein involved
in the localization of GABAA receptors in the amygdala, they prevented the recruitment of
GABA-mediated inhibition and extinction of fear. Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological
Psychiatry comments: "This research provides evidence that we are starting to
untangle the molecular mechanisms through which our cognitive and behavioral therapies
might alter brain function."
Sensor biochips could aid in cancer
diagnosis and treatment
It is very difficult to predict whether a cancer drug will help an individual patient:
only around one third of drugs will work directly in a given patient. Researchers at the
Heinz Nixdorf Chair for Medical Electronics at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM)
have developed a new test process for cancer drugs. With the help of microchips, they can
establish in the laboratory whether a patient's tumor cells will react to a given drug.
This chip could help in future with the rapid identification of the most effective
medication for the individual patient. Cancer is the second most common cause of death in
the Western world. According to the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg,
approximately 450,000 people develop cancer every year in Germany. Although the doctors
who treat cancer have numerous cancer drugs at their disposal today, the treatment must be
precisely tailored to the patient and the type of cancer in question to be as effective as
possible. If it takes a second or third try to find a drug that works, the patient loses
valuable time in which the tumor can continue to grow.In the future, miniature
laboratories could provide the fast help required here. A lab-on-a-chip is a device --
made of glass, for example -- that is just a few millimeters across and has bioelectronic
sensors that monitor the vitality of living cells. The chips sit in small wells, known as
microtiter plates, and are covered with a patient's tumor cells. A robot changes the
culture fluid in each well containing a chip at intervals of just a few minutes. The
microsensors on the chip record, among other things, changes in the acid content of the
medium and the cells' oxygen consumption; photographs of the process are also taken by a
microscope fitted underneath the microtiter plate. All of the data merge in a computer
that is connected to the system, and which provides an overview of the metabolic activity
of the tumor cells and their vitality.
Physicians have less respect for
obese patients, study suggests
Doctors have less respect for their obese patients than they do for patients of normal
weight, a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers suggests. The findings raise questions
about whether negative physician attitudes about obesity could be affecting the long-term
health of their heavier patients.As patients had higher body mass index (BMI), physicians
reported lower respect for them, according to the study, being published in the November
issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine. In a group of 238 patients, each
10-unit increase in BMI was associated with a 14 percent higher prevalence of low patient
respect. BMI, calculated from a person's weight and height, is a shorthand used to
determine whether someone is a healthy weight. A person whose BMI is 25 to 29.9 is
considered overweight; a BMI over 30 is considered obese. Mary Margaret Huizinga, M.D.,
M.P.H., an assistant professor of general internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine, says the idea for the research came from her experiences
working in a weight loss clinic. Patients would come in and "by the end of the visit
would be in tears, saying no other physician talked with me like this before. No one
listened to me," says Huizinga, the study's leader and director of the Johns Hopkins
Digestive Weight Loss Center. "Many patients felt like because they were overweight,
they weren't receiving the type of care other patients received," she says. Data was
collected from 238 patients at 14 urban community medical practices in Baltimore. Patients
and physicians completed questionnaires about their visit, their attitudes, and their
perceptions of one another upon the completion of the encounter. On average, the patients
for whom physicians expressed low respect had higher BMI than patients for whom they had
high respect.
Time-Keeping Brain Neurons
Discovered
Groups of neurons that precisely keep time have been discovered in the primate brain by a
team of researchers that includes Dezhe Jin, assistant professor of physics at Penn State
University and two neuroscientists from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "This research is the first time that
precise time-keeping activities have been identified in recordings of neuron
activity," Jin said. The time-keeping neurons are in two interconnected brain
regions, the prefrontal cortex and the striatum, both of which are known to play critical
roles in learning, movement, and thought control. The timing of individual actions, like
speaking, driving a car, or throwing a football, requires very precise control. Although
the lives of humans and other primates are extremely dependent on this remarkable
capability, surprisingly little has been known about how brain cells keep track of time.
This new discovery, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Science, is an important step toward answering this fundamental question. To make the
discovery, Jin analyzed thousands of neural-activity recordings made by Naotaka Fujii,
from RIKEN, who then was a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Ann Graybiels, an
institute professor at MIT. Jin developed the computational tools that enabled the
discovery of the novel results to emerge from the team's vast data set. "The key
finding is that neurons in the prefrontal cortex and the striatum encode the time
information associated with sensory cues," Jin explained. "Visual cues, for
example, elicit a variety of responses in a particular population of neurons. We found
that the brain is able to tell the passage of time from the visual cues because different
neurons are active at different times. Most remarkably we found that there are neurons
that are active at precise times after a particular visual cue, and these neurons act like
clocks that mark time."
Can we 'learn to see?' - Study
shows perception of invisible stimuli improves with training
Although we assume we can see everything in our field of vision, the brain actually picks
and chooses the stimuli that come into our consciousness. A new study in the Association
for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology's Journal of Vision reveals that our brains can
be trained to consciously see stimuli that would normally be invisible. Lead researcher
Caspar Schwiedrzik from the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Germany said the
brain is an organ that continuously adapts to its environment and can be taught to improve
visual perception. "A question that had not been tackled until now was whether a
hallmark of the human brain, namely its ability to produce conscious awareness, is also
trainable," Schwiedrzik said. "Our findings imply that there is no fixed border
between things that we perceive and things that we do not perceive – that this border
can be shifted." The researchers showed subjects with normal vision two shapes, a
square and a diamond, one immediately followed by a mask. The subjects were asked to
identify the shape they saw. The first shape was invisible to the subjects at the
beginning of the tests, but after 5 training sessions, subjects were better able to
identify both the square and the diamond.
Bionic technology aims to give
sight to woman blinded beginning at age 13
A 50-year-old New York woman who was diagnosed with a progressive blinding disease at age
13 was implanted with an experimental electronic eye implant that has partially restored
her vision. A team led by Dr. Lucian V. Del Priore at NewYork-Presbyterian
Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center performed the June 26 surgery -- the first
case of its kind in New York. The first treatment aimed at restoring limited sight in
people blinded by retinal disease, it is currently available as part of a multicenter
clinical trial. The implant -- a component of the Argus™ II Retinal Stimulation
System by Second Sight® Medical Products Inc., of Sylmar, Calif. -- is designed to
stimulate retinal cells directly. In a healthy eye, photoreceptor cells of the retina
receive light and translate it into signals that are sent to the brain via the optic
nerve. But in patients with a genetic, blinding disease called retinitis pigmentosa (RP),
these light-processing cells gradually degenerate, leading to severe vision loss or total
blindness. "With this system, people who are functionally blind might begin to
distinguish light from dark, recognize visual patterns, make out figures, see food on a
plate and navigate in unfamiliar surroundings," says Dr. Del Priore, site principal
investigator, professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Columbia University College
of Physicians and Surgeons, and an ophthalmologist at NewYork-Presbyterian
Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. "In its current form, the device won't
restore full visual function -- but if it dramatically reduces a patient's disability,
that is a major advance." Retinitis pigmentosa only affects the outer layer of
retinal cells, leaving the inner layers healthy and capable of conducting electricity, Dr.
Del Priore explains. Therefore, people with glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, optic nerve
disease, or a history of retinal detachment have been excluded from the study, as their
level of retinal impairment is likely to be more severe and more generalized. At this
point, the device is being tested exclusively in people with RP as part of a clinical
trial offered at six sites across the country.
Phytochemicals in plant-based foods
could help battle obesity, disease
The cheeseburger and French fries might look tempting, but eating a serving of broccoli or
leafy greens first could help people battle metabolic processes that lead to obesity and
heart disease, a new University of Florida study shows. Eating more plant-based foods,
which are rich in substances called phytochemicals, seems to prevent oxidative stress in
the body, a process associated with obesity and the onset of disease, according to
findings published online in advance of the print edition of the Journal of Human
Nutrition and Dietetics. To get enough of these protective phytochemicals, researchers
suggest eating plant-based foods such as leafy greens, fruits, vegetables, nuts and
legumes at the start of a meal. Using what is known as a phytochemical index, which
compares the number of calories consumed from plant-based foods compared with the overall
number of daily calories, could also help people make sure they remember to get enough
phytochemicals during their regular meals and snacks, said Heather K. Vincent, Ph.D., the
lead author of the paper. "We need to find a way to encourage people to pull back on
fat and eat more foods rich in micronutrients and trace minerals from fruits, vegetables,
whole grains and soy," said Vincent, an assistant professor in the UF Orthopaedics
and Sports Medicine Institute. "Fill your plate with colorful, low-calorie,
varied-texture foods derived from plants first. By slowly eating phytochemical-rich foods
such as salads with olive oil or fresh-cut fruits before the actual meal, you will likely
reduce the overall portion size, fat content and energy intake. In this way, you're
ensuring that you get the variety of protective, disease-fighting phytochemicals you need
and controlling caloric intake." The researchers studied a group of 54 young adults,
analyzing their dietary patterns over a three-day period, repeating the same measurement
eight weeks later. The participants were broken into two groups: normal weight and
overweight-obese. Although the adults in the two groups consumed about the same amount of
calories, overweight-obese adults consumed fewer plant-based foods and subsequently fewer
protective trace minerals and phytochemicals and more saturated fats. They also had higher
levels of oxidative stress and inflammation than their normal-weight peers, Vincent said.
These processes are related to the onset of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and joint
disease, she added. "Diets low in plant-based foods affect health over the course of
a long period of time," Vincent said. "This is related to annual weight gain,
low levels of inflammation and oxidative stress. Those are the onset processes of disease
that debilitate people later in life."Oxidative stress occurs when the body produces
too many damaging free radicals and lacks enough antioxidants or phytochemicals to
counteract them. Because of excess fat tissue and certain enzymes that are more active in
overweight people, being obese can actually trigger the production of more free radicals,
too.
Vitamin D Effective Against Flu?
As a nutritionist, I would recommend 5,000 units a day and take the D3 form, not the
D2," he said.
Probiotics Could Help Gastric
Bypass Patients
Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine included probiotics as part of a
regimen for patients who had recently undergone gastric bypass surgery.
A few coffees a day keep liver
disease at bay
Researchers in the United States have found another good reason to go to the local
espresso bar: several cups of coffee a day could halt the progression of liver disease, a
study showed Wednesday.
Metabolic syndrome linked to
inflammation, physical inactivity in COPD
Metabolic syndrome is associated with systemic inflammation and physical inactivity in
patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to a report in the
October Chest.
Why my Family Isn’t Getting
the H1N1 Vaccine
I’m not an anti-vaccination advocate, and all of my children have been vaccinated per
school requirements. However, we have not vaccinated our daughters against HPV (Gardasil)
and have no plans to.
Drinking plain water may improve
overall diet
A new study may have people reaching for a glass of water rather than another beverage to
stay hydrated.
UPDATE 2-Antigenics says EU may not
OK kidney cancer vaccine
Drug developer Antigenics Inc (AGEN.O) said European health regulators are likely to turn
down its application to market a kidney cancer vaccine, sending its shares down 43
percent.
Death and dessert? The truth behind
obesity in the U.S.
Forty million Americans are obese and three million are morbidly obese. Obesity is not
just a problem-it is now considered a disease directly related to unhealthy addictions to
high-sugar foods.
Nurse Charges Dangerous Yaz Birth
Control Drug "Altered My Life"
Kent L. Klaudt of the national plaintiffs` law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann &
Bernstein, LLP announced that Candice Atkinson today filed a personal injury lawsuit
against Bayer Corporation and Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, Inc., for severe side
effects from the prescription birth control drug Yaz, manufactured and marketed by Bayer.
The complaint was filed in the Superior Court of New Jersey, where Bayer Healthcare
Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is located.
Daily News Central
Daily News Central- Health News provides news geared toward health consumers, along with
links to informative sites.
Thimerosal in child’s dosage
of flu vaccine
Can’t figure out how much Thimerosal is contained in a child’s dosage of flu
vaccine from the CDC website?
When Hamburgers Cause Sickness,
Paralysis, and Death
Hamburger meat is often composed of various grades of meat from different parts of cows
and even from different slaughterhouses.
New Study Demonstrates Significant
Harm From Just ONE Mercury-Containing Vaccine
new study found that primates that received just ONE vaccination containing thimerosal,
the mercury-preservative found in many vaccines including the new swine flu shot, had
significant neurological impairment when compared with those who received a saline
solution injection or no injection at all.
Herbal News Magazine
Herbal and natural health news, including information on alternative medicine supplements
and herbal remedies, as well as medical vs. natural treatments.
These 3 Things May Indicate Your
Pet has a Bladder Problem
Dr. Karen Becker explains why understanding your pet’s urine Ph is essential to their
bladder health.
Benefits and Risks of Cancer
Screening Are Not Always Clear, Experts Say
Most people believe that finding cancer early is a certain way to save lives. But the
reality of cancer screening is far more complicated.
Campaign tries to stop pesticides
near school
Tests of pesticides in the air near a St. Johns County elementary school have become
ammunition in a national campaign to put new controls on farmers' use of sprays.
Dow Chemical and dioxins
Dow is a major employer but also responsible for poisoning a river valley that stretches
more than 50 miles.
Drug Makers Are Advocacy
Group’s Biggest Donors
A majority of the donations made to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one of the
nation’s most influential disease advocacy groups, have come from drug makers.
Experts Worry as Population and
Hunger Grow
Scientists and development experts across the globe are racing to increase food production
by 50 percent over the next two decades to feed the world’s growing population.
F.D.A. Lags in Banning Researchers
After Fraud
In a review of 18 proceedings, investigators for the Government Accountability Office
found that the F.D.A. took from 1 to 11 years to complete its process to ban researchers.
This means many who were convicted of fraud remained eligible to conduct experiments for
years.
Health workers are urged to take up
the offer of vaccination
Concerns have been raised that many staff will not have the vaccine, as only a fifth
accept the seasonal flu jab.
Hormones in U.S. Beef Linked to
Increased Cancer Risk
Beef produced in the United States is heavily contaminated with natural or synthetic sex
hormones, which are associated with an increased risk of reproductive and childhood
cancers, warns Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition.
Kicking Formaldehyde Out of Bed
A bill backed by industry and environmental groups would set federal limits on a
potentially dangerous chemical inside your home - formaldehyde.
Neurotic? It could lead to asthma
People who are neurotic -- they tend to worry a lot and to have emotional ups and downs --
seem to be at increased risk of developing asthma, a new study hints.
New study reveals how daily life
'can make men infertile'
Modern life is having a devastating impact on men's fertility, research suggests.
Oil - Soil Tests Expose High Toxic
Levels
OIL tests by the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) have shown unacceptable levels of heavy
metals in the waste water and mud cuttings left behind by the oil companies in the process
of their exploration activities.
Wisconsin enacts new rules to
protect children from lead
Department of Health Secretary Karen Timberlake has announced new Wisconsin rules that
apply to lead-based paint and comply with the federal regulations involving renovations,
repairs and painting.
Cancer breakthrough as treatment
protects healthy cells from radiotherapy
A breakthrough in cancer treatment may allow doctors to protect healthy cells from
radiotherapy while at the same time accelerating the death of tumours.
Watching television late into the
night could make you depressed
Researchers found that too much artificial light at night can alter mood and lead to
similar symptoms to depression such as lack of energy and enthusiasm.
Ethiopia 27 million years ago had
higher rainfall, warmer soil
Thirty million years ago, before Ethiopia's mountainous highlands split and the Great Rift
Valley formed, the tropical zone had warmer soil temperatures, higher rainfall and
different atmospheric circulation patterns than it does today, according to new research
of fossil soils found in the central African nation. Neil J. Tabor, associate professor of
Earth Sciences at SMU and an expert in sedimentology and isotope geochemistry, calculated
past climate using oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in minerals from fossil soils discovered
in the highlands of northwest Ethiopia. The highlands represent the bulk of the mountains
on the African continent. Tabor's research supplies a picture of the paleo landscape of
Ethiopia that wasn't previously known because the fossil record for the tropics has not
been well established. The fossils were discovered in the grass-covered agricultural
region known as Chilga, which was a forest in prehistoric times. Tabor's research looked
at soil fossils dating from 26.7 million to 32 million years ago.
Female choice benefits mothers more
than offspring
The great diversity of male sexual traits, ranging from peacock's elaborate train to
formidable genitalia of male seed beetles, is the result of female choice. But why do
females choose among males? In a new study published today in Current Biology, researchers
from Uppsala University found no support for the theory that the female choice is
connected to "good genes". The great diversity of male sexual traits, ranging
from peacock's elaborate train to formidable genitalia of male seed beetles, is the result
of female choice. But why do females choose among males? Remarkably, there is no consensus
among biologists over the key question why females choose among males. At the heart of
this debate lie two distinct possibilities - that female choosiness is beneficial to the
females themselves or that female choice traits are favoured because of 'good genes' that
males contribute to female's offspring. Across animal kingdom, females often resist male
advances and only a small fraction of mating attempts result in copulations. Mating is
costly, and one straightforward explanation for female resistance is that non-resistant
females will suffer a reduction in their fitness. However, by resisting mating attempts,
females are selecting for most 'persistent' males. Could it be that offspring of such
'persistent' males have higher fitness? If yes, female resistance can be viewed as a way
of selecting for males that provide their offspring with 'good genes'.
Boston University scientists first
to see RNA network in live bacterial cells
Scientists who study RNA have faced a formidable roadblock: trying to examine RNA's
movements in a living cell when they can't see the RNA. Now, a new technology has given
scientists the first look ever at RNA in a live bacteria cell—a sight that could
offer new information about how the molecule moves and works. Interest in RNA, which plays
a key role in manufacturing proteins, has increased in recent years, due in large part to
its potential in new drug therapies. RNA localization and movement in bacterial cell are
poorly understood. The problem has been finding a way to mark RNA in a living cell so that
scientists can track it, says Natasha Broude, a research associate professor at Boston
University's Department of Biomedical Engineering. "You can label any protein within
the cell and watch what it is doing," says Broude, a senior researcher on the new
study, published in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"For RNA it was much more difficult because RNA is more mobile and less stable than
both proteins and DNA." Before now, scientists used green fluorescent protein (GFP)
to label RNA in a cell. But proteins were also tagged with GFP and their fluorescence was
so bright, it drowned out the glow from the RNA. "The initial idea was to do
something to allow us to decrease background fluorescence," Broude says. In 2007,
Broude and her colleagues developed a system to persuade a cell to synthesize protein in
two fragments rather than a whole, which made the protein inactive. They then modified an
RNA molecule, adding a small tail of RNA sequence that works like a handle, grabbing the
fragments and pulling them together, wich makes the protein active—and glow bright
green. The scientists can then follow the RNA as it moves through the cell.
Manipulating Brain Inflammation May
Help Clear Brain of Amyloid Plaques, Mayo Clinic Researchers Say
In a surprising reversal of long-standing scientific belief, researchers at the Mayo
Clinic campus in Florida have discovered that inflammation in the brain is not the trigger
that leads to buildup of amyloid deposits and development of Alzheimer's disease. In fact,
inflammation helps clear the brain of these noxious amyloid plaques early in the disease
development, as seen from studies in mice that are predisposed to the disorder, say the
researchers in the online issue of the FASEB Journal. "This is the opposite of what
most people who study Alzheimer's disease, including our research group, believed,"
says the study's lead investigator Pritam Das, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the
Department of Neuroscience. "And it also suggests that we can take advantage of the
brain's own immune cells by directing them to remove amyloid plaques from the brain, thus
protecting the brain against their harmful effects."
Study reveals an increase in
long-term antidepressant drug use
A dramatic rise in antidepressant prescriptions issued by GPs has been caused by a year on
year increase in the number of people taking antidepressant drugs on a long-term basis,
according to researchers from the University of Southampton.In a paper, published in the
printed edition of British Medical Journal (BMJ) tomorrow, scientists found that despite a
drop in the number of new patients diagnosed with depression over 11 years, the number of
prescriptions doubled. "We estimate that more than 2 million people are now taking
antidepressants long-term over several years, in particular women aged between 18 and
30," comments Tony Kendrick, a professor in Primary Medical Care of the University's
School of Medicine, who led the study. The number of prescriptions issued per patient rose
from 2.8 in 1993 to 5.6 in 2004. Prescription Pricing Authority data shows that more than
30 million prescriptions for SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) such as
Prozac and Seroxat, are now issued per year, twice as many as the early 1990s. Researchers
at the University of Southampton found 90 per cent of people diagnosed with depression are
now taking SSRIs either continuously or as repeated courses over several years. Professor
Kendrick adds "Our previous research found that although these drugs are said not to
be addictive, many patients found it difficult to come off them, due to withdrawal
symptoms including anxiety. Many wanted more help from their GP to come off the drugs. We
don't know how many really need them and whether long-term use is harmful. This has
similarities to the situation with Valium in the past." The research team analysed
all new cases of depression between 1993 and 2005 from anonymous computerised general
practice records covering 170 GP surgeries and 1.7 million registered patients.
Pesticides exposure linked to
suicidal thoughts
A new study in China has found that people with higher levels of pesticide exposure are
more likely to have suicidal thoughts. The study was carried out by Dr Robert Stewart from
the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London together with scientists from Tongde
Hospital Zhejiang Province. The agricultural pesticides commonly used in China are
organophosphates which are in wide use in many lower income countries but have been banned
in many Western nations. It is well known that they are very dangerous if ingested as an
overdose but there is also biological evidence that chronic low-grade exposure to these
chemicals, which are very easily absorbed into the body through the skin and lungs, may
have adverse effects on mental health. This study is the first epidemiological evidence to
suggest possible effects on suicidal thoughts. The study was carried out in
central/coastal China, a relatively wealthy area with a rapidly developing economy. In a
very large survey of mental health in rural community residents, participants were also
asked about how they stored pesticides. The study found that people who stored pesticides
at home, i.e. those with more exposure, were more likely to report recent suicidal
thoughts. Supporting this, the survey also found suicidal thoughts to be associated with
how easily accessible these pesticides were in the home and that the geographic areas with
highest home storage of pesticides also had highest levels of suicidal thoughts in their
populations.
New UK study suggests minimal
relationship between cannabis and schizophrenia or psychosis
Last year the UK government reclassified cannabis from a class C to a class B drug, partly
out of concerns that cannabis, especially the more potent varieties, may increase the risk
of schizophrenia in young people. But the evidence for the relationship between cannabis
and schizophrenia or psychosis remains controversial. A new study has determined that it
may be necessary to stop thousands of cannabis users in order to prevent a single case of
schizophrenia. Scientists from Bristol, Cambridge and the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine took the latest information on numbers of cannabis users, the risk of
developing schizophrenia, and the risk that cannabis use causes schizophrenia to estimate
how many cannabis users may need to be stopped to prevent one case of schizophrenia. The
study found it would be necessary to stop 2800 heavy cannabis users in young men and over
5000 heavy cannabis users in young women to prevent a single case of schizophrenia. Among
light cannabis users, those numbers rise to over 10,000 young men and nearly 30,000 young
women to prevent one case of schizophrenia. That's just part of the story. Interventions
to prevent cannabis use typically do not succeed for every person who is treated.
Depending on how effective an intervention is at preventing cannabis use, it would be
necessary to treat even higher numbers of users to achieve the thousands of successful
results necessary to prevent a very few cases of schizophrenia.Matt Hickman, one of the
authors of the report published last week in the scholarly journal Addiction, said that
"preventing cannabis use is important for many reasons – including reducing
tobacco and drug dependence and improving school performance. But our evidence suggests
that focusing on schizophrenia may have been misguided. Our research cannot resolve the
question whether cannabis causes schizophrenia, but does show that many people need to
give up cannabis in order to have an impact on the number of people with schizophrenia.
The likely impact of re-classifying cannabis in the UK on schizophrenia or psychosis
incidence is very uncertain."
Friendship is mainly about 'me, me
and me'
Young people mainly select their friends according to the image they have of another
person, irrespective of whether the person concerned actually satisfies that image. Dutch
researcher Maarten Selfhout has demonstrated that young people consider themselves to be
the most important factor in a friendship. Nevertheless friendship can still exert a
significant influence: boys become criminal and girls become depressed.
New artificial enzyme safer for
nature
Custom built enzyme to replace harsh and hazardous chemicals. Perilous and polluting
industrial processes can be made safer with enzymes. But only a short range of enzymes
have been available for the chemical industry. Recently a group of researchers at The
Department of Chemistry at University of Copenhagen succeeded in producing an artificial
enzyme that points the way to enzymes tailor-made for any application. With their group
leader, Professor Mikael Bols, Ph.d. students Jeanette Bjerre and Thomas Hauch Fenger are
publishing details of their breakthrough in recognized international ChemBioChem (15/2009)
under the title “Cyclodextrin Aldehydes are Oxidase Mimics”
Early treatment of fibromyalgia
more effective
People suffering from fibromyalgia have reduced activity in the parts of the brain that
inhibit the experience of pain. Drugs that affect the CNS can be effective against the
disease, and are thought to be even more so if administered early in its course. This
according to a new thesis from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet.
"It's a common misconception that fibromyalgia is a manifestation of mental
problems," says Karin B. Jensen, postgraduate at the Department of Clinical
Neuroscience. "But in the studies that comprise my thesis, we've made careful
measurements and have found no correlation at all between pain sensitivity in fibromyalgia
patients and the degree of anxiety or depression they show." In one of the studies
presented in the thesis, subjects had both thumbs pressed hard enough for them to feel the
same degree of mild pain as healthy controls. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI), researchers could show that the subjects had the same level of activity in the
parts of the brain that deal with emotions as well assensory information from the thumb,
regardless of which group they belonged to. However, the subjects with fibromyalgia had
lower activity in a brain area that inhibits the experience of pain.
Chinese Herbs Show Promise for
Diabetes Prevention
A number of traditional Chinese herbs may help control blood sugar levels in people at
high risk of diabetes, a new research review suggests.
The Uber Nutrient Worth
“Hundreds of Billions”
If the new consensus is correct, and I believe it is, increasing your vitamin D level
could, for most people, add years of healthy life. It could also save the U.S. economy
hundreds of billions annually…
You can raise level of good
cholesterol
A glass of red wine is another HDL cholesterol booster. Oils, such as olive, canola, soy
and flaxseed, as substitutes for butter also increase HDL cholesterol. So do peanuts,
walnuts, almonds and other nuts, as well as tuna, mackerel and trout.
What Is Up With Coconut Oil?
Think of coconut oil like an avocado - they both contain fat, but it's the good fat, the
saturated kind that, like the avo, it improves cholesterol by raising HDL, the "good
cholesterol."
Teen drug use may impair memory
later, study suggests
Rats develop memory loss in adulthood after receiving high doses of amphetamines during
their "teen" years, new research shows.
Study raises red flag over home
insecticides, autoimmune diseases
New research suggests a link between women's exposure to household insecticides —
including roach and mosquito killers — and the autoimmune disorders rheumatoid
arthritis and lupus.
Westmoreland farmer compares bison
meat to fish
Westmoreland bison farmer Ed Dillinger compared bison meat to fish when talking to Lions
Club members about meat this week.
Cherry juice can treat pain after
exercise
A glass of unsweetened cherry juice can work like common non-steroidal anti-inflammatory
drugs, used by millions to treat pain and inflammation after exercise, say experts
Oestrogen treatment following
severe burn injury reduces brain inflammation and apoptotic signaling
In burned rats, 17 beta-estradiol significantly decreased the levels of brain tissue
TNF-alpha (~25%), IL-1beta (~60%), and IL-6 (~90%) when compared to the placebo group.
How Low Doses Of Radiation Can
Cause Heart Disease And Stroke
mathematical model constructed by researchers at Imperial College London predicts the risk
of cardiovascular disease (heart attacks, stroke) associated with low background levels of
radiation.
Manipulating Brain Inflammation May
Help Clear Brain Of Amyloid Plaques, Researchers Say
In a surprising reversal of long-standing scientific belief, researchers at the Mayo
Clinic campus in Florida have discovered that inflammation in the brain is not the trigger
that leads to buildup of amyloid deposits and development of Alzheimer's disease.
The Pharmaceutical Industrial
Complex
It has been a particularly bad month for the pharmaceutical industrial complex in its
ongoing litigations in American courts.
Special diet speeds spinal cord
healing
A diet high in fat and low in carbohydrates speeds recovery in rats with spinal cord
injuries, Canadian researchers said.
The Sardinian Diet - Wine, Bread
and Cheese
The Sardinian diet emphasizes bread, cheese and red wine. Sardinian Cannonau, a very
darkly-colored red wine, has the highest level of antioxidants of any known red wine in
the world.
Fibromyalgia 2010 document
available to public
Each year, the Colorado Fibromyalgia Center (formerly Fibromyalgia Centers of
America-Colorado) puts out an extensive research review on Fibromyalgia and Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome.
2010 "What's Wrong With
Me?" Document
Each year, the Colorado Fibromyalgia Center puts out an extensive research review on
Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The name of the document is "What's Wrong
With Me?". The purpose of the document is to provide a deep understanding of the
conditions to healthcare providers and patients, and inform readers of the latest research
findings and most effective treatments available.
The Food-Pharma-Government
Coalition Brings Fear Mongering and Death
In the United States, one of our favorite slogans comes from our national anthem:
"The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave." Most Americans don't seem to
realize that this statement is no longer relevant to our nation and its people. We have
become the land of the diseased and the home of the wholly owned subsidiary.
Belly Fat Makes It Hard to Breathe,
Raises Asthma Risk
Reporting in the journal Thorax, scientists found obese or overweight women, i.e. larger
waist sizes, were more likely to develop asthma.
Towards an adequate intake of
vitamin D
The Committee has concluded that a section of the population needs extra vitamin D, in
addition to the vitamin D obtained from food (including margarine, low-fat margarine and
products used in baking and frying) and that produced by the skin through exposure to
sunlight. The specific groups concerned are children under the age of 4, dark-skinned
people, women who are pregnant or are breastfeeding, women who wear a veil, women from the
age of 50 and men from the age of 70. The Committee recommends streamlining information on
the importance of extra vitamin D obtained from supplements.
How does emodin protect rat liver
from fibrogenesis?
In the last decade, advances in the understanding of genes promoting hepatic stellate cell
(HSC) activation are impressive. However, there are few breakthroughs in therapeutic
intervention of hepatic fibrogenesis. Efficient and well-tolerated antifibrotic drugs are
lacking and current treatment of hepatic fibrosis is limited to withdrawal of the noxious
agent. Research identifying innocuous antifibrotic agents is of high priority and urgently
needed. Emodin is efficacious in the management of hepatic fibrosis. However, the
mechanisms underlying its effects remain to be elucidated. A research team from China
established rat models of experimental hepatic fibrosis by injection with CCl4; the
treated rats received emodin via oral administration at a dosage of 20 mg/kg twice a week
at the same time. Rats injected with olive oil served as a normal group. Histopathological
changes were observed by hematoxylin and eosin staining. The activities of alanine
aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) in serum and hepatic
hydroxyproline content were assayed by biochemical analyses. The mRNA and protein relevant
to hepatic stellate cell (HSC) activation in the liver were assessed using real-time
reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, immunohistochemistry, western blotting
and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Their study will be published on October 14, 2009
in the World Journal of Gastroenterology.
The correlation between incidental
NAFLD and carotid atherosclerosis
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is often caused by abdominal obesity, which is
also one of the main causes of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. The latter, in
turn, is an important cardiovascular risk factor, and has been found to be associated with
the presence of carotid atherosclerotic lesions. It is therefore understandable that an
association may exist between NAFLD and carotid lesions. Although the association between
NAFLD and carotid lesions is plausible and demonstrated, its practical implications have
not been fully understood.A research article to be published on October 14, 2009 in the
World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The research team, led by Prof.
Antonio Muscari from University of Bologna, S.Orsola-Malpighi Hospital, have prospectively
examined a random group of consecutive outpatients undergoing abdominal US to establish
whether those with NAFLD had an increased prevalence of early or advanced carotid lesions.
One hundred and fifty-four consecutive outpatients (age range 24-90 years, both sexes)
referred by general practitioners for abdominal US, and drinking less than 20 g
alcohol/day, underwent carotid US for an assessment of carotid intima-media thickness
(c-IMT) and carotid plaque prevalence. Hepatic steatosis, visceral fat thickness and
subcutaneous fat thickness were also assessed at ultrasonography.
Is duodenal biopsy necessary in
celiac disease diagnosis for children and adults?
Duodenal biopsy remains the gold standard for celiac disease (CD) diagnosis. However, it
has several pitfalls and requires an invasive procedure in children. In the past few
years, a more prominent role for a definitive diagnosis based solely on serology has been
proposed. The predictive value of high levels of anti-tissue transglutaminase (tTG)
antibodies has also been reported in retrospective CD cohorts. Based on these studies,
some authors have proposed to start a gluten-free diet (GFD) for those patients with high
tTG antibody levels, without duodenal biopsy. There is no agreement to start a GFD without
biopsy to confirm mucosal atrophy. There are age-related differences in CD diagnosis that
may be taken into account to evaluate the predictive value of tTG antibody for mucosal
atrophy. A research team, led by Dr. Santiago Vivas from Hospital de León recruited a
total of 324 patients with celiac disease (CD; 97 children and 227 adults) prospectively
at two tertiary centers. Human IgA class anti-tTG antibody measurement and upper
gastrointestinal endoscopy were performed at diagnosis. A second biopsy was performed in
40 asymptomatic adults on a gluten-free diet (GFD) and with normal tTG levels. Their study
will be published on October 14, 2009 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology.
Long-term treatment with proton
pump inhibitor can increase weight
Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is the most common esophageal disorder, and
frequently encountered in the primary care setting. Accumulating evidence has confirmed
the excellent efficacy and safety of proton pump inhibitor (PPI) therapy in patients with
all grades of GERD, making these agents the mainstay of treatment. However, the possible
impact of changes in body weight(BW) or body mass index (BMI) in reflux patients while on
long-term PPI therapy has not been examined. A clinical research team from Japan
elucidatied the effect on nutritional parameters such as body weight and BMI in patients
receiving long-term PPI therapy. Their study will be published on October 14, 2009 in the
World Journal of Gastroenterology. The subjects were 52 patients with GERD and 58 sex- and
age-matched healthy controls. GERD patients were treated with PPI for a mean of 2.2 years
(range, 0.8-5.7 years), and also advised on lifestyle modifications (e.g. selective diet,
weight management). BW, BMI and other parameters were measured at baseline and end of
study. Their results showed there were no differences in BW and BMI between reflux
patients and controls at baseline. Patients with GERD showed increases in BW, but no such
changes were noted in the control group. Mean BW increased by 3.5 kg (6.2% of baseline) in
37 (71%) reflux patients but decreased in only 6 (12%) patients during treatment.
Boys with urogenital birth defects
are 33 percent more common in villages sprayed with DDT
Women who lived in villages sprayed with DDT to reduce malaria gave birth to 33 per cent
more baby boys with urogenital birth defects (UGBD) between 2004 and 2006 than women in
unsprayed villages, according to research published online by the UK-based urology journal
BJUI. And women who stayed at home in sprayed villages, rather than being a student or
working, had 41 per cent more baby boys with UGBDs, such as missing testicles or problems
with their urethra or penis. The authors suggest that this is because they spent more time
in homes where domestic DDT-based sprays are still commonly used to kill the mosquitos
that cause malaria, even in areas where organised mass spraying no longer takes place.
Researchers led by the University of Pretoria in South Africa studied 3,310 boys born to
women from the Limpopo Province, where DDT spraying was carried out in high-risk areas
between 1995 and 2003 to control malaria. The study compared boys born to women in the 109
villages that were sprayed, with those born to women from the 97 villages that were not.
This showed that 357 of the boys included in the study – just under 11 per cent
– had UGBDs. The incidence of UGBDs was significantly higher if the mother came from
a sprayed village."If women are exposed to DDT, either through their diet or through
the environment they live in, this can cause the chemical to build up in their body"
explains lead author Professor Riana Bornman from the University's Department of Urology.
"DDT can cross the placenta and be present in breast milk and studies have shown that
the residual concentration in the baby's umbilical cord are very similar to those in
maternal blood. "It has been estimated that if DDT exposure were to cease completely,
it would still take ten to 20 years for an individual who had been exposed to the chemical
to be clear of it. Our study was carried out on boys born between 2004 and 2006, five to
nine years after official records showed that their mothers had been exposed to spraying.
Trembling hands and molecular
handshakes
Fragile X tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS) is a recently recognized condition, which is
actually one of the most prevalent heritable neurodegenerative diseases. It is assumed
that the condition is caused by deficiency for the protein Pur-alpha, which is essential
for normal neural function. Structural studies undertaken by a team under the leadership
of Dr. Dierk Niessing of the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Gene Center at
Ludwigs-Maximilians-University (LMU) have now determined the three-dimensional structure
of Pur-alpha, and gained insights into the molecular function of the protein. The findings
provide a possible basis for the development of an effective therapy for the disease.(PNAS
Early Edition, 21. Oktober 2009) Most FXTAS patients are males, and symptoms of the
condition become manifest around the age of 55. As the disease progresses, patients
develop tremor in their hands and also show ataxia, i.e. they have difficulty maintaining
their balance when they move, and therefore have a tendency to fall. Quite often these
deficits are accompanied by cognitive defects and dementia. The underlying cause of FXTAS
is a mutation in the gene for FMRP (Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein). This mutation
is found on the X chromosome in one out of 800 men, and involves abnormal expansions of a
DNA sequence composed of repeats of the base triplet CGG. Healthy people have between 5
and 54 copies of this sequence, while those who will develop FXTAS are born with between
55 and 200 repeats. Expansion of the triplet sequence beyond 200 copies leads to Fragile X
Syndrome (FXS), which is the second most common cause of hereditary mental retardation
after Down's syndrome. FXTAS itself is apparently triggered by a lack of the protein
Pur-alpha. This protein binds to the CGG sequences in FMR messenger RNAs (mRNA). The
excessive numbers of CGG triplets found in the mutant FMRP mRNA essentially bind so much
Pur-alpha that insufficient amounts are available for its normal cellular function. Dr.
Niessing's team reports in the online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS) that the Pur-alpha protein itself consists of
three copies of a structural unit called the PUR repeat. "The crystal structure of
Pur-alpha will make it possible to understand the protein's function in detail, and this
could contribute to the development of a therapy for FXTAS", says Dierk Niessing, who
leads a junior research group that is jointly funded by the Helmholtz Zentrum München,
the Helmholtz Association and LMU's Gene Center. "With the treatment options we have
at the moment, we can only alleviate the symptoms but cannot attack the real cause of the
disease."
New insight in the fight against
the Leishmania parasite
Professor Albert Descoteaux's team at Centre INRS – Institut Armand-Frappier has
gained a better understanding of how the Leishmania donovani parasite manages to outsmart
the human immune system and proliferate with impunity, causing visceral leishmaniasis, a
chronic infection that is potentially fatal if left untreated. This scientific
breakthrough was recently published in PLoS Pathogens. Some 350 million people live in
areas where leishmaniasis can be contracted. Over 90% of cases are reported in India,
Bangladesh, Nepal, Sudan, and Brazil. Leishmaniasis is also found in Mexico and elsewhere
in South America. There are no effective vaccines to prevent leishmaniasis, and resistance
issues greatly reduce the efficacy of conventional medications. The parasite, which is
transmitted to humans during the blood meal of infected sand flies, is internalized via
macrophages in the liver, spleen, and bone marrow. However, this parasite manages to alter
the normal phagocytosis process (destruction of foreign bodies), resist this process,
replicate itself, and infect other macrophages. This resistance process notably involves
blocking the normal acidification process within the macrophage by disrupting membrane
fusions. To date, few studies have attempted to identify the regulators of these membrane
fusions and their role in the phagolysosomal biogenesis process (a compartment where
pathogenic microorganisms are usually killed). The work by doctoral candidate Adrien Vinet
and Professor Descoteaux shed new light on the biology of Leishmania parasites,
particularly the molecular mechanisms by which they manage to outsmart the human immune
system.
Why antidepressants don't work for
so many
More than half the people who take antidepressants for depression never get relief. Why?
Because the cause of depression has been oversimplified and drugs designed to treat it aim
at the wrong target, according to new research from the Northwestern University Feinberg
School of Medicine. The medications are like arrows shot at the outer rings of a bull's
eye instead of the center. A study from the laboratory of long-time depression researcher
Eva Redei, presented at the Neuroscience 2009 conference in Chicago this week, appears to
topple two strongly held beliefs about depression. One is that stressful life events are a
major cause of depression. The other is that an imbalance in neurotransmitters in the
brain triggers depressive symptoms. Both findings are significant because these beliefs
were the basis for developing drugs currently used to treat depression. Redei, the David
Lawrence Stein Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern's Feinberg School, found powerful
molecular evidence that quashes the long-held dogma that stress is generally a major cause
of depression. Her new research reveals that there is almost no overlap between
stress-related genes and depression-related genes. "This is a huge study and
statistically powerful," Redei said. "This research opens up new routes to
develop new antidepressants that may be more effective. There hasn't been an
antidepressant based on a novel concept in 20 years." Her findings are based on
extensive studies with a model of severely depressed rats that mirror many behavioral and
physiological abnormalities found in patients with major depression. The rats, after
decades of development, are believed to be the most depressed in the world.
Sex-based prenatal brain
differences found
Prenatal sex-based biological differences extend to genetic expression in cerebral
cortices. The differences in question are probably associated with later divergences in
how our brains develop. This is shown by a new study by Uppsala University researchers
Elena Jazin and Björn Reinius, which has been published in the latest issue of the
journal Molecular Psychiatry. Professor Elena Jazin and doctoral student Björn Reinius at
the Department of Physiology and Developmental Biology previously demonstrated that
genetic expression in the cerebral cortices of human beings and other primates exhibits
certain sex-based differences. It is presumed that these differences are very old and have
survived the evolutionary process. The purpose of the new study was to determine whether
they appear during the process of brain development or first upon the conclusion of that
process. Identifying the initial genetic mechanisms that prompt the brain to develop in a
female or male direction is a long-range research objective. The Uppsala University
researchers analysed data, on the basis of sex, from another extensive study of the
prenatal human brain. "The results show that many of the genes situated on the Y
chromosome are expressed in various parts of the brain prior to birth and probably provide
a developmental basis for the sex-based differences exhibited by adult brains,"
according to Elena Jazin.
Childhood cancer survivors
experience suicidal thoughts decades after diagnosis
Adult survivors of childhood cancer have an increased risk for suicidal thoughts, even
decades after their cancer treatments ended, according to a study led by Dana-Farber
Cancer Institute scientists. The researchers report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology
that nearly eight percent of childhood cancer survivors said they have experienced
suicidal thoughts, or ideation. Survivors of brain and central nervous system cancers were
most likely to have had suicidal thoughts. Those who were in poor health or who had
cancer-related pain or treatment-related chronic conditions also were at greater risk for
suicidal thoughts. The paper is published on the journal's Web site and later will appear
in a print edition. "Our findings underscore the importance of recognizing the
connection between childhood cancer survivors' physical health issues and their risk for
suicidal thoughts, as some of the conditions may be treatable," said Christopher
Recklitis, PhD, MPH, the study's lead author and a psychologist and director of research
in the Perini Family Survivors' Center at Dana-Farber. The researchers analyzed data from
9,126 adult survivors of pediatric cancers who were part of the Childhood Cancer Survivor
Study (CCSS), a multi-institutional study coordinated through St. Jude Children's Research
Hospital in Memphis to track long-term effects of cancer and its treatment. The
participants were 18 years or older, had been diagnosed with cancer before the age of 21,
and been diagnosed at least five years prior to participating in the study. The vast
majority (8,464, or 92.7 percent) were diagnosed with cancer more than a decade before,
and more than a quarter (2,564, or 28.4 percent) were diagnosed more than 20 years prior.
The survivors were compared to a non-cancer control group made up of 2,968 of the
survivors' nearest-in-age siblings who also participated in the CCSS.
Canadian scientists link fat
hormone to death from potentially deadly blood infection
A new Canadian study has found that lower-than-normal levels of a naturally-occurring fat
hormone may increase the risk of death from sepsis—an overwhelming infection of the
blood which claims thousands of lives each year. The study by researchers at St. Michael's
Hospital and the University of Toronto focused on adiponectin, a hormone secreted by
visceral fat surrounding the abdominal organs. The findings were presented this week at
the 2009 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons held in Chicago.Using an
animal model designed to mimic what occurs in people with low levels of adiponectin, the
scientists observed that Mice with low levels of the hormone were at much greater risk of
dying from a blood infection. o Sepsis could be prevented if the animals were given
additional adiponectin. The risk of dying from sepsis after surgery is known to be
two-and-a-half to three times higher in people with "metabolic syndrome"—a
combination of factors including abdominal obesity, high blood fat composition, high blood
pressure, diabetes, and high inflammatory and blood clot indicators. People with these
conditions tend to have lower levels of adiponectin which may prime them to greater sepsis
related complications. "We hypothesized that low adiponectin levels might predispose
such individuals to develop sepsis and sepsis-related problems," says Dr. Subodh
Verma, a cardiac surgeon at St. Michael's Hospital and associate professor of surgery at
the University of Toronto who holds the Canada Research Chair in Atherosclerosis.
"This initial hypothesis was borne out by our latest research."
Despite Risk, Older African
Americans More Likely Than Others To Avoid Flu Vaccine
A study about why African American seniors do or do not get influenza vaccinations finds
that many of them do not have accurate and complete information about the flu itself, the
safety and efficacy of the inoculations, and the ease and necessity of getting the shots.
Concurrent imaging of metabolic and
electric signals in the heart
Cardiac rhythm disorders can result from disturbances in cardiac metabolism. These
metabolic changes are tightly linked with specific cardiac electrophysiology (CEP)
abnormalities, such as depressed excitability, impaired intra- and extracellular
conductivities, wave propagation block, and alteration of conduction velocity, action
potential amplitude, and duration. The altered electrophysiology eventually can lead to
arrhythmias, fibrillation, and cardiac death; therefore, understanding the spatiotemporal
complexity of the relationship between metabolism and electrophysiology is the challenge
in developing new approaches for treatment of cardiac diseases. The optical system for
simultaneous imaging electrical and metabolic quantities in the heart was developed by
scientists at Vanderbilt University. The advantages of their imaging system over others
include an optional software camera calibration routine that eliminates the need for
precise camera alignment. The system allows for rapid setup, dichroic image separation,
dual-rate imaging, and high spatial resolution, and it is generally applicable to any
two-camera measurement. The authors provide a detailed description of a camera calibration
algorithm along with multiple examples. They demonstrate the capabilities of this type of
imaging system for recording not only the transmembrane potential and intracellular
calcium, but other signals more directly related to myocardial metabolism, such as [K+]e,
NADH, and reactive oxygen species, leading to the possibility of correlative multimodal
cardiac imaging. The authors findings appear in the November issue of Experimental Biology
and Medicine.
Poor start between a class and its
teacher almost impossible to rectify
The relationship between a teacher and class is important for the learning achievement of
pupils and their pleasure in learning. Dutch researcher Tim Mainhard discovered that these
teacher-class relationships are very stable over the course of a school year. Consequently
if teachers get off to a bad start, it is almost impossible to put things right. During
four studies in high school classes, Mainhard observed pupils and asked them to complete
questionnaires under different circumstances and at different times. Teacher-class
relationships were found to be pretty stable. And if they did change then the relationship
over the course of a school year was more likely to became worse. This is particularly the
case for classes that start the school year with a teacher who exerts little influence on
what happens in the class and whose 'proximity' in the class is relatively low. In such
cases the quality of the relationship gradually decreases even further. The research
revealed that characteristics such as being strict or friendly were appreciated equally by
pupils who experienced the teacher for the first time and pupils who had known the teacher
longer. This suggests that the teacher-class relationship is established almost
immediately during the initial contact. Therefore the most important implication from this
study is that it is probably very difficult for a teacher to fundamentally change a
disrupted relationship.
Climate models don't tell the full
story
Climate models that predict heavy rainfall don't give the whole picture, according to the
results of a study by NWO scientist Martin Ziegler. He examined climate changes that have
taken place over the past 800,000 years, and discovered that the melting icebergs in the
North Atlantic and changes in the El Niño Southern Oscillation have a great influence on
the intensity of monsoon rains. He received his doctorate from Utrecht University on 2
October. Ziegler analysed sedimentary deposits from around the world in order to work out
which factors affect the strength of monsoons. The sedimentary deposits give a picture of
the weather patterns of the last 800,000 years. Many climate models are based on gradual
changes, for example the concentration of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere, or
changes in the solar radiation that enters the atmosphere. According to Ziegler, this
means that important factors may be overlooked.
Big meat tries to spin new
antibiotics report
The American Academy of Microbiologists (“the world’s oldest and largest life
science organization”), just issued a major report on antibiotic resistance which,
among many recommendations, calls for decreasing or eliminating the use of antibiotics in
animal production.
Italians Search for Radioactive
Waste Sunk by Mafia
Italian investigators are scouring a shipwreck allegedly containing toxic and radioactive
waste dumped by the mafia in the Mediterranean. Following years of speculation,
environmentalists, local politicians and now the EU are urging the government to act.
Mammogram screening does not cut
risk of breast cancer death
The American Cancer Society would be proud to tell that the survival rate of patients with
breast cancer has drastically increased since the introduction of mammogram screening. But
experts say that the screening method leads to detection and treatment of early stage or
indolent tumors, but no decline in cancer mortality.
Pesticide exposure and suicidal
ideation in rural communities in China
A potential marker of chronic pesticide exposure was found to be associated with suicidal
ideation, which supports findings from previous studies. Given the high level of pesticide
exposure and the high suicide risk in rural China, clarification of the causal mechanisms
underlying this association and the development of appropriate interventions are
priorities for public health and health policy.
Pollution may increase risk of
miscarriage
HIGH levels of pollution could increase the risk of miscarriage, new research suggests.
Research Uproar at a Cancer Clinic
Two years after becoming vice president for research at the biggest hospital in this
university town, Suzanne Stratton said she had finally seen enough.
Scientists Seek Origins of Obesity
in the Womb
Something in an obese woman's womb can program her fetus toward becoming a fat child and
adult. It's not about simply passing along genes that promote obesity; it's some sort of
still-mysterious signal.
Statin drugs might slightly boost
diabetes risk
Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs do not reduce the risk of diabetes and might modestly
elevate the chances of developing the condition, researchers found in a pooled analysis of
trial data.
Survey and health assessment of the
exposure of 2 year-olds to chemical substances in consumer products.
It can be concluded that not only is there a need to reduce exposure to anti-androgens and
oestrogen-like substances from food products, indoor air and dust, but also to reduce
exposure to the studied product groups, as these contribute to both indoor air and dust
and to direct exposure, based on the assumptions made in this report.. Danish
Environmental Protection Agency.In summary, it can be concluded that there is not only a
need to reduce exposure to antiandrogenic and oestrogen-like substances from foods and the
indoor climate, but also from products in the studied product groups. Based on the
assumptions made in this report, these contribute to both the indoor climate and to the
direct exposure. A reduction of the potential cumulative risk requires knowledge of which
sources are present in foods and the indoor climate. Furthermore, there is a need to
reduce possible contributions from other sources, e.g. propyl, butyl and isobutylparaben
in cosmetics, phthalates from other footwear (e.g. rubber clogs and rubber shoes).
Researchers have long known that endocrine disruptors can affect sexual development in
laboratory animals. Findings in males included malformedgenitals, undescended testicles to
the scrotum at birth (cryptorchidism), decreased sperm quality as well as testicular
cancer later in life (Sharpe, 2009). Similar symptoms have been observed in humans, and
new Danish research shows that Danish girls develop breasts earlier than 15 years ago.
Exposure to endocrine disruptors in the environment is suspected to be a contributory
factor in the development of these syndromes in the general population (Aksglaede et al.,
2009). However, in humans it is much more difficult to prove a cause-effect relationship.
A risk assessment is normally performed by assessing the exposure to a single substance in
a single product. We are exposed to many different products on a daily basis, of which
several contain the same chemical substances. We arealso exposed to many different
chemical substances that can have the same toxicological effect. This project attempts to
take into account some of these combination effects. In the past few years, surveys have
shown surprising results on combinationeffects (also known as cocktail effects) of
endocrine disruptors. A new Danish survey has revealed serious malformations in baby rats
when female rats are exposed to a mixture of endocrine disruptors at concentrations which
would not by themselves cause an effect. An expert workshop was held to follow up these
results. Several world leaders in endocrine disruptors and combination effects met in
Denmark in January 2009, where they considered on current knowledge on combination effects
and possibilities for introducing legislation to address the issue. In the report from the
workshop, the experts emphasise the fact that the risks posed by chemicals are currently
underestimated because we do not take into account our daily exposure to a cocktail of
many different substances, including endocrine disruptors. The advice from the experts is
that, it is possible and necessary to include the risks of combination effects when
performing a risk assessment of endocrine disruptors. The experts also refer to a
so-called dose addition method that can be used until further knowledge is acquired. This
project attempts to use the dose addition method for exposure to a series of substances
that have been proven to exhibit endocrine disrupting effects in animal studies. The
present project has shown that if one considers the total exposure as the sum of exposure
from all the products suurrounding a 2-year-old, then for certain individual substances
such as DBP, dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs, and propyl- and butylparaben, the individual
substance can in themselves pose a risk. If the exposure is then assessed together with
the substances that are suspected of having antiandrogenic or oestrogen-like effects, the
total contribution will result in a potential risk for endocrine disrupting effects.
Women with breast cancer have low
vitamin D levels
Scientists funded by the NCI analyzed vitamin D levels in each woman, and the average
level was 27 nanograms per milliliter; more than two-thirds of the women had vitamin
deficiency. Weekly supplementation with high doses of vitamin D -- 50,000 international
units or more -- improved the levels, according to Peppone's study.
Is Copper Making You Crazy? A
Closer Look at Copper Toxicity
As copper levels increase in the body, zinc levels decrease. These two metals worktogether
in the body, with zinc being a natural antagonist to copper. Our body utilizes metals for
a varietyof functions and needs to maintain specific relationships between them. When this
goes out of balance, our body and mind soon follow.
Global warming is the new religion
of First World urban elites
Geologist Ian Plimer takes a contrary view, arguing that man-made climate change is a con
trick perpetuated by environmentalists
Gastric bypass - Is it a diabetes
fix?
Within days of various weight-loss surgeries, blood sugar levels become easier to manage
-- or are normal.
Link between diabetes and heart
disease scrutinized
Figuring out precisely why diabetics are more prone to heart attacks and strokes has the
potential to revolutionize treatment.
Incretin therapy shows promise
In experiments on rats, the gut hormones increased the number of insulin-producing cells
in the pancreas.
Video - Coal Country
COAL COUNTRY is a dramatic look at modern coal mining. We get to know working miners along
with activists who are battling coal companies in Appalachia. We hear from miners and coal
company officials, who are concerned about jobs and the economy and believe they are
acting responsibly in bringing power to the American people. Both sides in this conflict
claim that history is on their side. Families have lived in the region for generations,
and most have ancestors who worked in the mines. Everyone shares a deep love for the land,
but MTR (Mountain Top Removal mining which has leveled over 500 Appalachian mountains) is
tearing them apart. We need to understand the meaning behind promises of “cheap
energy” and “clean coal.” Are they achievable? At what cost? Are there
alternatives to our energy future?
US Chamber Shuts off TheYesMen.org
and Websites of Hundreds of Other Activist Groups
Hundreds of activist organizations had their internet service turned off last night after
the US Chamber of Commerce strong-armed an upstream provider, Hurricane Electric, to pull
the plug on The Yes Men and May First / People Link, a 400-member-strong organization with
a strong commitment to protecting free speech.
Farmers part of the problem,
solution to water pollution
Ask anybody what they think is the largest source of water contamination, and industry
most likely will be the culprit they name.
Mineral could cut cancer risk
Selenium is known for its cancer-combating properties, and an Australian study has shown
how it could dramatically cut the incidence of bowel cancer.
Why boys are turning into girls
Gender-bending chemicals are largely exempt from new EU regulations, warns Geoffrey Lean.
Pollutants Boost Lead Paint Hazard
Two pollutants linked to transportation emissions react with surfaces coated with
lead-based paint and increase release of lead pigments, a new study shows.
Doctors' Group Under Fire for Coke
Partnership
The American Academy of Family Physicians has come under fire from nutrition advocates for
a new partnership with the Coca-Cola company.
Long-term use of mobile phones 'may
be linked to cancer'
A £20million, decade-long investigation overseen by the World Health Organisation (WHO)
will publish evidence that heavy users face a higher risk of developing brain tumours
later in life, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
Childhood obesity warning over
clock change
Parents are being warned that as the clocks go back children who suffer sleep disruption
could be more susceptible to obesity.
Researchers Exploit Genetic
"Co-dependence" to Kill Treatment-resistant Tumor Cells
ancer cells fueled by the mutant KRAS oncogene, which makes them notoriously difficult to
treat, can be killed by blocking a more vulnerable genetic partner of KRAS, report
scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.
The laboratory results, published by Nature on its Web site as an advanced online
publication and later in a print edition, demonstrate a potential advance against many
major tumors which, because they harbor the mutant KRAS cancer gene, are highly aggressive
and respond poorly to treatment. By targeting the second, more easily inhibited
"co-dependent" gene, TBK, the strategy bypasses the so far unfruitful head-on
assault against the highly resistant KRAS gene.
A new demand for uranium power
brings concerns for Navajo groups
Uranium from the Grants Mineral Belt running under rugged peaks and Indian pueblos of New
Mexico was a source of electric power and military might in decades past, providing fuel
for reactors and atomic bombs.
Brockton businessman steadfast in
fight against power plant
Unassuming yet tenacious Brockton businessman takes on a power-plant company
Dr Michael Hansen - GM Crops No
Panacea for Food Security
Senior US scientist Dr Michael Hansen has said genetically modified crops are not the
panacea for food security. Rather, the answer to food security lies with small-scale,
ecologically rational, sustainable agriculture that focuses on local food systems.
How farm fishing boom in Chile
threatens eco disaster
Separated by an ocean, a continent and more than 7,000 miles, Chile seems an awfully long
way to go to find sushi for millions of Britons.
Meta-analysis of vitamin D, calcium
and the prevention of breast cancer
These results provide strong evidence that vitamin D and calcium have a chemopreventive
effect against breast cancer.
Mobile phone users face new cancer
alert
The study, funded partly by the industry, has been criticised for including people who
made just one mobile call a week, and leaving out children, which some said could
underplay the risks.
Modern man had sex with
Neanderthals
Modern man and Neanderthals had sex across the species barrier, according to leading
geneticist Professor Svante Paabo.
New scrutiny of pig farming
Many experts think pig farming presents a serious and overlooked risk to public health.
Little is known about the origin of the novel H1N1 virus. But one thing is virtually
certain: The pandemic influenza now infecting the people of more than 190 countries began
in a pig.
The Elderly with Vitamin D
Deficiency Die Earlier*
Two recent studies suggest that vitamin D deficiency can be a cause for increased risk of
early deaths in the elderly.
The great race - Coal vs. Climate
Energy experts, coal industry officials and environmental advocates from around the world
are watching American Electric Power's Mountaineer Power Plant in Mason County for clues
about whether greenhouse gas-emissions controls will work.
Toxic timebombs tick on
Hundreds of homeowners could be living on a toxic timebomb as officials struggle to track
down land contaminated by industrial waste decades ago.
Treaty may force farms to halt use
of pesticide
AUSTRALIAN farmers may be forced by an international environmental treaty to stop using a
dangerous insecticide already banned in more than 60 countries.
Who says it's green to burn
woodchips?
One of the most cherished articles of faith of the green movement – that wood-fuelled
power stations can help save the planet – is being increasingly challenged by
campaigners and conservationists around the world.
Video - Coconut Oil Benefits Hair
Health
Dr. Bruce Fife explains how coconut oil is better than other oils in terms of hair health
and how to use this oil as a conditioner.
Video - Boost Your Metabolism with
Coconut Oil
In a study published in 1996 in the Journal of Lipid Research, animals fed a diet
consisting of at least 50 percent MCFAs had significant weight loss. In contrast, a group
fed the same diet with the same number of calories, but consisting of 50-percent
long-chain fatty acids (LCFAs found in other foods), lost no weight whatsoever. Other
studies confirm that MCFAs are oxidized (burned up and used for energy) instead of being
stored in the fatty tissue of the body, as are the LCFAs. As a result, you generate more
heat to burn calories, kick-starting the body into burning up existing fat stores. Studies
with human confirm animal research - a study published in the American Journal of Clinical
Nutrition in 1991 found that humans consuming a meal containing 30 grams (2 tablespoons)
MCFAs and 8 grams (about 1.5 tablespoons) LCFAs had a significant rise in temperature
compared to those who at the same meal containing 38 grams LCFA. This rise in temperature
indicates higher metabolic activity caused by better thyroid functioning, revealing how
coconut oil helps your thyroid and boosts your metabolism
Super Foods - The Truth about
Coconut
Super Foods - The Truth about Coconut - Nutrition by Natalie. Top 10 reasons, coconut is a
super food.
Vitamins more dangerous than
secondhand smoke?
New research into vitamins and supplements suggests you can have too much of a good thing.
Vitamins boost pharma growth
Vitamins and minerals are among the drug therapeutic groups showing the fastest growth in
sales in the domestic pharmaceutical market over the past year, show data from the
research company ORG-IMS.
What NSAIDs Do to Your Kidneys
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are widely used throughout the world to
treat pain and inflammation. Only a small fraction of NSAID users get significant kidney
damage, but this is still a large number of people.
Scientists examine pig farming for
answers on H1N1
Studying swine may yield clues on flu defense
Three-day course of antibiotics may
be sufficient after tonsillectomy
Children who receive a three-day course of antibiotics following tonsillectomy rather than
a seven-day course appear to have no differences in pain or how quickly they return to a
normal diet and activity level.
Toronto water has drug-resistant
bacteria
Bacteria resistant to some antibiotics have been found in Toronto tap water, a University
of Michigan scientist says.
Packaged milk allergies sends three
kids to hospital
Three more children have been hospitalized in Ho Chi Minh City with allergies developed
after having milk produced by FrieslandCampina Vietnam.
Gastroenterologists Explore
Relationship between Bacteria in the Gut and Breast Cancer
The human body contains billions of microorganisms, and microbial cells found in the human
gut are estimated to outnumber human cells by ten-to-one in healthy adults. However,
little is known about the ways in which these minute life forms influence health and
disease. That is why gastroenterologists at Rush University Medical Center are working on
a new research study funded by the U.S. Department of Defense to chart the presence of
microorganisms found within the gut and to explore how microbial imbalances may impact
diseases like breast cancer. “Similar to what has been done with human DNA, we want
to map out the composition of these microorganisms from their DNA and analyze how they
correlate to diseases and changes within the immune system,” said Dr. Ece Mutlu,
gastroenterologist at Rush and principal investigator of the study. “If we are able
to find the microbes responsible for particular diseases, it may increase the likelihood
of developing new diagnostic tests and treatments for diseases like breast cancer.”
Increased stroke risk from birth
control pills
She was only 30 years old, but she was experiencing the classic symptoms of a stroke. Her
speech suddenly became slurred, and her left hand became clumsy while eating. What
triggered her stroke, at such a young age, may have been the birth control pills she was
taking. Oral contraceptives nearly double the risk of stroke, according to a review
article in MedLink Neurology by three Loyola University Health System neurologists. Nearly
100 million women worldwide use birth control pills. Pills now in use contain much lower
concentrations of estrogens than older preparations. The relationship between oral
contraceptives and stroke has been studied and debated for decades, and studies have
yielded conflicting results. There are about 4.4 ischemic strokes for every 100,000 women
of childbearing age. Birth control pills increase the risk 1.9 times, to 8.5 strokes per
100,000 women, according to a well-performed "meta-analysis" cited in the
article. (A meta-analysis combines the results of multiple studies.) This is still a small
risk; there's one additional stroke for every 25,000 women who take birth control pills,
according to the article.
Teacher talk strains voices,
especially for women
Teachers tend to spend more time speaking than most professionals, putting them at a
greater risk for hurting their voices -- they're 32 times more likely to experience voice
problems, according to one study. And unlike singers or actors, teachers can't take a day
off when their voices hurt. Now a new study by the National Center for Voice and Speech
(NCVS) reveals how teachers use their voices at work and at home and uncovers differences
between male and female teachers. Its findings will be presented at a meeting of the
Acoustical Society of America (ASA) next week in San Antonio, TX.
Deadly stomach infection rising in
community settings, Mayo Clinic study finds
Mayo Clinic researchers have found that a sometimes deadly stomach bug, Clostridium
difficile, (http://www.mayoclinic.org/c-difficile/) is on the rise in outpatient settings.
Clostridium difficile is a serious bacteria that can cause symptoms ranging from diarrhea
to life-threatening inflammation of the colon. These findings were presented today at the
2009 American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) Annual Meeting in San Diego. Clostridium
difficile, often called C. difficile or "C. diff", is a bacterium that is
resistant to some antibiotics and is most often contracted by the elderly in hospitals and
nursing homes.
Slipper-shaped blood cells
What causes blood cells to deform, and how does deformation affect blood flow? Red blood
cells, which make up 45 percent of blood, normally take the shape of circular cushions
with a dimple on either side. But they can sometimes deform into an asymmetrical slipper
shape. A team of physicists have used simulations to explore how fluid flow might be
responsible for this deformation, as well as how the deformation in turn affects blood
flow. The insights could help understand the mechanisms involved in arterial disease and
other blood flow-related ailments. Their research is reported in Physical Review Letters
and highlighted with a Viewpoint in the October 26 issue of Physics
Moderate amounts of protein per
meal found best for building muscle
For thousands of years, people have believed that eating large amounts of protein made it
easier to build bigger, stronger muscles. Take Milo of Croton, the winner of five
consecutive Olympic wrestling championships in the sixth century BC: If ancient writers
are to be believed, he built his crushing strength in part by consuming 20 pounds of meat
every day. No modern athlete would go to such extremes, but Milo's legacy survives in the
high-protein diets of bodybuilders and the meat-heavy training tables of today's college
football teams. A recent study by University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
metabolism researchers, however, provides evidence that strongly contradicts this ancient
tradition. It also suggests practical ways to both improve normal American eating patterns
and reduce muscle loss in the elderly. The study's results, obtained by measuring muscle
synthesis rates in volunteers who consumed different amounts of lean beef, show that only
about the first 30 grams (just over one ounce) of dietary protein consumed in a meal
actually produce muscle. "We knew from previous work that consuming 30 grams of
protein — or the equivalent of approximately 4 ounces of chicken, fish, dairy, soy,
or, in this case, lean beef — increased the rate of muscle protein synthesis by 50
percent in young and older adults," said associate professor Douglas Paddon-Jones,
senior author of a paper on the study published in the September issue of the Journal of
the American Dietetic Association. "We asked if 4 ounces of beef gives you a 50
percent increase, would 12 ounces, containing 90 grams of protein, give you a further
increase?" The UTMB researchers tested this possibility by feeding 17 young and 17
elderly volunteers identical 4- or 12-ounce portions of lean beef. Using blood samples and
thigh muscle biopsies, they then determined the subjects' muscle protein synthesis rates
following each of the meals.
M. D. Anderson redefines screening
guidelines for breast, cervical and colorectal cancers
Drawing on years of experience in cancer research and patient care, The University of
Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center released today the most comprehensive, risk-based
screening guidelines publicly available to date for breast, cervical and colorectal
cancers. The new recommendations represent the first wave of an effort by M. D. Anderson
to improve the effectiveness of efforts to prevent and detect cancer at its earliest, most
treatable stage by reconstructing and expanding its screening, risk reduction and
diagnostic guidelines across eight disease sites. Available on M. D. Anderson's Web site,
the recommendations translate best practices in cancer prevention employed at M. D.
Anderson into accessible guidelines the public can follow, with risk categories identified
and information about when to begin and discontinue screening exams.
Protein critical for insulin
secretion may be contributor to diabetes
A cellular protein from a family involved in several human diseases is crucial for the
proper production and release of insulin, new research has found, suggesting that the
protein might play a role in diabetes. Mice lacking the ClC-3 channel, a passageway that
allows negatively-charged chloride ions to pass through cell membranes, have only
one-fifth the circulating insulin of normal mice, according to research published this
month in the journal Cell Metabolism. Researchers Deborah Nelson and Louis Philipson of
the University of Chicago, senior authors on the paper, argue that the finding may explain
a portion of what goes wrong in Type 2 diabetes and could help doctors find rare patients
whose diabetes has a previously-undetected genetic origin. "Chloride regulation is
not really well understood, but it's at the heart of cystic fibrosis, and it is related to
the regulation of how insulin gets made," said Philipson, professor of medicine and
medical director of the Kovler Diabetes Center at the University of Chicago. "Now we
see that it's a critical feature of how insulin gets converted from a precursor form to
its most active form." Insulin is made and released by specialized pancreas cells
called Beta-cells. The cell first synthesizes a protein called pro-insulin, discovered
forty years ago at the University of Chicago by Donald Steiner, which is then put inside
structures called secretory granules. Inside the secretory granule, proinsulin is
chemically converted into insulin, and the granule moves to the cell surface where it can
release insulin into the blood. Steiner discovered that the conversion of proinsulin to
insulin must happen in an acidic environment, but how the granules make themselves acidic
was unknown.
Will genomics help prevent the next
pandemic?
This week, the Public Library of Science, an open-access publisher, presents the
"Genomics of Emerging Infectious Disease," a collection of essays, perspectives,
and reviews that explores how genomics—with all its associated tools and
techniques—can provide insights into our understanding of emerging infectious
disease. As pandemic H1N1 2009 influenza (commonly referred to as swine flu) continues to
spread around the globe, people want to know if this flu poses more of a threat than other
seasonal flu strains, how fast it's spreading (and where), and what can be done to contain
it. The increasing speed at which complete genome sequences and other genome-scale data
can be generated provides tremendous opportunities to address these questions by
identifying the molecular changes in disease agents such as influenza viruses that will
enable us to track their spread and evolution and to generate the vaccines and drugs
necessary to combat them. The "Genomics of Emerging Infectious Disease"
collection discusses the challenges involved and how scientists and public health
professionals might take advantage of these opportunities and advances to prevent the next
pandemic. (See the link at the bottom of the release for a press preview PDF containing
all the a rticles in the collection;.when the embargo ends the collection will be
available at http://ploscollections.org/emerginginfectiousdisease/) Emerging infectious
diseases are caused by a wide range of organisms, but they are perhaps best typified by
zoonotic viral diseases, which cross from animal to human hosts and can have a devastating
impact on human health. These zoonotic diseases include monkeypox, Hendra virus, Nipah
virus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), in addition to
influenza A and the lentiviruses (HIV) that cause AIDS. As Albert Osterhaus and colleagues
from the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, point out in their article in
the collection, the apparent increased transmission of pathogens from animals to humans
over recent decades can be attributed to the unintended consequences of globalization as
well as environmental factors and changes in agricultural practices.
Study shows unsedated colonoscopy
for colorectal cancer screening well accepted by patients
Researchers from Taiwan report in a new study that unsedated colonoscopy for primary
colorectal cancer screening is well accepted in a majority of patients. Sedation is
typically used for colonoscopy to make the patient feel comfortable during the procedure.
In Taiwan, colonoscopy is performed less frequently than sigmoidoscopy for colorectal
cancer screening due to concerns over cost and availability. While sigmoidoscopy is
generally accepted as a well tolerated procedure without sedation, many physicians and
patients assume colonoscopy requires sedation for patients to be comfortable. Researchers
compared unsedated colonoscopy with sigmoidoscopy to analyze factors associated with
acceptance of the procedures and need for sedation. The study appears in the October issue
of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the
American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. Colonoscopy is recommended as the primary
screening method for colorectal cancer and is the final common pathway for all other
recommended screening tests. It is considered the "gold standard" for colorectal
cancer screening because of the ability to diagnose and remove polyps (growths) before
they become cancer. Colonoscopy utilizes a colonoscope, a tube with a light and video
camera on the end, which allows the physician to see the entire colon. If a polyp is
found, it can be removed immediately. Flexible sigmoidoscopy consists of a sigmoidoscope,
a slender, lighted tube about the thickness of a finger. This allows the physician to look
only at the inside of the rectum and lower part of the colon for cancer or polyps. This
exam only evaluates about one-third of the colon; the other two-thirds are not examined.
If polyps are found, the patient must return for a full colonoscopy. The advantages of
unsedated colonoscopy include the elimination of the risks associated with sedation,
especially in patients with comorbidities; a reduction in the recovery time after the
procedure; a decrease in the need for cardiopulmonary monitoring; and a significant
reduction in cost.
Fighting Sleep, Penn Researchers
Reverse the Cognitive Impairment Caused By Sleep Deprivation
A research collaboration led by biologists and neuroscientists at the University of
Pennsylvania has found a molecular pathway in the brain that is the cause of cognitive
impairment due to sleep deprivation. Just as important, the team believes that the
cognitive deficits caused by sleep deprivation, such as an inability to focus, learn or
memorize, may be reversible by reducing the concentration of a specific enzyme that builds
up in the hippocampus of the brain. It is known that sleep deprivation can have cognitive
consequences, including learning and memory deficits, but the mechanisms by which sleep
deprivation affects brain function remain unknown. A particular challenge has been to
develop approaches to reverse the impact of sleep deprivation on cognitive function. The
findings, reported in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, could present a new
approach to treating the memory and learning deficits of insomnia. A molecular mechanism
by which brief sleep deprivation alters hippocampal function is now identified in mice,
involving the impairment of cyclic-AMP- and protein-kinase-A-dependent forms of synaptic
plasticity, or readiness for cognitive function.
Changes in brain chemicals mark
shifts in infant learning
When do you first leave the nest? Early in development infants of many species experience
important transitions—such as learning when to leave the protective presence of their
mother to start exploring the wider world. Neuroscientists have now pinpointed molecular
events occurring in the brain during that turning point. Based on animal studies, the
findings may shed light on the strength of attachments in many species—including the
conundrum of why human children form strong attachments to even abusive caregivers.
"This is one of the few times we know what causes this type of early
transition," said psychologist Gordon A. Barr, Ph.D., of The Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia, co-author of a study that appeared online Sept. 27 in Nature Neuroscience.
Barr performed the studies in rats with a longtime collaborator, neuroscientist Regina M.
Sullivan, Ph.D., of the Nathan Kline Institute and New York University Langone Medical
Center. The youngest rats, called pups, first experience the mother's presence with both
positive and negative stimuli. Even if the mother does something unpleasant, like stepping
on or biting a pup, the baby rat stays close by the mother, something called preference
learning. "From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes sense," said Barr.
"The dependent baby has a better chance of survival if it doesn't stray from the
mother's side." However, at about ten days of age, the rat pups experience a
transition to so-called aversion learning, in which they learn to avoid unpleasant
stimuli. Said Barr, "Once an animal is better able to move around, it needs to be
able to escape from stressful situations, again in the interests of its survival."
The maturing rat learns a type of safe behavior while away from parental protection. For
neuroscientists, one puzzle has been how to understand the underlying biological events in
the changeover from preference learning to aversion learning. In a series of studies
reported in the current paper, the authors focused on neurotransmitters in the brain, then
manipulated those chemical messages to mimic their natural effects in rats.
Faulty 'wiring' in the brain
triggers onset of schizophrenia
A new study by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP), King's College London has
discovered abnormalities in the white matter of the brain that seem to be critical for the
timing of schizophrenia. The study, led by Professor Phillip McGuire and Dr Sophia
Frangou, has been published in this month's edition of the British Journal of Psychiatry.
The white matter of the brain consists of nerve fibres that connect parts of the brain and
help regulate behaviour. The normal brain develops in a back to front fashion, i.e.
posterior regions mature first and the frontal lobes last. The research discovered that if
there are very severe deficits in the white matter in these posterior (specifically
parietal) regions, then schizophrenia develops early in adolescence. As people grow older
their deficits "migrate" in a back to front manner and in adulthood, they impact
the frontal lobes of the brain quite dramatically. Schizophrenia is a disabling and
emotionally devastating illness that affects about one per cent of the population
worldwide. Professor McGuire, from the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health,
South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and IoP comments: 'Although we can trace
the origins of schizophrenia to early brain development we still do not know what triggers
the onset of the full blown symptoms. Our study suggests that at least part of the answer
lies in problems affecting the "wiring" of key brain areas.'
Exercise makes cigarettes less
attractive to smokers
Exercise can help smokers quit because it makes cigarettes less attractive. A new study
from the University of Exeter shows for the first time that exercise can lessen the power
of cigarettes and smoking-related images to grab the attention of smokers. The study is
published in the journal Addiction. The study involved 20 moderately heavy smokers, who
had abstained from cigarettes for 15 hours before the trial. During two visits to our
laboratory participants began by being shown smoking-related and neutral images, and then
spent either 15 minutes sitting or exercising on a stationary bike at a moderate
intensity. Afterwards, they were again shown the images. While the participants were shown
the images, the research team used the latest eye tracking technology to measure and
record their precise eye movements. They were able to show not only the length of time
people looked at smoking-related images but also how quickly pictures of cigarettes could
grab their attention, compared with non-smoking matched images. The study showed an 11%
difference between the time the participants spent looking at the smoking-related images
after exercise, compared with the after sitting. Also, after exercise, participants took
longer to look at smoking-related images. Exercise, therefore, appears to reduce the power
of the smoking-related images to grab visual attention.
Unwrapping the truth behind organic
food
Research findings show that consumers of organic food cite concerns with health, food
safety, environmental impacts, food miles and a desire to support British farmers as
important underlying reasons for making purchases. These concerns translate into
expectations which the consumers bring to their understanding of organic food. The most
significant overall factor among 84% of the organic consumers surveyed is the view that
organic produce is healthier for consumers and children.
Probiotic Found to Be Effective
Treatment for Colitis In Mice
The probiotic, Bacillus polyfermenticus, can help mice recover from colitis, a new study
has found. Mice treated with B. polyfermenticus during the non-inflammatory period of the
disease had reduced rectal bleeding, their tissues were less inflamed and they gained more
weight than mice that did not receive the treatment. Colitis is a disease in which the
inner tissue of the colon, the mucosa, becomes inflamed and damaged and can result in
painful sores. Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease are the two major types of
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). It is not yet known what causes the diseases, but both
are believed to be the result of altered intestinal immune responses in genetically
predisposed individuals.A probiotic is a live microorganism -- in this case, a bacterium
-- that benefits its host. B. polyfermenticus is available in Japan and Korea to treat
intestinal disorders such as diarrhea and constipation. The bacterium is quite hardy and
can survive the hostile environment of the stomach and intestine. The study not only
provided evidence of B. polyfermenticus’ usefulness in treating colitis during the
non-inflammatory phase, but also showed that it works by healing intestinal wounds more
quickly by encouraging the growth of new blood vessels, a process known as angiogenesis.
Blue light-filtering increases
macular pigment, may protect against age-related vision loss
Results of an important new study show that implantation of blue light-filtering
intraocular lens (IOLs) at the time of cataract surgery increases a nutritional component
of the eye, which may afford protection against the development and/or progression of
age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The study, conducted by leading ophthalmology and
vision researchers from the Macular Pigment Research Group at the Waterford Institute of
Technology, is published in the October 2009 issue of the high impact journal
Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (IOVS).1 AMD is a disease affecting the
central part of the retina and is the leading cause of vision loss in the developed
world.2 Implantation of lenses that do not filter blue light during cataract surgery has
been shown to increase the risk for development and/or progression of AMD.3 "Blue
light-filtering lenses filter and block damaging blue light from reaching the retina,
which holds the potential of reducing vision loss and improving the quality of life for
millions of older patients," said the study's chief investigator, John M. Nolan,
Fulbright Scholar, BSc, PhD, deputy director, Macular Pigment Research Group, Waterford
Institute of Technology, Waterford, Ireland. "These data represent an important first
step in fully realizing the benefits of blue light-filtering in improving a nutritional
component of the eye known as macular pigment. There is a strong scientific rationale
supported by an ever-growing body of scientific evidence which suggests that macular
pigment plays a role in reducing the onset and progression of AMD."
First national and evidence-based
guidelines for brain cancer released
The first national treatment guidelines for brain metastases, which account for nearly
500,000 new cancers annually in the United States, were released today at the Congress of
Neurological Surgeons in New Orleans. The guidelines were developed by a 20-member panel
in various specialties over the last year after reviewing the literature and reaching a
consensus for different treatments. The panel was headed by neurosurgeon Steven Kalkanis,
M.D., co-director of the Hermelin Brain Tumor Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
"In the last 10 years, there has been an explosion of new treatments for brain
metastases: surgical resection, stereotactic radiosurgery, whole brain radiation therapy,
partial brain radiation, chemotherapy and various combinations of all the above,"
says Dr. Kalkanis. "Because of the growth of these new technologies, there has been
wide variation among physicians in how to treat patients. And there hasn't been a central
source on which treatment regimens give the best results," adds Dr. Kalkanis.
"Our primary goal was to identify best treatment practices leading to the best
outcomes for patients."
Diverticulosis Not Associated with
Higher Incidence of Polyps
A Henry Ford Hospital study questions the need for aggressive screening for colonic polyps
in patients with diverticulosis. The study sought to determine if asymptomatic patients
with diverticular disease are at higher or lower risk for developing colonic polyps,
abnormal growths found in the wall of the colon that sometimes become cancerous. "We
found that patients with diverticulosis have a lower incidence of polyps overall and a
tendency for less-advanced polyps," says Ali Nawras, M.D., chief of Endoscopy
Services, Division of Gastroenterology at Henry Ford Hospital, and lead author of the
study. "These results suggest that for patients with diverticulosis, a
less-aggressive surveillance regimen could be appropriate." The study results will be
presented Oct. 26 at the American College of Gastroenterology's Annual Scientific Meeting
in San Diego.
Latest analysis confirms suboptimal
vitamin D levels in millions of US children
Millions of children in the United States between the ages of 1 and 11 may suffer from
suboptimal levels of vitamin D, according to a large nationally representative study
published in the November issue of Pediatrics, accompanied by an editorial. The study, led
by Jonathan Mansbach, MD, at Children's Hospital Boston, is the most up-to-date analysis
of vitamin D levels in U.S. children. It builds on the growing evidence that levels have
fallen below what's considered healthy, and that black and Hispanic children are at
particularly high risk. Both the optimal amount of vitamin D supplementation and the
healthy blood level of vitamin D are under heated debate in the medical community.
Currently, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends children should have vitamin D
levels of at least 50 nmol/L (20 ng/ml). However, other studies in adults suggest that
vitamin D levels should be at least 75 nmol/L (30 ng/ml), and possibly 100 nmol/L (40
ng/ml), to lower the risk of heart disease and specific cancers. Mansbach and
collaborators from the University of Colorado Denver and Massachusetts General Hospital
used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to look at
vitamin D levels in a nationally representative sample of roughly 5,000 children from
2001-2006. Extrapolating to the entire U.S. population, their analysis suggests that
roughly 20 percent of all children fell below the recommended 50 nmol/L. Moreover, more
than two-thirds of all children had levels below 75 nmol/L, including 80 percent of
Hispanic children and 92 percent of non-Hispanic black children. "If 75 nmol/L or
higher is eventually demonstrated to be the healthy normal level of vitamin D, then there
is much more vitamin D deficiency in the U.S. than people realize," Mansbach says.
Adverse drug events - a large
burden in pediatric care
An 11-year national analysis at Children's Hospital Boston shows that side effects or
accidental overdoses of medications are a common complication of outpatient care in
children, generating more than half a million additional visits per year, particularly in
children age 4 and younger. Findings are reported in the October issue of Pediatrics.While
many studies have documented adverse drug events, or ADEs, in adults, information in
children has been limited, despite the fact that drugs are prescribed to children in
almost 70 percent of outpatient visits (1). According to the American Academy of
Pediatrics, 75 percent of drugs given to children have not undergone pediatric testing
(2). The researchers, led by Florence Bourgeois, MD, MPH, of Children's Division of
Emergency Medicine, analyzed data from the National Center for Health Statistics on
outpatient visits throughout the United States. Focusing on children up to age 18, they
tallied an average of 585,922 visits per year for ADEs between 1995 and 2005. Most of
these visits were to outpatient clinics, but 22 percent were to emergency rooms. The
authors suggest that clinicians need to be aware of potential adverse effects and provide
appropriate anticipatory guidance to parents, especially when children are given a
medication for the first time. "We found that there are as many as 13 outpatient
visits for adverse drug events per 1,000 children, indicating that they are a common
complication of pediatric care," says Bourgeois.
Canadian cardiology team clears the
way for lifesaving breast cancer treatment
A team of Canadian cardiologists, in collaboration with oncologists, are playing an
important role in the war against breast cancer Dr. Michael McDonald told the Canadian
Cardiovascular Congress 2009, co-hosted by the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the
Canadian Cardiovascular Society. At issue is how to use a highly effective drug therapy
for early-stage breast cancer while maintaining the cardiovascular health of the patient.
The drug – trastuzumab (herceptin) – inhibits cancer cell survival. Herceptin is
prescribed as an adjuvant to other standard chemotherapy treatments. Unfortunately, some
women will develop serious heart complications as a result of herceptin-based
treatment."These are women with no previous heart problems," says Dr. McDonald,
a cardiologist. In a worst case scenario, thousands of women could be denied a potentially
life-saving therapy. Thanks to a study by Dr. McDonald and colleagues from the Heart
Function Clinic at Toronto General Hospital, there is hope for these women. They found
that the affected patients can be taken off the medication and treated for the heart
condition, allowing them to resume the cancer treatment unaffected.
New studies explore connection
between high stress jobs and GI disorders
In two new studies, presented at the American College of Gastroenterology's (ACG) 74th
Annual Scientific meeting in San Diego, researchers explored the connection between high
stress, high exposure occupations and long-term gastrointestinal disorders. The studies,
performed by the United States Navy and the State University of New York (SUNY),
Stonybrook, examine the long term effects of infectious gastroenteritis (IGE) among active
duty military and the interaction between gastroesophageal reflux (GERD) and mental health
disorders among World Trade Center workers, respectively. Both studies will be the
highlight of an ACG roundtable discussion being held on Tuesday, October 27, 2009
entitled: "Impact of Workplace Stress and Exposure on GI Disorders: Occupations that
Take Guts." Infectious Gastroenteritis: Risk in Military Duty Dr. Mark Riddle, of the
United States Navy, led the study that examined functional gastrointestinal disorders
(FGD) within the active military population and their connection to IGE. IGE can be caused
by a variety of factors, including exposure to bacterial pathogens, protozoa and/or
certain viruses, and active duty military personnel are at high risk during deployments.
Using electronic medical records obtained through the Defense Medical Surveillance System,
Dr. Riddle and his colleagues identified 31,866 cases of FGD, including irritable bowel
syndrome, functional constipation or diarrhea, and dyspepsia, in active duty personnel
between 1999 and 2007. Matching each case to four corresponding non-FGD controls, the team
calculated FGD incidence rates, as well as performed an assessment of differential risk
for FGD associated with the type of IGE exposure. The researchers found a significant
association between IGE and all FGD, with the highest risk of functional diarrhea and
irritable bowel syndrome (Odds Ratio: 6.26 and 3.72, respectively) and moderate risk with
functional constipation and dyspepsia (Odds Ratio: 2.15 and 2.39, respectively). They also
found that risk of FGD generally increased nearer to IGE exposure and that exposure to
bacteria was associated with the highest risk overall. Importantly, 28.8% of active duty
personnel studied still received FGD-related care two years after their initial diagnosis.
Possible Link Between Inflammatory
Bowel Disease Treatment And Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer
Findings from a new retrospective cohort study indicate that patients with Inflammatory
Bowel Disease (IBD), especially those receiving the thiopurine class of medications to
treat IBD, may be at risk for developing non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC). In light of
these findings, the American College of Gastroenterology is encouraging physicians
treating patients with IBD to provide appropriate counseling and monitoring for NMSC.
For big athletes - Possible future
risk
For today's athletes, size and strength can mean the difference between championships,
scholarships and million-dollar paydays. But new research comparing the signs of metabolic
syndrome in professional baseball and football players, presented at the American College
of Gastroenterology's 74th Annual Scientific Meeting in San Diego, reveals that the larger
professional athletes – specifically football linemen - may encounter future health
problems despite their rigorous exercise routines. These findings come after previous
media reports have suggested that professional football players are twice as likely to die
before age 50 as professional baseball players. Researchers collected and studied the
cardiometabolic syndrome parameters of 69 current professional football players and 155
current professional baseball players. Parameters studied included blood pressure, fasting
glucose, triglycerides, waist circumference, high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol,
body mass index, waist-to-height ratio, insulin resistance and levels of alanine
aminotransferase, an indicator of fatty liver disease. As a whole, professional football
players demonstrated higher fasting glucose levels, increased body mass index, waist
circumference and waist-to-height ratios as compared to their baseball counterparts. In
particular, among the 19 professional football linemen studied (including guards, tackles,
centers and defensive ends) there was a significant increase in these parameters and, as a
result, an increased incidence of cardiometabolic syndrome, defined as exhibiting three or
more risk factors. "Most studies that have examined cardiometabolic risks in
professional athletes have been conducted after athletes retire. This is one of the first
to study athletes in the midst of their playing careers," said ACG member Dr. Michael
Selden, who authored the study. "We expect professional athletes to be in peak
physical condition given the demands of their jobs and the amount of time they spend
exercising heavily. However, there does not seem to be a complete protective effect of
exercise, particularly among the larger athletes – football linemen. Instead, the
impact of their sheer size may outweigh the positive benefits of exercise to mitigate
their risk for cardiometabolic syndrome, fatty liver disease, and insulin
resistance."
Researchers evaluate new bowel prep
approaches
While there is little doubt concerning the effectiveness of colonoscopy procedures to
detect colon cancer, a new study presented at the American College of Gastroenterology's
74th Annual Scientific Meeting in San Diego places new emphasis on the importance of
adequate bowel preparation prior to procedure. The findings come at a time when clinicians
are evaluating new bowel preparation solutions to replace the popular over the counter
phosphosoda formulations recently withdrawn from the market. In a retrospective study
performed at the VA Medical Center in Phoenix, AZ, Dr. Nooman Gilani, Dr. Veronika Karasek
and their team evaluated the impact of inadequate bowel preparation on the follow-up
interval recommended by the endoscopist. After studying records on some 788 patients, the
researchers concluded that inadequate bowel preparation by the patient before the
procedure resulted in a recommended follow-up colonoscopy 17.1 months earlier than
average. By comparison, finding an adenoma during the procedure resulted in a recommended
follow-up examination 17.2 months earlier than average. "Endoscopists' ability to
detect colonic legions, especially the flat or depressed ones, is greatly linked to the
quality of bowel preparation. For years, we have emphasized the importance of adequate
bowel preparation for patients to help ensure the detection of adenomas during
colonoscopy, especially on the right side of the colon," explains Dr. Karasek.
"This new finding suggests that endoscopists are taking into consideration the
quality of preparation when recommending a follow-up interval, regardless of the findings
of the examination. "Emphasizing better bowel preparation, and making it easier and
more palatable for patients, may not only make colonoscopy less intimidating, for some it
may mean an extra year and a half between follow-up procedures."
Sperm may play leading role in
spreading HIV
Sperm, and not just the fluid it bathes in, can transmit HIV to macrophages, T cells, and
dendritic cells (DCs), report a team led by Ana Ceballos at the University of Buenos Aires
in Argentina. By infecting DCs, which carry the virus and potently pass it to T cells,
sperm may play a leading role in spreading HIV. The article appears in the November 23,
2009 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine (online October 26). During sexual
intercourse, HIV-infected men transmit HIV through their semen, which carries
free-floating virus as well as HIV-infected leukocytes. Traces of HIV have been detected
on sperm as well, but the role they play in viral transmission has been a matter of
debate. After all, men with vasectomies can transmit HIV. Now, Ceballos et al. show that
HIV attaches to the surface of sperm and that these HIV carriers pass on the virus to DCs
and other HIV targets. Sperm express molecules known to interact with HIV's envelope, such
as heparan sulfate and mannose receptors. The authors show that HIV relies on heparan
sulfate to attach to sperm, but not mannose receptors as previously predicted. Once
attached, the virus was transmitted from sperm to DCs in culture. The DC receptors CD4 and
DC-SIGN were required for transmission, suggesting that DCs pick up the virus by binding
to sperm rather than by ingesting them. DCs matured after interacting with the sperm,
producing tolerance-promoting cytokines like interleukin-10. The authors speculate that
this immune-suppressing profile, versus an inflammatory profile, might also help the virus
spread.
Chemosensitivity of cancer cells
depends on their protein dependency
Two different anti-apoptotic proteins support cancer cell survival via an identical
mechanism, yet differ in their sensitivity to chemotherapeutic drugs, report Brunelle et
al. The study will be published online October 26, 2009 and in the November 2, 2009 print
issue of the Journal of Cell Biology (JCB). Cancer cells often become dependent on one or
more anti-apoptotic proteins to avoid death while continuing to proliferate. BCL-2, for
example, is overexpressed in many cancers and mops up pro-apoptotic proteins to prevent
them from permeabilizing mitochondria and initiating cell death. Other tumors are reliant
on a related protein called MCL-1, but less is known about this member of the BCL-2
family. Brunelle et al. created leukemic mice overexpressing MCL-1 and compared them to
similar mice that produced excess BCL-2. The leukemias suffered by these two types of mice
were identical, yet a technique called BH3 profiling was able to distinguish between cells
derived from the different animals by demonstrating a dependency on one or other of the
two anti-apoptotic proteins. Immunoprecipitation experiments revealed that MCL-1 and BCL-2
both work by sequestering the same two pro-apoptotic targets. Surprisingly then, leukemia
cells reliant on MCL-1 were much more sensitive to a range of chemotherapeutic drugs than
their BCL-2–dependent counterparts were. Brunelle et al. found that the different
cytotoxic drugs all caused a rapid decrease in MCL-1 protein levels via
proteosome-mediated degradation, allowing cell death to proceed quickly. BCL-2 protein is
more stable however, so additional time and more drug is needed to kill
BCL-2–dependent cancer cells.
OMRF scientists discover promising
new path for treating traumas
A discovery by scientists at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation could help save
lives threatened by traumatic injuries like those sustained in car crashes or on the
battlefield. The work also holds potential for treating severe infectious diseases and
diabetes. In a paper published online today in the advance edition of the scientific
journal Nature Medicine, OMRF researcher Charles Esmon, Ph.D., with co-authors Florea
Lupu, Ph.D., and Jun Xu, Ph.D., has cast new light on how proteins called histones can
enter the bloodstream and begin to kill the lining of blood vessels, resulting in
uncontrolled internal bleeding. Building on this work, Esmon and a team of collaborators
have discovered an antibody that could counter this deadly process. “This discovery
could open the door to new ways to treat soldiers hurt in IED attacks, gunshot wound
victims and people who suffer a traumatic injury,” said Esmon, who holds the Lloyd
Noble Chair in Cardiovascular Biology at OMRF. “When we realized that histones were
so toxic, we immediately went to work looking for a way to stop their destructive
tendencies.”
Master regulator found for
regenerating nerve fibers in live animals
Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston report that an enzyme known as Mst3b, previously
identified in their lab, is essential for regenerating damaged axons (nerve fibers) in a
live animal model, in both the peripheral and central nervous systems. Their findings,
published online by Nature Neuroscience on October 25, suggest Mst3b – or agents that
stimulate it – as a possible means of treating stroke, spinal cord damage and
traumatic brain injury. Normally, neurons in the central nervous system (the brain and
spinal cord) cannot regenerate injured nerve fibers, limiting people's ability to recover
from brain or spinal cord injuries. The study, led by Nina Irwin, PhD and Larry Benowitz,
PhD, of the Laboratories for Neuroscience Research in Neurosurgery and the F.M. Kirby
Neurobiology Center at Children's, builds on previous discoveries in the lab. In 2002,
they showed that a naturally occurring small molecule, inosine, stimulates axon
regeneration, later showing that it helps restore neurological functions in animal models
of injury. In 2006, Benowitz and colleagues reported a previously unknown growth factor,
oncomodulin, to have dramatic effects on axon growth. Investigating the mechanisms of
action of inosine and oncomodulin, Irwin and Benowitz discovered that both compounds
activate Mst3b, an enzyme that appears to be a master regulator of a cell-signaling
pathway controlling axon growth. Mst3b, a protein kinase, in turn activates signals that
switch on the genes necessary for axons to grow.
Study establishes that women do
have same the heart attack symptoms as men
The gender difference between men and women is a lot smaller than we've been led to
believe when it comes to heart attack symptoms, according to a new study presented to the
Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2009, co-hosted by the Heart and Stroke Foundation and
the Canadian Cardiovascular Society. "Both the media and some patient educational
materials frequently suggest that women experience symptoms of a heart attack very
differently from men," says cardiac nurse Martha Mackay, a Canadian Institutes of
Health Research clinical research fellow and doctoral student at the UBC School of
Nursing. "These findings suggest that this is simply not the case." Her team's
study of 305 consecutive patients undergoing angioplasty ? which briefly causes symptoms
similar to a heart attack ? found no gender differences in rates of chest discomfort or
other 'typical' symptoms such as arm discomfort, shortness of breath, sweating, nausea,
indigestion-like symptoms, and clammy skin. While both women and men may experience
typical or non-typical symptoms, the major difference was that female patients were more
likely to have both the classic symptoms of heart attack plus throat, jaw, and neck
discomfort. "Clear educational messages need to be crafted to ensure that both women
and healthcare professionals realize the classic symptoms are equally common in men and
women," says Mackay.
Obesity may hinder optimal control
of blood pressure and cholesterol
Obese patients taking medications to lower their blood pressure and cholesterol levels are
less likely to reach recommended targets for these cardiovascular disease risk factors
than their normal weight counterparts, according to new research presented at the 2009
Canadian Cardiovascular Congress hosted by the Canadian Cardiovascular Society and the
Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.Dr. Vineet Bhan, a resident at the University of
Toronto, sought to determine whether there were differences in reaching
guideline-recommended targets for blood pressure and cholesterol levels according to body
mass index (BMI) in a large number of individuals deemed to be at high risk for heart
disease and stroke. "In Canada, these high risk patients frequently do not reach
their blood pressure and cholesterol targets," says Dr. Bhan. "The goal of our
study was to see if obesity could be a factor."
CSHL-led team discovers rare
mutation dramatically increasing schizophrenia risk
An international team of researchers led by geneticist Jonathan Sebat, Ph.D., of Cold
Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), has identified a mutation on human chromosome 16 that
substantially increases risk for schizophrenia. The mutation in question is what
scientists call a copy number variant (CNV). CNVs are areas of the genome where the number
of copies of genes differs between individuals. The CNV is located in a region referred to
by scientists as 16p11.2. By studying the genomes of 4,551 patients and 6,391 healthy
individuals, Sebat's team has shown that having one extra copy of this region is
associated with schizophrenia. The study appears online today ahead of print in the
journal Nature Genetics. The mutation identified in this study is a potent risk factor.
"In the general population this duplication is quite rare, occurring in roughly one
in 5,000 persons", says Sebat, "but for people that carry the extra copy, the
risk of developing schizophrenia is increased by more than eight-fold". This finding
is the latest in a series of studies that have pinpointed rare CNVs that confer
substantial risk of schizophrenia. Others include deletions on chromosomes 1, 15 and 22.
Testicular tumors may explain why
some diseases are more common in children of older fathers
A rare form of testicular tumour has provided scientists with new insights into how
genetic changes (mutations) arise in our children. The research, funded by the Wellcome
Trust and the Danish Cancer Society, could explain why certain diseases are more common in
the children of older fathers. Mutations can occur in different cells of the body and at
different times during life. Some, such as those which occur in 'germ cells' (those which
create sperm or eggs), cause changes which affect the offspring; those which occur in
other cells can lead to tumours, but are not inherited. In work published today in Nature
Genetics, researchers at the University of Oxford and Copenhagen University Hospital
describe a surprising link between certain severe childhood genetic disorders and rare
testicular tumours occurring in older men: the germ cells that make the mutant
gene-carrying sperm seem to be the same cells that produce the tumour. Although the
original mutations occur only rarely in the sperm-producing cells, they encourage the
mutant cells to divide and multiply. When the cell divides, it copies the mutation to each
daughter cell, and the clump of mutant sperm-producing cells expands over time. Hence, the
number of sperm carrying this mutation also increases as men get older, raising the risk
to older fathers of having affected children. Professor Andrew Wilkie from the University
of Oxford, who led the study, explains: "We think most men develop these tiny clumps
of mutant cells in their testicles as they age. They are rather like moles in the skin,
usually harmless in themselves. But by being located in the testicle, they also make sperm
– causing children to be born with a variety of serious conditions. We call them
'selfish' because the mutations benefit the germ cell but are harmful to offspring."
Clues to visual variant
Alzheimer's; myopia and diabetic retinopathy risk
Two studies are of particular note in today's Scientific Program of the 2009 Joint Meeting
of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and the Pan-American Association of
Ophthalmology (PAAO): a report by Swiss neuro-ophthalmic researchers about vision exam
clues that should make ophthalmologists suspect an atypical variant of Alzheimer's
disease; and new evidence from a Singapore National Eye Center study that diabetics who
are nearsighted may be less susceptible to diabetic retinopathy. The AAO-PAAO meeting is
in session October 24 through 27 at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA. As the largest,
most comprehensive ophthalmic education conference in the world, it offers United States
and international Eye M.D.s more than 2,000 scientifically-based, peer-reviewed
presentations, including instruction courses, skills transfer labs, "Breakfast with
the Experts" roundtables and 900 research papers and posters.
AMD Medication Raises Eye Pressure
in Some Patients
A first-time finding of intraocular pressure increases in patients with no personal or
family history of glaucoma following anti-VEGF treatment for wet age-related macular
degeneration (AMD), and a report on a simple, low-cost method that could revolutionize
vision screening and treatment in developing countries, are highlights of today’s
Scientific Program of the 2009 Joint Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology
(AAO) and the Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology (PAAO).
1 shot of gene therapy and children
with congenital blindness can now see
Born with a retinal disease that made him legally blind, and would eventually leave him
totally sightless, the nine-year-old boy used to sit in the back of the classroom, relying
on the large print on an electronic screen and assisted by teacher aides. Now, after a
single injection of genes that produce light-sensitive pigments in the back of his eye, he
sits in front with classmates and participates in class without extra help. In the
playground, he joins his classmates in playing his first game of softball. His treatment
represents the next step toward medical science's goal of using gene therapy to cure
disease. Extending a preliminary study published last year on three young adults, the full
study reports successful, sustained results that showed notable improvement in children
with congenital blindness. The study, conducted by researchers from the University of
Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics at
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, used gene therapy to safely improve vision in
five children and seven adults with Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA). The greatest
improvements occurred in the children, all of whom are now able to navigate a low-light
obstacle course—one result that the researchers call "spectacular."
"This result is an exciting one for the entire field of gene therapy," said
Katherine A. High, M.D., co-first author of the study and the director of the Center for
Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics, the facility that sponsored the clinical trial at The
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. High, an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute and a past president of the American Society of Gene Therapy, has been a pioneer
in translational and clinical studies of gene therapy for genetic disease. "This
study reports dramatic results in restoring vision to patients who previously had no
options for treatment," said High. "These findings may expedite development of
gene therapy for more common retinal diseases, such as age-related macular
degeneration."
What happens to the hormonal system
of victims of mobbing?
A study by Naples investigators published in the current issue of Psychotherapy and
Psychosomatics reports on what happens in the axis which controls the secretion of
cortisol in victims of mobbing. Mobbing (bullying at the workplace) is a severe form of
work related psychological distress resulting from repeated hostile communications or acts
directed in a systematic manner by one or more individuals toward one subjects, who is in
a situation where he/she may have difficulties defending him/herself against these
actions. Being subjected to violence at the workplace is expected to generate stress
reactions, which may have severe consequences for both physical and emotional health.
Stress is associated with activation of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and
there is evidence that personality traits may influence the HPA response to stressful
situations. To assess whether the stressful load of workplace bullying affects HPA
activity and whether character and temperament characteristics have a role in the
determinism of the HPA activity of bullied subjects, daytime saliva cortisol levels and
personality characteristics of bullied individuals as compared to controls who had not
been bullied were measured.
Married with children the key to
happiness?
Having children improves married peoples' life satisfaction and the more they have, the
happier they are. For unmarried individuals, raising children has little or no positive
effect on their happiness. These findings by Dr. Luis Angeles from the University of
Glasgow in the UK have just been published online in Springer's Journal of Happiness
Studies. Previous research suggests that increasing numbers of children do not make people
any happier, and in some cases the more children people have, the less satisfied they are
with their lives. Rather bleakly, this has been attributed to the fact that raising
children involves a lot of hard work for only a few occasional rewards.Dr. Angeles
believes that this explanation is too simplistic. When asked about the most important
things in their lives, most people place their children near or even at the top of their
list. Contrary to previous work, Dr. Angeles' analysis of the relationship between having
children and life satisfaction takes into account the role of individual characteristics,
including marital status, gender, age, income and education. For married individuals of
all ages and married women in particular, children increase life satisfaction and life
satisfaction goes up with the number of children in the household. Negative experiences in
raising children are reported by people who are separated, living as a couple, or single,
having never been married. Children take their toll on their parents' satisfaction with
social life, and amount and use of leisure time.
Empiric antibiotic therapy in acute
uncomplicated urinary tract infections and fluoroquinolone resistance
Empirical use of FQ in uUTI should be discouraged because of increased antimicrobial
resistance rates.
You may be drinking DEET,
antibiotics and other drugs
Ball State study finds traces of pharmaceuticals in White River, the source of local
drinking water.
What OTC Drug May Have Killed More
People in 1918 Flu Pandemic than Flu Itself?
Historic evidence points to too much aspirin as a contributor to high death tolls during
the 1918-1919 flu pandemic.
Children's Diseases Linked to
Chemicals Are on the Rise
Chronic childhood diseases linked to exposure to toxic chemicals in the environment have
been surging upward, costing the U.S. almost $55 billion a year.
Daily Candy in Childhood Linked to
Violence in Adulthood
Children who eat sweets and chocolate every day are more likely to be violent as adults.
CBS Reveals that Swine Flu Cases
Seriously Overestimated
A three-month-long investigation by CBS News, released earlier this week that included
state-by-state test results, revealed some very different facts. The CBS study found that
H1N1 flu cases are NOT as prevalent as feared.
Home Canning - Pickles, Peppers,
and a Dash of BPA?
It’s home canning season, and by some indications a lot more Americans are joining in
on the pickle-packing fun. If you’re one of them, you ought to know that your
plastic-lined canning lids probably contain bisphenol A, the endocrine-disrupting chemical
that’s been suspected in a host of health problems and is under intensive scrutiny by
the slow-moving FDA.
Big Pharma has 2.3 lobbyists for
every lawmaker
The pharmaceutical industry spent $110 million in just the first half of 2009 in its
efforts to influence health care reform, part of a booming lobbying effort that now has
2.3 drug lobbyists on Capitol Hill for every member of Congress, a new investigative
report reveals.
If doctors will not be vaccinated
with the H1N1 or flu shots, then why should we?
It was announced that President Obama's school age daughters have not been vaccinated
against the H1N1 flu virus. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says, "the
vaccine is not available to them based on their risk."
H1N1 research studies asthma
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health have begun
administering a national clinical trial aimed at determining the proper swine flu vaccine
dosage to immunize asthmatic patients against the H1N1 virus.
Inflammation testing shows cocoa
improves heart health
Lab testing for inflammatory markers associated with heart disease found that ingesting
the cocoa found in chocolate can reduce inflammation and increase levels of the beneficial
cholesterol, HDL.
Acid in Animal Fats May Lower Blood
Pressure
A lower intake of arachidonic acid -- a fatty acid found in animal fats -- is related to
lower systolic blood pressure, according to a new international study.
Video - What You Didn't Know About
The War
This video is mandatory viewing to all supporters of the war(s).
Vaccine-Induced Disease Epidemic
Outbreaks - The Engineering of ‘Pandemics’
“Modern Medical Practitioners”, including some well-meaning
“osteopaths”, would have the world believe the MYTH that vaccines containing
attenuated (weakened) live viruses cannot cause the viral disease conditions they are
targeting. This is a most dangerous misconception for the following SCIENTIFIC reasons.
Adding Tool Against Breast Tumors
At the end of a 10-year, coast-to-coast study of women with an unusual form of breast
cancer, Richard J. Barth Jr., M.D., and three fellow researchers are making the case for a
particular combination of treatments to stop the tumors in their tracks.
Consumer Electronics Can Help
Improve Patient Health
Electronic tools and technology applications for consumers can help improve health care
processes, such as adherence to medication and clinical outcomes like smoking cessation,
according to a report by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health. The analysis of consumer health informatics, conducted by the Bloomberg
School’s Evidence-based Practice Center for the Agency for Healthcare Research and
Quality (AHRQ), was based on an examination of 146 published research studies of
patient-focused electronic tools. It is among the first to explore the potential value of
consumer health informatics. Consumer health informatics applications are defined as any
electronic tool, technology or electronic application designed to interact directly with
consumers, with or without the presence of a health care professional, and that provides
or uses individualized (personal) information to help a patient better manage his or her
health or health care. Personalized informatics tools can include applications such as
online health calculators, interactive computer programs to aid decision making, SMS text
and email messages, which can be applied to a variety of clinical conditions, including
cancer, smoking, diabetes mellitus, physical activity and mental health disorders.
Propolis has proved to be a product
with ability to have beneficial effects for health
Growing concerns about health has caused the scientific community to focus their interest
on investigating functional foods which contribute to boosting the prevention and
reduction of the risk of suffering from certain illnesses. The benefits of this product
lies in its composition and, thus, its study, identification and subsequent extraction
provides a useful tool which enables making high added-value products, given their high
concentration of biologically active compounds. Over the past 5 years, Neiker-Tecnalia, in
collaboration with the Fundación Kalitatea, apicultural associations in the Autonomous
Community of the Basque Country, honey producing plants and Basque governmental bodies,
has undertaken R+D projects associated with the beekeeping sector. Various products
derived from the beehive have been studied and propolis has proved to be a product having
beneficial results for human health. Propolis (Pro-before, Polis-city = defence of the
city), is the resinous substance that bees gather from the leaf buds of trees and certain
vegetables. The bee gathers this and transforms it in order to disinfect the beehive, seal
cracks, build panels, as well as using it as a microbiocidal agent, disinfectant and also
for embalming intruders otherwise difficult to expel due to their size. Propolis is, thus,
directly responsible for guaranteeing the asepsis of the beehives, locations prone to
developing viruses and bacteria, given their conditions of temperature and humidity.
CIC biomaGUNE analyses impact on
health of nanoparticles present in sun creams
CIC biomaGUNE is researching the possible impact on health of metal oxide nanoparticles,
such as those of zinc, cerium, titanium and iron. These nanoparticles have numerous
practical applications and are present in commercial products as varied as sun creams,
protection agents for ultraviolet rays, fuel mixtures, paints, anti-electrostatic coatings
and electronic circuits. These microscopic particles are made up of metal ions the
concentration in living organisms of which is normally low. The incorporation of
nanoparticles that can eventually degrade within the organism can increase the
concentration of these ions. Currently it is unknown how it will affect biochemical
processes both at cell level and at the level of the organism itself. The research is
being carried out within the framework of the European HINAMOX (Health Impact of
Engineered Metal and Metal Oxide Nanoparticles: Response, Bioimaging and Distribution at
Cellular and Body Level) project, Research work has just begun this October and is being
led by CIC biomaGUNE until the end of the project, anticipated to be for the end of 2012.
One of the main objectives of the Basque centre is bringing basic scientific research
closer to the eventual needs of the technological and industrial development of the Basque
Country. From this new lines of research are initiated, such as HINAMOX, closely related
to the social aspects of technological development. Knowledge about the effect of
nanoparticles and nanomaterials on health is an essential step prior to the marketing and
widespread use of nanotechnology-based products.
Older Patients with Dementia at
Increased Risk for Flu Mortality
An epidemiological study on pneumonia and influenza (P&I) in adults age 65 and over
reports that patients with dementia are diagnosed with flu less frequently, have shorter
hospital stays, and have a fifty percent higher rate of death than those without dementia.
The three-pronged study, which analyzed geographic and demographic patterns of P&I and
the relationship between P&I and health care accessibility, was published online in
advance of print in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.“The increased
mortality of older patients with dementia hospitalized for flu may be indicative of
inadequacies in health care quality and accessibility. It could be beneficial to refine
guidelines for the immunization, testing, and treatment of flu in older patients with
dementia when planning for the possibility of a flu pandemic,” said first and senior
author Elena Naumova, PhD, professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts
University School of Medicine.
Puberty a gateway to heart disease
for Canada's teens
A seven-year ongoing study examining over 20,000 Canadian grade 9 students shows most
already have at least one major risk factor for heart disease and stroke, Dr. Brian
McCrindle told the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2009, co-hosted by the Heart and
Stroke Foundation and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society. "This study is further
evidence of an accelerating decline in the heart health of Canada's teens," says Dr.
McCrindle, a cardiologist at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. "Children
shouldn't have these profiles."The study investigated the heart health of 20,719
grade 9 students aged 14 and 15 years. The study found that, between 2002 and 2008, the
rates of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and obesity in these teens were alarmingly
high and, even more worrisome, increasing over time.
Smoking gun - just 1 cigarette has
harmful effect on the arteries of young healthy adults
Even one cigarette has serious adverse effects on young adults, according to research
presented by Dr. Stella Daskalopoulou at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2009,
co-hosted by the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society. Her
study found that smoking one cigarette increases the stiffness of the arteries in 18 to 30
year olds by a whopping 25 per cent. Arteries that are stiff or rigid increase resistance
in the blood vessels, making the heart work harder. The stiffer the artery, the greater
the risk for heart disease or stroke. "Young adults aged 20-24 years have the highest
smoking rate of all age groups in Canada," says Dr. Daskalopoulou, an internal
medicine and vascular medicine specialist at McGill University Health Centre. "Our
results are significant because they suggest that smoking just a few cigarettes a day
impacts the health of the arteries. This was revealed very clearly when these young people
were placed under physical stress, such as exercise." The study compared the arterial
stiffness of young smokers (five to six cigarettes a day) to non-smokers. The median age
was 21 years. Arterial measurements were taken in the radial artery (in the wrist), the
carotid artery (in the neck), and in the femoral artery (in the groin), at rest and after
exercise. Arterial stiffness in both smokers and non-smokers was measured using a new but
well established method called applanation tonometry. Dr. Daskalopoulou introduced the
'arterial stress test' which measures the arteries' response to the stress of exercise.
The test is comparable to a cardiac stress test, which measures the heart's response to
the stress of exercise.
UC Davis researchers identify
dominant chemical that attracts mosquitoes to humans
Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have identified the dominant odor
naturally produced in humans and birds that attracts the blood-feeding Culex mosquitoes,
which transmit West Nile virus and other life-threatening diseases. The groundbreaking
research, published this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, explains why mosquitoes shifted hosts from birds to humans
and paves the way for key developments in mosquito and disease control. Entomology
professor Walter Leal and postdoctoral researcher Zain Syed found that nonanal (sounds
like NAWN-uh-nawl) is the powerful semiochemical that triggers the mosquitoes' keen sense
of smell, directing them toward a blood meal. A semiochemical is a chemical substance or
mixture that carries a message. "Nonanal is how they find us," Leal said.
"The antennae of the Culex quinquefasciatus are highly developed to detect even
extremely low concentrations of nonanal." Mosquitoes detect smells with the olfactory
receptor neurons of their antennae.
Alcohol activates cellular changes
that make tumor cells spread
Alcohol consumption has long been linked to cancer and its spread, but the underlying
mechanism has never been clear. Now, researchers at Rush University Medical Center have
identified a cellular pathway that may explain the link. In a study published in the
current issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, the researchers found
that alcohol stimulates what is called the epithelial–to–mesenchymal transition,
in which run-of-the-mill cancer cells morph into a more aggressive form and begin to
spread throughout the body. "Our data are the first to show that alcohol turns on
certain signals inside a cell that are involved in this critical transition," said
Christopher Forsyth, PhD, assistant professor of medicine and biochemistry at Rush
University Medical Center and lead author of the study. The epithelial-to-mesenchymal
transition is a hot area of research right now, implicated in the process whereby cancer
cells become metastatic. A large body of laboratory and clinical research suggests that it
plays a key role in making cancer cells aggressive. "Cancer cells become dangerous
when they metastasize," Forsyth said. "Surgery can remove a tumor, but
aggressive tumor cells invade tissues throughout the body and take over. If we can thwart
this transition, we can limit cancer's toll." The researchers treated colon and
breast cancer cell lines with alcohol and then looked for the biochemical hallmarks of the
epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, including evidence of a transcription factor called
Snail and of the receptor for epidermal growth factor. Snail controls the
epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition; when overexpressed in mice, it induces the formation
of multiple tumors. Epidermal growth factor is required by many cancer cells. "They
need lots of it," Forsyth said. "They are addicted to it."
Do drug therapies raise risk of
bladder cancer?
In her most recent study of possible triggers of cancer among northern New England
residents, Dartmouth epidemiologist Margaret R. Karagas, Ph.D., and her team identified an
enhanced risk to the bladders of patients taking drugs that suppress the immune system.
The findings, from a population-based, case-control study in New Hampshire, appear in the
September 2009 issue of the British Journal of Cancer, with Dartmouth Medical School
student Karl Dietrich as first author, with DMS professors Alan R. Schned, M.D., and John
A. Heaney, M.D., as co-authors, and with Karagas, a professor of community and family
medicine at DMS, as principal investigator. The report examines the long-term use of
glucocorticoids by 786 bladder-cancer patients and by 1,083 control subjects. Doctors
commonly prescribe a combination of cytotoxic drugs and glucocorticoids as
immunosuppressive therapy to help recipients of transplants avoid rejection of their new
organs, and patients with rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, and other conditions often take
glucocorticoids. Previous research, in some of which Karagas participated, has shown
associations between such drug therapies and higher risk of skin cancer and lymphoma. A
similar risk for bladder cancer, the new report says, "might indicate the need for
closer monitoring of individuals who regularly take glucocorticoids."
That '4 hour erection' - new
discovery may help prevent a complication of priapism
For men coping with painful erections lasting for long periods of time, or priapism, new
research published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) offers hope. That's
because researchers from the United States and China show that the enzyme adenosine
deaminase may prevent priapism from progressing to penile fibrosis, a condition associated
with the build up of scar tissue and eventual impotence. As penile fibrosis is a
complication of priapism, so priapism is a complication of sickle cell disease. Adenosine
deaminase, which breaks down adenosine, is already used in humans as a treatment for a
rare immune disorder. "Coping with priapism is hard enough, but knowing that it can
ultimately lead to fibrosis within the penis adds insult to injury," said Gerald
Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "Hopefully this discovery can
yield new drugs that relieve the excitatory signals sent by adenosine so that these men to
get some relief."
Common weed could provide clues on
aging and cancer
A common weed and human cancer cells could provide some very uncommon details about DNA
structure and its relationship with telomeres and how they affect cellular aging and
cancer, according to a team led by scientists from Texas A&M University and the
University of Cincinnati (UC). For the study, the multi-institutional team examined the
telomeres of Arabidopsis, a plant found throughout the world, and discovered a new set of
essential telomere proteins. The team then identified the human counterpart, a discovery
that could be beneficial in understanding human cancers and cellular aging. Their work is
published in the current issue of the journal "Molecular Cell" and was funded by
the National Institutes of Health. Dorothy Shippen, professor of biophysics and
biochemistry at Texas A&M, and Carolyn Price, professor of cancer and cell biology at
the UC College of Medicine, served as co-corresponding authors of the study. Telomeres are
located at each end of a chromosome and are composed of DNA and protein. Their main
function is to protect the ends of the chromosome, but they also play a key role in cell
division. Researchers also believe they play a key role in cellular lifespan. "We
found that removal of the plant telomere proteins caused rampant end-to-end joining of
chromosomes and dramatic defects in plant development," explains Shippen. "The
Cincinnati team then showed that removal of one of the human proteins from human cancer
cells caused wide-spread DNA damage and complete loss of some telomeres."
Barrett's esophagus patients have
same survival rates as general population
New Mayo Clinic research has found that survival rates of patients with Barrett's
esophagus, (http://www.mayoclinic.org/barretts-esophagus/) which can be a precursor for
esophageal cancer, are no different than the survival rates for the general population.
These findings were presented today at the 2009 American College of Gastroenterology
(http://www.acg.gi.org/) (ACG) Annual Meeting in San Diego. Barrett's esophagus is most
often diagnosed in people who have long-term gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) -- a
chronic regurgitation of acid from the stomach into the lower esophagus. A diagnosis of
Barrett's esophagus can be concerning because it increases the risk of developing
esophageal cancer. "Patients who are diagnosed with Barrett's esophagus often fear
they will develop esophageal cancer and not survive long," says Ganapathy Prasad,
M.D., (http://www.mayoclinic.org/bio/12948837.html) gastroenterologist, Mayo Clinic and
lead author on the study. "Our research examined the survival rates of Barrett's
esophagus patients from Olmsted County, Minn., over the past three decades, compared to a
control group of patients. We wanted to study overall survival, predictors of survival and
ultimate cause of death in patients." In this study of 366 patients, the average
patient age was 63 years, with 72 percent men and 18 percent women. All patients with a
diagnosis of Barrett's esophagus from 1977 were identified using the Rochester
Epidemiology Project (http://mayoresearch.mayo.edu/mayo/research/rep/index.cfm) resources
in Olmsted County and confirmed via review of medical records. Only patients from Olmsted
County were selected to reduce referral and selection bias.
Alternatively spliced tissue factor
identified as promising new biomarker for aggressive cancers
A recently discovered form of the protein that triggers blood clotting may play a key role
in the molecular mechanisms leading to the growth of certain metastatic cancers, according
to new research reported by an international team of scientists. The protein, called
"Tissue Factor," is present in various tissues, but is most prominent in
vascular structures such as blood vessels. Previous studies have shown that alternatively
spliced Tissue Factor (asTF) contributes to cancer growth, but the molecular events
leading to this were previously unknown. In a preclinical study, an international team of
collaborators including Vladimir Bogdanov, PhD, of the University of Cincinnati (UC), and
Henri Versteeg, PhD, of the Einthoven Laboratory of Experimental Vascular Medicine at
Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, has described in detail how asTF
works to contribute to cancerous cell growth. They report their findings in an early
edition of Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). This is the first study to
report the specific mechanisms of action that lead to increased angiogenesis when
alternatively spliced Tissue Factor is present. "This is an important breakthrough in
cancer research because we are able to draw a more complete molecular picture of how
Tissue Factor contributes to cancer growth," says Bogdanov, who discovered asTF while
a postdoctoral fellow and is currently the director of the newly established hemostasis
research program at the UC College of Medicine. "This will help translate basic
research into real-life for therapies targeted to stop angiogenesis." Angiogenesis is
the process by which tumors grow vessels to fuel their growth and ability to reach out and
metastasize to other tissues.
Alcohol Activates Cellular Changes
That Make Tumor Cells Spread
Alcohol consumption has long been linked to cancer and its spread, but the underlying
mechanism has never been clear. Now, researchers at Rush University Medical Center have
identified a cellular pathway that may explain the link. In a study published in the
current issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, the researchers found
that alcohol stimulates what is called the epithelial–to–mesenchymal transition,
in which run-of-the-mill cancer cells morph into a more aggressive form and begin to
spread throughout the body. “Our data are the first to show that alcohol turns on
certain signals inside a cell that are involved in this critical transition,” said
Christopher Forsyth, PhD, assistant professor of medicine and biochemistry at Rush
University Medical Center and lead author of the study.
Hold the MSG - Food Triggers for
Epilepsy and Other Neurological Illnesses
With the increase in incidence of neurological illness, including Alzheimer's Disease, a
basic proactive health strategy that many integrative practitioners recommend is to limit
intake of these food ingredients. More information on excitotoxins can be found in Russell
Blaylockm MD's book, Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills.
Does gluten deserve its bum rap?
What's so bad about gluten? In recent years, doctors have grown increasingly aware of
celiac disease, a gluten intolerance that damages the small intestine and affects its
ability to absorb nutrients.
High fructose corn syrup is bad for
body
Sugar and high fructose corn syrup can be harmful when used excessively. By reading food
labels and restricting intake of sweeteners, we can limit our risk of obesity and related
health conditions while improving our overall diet and well-being.
Agave Syrup May Not Be So Simple
Agave is not just for tequila anymore. The sap from the Mexican plant is now increasingly
being sold as a natural sweetener called agave nectar. Companies that sell it say it saves
calories and raises blood sugar less than conventional sugar.
Make sure inflammation is well
controlled before removing cataract in uveitic eyes
Cataract surgeons should delay cataract removal in patients with uveitis until well after
inflammation is controlled, according to a speaker here.
Study finds worst cereals, are most
heavily marketed
According to the Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity the breakfast
cereals that are the worst for kids are the ones most pushed on them through advertising.
Children need more vitamin D,
researchers say
A dramatically higher percentage of kids had levels lower than the 75 nmol/L recommended
by some researchers.
Prevent Breast Cancer with Vitamin
D and a Vegan Diet
In 1940, the risk of a woman getting breast cancer was one in 20. Today that number is one
in eight. Risk factors for breast cancer include genetics, family history, and diet.
Western diets have changed dramatically since 1950- and not for the better. As our food is
filled with more preservatives, toxins, and unnatural fillers and as fast food restaurants
appear on every corner, cancer rates consequently have skyrocketed.
The shocking truth about why Obama
announced a National Public Health Emergency
President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency on Friday
October 23, empowering the health secretary to suspend federal requirements and speed up
treatment. His declaration authorizes Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius to bypass normal federal regulations so health officials can respond more quickly
to the outbreak, which, allegedly, has killed more than 1,000 people in the United States.
Biomass & Biofuels are Not
Really Green
The promise of biofuels like ethanol is that they will someday help the world grow its way
out of its addiction to oil. Nine billion gallons of corn ethanol were produced in the
U.S. in 2008, while countries like Brazil have already widely replaced gasoline with
ethanol from sugar cane and countless start-ups are working to bring cellulosic and other
second-generation biofuels to market. The reasoning is that if we use greener biofuels in
place of gasoline, it will significantly enhance our effort to reduce greenhouse-gas
emissions.
Deep Brain Stimulation May Be
Effective Treatment for Tourette Syndrome
Deep brain stimulation may be a safe and effective treatment for Tourette syndrome,
according to research published in the October 27, 2009, print issue of Neurology®, the
medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. “Our findings hold promise for
helping people with severe Tourette syndrome, who are in need of new treatment options to
improve their quality of life,” said study author Andrea Cavanna, MD, of the
University of Birmingham, in the United Kingdom.
Antibody 'fixes internal bleeds'
Scientists say they have discovered an antibody that could minimise the major internal
bleeding seen in traumas like bullet wounds and car crashes.
Excess Hormone-Grown Meat? Don't
Worry, the Kids Will Eat it
Whether it's the surplus chicken from a factory farm snuck into your kids meal in the form
of chicken nuggets or the cheese made from hormone-laden milk made acceptable on WIC food
lists, it's really no secret: the role of the USDA's Food Distribution Programs (FDPs)
since the Great Depression has been to get rid of surplus agricultural commodities by
passing them on to those who need nutritional foods the most.
Fat liver, not belly, may be best
indicator of health problems
For years, scientists have warned people that having an apple-shaped figure or a beer
belly is a health risk. They said people with wide girths are more likely to have visceral
or intra-abdominal fat, which increases their risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and
some types of cancer.
GM Food Can Cause Cancer
French scientist Gilles-Eric Séralini unmasked the dangers of genetically modified
brinjal, almost approved for commercial production in India. He shared with Savvy Soumya
Misra his findings on Bt brinjal and Roundup Ready soybean
Herbicides and cholesterol drugs
interfere with taste, could damage metabolism
It's not unusual to hear about herbicides having suspected toxic effects or prescription
drugs producing side effects. But a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded study
just published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry has found another negative and
surprising way common herbicides and fibrate drugs (which are used to lower elevated blood
lipids) impact the human body: they block a nutrient-sensing taste receptor on the tongue
called T1R3.
Wish your kids ate more fruits and
vegetables?
Good news for parents who are trying to get their children to eat their vegetables: If you
offer kids more fruits and vegetables before and during meals, they'll eat more of them,
even if some turn up their noses at specific varieties they don't like.
Study Shows How Carbon Nanotubes
Can Affect Lining of the Lungs
Carbon nanotubes are being considered for use in everything from sports equipment to
medical applications, but a great deal remains unknown about whether these materials cause
respiratory or other health problems. Now a collaborative study from North Carolina State
University, The Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences, and the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences shows that inhaling these nanotubes can affect the outer
lining of the lung, though the effects of long-term exposure remain unclear. Using mice in
an animal model study, the researchers set out to determine what happens when multi-walled
carbon nanotubes are inhaled. Specifically, researchers wanted to determine whether the
nanotubes would be able to reach the pleura, which is the tissue that lines the outside of
the lungs and is affected by exposure to certain types of asbestos fibers which cause the
cancer mesothelioma. The researchers used inhalation exposure and found that inhaled
nanotubes do reach the pleura and cause health effects.
GM Sugar Beets Ruling Calls into
Question Approval of GM Corn
The hurried review and approval this summer by the US Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) of Monsanto's SmartStax genetically modified corn has now been called into question
by the late September federal court ruling against a GM, herbicide-resistant strain of
sugar beets, according to the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a
broad-based coalition of nearly 300 faith-based investors with over $100 billion in
invested capital.
Generic Drugs Are Much Cheaper, but
Use Caution for Those That Have 'Narrow Therapeutic Windows'
Generic drugs can be as much as 90 percent cheaper than name-brand prescriptions. And more
than 70 percent of prescription medications taken today are generics.
Ailing planet seen as bad for human
health
Advocates' report links climate change to worsening of diseases
Alcohol may help women stay mobile
For people in their 70's, light to moderate alcohol intake may offer women, but not men,
some protection against loss of mobility, a study hints.
Antipsychotics cause rapid weight
gain in youth
Up to a third of children and adolescents who took common antipsychotic drugs for the
first time became overweight or obese in as little as 11 weeks, raising their risk for
diabetes and heart disease, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
Cervical cancer jab would 'make
girls more promiscuous'
One in seven girls has admitted that having the cervical cancer vaccination could make
them more promiscuous because they would feel more "protected", research has
found.
Gagging Michael Pollan
Even if agribusiness could shut Michael Pollan up, the outspoken author of Omnivore's
Dilemma and a journalism professor at University of California, Berkeley, it still has the
Los Angeles Times to contend with.
Could water scarcity cause
international conflict?
In reporting a recent story on a fight over water between residents of a small Colorado
town and Nestlé Waters North America, a bottled water company I learned much about water
scarcity.
Scottish Courts Briefly Take Obese
Mother's Newborn Child
A severely obese family in Dundee, Scotland, whose newborn child was briefly taken from
them by child protective services while the mother was still recovering in the hospital,
is now gaining international attention over the issue of whether childhood obesity can be
a sign of abuse or neglect.
Diabetes may slow decline in
Alzheimer's patients
Alzheimer's sufferers who also have diabetes experience slower memory loss than those
without the condition, 'surprising' research results have suggested.
Disease jump linked to food
industry changes
THE increased globalisation of the food production industry is contributing to the spread
of disease from humans to animals.
FDA, FTC threaten Dr. Weil over
immune-boosting supplements for H1N1 swine flu
In working to protect the business interests of vaccine manufactures, both the FDA and FTC
have declared all-out war against any products that might offer consumers options other
than vaccines.
Endocrine Society Calls for
Expanded Scope and Funding for Stem Cell Research
Stem cell research holds great promise for the treatment of millions of Americans with
debilitating and possibly fatal diseases. Current legislation and guidelines, however,
continue to limit researchers’ endeavors in unlocking the potential breakthroughs
that stem cell research can provide. To address this concern, today The Endocrine Society
issued a Position Statement (http://www.endo-society.org/advocacy/policy) calling for an
increase in NIH funding for stem cell research as well as expanding the scope of funding
to include promising yet neglected areas of stem cell research.
Patients Starting Dialysis Have
Increased Risk of Death
Compared to the general population, patients starting dialysis have an increased risk of
death that is not attributable to a higher rate of death from cardiovascular causes, as
previously thought, according to a study in the October 28 issue of JAMA. Several studies
have shown that cardiovascular disease accounts for 40 percent to 50 percent of deaths in
patients with end-stage kidney disease, according to background information in the
article. “It is believed that the life span of patients receiving dialysis is reduced
mainly as a consequence of premature cardiovascular death,” the authors write.
Our Economy Was a Scam and Now
We're Dead Broke
America is broke. And the easy credit, phantom "growth" economy has been exposed
for what it was: a credit scam.
One in four babies born by
caesarean
One in four babies born in England are delivered by caesarean section, figures show,
despite warnings from midwives that the operation can pose risks to mothers and children.
New pesticide is no strawberry
shortcake
What is evident from the transcripts is that leading scientists who have reviewed the
proposed use of methyl iodide, from a diversity of disciplines, have serious concerns
about this chemical.
Journal Article Says Suppressed
Study Found GM Corn Killed Ladybugs
A recent article in Nature Biotechnology on how biotechnology companies restrict
independent research described a study showing that a genetically modified corn killed
ladybugs. The study was suppressed by the corn's developer.
Inhofe Thinks Global Warming Ended
9 Years Ago
Needless to say, Inhofe's dangerous nonsense has been debunked repeatedly by scientists.
Smoking parents risk children's
health
Royal Children's Hospital pediatrician Dr Rob Roseby said smoking increases the risk of
SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) and elevates the risk of contracting meningococcal
disease by a staggering 700 per cent.
Silicon-Air Battery - Non-stop
Power for Thousands of Hours
Scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a new,
environmentally friendly silicon-air battery capable of supplying non-stop power for
thousands of hours without needing to be replaced. The findings are published in the
October 2009 issue of Electrochemistry Communications. Created from oxygen and silicon
(the second most plentiful element in the earth’s crust), such batteries would be
lightweight, have an unlimited shelf life, and have a high tolerance for both humid and
extremely dry conditions. Potential uses include medical applications (for example,
powering diabetic pumps or hearing aids), sensors and microelectronics structured from
silicon. “Silicon-air batteries will be used like the ones already in use
today,” says lead researcher Prof. Yair Ein-Eli of the Department of Materials
Engineering. “But by using silicon – a safe, non-toxic, stable and more common
material – we can create very lightweight batteries with infinite shelf life and high
energy capacity.”
Scientist Jeopardizes Career by
Publishing Paper Criticizing GMOs
The paper makes a damning case against genetically modified foods, saying the technology
is based on obsolete science, that biotechnology companies such as Monsanto have too much
influence on government regulators and "public" universities, and that
university scientists are ignoring the health and environmental risks of GM crops. Lotter
calls the introduction of GM foods the "largest diet experiment in history."
Rainforest treaty 'fatally flawed'
A vital safeguard to protect the world's rainforests from being cut down has been dropped
from a global deforestation treaty due to be signed at the climate summit in Copenhagen in
December.
Vitamin D supplements taken in
early life prevent type 1 diabetes
A new study published in the Nov 3, 2009 issue of the journal Lancet suggests that vitamin
D deficiency raises risk of type 1 diabetes, and supplementation of this sunshine vitamin
may reduce the risk.
Fat hips increase risk of blood
clots, study claims
Excess weight on women's hips and men's waistlines increases the risk of blood clots in
middle-aged people, research suggests.
Infant Formula Companies Claim They
Can Make Babies ‘Smarter’
Infant formula manufacturers are banking that you would. That’s why, since 2002,
several companies have fortified their products with synthetic versions of DHA and ARA,
long-chain fatty acids that occur naturally in breast milk and have been associated with
brain development.
Toxic Chinese Drywall Creates A
Housing Disaster
Between 2004 and 2007, an estimated 100,000 homes in more than 20 states were built with
toxic drywall imported from China.
Thyroid cancer a risk after
childhood cancer
Childhood cancer survivors are 18 times more likely to develop thyroid cancer than the
general population, UK researchers report.
Thousands Protest Trash
Incinerators in Southern China
Tens of thousands of residents of Pingwang Town in China's southern Jiangsu Province
protested against garbage incinerators being built too close to where they live on Oct.
21. Local authorities sent 3,000 anti-riot police to disperse the crowd.
Low Vitamin D Status Found in
Parkinson's disease Patient
n a study involving predominantly white patients with Parkinson's disease, patients with
Alzheimer's disease, and controls, a significant percentage of patients with Parkinson's
disease (55%) were found to have insufficient vitamin D status, as compared to healthy
controls (36%) and as compared to patients with Alzheimer's disease (41%).
Curry is a 'cure for cancer'
MOLECULES found in a curry spice have been shown to kill oesophageal cancer cells in the
laboratory, reveals research published in the British Journal of Cancer today (Wednesday -
27th October 2009). Scientists at the Cork Cancer Research Centre, UCC, treated
oesophageal cancer cells with curcumin** – a chemical found in the curry spice
tumeric. They found that curcumin started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours. The cells
also began to digest themselves. The results additionally showed that curcumin kills cells
by triggering lethal cell death signals. “These exciting results suggest that
scientists could develop curcumin as a potential anti-cancer drug to treat oesophageal
cancer,” says Dr Sharon McKenna, lead study author at the Cork Cancer Research
Centre, UCC. “Scientists have known for a long time that natural compounds have the
potential to treat faulty cells that have become cancerous and we suspected that curcumin
might have therapeutic value. Dr Geraldine O’Sullivan-Coyne, a medical researcher in
our lab had been looking for new ways of killing resistant oesophageal cancer cells. She
tested curcurmin on resistant cells and found that they started to die using an unexpected
system of cell messages.” Normally, faulty cells die by committing programmed suicide
– or apoptosis – which occurs when proteins called caspases are ‘switched
on’ in cells. But these cells showed no evidence of suicide and the addition of a
molecule that inhibits caspases and stops this ‘switch being flicked’, made no
difference to the number of cells which died. This suggested that curcumin attacked the
cancer cells using an alternative cell signalling system.
WHO memos 1972 explains how to turn
vaccines into a means of killing
Two key memorandums from WHO, discovered by Patrick Jordan, prove WHO has intentionally
created the three-shot killer vaccine that people in the USA and other countries could
soon be forced to take.
Deadly Stomach Infection Rising in
Community Settings, Mayo Clinic Study Finds
Mayo Clinic researchers have found that a sometimes deadly stomach bug, Clostridium
difficile,
Getting the D in children
According to a new analysis focusing on U.S. children ages 1 through 11, about a fifth of
youngsters that age aren't getting the minimally required level of vitamin D. Many more
may fall short of the optimal dose.
Serotonin's Role in the Pancreas
Revealed at Last
The authors found that serotonin in pancreatic cells bound directly to GTPase enzymes, and
by blocking transglutaminase, blocked this reaction, reducing insulin secretion. The
authors identified two specific GTPases that are known to play a role in insulin secretion
as targets for serotonylation. But, based on the large amount of protein-bound serotonin
they saw, they suggest serotonin likely links up with multiple other proteins as well,
suggesting a host of other interactions yet to be discovered.
Neurons Help Bridge the Brain's
Communication Gap
These findings bring a new level of complexity to our understanding of how the corpus
callosum is formed. The involvement of two previously uncharacterized populations of
neurons in axon guidance across the midline raises the question of how neurons and glia
interact to mediate callosal development and will surely stimulate future investigations.
In particular, the identification of a further chemoattractant factor or factors, released
by both neuronal populations, is likely to be a priority, as is investigation of how the
callosal neurons and glia come together to form the dense structure through which axons
are guided across the midline.
Linking Inflammation to Natural
Killer T Cell Activation
In conclusion, the identification of LPC as an endogenous ligand for iNKT cells is an
important finding for the understanding of the role that iNKT cells and other immune cells
play during inflammation. It will also be interesting to correlate iNKT-cell numbers and
activation with changes in activity of the PLA2 isoforms during different inflammatory
conditions (for example, upon microbial infections and Toll-like receptor-mediated
activation of APCs or during chronic inflammatory processes, such as cancer). Future
studies will reveal whether analogues of lysophospholipids could be exploited as novel
adjuvants to further harness iNKT cells' ability to bridge innate and adaptive immune
responses or to fine-tune iNKT-cell autoreactivity during autoimmune diseases.
Antiretroviral Strategies to
Prevent Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV
Prevention of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV has been both a great success and
a continued challenge. Today, in resource-rich countries, new infant infections are a rare
event. However, nearly 400,000 infant HIV-1 infections still occur each year in settings
in which highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), elective caesarean sections, and
safe alternatives to breastfeeding are not readily available. In these settings, various
short-course antiretroviral therapies that include a single-dose of nevirapine (sdNVP) are
used to prevent transmission to infants [1]. The sdNVP regimen effectively reduces MTCT by
close to 50% and is an inexpensive and simple regimen, feasible for use in
resource-limited settings [2],[3]. However, resistance to sdNVP arises commonly and
quickly and can adversely affect the future treatment of NVP-exposed women [4]–[6].
Ideal alternatives to the sdNVP regimen would reduce the emergence of resistance while
preserving efficacy and feasibility.
H1N1 Vaccine and Thimerosal
Is injecting mercury similar to ingesting it? If not your article has a propaganda slant
to it that is irresponsible considering it is written by a "senior scientist."
MF59 responds very different when taken orally than when injected in your blood stream.
Bad driving may have genetic basis,
UCI study finds
Bad drivers may in part have their genes to blame, suggests a new study by UC Irvine
neuroscientists. People with a particular gene variant performed more than 20 percent
worse on a driving test than people without it - and a follow-up test a few days later
yielded similar results. About 30 percent of Americans have the variant.
Maize Research Reduces Poverty in
West and Central Africa
An analysis of three and half decades of maize research in African farming communities
finds big benefits. A multi-country study, in Agricultural Economics, reports the
significant role international maize research plays in reducing poverty. It finds that
since the mid-1990s, more than one million people per year have escaped poverty through
the adoption of new maize varieties.
High-definition Colonoscopy Detects
More Polyps, Mayo Clinic Researchers Say
High-definition (HD) colonoscopy is much more sensitive than standard colonoscopy in
finding polyps that could morph into cancer, say researchers at the Mayo Clinic campus in
Florida.
Some researchers call for moving
beyond targeted therapies when tackling cancer
When scientists sequenced the human genome in 2003, a shot rang out in drug discovery labs
around the world. It signaled the start of a race to uncover the cellular pathways of
disease and find small and large molecules to interrupt those pathways. Cancer has been a
ripe area for research, and the pipeline is now packed with “molecularly
targeted” drugs.
Knocking nanoparticles off the
socks
Scientists in Switzerland are reporting results of one of the first studies on the release
of silver nanoparticles from laundering those anti-odor, anti-bacterial socks now on the
market. Their findings, scheduled for the Nov. 1 issue of ACS' journal Environmental
Science & Technology, may suggest ways that manufacturers and consumers can minimize
the release of these particles to the environment, where they could harm fish and other
wildlife. In the study, Bernd Nowack and colleagues note that widespread use of silver
nanoparticles in consumer products, especially textiles, likely results in the
distribution of nanoparticles in lakes and streams. Manufacturers favor silver
nanoparticles because of their antibacterial action, which slows the growth of
odor-causing bacteria. The scientists studied release of nanoparticles in laundry water
from nine different textiles, including different brands of commercially available
anti-odor socks. Previous studies laundered socks, but in pure distilled water. They found
that most of the released particles were relatively large and that most came out of the
fabrics during the first wash. The total released varied from 1.3 to 35 percent of the
total nanosilver in the fabric. Bleach generally did not affect the amount released.
"These results have important implications for the risk assessment of silver textiles
and also for environmental fate studies of nanosilver, because they show that under
certain conditions relevant to washing, primarily coarse silver-containing particles are
released," the paper says.
Statins show dramatic drug and cell
dependent effects in the brain
Besides their tremendous value in treating high cholesterol and lowering the risk of heart
disease, statins have also been reported to potentially lower the risks of other diseases,
such as dementia. However, a study in the October Journal of Lipid Research finds that
similar statin drugs can have profoundly different effects on brain cells –both
beneficial and detrimental. These findings reinforce the idea that great care should be
taken when deciding on the dosage and type of statin given to individuals, particularly
the elderly. John Albers and colleagues compared the effects of two commercially used
statins, simvastatin and pravastatin, on two different types of brain cells, neurons and
astrocytes (support cells that help repair damage). By directly applying the drugs to
cells as opposed to administering them to animals, they could eliminate differences in the
drugs' ability to cross the blood-brain barrier as a reason for any differing effects.
Albers and colleagues looked at the expression of genes related to neurodegeneration, and
found that indeed, despite using biologically equivalent drug concentrations, differences
were seen both between cells, and between drugs; for example, simvastatin reduced the
expression of the cholesterol transporter ABCA1 by approximately 80% in astrocytes, while
pravastatin lowered expression by only around 50%. Another interesting difference was that
while both statins decreased expression of the Tau prtein –associated with
Alzheimer's disease—in astrocytes, they increased Tau expression in neurons;
pravastatin also increased the expression of another Alzheimer's hallmark, amyloid
precursor protein (APP). While increased levels of these two proteins may account for
potential risks of disease, Albers and colleagues also note that large decreases in
cholesterol proteins like ABCA1 should be considered. Brain cholesterol levels tend to be
reduced in elderly people, and in such individuals the long-term effects of statin therapy
could lead to transient or permanent cognitive impairment.
Mortality Rates Reduced among
Children Whose Mothers Received Iron-folic Acid Supplements
Offspring whose mothers had been supplemented with iron-folic acid during pregnancy had
dramatically reduced mortality through age 7, according to researchers at the Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Researchers found that other supplement
combinations, including the multiple micronutrient supplement, did not confer the same
benefit. Nearly 40 percent of pregnant women worldwide are estimated to be anemic.
Although there is an international policy for antenatal iron-folic acid supplementation,
coverage and use of this antenatal intervention is low in many developing countries.
Benefit of memantine in the
treatment of Alzheimer's disease not proven
There is no scientific proof that patients with moderate or severe Alzheimer's disease
benefit from drugs containing the agent memantine. This is the conclusion in the final
report that the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) published in
September 2009. The report is part of a broader commission awarded by the Federal Joint
Committee (G-BA) to assess both drug and non-drug therapy options for Alzheimer's disease.
In addition to memantine, IQWiG has investigated cholinesterase inhibitors, Ginkgo biloba
and non-drug therapy alternatives.
A new explanation of 'Asian
paradox'
Although Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) has been classified as a class I (or definite)
carcinogen by World Health Organization (WHO), the controversy as to why only a minority
of infected patients develop gastric cancer still remains. Moreover, in Asian countries
such as Indonesia, Japan, China, and Thailand, where the H. pylori infection rates are
similar, there is a significant difference regarding the outcome of gastric cancer. That
fact has been termed the "Asian paradox". A research article to be published on
October 21, 2009 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. A
research, led by Murdani Abdullah, MD from Division of Gastroenterology, Department of
Internal Medicine, University of Indonesia, was based on the old concept of a cascade of
mucosal changes that develops from acute/chronic gastritis to gastric cancer as proposed
by P. Correa. The difference in the pattern of H. pylori-associated gastritis may explain
the difference in the incidence of gastric cancer between Indonesia and Japan. Previous
studies have never evaluated the cascade of gastric mucosal changes prior to gastric
cancer. In this research, the transformation of gastric mucosa that is induced by H.
pylori infection prior to gastric cancer was investigated. The transformation was then
compared between Indonesian and Japanese patients, the two countries that represent the
"Asian paradox".
American Cancer Society calls for
new strategies to monitor exposure to environmental carcinogens
A new report from an American Cancer Society (ACS) scientific advisory subcommittee on
cancer and the environment says exposure to carcinogens should be minimized or eliminated
whenever feasible, and calls for new strategies to more effectively and efficiently screen
the large number of chemicals to which the public is exposed. The report was created as
part of an initiative to address ongoing and emerging issues related to environmental
pollutants and cancer, and to articulate the American Cancer Society's principles,
objectives, and potential roles regarding environmental pollution and cancer prevention.
"The issue of environmental pollutants in air, water, food, and consumer products is
one that generates significant public concern and uncertainty," said Jonathan Samet,
M.D., chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of
University of Southern California, and co-chair of the committee that authored the report.
"With this report, we felt it was important to put environmental pollutants into the
broader context of cancer prevention, which includes efforts to reduce tobacco use,
improve nutrition, increase physical activity, maintain a healthy body weight, and provide
vaccinations against the infections that cause cancer." "Exposure levels to
environmental pollution to the general public are typically far lower than the levels
associated with the proven cancer risks shown in occupational or other settings,"
said Elizabeth "Terry" T.H. Fontham, M.P.H., Dr.P.H., national volunteer
president of the American Cancer Society and co-chair of the committee.
"Nevertheless, these low-level exposures do cause us concern because of the
multiplicity of substances, the fact that many exposures are out of the public's control,
and the potential that even low-level exposures contribute to the cancer burden when large
numbers of people are exposed."
Mechanism of temperature
synchronization in drosophila
New research reveals a pathway that links peripheral sensory tissues with a
"clock" in the brain to regulate molecular processes and behaviors in response
to cyclical temperature changes. The research, published by Cell Press in the October 29th
issue of the journal Neuron, reveals some surprising fundamental differences between how
light-dark and temperature cycles synchronize the brain clock of the fruit fly,
Drosophila. A variety of organisms have evolved an endogenous timing system called a
circadian clock to regulate behavioral metabolic activities. "Circadian clocks
regulate many biological processes to occur at beneficial times for the organism,"
explains senior study author, Dr. Ralf Stanewsky from Queen Mary College at the University
of London. "Although we know quite a bit about how natural light-dark cycles
synchronize the circadian clock of organisms ranging from flies to mammals, little is
known about mechanisms of temperature synchronization." Specifically, it is not known
which cells or structures sense temperature changes or how temperature signals reach the
brain clock. In an earlier study, Dr. Stanewsky and colleagues identified two mutations in
the fruit flies that interfered with temperature synchronization. One of the genes, nocte,
was defective in flies that exhibited normal light synchronization but abnormal molecular
and behavioral synchronization to temperature.
Muscle weakness a common side
effect of long stays in intensive care units
After decades of focusing on the management of respiratory failure, circulatory shock and
severe infections that lead to extended stays in hospital intensive care units, critical
care researchers are increasingly turning attention to what they believe is a treatable
complication developed by many who spend days or weeks confined to an ICU bed:
debilitating muscle weakness that can linger long after hospital discharge. In a
supplement to the current issue of the journal Critical Care Medicine, an
interdisciplinary research group – from Johns Hopkins and across the world —
propose a new classification scheme for helping physicians to uniformly and precisely
identify a variety of muscle-wasting disorders acquired in the ICU, a framework that came
out of a meeting of leaders in the field in Brussels, Belgium in March 2009. Getting
doctors on the same page with common definitions and awareness is a big first step in
preventing and treating ICU-related debility, the researchers say.
EPA releases guide to help
scientists understand children's exposure to pollutants
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today released a user-friendly document to help
risk assessors understand how children are exposed to pollution. The document, titled
"Highlights of the Child-Specific Exposure Factors Handbook," serves as a
quick-reference guide to the more comprehensive "Child-Specific Exposure Factors
Handbook," published by EPA in 2008. It will serve as an additional resource for
those who work on children's health issues, which the agency has been highlighting during
Children's Health Month. EPA developed the reference guide to provide important
information necessary for answering questions about exposure through drinking water,
breathing, and eating foods.
Exercise is good medicine for
lymphoma patients
A healthy dose of exercise is good medicine, even for lymphoma patients receiving
chemotherapy, University of Alberta researchers have found. The Healthy Exercise for
Lymphoma Patients (HELP) trial, a three-year study led by Kerry Courneya, Canada Research
Chair in physical activity and cancer in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation,
found that a regimen of aerobic exercise training produced significant improvements in
physical functioning and overall quality of life benefits in patients with lymphoma.
Researchers recruited 122 patients with Hodgkin's and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, then
stratified participants by disease type and treatment status; whether they were undergoing
chemotherapy at the time or receiving no treatments. Participants were randomly assigned
to an exercise program designed to maximize cardiovascular fitness or to usual care, which
did not include an exercise component. Exercisers trained three times a week for 12 weeks
and were encouraged to stay the course with behavioural support techniques that included
perks like free parking, a well-equipped gym, flexible exercise schedules, variation in
exercises, follow-up phone calls reminders and positive reinforcement by staff.
'Culture of we' buffers genetic
tendency to depression
A genetic tendency to depression is much less likely to be realized in a culture centered
on collectivistic rather than individualistic values, according to a new Northwestern
University study. In other words, a genetic vulnerability to depression is much more
likely to be realized in a Western culture than an East Asian culture that is more about
we than me-me-me. The study coming out of the growing field of cultural neuroscience takes
a global look at mental health across social groups and nations. Depression, research
overwhelmingly shows, results from genes, environment and the interplay between the two.
One of the most profound ways that people across cultural groups differ markedly, cultural
psychology demonstrates, is in how they think of themselves. "People from highly
individualistic cultures like the United States and Western Europe are more likely to
value uniqueness over harmony, expression over agreement, and to define themselves as
unique or different from the group," said Joan Chiao, the lead author of the study
and assistant professor of psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at
Northwestern. In contrast, people from collectivist cultures are more likely to value
social harmony over individuality. "Relative to people in an individualistic culture,
they are more likely to endorse behaviors that increase group cohesion and
interdependence," Chiao said.
Exposure to alkaline substances can
result in damaged teeth
It has long been known that acids can erode tooth enamel but a new Swedish study from the
Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg shows that strong alkaline substances
can damage teeth too - substances with high pH values can destroy parts of the organic
content of the tooth, leaving the enamel more vulnerable. The study was carried out at the
Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the Sahlgrenska Academy and
published in the Journal of Dentistry. "The study shows that exposure to alkaline
substances can result in damaged teeth, but that the process is different to that caused
by exposure to acidic drinks or acidic industrial vapours," says Fabian Taube,
occupational hygienist and one of the researchers behind the study.
Vegetables can protect unborn child
against diabetes
New evidence is emerging for how important it is for pregnant women to eat good,
nutritious food. Expecting mothers who eat vegetables every day seem to have children who
are less likely to develop type 1 diabetes, a new study from the Sahlgrenska Academy has
revealed. The study was performed in collaboration with Linköping University, which is
conducting a population study called ABIS (All Babies in Southeast Sweden). The results
have been published in the journal Pediatric Diabetes. "This is the first study to
show a link between vegetable intake during pregnancy and the risk of the child
subsequently developing type 1 diabetes, but more studies of various kinds will be needed
before we can say anything definitive," says researcher and clinical nutritionist
Hilde Brekke from the Sahlgrenska Academy.
Scientists Are First To Observe The
Global Motions Of An Enzyme Copying DNA
Scientists here have identified how the motions of an enzyme are related to correctly
copying genetic instructions, setting the stage for studies that can uncover what happens
when DNA copying mistakes are made. Perpetuation of DNA mistakes can cause mutations that
lead to cancer and other diseases. But before scientists can determine how and when errors
are made during DNA replication, they must first fully understand what’s going on
when the copying process works properly – a monumental research pursuit that remains
incomplete.
The power of doctors makes elderly
patients passive
Elderly patients are often critical towards the meeting with the doctor. Hierarchical
structures, time pressure and traditions in the health care sector make these patients and
their relatives passive when facing the doctor and his or her position of power. This is
shown in a thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The
study is based on interviews with 20 elderly patients and their relatives in Gothenburg,
Sweden, and about an equal number of doctors. 'We cannot disregard that the ability of
doctors to communicate with elderly patients and their relatives could be improved, and
that this shortcoming may explain why this group of patients feel insecure in the meeting
with the doctor. They don't feel at home in the health care system and sometimes have
problems understanding the doctor,' says Sandra Pennbrant, nurse and the author of the
thesis. A good relation between the doctor and the patient leads to reduced apprehension
and increased faith in the health care system. This kind of relation requires among other
things that the doctor and the patient discuss the situation and that the doctor listens
to what the patient has to say before deciding on a treatment plan.
TAU seeks genetic "Prozac
markers" to find a simple test for treating depression
Prozac works wonders for some depressed people, but not for others. In some cases,
patients derive little benefit and at worst, it can lead to bizarre hallucinations and
fits of rage. Researchers and doctors remain puzzled as to what causes the wide range of
reaction to Prozac and similar antidepressants. The answer, Tel Aviv University
researchers believe, can be found in a patient's genes. And if their research is
successful, these scientists may be able to provide psychiatrists with a simple genetic
test to revolutionize the treatment of depression.
Anxious pregnant mothers more
likely to have smaller babies
A new study published in the journal Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology reveals that
anxiety in pregnant women impacts their babies' size and gestational age. Specifically,
women with more severe and chronic anxiety during pregnancy are more likely to have
affected babies. Shahla M. Hosseini, Minhnoi W. Biglan, Cynthia Larkby, Maria M. Brooks,
Michael B. Gorin, and Nancy L. Day studied a sample of low-income women, half of whom were
African American and the other half Caucasian. The group already had well-known risk
factors such as alcohol and cigarette use. The authors demonstrated that the mother's
anxiety during pregnancy impacts birth outcomes over and beyond factors such as drug use,
education, and race. Anxiety during the third trimester predicted women delivering
significantly smaller babies. In the first and second trimesters, the effects of anxiety
were significant only among those women who had severe anxiety. Low to moderate levels of
anxiety in women during either the first or second trimester did not significantly affect
the birth outcomes, but women who are severely anxious during much of their pregnancy
should be considered for anxiety-reducing interventions. "One way to prevent health
problems in children and adults is to focus care on the prenatal period," the authors
note. "It is key to pursue further research which addresses interventions to
ameliorate the effects that a woman's trait anxiety has on the development of
fetuses."
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity
problems Associated with Low Folate Levels in Pregnant Women
It has long been suggested that healthy folate (the natural form of folic acid) levels in
expectant mothers goes hand in hand with healthy nervous system development in their
children. A study published in an upcoming issue of The Journal of Child Psychology and
Psychiatry finds that low maternal folate levels is linked to the development of
attention-deficit/hyperactivity problems in children at age seven to nine years.
Researcher Dr. Wolff Schlotz points out, “Our findings further support the hypothesis
that maternal nutrition contributes to an individuals’ development, with potential
consequences for their behavior later in life.” The long term effects of poor
maternal nutrition may even branch out to the child’s ability to interact with peers
or form social bonds. The researchers also found that children born from mothers with a
low folate status had a notably smaller head circumference at birth, which may indicate a
smaller rate of prenatal brain growth in children adversely affected by low folate levels.
This is a cause for concern among low-income populations where the nutritional health of
the mother is a low priority, and women are less likely to take folate supplements in
advance of pregnancy.
'Aura' migraines a stroke risk
Young women who have migraines with auras are twice as likely to have a stroke,
researchers have confirmed.
Bioengineered Plants Gone Wild
Special genes inserted into crop plants have a way of leaking into the environment. That
much scientists know for sure. What they're less certain about is what effect those genes
have on plants growing in the wild.
Dr. Samuel Epstein's 20 Year Fight
Against Biotech, Cancer-Causing Milk
Twenty years ago, back when Frank Young, M.D. was Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration, he received a report from Samuel S. Epstein, M.D. entitled "Potential
Public Health Hazards of Biosynthetic Milk Hormones," warning of the public health
dangers of consuming milk from hormone-treated cows.
The French Organic Revolution
For the first time ever, our children are growing up less healthy than we are. As the rate
of cancer, infertility and other illnesses linked to environmental factors climbs ever
upward each year, we must ask ourselves: why is this happening?
Men prefer curvy women
Men prefer “normal” sized women with average weight and curves than those who
are fashionably thin with a size zero body, a study claims.
Toxins Make Halloween Face Paints
Scary
"All 10 face paint products tested contained lead, and six out of 10 had known skin
allergens, including nickel, cobalt or chromium, at levels above recommendations of
industry studies," said Stacy Malkan, the campaign's co-founder and a co-author of
the report. Malkan is also the author of Not Just a Pretty Face, a 2007 book detailing
what she sees as the potentially hazardous ingredients in cosmetics.
GPs warn winter vomiting bug cases
rising at same time as swine flu
Official statistics show cases the winter vomiting bug, called norovirus, have been rising
in recent weeks and a bulletin to the health service has warned this usually signals the
beginning of a national outbreak.
ADHD Drug May Cause Suicidal
Thoughts
A new report from Australia is raising alarm about potentially dangerous side effects of
drugs used to treat ADHD. The report states that 30 children have had suicidal thoughts
(some attempting suicide).
ADHD drugs 'made 30 children
suicidal'
The federal opposition says the government has failed to regulate properly powerful drugs
used to treat hyperactivity disorders, with potentially dangerous results for children.
The Long Term Effects of
Genetically Modified Food in Humans
GMO agribusiness companies like Monsanto, BASF, Pioneer, Syngenta and others prohibit
independent research.
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