Patients with panic disorder have nearly double the risk for coronary heart disease, and those also diagnosed with depression are at almost three times the risk, according to new research. The study in the current issue of Psychosomatic Medicine focuses on the medical histories of nearly 40,000 people from the time they were first diagnosed as suffering from panic disorder. Lead author Andres Gomez-Caminero, Ph.D., says the large cohort study "highlights, for the first time, the potential for additive effects of different psychiatric conditions on cardiovascular health….and it really sets the foundation for new research in the area of cardiovascular risk estimation among patients with mental illness." The report focuses on medical histories from a database of 17 million patients jointly maintained by 30 managed care providers. Panic disorder involves unexpected and repeated episodes of intense fear accompanied by physical symptoms including chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness or abdominal distress. Panic disorder patients are more likely to be female, overweight, smokers and have a history of depression. About 2.4 million Americans annually experience panic episodes, and the manifestations often mimic symptoms of a heart attack. The disorder can be treated by medications and psychotherapy.

Keyword: Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 7943 - Posted: 09.24.2005

What was being looking at? The researchers were aiming to transfer as much of a human chromosome into a mouse embryonic stem cell as possible. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes which contain all human genes. Males and females share 22 of these chromosome pairs; the 23rd is the sex chromosome, where women have two X chromosomes and men have one X and one Y. Down's syndrome belongs to a class of disorders known as aneuploidies in which individuals have the wrong number of chromosomes. Scientists do not know why these extra copies occur. Aneuploidies occur in at least 5% of all pregnancies and are a significant cause of illness, death and miscarriage. People with Down's are born with three copies of chromosome 21. There are an estimated 60,000 people in the UK who have Down's syndrome. They can expect to live between 40 and 60 years. What has been achieved? The researchers, led by Victor Tybulewicz at the National Institute for Medical Research and Professor Elizabeth Fisher from the Institute if Neurology at University College London, were able to add about 90% of human chromosome 21 - which contains around 250 genes - into the embryonic stem cells of mice. They did this by extracting all chromosomes from a human cell. These were then squirted onto mouse embryonic stem cells, each of which will absorb one chromosome at random. Stem cells that took up chromosome 21 were then isolated and injected into mouse embryos. These were then replaced in the mother, whose offspring were shown to have the extra copy of chromosome 21, which also had problems with memory, in brain function and in the formation of the heart, similar to those that can occur in people with Down syndrome. (C)BBC

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7942 - Posted: 09.23.2005

Scientists have been able to introduce most of a human chromosome into mice - and create the most successful recreation of Down's syndrome so far. The Medical Research Council hopes the step will help research into Down's and other chromosomal conditions. They say it is a significant technical development, as it had previously been possible to place only fragments of chromosomes into mouse cells. The research is published in the magazine Science. A person with Down's has three copies of chromosome 21, instead of the normal two. It belongs to a class of disorders known as aneuploidies in which individuals have the wrong number of chromosomes. Scientists do not know why these extra copies occur. Aneuploidies occur in at least 5% of all pregnancies and are a significant cause of illness, death and miscarriage. Less well known aneuploidies are Edward's syndrome, where there are three copies of chromosome 18 and Patau's syndrome, where an extra copy of chromosome 13 is present. Both prove fatal in early childhood. In this research, led by Victor Tybulewicz at the National Institute for Medical Research and Professor Elizabeth Fisher from the Institute if Neurology at University College London, were able to add about 90% of the 250 genes on human chromosome 21 into the embryonic stem cells of mice. They then used these cells to generate a strain of mice that carried the extra human chromosome. This new strain of mice has been shown to have problems with memory, in brain function and in the formation of the heart, similar to those that can occur in people with Down syndrome. (C)BBC

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7941 - Posted: 09.23.2005

It is best to treat stammering as early as possible, ideally before a child starts school, researchers say. About one in 20 children begin to stammer, usually between the ages of two and four. University of Sydney researchers tested a new treatment - the Lidcombe programme - specifically designed for pre-school children. Their British Medical Journal study found it was more effective than relying on natural recovery. Around 80% of children who develop a stammer do recover spontaneously. As a result, there has been doubt about whether therapy has a positive impact - or is simply being used on children who would recover naturally anyway. The new study is the first to provide hard evidence that therapy does have a positive effect. In total 54 children aged three to six took part, of which just over half received the Lidcombe programme. Each child was diagnosed with a frequency of at least 2% syllables stammered. After nine months the children who received the Lidcombe programme had reduced their level of stammering by 77%, and 52% had reduced their stammering to 1% of syllables. In the control group, just 43% had reduced their stammering, and only 15% had achieved the target of stammering on 1% of syllables. However, the researchers say the programme seems to be less effective once children had reached school age. They argue that delaying treatment until then risks exposing children to serious social and psychological effects. "If the disorder persists into the school age years a child is exposed to unacceptable risk of experiencing the disabling effects of chronic and intractable stuttering throughout life." (C)BBC

Keyword: Language; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7940 - Posted: 09.23.2005

By Juliet Eilperin Women in coastal communities have twice as much mercury in their blood as those living inland, according to an analysis by an Environmental Protection Agency scientist. The preliminary findings, based on a survey of 3,600 women conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between 1999 and 2002, provide fresh evidence of the link between fish consumption and concentrations of methylmercury, a neurotoxin that causes developmental problems in young children. The study focused on the 10 percent of women with the highest mercury levels, and in that group, it found that inland residents had an average level of 2.4 parts per billion, compared with 5.9 parts per billion for coastal residents. EPA guidelines hold that mercury levels higher than 3.5 parts per billion pose a possible health threat. Mercury, spewed into the air in emissions from power plants and other sources, ends up in water and accumulates in predator fish such as tuna and swordfish. In pregnant women with high levels, methylmercury crosses the placenta and can affect the developing brain of the fetus. "What's evident in these data is there's a real difference between the coastal and non-coastal" women, said Kathryn Mahaffey, who conducted the analysis as director of the EPA's division of exposure assessment, coordination and policy. "The message is people need to eat a variety of foods and, when choosing fish species, they need to choose more than one type of fish." © Copyright 1996-2005 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Autism
Link ID: 7939 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Wild When it comes to working out the relationships between ancient languages, grammar is more enlightening than vocabulary, scientists say. There are some 300 language families in the world today. Researchers have long studied similarities between the words in different languages to try to work out how they are related. But the rate of change in languages means that this method really only works back to 10,000 years ago. Homo sapiens evolved more than a hundred thousand years ago and by 10,000 years ago had already settled around the globe. So researchers are keen to peer further back in time to see how language evolved and spread. To do this, Michael Dunn and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Germany decided to look at grammar. They took Papuan languages of people in the South Pacific as their challenge. Radiocarbon dating shows humans lived more than 35,000 years ago in Melanesia, a group of islands including Papua New Guinea. But the 23 languages that have evolved in this area share few, if any, common words. So the standard techniques cannot reveal much about the languages' histories. The researchers made a database of 125 grammatical features in 15 Papuan languages. This included how word types, such as nouns and verbs, are ordered in a sentence, and whether nouns have a gender, as they do in languages such as German and French. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 7938 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(Newark)-Psychology researchers have long understood and accepted the importance of an individual's brain activity in motor areas when interpreting the actions of others. However, much less was known about the role the body plays in helping individuals process and understand the same information. With the help of two patients suffering from an extremely rare degenerative neurological condition, a Rutgers-Newark Psychology Professor and his team of researchers have established that the body plays a significant role in helping humans to perceive and understand the actions of others. In the article, "Understanding Another's Expectation from Action: The Role of Peripheral Sensation," that will appear in the October 2005 issue of Nature Neuroscience, Rutgers-Newark Psychology Professor Guenther Knoblich is among a group of researchers who contend that individuals use the human body's senses to understand others actions and expectations. The researchers reached this conclusion by performing experiments with two individuals suffering from the rare neurological disorder of selective and complete haptic deafferentiation due to sensory neuronopathy. The participants are the only two known individuals in the world whose sense of touch and body movement was completely eradicated by the degenerative disease. The individuals participated in tasks that tested their ability to gauge the weight of boxes which were lifted by other individuals and their ability to infer weight expectations of the observed individuals. Their performance was compared against a control group comprised of healthy individuals.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 7937 - Posted: 09.23.2005

US researchers claim to have developed a brain scanning technique reliable enough to identify when criminals lie. The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, team say monitoring the frontal lobe area of the brain shows when people are lying. Nature magazine reports the scientists say the area is more active when people are not telling the truth. But other experts said laboratory research would not translate to real-life situations. The researchers use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to look at which areas of the brain were active in particular circumstances. In the study, which is also set to be published in the journal Neuroscience, volunteers were given an envelope with two cards and $20. They were told they could keep money if they lied convincingly in tests. Once inside the fMRI scanner, they were asked to press a button if cards flashed up on a screen in front of them matched one they had. They were asked to lie about having one of the cards, and be honest about the other. The scientists say that, by analysing brain activity, they were able to develop a mathematical formula that could detect lies from truth which was 99% accurate. Daniel Langleben, who led the research, had previously said fMRI was a research tool, and could not be used to spot people lying in criminal or terrorist investigations. But he said this latest study had changed his mind because it looked at results from an individual lie, rather than looking at generic brain activity when people were being dishonest. He told Nature: "We can't say whether this person will one day use a bomb. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 7936 - Posted: 09.22.2005

By STEPHANIE SAUL THE waiting room at the office of Dr. Stanley Title on West 57th Street in Manhattan is full of women, all of them seeking a cure for fat. It is a man's job in life to make money, but "a woman has to look good," said Dr. Title, explaining why the women flock to his office, where the walls are decorated with framed articles from newspapers and magazines that quote him as a leading weight-loss expert. In The Daily Star, the British tabloid, he warned that Mel Gibson's diet of raw beef could contain parasites. He told The Courier-Mail of Brisbane, Australia, in 1998 that a super-thin Courteney Cox appeared to have taken her dieting too far. Yet, for all the sane advice Dr. Title dispenses to others, he was censured last year by the State of New York for ordering too many tests and treatments for his own patients. Dr. Title, 69, who calls the sanction the only blemish on a 45-year career, is one of an estimated 2,500 doctors practicing medical weight loss in the United States. As obesity becomes an increasingly intractable national problem and more people seek medical solutions, diet doctors represent a growing segment of the country's $46 billion diet market, according to Marketdata Enterprises, a market research firm in Tampa, Fla. Virtually ignored by medical schools and residency programs, medical weight loss has no specific entry requirements and no recognized certification board. But the field, which recently gained a delegate seat at American Medical Association meetings, does seem to have more than its share of complaints leveled at doctors who sell products to their patients, whether special food, liquid diets, unproven therapies or potentially dangerous and habit-forming weight-loss drugs. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 7935 - Posted: 09.22.2005

Playing catch is a simple pleasure for Lisa Van Vleck and her two sons. But a rare genetic brain disorder called vanishing white matter disease (VWM) kept her oldest son, Nathan, on the sidelines. "He loved watching people play sports," says Lisa Van Vleck from Pittsford, NY. But now Nathan is a key player in helping researchers understand this debilitating disease. His brain cells have shown, for the first time, that the type of cells they expected to be defective are actually normal, while others, surprisingly, are not. A very happy, social kid, Nathan's slow speech development by age two gave the first signs to both his parents and his pediatrician that something was wrong. "At first his gait was a little awkward, but he could walk — we thought he was normal," Van Vleck says. "But all the tests came back normal and everyone was just baffled. We went on for years like that." Tragically, in spite of some gains along the way, Nathan's decline was steady, confining him to a walker and then a wheelchair to get around. "It was very hard to watch," his mother recalls. "He realized it himself, he would say, 'Why can't I walk? I used to be able to walk.' And we didn't have any answers for him." After a nearly lifelong fight with this incredibly rare inherited disease, Nathan died at age 12. The family allowed doctors to immediately sample his brain cells. "We'd do anything to help so some other child wouldn't have to suffer," says Van Vleck. © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Glia
Link ID: 7934 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Andreas von Bubnoff Researchers have found an earthly cause for a phenomenon that Peruvian locals call 'devil's gardens' in the Amazonian rainforest. These gardens consist of just one type of tree (Duroia hirsuta). This is such an eerie and unusual sight in the otherwise diverse Amazon that locals presumed there to be a supernatural cause. But US researchers say it's ants, not the devil, that make this tree bloom. The ants (Myrmelachista schumanni) live inside the trees' hollow stems, safe from predators and the environment. They kill all plants other than their host plant by injecting formic acid into the leaves. In this way, they help their host plant, and their own colony, to spread. Such gardens can hold more than 300 trees and millions of ants, and can be hundreds of years old. "It's amazing that the ants exert so much control over their environment," says Deborah Gordon of Stanford University, California. "They create a single species stand of plants in one of the most diverse places on the planet." Some previous studies have suggested that ants or the trees themselves were killing the surrounding plants, but no one could explain how. Now Megan Frederickson of Stanford University and her colleagues, including Gordon, report in Nature1 that the ants do it through injecting a natural poison. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 7933 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In mice, that had been genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer's disease, scientists were able to reverse the rodents' memory loss by reducing the amount of an enzyme that is crucial for the development of Alzheimer's disease. "What we are showing is a proof of principle that stopping the synthesis of a protein that is necessary for the formation of the telltale plaques reverses the progression of the disease, and more importantly, the cognitive function of these mice, which had already been impaired, has now recovered," says Inder Verma, professor in the Laboratory for Genetics at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The findings, which are the result of a close collaboration between researchers at the Salk Institute and scientists at the University of California in San Diego, are reported in an advance on-line publication of Nature Neuroscience. In the past, gene therapy has been mainly used to deliver normal genes into cells to compensate for defective versions of the gene causing disease. In their study, the researchers used gene therapy to silence a normally functioning gene. Exploiting a mechanism called RNA interference, they were able to turn down the gene that helps produce the characteristic amyloid plaques that are one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 7932 - Posted: 09.21.2005

By CORNELIA DEAN ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution. They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply. After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry." That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds. Similar efforts are under way or planned around the country as science museums and other institutions struggle to contend with challenges to the theory of evolution that they say are growing common and sometimes aggressive. One company, called B.C. Tours "because we are biblically correct," even offers escorted visits to the Denver Museum of Science and Nature. Participants hear creationists' explanations for the exhibitions. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 7931 - Posted: 09.21.2005

By Lauran Neergaard, The Associated Press WASHINGTON — Injections of human stem cells seem to directly repair some of the damage caused by spinal cord injury, according to research that helped partially paralyzed mice walk again. The experiment, reported Monday, isn't the first to show that stem cells offer tantalizing hope for spinal cord injury — other scientists have helped mice recover, too. But the new work went an extra step, suggesting the connections that the stem cells form to help bridge the damaged spinal cord are key to recovery. Surprisingly, they didn't just form new nerve cells. They also formed cells that create the biological insulation that nerve fibers need to communicate. A number of neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, involve loss of that insulation, called myelin. "The actual cells that we transplanted, the human cells, are the ones that are making myelin," explained lead researcher Aileen Anderson of the University of California, Irvine. "We're extremely excited about these cells." The research is reported in Monday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Stem cells are building blocks that turn into different types of tissue. Embryonic stem cells in particular have made headlines recently, as scientists attempt to harness them to regenerate damaged organs or other body parts. They're essentially a blank slate, able to turn into any tissue given the right biochemical instructions. © Copyright 2005 USA TODAY

Keyword: Regeneration; Stem Cells
Link ID: 7930 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A team of scientists has solved a key mystery of visual perception. Why do pictures look the same when viewed from different angles? When you look at a picture, there is only one viewing position--the picture's center of projection--that yields a correct image at your eye. For example, there's but one place in the movie theater where the film creates the same image at your eye as the original scene. Viewing from other places causes distortion of the image at your eye. Why, then, don't moviegoers rush to the correct position? Indeed, do they even know where that position is? Martin S. Banks, Professor of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of California at Berkeley, Dhanraj Vishwanath, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rochester Institute of Technology, and Ahna Girshick, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, have developed a new scientific model of the processes underlying the phenomena. Their results will be presented in the upcoming edition of Nature Neuroscience. "If the brain processed pictures in the same way it did real objects, you should actually see things in the picture change and distort for every different location you view it from," Banks says. "The human visual system automatically corrects such distortions, but researchers have not been able to pinpoint how this correction occurs."

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 7929 - Posted: 09.21.2005

By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News — Babies start crying in the womb as early as 28 weeks, according to video-recorded ultrasound images. Jeannine Gingras at the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C., and colleagues made the discovery after playing tones of about 100 Hz and 95 decibels through a speaker placed on the stomach of a pregnant woman. The response, recorded with an ultrasound scan, showed the fetus startling and turning the head as the sound stimulation was played. Then the fetus showed all the characteristics of crying: an open mouth, increasing head tilts, a quivering chin and several irregular breaths before exhaling and settling with a turn of the head, mouthing and swallowing. The video documentation "supports the concept that the fetus is capable of the complex motor behaviors that accompany the crying state," Gringas and colleagues wrote in the current issue of the Archives of Disease in Childhood: Fetal and Neonatal Edition. The discovery came by chance: the ultrasounds and noise stimulation were performed as part of a study into the effects of maternal smoking and cocaine use during pregnancy. © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7928 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Michael Hopkin Ever think your spouse is turning you grey before your time? Well things are very different for a beetle being studied by Swedish evolutionary biologists. They have found that some male bean weevils can slow down the ageing process in their mates simply by having sex with them. Female weevils (Acanthoscelides obtectus) live longer when mated with males that have been bred to reproduce later in life, report researchers at Uppsala University. By supplying a cocktail of age-defying chemicals with their sperm, the males stop their mates dying off before they have had the chance to produce a large family. "The males are promoting their own selfish interests by being the good guys in this case," explains Göran Arnqvist, a member of the study team. "It benefits males if their mates live longer." It's a surprising finding, because reproduction is generally thought to accelerate the ageing process. Castrated male mice, for example, live longer without the body-ravaging side effects of testosterone. Ensuring that your genetic legacy is preserved in future generations can be a costly, tiring business. In general, ageing is not thought to be subject to strong evolutionary forces, because old age sets in after offspring have already been produced and genes already passed on. Genes that leave you weak and frail at 70 are unlikely to be weeded out if you have kids at 30. ©2005 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7927 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A microscope the size of a matchbox is allowing US biologists to peer inside the brains of live animals. Weighing a mere 3.9 grams, the microscope has been used to image blood vessels lying 1 millimetre below the surface of the brains of anaesthetised mice, with a resolution of 1 micrometre (one-thousandth of a mm). The researchers believe they may one day be able to view brain cells in the same way. In future the tiny microscope could be strapped to the head of a conscious, moving animal and beam back a movie of the neurons while the animal engages in a variety of activities, say its creators, led by Mark Schnitzer of Stanford University, US. “It’s a microscope that fits in the palm of your hand,” says co-creator Ben Flusberg. It could also be a quick, easy way to image diseased or tumour-laden brains, which currently require an MRI scan or large machinery, he says. Or it could pave the way for a mobile, pocket-sized diagnostic tool. But it is not clear whether the device would ever be used in humans because of its invasive nature. “It’s an ingenious device, but whether it’s transferable from mouse to man is not mentioned,” says Britton Chance, a biophysicist at the University of Pennsylvania, US, who focuses on non-invasive imaging. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7926 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sandra G. Boodman, Washington Post Staff Writer As president and chief executive officer of the Society for Women's Health Research, Phyllis Greenberger knows all about the studies showing that women who take hormones after menopause have a greater risk of breast cancer, stroke, heart attack, incontinence and dementia. She is aware that federal health officials recommend that the drugs be taken at the lowest dose for the shortest time possible to treat severe symptoms of menopause such as hot flashes. But Greenberger has no plans to stop taking the hormones she started at age 50 more than a decade ago, although she has reduced the dose. In her case, she said, she doesn't think the advice is relevant. And she believes the risks of the estrogen-progestin combination have been exaggerated. "I feel better, I have no side effects and in my case I see no downside," she said, noting that estrogen protects against osteoporosis and colon cancer. "Obviously if I thought it was dangerous, I wouldn't be taking it," Greenberger said. Greenberger's experience is emblematic of a medical landscape that has shifted dramatically since July 2002, when federal researchers made a stunning announcement: Because of the risks to women taking hormones, they were halting a key arm of the mammoth study known as the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) three years early and advising women taking the drugs to consult their doctors. © Copyright 1996-2005 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 7925 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lynn Crawford Cook, Special to The Washington Post If you could follow gynecologist Jessica Berger-Weiss around in her Silver Spring office for a day, you might be surprised by what you hear. Four to five times a day, every day, women in their thirties, forties and fifties emotionally tell Berger-Weiss about a problem they think is uniquely theirs: "Doctor, I just don't have any interest in sex." Women in midlife are inundated with emotional and physical reasons why they can't experience a fulfilling sex life. Who hasn't heard the jokes about couples saying so long to sex once they have children? Add in typical midlife events such as stress, illness, depression, medications, relationship problems and plain old boredom, and it's no wonder some middle-aged women have little interest in intimate relations. "Though loss of sex drive is unfortunate, it is common -- almost universal," said Andrew Goldstein, co-director of the Sexual Wellness Center in Annapolis. "Libido is very important for a relationship," said Goldstein. "If a woman has no desire, the responsibility [for initiating sex] always falls to her partner. Of course, partners become very unhappy. They take it personally. They feel rejected." Although many factors contribute to low sexual desire in women, Goldstein said that for some there is an underlying biological mechanism at work. Goldstein is an investigator in a study of Intrinsa, a Procter & Gamble (P&G) testosterone patch that the company hopes will provide a medical solution for women's diminished desire. He and many of his colleagues believe that testosterone can restore sex drive in some women. © Copyright 1996-2005 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 7924 - Posted: 06.24.2010