Gene Therapy May Treat Cocaine Addiction
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Sense of Smell and Parkinson's Disease
According to researchers, smell impairment can precede the development of PD in men by at least four years. The results showed that an odor identification deficit can predate the development of PD by at least four years, although it was not a strong predictor beyond this time period. Decreased odor identification was associated with older age, smoking, more coffee consumption, less frequent bowel movements, lower cognitive function and excessive daytime sleepiness, but even after adjusting for these factors, those with the lowest olfactory scores, meaning they had the poorest odor identification, had a five times greater risk of developing PD than those with the highest scores. "One interpretation of this finding is that the relationship of olfactory deficits to higher risk of future PD begins to weaken beyond a threshold of approximately four years between testing and diagnosis," the authors state. Caught your attention, didn't I? Read on. Hope everyone of you had a great Easter!! Retired NFL players at increased risk for heart problems
The Mayo data showed that 82 percent of NFL players under age 50 had abnormal narrowing and blockages in arteries, compared to the general population of the same age. This finding suggests that the former athletes face increased risk of experiencing high blood pressure, heart attack or stroke. The report on research conducted by the Mayo Clinic Arizona group will be presented next week at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session in Chicago. Significance of the Mayo Clinic Study This is the first and largest study to measure comprehensive cardiovascular performance measures on retired NFL athletes, ages 35 to 65. Its findings add to the emerging portrait of poor heart health among this group of retired athletes. The findings also suggest that players as young as high school age who are engaged in serious competitive-conference level of training and play may benefit from regular cardiovascular screening. What we hope to emphasize with our findings is that all NFL players -- retired or not -- need to undergo cardiovascular health evaluation because they may have changes in heart and vessel conditions that we can treat so they dont experience problems that may occur later in life, says Robert Hurst, M.D., Mayo Clinic cardiologist and lead researcher......... Extra-curricular activities to prevent juvenile delinquency?
While they found that involvement in extra-curricular activities definitely seemed to minimize the risky behaviors, there seemed to be a tipping point where too much participation had a counter-effect. They also found that nontraditional activities for each gender (such as sports for girls and church for boys) provided a greater protection from delinquency. The researchers believe that extracurricular involvement helps deter delinquency by reducing unstructured time, providing incentives to conform, and creating avenues for attachments with other pro-social peers and adults. Young people who participate in sports and both community and church activities report significantly less serious delinquency as well as less problem drinking and risky sexual behavior, writes co-author Sean P. Varano, Ph.D. A healthy and measured dose of involvement in extracurricular activities is good for young people......... Extra-curricular activities to prevent juvenile delinquency?
While they found that involvement in extra-curricular activities definitely seemed to minimize the risky behaviors, there seemed to be a tipping point where too much participation had a counter-effect. They also found that nontraditional activities for each gender (such as sports for girls and church for boys) provided a greater protection from delinquency. The researchers believe that extracurricular involvement helps deter delinquency by reducing unstructured time, providing incentives to conform, and creating avenues for attachments with other pro-social peers and adults. Young people who participate in sports and both community and church activities report significantly less serious delinquency as well as less problem drinking and risky sexual behavior, writes co-author Sean P. Varano, Ph.D. A healthy and measured dose of involvement in extracurricular activities is good for young people......... Controversial shoulder surgery effective long-term
In young, active patients, there were statistics as high as 92 percent that they would dislocate their shoulder again when conservative approaches like rest and immobilization in a sling were used, says Robert A. Arciero, MD, of the Keller Army Hospital in West Point, NY. If we had an operation with a 90 percent failure rate, we would abandon the procedure. My thought was, why should we embrace a therapy with such a high failure rate". Beginning in 1993, Dr. Arciero began performing arthroscopic surgery on young military cadets who suffered their first shoulder dislocation. The short-term results were excellent. The unknown, however, was how these patients would fare over the years. We decided to examine these patients long-term results, says Major Brett Owens, MD, of Williams Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, Texas. We observed that these patients maintained their health and active lifestyle. Surgery for this group of patients was durable and provided excellent shoulder function and a high activity level even after 10 years......... Drosophila drug screen for fragile X syndrome
The results of the research by lead scientist Stephen Warren, PhD, chair of the Department of Human Genetics at Emory University School of Medicine, are published online in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. Dr. Warren led an international group of researchers that discovered the FMR1 gene responsible for fragile X syndrome in 1991. Fragile X syndrome is caused by the functional loss of the fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP). Currently there is no effective drug treatment for fragile X syndrome, and previously no assays had been developed to screen drug candidates for the disorder. During the past 17 years, intense efforts from a number of laboratories have uncovered the fundamental basis for fragile X syndrome. Researchers believe FMRP affects learning and memory through regulation of protein synthesis at synapses in the brain. One leading view, proposed by Dr. Warren and his colleagues, suggests that over stimulation of neurons by the neurotransmitter glutamate is partly responsible for the brain dysfunction resulting from the loss of FMRP......... Connection Between Job Loss And Poor Health
The study also suggests that people who are reemployed quickly have better health outcomes than those who remain unemployed. It's not clear how a number of people involuntarily lose their jobs for health-related reasons, but shaping policy to meet the needs of this population of the unemployed is critical, a University of Michigan professor says. "We need to know more about this population for intervention and policy reasons," said Sarah Burgard, assistant professor of sociology with appointments in the Institute for Social Research and the School of Public Health. "Re-employment appears to be key for mitigating these health effects for people who lose their jobs-either for health-related reasons or other reasons, say a layoff." Much existing research suggests a link between involuntary job loss and health consequences, but those analyses don't account for an employee's pre-existing health or other outside factors, such as socioeconomic background, that may actually make the link spurious. People who have lost their jobs and want to get back to work may need the assistance of interim health insurance coverage, unemployment benefits, and re-employment programs. This may be especially true for people who have health problems that caused them to lose their jobs. However, these traditional employment benefits were designed to meet the needs of workers in standard full-time jobs,......... China Starts Drug Recall System
The system, launched on Wednesday, "shifts responsibility to companies to recall harmful drugs, a day after U.S. and Chinese officials signed an agreement on the safety of medicine and medical devices" according to the AP. Companies have between 24 and 72 hours to recall a drug, depending on the drug and the nature of the problem with it. Abiding by the new rules helps companies avoid financial penalties. Fiece Biotech reported the story on China's recall system for drugs and pointed out that China recently cracked down on the manufacturer of a tainted leukemia drug: "Shanghai Hualian Pharmaceutical also saw revenues from the drug seized, and company officials were taken into custody." Growth of CT scan use significant public health problem
In a Nov. 29, 2007 article in The New England Journal (NEJM), David J. Brenner, Ph.D., and Eric J. Hall, Ph.D., from the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center, argue that the potential carcinogenic effects from using Computerized axial tomography scans may be underestimated or overlooked. This is of particular concern, because perhaps one-third of all Computerized axial tomography scans performed in the United States may not be medically necessary, the radiation scientists say. It is estimated that more than 62 million Computerized axial tomography scans per year are currently given in the United States, in comparison to three million 1980. Because Computerized axial tomography scans result in a far larger radiation exposure compared with conventional plain-film X-ray, this has resulted in a marked increase in the average personal radiation exposure in the United States, which has about doubled since 1980, largely because of the increased CT usage......... Supplements even confuse athletes
A research team, led by Andrea Petrczi of the School of Life Sciences at Kingston University, in South West London, UK re-analysed surveys filled in by high performance athletes, representing over thirty different sports, for the 'UK Sport 2005 Drug Free Survey'. Three-fifths of athletes questioned took nutritional supplements, but the reasons given for taking them did not generally match up to the supplements' actual effects. Not surprisingly, given this result, the team also observed that relatively few supplement users appeared to be taking supplements because of medical advice. The results are worrisome because high doses of some supplements may damage health and contaminated products may even cause athletes to fail drug-screening tests. To help remedy this, the article recommends that education about the use of nutritional supplements should become a mandatory part of the accreditation process for all sport coaches. Indeed, prior research has shown that the more information athletes have on supplements, the less likely they are to take them......... Higher levels of pollutants found in fish
To complete the study, scientists recruited local anglers to catch channel catfish from the three rivers area of Pittsburgh and from Kittanning, Pa., an area 40 miles upstream of Pittsburgh. The three rivers area includes the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers. Based on testing of 63 fish, they observed that Kittanning and three rivers area fish had 19 and 3.1 times more mercury, respectively, than store-bought fish. They also found significantly higher levels of mercury and selenium in the Kittanning-caught fish than in the fish caught in the three rivers area......... Demand for Spanish-language cancer Web
Spanish-speaking cancer patients were also shown to have more limited access to the Internet in comparison to English-speaking users of cancer information Web sites, based on the user patterns of the two groups. There is an urgent need for more Web-based information to be more available to Spanish-speaking patients with cancer, and Internet access needs to be more widely available, said Charles Simone II, M.D., lead author of the study and a radiation oncologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The increased knowledge gained among these patients will help to eliminate healthcare disparities and lead to improved medical outcomes. The Spanish-language cancer information Web site, OncoLink en espaol, quadrupled their number of unique visitors last year, from 7,000 visitors per month in January 2006 to nearly 29,000 monthly visitors by the end of the year. More than 200,000 users visited the Web site in 2006......... How lasers cut flesh
Prof. Shane Hutson working in his laboratory.
Credit: Daniel Dubois From cosmetic to brain surgery, intense beams of coherent light are gradually replacing the steel scalpel for a number of procedures. Despite this increasing popularity, there is still a lot that researchers do not know about the ways in which laser light interacts with living tissue. Now, some of these basic questions have been answered in the first investigation of how ultraviolet lasers similar to those used in LASIK eye surgery cut living tissues. It was published online in Physical Review Letters on October 10. The effect that powerful lasers have on actual flesh varies both with the wavelength, or color, of the light and the duration of the pulses that they produce. The specific wavelengths of light that are absorbed by, reflected from or pass through different types of tissue can vary substantially. Therefore, different types of lasers work best in different medical procedures. For lasers with pulse lengths of a millionth of a second or less, there are two basic cutting regimes:
Adult stem cells lack key regulator
Top panels: Cells of the intestinal lining of mice lacking the embryonic pluripotency regulator Oct4 stop dividing and die after radioactive exposure. Middle panels: Intestinal stem cells then become activated and begin dividing rapidly. Bottom panels: The intestinal lining is completely regenerated, with stem cells relocating to the bottom. Image / Chris Lengner
But those findings are misleading, as per research in the lab of Whitehead member and MIT biology professor Rudolf Jaenisch. In a paper published online in Cell Stem Cells on Oct. 10, postdoctoral fellow Christopher Lengner has shown that Oct4 is not mandatory to maintain mouse adult stem cells in their undifferentiated state, and that adult tissues function normally in the absence of Oct4. Furthermore, using three independent detection methods in several tissue types in which Oct4-positive adult stem cells had been reported, Lengner found either no trace of Oct4, or so little Oct4 as to be indistinguishable from background readings. This means that pluripotency, the ability of stem cells to change into any kind of cell, is regulated differently in adult and embryonic stem cells. "This is the definitive survey of Oct4," said Jaenisch. "It puts all those claims of pluripotent adult stem cells into perspective"......... peanut butter program for starving children
Malnutrition affects 70 percent of all Malawian children with an estimated 13 percent of children dying from it before the age of five. Mark J. Manary, M.D., professor of pediatrics and an emergency pediatrician at St. Louis Children's Hospital, has spent several years researching the use of the enriched peanut-butter mixture, called Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) with small groups of severely and moderately malnourished young children in the sub-Saharan African country. The nutrient-rich mixture contains peanuts, powdered milk, oil, sugar, and added vitamins and minerals. Produced in a Malawian factory, the mixture is given to the mothers of the children to feed at home. While Manary's team had promising results in using the RUTF in a small setting, it hadn't used the therapy in large-scale operations because of limited human and material resources. The team embarked on a three-year study to implement the peanut-butter feeding program using the existing health-care system in Malawi. Results of the study appeared in the recent issue of Maternal and Child Nutrition......... Should doctors should participate in capital punishment?
None of these articles debate whether capital punishment is justifiable. Instead, the authors explore the current position of the American Medical Association (AMA), which prohibits doctor participation in legally authorized executions. Here are a few highlights of the arguments presented in these articles. In a commentary column, David Waisel, M.D., an anesthesiologist practicing at Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School, asserts that it is time to reassess the AMA's position on this issue and allow doctors to participate in state-mandated executions to help provide the condemned a more humane path to death. Dr. Waisel cites numerous details about the technical problems linked to lethal injection, the form of capital punishment most usually used in the United States today. Dr. Waisel reasons that doctors, especially anesthesiologists, possess the skills to administer the medications used in lethal injections in a manner that prevents undue suffering. "If state administration of capital punishment is legal and ongoing, humane methods of execution should be sought and applied. It is honorable for physicians to minimize the harm to these condemned individuals and organized medicine has an obligation to permit doctor participation in legal execution," he writes......... Old McDonald's has a hold on kids' taste buds
Asked to sample two identical foods from the fast-food giant McDonald's, children preferred the taste of the version branded with the restaurant's familiar "Golden Arches" to one extracted from unmarked paper packaging, say scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. The study shows that even young children are swayed by brand preferences. The results are likely to fuel more debate over a growing movement to restrict marketing to kids under 8 years old. "Kids don't just ask for food from McDonald's," said Thomas Robinson, MD, director of the Center for Healthy Weight at Packard Children's and associate professor of pediatrics and of medicine at the School of Medicine. "They actually think that the chicken nugget they think is from McDonald's tastes better than an identical, unbranded nugget". The degree of preference expressed by the children correlated with the number of television sets they had in their homes and the frequency with which they ate at McDonald's. Numerous studies have shown that young children are unable to understand that advertising, product placement and co-branding with popular toys are meant to get them to choose one product over another. For them, "truth in advertising" has a very literal meaning......... |
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