By ANDREW BRIDGES WASHINGTON -- A tablet shown to help more than one in five smokers quit joined the limited number of effective stop-smoking drugs on Thursday, approved by federal regulators. When varenicline goes on sale later this year, it will become the first new prescription drug for smoking cessation approved by the Food and Drug Administration in nearly a decade and only the second stop-smoking drug that is nicotine-free, according to Pfizer Inc. The New York company plans to market the twice-daily tablet, intended for adults only, as Chantix. "It's a welcome new addition. It's like with cancer or heart disease or high blood pressure or diabetes: The more effective treatments you have, the better off patients are," said Dr. Steven Schroeder, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who is active in smoking cessation efforts. Varenicline works in two ways, by cutting the pleasure of smoking and reducing the withdrawal symptoms that lead smokers to light up over and over again. © 2006 The Associated Press

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 8914 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY and GARDINER HARRIS After analyzing data from clinical trials, GlaxoSmithKline has sent letters to doctors warning that its antidepressant drug Paxil appears to increase the risk of suicide attempts in some young adults. The company said it had changed the labeling on the drug to reflect the finding of the study, which analyzed clinical trial data involving some 15,000 people. The study found that reported suicide attempts were rare but significantly more common in adults who took the drug for depression than in those who received placebo pills. The Glaxo researchers reported only one suicide in the trials, a number so small it says nothing about the drug's risk, experts said. In October 2004, the Food and Drug Administration ordered drug companies to place a strong warning on antidepressant labels after studies suggested that some drugs increased suicidal thinking or behavior in children and adolescents. But the Glaxo study — the first by a drug company to find a link between antidepressants and suicidal behavior in adults, experts say — is likely to persuade some skeptics that the risk is real and not confined to minors. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 8913 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By WILLIAM GRIMES "It's not brain surgery." In casual English, that means the task at hand is not complicated. Brain surgeons, like rocket scientists, are presumed to be at the top rung of the intellectual ladder, solving problems of Einsteinian complexity. Think again. Katrina Firlik, a neurosurgeon practicing in Connecticut, deflates that myth right off the bat in "Another Day in the Frontal Lobe," her engaging tour of human brains and the doctors who cut into them. It's neurologists or psychiatrists who are more likely to ponder the deep questions of mind and consciousness. Neurosurgeons, whom Dr. Firlik describes as "part scientist, part mechanic," do manual labor, the hands-on work of opening the skull and cutting out tumors or cysts. Sometimes the work calls for exquisite delicacy. Other times, they're reaching for a mallet and chisel. Good neurosurgeons (who, by the way, spend more time operating on spines than they do on brains) like to keep things simple. Case No. 1 in Dr. Firlik's file is a construction worker who has been shot in the head with a nail gun by his partner and has a two-inch nail in his frontal lobe. The victim is alert and mentally sharp. He feels no pain. In the operating room Dr. Firlik, rolling up her sleeves, drills a circular hole in the skull around the nail head and gently pulls it out along with the nail. After pounding the nail out, she fastens the disc of bone back to his head with titanium plates and screws. Within 24 hours the patient is sent on his way. No harm done. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 8912 - Posted: 05.12.2006

Female fish prefer brightly coloured males because they are easier to see and are in better shape concludes Dutch researcher Martine Maan following her study of fish speciation in the East African Lakes. Environmental variation subsequently leads to differences in preference and eventually to speciation. Evolutionary theory predicts that species can diverge if different females choose different characteristics in males. Yet females often pay attention to traits that reveal something about the quality of a male. As a result, females are likely to share the same preferences. In Lake Victoria cichlid fish, Martine Maan found a solution for this paradox: in different species, different traits reveal male quality. She examined two closely related species, one with blue males and the other with red males. Females prefer males of the right colour, blue or red, and within those categories they choose the most brightly coloured males. They do so for good reasons: brightly coloured males from both species carry fewer parasites and are thus in better condition. Moreover, both species are adapted to different infection risks, which are associated with a difference in water depth and food choice. It is therefore in the females' interest to mate with their own males.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 8911 - Posted: 05.12.2006

Helen Pearson There is a building block of protein that kills hunger in the brain, researchers have shown in experiments with rats. The result backs the idea that altering tiny quantities of particular nutrients in our diets could help fight obesity and disease. The study suggests that rats' brains monitor levels of amino acids, the components of proteins, and use this to judge how much food to eat. The researchers, at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, found that injecting an amino acid called leucine into the brains of hungry rats curbed their appetite: they gained a third less weight over 24 hours than rats that didn't have jabs. The team reports its results in Science1. The discovery implies that traditional thinking about diets — based on monitoring the broader classes of carbohydrates, fats and proteins — is rather crude. Tinkering with our diets more subtly, to include particular cocktails of 'micronutrients' such as amino acids, sugars or fat components, might help to control weight, alter aspects of metabolism and perhaps combat disease. ©2006 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 8910 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roxanne Khamsi A new appetite-controlling pathway that responds to molecules found in meat has been discovered in the brain. This brain signal system is triggered by specific amino acids and may lead to new ways of helping obese people lose weight, researchers say. Certain amino acid molecules – the building blocks of proteins – exert powerful control over appetite, according to a new study in rats. Animals given injections of the amino acid leucine, which is found in high-protein meats and grains, gained only about one-third of the weight put on by their control counterparts. Although levels of fats and sugars have been shown to influence the desire to eat, until now no team had demonstrated how protein molecules regulate appetite, the researchers claim. Randy Seeley at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, US, and his colleagues looked at an enzyme called mTOR, which responds to protein molecules and regulates their synthesis within cells. They found that mTOR was highly active in a region of the rat brain called the hypothalamus – a structure that is involved in regulating appetite in both humans and rats. To see whether the mTOR pathway in the hypothalamus responds to amino acids, Seeley injected 1 microgram of leucine directly into the brains of rodents, near the hypothalamus. Over the next day, the rats that received the injection consumed 25 grams of food on average while the control rats consumed 30 g of food. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 8909 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The epic journeys taken by dragonflies searching for warmer climates have been revealed by scientists in the US. The team, led by researchers from Princeton University, found that the insects are capable of flying up to 85 miles (137 km) in a day. Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the group describes how it tracked the movements by attaching tiny radio transmitters to the insects. A scientific posse followed the signals from a receiving aeroplane. Other researchers monitored the insects' progress from the ground. The dragonflies' route took them along the east coast of America towards the warmer south. The data revealed that the dragonflies' migration patterns are strikingly similar to those of songbirds, suggesting there is a strong evolutionary link to their behaviours. "Insects have been around far longer than birds, therefore we suspect that they have been migrating far longer than birds," said Professor David Wilcove of Princeton University and one of the authors of the paper. "It is just possible what we are seeing here are the basic primitive rules of migration and that birds converged on the tricks of the trade," he told Science In Action on the BBC World Service. Billions of common green darner dragonflies (Anax junius) migrate every year but until now hardly anything was known about their routes or strategy. (C)BBC

Keyword: Animal Migration
Link ID: 8908 - Posted: 05.11.2006

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR THE FACTS Most people can spot the telltale signs of a heart attack. But a stroke? Studies show that stroke victims sometimes fail to realize that they have suffered an attack or to seek medical help until crucial hours later. Minor strokes are sometimes dismissed as migraines or fatigue. So when an e-mail message claiming that anyone can diagnose a stroke in three simple steps surfaced recently, it was tantalizing. It claims that an untrained bystander can tell whether people have suffered a stroke by asking them to smile, raise both arms slowly and recite a simple sentence. A small study presented at a meeting of the American Stroke Association in 2003 suggested the test. But because the symptoms of a stroke vary widely, the three-step test can detect some victims but will miss many others, said Dr. Larry Goldstein, the director of the Duke Stroke Center. Some of the more common symptoms of a stroke, for example, are problems seeing, an unusual headache, sudden numbness and trouble with coordination or walking — all of which the three-step test overlooks. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 8907 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists at UCL (University College London) have discovered that even wasps are driven by their status. The study, published today in Nature, shows that lower-ranked female wasps work harder to help their queen than those higher up the chain because they have less to lose, and consequently are prepared to take more risks and wear themselves out. The study, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), reveals that those higher up the chain and therefore with a greater chance of being the next in line to breed are much lazier than their lower-ranked nest-mates: rather than use up their energy in foraging to feed the queen's larvae, high-rankers sit tight on the nest and wait for their chance to become queen themselves. Dr Jeremy Field, UCL Department of Biology, said: "Helpers wait peacefully in an age-based queue to inherit the prize of being the queen or breeder in the group. The oldest female almost always becomes the next breeder. The wasps in this queue face a fundamental trade-off: by working harder, they help the group as a whole and as a result indirectly benefit themselves, but they simultaneously decrease their own future survival and fecundity because helping is costly. It involves energy-expensive flight to forage for food, and leaving the nest is dangerous. We have found that the brighter the individual wasp's future, the less likely it is to take risks by leaving the safety of its nest to forage for food."

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 8906 - Posted: 05.11.2006

A question long debated among Alzheimer's disease researchers has been definitively answered by scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease in San Francisco. Using a unique mouse model, Gladstone Investigator Yadong Huang, MD, PhD, and his team have proven that, under certain conditions, neurons produce Alzheimer's-linked apolipoprotein E. Also known as apoE, this cholesterol-carrying protein has three common forms, one of which, apoE4, is the major known genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, according to studies published around the world in recent years. Until now, most researchers have believed that apoE is synthesized in the brain solely in such cells as astrocytes, microglia, and ependymal layer cells. Controversial for the last decade has been the question of whether or not neurons, which make thought and memory possible by transmitting electrical signals, can produce apoE. The Gladstone study, published in the May 10 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience and highlighted in its "This Week in the Journal" section, proves that neurons, too, produce apoE, but only in response to injury to the brain. Key to the finding has been the development of a mouse model that is uniquely capable of alerting researchers whenever and wherever the apoE gene is expressed. Huang and his team have succeeded in making one of the two alleles of the apoE gene produce a green fluorescent protein that represents apoE, while the remaining allele functions normally. Thus, under a microscope, the bright green fluorescence, dubbed EGFPapoE, shows researchers wherever the apoE gene is expressed.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 8905 - Posted: 05.11.2006

Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer Lesbians seem to have different brain circuitry than heterosexual women, processing the aroma of sex hormones in a way more similar in some respects to the brain response of straight men, a new study has found. A team of neuroscientists in Sweden already has reported evidence suggesting that the brains of men and women, as well as the brains of gay men and straight men, handle male and female hormone smells in distinct ways. On Monday, the same researchers, led by Ivanka Savic of the Stockholm Brain Institute and Hans Berglund of the Karolinska University Hospital, reported similar differences in women. Results appear in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Twelve women identified as strongly homosexual were subjected to brain scans while the scientists presented an array of aromas, in particular a sample of male and female sex hormones. A group of women identified as straight were also presented the aromas. The results showed that while a part of the brain called the anterior hypothalamus -- which is linked to sexual behavior, among other things -- tended to light up in the straight women, the lesbians showed no reaction. On the other hand, lesbians tended to react to male as well as female hormones in the part of the brain that handles routine odors. ©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 8904 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Memory allows us to do more than just store telephone numbers and directions to the post office. It is a repository for lost worlds, which we can recreate years later. The Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel did just that during his lecture at the New York Academy of Sciences on March 2, 2006, as part of the Readers & Writers lecture series. Kandel, now 76, drew his audience back to his youth in Vienna in the 1930s. To convey the trauma of being a Jewish boy during the Nazi occupation of Austria, he recalled his ninth birthday. "I'd gotten a number of toys, the most magical was a little shiny car I could control remotely," Kandel said. But that joy turned to terror. It was 1938, the year the Nazis had invaded Austria. "Two days later, Nazi police officers came and told us we had to leave the house," Kandel recalled. "They sent us to live with another family. When we came back, the apartment had been essentially emptied out. Everything was gone." Today Kandel understands a great deal about how he can manage to hold memories such as these. He escaped from Austria to the United States, where he trained as a neuroscientist. He went on to have a spectacular career probing the biological basis of the mind, winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2000. Kandel has woven together recollections of his life, his research, and the evolution of modern neuroscience into a memoir and intellectual history, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind. ©2006 New York Academy of Sciences,

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 8903 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new way to preserve the cells that surround and protect nerves could lead to new treatments for demyelinating diseases such a multiple sclerosis, a research team reports in the May 10, 2006, issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. The approach grew out of a novel explanation, quickly gaining followers, for the mechanism of nerve damage caused by multiple sclerosis. Instead of concentrating on the alterations that result in autoimmune assaults on the nervous system, researchers led by Brian Popko of the University of Chicago have focused on a set of factors that prevent recovery from the inflammatory attacks. A series of papers from Popko's lab has demonstrated that interferon-gamma -- a chemical signal used to activate the immune system -- plays a critical role in damaging the cells that produce myelin, the protective coating that lines healthy nerves. Interferon not only leaves these cells, called oligodendrocytes, incapable of repairing the damage but can also kill them directly. "Interferon-gamma is not normally found in the nervous system," said Popko, the Jack Miller Professor of Neurological Diseases at the University of Chicago, "but it can gain entry after an inflammatory flare-up. We previously showed how it harmed oligodendrocytes. Here we confirm its direct harmful effects on those cells and demonstrate one way of protecting them." The researchers produced a series of transgenic mice. In one set they introduced genes that produced interferon-gamma within the central nervous system. In another set they also introduced a gene (known as suppressor of cytokine signaling 1, or SOCS1) that blocked the response of myelin-producing cells to interferon-gamma.

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 8902 - Posted: 05.10.2006

Some people meditate to clear their minds or to relieve the stresses of daily life. Others hope to find enlightenment and reach nirvana. It's estimated that ten million Americans practice some form of meditation regularly. "Meditating is about training the mind in effect, it's a technique, it's a tool, so its training the mind to be more focused and to be more mindful moment to moment," explains George Pitagorsky, a management consultant who practices and teaches meditation at the New York Insight Meditation Centre. "It increases concentration capability — less spacing out, much more ability to focus on a particular chosen point of reference," he says. But the benefits of meditation may not be only in the mind. Massachusetts General Hospital's Sara Lazar says she can see physical changes in the brains of people who routinely meditate. "Meditation can have a serious impact on your brain long beyond the time when you're actually sitting and meditating, and this may have a positive impact on your day-to-day living," says Lazar, an assistant in psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. Lazar found that certain parts of the brain were thicker for meditators. As she reported in the journal NeuroReport, Lazar and her research team used a MRI brain scanner to compare the brains of people who practiced Insight meditation every day, with non-meditators. "These are not monks; these are just people who choose to meditate for about 45 minutes a day every day," she says. © ScienCentral, 2000-2006.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 8901 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Despite research efforts to find modern factors that would explain the different life expectancies of men and women, the gap is actually ancient and universal, according to University of Michigan researchers. "Women live longer in almost every country, and the sex difference in lifespan has been recognized since at least the mid-18th century," said Daniel J. Kruger, a research scientist in the U-M School of Public Health and the Institute for Social Research. "It isn't a recent trend; it originates from our deep evolutionary history." This skewed mortality isn't even unique to our species; the men come up short in common chimps and many other species, Kruger added. Kruger and co-author Randolph Nesse, a professor of psychology and psychiatry and director of the Evolution and Human Adaptation Program, argue that the difference in life expectancy stems from the biological imperative of attracting mates. "This whole pattern is a result of sexual selection and the roles that males and females play in reproduction," Kruger said, "Females generally invest more in offspring than males and are more limited in offspring quantity, thus males typically compete with each other to attract and retain female partners." For example, in common chimps, the greatest difference in mortality rates for males and females occurs at about 13 years of age, when the males are just entering the breeding scene and competing aggressively for social status and females.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 8900 - Posted: 05.10.2006

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News —Monkeys drink more alcohol when housed alone, and some like to end a long day in the lab with a boozy cocktail, according to a new analysis of alcohol consumption among members of a rhesus macaque social group. These and other observed behaviors strongly correspond with human patterns of alcohol use. Researchers attribute a predisposition to alcohol abuse in some monkeys and people to a combination of genetic and environmental factors. In the study subjects, "blood alcohol levels often exceeded the .08 percent level, which is the legal limit for most states in the U.S.," said Scott Chen, one of the study’s authors and a researcher at the National Institutes of Health Animal Center in Maryland. The study, recently published in the journal Methods, also found that booze affects monkeys much the same way it affects people. "It was not unusual to see some of the monkeys stumble and fall, sway, and vomit," Chen added. "In a few of our heavy drinkers, they would drink until they fell asleep." © 2006 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Stress
Link ID: 8899 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roxanne Khamsi Women may be able to tell whether a man is child-friendly simply by looking at his face – and this could influence how attractive they find him as a potential long-term partner. But for a spring fling or a summer love, women seek men with high levels of testosterone who don’t care much for children. James Roney at the University of California, Santa Barbara, US, and his colleagues asked 39 undergraduate men to look at pairs of pictures each consisting of a photo of an adult and a photo of an infant. The men were asked which photo they preferred. Researchers also took saliva samples from the male volunteers to determine their testosterone levels. Each man was then asked to maintain a neutral expression while researchers photographed his face. Then, 29 female undergraduates rated the photographed male faces according to how much they believed the men liked children. Researchers found that women could often correctly guess which men preferred the infant photos. The women were also asked which men they would choose for a short fling and which for a long-term relationship. Those men perceived as child-friendly were more likely to be selected for a long-term relationship. In addition, the female volunteers were told to rate the men’s faces in terms of masculinity. The men selected as most masculine by the women were confirmed by their saliva tests to be the ones with the highest testosterone levels. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 8898 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY Handling a gun stirs a hormonal reaction in men that primes them for aggression, new research suggests. Psychologists at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., enrolled 30 male students in what they described as a taste study. The researchers took saliva samples from the students and measured testosterone levels. They then seated the young men, one at a time, at a table in a bare room; on the table were pieces of paper and either the board game Mouse Trap or a large handgun. Their instructions: take apart the game or the gun and write directions for assembly and disassembly. Fifteen minutes later, the psychologists measured saliva testosterone again and found that the levels had spiked in men who had handled the gun but had stayed steady in those working with the board game. The "taste sensitivity" phase of the experiment was in fact intended to measure aggressive impulses. After the writing assignment, the young men were asked to rate the taste of a drink, a cup of water with a drop of hot sauce in it. They were then told to prepare a drink for the next person in the experiment, adding as much hot sauce as they liked. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Aggression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 8897 - Posted: 05.09.2006

By LARRY ZAROFF, M.D. My anesthesiologist, Dr. G., was young, handsome, athletic and slick. Relaxed and happy. A triumphant life. In less than a minute, he had my epidural in place. The needle into my spinal space, the medication injected. A perfect anesthetic for an operation on my left lower leg. I did not have to wait long before my legs lost all feeling, as if U.P.S. had picked them up for delivery to Kauai. They disappeared. Later, Dr. G. would do the same. At that moment, the greater loss was my right leg. My left was already short a functional Achilles tendon, the thick cord — a bass's string — that connects the calf muscles to the heel bone. Without that anchor, the lower leg is useless. I had been playing tennis with my cousin, a pediatrician. I had two lessons that afternoon. Pediatricians can be as competitive as surgeons, and if you're in your mid-50's, you should either stretch before playing or forget about charging the net for drop shots. I heard and felt the second shot, the pop as my Achilles tendon wandered away from its roots and migrated up my calf. It hurt, and I could not walk. A definite weakness. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 8896 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER Oh, mothers! Dear noble, selfless, tender and ferocious defenders of progeny all across nature's phylogeny: How well you deserve our admiration as Mother's Day draws near, and how photogenically you grace the greeting cards that we thrifty offspring will send in lieu of a proper gift. Cute? You think so. But this mother gave birth to two cubs and when one of them thrived, she left the "spare" behind without a backward look. Here is a mother guinea hen, trailed by a dozen cotton-ball chicks. Here a mother panda and a baby panda share a stalk of bamboo, while over there, a great black eagle dam carries food to her waiting young. We love you, Mom, you're our port in the storm. You alone help clip Mother Nature's bloodstained claws. But wait. That guinea hen is walking awfully fast. In fact, her brood cannot quite keep up with her, and by the end of the day, whoops, only two chicks still straggle behind. And the mama panda, did she not give birth to twins? So why did just one little panda emerge from her den? As for the African black eagle, her nest is less a Hallmark poem than an Edgar Allan Poe. The mother has gathered prey in abundance, and has hyrax carcasses to spare. Yet she feeds only one of her two eaglets, then stands by looking bored as the fattened bird repeatedly pecks its starving sibling to death. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 8895 - Posted: 05.09.2006