SumanSpeaks: Health:

2011-09-20T12:25:00.000-07:00

Scientists Disarm HIV in Step Towards Vaccine

Researchers have found a way to prevent HIV from damaging the immune system, in a new lab-based study published in the journal Blood. The research, led by scientists at Imperial College London and Johns Hopkins University, could have important implications for the development of HIV vaccines.
HIV/AIDS is the third biggest cause of death in low income countries, killing around 1.8 million people a year worldwide. An estimated 2.6 million people became infected with HIV in 2009.
The research shows that HIV is unable to damage the immune system if cholesterol is removed from the virus's membrane. Usually, when a person becomes infected, the body's innate immune response provides an immediate defence. However, some researchers believe that HIV causes the innate immune system to overreact and that this weakens the immune system's next line of defence, known as the adaptive immune response.
In the new study, the researchers removed cholesterol from the membrane surrounding the virus and found that this stopped HIV from triggering the innate immune response. This led to a stronger adaptive response, orchestrated by immune cells called T cells. These results support the idea that HIV overstimulates the innate response and that this weakens the immune system.
Dr Adriano Boasso, first author of the study, from Imperial College London, said: "HIV is very sneaky. It evades the host's defences by triggering overblown responses that damage the immune system. It's like revving your car in first gear for too long. Eventually the engine blows out.
"This may be one reason why developing a vaccine has proven so difficult. Most vaccines prime the adaptive response to recognise the invader, but it's hard for this to work if the virus triggers other mechanisms that weaken the adaptive response."
HIV takes its membrane from the cell that it infects. This membrane contains cholesterol, which helps to keep it fluid. The fluidity of the membrane enables the virus to interact with particular types of cell. Cholesterol in the cell membrane is not connected to cholesterol in the blood, which is a risk factor for heart disease but is not linked to HIV.
Normally, a subset of immune cells called plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) recognise HIV quickly and react by producing signalling molecules called interferons. These signals activate various processes which are initially helpful, but which damage the immune system if switched on for too long.
In collaboration with researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Milan and Innsbruck University, Dr Boasso's group at Imperial have discovered that if cholesterol is removed from HIV's envelope, it can no longer activate pDCs. As a consequence, T cells, which orchestrate the adaptive response, can fight the virus more effectively.
The researchers removed cholesterol using varying concentrations of beta-cyclodextrin (bCD), a derivative of starch that binds cholesterol. Using high levels of bCD they produced a virus with a large hole in its envelope. This permeabilised virus was not infectious and could not activate pDCs, but was still recognised by T cells. Dr Boasso and his colleagues are now looking to investigate whether this inactivated virus could be developed into a vaccine.
"It's like an army that has lost its weapons but still has flags, so another army can recognise it and attack it," he said.
The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health.

Courtesy: Science Daily

2011-09-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

Exercise produces crosstalk between bone, fat and Pancreatic Cells

Pancreas

Washington, Sept 20 : Exercise can produce healthy chatter between bones, fat and pancreatic cells in humans, thereby helping them in bringing out the best in each other, researchers say.
A small study of obese children enrolled in after-school exercise programs showed 12 weeks of vigorous exercise resulted in stronger bones, improved insulin sensitivity (reduced diabetes risk) and less of the most-deadly belly, or visceral, fat, Georgia Health Sciences University researchers report.
It also indicated that blood levels of the hormone osteocalcin, made by bone-producing osteoblasts, might be a good indicator of how things are going in all three areas, said Dr. Norman Pollock, bone biologist at GHSU's Georgia Prevention Institute.
Pollock's finding is some of the earliest human evidence of this crosstalk among the divergent cell types.
"The idea is that bones can possibly sense environmental stimuli such as being physically active or sedentary and dictate energy regulation accordingly," he said.
The reality is bones get bigger and stronger with exercise and they appear to be sharing the good news. "When osteocalcin is released in your blood, that hormone is talking back to the adipocytes, the cells that store fat, and the pancreatic cells that release insulin to improve energy metabolism."
Bone researchers like Pollock have previously believed bones were just listening.
The study was presented at the American society's annual September meeting in San Diego.

Courtesy: ANI

2011-09-19T17:06:00.000-07:00

Men Also Can be affected by Breast Cancer

Although beast cancer have affected most women, but men also can suffer from the disease. Male breast anatomy is no different with women. But men have more testosterone which can suppress breast development. Therefore, the breast tissue is dominated only by channels that do not develop and a small amount of fat
However, under certain conditions, male breasts can be enlarged due to the consumption of drugs such as antibiotics, marijuana, heroin, antidepressants, amphetamines, and AIDS therapy. Breast enlargement or gynecomastia may also occur when men experience hormonal imbalance and obesity.
Because of their organ are similar with women, breast cancer disease could also threaten a man. The high Estrogen levels are risk for developing breast cancer cells. Female sex hormone or estrogen stimulates breast cells and divide actively in large numbers. Many cells are damaged and this damage to genes that cause cancer. The initial symptoms of this disease usually are in the form of a lump or pain in the chest. “Breasts are harder and nipples become sore,” said plastic surgeon, Enrina Diah.
The man still lay with the disease. They often ignore the symptoms. Many men knew that they suffered from the disease in the elderly. According to the nonprofit Breastcancer.org, this disease attacked men less than one percent of all breast cancer diagnoses in women.
Mammography can be the initial technique for diagnosing breast cancer. If a mass is found in this examination, the doctor will perform a biopsy to take sample of the bump. Surgery or the lump removal is often being the priority choice to stop the spread locally in the nipple or skin.
Male breast cancer is extremely uncommon and just covers 1% of all breast cancers. For men, between the ages of 60 and 70 is the most common age to get this cancer type. It is About 1,990 new cases were detected in the US in 2008, and will lead to 480 deaths, as said by the American Cancer Society. And about 40,000 females die yearly from this dreadful cancer.
It is greatly important to know about the reason why men can grow male breast cancer. According to many researchers, besides inherited or genetic aspects, it also can be environmental problems that are possible to contribute in its development.
Recognized gene in the family or family history contributes about 5-10% of all breast cancer in men. In addition, exposure to radiation continually and high levels of estrogen for a long time in young age could contribute as well.
If it is diagnosed at an early stage, men identified with this cancer have a good opportunity for treatment. However, the symptoms should not be overlooked. The most common symptom of male breast cancer is a breast lump. For the most part of cases are made a diagnosis after the illness has got an advanced condition.
A number of the symptoms are as followed: a lump that is painless in nature; the skin covering the breast feels dimpling, redness, puckering, or scaling; discharge from the nipple; thickening of the breast tissue; and nipple may turn inward.
Male Breast Cancer Treatments:
Actually there are a number of measures that can be used for the treatments, and certain process used may rely on the stage or type of the cancer. Removing the breast with surgical method or mastectomy, then chemotherapy and radiation are methods of breast cancer treatment. However, the male breast cancer treatments must be discussed personally between the patient and doctor.

Courtesy: http://1st-in-breastcancer.com

2011-09-19T16:41:00.000-07:00

Association Found Between Stress and Breast Cancer Aggressiveness

We found that after diagnosis, black and Hispanic breast cancer patients reported higher levels of stress than whites, and that stress was associated with tumor aggressiveness," said Garth H. Rauscher, Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology in the division of epidemiology and biostatistics at the School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago.
Rauscher and colleagues studied patient-reported perceptions of fear, anxiety and isolation, together referred to as psychosocial stress, and associations with breast cancer aggressiveness. He cautioned that patients' stress levels were examined two to three months post-diagnosis.
The study included 989 breast cancer patients who were recently diagnosed; of those, 411 were non-Hispanic black, 397 were non-Hispanic white, and 181 were Hispanic. Results showed that psychosocial stress scores were higher for both black and Hispanic patients compared to white patients.
"Those who reported higher levels of stress tended to have more aggressive tumors. However, what we don't know is if we had asked them the same question a year or five years before diagnosis, would we have seen the same association between stress and breast cancer aggressiveness?
"It's not clear what's driving this association. It may be that the level of stress in these patients' lives influenced tumor aggressiveness. It may be that being diagnosed with a more aggressive tumor, with a more worrisome diagnosis and more stressful treatments, influenced reports of stress. It may be that both of these are playing a role in the association. We don't know the answer to that question," Rauscher said.

Courtesy: www.sciencedaily.com

2011-09-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

Birth Control Pills Affect Memory, Researchers Find

Women who use contraceptives like birth control pills experience memory changes, according to new UC Irvine research. Their ability to remember the gist of an emotional event improves, while women not using the contraceptives better retain details.

"What's most exciting about this study is that it shows the use of hormonal contraception alters memory," UCI graduate researcher Shawn Nielsen said. "There are only a handful of studies examining the cognitive effects of the pill, and more than 100 million women use it worldwide."
She stressed that the medications did not damage memory. "It's a change in the type of information they remember, not a deficit."
The change makes sense, said Nielsen, who works with neurobiologist Larry Cahill, because contraceptives suppress sex hormones such as estrogen and progesterone to prevent pregnancy. Those hormones were previously linked to women's strong "left brain" memory by Cahill's research group.
"This new finding may be surprising to some, but it's a natural outgrowth of the research we've been doing on sex differences for 10 years," Cahill said.
A neurobiologist not involved in the latest work agreed it was a logical and intriguing next step in the examination of memory differences between the sexes. Like any research, she added, it would be important to validate it further.
"Larry Cahill is already well known for his phenomenal research linking sex to memory," said Pauline Maki, professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who specializes in memory and brain functioning. "The fact that women on oral contraceptives remembered different elements of a story tells us that estrogen has an influence on how women remember emotional events."
In the study, groups of women either on the contraceptive or experiencing natural hormonal cycles were shown photographs of a mother, her son, and a car accident. The audio narrative differed; some in each group were told the car had hit a curb, while others were told the car had hit the boy and critically injured him.
One week later, all were given surprise tests about what they recalled. Women using hormonal contraceptives for as little as one month remembered more clearly the main steps in the traumatic event -- that there had been an accident, that the boy had been rushed to the hospital, that doctors worked to save his life and successfully reattached both his feet, for instance.
Women not using them remembered more details, such as a fire hydrant next to the car.
Nielsen and fellow researcher Nicole Ertman agreed the findings could help lead to fuller answers about why women experience post traumatic stress syndrome more frequently than men, and how men remember differently than women. Men typically rely more on right-hemisphere brain activity to encode memory. They retain the gist of things better than details. Women on the pill, who have lower levels of hormones associated with female reproduction, may remember emotional events similarly to men. Nielsen plans to do her doctoral thesis on whether hormones affect the retention of details.
The work, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, appears in the September issue of the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. Additional authors include Cahill and UCI undergraduate research assistant Yasmeen Lakhani.

Courtesy: www.sciencedaily.com

2011-01-20T19:44:00.000-08:00

The more sex partners you have, the more fertile your offspring will be

In a new study, scientists at the Centre for Evolutionary Biology, University of Western Australia, have found being polygamous could be more than being monogamous, when it comes to fertilisation.

The team discovered that sperm from polygamous mice are better competitors in the race for fertilisation.

Dr Renee Firman and her team attempted to show that sperm from rival males compete to fertilise females

and that, over several generations, polygamy can select for mice who produce more sperm, with stronger motility, than monogamous males.

The study found that while 53 percent of the litters had mixed paternity, 33 per cent of litters were fathered by the polygamous males compared to 14 per cent by monogamous males.

And whether they were mated first or second, polygamous males retained this advantage, showing that the increased fitness applies to both offensive and defensive competition.

The study seems to debunk previously held theories about the merits of monogamy versus polygamy.

The study appears in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

2009-07-17T07:17:00.000-07:00

Twelve things one should avoid doing when it comes to sex

Washington: While much has been written about how to boost action in the bedroom, there are things one should never do when it comes to sex.
In her new book, titled 'Sex with Your Ex & 69 Other Things You Should Never Do Again... Plus a Few That You Should', author Dr. Yvonne K. Fulbright has mentioned things that one should strictly refrain to keep a healthy sex life, reports Fox News. And, according to her, the don'ts of sex are:
1. Never have a 'type' of orgasm - have your orgasm
Instead of trying to have a breast, clitoral, G-spot or blended orgasm, forget the labels and have yours. Don't worry about having a specific type, but focus on pampering your whole body, attending to any of its hot spots. This beckons your orgasm by not being so goal-oriented.
2. Never talk about past sexual relationships
Don't invite distress into your current romance by reminiscing about the good times or bad times you've had with other jerks, hotties, players or loves. Focus on the present and making it the most memorable.
3. Never let sex get routine
While it's wise to get in a routine to make sure sex happens, don't let the sex itself get routine. This only invites monotony and the mundane. To keep things hot, be sure to keep things new and fresh.
4. Never just lie there
A big complaint you'll hear from men and women alike is that their lover didn't do much of anything during sex. Men have grumbled that she doesn't move during lovemaking. Most people like an active lover - one responsive to the action, which shows that they're into the moment.
5. Never move in together (or get married) a second time
Things didn't work out the first time for good reason. Maybe you love each other, but if you're incompatible or fight too much, it's better to cut your losses and move on to a situation that does work.
6. Never drink cheap beer and stay overnight
Don't set yourself up to be someone's gassy guest. Get the walk of shame over with sooner rather than later, lest you stink up someone's bedroom and bathroom. This is not the kind of lasting impression most seducers are after.
7. Never drink more than 1-2 glasses of alcohol
While spirits can do a lot for one's spirits, sexual self-confidence, and libido, keep your booze to a minimum. More than a couple of glasses can cause erectile difficulties in men and vaginal dryness in women. Being buzzed or drunk can also lead to high-risk sexual behaviours.
8. Never compare yourself to Victoria's Secret or Abercrombie models.
It's no good to think that these real-life moving mannequins are the standard by which you should judge your face or form. You've got your own unique look and that can be super sexy, depending on how you wear it. That starts with a smile and indicating to others that you feel quite good about yourself.
9. Never totally trust magazine sex tips
Don't mindlessly copy magazine sex tips. Think about the suggestion first. Is it hot or completely ridiculous? Will it work for your sexual relationship? Or does it have the potential to sabotage your sex life?
10. Never douche before sex
Despite popular belief, douching is not a safe or healthy way to clean the vagina. Doing so upsets the vagina's delicate chemical balance, increasing your chance of developing pelvic inflammatory disease or other health problems. Let the vagina naturally cleanse itself and worry about other much sexier activities pre-sex.
11. Never attempt tricky Kama Sutra positions if you are not flexible.
Stick with pursuing sexual positions that are comfortable for you.
12. Never listen to somebody slamming your sexy self.

Is a guy suggesting that you get breast implants? Is some gal making fun of your penis size? In either case, ignore the criticism, or in the very least, fire back.

2009-06-13T11:23:00.000-07:00

Testosterone replacement improves men's liver function

Washington: A new study suggests that testosterone replacement for men with low levels of the hormone greatly improves their fatty liver disease as well as their risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
"Physicians often are reluctant to prescribe testosterone for conditions not related to sexual function. However, our study shows that testosterone has a much wider therapeutic role than just for improving sexual desire and erectile function," said the study's co-author, Dr. Farid Saad, of Berlin-headquartered Bayer Schering Pharma.
During a presentation at The Endocrine Society's 91st Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., it was revealed that the study included 122 testosterone-deficient men, aged 36 to 69 years.
The researchers found that restoring testosterone to normal levels led to major and progressive improvements in many features of the metabolic syndrome over the 2 years of treatment.
They said that, particularly, the men's weight, waist line and body mass index continued to decline over the full study period.
According to them, the other metabolic risk factors also significantly improved during the first year of testosterone treatment.
Of the 47 men who met the criteria for a diagnosis of the metabolic syndrome at the beginning of the study, 36 no longer had the diagnosis after 2 years of treatment, the authors reported.
Furthermore, liver function significantly improved during the first 12 to 18 months of therapy and stabilized for the remainder of the study period.
The researchers said that the treatment also greatly decreased blood levels of C-reactive protein, a measure of inflammation that is linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
"We conclude that testosterone therapy in men with testosterone deficiency can largely improve or even remedy the metabolic syndrome, which will most likely decrease their risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease," Saad said. [From Internet]

2009-05-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

'Pullout method' nearly as effective as using condoms: Study

Washington: A new study has indicated that the old 'pullout method', pulling out just before ejaculation, works nearly as well as condoms in preventing pregnancies.
The study, titled "Better than nothing or savvy risk reduction practice? The importance of withdrawal," appears in the June edition of the journal Contraception, reports CBS News.
The authors find:
"If the male partner withdraws before ejaculation every time a couple has vaginal intercourse, about 4 percent of couples will become pregnant over the course of a year.
"However, more realistic estimates of typical use indicate that about 18 percent of couples will become pregnant in a year using withdrawal.
"These rates are only slightly less effective than male condoms, which have perfect- and typical-use failure rates of 2 percent and 17 percent, respectively."

2009-04-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

Binge drinking harms teens' brains

Washington: In a study on adolescent binge drinkers, scientists have found that even rare consumption of large doses of alcohol during youth may compromise the coherence of the brain's white matter fibre.
Such incoherence has been known in adult alcoholics, but researchers were unaware as to when during the course of drinking white matter abnormalities become apparent.
"Because the brain is still developing during adolescence, there has been concern that it may be more vulnerable to the effects of neurotoxins, such as high doses of alcohol," said Susan F. Tapert, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.
The study's corresponding author has claimed that animal studies have suggested this to be true.
Duncan Clark, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said that "'white matter'" refers to brain areas that appear light in colour due to being primarily lipids."
He added: "White matter is composed of bundles of myelinated axons connecting grey matter areas of the brain, and has been shown to continue to develop throughout adolescence. These systematic changes in white matter organization reflect not only maturation of interconnections but continued maturation of the brain as a whole."
"White matter, and its integrity, are essential to the efficient relay of information within the brain. Indicators of white matter integrity are linked to performance on a range of cognitive tests, including measures of reading, copying complex figures, and speeded coding of information. Abnormalities in white matter health could relate to compromised ability to consider multiple sources of information when making decisions, and to emotional functioning," said Tapert.
For the study, the researchers enrolled 28 teens and used diffusion tensor imaging - an MRI technique sensitive to the random movement of water in cells of a target tissue - to examine fractional anisotropy, a measure of directional coherence of white matter tracts, in them.
It was found that out of the 28 adoloscents, 14 (12 males, 2 females) had and 14 (12 males, 2 females) did not have histories of binge drinking.
No participants had a history of an alcohol use disorder-drinkers were matched to non-drinkers on age, gender and education.
"This study showed that adolescents with histories of binge drinking episodes have lower coherence of white matter fibers, suggesting poorer white matter health, in a variety of brain regions. Frankly, I was surprised we found this, because the drinkers did not meet criteria for alcohol abuse or dependence," said Tapert.
Clark said: "These findings add to a growing literature indicating that adolescent alcohol involvement is associated with specific brain characteristics. One of the advantages of this study was that the adolescents with binge drinking did not have major mental disorders. Adolescents with alcohol-use disorders often have other problems. This suggests that the observed brain characteristics may be associated with alcohol involvement specifically rather than other complications."
"These findings indicate that adolescents who engage in binge drinking show low levels of brain organization," he said. "This characteristic could be a risk factor for accelerated alcohol use or an effect of alcohol. We need to know more about how alcohol influences adolescent brain development, [given] that alcohol may disrupt brain development."
The results of the study will be published in the July issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View

2009-03-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

Diet high in fruits, veggies may protect against cancer

London: A diet rich in fruit and vegetables may protect against cancer and heart disease, claim researchers.
Fruit and vegetables contain high levels of salicylates, which are also the active anti-inflammatory ingredient of aspirin.
According to a review of the possible association of cancer prevention with this substance found in aspirin, published in the medical journal The Lancet, many herbs and spices are also especially rich in salicylates, reports The Independent.
Professor Peter Elwood, of the University of Cardiff's school of medicine, who led the review, said: "I think this is a very exciting area that should be researched in considerable depth.
"Most medical authorities have said for 20 years that it is the antioxidants in fruit and vegetables that account for their protective effects. It leads us to wonder if the beneficial effects of fruit and vegetables are because of the salicylates they contain," he said.
Salicylates were first identified in strawberries at the beginning of the 20th century, and they have been found to occur naturally in a wide range of plants.

2009-03-22T04:16:00.000-07:00

Daily Drinking Poses Biggest Threat to Liver

London: Daily drinking, rather than binge drinking, poses the biggest threat to the liver, according to a new study.
University of Southampton researchers attributed increases in liver-related deaths to daily or near daily heavy drinking, not episodic or binge drinking, a pattern discernable at an early age.
In the study of alcohol dependency of 234 people with liver disease - 106 had alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) and 80 of them had evidence of cirrhosis or progressive fibrosis - the team found that 71 percent of ALD patients drank on a daily basis.
Conversely, patients with other forms of liver disease tended to drink sparingly with only 10 people (eight percent) drinking moderately on four or more days each week.
The study also explored lifetime drinking histories of 105 people and found that ALD patients started drinking at a significantly younger age (15 years) than other subjects and had significantly more drinking days and units than non-ALD patients from the age of 20 onwards, said a Southampton release.
Senior lecturer and consultant hepatologist Nick Sheron at Southamption, who led the study, said, "If we are to turn the tide of liver deaths. . . which means tackling cheap booze and unregulated marketing - we need to find a way to identify those people who are most likely to develop alcohol-related illnesses at a much earlier stage."
These findings were published in Addiction.

2009-03-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

Surgeons announce world's first successful transvaginal nephrectomy using intra-umbilical Tri-port

Washington: Doctors at Instituto Medico La Floresta in Caracas, Venezuela, have successfully performed the world's first live human transvaginal nephrectomy using the Tri-port multi-channel port supplied by Advanced Surgical Concepts Ltd.
Dr. Rene Sotelo, the leader of the team of surgeons who carried out the operation, has revealed that the majority of the intra-operative endoscopic visualization and tissue mobilization for the natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) nephrectomy was performed transvaginally, with observation and occasional assistance from an intra-umbilical Tri-port.
According to him, no extra-umbilical incisions were needed.
The patient on whom the operation was performed was a 65 year-old woman with a 6 cm left kidney tumour, and a prior history of hysterectomy.
Sotelo revealed that it took 220 minutes for the surgery to complete, and that patient thereafter had to stay in the hospital for two days.
He said that the patient did not experience any complications, and was discharged with no visible abdominal scar.
Sotelo says: "The procedure went well and has great potential for the future."

2009-03-05T18:26:00.000-08:00

Sleeping during the day ups mortality risk in older women

Washington: A new study has found that older women who take daily naps are at a greater risk of dying.
Researchers have found that women who reported napping daily were 44 percent more likely to die from any cause while 58 percent more likely to die from cardiovascular causes
Also 59 percent were more likely to die from non-cardiovascular, non-cancer causes.
The study involving 8,101 Caucasian women aged 69 and older that showed that those who reported sleeping between 9-10 hours per 24-hour period also had a greater risk of mortality compared to those who slept between 8-9 hours.
The association was strongest for cardiovascular-related mortality.
However, researchers urge that the results should not be interpreted to mean that napping causes poor health outcomes, and it is not recommended that older adults avoid napping.
Napping and long sleep duration may be caused by sleepiness due to underlying sleep disorders or other medical conditions.
"Since excessive sleep suggests that night time sleep is disrupted, interventions to treat sleep disorders and improve sleep quality in older women may reduce mortality risk," said Katie L. Stone, co-author of the study.
However, further studies are required to explain why napping is linked with increased risk of death.
This study is published in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

2009-03-01T02:52:00.000-08:00

HIV beats our immune system by 'innovative mutations'

Washington : The human immunodeficiency virus or HIV adapts so well to the body's immune system that any successful AIDS vaccine must keep pace with its ever mutating profile, researchers say.
A new study, based on a survey of 2,800 HIV patients on five continents, better describes HIV's ability to adapt by spelling out at least 14 different "escape mutations" that keeps the virus alive after it interacts genetically with immunity molecules that attack HIV.
"Key genetic regions of HIV introduced into individuals of different ancestry in different places have been evolving to a greater or lesser degree according to inherited factors controlling immune response," said Richard Kaslow.
Kaslow is a professor at the University Kasof Alabama-Birmingham (UAB) School of Public Health and study co-author. "If HIV adapts differently in genetically distinct hosts, the challenge ahead in vaccine design is formidable," he said.
Researchers looked at different DNA variations of HIV in conjunction with different forms of human leukocyte antigen (HLA), a group of molecules that orchestrate immune response.
Normally HLA molecules present fragments of HIV proteins on the surface of infected cells to the immune system, acting as a signal for HIV destruction.
The Nature study shows just how efficiently the virus evolves escape mutations that help infected cells avoid destruction, Kaslow said, according to an UAB release.
The future of vaccine exploration will need to address the escape mutation capacity and identify new drug targets that work against an ever-changing HIV immunology landscape, said Philip Goulder, professor of immunology at the University of Oxford and the study's senior author.
These findings were published online in Nature......

2009-02-20T21:20:00.000-08:00

Violent video games, movies make people insensitive towards other's sufferings

Washington: People who play violent video games become insensitive towards the pain and suffering of others, according to new research.
Detailing the findings of two studies conducted by University of Michigan professor Brad Bushman, and Iowa State University professor Craig Anderson, the research fill an important gap in the literature on the impact of violent media.
Past studies demonstrated that exposure to violent media produces physiological desensitisation-lowering heart rate and skin conductance-when viewing scenes of actual violence a short time later.
However, the current research has shown that violent media also affects a person's willingness to offer help to an injured person, both in a field study as well as in a laboratory experiment.
"These studies clearly show that violent media exposure can reduce helping behavior," said Bushman, professor of psychology and communications and a research professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research.
He added: "People exposed to media violence are less helpful to others in need because they are 'comfortably numb' to the pain and suffering of others, to borrow the title of a Pink Floyd song."
In a study of 320 college students, the participants played either a violent or a non-violent video game for approximately 20 minutes, and then after a few minutes overheard a staged fight that ended with the "victim" sustaining a sprained ankle and groaning in pain.
It was found that those who had played a violent game took significantly longer to help the victim than those who played a non-violent game-73 seconds compared to 16 seconds.
Also, people who had played a violent game were less likely to notice and report the fight. And in case they did report it, they judged it to be less serious than did those who had played a non-violent game.
In the second study, the participants were 162 adult moviegoers. The researchers staged a minor emergency outside the theatre in which a young woman with a bandaged ankle and crutches "accidentally" dropped her crutches and struggled to retrieve them.
Participants who had just watched a violent movie took over 26 percent longer to help than either people going into the theatre or people who had just watched a non-violent movie.
The findings of the study have been published in the journal Psychological Science.

2009-02-13T14:20:00.000-08:00

Mending broken hearts with skin stem cells possible

Washington: After turning skin cells back into stem cells successfully, scientists now have proof that they can indeed form specialised cells making up heart muscle.
University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-M) School of Medicine and Public Health professor Tim Kamp and his research team showed that they were able to grow working heart-muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) from induced pluripotent stem cells, known as iPS cells.
The heart cells were originally reprogrammed from human skin cells by James Thomson and Junying Yu, two of Kamp's co-authors on the study.
"It's an encouraging result because it shows that those cells will be useful for research and may someday be useful in therapy," said Kamp, who is also a cardiologist with UW Health.
"If you have a heart failure patient who is in dire straits - and there are never enough donor hearts for transplantation, we may be able to make heart cells from the patient's skin cells, and use them to repair heart muscle. That's pretty exciting."
It's also a few more discoveries away. The researchers used a virus to insert four transcription factors into the genes of the skin cell, reprogramming it back to an embryo-like state.
Because the virus is taken up by the new cell, there is a possibility it eventually could cause cancer, so therapies from reprogrammed skin cells will likely have to wait until new methods are perfected.
Still, the iPS cardiomyocytes should prove immediately useful for research. And Kamp said the speed at which knowledge is progressing is very encouraging.
Jianhua Zhang, study co-author noted that it took 17 years, from when a mouse embryonic stem cells were first created in 1981, to 1998, when Thomson created the first human embryonic stem cells, said a UW-M release.
In contrast, the first mouse iPS stem cells were created in 2006, and Thomson and Yu published their paper in November 2007, announcing the creation of human iPS stem cells that began as a skin cells.
The study was published online Thursday in Circulation Research, a journal of the American Heart Association.

2009-02-08T11:18:00.000-08:00

Potential new treatment for prostate cancer developed

Washington: Scientists at Melbourne's Burnet Institute claim to have developed a potential new treatment for prostate cancer patients.
The team led by Associate Professor Pei Xiang Xing, head of the Burnet Institute's Cancer Immunotherapy, has produced a monoclonal antibody to a unique tumour marker for the treatment of prostate cancer.
The monoclonal antibody is directed at cancer-producing cells carrying the specific molecule known as PIM-1, which is responsible for cell survival, proliferation and differentiation.
Over-expression of PIM-1 plays a critical role in the development, progression and metastasis of prostate cancer and other cancers such as leukaemia.
The researchers found that the monoclonal antibody significantly inhibited cancer cell growth when used in laboratory models of prostate cancer.
During the study, the team demonstrated that the monoclonal antibody binds to PIM-1 present in cancer cells and creates a chain of events leading to the death of the cells.
Moreover, the therapeutic effect was improved by combination of the antibody with other drugs currently used to treat prostate cancer.
"This is an exciting step in the development of new treatments for patients with prostate cancer with very promising laboratory-test results," said Professor Crabb.

2009-02-06T16:43:00.000-08:00

Three simple steps to treat erectile dysfunction

Washington: Is erectile dysfunction taking the joy out of your sex life? Take heart, for Temple urologist Jack Mydlo has offered three simple steps to get back the pleasure - cut back on fat, control cholesterol, and kick the butt.
Men often rely on the "little blue pill" to score in the bedroom but following these three simple steps can improve their performance without a visit to the doctor or a drugstore.
After diabetes and high blood pressure the next culprit in the line for erectile dysfunction (ED) is cigarette.
"The number one thing we can do to stop erectile dysfunction is to stop smoking. It's the number one environmental cause of ED in our society," said Mydlo.
It restricts the blood flow to the penis. He said it takes 12 to 24 months for better function once you quit the habit.
Men with high cholesterol are at two fold risk of developing ED.
"Men with a cholesterol level of 240 or higher have almost a twofold increase of ED compared to a man who has lower cholesterol numbers," said Mydlo.
High levels of cholesterol lead to plaque buildup in tubes (in the penis and arteries, which can greatly reduce blood flow.
Obesity is to blame not only for men with self-esteem issues involving their appearance, but also their performance.
"Adipose tissue in body fat converts testosterone to estrogen, and lower levels of testosterone can make it difficult for a man to achieve an erection, no matter how many pills they take," said Mydlo.
Losing weight will improve the testosterone to estrogen ratio, which may improve sex drive, or libido, as well as erections. It also decreases cholesterol, which will help improve blood flow.

2009-01-31T03:31:00.000-08:00

A cold as dangerous as a drink when it comes to driving

London : Having a bad cold or the flu can be as bad for driving as a couple of whiskies, a new reports has revealed.
According to the study, symptoms such as a stuffed-up head, grogginess and sneezing have the same impact on people's abilities as a level of alcohol close to or at the drink-drive limit.
In the research, for Lloyds TSB Insurance, one hundred drivers with a range of conditions including colds, stress and headaches and 50 who were healthy were put through a hazard simulator test, reports the BBC.
From the analysis, the study revealed that drivers with colds scored, on average, 11 percent worse - equivalent to the effect of a double whisky.
The study, carried out by PCP research agency, looked at 60 people with colds and flu as well as 40 with other conditions including premenstrual syndrome.
They said that applying the 11percent effect to reaction times would add 1m (3.3ft) to stopping distance if travelling at 30mph (48km/h) - on top of a normal distance of 12m (40ft).
It would add 2.3m (7.5ft) onto the normal stopping distance of 96m (315ft) if travelling at 70mph (113km/h).

2009-01-28T13:59:00.000-08:00

Watching TV every day can damage health

London: Regular television watching could harm your health, a British report has suggested.
According to the British Social Attitudes report, only 43 per cent of those who said they were regular viewers claimed their health was excellent or very good.
In stark contrast, 59 per cent of 4,000 respondents who said they rarely watched TV rated themselves as healthy.
Also, only 54 per cent of daily TV viewers said they had joined a social or cultural group in the past year, compared with 66 per cent of those who watch less frequently.
In total, 91 per cent of the total adults questioned for comprehensive study admitted to switching their TV set on several times a week, with 74 per cent watching it every day, reports the Telegraph.
Alison Park, co-author of the study, said: "These findings don't prove that a particular leisure activity causes ill-health or promotes civic engagement. But it is clear that our leisure choices are linked to our physical and mental wellbeing, as well as to the extent to which we are connected to others through things like voluntary groups.
"And it is notable that one leisure activity - watching TV - is negatively linked to many of these things. Efforts to promote different ways of spending our free time could well be beneficial."

2009-01-25T14:34:00.000-08:00

Alcohol gives men's sexual performance a boost

Melbourne: Australian scientists have given men the perfect reason to drink: alcohol improves performance in the bedroom.
According to News.com.au, the boffins believe that the latest finding will reassure blokes who worry about the affects of drinking on their sex lives.
Until now, it has been widely believed that boozing could cause erectile dysfunction, commonly called "brewer's droop''.
However, the latest study of 1580 Australian men has shown the reverse may be true - since drinkers reporting as many as 30 per cent fewer problems than teetotalers.
Infact, binge drinkers had lower rates of erectile dysfunction than those who never drank, although this type of drinking can cause other health problems.
According to lead researcher Dr Kew-Kim Chew, of Western Australia's Keogh Institute for Medical Research, who told The Sunday Telegraph, men who drank within safe guidelines appeared to have the best erectile function.
"We found that, compared to those who have never touched alcohol, many people do benefit from some alcohol, including some people who drink outside the guidelines,'' Dr Chew said.

2009-01-25T03:25:00.000-08:00

Coming soon, a Contraceptive Pill to "Ease Women's Pain"

Melbourne: A new contraceptive pill is on its way, which will bring relief to women who suffer from a loss of libido and other symptoms when taking the Pill.
The Royal Hospital for Women in Randwick will trial the oral contraceptive, which uses a natural form of the female hormone oestrogen, called estradil, reports News.com.au
It comes with international research finding that hormones used in traditional contraceptives have a wide range of side-effects on women, including the loss of libido, aches and pains and mood swings, The Daily Telegraph reports.
"There is no reason why women have to have a seven-day pill-free interval," sexual health physician Terri Foran said.
"A lot of women suffer these symptoms and believe they are normal or its PMT, but they don't have to (suffer).
"We believe it will work but before we put our hand on our heart and declare that, we have to test its effectiveness," the expert added.
The pill shortens the hormone-free interval from seven to two days and aims to end the withdrawals.
Dr Foran said that by reducing the pill-free interval to two days, the body would not have enough time to experience the "withdrawals".
"The difference with this pill to others on the market is that it alters the amount of hormone given and alters when it is given in the cycle," she said.
"There is a suggestion that if you can manipulate that pill-free week, you might be able to lessen the symptoms. The shortened break might well mean they don't get the symptoms," she added.

2009-01-24T10:32:00.000-08:00

Drinking Three Cups of Tea a day can cut Breast Cancer Risk by a Third

London: Consuming three cups of tea a day can reduce the risk of breast cancer by more than a third, a new research led by an Indian-origin scientist has revealed.
To reach the conclusion, a team of US researchers led by Dr Nagi Kumar at the Moffitt Cancer Centre in Tampa, Florida, studied 5,000 women aged between 20 and 74 who had been treated for breast cancer.
The boffins compared medical histories and lifestyles with a similar group of women free of breast cancer, reports the Telegraph.
From the analysis, they also found even greater benefits when it came to "lobular" breast cancer, with tea reducing the risk by 66 per cent.
Lobular cancer, where cancer affects the lobes deep inside breast tissue, accounts for one in ten cases of the disease.
The researchers said: "Regular tea consumption, particularly at moderately high levels, might reduce breast cancer risk in younger women.
"Given that tea is the most common beverage consumed in the world, it makes an attractive candidate for breast cancer prevention."

2009-01-23T09:19:00.001-08:00

Smoking Linked to Most Male Cancer Deaths

Washington: Smoking led to 70 per cent of the cancer deaths among Massachusetts men in 2003, much higher than the previous estimate of 34 per cent in 2001, according to a recent study.
Bruce Leistikow, a UC Davis associate adjunct professor of public health sciences, says that this finding strengthens the association between tobacco smoke and cancer deaths.
In a report on his epidemiological analysis, published online in BMC Cancer, the researcher writes that the study's findings suggest that increased tobacco control efforts could save more lives than previously estimated.
"This study provides support for the growing understanding among researchers that smoking is a cause of many more cancer deaths besides lung cancer. The full impacts of tobacco smoke, including second-hand smoke, have been overlooked in the rush to examine such potential cancer factors as diet and environmental contaminants. As it turns out, much of the answer was probably smoking all along," said Leistikow.
Leistikow used National Center for Health Statistics data to compare death rates from lung cancer to death rates from all other cancers among Massachusetts males.
The assessment revealed that the two rates changed in tandem year-by-year from 1979 to 2003, with the strongest association among males aged 30-to-74 years.
Smoking is known to be behind most of the lung cancer cases, and the study authors concluded that the very close relationship over 25 years between lung and other cancer death rates suggested a single cause for both: tobacco smoke.
Leistikow, whose research is dedicated to uncovering the causes of premature mortality, said: "The fact that lung and non-lung cancer death rates are almost perfectly associated means that smokers and nonsmokers alike should do what they can to avoid tobacco smoke. It also suggests that increased attention should be paid to smoking prevention in health care reforms and health promotion campaigns."

2009-01-20T18:24:00.000-08:00

Tiny 'robotic submarine' in blood to help operate on stroke victims

Washington: Researchers from Monash University have developed micro-motors that can drive around the body and even into the delicate structures of the brains of stroke victims to carry out potentially life-saving operations.
Lead researcher James Friend explained, motors provide the key to making robots small enough for injection into the bloodstream.
With the right sensor equipment attached to the microbot motor, the surgeon's view of, for example, a patient's troubled artery can be enhanced and the ability to work remotely also increases the surgeon's dexterity.
"If you pick up an electronics catalogue, you'll find all sorts of sensors, LEDs, memory chips, etc that represent the latest in technology and miniaturisation," said Friend.
"Take a look however at the motors and there are few changes from the motors available in the 1950s," he added.
Methods of minimally invasive surgery, such as keyhole surgery and a range of operations that utilise catheters, tubes inserted into body cavities to allow surgical manoeuvrability, are preferred by surgeons and patients because of the damage avoided when contrasted against cut and sew operations.
Serious damage during minimally invasive surgery is however not always avoidable and surgeons are often limited by, for example, the width of a catheter tube which, in serious cases, can fatally puncture narrow arteries.
The microbot motors just 250 micrometres, a quarter of a millimetre wide have so far succeeded in swimming through human blood in the laboratory, but scientists hope it could also power its way up the narrow arteries of the brain.
"Opportunities for micro-motors abound in fields as diverse as biomedicine, electronics, aeronautics and the automotive industry," said Friend.
"Responses to this need have been just as diverse, with designs developed using electromagnetic, electrostatic, thermal and osmotic driving forces," he added.
The study is published in Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering

2009-01-20T18:20:00.000-08:00

Brain stimulation via mild electrical current may enhance motor skill learning

Washington: A new study conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) suggests that mild electrical current may prove very helpful in rehabilitating people with traumatic brain injury, stroke, and other conditions.
Revealing the observations made during the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers said that people who had received a mild electrical current to a motor control area of the brain were significantly better able to learn and perform a complex motor task than those in control groups.
Motor skills, which are used for activities from typing and driving, to sports, require practice and learning over a prolonged period of time.
During practice, the brain encodes information about how to perform the task, but even during periods of rest, the brain is still at work strengthening the memory of doing the task. This process is known as consolidation.
Working in collaboration with scientists from Columbia University in New York City and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the research team from NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) presented the study subjects with a novel and challenging motor task, which involved squeezing a "joy stick" to play a targeting game on a computer monitor, which they practiced over five consecutive days.
One group received 20 minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) while practising, but the other group received only a 30 second "sham" stimulation.
The stimulation process involved mild electrical stimulation applied through surface electrodes on the head, and worked by modulating the activity of cells in the brain's outermost layers.
Dr. Leonardo Cohen, of NINDS Human Cortical Physiology and Stroke Neurorehabilitation Section, revealed that his team directedt DCS to the primary motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls movement.
He and his colleagues observed that over the five-day training period, the skill of the tDCS group improved significantly more than those of the control group, apparently through an effect on consolidation.
During the three-month follow-up period, the two groups forgot the skill at about the same rate, but the tDCS group continued to perform better because they had learnt the skill better by the end of training.

2009-01-20T18:15:00.000-08:00

Hope for Women who Suffer Infertility, Pelvic Pain during Sex

Washington: There is some hope for women who suffer from endometriosis, infertility and pelvic pain during sex, a chronic disease that affects five to 10 million women in the US.
Serdar Bulun, professor of gynaecology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine and colleagues have discovered key epigenetic abnormalities in endometriosis and identified existing chemicals that now help treat it.
Epigenetics is the study of the processes involved in the genetic development of an organism, especially the activation and deactivation of genes.
One of the abnormalities is the presence of enzyme aromatase - which produces oestrogen - in endometriosis, the diseased tissue that exists on pelvic organs and mimics the uterine lining. Normal endometrium, located in the uterine cavity, does not contain aromatase.
Consequently, women with endometriosis have excessive oestrogen in this abnormal tissue found on surfaces of pelvic organs such as the ovaries.
Bulun found the protein SF1 that produces aromatase, which is supposed to be shut down, is active in endometriosis.
"Oestrogen is like fuel for fire in endometriosis," Bulun said. "It triggers the endometriosis and makes it grow fast."
As a result of the aromatase finding, Bulun launched clinical trials in 2004 and 2005 testing aromatase inhibitors - currently used in breast cancer treatment - for women with endometriosis.
The drug blocks oestrogen formation and secondarily improves progesterone responsiveness. "We came up with a new treatment of choice for post-menopausal women with endometriosis," Bulun said.
Moreover, treatment with an aromatase inhibitor is a very good option for premenopausal women with endometriosis not responding to existing treatments, he noted.
Bulun believes that these abnormalities result from epigenetic defects that occur very early on during embryonic development and may be the result of early exposure to environmental toxins, said a Northwestern release.
These findings were published in the January issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

2009-01-20T18:03:00.000-08:00

Why some drinkers, smokers die young and others don't

London: Two newly identified genes hold the key to why some people who indulge in smoking and boozing die young, while others continue into old age.
While smoking and drinking have been linked to many types of cancer, still some people appear to be more prone to their effects than others, and scientists have attributed this tendency to genetics.
Scientists found that the genes if present in a human being, put their carriers at an increased risk of developing five different types of cancer- skin, lung, bladder, prostate and cervical cancer.
The researchers can use the findings to identify people who are at highest risk of suffering from the potentially deadly conditions because of a combination of genetics and their unhealthy lifestyle.
According to researchers almost 25 percent around of the population have the highest risk that their unhealthy lifestyle would give them cancer.
The researchers also estimated that another quarter of the population have the lowest risk, because they do not carry these genes, reports The Telegraph.
And these people could be the ones who remain hale and hearty into old age despite smoking, drinking, using sunbeds of having a poor diet.
But, till date scientists did not know by how much these two genes could increase the overall lifetime chance of developing a form of the disease.
Tim Bishop, professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of Leeds, and one of the co-authors of the paper, said that cancer was often caused by a "complex" interplay between genetic and environmental factors.
He also said that the newly identified genes might explain their relationship.
In the study, the researchers managed to isolate the genes by looking at the genetic make up of more than 33,000 cancer survivors and another 45,000 people who had never suffered from the disease.
Later, they compared the genes against their carrier's lifestyle and history of the disease.
While the genes were found to increase the chance of suffering from five types of cancer, they were not linked to an increased risk of another nine cancers for which the researchers could test, including breast cancer.
The study was published in the journal Nature Genetics.

2009-01-17T21:35:00.000-08:00

Six most Common Sex myths Busted

Washington: Despite creating a lot of awareness people are still sexually misinformed, and now a sex educator and relationship expert has debunked some of the myths surrounding the clandestine aspect of an individual's life.
Dr. Yvonne K. Fulbright, the founder of Sexuality Source Inc, has shed light on six common sex myths, reports Fox News
First on his list was the myth that Viagra is 100 percent effective, regarding which Fulbright wrote that men bearing this notion needed to think again because a desire component is needed for males to become sexually aroused and attain erection.
The second myth debunked in the report was that the presence of a hymen is an indicator that a female is a virgin, and it is broken she has intercourse.
The expert said that this might not happen with every girl, and since girls are born with hymens of various sizes and openings, some might appear to have no hymen at all.
Fulbright also said that some girls might have their hymen stretched from activities like bicycling or horseback riding.
The next myth to have been debunked was the notion that withdrawal is the best method of birth control, regarding which Fulbright said that pregnancy could occur any time unprotected sex was had, whether or not a male had climaxed.
Thus, according to the expert, withdrawal is not recommended as a form of birth control, especially for males who are sexually inexperienced.
Another misconception on the list was that oral sex does not put people at risk for sexually transmitted diseases.
As regards thoughts that women can't get pregnant if you aren't ovulating, the expert said that it was not true.
Lastly, Fulbright debunked the myth that contraceptive pills protects against STDs. The expert said that such pills provide protection only from pregnancy, adding that it's the condom that can protect against STDs when sexually active.
Six common sex myths are:
1. Myth: Viagra is 100 Percent Effective2. Myth: A Virgin's Hymen Always Breaks3. Myth: Withdrawal = Good Birth Control4. Myth: Oral Sex is Safe Sex5. Myth: You Can't Get Pregnant if You Aren't Ovulating6. Myth: The Pill Protects Against STDs

2009-01-17T13:19:00.000-08:00

Healthy Vaginal Tract Lining no Barrier against HIV

Washington: The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can penetrate healthy vaginal tract lining during sexual intercourse. This lining had earlier been thought to be an effective barrier against the deadly virus.
"This is an unexpected and important result," said Thomas Hope, principal investigator and professor of cell and molecular biology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "We have a new understanding of how HIV can invade the female vaginal tract."
"Until now, science has really had no idea about the details of how sexual transmission of HIV actually works," Hope added. "The mechanism was all very murky."
Hope, his Northwestern colleagues, and collaborators at Tulane University discovered that interior vaginal skin is vulnerable to HIV invasion at the level where it naturally sheds and replaces skin cells, a point where the cells are not as tightly bound together.
Women and female adolescents now account for 26 percent of all new HIV cases in the US, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC).
Based on its most recent analysis of 2005 data, the CDC estimated that there were 56,300 new HIV infections that year and traced 31 percent of the total to high-risk heterosexual contact. More than half of the new cases of HIV infection worldwide are in women.
Hope expects his findings, if confirmed by future studies, will provide information to help develop microbicides and vaccines to protect against HIV.
"We urgently need new prevention strategies or therapeutics to block the entry of HIV through a woman's genital skin," Hope said. While condoms are 100 percent effective in blocking the virus, "people don't always use them for cultural and other reasons", he noted.
By labelling the HIV viruses with photo-activated fluorescent tags, Northwestern researchers were able to view the virus as it penetrated the outermost lining of the female genital tract, called the squamous epithelium, in female human tissue obtained from a hysterectomy and in animal models.
Researchers found that HIV penetrated the genital skin barrier primarily by moving quickly - in just four hours - between skin cells to reach 50 microns beneath the skin, a depth similar to the width of a human hair.
This is the depth at which some of the immune cells targeted by HIV are located. HIV penetration was more common in the outermost superficial layers of skin and likely occurred during the normal turnover and shedding of skin cells. In the shedding process, the skin cells are no longer as tightly bound together so water - and HIV - can easily enter.
"As pieces of the skin flake off, that's the loose point in the system where the virus can get in," Hope said, according to a Northwestern release.
Previously, scientists thought that the HIV invaded a woman's immune system through the single layer of skin cells that line her cervical canal. "That was always thought to be the weak point in the system," Hope said.
However, a previous trial in Africa in which women used a diaphragm to block the cervix did not reduce transmission. Nor are women who have had hysterectomies less vulnerable to contracting HIV through sex.
Hope presented his findings at the American Society for Cell Biology's 48th annual meeting in San Francisco Friday.

2009-01-14T16:11:00.000-08:00

Study Debunks Herbal Menopause Remedy Myth

Washington: Scientists have found no strong evidence proving the efficacy of commonly taken herbal remedies in relieving troublesome menopausal symptoms.
In fact, for some of these medicines there is hardly any evidence at all, according to the researchers.
A large number of women experience vasomotor symptoms around the menopause, such as hot flushes and night sweats, prompted by the sharp fall in oestrogen levels.
Commonly used herbal remedies to relieve menopausal symptoms include black cohosh, red clover, Dong quai, evening primrose oil, and ginseng. Others include wild yam extract, chaste tree, hops, sage leaf, and kava kava.
However, according to the study, only a little good quality evidence on the effectiveness of herbal medicines, or how they might react with prescription medicines is available.
Generally speaking, safety has been under researched, which is a major concern given that herbal remedies are often assumed to be "safe" just on the grounds that they are "natural," said the authors.
Usually published studies are poorly designed, include too few participants, or don't last long enough to be of real value.
Also, the chemical make-up of various preparations of the same herb may differ, which can make it difficult to compare trial results.
The drugs regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has given a Traditional Herbal Registration to Menoherb, which contains black cohosh, under a scheme designed to boost the safety of herbal products on sale.
However, the authors said that clinical trial data on black cohosh are "equivocal," with some studies suggesting that the remedy works well, while others suggest that it does not relieve symptoms effectively.
One of the potential side effect of black cohosh is liver toxicity.
The authors said that there is "no convincing evidence" that red clover extract is effective.
Also little evidence is there one way or another for dong quai, evening primrose oil, wild yam, chaste tree, hops, or sage.
The study, titled 'Herbal medicines for menopausal symptoms' is published in the latest issue of the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB).

2009-01-10T23:16:00.000-08:00

How our brains work as GPS devices to bring things back in perspective

Washington: Very often people forget where they are, but luckily enough, the feeling of being disoriented doesn't last for more than a few seconds-all thanks to the mind. Now, scientists have described how our brain works as a GPS device and tells us the right direction.
The researchers have indicated that animals and young children mainly rely on geometric cues (e.g. lengths, distances, angles) to help them get reoriented.
On the other hand, human adults can also make use of feature cues (e.g. color, texture, landmarks) in their surrounding area.
However, to know which method do we use more often, scientists conducted a set of experiments investigating if human adults have a preference for using geometric or feature cues to become reoriented.
The first experiment, conducted by psychologists Kristin R. Ratliff from the University of Chicago and Nora S. Newcombe from Temple University, was set in either a large or small white, rectangular room with a landmark (a big piece of colourful fabric) hanging on one wall.
Volunteers in the study saw the researcher place a set of keys in a box in one of the corners. All of them were blindfolded and spun around, and were made disoriented. After removing the blindfold, they had to point to the corner where the keys were.
After a break, the volunteers were told the experiment would be repeated, although they wouldn't watch the researcher hide the keys. Without telling the volunteers, the researchers moved the landmark to an adjacent wall during the break.
The change forced the volunteers to use either geometric cues or feature cues, but not both, to reorient themselves and locate the keys.
In the second experiment, the researchers used a similar method, except they switched room sizes (the volunteers moved from a larger room to a smaller room and vice versa) during the break.
According to the results, the brain does not have a distinct preference for certain cues during reorientation.
In the first experiment, volunteers reoriented themselves by using geometric cues in the smaller room but used feature cues in the larger room.
However, the volunteers who went from the larger room to the smaller room in the second experiment also relied on feature cues, searching for the landmark to become reoriented.
During the second experiment, the researchers concluded that the volunteers had a positive experience using feature cues in the large room, so they kept on relying on the landmark in the smaller room to become reoriented.
The results suggested that the brain takes into account a number of factors, including the environment and our past experiences, while determining the best way to reorient us to our surroundings.
The findings were reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

2009-01-10T23:06:00.000-08:00

Ugg-style boots could cripple women

London: Chic Ugg-style boots, which cost from 50 pounds to 100 pounds, increase the risk of ankle sprains and bad posture, experts have warned.
The soft structure and heel-less sole create a breeding ground for fungi that cause foot infections, according to health researchers.
The boots are often spotted on the sexy legs of Katie Price and Coleen Rooney who like their soft sheepskin interior.
And the cherry on the icing is that, their woollen or sheepskin exteriors go with anything from skinny jeans to dresses, reports The Sun.
However, podiatrist Linda Hawkins, of Lee, South London, said: "Sheepskin boots, like other footwear without heel and sole support, are only suitable for short-term wear.
"Use all day leads to the boot structure breaking down, increasing the risk of a twisted ankle."
Pharmacist Hasan Ukra, who works in the flagship Boots store in London's Oxford Street, said: "Wearing these kind of boots could increase the risk of fungal infections due to the moist environment created.
"And I've seen a marked rise in ankle sprains due to the soft and comfortable nature of the boots."

2009-01-10T22:46:00.000-08:00

Laughing gas' pain-relieving effect can be enhanced via hypnosis

Washington: Scientists from University College London have revealed that pain relieving effect of nitrous oxide, popularly known as laughing gas, can be enhanced by suggestions or hypnosis in dental patients.
The study showed that people are more suggestible under the influence of gas. This suggests that dental patients may benefit from being coached to relax while undergoing sedation.
A number of dentists have been trained in hypnosis and find that their patients respond well to being spoken to in a quiet, hypnotic manner.
For the study, the researchers recruited thirty participants, who took part in two sessions. They were given a mask from which they breathed in air or 25 per cent nitrous oxide. The mask was scented to disguise the sweet smell of the laughing gas.
During each session, participants were given a series of mental imagery tests and were asked to rate their response according to a scale of 1-7, where 1 was 'as clear and vivid as the real thing' and 7 was 'no image present at all'.
The participants were asked to close their eyes and imagine tasting oranges or smelling roast beef, feeling linen or hearing the honk of a car horn.
The volunteers were also put through a series of 'imaginative suggestibility' tests based on suggestions given to them while under the gas.
The participants were asked to experience hallucinated sensations.
For instance, they were told to imagine a sour taste in their mouth, and were told that after a while they would actually begin to experience a sour taste in their mouth, and that this would become stronger and stronger.
If the participant responded well to the suggestion, he/she would answer some of the questions that the hallucinated voice had asked.
The researchers found that the nitrous oxide boosted imaginative suggestibility by approximately 10 per cent.
"Many dentists use laughing gas to relieve discomfort in their patients, but our study suggests that combining the gas with instructions and suggestions to help them to relax and become absorbed in imagery, for example, might enhance the pain-relieving effect," said Dr Matthew Whalley, Honorary Research Fellow at UCL.
"Our findings are preliminary, however, so it would be helpful to do a larger scale study to confirm our results and explore the best ways in which to use and combine nitrous oxide and suggestion," he added.

2009-01-08T15:23:00.000-08:00

C-sections best for baby when close to due date

Babies do better after a scheduled Caesarean section if they’re born no sooner than seven days before their due date, a new large study of U.S. births shows.
Those delivered earlier had more complications, including breathing problems, even though they were full term, the researchers reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine. Even just a few days made a difference, they said.
The findings offer important guidance to the growing number of women who face planned C-sections. And the study supports recommendations that elective C-sections be scheduled after 39 weeks unless tests show the infant’s lungs are fully mature. Due dates are set at 40 weeks gestation and infants are full term at 37 weeks.
"Take your due date and subtract seven and any one of those seven days is fine," said one of the researchers, Dr. John Thorp, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.
He delivered a healthy baby girl on Tuesday after persuading her mother to wait a few more days for a C-section, even though last week would have been more convenient for both mother and doctor.
"We bit the bullet and did it at the right time," said Thorp.
The rate of Caesarean sections in the United States is at an all-time high, accounting for about 31 percent of births. There are lots of reasons: older moms, multiple births, the threat of malpractice lawsuits, the preference of mothers and doctors and the risks of having a vaginal birth after a previous Caesarean. In 2006, a government panel urged women not to seek a C-section without a medical reason; surgery brings risks and babies born by Caesarean have a greater chance for respiratory problems.
In the new study, the researchers, led by Dr. Alan Tita of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, examined a C-section registry from 19 academic medical centers to see how many of the surgeries were being done before the recommended 39 weeks and if the timing made a difference in the risk of complications.
They focused on 13,258 women who had a single child at a planned Caesarean and who had previously given birth the same way. Excluded were cases where medical issues warranted an early or immediate delivery. The infants were followed until they left the hospital or for four months.
More than a third of the C-sections were performed before 39 weeks, the researchers found. Those delivered at 37 weeks were twice as likely to have health problems, including breathing troubles, infections, low blood sugar or the need for intensive care. Fifteen percent of those born at 37 weeks and 11 percent born at 38 weeks had complications, compared to 8 percent of the babies delivered at 39 weeks. The only death was an infant born at 39 weeks.
The biggest difference was in breathing problems, with a fourfold increase for those born at 37 weeks compared to 39 weeks. Babies born by C-section already have a higher risk of breathing trouble than those born vaginally; labor helps clear the lungs of fluid.
The risk of complications also increased for births after 41 weeks, but there were few births in that category, the researchers said.
Tita said the researchers didn’t know the reasons behind the chosen delivery dates. They speculated that some mothers might want to deliver as soon as the fetus reaches full term, or an earlier time may have been more convenient for the mother or doctor.
Dr. Michael Greene, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, noted the research showed that there’s even an increased risk of complications in the last few days before the 39th week. That’s something most doctors wouldn’t suspect, he said.
"I generally try to wait to 39 weeks, although I confess that I’m as guilty as anybody else with a busy practice and scheduling being what it is," said Greene, who wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal. "I really hadn’t thought much about it until now."
The study only looked at live births, and didn’t account for the small risk of the fetus dying while waiting to reach 39 weeks, Greene said. That risk has been estimated up to 1 in 1,000, he said.Thorp’s patient in Chapel Hill, Shannon Eubanks, said she was glad that she held off a few days to reach the 39-week threshold before having her daughter, Kathleen Conley Eubanks. Her first child, 2-year-old Charlie, was born by C-section.
"It was hard to wait," said Eubanks, business manager of the political science department at the university. "I was very over being pregnant and ready to get the show on the road."
And she had another reason for wanting to deliver last week.
As an accountant, "It just killed me not to have this kid in 2008" to get the tax deduction, Eubanks said hours after delivering.

2009-01-05T13:31:00.000-08:00

Obesity linked to ovarian cancer: Study

London: A new study by researchers in the US has confirmed that obesity is linked to ovarian cancer.
In a study of almost 95,000 women, researchers found that among women aged 50 to 71, being obese increased the risk of the disease by almost 80 per cent.
A link between obesity and ovarian cancer was already known, but the new study provides confirmation of the association.
The study also highlights the way hormones play a role in the way body fat influences cancer risk.
The link was only seen in women who had never used hormone replacement therapy (HRT) after the menopause.
No link between body weight and ovarian cancer was evident among women who had been on HRT.
The new study supports the hypothesis that obesity may up ovarian cancer risk through hormonal effects.
"The observed relations between obesity and ovarian cancer risk have relevance for public health programmes aimed at reducing obesity in the population," the Independent quoted Dr Michael Leitzmann, from the US National Cancer Institute, as saying.
Researchers found that a total of 303 women in the study group developed ovarian cancer over a period of seven years. Among women who had never taken hormones after the menopause, obesity increased the risk of the disease by almost 80 per cent.
The study appears in the journal Cancer.

2009-01-05T13:21:00.000-08:00

Scientists develop new technique to fuse cells for stem cell research

London: Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a new, highly efficient way to pair up cells so that they can be fused together into a hybrid cell.
The technique, which resulted from collaboration between Joel Voldman, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and Rudolf Jaenisch, professor of biology and a member of the Whitehead Institute, might make it a lot easier for scientists to study what happens when two cells are combined.
For instance, fusing an adult cell and an embryonic stem cell may help researchers study the genetic reprogramming that occurs in such hybrids.
The scientists have developed a simple but ingenious sorting method, which can boost the rate of successful cell fusion from around 10 percent to about 50 percent.
The technique also facilitates thousands of cell pairings at once.
Voldman said that despite the presence of cell fusion techniques in research, there were many technical limitations involved in the process.
And one of the biggest hindrances was how to get the right cells to pair up before fusing them, the researcher added.
If scientists are working with a mixture of two cell types, for example A and B, they end up with many AA and BB pairings, as well as the desired AB match. Earlier, the scientists could successfully trap cells in tiny cups as they flowed across a chip. Each cup could hold only two cells, but there was no way to control whether the cups capture an A and a B, two As or two Bs.
On the other hand, the cell-trapping cups on the new sorting device are arranged strategically to capture and pair up cells of different types.
First, type A cells are flowed across the chip in one direction and caught in traps that are large enough to hold only one cell.
After the cells are trapped, liquid is flowed across the chip in the opposite direction, pushing the cells out of the small cups and into larger cups across from the small ones. Once one A cell is in each large cup, type B cells are flowed into the large cups. As each cup can only hold two cells, thus each ends up with one A and one B.
After the cells are paired in the traps, they can be joined together by an electric pulse that fuses the cell membranes.
Besides helping with studies of stem cell reprogramming, the new method could help to study interactions between any types of cells.
"It's a very general type of device," Nature magazine quoted Voldman as saying.
The study has been published in the online edition of the journal Nature Methods.

2009-01-05T13:13:00.000-08:00

Deaf children given implants as babies can learn to speak

London: Experiments conducted by Australian researchers have shown that brain activity in deaf cats develops normally if they are fitted with a cochlear implant shortly after birth.
Rob Shephard, of the Bionic Ear Institute in Melbourne, says that this finding may explain how deaf children given implants as babies can learn to speak almost as well as hearing children.
The researcher points out that in animals with normal hearing, sound vibrates hair cells in the inner ear and thereby trigger neurons to send impulses to the brain.
However, according to him, these hair cells are often defective in deaf animals, and cochlear implants compensate by stimulating neurons directly.
With a view to finding out how this artificial stimulation affects the brain, Shephard and his colleagues recorded electrical activity in the cortex of 17 8-month-old cats that were deaf from birth.
The researchers activated each cat's cochlear implant while monitoring their brains, reports New Scientist magazine.
They said that 10 of the cats had received the implant relatively recently, and their electrical activity was "completely scrambled", indicating that they did not perceive sound coherently: normal cortex activity is key to perceiving sound and, in humans, to developing speech.
However, in the seven cats that received implants at 8 weeks old, brain activity was similar to that in hearing cats.
A research article in the Journal of Comparative Neurology highlights the fact that some deaf people consider it to be unethical to operate on deaf babies, who would otherwise learn sign language.
But neurologist Jim Pickles, of the University of Queensland, says the latest work "increases the weight of evidence to implant children early".

2009-01-02T23:58:00.000-08:00

Patterns of brain activity can help predict anxiety treatment success

Washington: American psychologists say that a network of emotion-regulating brain regions, implicated in the pathological worry that can grip patients with anxiety disorders, may also be used to predict whether a patient would benefit from treatment or not.
Jack Nitschke, assistant professor and clinical psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, says that high levels of brain activity in an emotional centre called the amygdala reflect patients' hypersensitivity to anticipation of adverse events.
At the same time, he adds, high activity in a regulatory region known as the anterior cingulate cortex is associated with a positive clinical response to a common antidepressant medication.
In a research article in the online edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry, the lead author writes that for individuals with anxiety disorders, the anticipation of a bad outcome can be worse than the outcome itself.
He points out that some people spend so much time worrying about getting into a negative situation or having a panic attack that the condition becomes debilitating.
"In an extreme situation, they might not even leave their home," he says.
With a view to finding out how the brain responds to anticipation, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) as they viewed a set of negative and neutral images.
The subjects were shown pre-image cues several seconds before each picture, so that they would know what to expect: a circle before a neutral image and a minus sign before an aversive image.
The researchers observed that GAD patients, though did not show any difference compared to healthy subjects in brain activation in response to the aversive or neutral pictures themselves, displayed unusually high levels of amygdala activity in response to both anticipatory cues.
Nitschke said that the response suggested that the patients were hypersensitive to the anticipation of any stimuli, even those they were told would not be negative.
"In response to both of those anticipatory signals, the GAD subjects - the anxious folks - are showing huge amounts of amygdala activation that is much more than what healthy control subjects showed," he said.
He further said that the high levels of amygdala activity seen in GAD patients reflected an indiscriminate and disproportionately large response to the idea that something negative might happen in the future, even in a lab setting where they knew nothing bad would actually occur.
"It suggests that there are differences in anticipatory brain processing in these individuals," he says, adding that the result has important implications for other related disorders as well.
"That's the crux of what's debilitating in people with anxiety disorders, whether it's panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder," the researcher said.
Nitschke said that the patterns of brain activity also seemed to hold predictive power for how patients would respond to treatment for their anxiety.
After brain scanning, the GAD patient participating in the study were administered an eight-week course of treatment with a common antidepressant called venlafaxine (Effexor).
The researchers said that clinical improvement on the medication was associated with higher levels of pre-treatment brain activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in anticipation of both aversive and neutral stimuli.
They said that activity in the ACC, a regulatory brain region important for modulating emotional responses, has been shown to predict clinical outcome in patients with depression.
"When you look within the GAD patient population, that area is what predicts whether they respond to this treatment. What it suggests is that people who still have some residual functioning of that area are the people who are more likely to get better (with this drug)," says Nitschke.
Since anxiety disorders encompass a range of conditions with diverse symptoms and causes, Nitschke says, it becomes very important to select the most appropriate treatment approach for an individual patient.
Highlighting the fact that anxiety disorders are also frequently associated with depression, Nitschke's team revealed that they were planning to examine GAD patients with and without major depressive disorder.
"This is a critical new direction that the field is already moving in - using fMRI to predict treatment response. Hopefully we'll be able to use that eventually to determine what kind of treatment to provide to people," he said.

2008-12-28T01:25:00.000-08:00

Restless legs could trigger imminent orgasms in women

London: Restless legs and overactive bladder could trigger imminent orgasms in women, according to a study.
Neuropsychiatrist Marcel Waldinger and his colleagues of Utrecht University and The Hague's HagaHospital studied 18 Dutch women with Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (PSAS).
Their findings were recently published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Women affected by this rare and mysterious syndrome experience persistent genital sensations as if they are continuously on the verge of an orgasm.
All participants received in depth interviews and various medical examinations such as MRI-scans of the brain and pelvis. The study showed that most women in this research also had restless legs, symptoms of an overactive bladder and pelvic varicosis.
"These results are a very important breakthrough in the research of this syndrome and show that this is a real physical disorder," Waldinger emphasised.
In 2001, PSAS was mentioned for the first time in medical literature. Only 22 case reports have been described so far. A key feature of the syndrome is that sexual contact does not lead to diminishment but to aggravation of the symptoms. The complaints may lead to desperate and depressive feelings.
The majority of women in the study, the largest on PSAS so far, reported that their complaints were accompanied by restless legs and frequent urge to void.
Some of them reported to have restless legs symptoms long before their genital complaints. MRI-scan and ECHO-Doppler investigations of the pelvis and genitals also demonstrated a high prevalence of pelvic varicosis.
Notably, varicosis and restless legs are associated. The researchers are currently continuing their research on restless legs and bladder functioning in women with PSAS, said a Utrecht University release.
According to Waldinger, PSAS is a genital form of restless legs. Based on scientific observations, he postulated the view that the weird genital sensations are equivalent to the sensations belonging to the Restless Legs Syndrome.
"In order to emphasise this equivalence, we decided to change PSAS into Restless Genital Syndrome (RGS)", Waldinger explained

2008-12-20T05:45:00.000-08:00

A walk in a park a day can help keep mental fatigue at bay

Washington: A simple walk in the park a day can help improve your memory and attentiveness, according to a new study.
The new study led by Marc G. Berman, John Jonides, and Stephen Kaplan from the University of Michigan have found that spending time in nature may be more beneficial for mental processes than being in urban environments.
For the study, the researchers conducted two experiments to test how interactions with nature and urban environments would affect attention and memory processes.
First, a group of volunteers completed a task designed to challenge memory and attention. The volunteers then took a walk in either a park or in downtown Ann Arbor. After the walk, volunteers returned to the lab and were retested on the task.
In the second experiment, after volunteers completed the task, instead of going out for a walk, they simply viewed either nature photographs or photographs of urban environments and then repeated the task.
The results showed that performance on the memory and attention task greatly improved following the walk in the park, but did not improve for volunteers who walked downtown
Moreover, the group who viewed the nature photographs performed much better on the retest than the group who looked at city scenes.
The authors suggest that urban environments provide a relatively complex and often confusing pattern of stimulation, which requires effort to sort out and interpret.
Natural environments, by contrast, offer a more coherent (and often more aesthetic) pattern of stimulation that, far from requiring effort, are often experienced as restful.
The study appears in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

2008-12-20T05:40:00.000-08:00

Scientists studying how asbestos fibres cause Cancer

Washington: Ohio State University scientists claim that they are for the first time studying how an asbestos fibre triggers cancer in human cells.
The researchers believe that their work may aid in drug development efforts, aimed towards finding potential cures for illnesses caused by excessive exposure to asbestos, including the deadly cancer called mesothelioma.
With a view to observing how a single asbestos fibre binds with a specific receptor protein on cell surfaces, the research team uses atomic force microscopy.
Study's co-author Eric Taylor, a doctoral candidate in earth sciences at Ohio State, described atomic force microscopy as "Braille on a molecular level", which allows the team to feel what was happening on molecular surfaces.
"We're looking at what molecules are involved in the chain of events when the fibre touches the cell. Does the binding occur over minutes, or hours? And what processes are triggered?" said Taylor, who presented the research at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
So far, the study has been focused to blue asbestos (Crocidolite), a part of the amphibole group of asbestos minerals that were used in such products as ceiling tiles and thermal insulation, before being banned in most of the Western world by the mid-Eighties.
However, the researchers eventually hope to study how all six forms of asbestos interact with certain proteins on cell surfaces.
According to them, some forms of asbestos can dissolve in the lungs if they are inhaled, but others are believed to essentially "stick" to cells, especially at high concentrations, and eventually cause lung diseases.
"For the first time, this will give us data on biological activity that should help policymakers determine which forms of asbestos are the most dangerous," said Steven Lower, associate professor of earth sciences at Ohio State and a co-author on the study.
"The hypothesis we're testing is that binding of cell surface receptors to asbestos fibers triggers a signal event, which initiates the cancer.
"There seems to be something intrinsic about certain types of asbestos, blue asbestos in particular, that elicits a unique signal, and it triggers inflammation, the formation of pre-malignant cells and, ultimately, cancer," added Lower, also a faculty member in the School of Environment and Natural Resources.
The researchers have revealed that the first protein to be studied is epidermal growth factor receptor, which is present on the surface of every human cell.
Lower said that understanding the intricacies of the binding process between the mineral and one or more proteins might provide an index of the biological activity of a particular type of asbestos, and lead the researchers to figure out how to prevent or undo that interaction.
Taylor said that the driving motivation behind the research was the potential to find a way to intervene and prevent illness even after someone was exposed to asbestos.

2008-12-14T11:04:00.000-08:00

Protein expression predicts breast cancer survival in an unexpected way

Washington: A new research led by The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center has revealed that the expression of the microtubule-binding protein Tau is not a reliable means of selecting breast cancer patients for adjuvant paclitaxel chemotherapy.
In the study, the researchers found that Tau expression does predict survival, yet in an unexpected way.
In previous neoadjuvant studies, researchers from M. D. Anderson found that low levels of Tau predicted a good response to pre-operative chemotherapy.
In vitro studies had shown that down-regulation of Tau expression increased the sensitivity of breast cancer cell lines to paclitaxel.
Other studies suggested that high levels of Tau partially protect microtubules from paclitaxel binding and that low levels of the protein leave microtubules more accessible and vulnerable to the drug.
'If you treat patients who have a low level of Tau protein expression with pre-operative chemotherapy in neo-adjuvant studies, they are very likely to have a good response to the chemotherapy. We wanted to see if this correlation would hold up in predicting survival in adjuvant studies,' said Lajos Pusztai, M.D., D. Phil, associate professor of medicine in the Department of Breast Medical Oncology at M. D. Anderson and the study's first author.
In collaboration with researchers at the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP), the investigators assessed Tau protein expression in primary breast cancer specimens from 1,942 patients in the NSABP-B28 clinical trial.
The aim of the study was to evaluate the prognostic value of Tau in these patients, who were treated with four courses of doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide (AC) or AC followed by four courses of paclitaxel. All hormone receptor-positive patients in the trial also received adjuvant endocrine therapy.
The hypothesis was that patients whose tumours expressed low levels of Tau would preferentially benefit from the addition of paclitaxel to their adjuvant regimen, Pusztai explained.
Univariate and multivariate analyses found that both Tau-positive status (high Tau expression) and estrogen receptor (ER) -positive status were associated with better disease-free and overall survival.
However, the researchers found no significant correlation between Tau expression and benefit from paclitaxel in the total population or among estrogen receptor (ER) -positive or ER-negative patients.
'We eventually found that Tau is very predictive of survival but in the opposite manner than we initially thought,' 'Low Tau expression was actually associated with a relatively poor survival despite a higher sensitivity to chemotherapy,' Pusztai said.
'On the other hand, patients with high levels of Tau-and we knew these patients were not particularly sensitive to chemotherapy-actually did very well. They had a significantly better survival in this large randomized study,' he added.

The study has been presented at the CRTC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

2008-12-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

Contraceptive Methods affect Women's Sexual Pleasure & Satisfaction

Washington: A new study has shown that contraceptive methods can have a significant impact on women's sexual pleasure and satisfaction.
The researchers from The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University have found that many women think condoms decrease sexual pleasure.
On the other hand, those who use both hormonal contraception and condoms report higher overall sexual satisfaction.
"The public health community has paid little attention to women's sexual experiences with contraceptive methods, especially condoms," said Stephaine Sanders, associate director of The Kinsey Institute and a co-author of the study.
"If women think condoms detract from sexual pleasure, they may be less inclined to use them consistently," she added.
During the study, women admitted condoms make sex less pleasurable, while those who used only hormonal methods-such as the birth control pill-were unlikely to associate their method with decreased sexual pleasure.
When asked about the effect of contraceptives on sexual enjoyment, women who used condoms either alone or with hormonal methods reported decreased sexual pleasure.
However, while considering overall sexual satisfaction, which goes beyond the immediate sexual moment and includes factors such as sexual self-esteem and relationship satisfaction, women who used both condoms and hormonal methods reported the highest levels of sexual satisfaction.
The findings revealed that only 4 percent of women who relied on hormonal methods of contraception reported decreased pleasure, but hormonal users reported the lowest overall sexual satisfaction scores.
While 23 percent of women who used both condoms and hormonal methods reported decreased pleasure, they had the highest sexual satisfaction scores.
Women who used condoms alone or along with a hormonal method were six to seven times more likely to report decreased sexual enjoyment compared to those who used hormonal methods only. [From Internet]

2008-12-06T12:20:00.001-08:00

Women likely to miscarry if exposed to cigarette smoke

Washington, Dec 6: Women exposed to cigarette smoke, either as adults or children, are more likely to face fertility problems and suffer miscarriages.
An analysis of more than 4,800 non-smoking women showed those who were exposed to cigarette smoke six or more hours a day as children and adults, faced a 68 percent greater chance of facing difficulties in getting pregnant and suffering one or more miscarriages. "These statistics are breathtaking and certainly point to yet another danger of second hand smoke exposure," said Luke J. Peppone, assistant professor at Rochester University's James P. Wilmot Cancer Centre. In the study, four out of five women reported exposure to second hand smoke during their lifetime. Half of the women grew up in a home with parents who smoked and nearly two-thirds of them were exposed to some second hand smoking at the time of the survey.

More than 40 percent of these women had difficulty getting pregnant (infertility lasting more than a year) or suffered miscarriages, some repeatedly, according to a Rochester release.

"We all know that cigarettes and second hand smoke are dangerous. Breathing the smoke has lasting effects, especially for women when they're ready for children," said Peppone, who analysed information in the Patient Epidemiology Data System, a well-studied resource that has yielded information on a variety of cancers.

Peppone analysed surveys collected from 4,804 women who visited Roswell Park Cancer Institute for health screenings or cancer care from 1982-1998. Each participant in this study reported that they had never smoked, and had been pregnant at least once or tried to become pregnant. Participants reported whether one or both of their parents smoked and if they lived with or worked with smokers as adults.

They also estimated the amount of time they were exposed to second hand smoke.Many of the women in the study grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, long before the surgeon general issued the first warning about the dangers of cigarette smoking in 1964. The study was published online in Tobacco Control.

2008-12-01T10:54:00.000-08:00

Using cosmetics during pregnancy 'increase birth defect risk'

Melbourne: Pregnant woman have been warned against the use of cosmetics, for they could lead to birth defects.
The warning follows a study, which found that women exposed to high levels of hair spray during pregnancy were twice as likely to have babies born with a urinary tract defect.
It encouraged calls for a new European cosmetics labelling system that would mark out some products as off-limits to mothers-to-be.
The French Government declared last week considering such a labelling system for cosmetics.
"Women who are planning to conceive or who are in the first three months of pregnancy should look at what they are using," the Australian quoted Prof Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, as saying.
"The cosmetics industry needs to look at this and clearly label their products.
"Anything like this raises concerns, but I don't think people should panic," he added.

2008-11-25T00:31:00.000-08:00

Stomach ulcer bug may be behind bad breath

Washington:A new study has suggested that bacteria, which cause stomach ulcers and cancer, may be behind bad breath.
Scientists, for the first time, have found that Helicobacter pylori living in the mouths of people, who are not showing signs of stomach disease.
The mouth is home to over 600 different species of bacteria, some of which can cause disease.
Helicobacter pylori has recently been shown to cause stomach ulcers and is behind a large proportion of gastric cancers.
"Recently, scientists discovered that H. pylori can live in the mouth. We wanted to determine whether the bacteria can cause bad breath, so we tested patients complaining of halitosis for the presence of H. pylori," said Dr Nao Suzuki from Fukuoka Dental College in Fukuoka, Japan.
The researchers found that the bacteria in the mouths of 21 out of 326 Japanese people with halitosis.
In these people, the concentration of a bad breath gas and the level of oral disease were significantly higher.
In patients with periodontal (gum) disease, 16 of 102 people had H. pylori in their mouths.
"Halitosis is a common problem in humans, and bad breath is largely caused by periodonitis, tongue debris, poor oral hygiene and badly fitted fillings," said Dr. Suzuki.
"Bacteria produce volatile compounds that smell unpleasant, including hydrogen sulphide, methyl mercaptan and dimethyl sulphide. Doctors often measure the levels of these compounds to diagnose the problem. Gastrointestinal diseases are also generally believed to cause halitosis," Dr. Suzuki added.
Patients who were carrying H. pylori had more blood in their saliva and were also carrying Prevotella intermedia, which is one of the major periodontal bacteria.
"Although the presence of H. pylori in the mouth does not directly cause bad breath, it is associated with periodontal disease, which does cause bad breath," said Dr. Suzuki.
"We now need to look into the relationship between H. pylori in the mouth and in the stomach. We hope to discover the role of the mouth in transmitting H. pylori stomach infections in the near future," Dr. Suzuki added.
The study is published in the December issue of the Journal of Medical Microbiology.

2008-11-21T23:18:00.000-08:00

'For men, the penis is the window to the heart'

Melbourne: Forget pills and creams, the secret to maintaining a healthy sex life well into old age is as simple as fighting the extra flab, according to a leading expert.
According to Gary Wittert, endocrinologist and Professor of Medicine at the University of Adelaide, erectile dysfunction is often a warning sign of underlying lifestyle-related diseases, which include heart disease, diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
"For men, the penis is the window to the heart," ABC Online quoted Wittert, while speaking at the Australian Health and Medical Research Congress in Brisbane.
"The blood vessels in the penis are exactly the same as the blood vessels in the heart. If they have some erectile dysfunction then they've probably got subclinical coronary artery disease," the expert added.
A study of more than 19,000 men by Dr Ian Thompson of the Texas Health Science Center and colleagues, which was conducted in 2005, found that those who reported erectile dysfunction were just as likely to have a heart attack or stroke as smokers.
Much coverage has been given to the age-related decline in testosterone and it effect on sexuality, however Professor Wittert says there is plenty of evidence that healthy, active men are able to maintain a healthy, active sex life well into their later years.
"What I truly believe is it's not just age. It is not inevitable that you lose your erections with age," the expert added.
He says, as obesity becomes more prevalent in younger men, they too are experiencing erectile problems as a result of their weight and associated health problems.
"You're starting to see with obesity a very high prevalence of erectile dysfunction in younger men and it's a warning sign," the researcher said. [From Internet]

2008-11-21T23:06:00.000-08:00

Eating an egg a day can up, type two diabetes risk by 60 percent

Melbourne: Eating an egg every day can raise the risk of developing diabetes, a shocking new study has found.
What's more, intake of more than a couple of eggs a week can make the condition worse in those who already have diabetes.
Scientists in Australia have urged that type 2 diabetics and people at risk of developing the blood glucose condition should limit their egg intake after a US study found them to be detrimental to their health, reports News.com.au.
According to Harvard Medical School scientists, eating an egg every day may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes by about 60 per cent.
Women were most susceptible, with females consuming seven eggs or more a week increasing their risk by 77 per cent, the study found.
Dr Michael Dr Gaziano wrote in the journal Diabetes Care that eating just one egg a week carried no increased risk.
The study reached the conclusions after tracking the egg-eating habits of almost 57,000 men and women over two decades. [From internet]

2008-11-15T07:24:00.000-08:00

Touchy feely couples less likely to be stressed

London: Couples who hug and kiss more often or become physically intimate are less likely to be stressed, especially if they are married.
A week-long study of 51 double income German couples (mostly married) by Zurich University found that touchy feely pairs, who did everything from holding hands to having sex, had lower levels of stress hormone cortisol in their saliva.
The body secretes more cortisol during its fight or flight response and is at the root of stress-related bodily changes.
The study found that couples experiencing more work-related problems had the lowest levels of cortisol through such displays of affection and intimacy, according to online reports.
Beate Ditzen of Zurich University, who conducted the research, informed that intimacy perked up moods that tended to improve hormone levels.
But she cautioned couples not to compete in expressing such intimacy, but involve themselves in tasks that nurture togetherness in both partners.
The finding appeared in Psychosomatic Medicine. [From Internet]

2008-11-13T06:03:00.000-08:00

Gender matching in heart transplantation leads to long-term survival

Washington: A new study has revealed that gender matching between donors and recipients is important to short- and long-term survival in heart transplantation,
"In clinical transplantation, we generally don't assume that organs from male and female donors have inherent differences affecting long-term outcomes, but our data suggest that there are important differences which must be taken into account," said Eric Weiss, M.D., first author of the study and a post doctoral research fellow in the Division of Cardiac Surgery at The Johns Hopkins University Medical Institutions in Baltimore, Md.
For the study, the researchers analyzed data from the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS), identifying 18,240 patients who received their first orthotopic (replacing a failing organ with a healthy one) heart transplant between 1998 and 2007. In this dataset, patients were followed for 10 years, with the average follow-up time being 3.4 years.
Patients were sorted into four groups: male donor with male recipient, female donor with male recipient, male donor with female recipient, and female donor with female recipient.
Overall, 71 percent were matched by gender to their donor (77 percent of male recipients and 51 percent of female recipients). Twenty-five percent of patients died during the study.
The researchers found that matching donor and recipient by gender resulted in 13 percent lower risk of graft rejection within the first year; 14 percent lower rate of graft rejection over the study period; 25 percent drop in 30-day death rate; and 20 percent lower one-year death rate.
Statistical modelling revealed that the greatest chance for death during the study occurred when pairing a male donor with a female recipient, which made the risk of death an estimated 20 percent higher compared to a male donor with male recipient.
The most successful transplants occurred between male recipients and male donors, when the cumulative chance for survival was 61 percent.
"These results fit with our hypothesis that sex matching in heart transplantation leads to improved survival rates. We hypothesized that we would see a big difference in the short-term survival - which we did, most likely because of heart-size issues - but what was interesting was the substantial difference in the long term, as well," said Weiss.
The study has been presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2008. [From Internet]

2008-11-09T02:51:00.000-08:00

'Anti-aging' pill may reverse time clock in humans

Washington : After successfully conducting studies on mice, scientists have claimed that SRT1720, touted as an 'anti-aging pill,' can be tested in human trials.
The new drug study from Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Inc., based in Cambridge, Mass., claimed that SRT1720 activates the same receptor as the much-discussed resveratrol, the chemical in red wine that may slow some effects of aging.
Scientists are testing both resveratrol and SRT1720 for first treating type-two diabetes, and possibly later for other age-related diseases.
"We are very excited by these results. These compounds are mimicking calorie restriction and exercise while lowering levels of glucose and insulin in mice. It's a game changer," Discovery News quoted Michelle Dipp of Sirtris as saying.
In the study, the scientists overfed two groups of mice by about 40 percent, which can make up for almost eating 3,000 calories a day, and enough to pack on significant weight.
After drug administration in various concentrations, the scientists found that after 15 weeks of eating the high-calorie diet, the control mice gained significant weight.
However, the mice taking 500 mg of the drug, did not gain any weight. The cholesterol levels of the mice on the drug also improved.
The animals' exercise habits were also recorded. Mice without SRT1720 ran for roughly half a mile. Mice given 100 mg ran roughly seven-tenths of a mile. And mice on 500 mg of SRT1720 were able to run a full mile, twice the distance of untreated mice.
Dipp said that tests have shown that above 500 mg, the drug's effects plateau. SRT1720 has no known side effects.
Johan Auwerx at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland led the research.
The SIRT1 receptor is also activated during caloric restriction diets, which have been shown to lengthen life span in multiple animal models, and during exercise.
SIRT1 receptors are found in mitochondria, often called the powerhouse of the cell because of all the energy they produce.
The study was published in the journal Cell Metabolism. [From Internet]

2008-11-07T14:02:00.000-08:00

Nerves damaged by brain and spinal cord injuries regenerated in mice

Washington: Nerves damaged by brain or spinal cord injury may be regenerated by silencing natural growth inhibitors, according to a new study.
Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston conducted an experiment on mice by temporarily silencing genes that prevent mature neurons from regenerating, and causing them to recover and re-grow vigorously after damage.
Dr. Zhigang He, Associate Professor of Neurology who is also the senior author of the paper, highlights the fact that currently there is no treatment for spinal cord or brain injury because injured neurons cannot regenerate.
Studies conducted in the past, which looked at removing inhibitory molecules from the neurons' environment, have found only modest effects on nerve recovery.
However, He and Dr. Mustafa Sahin have found that re-growth is primarily regulated from within the cells themselves.
"We knew that on completion of development, cells stop growing due to genetic mechanisms that prevent overgrowth. We thought that this kind of mechanism might also prevent regeneration after injury," says He.
The researchers point out that the key pathway for controlling cell growth in neurons, called the mTOR pathway, is active in cells during development, but is substantially down-regulated once neurons have matured.
Upon injury, this pathway is almost completely silenced, presumably for the cell to conserve energy to survive.
The researchers are of the view that preventing this down-regulation may allow regeneration to occur.
During the study, He's team used genetic techniques to delete two key inhibitory regulators of the mTOR pathway, known as PTEN and TSC1, in the brain cells of mice.
The mice were subjected to mechanical damage of the optic nerve two weeks later.
Two weeks post-injury, it was observed that about 50 percent of injured neurons in the mice with gene deletions of PTEN or TSC1 survived, compared to about 20 percent of those without the deletions.
Up to 10 per cent of the surviving mutant mice showed significant re-growth of axons, the fibre-like projections of neurons that transmit signals, over long distances.
This re-growth, according to the research team, increased over time.
He says that though the current study used genetic techniques, it may be possible to accomplish the same re-growth through pharmacologic means.
"This is the first time it has been possible to see such significant regeneration by manipulating single molecules. We believe that these findings have opened up the possibility for making small-molecule drugs or developing other approaches to promote axon regeneration," adds He.
The researchers have also to determine whether such regenerated axons can restore function.
They are presently looking at axon regeneration after spinal cord injury, hoping that their approach may lead to future neural regeneration therapies. [From Internet]

2008-11-04T14:34:00.000-08:00

Women's hands carry more diverse bacteria than men's

Washington: Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have found that human hands harbor far higher numbers of bacteria species than previously believed, and that women's palms carry a significantly greater diversity of microbes than those of men.
Assistant Professor Noah Fierer, the lead author of the study, says that the new findings have implications for better understanding human bacteria, and should help establish a "healthy baseline" to detect microbial community differences on individuals that are associated with a wide variety of human diseases.
Reporting their study in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers revealed that they used powerful gene sequencing techniques for their research, which revealed that a typical hand in had roughly 150 different species of bacteria living on it.
The researchers detected and identified more than 4,700 different bacteria species across 102 human hands in the study, but only five species were shared among all 51 participants.
"The sheer number of bacteria species detected on the hands of the study participants was a big surprise, and so was the greater diversity of bacteria we found on the hands of women," said Fierer.
He further said that the diversity of bacteria on individual hands was not significantly affected by regular hand washing.
Fierer said that the research team's observations suggested that the standard skin culturing of human skin bacteria, a technique used by many labs, dramatically underestimated the full extent of microbial diversity.
The researcher said that skin pH might be behind the higher bacterial diversity on women's hands, since men generally have more acidic skin, and other research has shown microbes are less diverse in more acidic environments.
He added that the difference could also be due to differences in sweat and oil gland production between men and women, the frequency of moisturizer or cosmetics applications, skin thickness or hormone production.
The study also revealed that the right and left palms of the same individual shared an average of only 17 percent of the same bacteria types.
The participants, who were CU undergraduates, shared an average of only 13 percent of bacteria species with each other.
Fierer said that while the composition of bacterial communities on dominant and non-dominant hands of subjects was significantly different, diversity levels were similar.
He said that the differences found between dominant and non-dominant hands were likely due to environmental conditions like oil production, salinity, moisture or variable environmental surfaces touched by either hand of an individual.
The researchers also observed that some groups of bacteria were less abundant following hand washing, while others were more abundant.
Biochemistry Assistant Professor Rob Knight stressed that regular hand washing with anti-bacterial soap was beneficial.
"The vast majority of bacteria are non-pathogenic, and some bacteria even protect against the spread of pathogens. From a public health standpoint, regular hand washing has a very positive effect," Knight said.
In their study report, the researchers wrote: "Although hand washing altered community composition, overall levels of bacterial diversity were unrelated to the time since the last hand washing. Either the bacterial colonies rapidly re-establish after hand washing, or washing (as practiced by the students included in this study) does not remove the majority of bacteria taxa found on the skin surface."
Knight revealed that the research team used the metagenomic survey to simultaneously analyze all of the bacteria on a given palm surface.
According to him, the procedure involved isolating and amplifying tiny bits of microbial DNA, then building complementary DNA strands with a high-powered sequencing machine that allowed the team to identify different families, genera and species of bacteria from the sample.
He said that the richness of bacteria types on the palm was three times higher than that found on the forearm and elbow.
Fierer added that the total diversity of hand bacteria appeared to match or exceed levels of bacteria colonizing other parts of the body, including the esophagus, the mouth and lower intestine.
"I view humans as 'continents' of microscopic ecological zones with the kind of diversity comparable to deep oceans or tropical jungles. Today we have the ability to answer large-scale questions about these complex microbial communities and their implications for human health that we weren't even asking six months or a year ago," Fierer said. [From Internet]

2008-11-03T18:35:00.000-08:00

How to get rid of belly fat

Washington: Want to get rid of your belly fat? Well, then all you need to do is follow the simple tips given in a new book, 'The Flat Belly Diet'.
The book is written by Liz Vaccariello and Cynthia Sass, the editors of health magazine 'Prevention', reports CBS News.
Here are some tips that can help you get rid of belly fat:
1. Eat four 400-calorie meals per day
2. Never go more than four hours without eating
3. Incorporate monounsaturated fats or "MUFAS" into meals
4. When the body is under stress, it produces a hormone called "cortisol," which turns into belly fat. Learning to control the stress in life can go a long way toward reducing the belly fat.
5. Keep a strong social support group. Get your friends to join you, or find an online support group.
6. Keep a record of what you've eaten, and how much. [From internet]

2008-11-03T18:25:00.000-08:00

Kids who sleep less more likely to be obese as adults: Study

Melbourne: Kids who sleep less are more likely to be obese as adults, according to a New Zealand study.
For the study, researchers at the University of Otago followed more than 1000 children born in Dunedin between 1972 and 1973.
They found that kids aged between five and 11 who spent less time in bed had higher Body Mass Indexes as adults and were significantly more likely to be obese.
Lead author of the study Erik Landhuis said the importance of getting a good night's sleep was well known, but this was the first study to show potential implications for adult obesity from lack of sleep during childhood.
"It is not clear why lack of sleep might lead to weight gain, but experimental studies have shown that sleep deprivation may disrupt the hormones that regulate appetite," the Age.com.au quoted Landhuis, as saying.
"It has also been suggested that tired kids may simply have less energy and are therefore less active.
"Our findings indicate that ensuring adequate sleep time in childhood may play an important part in the prevention of adult obesity," Landhuis added.
Researchers documented participants' time in bed every two years between ages five and 11 and measured body weight at age 32.
They ruled out early signs of obesity such as socioeconomic factors, parental control, television watching, and a parental history of obesity as possible explanations for the results.
The study is published in the United States journal Paediatrics. [From Internet]

2008-11-03T18:20:00.000-08:00

Test developed to predict menopause

London: Scientists have developed a test to predict when a woman will go through menopause, enabling older women to plan for motherhood.
The breakthrough by American scientists will help women prepare mentally for losing their fertility and allow those in their late 30s and 40s who are considering trying for a baby to pinpoint just how long they have left to conceive, The Observer newspaper reported Sunday.

“This test seems to be reasonably predictive of menopause. Lots of people want to know when it's going to happen so that they can plan their life and work and their children, if possible, and this test would give them an idea of that,” said Bill Ledger, a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Sheffield.

“It would give them an idea of where their body is in relation to the menopause, how soon it's coming,” he added.

The test, developed by international researchers led by MaryFran Sowers of the University of Michigan, measures three hormones in the blood to calculate how many eggs are left in a woman's ovaries.

The researchers found that changes in the levels of anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), the follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and inhibin B concentrations foretold when they would enter menopause.

AMH fell to a very low or non-measurable level five years before a woman has her final period, the newspaper said, quoting the study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. [From Intenet]

2008-11-02T13:48:00.000-08:00

WHO warns against melamine contamination in milk products

New Delhi: In view of reports about the melamine contaminated milk leading to death of infants in China, World Health Organisation has alerted South East Asian countries against possible dangers of distribution and consumption of melamine-contaminated milk products leading to serious health hazards.
Contaminated batches of infant formula or other milk-containing products such as biscuits, chocolates and snack food have reportedly been exported to Member States in South-East Asia, posing a serious public health risk, especially to infants, WHO South East Asia Regional Office pointed out.
WHO has recommended that countries set standards for maximum limits of melamine content in food products. A surveillance case definition based on clinical manifestations, key diagnostic criteria (notably ultrasound examination features) and guidelines on differential diagnosis, clinical treatment and necessary medical follow-up have also been provided to Member States.
WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding for all infants for the first six months of their lives. No other liquid or food, not even water, is needed during this period. Thereafter, infants should receive adequate and safe supplementary foods, while breastfeeding can continue up to two years of age and beyond, it said.
Replacing powdered infant formula with other products such as condensed milk, honey mixed with milk, or fresh milk is not recommended as this could compromise safety and nutrition.
WHO-SEARO is taking steps to support Member States in dealing with the issue. Information on reported and confirmed contaminated products, including a compilation of official test results obtained through the International Food Safety Authorities Network (INFOSAN) , has been shared with all Member States. [From Internet]

2008-11-02T13:34:00.000-08:00

Bone-building find hold hope for improved osteoporosis treatment

Washington: A team of American scientists claims to have uncovered an important step in hormone-triggered bone growth, paving the way for new osteoporosis drugs and better bone-building therapies.
The research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) showed that parathyroid hormone (PTH) given intermittently enhances the body's own bone-building action through a specific "co-receptor" on the surface of bone cells.
While scientists have known for long that PTH stimulates bone formation, the exact mechanism underlying this effect has been unknown to date.
"Our study uncovers a novel mechanism for how parathyroid hormone signaling selectively stimulates bone formation. We have identified the protein co-receptor crucial to the whole process," said Dr. Xu Cao, UAB professor of pathology and senior author on the study.
During the study, the researchers focused on PTH signals in mice to see which cell receptors would actively recruit calcium from the blood.
Dr. Mei Wan, UAB associate professor of molecular and cellular pathology and first author on the study, said that the team's efforts helped uncover the one co-receptor responsible for turning on bone building.
Dr. Jay McDonald, pathology professor and director of UAB's Center for Metabolic Bone Disease, pointed out that the exact mechanism of PTH-signalled bone formation was previously shrouded by the joint production of osteoblasts and osteoclasts, two types of cells that are instrumental in regulating a healthy skeleton.
While osteoblasts regulate a healthy skeleton by forming new bone, and osteoclasts do so by resorbing old and brittle bone.
McDonald highlighted the fact that many existing osteoporosis drugs target both osteoblasts and osteoclasts, which can lead to zero or minimal bone formation.
"The ideal would be to have one drug to shut down the osteoclasts and turn on the osteoblasts to effectively build bone. We don't have that yet, but this study shows us the path to get there," he said.
An article describing the new study has been published in the journal Genes and Development. [From Internet]

2008-11-02T13:28:00.000-08:00

New hair counting software may turn out boon for baldies

Melbourne: Counting hairs to check the efficacy of baldness treatments and depilatory creams is now just a matter of a mouse click, all thanks to a new software developed by Australian researchers.
Researchers from CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences in Sydney has developed the software, which can analyse exactly how many hairs there are in a patch of skin.
The software makes use of images captured by a small flatbed scanner pressed onto the skin.
Developed in collaboration with a UK company, the software, according to image analyst Dr Pascal Vallotton, would make it easier for scientists developing hair removal creams to accurately assess how well they work
"Up to now they were counting the number of hairs that survived after treatment manually," ABC Online quoted him as saying.
He added: "That's hard work and it's difficult because you may count a hair twice or you may miss it, so image analysis offers distinct advantages because you always get the same counts and you get the right counts."
The software makes use of a mathematical algorithm to identify and trace each individual hair relying on the understanding of a hair's unique features, such as its relative straightness.
It can also differentiate between hairs and other features on the skin such as wrinkles, wounds or moles.
"We have a lot of defects in our skin irregularities that make it difficult to say this is a hair or this is a wrinkle," said Vallotton.
He added that by comparing the earlier and later images, it is possible to determine if hair is growing quickly or slowly.
However, the researchers checked the accuracy of the software by manually counting the hair strands, and were pleased to find that the counts matched.
According to Vallotton, the software could also be useful in testing the effectiveness of balding treatments and counting or tracing substances other than hairs, that are long and thin and otherwise difficult to image.
For instance, one can use the software to work out the number of neurons in a cell sample or to trace biological polymers such as long strings of protein.
The findings have been published in the latest issue of the journal Skin Research and Technology. [From Internet]

2008-11-02T13:23:00.000-08:00

Frequent urination protects against bladder cancer

Washington: Frequent urination at night might be a good thing after all, it protects your bladder against cancer, according to an exhaustive study.
The results indicate that those people who usually get up at night at least twice to pass urine reduced their risk of suffering from bladder cancer by 40 to 59 percent.
This "protective effect" was found in both men and women and did not relate to the consumption of tobacco or the quantity of water they drank.
Night-time is usually the period during which there is the longest interval between urination.
For this reason carcinogenic agents like tobacco "are present in the urine, (that) constitutes an important factor towards the likelihood of developing bladder cancer", explained Juan Alguacil, a researcher from University of Huelva (Spain) and one of the authors of the study.
The research group, made up of Spanish and North American scientists, analysed the urinary frequency in 884 recently diagnosed bladder cancer cases and in 996 non-cancer 'control patients', from five regions in Spain.
The patients, aged between 21 and 80 years, came from 18 hospitals in Vallés, Barcelona, Asturias, Alicante and Tenerife, according to a release of Plataforma SINC.
The study authors underlined that "it would be necessary to transport this discovery from the lab to the hospital in order to achieve the prevention of almost 357,000 new cases diagnosed every year globally and 145,000 deaths.
Although the best advice is to avoid exposure to stop smoking and to avoid direct contact with chemical products or pollution particles, the risk of bladder cancer could be reduced by increasing urinary frequency and drinking more water.
The research appeared recently in the International Journal of Cancer. [From Internet]

2008-10-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

How women with Lupus can boost their chances of Healthy Pregnancies!!

Washington: Rheumatologists at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York have now uncovered how women suffering from systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disease
Earlier, women with SLE were advised not to have children, and in case they did conceive a child, they were advised to have therapeutic abortions to prevent severe flares of their lupus.Now, the new research provides information that may yield insights that support a reversal of that thinking.Titled, the PROMISSE (Predictors of pRegnancy Outcome: bioMarkers In antiphospholipid antibody Syndrome and Systemic lupus Erythematosus) Study, the multi-center research is led by Jane Salmon, M.D., attending physician at Hospital for Special Surgery.Salmon will present two research projects based on data gathered from the PROMISSE Study.The researchers identified factors that help a woman and her doctor plan for a healthy pregnancy.

Lupus patients usually experience a disease "flare" quite late, when symptoms such as a red rash across the nose and cheeks, painful or swollen joints, swollen legs or extreme fatigue appear suddenly.

For the first presentation, aimed at finding if problems during pregnancy can be correlated to the severity, the researchers followed 198 pregnant patients with lupus.

They found that women who conceived while their disease was stable or only mildly active had relatively infrequent flares during their pregnancies and delivered healthy babies, regardless if past disease severity or past kidney disease.

The findings inform women with lupus on how to plan when to conceive to have a low risk pregnancy.Patients with Lupus, as well as other patients with the antiphospholipid syndrome, produce special types of proteins called antiphospholipid antibodies that can attack their own tissues and cause pregnancy complications.

The second study showed that the presence of a specific subset of these autoantibodies is linked with poor pregnancy outcomes. In fact, they found that women having an autoantibody called lupus anticoagulant were more prone to have complications such as miscarriage or preeclampsia during pregnancy.

With the help of these findings, it is possible to identify patients at high risk for complications just by a blood test to determine if they are positive or negative for the lupus anticoagulant autoantibody.

Though it is possible for women with lupus or the antiphospholipid syndrome who are positive for this protein to have successful pregnancies, their doctors should monitor them more closely for early signs of pregnancy complications.

The two studies will be presented at this year's American College of Rheumatology meeting in San Francisco.

2008-10-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

Kicking the butt may help control rheumatoid arthritis

Washington: For smokers with rheumatoid arthritis, kicking the butt might help in controlling its progression, according to a study.
Smoking is known to increase the risk and severity of RA, and its cessation has been shown to have a positive impact in slowing the progression of other diseases like coronary disease and emphysema.

The researchers conducted the study over 14,847 patients with RA based on their smoking status. Of those, 65.4 percent were non-smokers, 22.1 percent were former smokers and12.5 percent were active smokers.

They monitored the change in Clinical Disease Activity Index-a composite measure of disease activity in people with RA that assesses change over time.They found that Clinical Disease Activity Index was higher among active smokers than among patients who had stopped smoking.

Individual measures of active disease including swollen and tender joint counts and C-reactive protein were all lower in the patients who had stopped smoking. These results suggest that stopping smoking can lessen RA disease activity over and above current medical treatment.

"While these results are preliminary, it seems that quitting smoking, which would have many other health benefits, also may benefit patients with rheumatoid arthritis," said Dr Mark C. Fisher, MPH; Research Fellow, NYU Medical Center; Hospital for Joint Disease, New York, N.Y."RA patients who stop smoking may see an improvement in the number of joints that hurt them every day and in how they feel overall," he added.

The research was presented at the American College of Rheumatology

2008-10-26T00:37:00.000-07:00

New cancer treatment uses heavy ion beams to kill deep-seated tumours

New Delhi: Chinese nuclear physicists have developed a new treatment for cancer that uses heavy ion beams to kill malignant tumours more than 2.1 cm below the skin's surface.

Zhan Wenlong, the leading nuclear physicist in the country, has claimed that heavy ion beams score over light ion beams, such as gamma rays and X-rays used in traditional radiotherapies.

High ion beams can accurately moderate the amount of radiation and minimize the damage done to healthy cells, reports China Daily.He further said that the new treatment uses stronger heavy ion beams that reach a maximum of 400 mega electron volts (MeV), and can travel further into the human body to kill deeper tumours.

One of the key roles in generating the beams has been played by the 'Cooler Storage Ring', which is a 300 million yuan project by the Heavy Ion Research Facility (HIRF) in Lanzhou, the capital of the northwestern Gansu province.

Zhan said that the amount of ions in heavy ion beam treatment sky rocket when they get to the deep tumors, and become strong enough to kill tumor cells and better protect healthy cells along the way.

On the contrary, in traditional light ion beam treatment, the amount of ions diminishes the further it travels, The researchers at the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have produced a broad spectrum of heavy ion beams, which range from 80 to 400 MeV and can treat both shallow and deep-seated tumors.

Zhan also said that scientists are now optimizing the system software to open new doors for massive clinical testing in the near future.

According to HIRF Director Yue Haikui, the method had been used on 85 cancer patients by the end of 2006, with satisfactory results. The researchers will continue monitoring the patients to probe the effect of the treatment. [From Inernet].

2008-10-26T00:33:00.000-07:00

No time for veggies? Squeeze them

Washington: Drinking vegetable juice daily could compensate the shortfall in dietary intake of vegetables, according to a new study.
With seven out of 10 adults falling short of daily vegetable intake as recommneded by US dietary guidelines, researchers studied whether drinking their juice could act as its substitute.

"What we found was that drinking vegetable juice seemed to address some of the key barriers to vegetable consumption such as convenience, portability and taste, so individuals were more likely to meet their daily recommendations," said Carl Keen, study author and professor of nutrition & internal medicine, University of California, Davis (UC-D).

"Furthermore, vegetable juice drinkers reported that they actually enjoyed drinking their vegetables, which is critical to adopting dietary practices for the long-term." In fact, after six weeks of the study, vegetable drinkers reported they felt "more satisfied" with the ease of getting vegetables into their diet, and that the vegetable juice provided an important additional source of vitamins and minerals. The study looked at three groups of healthy men and women.

They received dietary counseling on ways to get more vegetables, but only two of the groups were instructed to consume at least one serving of vegetable juice.

Of those two groups, one drank one eight ounces of juice daily and the other drank two eight-ounces doses daily as part of a balanced eating plan, according to a release of UC-D.

The study found that those who received dietary counselling and consumed veg juice were far more likely to meet daily veg recommendations, about two and a half cups (five servings), than those who received counselling alone.

These findings were presented this week at the American Dietetic Association's annual conference.

2008-10-26T00:25:00.000-07:00

Older women can have stronger muscles but risk falling

Washington: Elderly women can regain muscle strength as much as any young women, according to a new study.
The research compared strength gains of inactive elderly women and inactive young women after both groups participated in an eight-week training regime.

Yet while the two groups increased similar percentages of strength, the older group was far less effective in increasing power, which is more closely related to preventing falls.

"Power is more important than strength for recovery from loss of balance or walking ability," said Dain LaRoche, assistant professor of exercise science at University of New Hampshire (UNH) and co-author of the study. Preventing falls, which occur in 40 percent of people over 65 and are the top reason for injury-related emergency room visits, is the driving force behind LaRoche's research agenda.LaRoche compared the initial strength of 25 young (18-33 years) and 24 old (65-84 years) inactive women, then had both groups participate in resistance training on a machine that targeted knee extensor muscles, which are critical for walking, stair-climbing, or rising from a chair.

"They're what let you live on your own," he said. After eight weeks of training, the older group not only increased their strength by the same percentage as the younger group, they achieved strength similar to a control group of young inactive women, said a UNH press release. But the older group's ability to increase power - force over time - was significantly less than the younger group's; the elderly women saw only a 10 percent increase in power versus the younger women's 50 percent increase.

Acknowledging that the type or frequency (six sets, three times per week) of his training protocol may have affected the older group's ability to make gains in power, LaRoche is continuing to research older women's capacity to develop muscle power. As baby boomers age, doubling the over-65 population by 2030, research that supports fall prevention and independent living is a growth area.

"I tell my students, 'there's room for you in this field'," said LaRoche.The results were published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.

2008-10-26T00:13:00.000-07:00

Depression during pregnancy doubles risk of premature delivery

Washington: Depressed pregnant women face twice the risk of premature delivery than their counterparts with no such symptoms, according to a new study.
Besides the increased risk of premature delivery, the study found that the risk grows with the severity of the depressive symptoms, among pregnant women.

These findings also provide preliminary evidence that social and reproductive risk factors, obesity, and stressful events may aggravate depression-premature delivery link, according to researchers."Premature delivery is the leading cause of infant mortality, and yet we don't know what causes it," said co-author De-Kun Li, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research in Oakland.

"This study adds to emerging evidence that depression during early pregnancy may interfere with the neuroendocrine pathways and subsequently placental function," Li said."The placenta and neuroendocrine functions play an important role in maintaining the health of a pregnancy and determining the onset of labour," Li explained.
Because the majority of the women in the study did not use anti-depressants, the study provides a clear look at the link between depression and preterm delivery.The study, among the first to examine depression and premature delivery in a representative and diverse population in the US, looked at 791 pregnant Kaiser Permanente members in San Francisco city and county from October 1996 through October 1998.

Researchers interviewed the women around their 10th week of pregnancy and found that 41 percent of the women reported significant or severe depressive symptoms, according to a Kaiser Permanente press release.The women with less severe depressive symptoms had a 60 percent higher risk of premature delivery -- defined as delivery at less than 37 completed weeks of gestation -- compared with women without significant depressive symptoms, and the women with severe depressive symptoms had more than twice the risk.

In addition to being the leading cause of infant mortality and morbidity, preterm delivery is also the leading medical expenditure for infants, with estimated annual cost of about $26 billion in the US alone. The study is published online in the Oxford University Press' journal Human Reproduction. [From Internet]

2008-10-23T03:36:00.000-07:00

World's first hernia repair through vagina conducted

Washington: Surgeons at UC San Diego Medical Center have conducted what is said to be the world's first hernia repair through vagina.As part of a clinical trial, Garth Jacobsen, M.D., and Santiago Horgan, M.D., were able to repair a painful weak spot in a patient's abdominal wall using the vagina as the path to the surgical site.
"This minimally invasive hernia repair is believed to be the first of its kind in the U.S. and abroad. If research proves that this 'natural orifice' technique is ideal for patients, more than 50,000 women in the U.S. may be eligible for this innovative hernia surgery," said Horgan, director of the UC San Diego Center for the Future of Surgery. A hernia is an abnormal bulging of organs or fatty tissue through a muscular wall.

The bulge is repaired by closing the hole with stitches and then placing a mesh over the repair for reinforcement.The mesh is made up of a biologic absorbable material and over time is incorporated into the body's tissue.

This repair itself was performed by entering the vagina and making a small incision behind the uterus through which the abdomen could be accessed with surgical tools. Only one small external incision was made to place a camera to safely view the surgery.

A traditional laparoscopic repair uses three incisions.The process of performing surgery through a natural opening means avoiding major incisions through the abdomen, and patients may experience a quicker recovery with less pain and scarring.

Surgeons at UC San Diego Medical Center have performed 38 of these natural orifice surgeries as part of a clinical trial comparing "scarless" to laparoscopic techniques. Patients recruited to the trial have had diseased gallbladders and appendix removed through either the mouth or vagina.

A gastrectomy, an obesity surgery that reduces the size of the stomach, and the hernia repair, are also part of the clinical trial.

Note: In general terms, we can say that a hernia occurs when the layers that make up the abdominal wall weaken. In other words, the fabric of muscle and other tissues which protect the gut, develops a defect, or weakness. Through that defect the peritoneum (PER-IT-TA-NEE-UM) - and perhaps other organs - push their way outward, forming a lump which can be felt - and sometimes seen - protruding from the abdomen.

2008-10-23T03:23:00.000-07:00

Erectile dysfunction warns of early heart attack

Washington : Erectile dysfunction is linked with heart attacks but it is being ignored by general practitioners, a doctor with Good Hope Hospital in Birmingham has warned.Dr Geoffrey Hackett reported regularly seeing patients referred with erectile dysfunction or ED after a heart attack, only to hear that they had developed erectile dysfunction two to three years before - a warning sign ignored by their general practitioners.

It is well known that ED (inability to achieve erection) doubles the risk of heart disease, a risk equivalent to being a moderate smoker or having an immediate family history of heart disease. ED in type 2 diabetes has been shown to be a better predictor of the risk of heart disease than high blood pressure or high cholesterol, according to an Eurekalert release. But despite this considerable evidence ED is still treated as a recreational or "lifestyle issue" rather than a predictor of a serious health problem, said Hackett.

The UK government has pledged to reduce the death rate from coronary heart disease and stroke and related diseases in people under 75 by at least 40 percent by 2010, yet there is no screening for erectile dysfunction in patients with diabetes or heart disease, he said. The report was published in the British Medical Journal.

2008-10-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

Early birth control lowers risk of ovarian, uterine cancers later

Washington: Researchers have edged a step closer to understanding why past oral contraceptive use dramatically lowers the risk of ovarian and uterine cancers later in life.
Latanya M. Scott of Wake Forest University School of Medicine discovered that monkeys who had been given birth control earlier in life had a reduced amount of oestrogen excreted in their urine.

The research was done in collaboration with Xia Xu and Timothy Veenstra, at Science Applications International Corporation-Frederick, who have developed novel methods for analysis of urinary oestrogens.

The discovery was particularly noteworthy because it was found three years after oral contraceptive treatment was stopped, roughly the equivalent of a decade of life in a human, said a Wake Forest University press release.

The study appeared in this month's issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.While researchers have known for many years that past oral contraceptive use significantly lowers the risk of ovarian and uterine cancers later in life, this new observation in monkeys may shed light on the mechanism behind the cancer-protective effect of the treatment.

While researchers don't yet understand the precise mechanism by which hormone levels are being affected, they do know that both the level of oestrogen in the blood and the amount of oestrogen being excreted in urine are lowered with past oral contraceptive use, which may mean that the oral contraceptive use is somehow leading to a diminished synthesis of oestrogen.

"Hormone exposure has long been known to be important in cancer risk," said J. Mark Cline, and senior project researcher. "These effects are robust, and we believe this discovery could be translated fairly quickly into a study in women.

""If our results are confirmed to also occur in women, they could change the way we look at oral contraceptives and cancer risk," added Cline, a professor of pathology and comparative medicine at Wakefield.Funded by the National Institutes of Health, researchers based their findings on a study of 181 premenopausal cynomolgus monkeys and followed them for seven years to look at hormone effects on many aspects of female health

2008-10-22T15:47:00.000-07:00

Long-term cellphone exposure could heighten brain cancer risk

Washington: Long-term exposure to cellphone may heighten risk of brain tumours, warned a neurosurgeon.
Ron Pawl, a neurosurgeon at Lake Forest Hospital, Illinois has called for collaborative research initiatives to determine whether the link between cell phones and brain cancer is real.Scientists have long been concerned over the possibility that electro-magnetic fields (ELF) exposure may increase the risk of brain cancers.

Until recently, however, research has shown no clear link between cell phone use and brain tumours.Earlier this year, a Swedish research group published an epidemiologic study suggesting an increased risk of brain cancers (gliomas) as well as acoustic nerve tumours (neuromas) in people using cell phones for 10 years or longer.

Tumours were more likely to develop on the same side as the cell phone was used. Other studies by the same group suggested that the use of wireless handsets in cordless home phones posed the same risk, according to an Elsevier press release.After reviewing the evidence, one author even suggested that long-term cell phone use is "more dangerous to health than smoking cigarettes".

Other recent commentators have raised similar concerns.The findings are alarming in light of the exponential growth of cell phones - now including widespread use by children and teenagers.

The damaging effects of ELF, if any, might be even greater in the developing brain.If the link is real, then rates of brain cancers should have increased over the last two decades. Some studies have reported that this is the case, particularly for the most malignant brain cancers. However, other studies have found a stable tumour rate.

"However, the fact that the incidence of gliomas, especially the more malignant varieties, is increasing, warrants action on this issue," Pawl wrote.

The problem, according to Pawl, is that no other research groups have performed actual studies showing a clear relationship between brain tumours and ELF. The write-up is scheduled for publication in the November issue of Surgical Neurology.

2008-10-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

Kuwaiti surgeon develops new method to treat cataract

Dubai: A Kuwaiti eye specialist has invented a process by which cataracts can be treated with a rentiscope without going for the complex option of retina transplant.
Khaled Al-Sabti, head of the retina ward in the Al-Bahar Eye Centre in Kuwait, told the official Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that his invention would spare eye cataract patients the time and money consuming process of retina transplant.

He claimed that his process improved the eyesight of his patients by 40 to 60 percent.Al Sabti's invention has been recorded in the British Journal of Opthalmology.

Elaborating on the process, he said that in conventional surgeries of the retina, the eyesight starts to improve six months after the operation, but in many cases, bodies of the patients reject the transplanted retina.

The surgeon said he applied his innovative medical technique on nine patients, aged between 50 and 74, which helped improve their condition noticeably.He said he would present his breakthrough method in scientific conferences and events in Canada and the US over the next month.Kuwait's Health Minister Ali Al-Barrak Saturday praised Al-Sabti for the innovation.

Al-Barrak, in his statement, also urged other Kuwaiti doctors to follow the new method for overall promotion of national medical services. [From Internet]

2008-10-17T14:59:00.000-07:00

Shahana Goswami counts the roles, not the Kisses

Mumbai: First she won accolades for her performance as Arjun Rampal's disgruntled wife in "Rock On" and later scorched headlines for 10 kisses with Randeep Hooda in "Ru Ba Ru". Now 22-year-old Shahana Goswami says she wants to play all kind of roles on screen.

"I want to do everything from the nagging wife to the conventional Bollywood girl singing songs around trees," Shahana told a news agency.

As Arjun Rampal's disgruntled, unhappy wife in Abhishek Kapoor's "Rock On", Shahana rips the screen apart. As Shabana Azmi said appreciatively, where did that come from?

"Did she?" laughed Shahana. "I guess I've never shied away from real emotions, never had to be over-sheltered or mollycoddled by my parents during my growing years in Delhi.
"I feel at times the person whom you love has to be told what to do, even if it makes him or her unhappy and resentful. Like my mom forced me to go through college. I hated it at that time. But today I'm thankful to her. Similarly in 'Rock On', I had the thankless job of being a nagging, pesky, embittered wife. I loved it."
Commenting upon her kissing scenes with Randeep in "Ru-Ba-Ru", Shahana said: "I can't understand why they (producers) highlighted 10 kisses between me and Randeep Hooda. First of all, who's counting? Certainly not the audiences! Surely they've matured far enough to not get carried away by kisses. Also, there aren't those many kisses at all. I'd rather be known for more than just kissing in my films."
Shahana debuted in films with Naseeruddin Shah's directorial debut "Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota".
"Strangely most of my films are either episodic or I'm part of an ensemble cast. The only exception is my next release 'Ru-Ba-Ru' where Randeep and I played lovers who've crossed the stage of euphoria into stagnancy. So again it's an unconventional role. I'd say it's a love story that begins where other filmy love stories end."
Any other unconventional role?
"In Sudhir Mishra's 'Tera Kya Hoga Johnny' I'm Neil Nitin Mukesh's girl married to a much older man Kay Kay Menon. Is that too much of the unconventional for me? I don't mind. I've always wanted to be an actress. If today I'm getting to play anyone from the age of 18 to 32 and I can do it convincingly, why not? As a child I'd take my mother's dupatta on my head and speak to myself in the mirror. The habit remains. I still speak to myself, though now I don't get much time to do that."
Coming up soon from Shahana is Nandita Das's "Firaaq" where she features in one episode with Marathi actress Amrita Subhash.
"Nandita saw me in "Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota' and cast me. So although I'm not much remembered by my first film, I still owe a lot to it," said Shahana who also worked with a theatre group called Working Titles. [From Internet]

2008-10-17T14:46:00.000-07:00

Killing mosquitoes may up prevalence of deadliest form of dengue

London: While mosquito controlling measures are considered to be the only way to fight dengue, a large-scale survey in Thailand has revealed that fewer mosquitoes may increase the prevalence of the deadliest form of the disease.

Yoshiro Nagao and colleagues at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine say that dengue, which is also known as "breakbone fever", is generally not fatal for the first time around.
The researchers say that the real threat is the second infection.
According to them, there are four varieties of infection, which are scientifically known as serotypes.
The researchers say if a person is bitten by a mosquito carrying serotype A and then a year later by one carrying serotype B, the antibodies made in response to virus A would bind to the virus B but not destroy it.
They say that such pairs instead over-stimulate the immune system, causing a potentially fatal disease called dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF).
Nagao says that for a few weeks after a person contracts dengue, one has a kind of immunity that destroys other serotypes.
Just in case a person gets serotype B during such weeks, he/she will not develop DHF, but will develop antibodies to both A and B.
The researcher says that if a person gets infectedb y all the serotypes during the period of cross-immunity, he/she will develop antibodies to all of them.
Nagao says that people are more likely to catch another serotype during the brief cross-immunity period when there are lots of mosquitoes about.
The researchers add that fewer mosquitoes would lessen the frequency of infections, and people would be less likely to catch another serotype during the crucial window.
All that goes to indicate that fewer mosquitoes could result in more cases of DHF, say the researchers.
The researcher tested their hypothesis by combining the incidence of DHF in Thailand with a huge Thai survey that sampled water containers in a million homes across the country, from 2002 to 2004, looking for larvae of the dengue-carrying Aedes mosquito.
They found that as mosquito infection rates climbed towards 30 per cent of houses, DHF cases also increased.
However, once over the 30 per cent mark, the relationship was reversed, and DHF cases dropped off as infection rates climbed.
The researchers said that 70 per cent of homes in some villages had Aedes larvae, and that a mathematical model based on the survey showed that cutting this to 30 per cent would increase DHF cases by more than 40 per cent.
They warned that infestation needed to be reduced to less than 10 per cent to reduce DHF cases, but achieving such an extensive reduction might be difficult.
Nagao says that since measures to control mosquito population, such as spraying insecticide, may increase the number of DHF cases, such measures should be "subject to ethical discussion".
However, a WHO dengue expert, Axel Kroeger, says even if this new discovery is confirmed, it is worth fighting dengue by controlling mosquitoes because some developing countries have achieved far less than 30 per cent infestation, while higher levels often reflect a neglect of mosquito control.

An article on the research has been published in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.[ From Internet]

2008-10-17T14:39:00.000-07:00

Gene therapy could help blind people see again

Washington, Oct 17 : Researchers relied on gene therapy to restore vision to mice which suffered from degeneration of the light-sensing retinal rods and cones, a common cause of human blindness, because of lack of protein.
"This is a proof of principle that someday we may be able to repair blindness in people with conditions like retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration," said Richard Masland, director of Cellular Neurobiology Lab at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
"There are several limitations we need to overcome before we can begin clinical trials, but I'm optimistic that this work may someday make a big difference for people who otherwise would have no vision at all."
The study was designed to investigate the effect of light-sensitive protein melanopsin in retinal ganglion cells of the eye. These specialised neurons receive light signals from the rods and cones and convey them to the brain via the optic nerve.
Melanopsin is usually produced in a set of cells involved with establishing circadian rhythms but not with vision.
The MGH team used the standard viral vector to deliver the gene encoding melanopsin throughout the retinas of mice whose rod and cone receptors had degenerated from lack of a crucial protein.
Four weeks after delivery of the gene, melanopsin - normally produced in one percent of retinal ganglion cells - was found in about 10 percent of ganglion cells in the treated eyes but not in eyes that received a sham injection, according to a MGH press release. Examination of the melanopsin - expressing cells revealed that all responded to light, although the neuronal signal was delayed and persisted after the light signal had stopped, which is typical for a melanopsin - mediated signal.
Two behavioural tests verified that the treated mice - which otherwise would have been essentially blind - had enough vision to find a darkened refuge in an otherwise brightly - lit area and to successfully learn that a light indicated a safe platform to which they could swim.
"The same level of melanopsin expression in a human retina might allow someone who otherwise would be totally blind to read newspaper headlines, but the slowness of the response would be a problem," Masland said.

These findings were published in Tuesday's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

2008-10-17T14:35:00.000-07:00

Scientists crack human metabolic code to track disease better

London:Normal and diseased tissues behave differently. If scientists knew how the tissues do that, they would be able to battle obesity, hypertension, diabetes and other metabolic disorders more effectively.
A new computational approach developed by computer scientists Tomer Shlomi, Moran Cabili and Eytan Ruppin from Blavatnik School of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University (TAU) may help clinicians gain a clearer overall picture of the metabolic processes in different tissues.

Their model could be potentially used in the future to refine the diagnosis of various metabolic-related disorders, aid in treatment and develop new drugs.

The model integrates tissue-specific information from healthy or diseased organs and matches it to an existing model of the global human metabolic network to predict metabolic tissue behaviour, according to a TAU release.

Their results, shared with Markus Herrgard and Bernhard Palsson from the University of San Diego, "establish a computational basis for the genome-wide study of normal and abnormal human metabolism in a tissue-specific manner", says Ruppin.The computational model describes metabolism in 10 different human tissues, exposing the functions in the body responsible for metabolism - a set of chemical reactions occurring in living organisms that allows tissues to grow, maintain their structures, and function and respond to other bodily cues. [From Internet]

Building on these results, TAU team are now working on developing tools for the discovery of biomarkers (metabolites that can be measured in the blood and urine) that are associated with different diseases. These results appeared recently in Nature Biotechnology.

2008-10-15T18:16:00.000-07:00

Red wine compound protects liver against 'fattening' itself

Washington: Red wine compound resveratrol prevents fat accumulation in the liver as a result of excessive alcohol consumption, according to a new study with mice.
Resveratrol, present in grapes, peanuts and berries besides red wine, not only cut down the fat produced in alcohol fed mice liver but also broke down the same fat much faster. Chronic alcohol consumption causes fat to accumulate and can lead to liver diseases, including cirrhosis and fibrosis of the liver, besides causing liver failure.

The study points to resveratrol as a possible treatment for alcoholic fatty liver disease, and as a way to prevent the disease in those who are at risk, but have not developed it, according to a release of University of South Florida.

Other research with mice has suggested resveratrol may have anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties. There is also evidence that it has cardiovascular benefits.

The study was conducted by Joanne M. Ajmo, Xiaomei Liang, Christopher Q. Rogers, Brandi Pennock and Min You, all of the University of South Florida Health Sciences Centre, Tampa. It appeared in the Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology journal. [From Internet]

2008-10-15T17:55:00.000-07:00

Steroids help in quicker recovery from pneumonia

Washington: Steroids often used in treating inflammation caused by bacterial meningitis also speed up recovery from pneumonia, according to a new study.
University of Texas (UT) Southwestern researchers have showed that mice infected with a type of severe bacterial pneumonia and subsequently treated with steroids and antibiotics recovered faster, with far less inflammation in their lungs than mice treated with antibiotics alone.
Pneumonia is a lung infection characterised by breathing difficulties and spread by coughing and sneezing. Symptoms include headache, fever, chills, coughs, chest pain, sore throat and nausea.
Robert Hardy demonstrated in mice that using corticosteroids as well as traditional antimicrobial therapy might eventually help people with pneumonia recover more quickly, according to a Southwestern release.
"Some people might think that if you give steroids, it would counteract the effect of the antibiotic," said Hardy, associate professor of internal medicine and paediatrics and the study's co-author.
"But it turns out you need the antibiotic to kill the bug and the steroid to make the inflammation in the lung from the infection get better. The steroids don't kill the bugs, but they do help restore health.
"Pneumonia caused by the Mycoplasma pneumoniae bacterium is generally a less severe form of the disease that can occur in any age group. It accounts for 20 percent to 30 percent of all community-acquired pneumonia cases.
In the current study, mice infected with the M pneumoniae bacterium were treated daily with a placebo, an antibiotic, a steroid, or a combination of the antibiotic and steroid in order to investigate the effect on M pneumoniae-induced airway inflammation.
The animals were then evaluated after one, three and six days of therapy."It turns out that the group that got both the antibiotic and the steroids did the best," Hardy said. "The inflammation in their lungs got significantly better.
"Hardy said it was too early to recommend steroids as standard treatment for people with this type of bacterial pneumonia, but the work does support the need for a clinical trial.

These findings are available online and are scheduled for publication in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. [From Internet]

2008-10-15T17:50:00.000-07:00

Using Internet is good for the brain

London: Internet use benefits the brains of middle aged and older people as it stimulates the brain's decision-making and reasoning centres, according to a study by US scientists.
The team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, found that searching the Internet stimulates parts of the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning, BBC News reported.

The study found that Internet use might even help resist age-related physiological changes in the brain such as shrinkage of cells, which reduces its performance.

"The study results are encouraging, that emerging computerized technologies may have physiological effects and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults," lead researcher Gary Small said."Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function," he added.

The study involved brain scans of 24 volunteers aged between 55 and 76 while they were doing web searches and reading books.

Both tasks caused activity in regions of the brain responsible for language, reading, memory and visual abilities. However, searching the web produced considerable additional activity in areas of the brain controlling decision-making and complex reasoning.
The study found that the additional activity was present only in the brains of experienced web users and the volunteers who were new to the web did not experience such activity.

The researchers said that the number of possible options while performing a web search requires people to make decisions about which link to click on for getting the required information.

The increased brain activity was absent in the people who were new to the Internet as they had not yet acquired the necessary analytical skills for carrying out a successful web search by distinguishing relevant links from non-relevant ones.

"These fascinating findings add to previous research suggesting that middle-aged and older people can reduce their risk of dementia by taking part in regular mentally stimulating activities," said Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Britain-based Alzheimer's Research Trust.The study features in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. [From Internet]

2008-10-14T09:09:00.000-07:00

Exposure to noxious gas stove emissions worsens asthma in kids

Washington: Exposure to high levels of noxious gas emitted from gas stoves can exacerbate asthma symptoms in children, especially preschoolers, say researchers.
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a toxic form of nitrogen oxide gas, is most prevalent in industrial zones but also found at higher levels in poor homes with unvented gas stoves.

During the study, the research team compared the frequency and intensity of coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath and chest tightness to NO2 levels inside the inner-city homes of 150 Baltimore City 2- to 6-year-olds.

Eighty-three percent of the households had gas stoves, 72 percent were heated by natural gas, and 14 percent used gas stoves for heating in the winter.They found that the toxic gas worsened day and night asthma symptoms in children.

Each 20-point increase in nitrogen dioxide levels led to 10 percent more days of cough and 15 percent more days with limited speech due to wheezing.

"Because using stoves as heat sources is a hallmark of urban poverty, our study tellingly points to how profound and direct the effects of purely social and environmental factors can be on a child's health," said Johns Hopkins lung expert Nadia Hansel and study leader. "Doctors caring for children with asthma should always inquire about the home's heating and cooking appliances and urge those using gas-based stoves and space heaters to switch to electric heating and cooking, if possible, or at least properly vent the exhaust gases," she added.

"Inner-city preschoolers appear especially vulnerable because they spend most of their time indoors and in homes with high levels of nitrogen dioxide," said study senior investigator and Hopkins pulmonary expert Dr Gregory Diette.

"We knew that but still we were disturbed by what we saw: As nitrogen dioxide levels crept up, so did the frequency and severity of these kids' symptoms," Diette added.The study appears in October issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.

2008-10-14T09:05:00.001-07:00

Now chicken soup for high blood pressure

Washington: Chicken soup, a popular home remedy for common cold, may have a role in fighting high blood pressure, according to a Japanese study.
Ai Saiga of Nippon Meat Packers and colleagues cited previous studies indicating that chicken breast contains collagen proteins with effects similar to ACE inhibitors, mainstay medications for treating high BP.

But chicken breast contains such small amounts of the proteins that it could not be used to develop food and medical products for high BP. Chicken legs and feet, which are often discarded as waste products in the US and are key soup ingredients elsewhere, appear to be a better source, according to a release of American Chemical Society (ACS).

In the new study, Saiga and colleagues extracted collagen from chicken legs and tested its ability to act as an ACE inhibitor in lab studies. They identified four different proteins in the collagen mixture with high ACE-inhibitory activity.

Given to rats used to model human high BP, the proteins produced a significant and prolonged decrease in blood pressure, the researchers said.The research is scheduled for publication in the Oct 22 issue of ACS' biweekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. [From Internet]

2008-10-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

Women 'more interested in cult of celebrity than own health'

London: A new research has confirmed what many people already knew: women pay more attention to gossip about the rich and famous than their own health.
The study, therefore, suggests that women are more interested in the cult of celebrity and lack awareness about health news.

To reach the conclusion, a Breast Cancer Campaign polled 1,000 women and found that nearly four out of five women could name Coleen McLoughlin as footballer Wayne Rooney's wife.

However, just over half said they checked their breast for lumps once a month or more. Despite being in one of the age groups most at risk, more than 40 percent of women aged over 65 did not believe they were at risk from breast cancer, the survey showed.

The reality is that 80 percent of the breast cancers are diagnosed in women over 50 years old. In total, just 55 percent of women checked their breasts at least once a month, 28percent only did it a few times a month and 15 percent said they never did.

"While women are clued up about the latest gossip from celeb-land, it appears they are dismissing serious information that could save lives," BBC quoted Arlene Wilkie, director of research and policy at Breast Cancer Campaign, as saying

2008-10-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

The more the booze, the tinier the brain

Washington: The more you drink alcohol, the smaller your total brain volume gets, according to a new study by Wellesley College, Massachusetts.
The study found that even moderate alcohol consumption can lead to decline in brain volumes.
Lower brain volumes have been linked to progression of dementia and problems with thinking, learning and memory.In the study involving 1,839 adults, the participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and a health examination.

"Most participants reported low alcohol consumption, and men were more likely than women to be moderate or heavy drinkers," the authors write.

"There was a significant negative linear relationship between alcohol consumption and

total cerebral brain volume," they added.The research team led by Carol Ann Paul, M.S., of Wellesley College also found that although men were more likely to drink alcohol, the association between drinking and brain volume was stronger in women.

This could be due to biological factors, including women's smaller size and greater susceptibility to alcohol's effects."The public health effect of this study gives a clear message about the possible dangers of drinking alcohol," the authors write.

"Prospective longitudinal studies are needed to confirm these results as well as to determine whether there are any functional consequences associated with increasing alcohol consumption.

"This study suggests that, unlike the associations with cardiovascular disease, alcohol consumption does not have any protective effect on brain volume," they added. The report appears in the October issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

2008-10-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

Multi-tasking Could Slow Down the Brain

Multi-tasking could make one feel proud of oneself. But there is a hidden danger. Ultimately it could lead to the slowing down of the brain.
Even though modern technology allows people to perform more tasks at the same time, juggling tasks can make our brains lose connections to important information.

Which means, in the end, it takes longer because we have to remind our brains what we were working on. Youngsters these days swiftly move from one to another, computer to music to cricket to …… Possibilities are endless.

But therein lies the dangerDavid Meyer at the University of Michigan has spent the past few decades studying multitasking, mostly in adults."For tasks that are at all complicated, no matter how good you have become at multitasking, you're still going to suffer hits against your performance.

You will be worse compared to if you were actually concentrating from start to finish on the task," Meyer says.Multitasking causes a kind of brownout in the brain. Meyer says all the lights go dim because there just isn't enough power to go around.

So, the brain starts shutting things down, things like neural connections to important information.The technical name for creating, or recreating, these neural pathways is "spreading activation." It involves building connections step by step.
Meyer says it's similar to what we do when we free associate."I say to you, 'What do you think of when I say the word apple to you?' And you start vibing on apple. 'Oh, apple's a fruit, it fell on Newton's head. Newton was a physicist. He invented the first theory of gravity.' And on and on," Meyer

2008-10-13T20:23:00.000-07:00

Manscaping, The Latest Fad Among the Men!

It's not just metrosexual guys who are opting for manscaping, shaving of male pubic hair, for high profile men too are taking up the trend.

According to an Australian salon owner, Stephen Foyle more and more high profile men want to be well groomed and are going for manscaping. Foyle revealed that CEOs, and many high profile men often visit his Sydney 'Detail for Men' salon to get treatments like manscaping.

"There have been many clients who are first time spa visitors who have gone commando to get a facial," The Couriermail quoted Foyle, as saying.

Although male grooming and manscaping is becoming popular with men Foyle revealed that he has instructed his employs to omit the manscaping part.

"The therapists have learnt to give very clear instructions and tell the clients to just take their shirts off," he said. Foyle pins the popularity of manscaping on handsome stars like George Clooney, David Beckham and Brad Pitt.

"Men are much more conscious about the way they look," he added. [From Internet]

2008-10-13T19:04:00.000-07:00

Beware of using mobiles when pregnant

London: Mothers who use mobiles during pregnancy are more likely to have kids with behavioural problems, according to a new study.
The findings are based on a review of 15 years of research into mobile phone health danger.
It also showed that mothers who use handsets around their toddlers would cause the same difficulties.
The study has claimed that using a mobile phone regularly for more than ten years can also increase the risk of brain tumours.
Experts have warned that heavy usage can seriously affect male fertility. According to the study, kids exposed to phones pre-natally and in early childhood show an 80 per cent rise in behaviour problems.
The study found that kids’ brains absorb a greater proportion of radiation emitted by mobiles due to skull formation.
“We strongly recommend the Government actively discourages mobile phone use by children, including making public advice leaflets readily available in NHS waiting rooms,” the Sun quoted Graham Philips, co-author of the study, as saying.
The study will be unveiled at the Radiation Research Trust Conference, in London. [From Internet]

2008-10-13T19:00:00.000-07:00

Sexually active girls more likely to suffer from depression

Melbourne: A new study has found that young girls who are sexually active are far more likely to suffer from depression than those who remain virgins.
Researchers found that teenage sex leaves many girls with feelings of guilt and low self-esteem, reports the Daily Telegraph.
After conducting a study of more than 14,000 US teens aged between 14 and 17, researchers said the feelings could be directly ascribed to sexual activity, rather than outside influences.
The study found that having sex doubled the chances of girls becoming depressed, with 19 per cent of those who had sex exhibiting symptoms of depression, compared with 9.2 per cent who had abstained.
Researchers also found that the mental health of boys in the same age group did not correlate with sexually active.
Christian Medical Fellowship chairman Dr Trevor Stammers said the study showed that most girls, "retrospectively showed regret about early intercourse."
The study is published in the Journal of Health Economics

2008-10-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

Weight loss boosts libido

Gastric bypass surgery helps obese men not only lose weight but also increase their testosterone levels. Gastric bypass surgery is generally considered when the body mass index of an individual is 40 or higher or when weight becomes a life- threatening or disabling condition.

The surgery makes the stomach smaller and allows food to bypass part of the small intestine. The weight loss continues up to 12 months after the surgery. Excess weight is usually associated with decreased testosterone (male sex hormone) levels and hence decreased libido.

To study whether gastric bypass surgery helps increasing testosterone levels or not, researchers from California studied 48 severely obese men with an average BMI of 48 before the surgery.

The testosterone levels of the participants were measured before and after the weight loss surgery. The serum total testosterone levels were below normal in 50 percent of the patients before the surgery.

It was found that after the procedure, average testosterone concentrations rose significantly. All of the men had testosterone levels in the normal range after 1 year.

The researchers noted that the degree of the increase in testosterone levels after the surgery might explain why many male patients have a restoration of erectile function and sexual drive once they lose weight. [From Internet]

2008-10-13T18:47:00.000-07:00

Fruit-eaters seem to be protected against cancers

London: Scientists have found a possible explanation for why fruit-eaters and vegans may gain protection against the spread of cancers.
They have shown that a fragment released from pectin, found in all fruits and vegetables, binds to and is believed to inhibit galectin 3 (Gal3), a protein that plays a role in all stages of cancer progression.'Most claims for the anti-cancer effects of foods are based on population studies,' said Vic Morris from the Institute of Food Research.

'For this research, we tested a molecular mechanism and showed that it is viable.'Population studies such as EPIC, the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer, identified a strong link between eating lots of fibre and a lower risk of cancers of the gastrointestinal tract.

But exactly how fibre exerts a protective effect is unknown.Pectin is better known for its jam-setting qualities and as being a component of dietary fibre.

The present study supports a more exciting and subtle role, according to a release of Norwich BioScience Institutes. Interaction between dietary carbohydrates and mammalian proteins, of which this research is an example, may provide an explanation.

Other food carbohydrates such as beta glucans are considered to be bioactive and their anti-cancer action can be attributed to different types of carbohydrate - mammalian protein interactions.

'For a whole combination of different effects, it is best to consistently eat a range of fruits, vegetables and high-fibre foods,' said Morris.

'You don't necessarily have to eat a superfood.'The next stage of Morris' research is to identify how pectin can be taken up by the body and released so it can exert its effect on cancer cells.

The research was published in The Faseb Journal. [From Internet]

2008-10-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

Enzyme able to block HIV replication in human body

Washington: An enzyme present in every human cell is capable of stopping HIV at the first step of replication, when the retrovirus transcribes its RNA into viral DNA.
The study's authors, led by Xiaojiang Chen of the University of Southern California (USC), were able to map the atomic structure of the active portion of enzyme APOBEC-3G.

The discovery suggests how and where the enzyme binds to the viral DNA, mutating and destroying it.'We understand how this enzyme can interact with DNA,' said Chen, a professor of molecular and computational biology at USC. '

This understanding provides a platform for designing anti-HIV drugs.'If APOBEC-3G works so well, why do people get AIDS?

Because the HIV virus has evolved to encode the protein Vif, known as a 'virulence factor,' that blocks APOBEC-3G, according to an USC release.With APOBEC-3G out of the way, the RNA of the HIV virus can be successfully transcribed to viral DNA, an essential step for infection and for producing many more HIV viruses.Chen said his group's research offers important clues on where Vif binds to APOBEC-3G.

The knowledge could be used to design drugs that would prevent Vif from binding and allow APOBEC-3G to do its job, Chen said.That would unlock humans' innate ability to fight HIV. 'We were born with it, and it's there waiting,' Chen said.

In addition to fighting HIV, APOBEC-3G can inhibit the Hepatitis B virus. Other members of the APOBEC family serve important roles in antibody maturation, fat metabolism and heart development.

Mapping the structure of APOBEC-3G at the atomic level is a goal that 'has been sought after worldwide because of its significance,' Chen said.The study was published online in Nature. [From Internet]

2008-10-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

Gene determines rapidity of ejaculation in men

Washington: Utrecht University researchers say that the rapidity of ejaculation in men is genetically determined.
Neuropsychiatrist Dr Marcel Waldinger and Pharmacological Researcher Paddy Janssen came to this conclusion after studying 89 Dutch men with premature ejaculation.

Their study also involved a control group of 92 men. For a month, the female partners used a stopwatch at home to measure the time until ejaculation each time they had intercourse. "This study applies to men who have always ejaculated prematurely from their first sexual contact onwards and not for men who started suffering from this later on in life," Science Daily quoted Waldinger as saying.

In men with the problem, the substance serotonin appears to be less active between the nerves in the section of the brain that controls the ejaculation. The researchers say that due to low of serotonin, the transference of signals from one neuron to another does not occur properly in men with the primary form of premature ejaculation.

According to them, a gene called 5-HTTLPR seems to be responsible for the amount and activity of serotonin, which means that it controls the rapidity of ejaculation.

Three types of the gene exist, namely LL, SL and SS. The researchers have observed that the LL type causes a more rapid ejaculation. They say that men with LL, on average, ejaculate twice as quickly as men with SS, and also almost twice as quickly as men with SL.

They are trying to identify other genes that are involved in ejaculation.As long ago as 1998, researcher Marcel Waldinger predicted that both the rapidity with which men ejaculate, and the primary form of premature ejaculation were genetically determined.

"This theory contradicts the idea, which has been common for years, that the primary form of premature ejaculation is a psychological disorder," said Waldinger. "The results of our research confirm the genetic theory and may contribute to possible gene therapy against premature ejaculation," there searcher added.

The study has been published in the renowned International scientific journal the Journal of Sexual Medicine. [From Internet]

2008-10-13T18:33:00.000-07:00

'Intelligent men have the best sperm'

London: A man's sperm quality turns out to be a decent indicator of his brain power, says University of New Mexico evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller.
According to the tests conducted by the expert, it was found that men who scored high on a battery of intelligence tests boasted high counts of healthy sperm.

Whereas, low scorers tended to have fewer and more sickly sperm.

The finding suggests that intelligence might tip off a man's overall health to women looking for a mate with healthy genes, the researcher explained at a recent Harvard University talk.

"It's not necessarily that the same genes are influencing sperm quality and intelligence," New Scientist quoted him, as saying.

Rather, the two traits could be linked through a tangled web of biological and environmental interactions that has evolved to help women pick a mate.

To reach the conclusion, the researcher and his team uncovered the apparent sperm-intelligence connection after reanalyzing data gathered in 1985 to assess the after-effects of the Vietnam War, particularly exposures to Agent Orange.

Of the 4,402 veterans who participated in three days of physical and mental testing, 425 provided sperm samples. After accounting for factors that could skew the results, such as age, drug use, and abstinence before providing a sample, Miller's team looked for a statistical link between men's sperm counts and motility and their scores on several tests of verbal and arithmetic intelligence.

Though the connections between brains and sperm were "not awesome, they're there and highly significant," Miller said. All things held equal, good sperm and good brains go together.

Exactly why smart men would have healthy sperm is unclear, but Miller has one idea: "I'm thinking of intelligence as being quite closely related to individual fitness."

2008-10-12T02:48:00.001-07:00

Dieting and weight gain in pregnancy

Women who diet a lot gain more weight during pregnancy than their peers who are more relaxed about eating. More women are overweight during pregnancy because of increased calorie intake. Excessive weight gain during pregnancy is of concern because of its association with weight retention after delivery.

There's evidence that women who restrain their eating and those who diet frequently may actually gain more weight. To further investigate how a woman's pre-pregnancy eating habits influence weight gain during pregnancy, researchers from America followed 1,223 pregnant women participating in a study of preterm birth and fetal growth.

The participants completed questionnaires evaluating restrained eating behaviour, weight cycling, concern with dieting and pre-pregnancy weight.It was found that thirty-two percent of the underweight women gained too much weight, while 63 percent of normal weight women, 85 percent of overweight women, and 74 percent of obese women gained excessive weight.

Further, those who cycled and lost five pounds or more weight before pregnancy gained 2 kg more gestational weight than the non-cyclers. Among every weight status group except for underweight women, those with a high degree of eating restraint gained more weight than those who were less restrained eaters.

The same pattern was seen for women who were habitual dieters.The researchers noted that women who habitually restrain their eating are physiologically more vulnerable to gaining weight during pregnancy, and are more likely to see pregnancy as an opportunity to let go of these restraints.

2008-10-12T02:44:00.000-07:00

'Vitamin D a major contributor in overall health of body organs'

Washington: Once linked to bone diseases such as rickets and osteoporosis, vitamin D has now been considered to play a major role in contributing to overall human health, says UC Riverside's Anthony Norman, an international expert on vitamin D.
He found that vitamin D maintains good health in the adaptive and innate immune systems, the secretion and regulation of insulin by the pancreas, the heart and blood pressure regulation, muscle strength and brain activity.

Also, it is also believed that access to adequate amounts of vitamin D could be beneficial towards reducing the risk of cancer.In his study, Norman also enlisted 36 organ tissues in the body whose cells respond biologically to vitamin D, which include bone marrow, breast, colon, intestine, kidney, lung, prostate, retina, skin, stomach and the uterus.In his opinion, deficiency of vitamin D can impact all 36 organs.

Vitamin D deficiency has already been linked with muscle strength decrease, high risk for falls, and increased risk for colorectal, prostate and breast and other major cancers."It is becoming increasingly clear to researchers in the field that vitamin D is strongly linked to several diseases.

Its biological sphere of influence is much broader than we originally thought. The nutritional guidelines for vitamin D intake must be carefully reevaluated to determine the adequate intake, balancing sunlight exposure with dietary intake, to achieve good health by involving all 36 target organs," said Norman.

He added: "To optimize good health you must have enough vitamin D," he said. "Vitamin D deficiency is also especially of concern in third world countries that have poor nutritional practices and religious customs that require the body to be covered from head to toe. Ideally, to achieve the widest frequency of good health by population, we need to have 90 percent of the people with adequate amounts of vitamin D.

"Not only does vitamin D deficiency impacts health negatively, extremely high doses of vitamin D can also cause hypercalcemia, a condition in which the blood's calcium level is above normal. The highest daily 'safe' dose of vitamin D is 10,000 IU.

"More than ever we need to increase the amount of research on vitamin D, with more funding from government agencies and pharmaceutical companies, to meet the challenge of preserving or improving the health of everyone on the planet," said Norman. The study is published in a recent issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

2008-10-11T23:36:00.000-07:00

Statins may prevent miscarriages

Statins may be able to prevent miscarriages in women suffering from pregnancy complications caused by antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), say researchers on the basis of trials with mice.

APS is an auto-immune syndrome, in which the body produces antibodies directed at phospholipids, the main components of cell membranes, according to a study.

In low risk pregnancies, APS is associated with a nine-fold increase in miscarriage. In high-risk pregnancies (women who have had at least three prior losses), APS is associated with a 90 percent risk of miscarriage.

"Statins may work as a treatment for women with APS-induced pregnancy complications," said Guillermina Girardi, associate scientist at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, who is a co-author of the study.

"They are drugs that have been shown to be very safe. There are a lot of women who continue to take statins through pregnancy and the drugs have not been shown to produce birth defects." Statins do not increase the risk of bleeding like anticoagulants, the current treatment for patients with APS.

Girardi and colleagues examined the white blood cells from mice that had APS and discovered that these cells expressed certain receptors called PAR2 (protease-activated receptor 2).

Stimulating this receptor led to the activation of white blood cells that attacked the placenta and hurt the foetus. Using an antibody that blocks tissue factor interaction with PAR-2, they inhibited white blood cell activation, a press release of the Hospital for Special Surgery said.

In another experiment, investigators tested a possible treatment. Previous studies had shown that statins, commonly used to regulate cholesterol levels, could downregulate tissue factor (diminish the number of molecules expressed on the surface of the cell).

Girardi and colleagues found that statins not only downregulate tissue factor, but they also downregulate PAR-2 on white blood cells, making the cells less sensitive. So, the researchers injected statins into mice with APS and found that these drugs could prevent white blood cell activation and protect pregnancies.

The study was published in the October issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.