By Catriona Purcell, ABC Science Online — Australian marsupials can see in full color, new research has found, making them the only other mammals apart from primates to do so. A team led by Catherine Arrese from the University of Western Australia in Perth reports findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a journal of the U.K.'s Royal Society. Most people think marsupials lack color vision, said Arrese, but her team's investigation of Australian quokkas (Setonix brachyurus) and quendas (Isoodon obesulus) have found otherwise. They looked at cone cells at the top of the retina and the rear of the animals' eyes and found three distinct cone types that enable full color vision. Arrese said marsupials, along with other mammals including dogs, cats and horses, were previously thought to have only two types of cone cells, which meant they could not detect several colors including ultraviolet, blues or reds. But she has found short wavelength sensitive (SWS) cone cells that pick up ultraviolet or blue light; medium wavelength sensitive (MWS) cells that pick up colors along the middle of the light spectrum; and long wavelength sensitive (LWS) cells that pick up reds. Copyright © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 7103 - Posted: 06.24.2010

GPs should offer exercise on prescription to all patients with depression, says a report. The Mental Health Foundation said there was mounting evidence that a supervised exercise programme could treat mild to moderate depression as well as drugs. Its report said there were growing concerns about the side effects of anti-depressants - and their over-use. However, it said GPs are still turning to anti-depressants as their first line of treatment. The cost of antidepressant prescriptions in England has risen by more than 2,000% over the last 12 years. Clinical guidelines promote the use of exercise for the treatment of depression. They also state that anti-depressants should not be used as a first-line treatment for mild depression, and that all but one of the newer SSRI drugs should not be given to under 18s. But the MFH report - Up and Running? - found only 5% of GPs use exercise as one of their three most common treatment responses. Many of the GPs surveyed for the report did not believe exercise was an effective treatment. And the report said most common alternative approaches - psychotherapy and counselling - are often in short supply, with patients being asked to join long waiting lists. As a result, the report found 78% of GPs had prescribed an anti-depressant in the last three years despite believing that an alternative treatment might have been more appropriate. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 7102 - Posted: 03.29.2005

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR THE FACTS Some bleary-eyed travelers swear by melatonin as a way to beat jet lag. But experts say research on the hormone's effectiveness is far from clear-cut. Over the years, more than a dozen studies have tried to determine whether melatonin can ease symptoms of jet lag by adjusting the body's internal clock to new time zones. Some have shown that it helps in small doses; others have found that it is no better than a placebo. Dr. Michael Terman, a sleep expert at the New York State Psychiatric Institute who published a study on melatonin and jet lag in 1999, said the split stemmed from confusion over how jet lag is defined. While taking melatonin has been shown to help reset body rhythms, he said, there is little evidence that it can alleviate symptoms of jet lag that result from the stress of traveling itself - running through busy airports, an altered diet, sudden weather changes, the prospect of meeting new business clients. All of these contribute to exhaustion and sleep disturbances. "We cannot say that all of the symptoms of jet lag are unequivocally due to circadian rhythm shifting," Dr. Terman said. "We see for example that some people traveling long distances barely complain of jet lag even though their internal clocks are undergoing marked change." Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 7101 - Posted: 03.29.2005

By Jennifer Huget, Special to The Washington Post You see them huddled against the wind outside office buildings, cupping hands to protect tiny flames. You see them in their cars, faces blurred by clouds of smoke. You smell them when they're sitting next to you on the Metro. You hear them ask the salesclerk for a pack of Marlboro Lights, and you wonder: Who are these people? By now, overwhelming evidence shows that smoking ravages your body, encourages fatal disease and shortens your life. And these facts are well publicized, indeed unavoidable: Well-funded anti-smoking campaigns have succeeded in painting the once-glamorized habit as dirty, smelly, costly and unsexy. Bans restrict smoking in all kinds of places where people used to light up. And yet 22.5 percent of U.S. adults -- 46 million Americans -- continue to smoke. Why? We put the question to several smokers, particularly people you might expect to know better, interviewing them first via e-mail, then by phone; their comments here come from both sorts of contacts. We were not out to endorse their habit, or to preach (although we'd much rather be referring them to the Center for Tobacco Cessation at www.ctcinfo.org, a site funded by the American Cancer Society and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). We just wanted to understand it better. © Copyright 1996-2005 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7100 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DAN HURLEY Medical marijuana is now legal in 11 states, and bills to legalize it are pending in at least 7 more. The drug is also at the heart of a case being considered by the United States Supreme Court. Yet there remains much confusion over whether marijuana in fact has any significant medical effect. "People subjectively report benefits," said Dr. Joseph I. Sirven, an epilepsy specialist and associate professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Scottsdale, Ariz. "There's a whole Internet literature suggesting what a wonderful thing it is. But the reality is, we don't know." In an editorial last year in the journal Neurology, Dr. Sirven pointed out that the best studies of marijuana's effects on humans have so far shown little objective evidence of benefit in patients with epilepsy or multiple sclerosis. And a growing body of research indicates that, at least in teenagers, heavy marijuana use over a period of years significantly increases the risk of developing psychosis and schizophrenia. In the Supreme Court case, two California residents, Angel McClary Raich and Diane Monson, brought a suit against federal officials in October 2002 to defend their use of marijuana after six of Ms. Monson's marijuana plants were seized and destroyed by the Drug Enforcement Administration. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company |

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7099 - Posted: 03.29.2005

By DENISE GRADY STANFORD, Calif. - Kathleen Young had no reason to believe she was anything but healthy. She led a hectic life, running a tree-trimming business with her husband, studying to become a nurse and bringing up three daughters, ages 10, 12 and 13, in Raymore, Mo. But in an instant last September, everything changed. While working out at the gym, Mrs. Young, 41, suddenly went blind in her left eye. Minutes later, her head began to pound. The diagnosis, after an M.R.I. and other tests, was almost beyond comprehension: a rare disease had created blockages in arteries deep inside her skull, cutting off blood flow to part of her brain and causing a stroke, which had partly blinded her. The disorder, called moyamoya disease, is so uncommon that her family doctor admitted he had never heard of it. The name is Japanese for puff of smoke, which is what the disease looks like on X-rays: a wispy cloud of fragile blood vessels that develop in the brain where normal vessels are blocked. It was first identified in Japan in 1959. When Mrs. Young looked it up, what she learned was devastating. The disease causes a progressive narrowing of the internal carotid arteries, which carry blood to the brain. Patients suffer multiple strokes, mental decline and, usually, death from brain hemorrhage. The cause is unknown, and there is no cure. Reading a textbook chapter on it, she was stunned to realize that much of the information came from autopsies. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 7098 - Posted: 03.29.2005

Durham, N.C. – Determining which variants of particular genes patients with epilepsy carry might enable doctors to better predict the dose of drugs necessary to control their seizures, suggest basic findings by researchers at the Duke University Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (IGSP) and the University College London. Patients often undergo a lengthy process of trial and error to find the dose of anti-epilepsy drugs appropriate for them. The researchers found that variants of two genes were more likely to be found in patients who required higher dosages of anti-epileptic drugs. The findings suggest that, by incorporating genetic tests into the prescription process, physicians might improve outcomes for patients with epilepsy, said the researchers. A similar approach might also prove useful for other conditions, such as Parkinson's disease and cancer, in which patients' drug dosage requirements vary substantially, they added. Rigorous clinical study is required before any such method could be put into practice, the researchers emphasized. In the March 28, 2005, early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the investigators report the first clear evidence linking variation in genes involved in the action or metabolism of the anti-epileptic drugs, carbamazepine and phenytoin, to the drugs' clinical use. The study is the first to emerge from a partnership, aimed at tailoring the treatment of epilepsy to patients' genetic makeup, between the Department of Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy at the University College London and the Duke Center for Population Genomics and Pharmacogenetics, a center of the IGSP. © 2001-2005 Duke University Medical Center.

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 7097 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Much of the controversy surrounding research on stem cells hinges on the source of the cells--particularly whether they come from embryonic sources or adult ones. Now research published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides new insight into the abilities of stem cells taken from hair follicles. The results indicate that these adult stem cells can develop into neurons. Inside a hair follicle is a small bulge that houses stem cells. As hair follicles cycle through growth and rest periods, these stem cells periodically differentiate into new follicle cells. Yasuyuki Amoh of AntiCancer, Inc. and his colleagues isolated stem cells from the whiskers of mice and tested their ability to become more sophisticated cell types. The researchers cultured the cells and after one week discovered that they had changed into neurons and two other cell types, known as astrocytes and oligodendrocytes, that are associated with neurons. According to the report, when left for longer periods lasting weeks or months, the stem cells could differentiate into a variety of cell types, including skin and muscle cells. © 1996-2005 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Stem Cells
Link ID: 7096 - Posted: 06.24.2010

For some smokers, slapping on a patch or chewing some gum may not be enough to help them kick the habit. As this ScienCentral News video reports, psychologists have shown that for some, giving up for good may require long-term counseling as well as medication. Although there’s an array of effective treatments available over-the-counter or from the doctor that help many people successfully give up smoking, as many as 440,000 Americans still die each year from smoking-related illnesses. Part of the problem is that for some smokers who want to quit those treatments just don't seem to work. "It's really important to look at methods that are helpful to people who are chronic smokers, who are long-term smokers; who are seriously addicted; who, despite all the social pressure there are on people to quit, haven't been able to quit," explains addiction psychologist Sharon Hall, from the University of California, San Francisco. Hall believes that the reason those short-term treatments fail for some people is that smoking is a complex and chronic addiction. "We know that nicotine is a very addicting drug and that smoking cigarettes is a very efficient way of delivering nicotine to the brain. So, it becomes physically very addicting," she explains. But smoking is more complex that just the physical addiction. "There's a tremendous number of factors that play into whether someone smokes or whether they can quit smoking," says Hall. "There are social factors. People tend to smoke with friends. They tend to smoke with one group and not with another. There are psychological factors: people report smoking under stress, they report smoking being related to mood." And when trying to give, nicotine-replacement may help with the physical addiction, but fails to deal with the psychological properties of a smoking addiction. (C) ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7095 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Durham, N.C. – Gene therapy methods that specifically target muscle may reverse the symptoms of a rare form of muscular dystrophy, according to new research in mice conducted by medical geneticists at Duke University Medical Center. Infants born with the inherited muscular disorder called Pompe disease usually die before they reach the age of two. The researchers also said their approach of targeting corrective genes to muscles may have application in treating other muscular dystrophies. Patients with Pompe disease have a defect in a key enzyme that converts glycogen, a stored form of sugar, into glucose, the body's primary energy source. As a result, glycogen builds up in muscles throughout the body, including the heart, causing muscles to degenerate. Using genetically altered mice in which the gene for the enzyme had been rendered nonfunctional, the researchers demonstrated they could introduce the functioning gene and correct glycogen buildup in heart and skeletal muscle. The findings suggest that such an approach should be considered as a potential gene therapy strategy for Pompe disease patients, the researchers report in a forthcoming issue of Molecular Therapy (now available online). © 2001-2005 Duke University Medical Center

Keyword: Muscles
Link ID: 7094 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kenneth J. Bender, Pharm.D., M.A. As a three-generation study was published with new evidence that major depression can afflict families from one generation to the next, genomic research reported associated heightened risk for depression and specific treatment response with particular genotypes. The 20-year longitudinal family study found twice the rate of depression or anxiety in children whose parents and grandparents also had depression than in children without such a history (Arch Gen Psychiatry 2005;62[1]:29A-36). Two other recent publications offered examples of mechanisms for such familial vulnerability: In one, a defect in a gene that codes the enzyme tryptophan hydroxylase-2, integral to serotonin synthesis, was linked to depression risk (Neuron 2005;45[1]:11-16). In another, a variant in the corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) receptor 1 (CRHR1) gene predicted responsiveness to antidepressants (Mol Psychiatry 2004;9[12]:1075-1082). The longitudinal family study, conducted by Myrna M. Weissman, Ph.D., and colleagues, not only supports numerous other studies of depression risk in offspring of parents with major depression disorder, but finds the risk carried through several generations and suggests that it intensifies as more are affected (Arch Gen Psychiatry 2005;62[1]:29A-36). The researchers found 59.2% of the children of an afflicted parent and grandparent had a psychiatric disorder, most frequently anxiety, at the group's mean age of 12 years. They extrapolated from other data to consider the anxiety disorder at this age to be a precursor of depression in adolescence and young adulthood. © 2005 Psychiatric Times

Keyword: Depression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7093 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Leslie Citrome, M.D., M.P.H. The availability of new medications for the treatment of schizophrenia has led to increased optimism for the treatment of this disease. Unfortunately, remission is still uncommon, and researchers continue to categorize "responders" as experiencing a reduction of a mere 20% or 30% on rating scales that measure psychopathology, leaving substantial residual symptomatology and disability. On the other hand, new paradigms and new strategies are emerging that will help optimize the treatments that we can offer. Better recognition of the multidimensional aspect of schizophrenia that includes not only positive symptoms, but also negative symptoms, cognition, mood and hostility/aggression, helps the clinician to target specific treatments for specific symptom clusters. Awareness of the impact of alcohol and substance abuse, and the need to address this issue head-on, is necessary to enhance the potential for recovery. We are better able to examine the course of schizophrenia by paying attention to prodromal and first-episode patients. The article by Matcheri S. Keshavan, M.D., describes the longitudinal course of the illness, together with possible pathophysiological mechanisms. Being better able to identify pathophysiology will allow for more targeted treatments to be developed and help us better understand prognosis. The multiple mechanisms speak to the heterogeneity of what we call schizophrenia and make obvious the fact that we are probably dealing with several actual different diseases. Genetics, as described by Anil K. Malhotra, M.D., may help us explore the molecular lesions that lead to symptoms and offer the promise of knowing when and if early intervention can lead to a change in disease course. © 2005 Psychiatric Times.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 7092 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Like many other marine creatures, Aplysia, a common sea slug, enlists chemical defenses against its predators, but the mechanisms by which such chemical attacks actually work against their intended targets are not well understood by researchers. New work has now shown that such chemical defenses can involve modes of trickery that had not previously been appreciated as components of chemical defense. When attacked by predatory spiny lobsters, sea slugs (also known as sea hares) release an inky secretion, termed ink and opaline, from a pair of glands. The new findings show that Aplysia's defensive secretion includes a variety of chemicals that together comprise a multi-pronged attack on the predator's nervous system, resulting in the usurpation of its normal behavioral control system and a confused response that facilitates the slug's ultimate escape. The team of researchers conducting the study, Cynthia Kicklighter, Zeni Shabani, and Paul Johnson, led by Charles Derby of Georgia State University, discovered that in addition to containing unpalatable, aversive chemicals, Aplysia's inky secretion contains large quantities of chemicals that are also found in the food of spiny lobsters and that indeed these chemicals serve to activate nervous-system pathways that control feeding behaviors of the lobster. The inky secretion also stimulates other behaviors in the lobster, including grooming and avoidance.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 7091 - Posted: 03.29.2005

By Anne Casselman Current levels of obesity truncate American lives by four to nine months, report Jay Olshansky and his colleagues in the latest New England Journal of Medicine. If child and adolescent obesity continue to run rife, another two to five years will be lopped off our life span in the coming decades, dramatically reversing the rise in U.S. life expectancy seen over the past two centuries. Scientists previously expected average American life expectancy to reach 100 years by 2060. “Looking out the window, we see a threatening storm—obesity—that will, if unchecked, have a negative impact on life expectancy,” Olshansky and his colleagues write in their paper. Today two-thirds of American adults are obese or overweight, as are a quarter to a third of American children. This adds up to a 3.3-fold increase in childhood obesity over the past 25 years, mostly due to couch-potato lifestyles and the surging sales of fast, fizzy, and junky food. Obesity increases the risk of heart disease and cancer and is associated with hypertension, asthma, and gastrointestinal problems. It has sparked an epidemic of type 2 diabetes in children, which has increased tenfold over the past 20 years. Having diabetes in adulthood increases the risk of heart attack and shortens lives by about 13 years. Other diabetes-related complications include renal failure, limb amputation, stroke, and blindness. The cost of treating such medical problems will only go up as the age of onset drops. © 2004 The Walt Disney Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 7090 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A traumatic brain injury from a sudden blow to the head is a major public health problem. Currently it’s a leading cause of disability among American children and young adults. Many face lasting impairments that affect their independence and daily lives. But now, thanks to recent studies, these patients’ futures may eventually improve. A line of research finds that new strategies centering on transplant techniques show promise for repairing the brain following an injury. A slip on the ice. A crash into the windshield. A collision during a football game. The scenarios are endless. Yet each year, for an estimated 1.5 million Americans, the result is the same. A traumatic brain injury. Characterized by a blow to the head, this type of injury suddenly damages the brain and its function. Survivors can experience a range of lasting impairments, including problems with speech, emotion, sensation, movement, or thinking. And due to inadequate treatments, many face the prospect of experiencing significant disabilities for the rest of their lives. Increasing research, however, now points to new strategies that may eventually improve the future of these patients. Techniques that may hold promise for traumatic brain injury (TBI) include the use of special cell transplants. Specifically, recent animal studies provide evidence that cell transplant strategies may promote the repair of an injured brain and help restore lost abilities. Copyright © 2004 Society for Neuroscience

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Stem Cells
Link ID: 7089 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The genetic basis of a distressing neurological condition that prevents people from recognising faces has been pinned down. The finding may help people cope with the impairment, which the researchers believe may affect 1 in 50 people from birth. People with prosopagnosia, or face blindness, cannot easily tell faces apart, even if they belong to people they know well, and so often see their friends and family as strangers. The condition is usually associated with brain damage, for example from a stroke, but numerous anecdotal reports have suggested that it also runs in families. Now a team led by Thomas Grüter at the Institute for Human Genetics in Münster, Germany, who is a prosopagnosic himself, has found concrete evidence of its genetic basis. "I realised I had prosopagnosia quite early on in school," Grüter says. He has trouble recognising faces of people he knows and sometimes thinks he recognises strangers. The team recruited members of a prosopagnosia support group and their families into the study, plus Grüter's own relatives. Using a questionnaire to identify prosopagnosia symptoms, the team found 38 prosopagnosics in seven families. By plotting the condition on family trees, the team showed that the inheritance pattern is consistent with the trait being carried by a single gene: just one defective copy of the gene could make the carrier face-blind. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7088 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Providence, RI –Some families with new babies face excessive infant crying, or colic. And some new mothers go through maternal post-partum depression (PPD) following childbirth. Neither situation is considered healthy, but a recent study published in the Infant Mental Health Journal has found that the combined impact of colic and PPD can have a highly toxic outcome. Researchers have linked colicky babies and maternal depression to decrease in overall family functioning. "We found that severe depressive symptoms in the mothers were related to fussy, or difficult infant temperament, more parenting stress, lower parental self-esteem and more family-functioning problems," says senior author Barry Lester, PhD with the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center (BHCRC) and Brown Medical School. Dr. Lester founded the Colic Clinic at the Infant Development Center at Women and Infant's Hospital in Providence, RI, and is the foremost colic researcher in the country. His new book Why is My Baby Crying? was published last month by Harper-Collins and is touted as 'the parent's survival guide for coping with crying problems and colic'. "Colic is ultimately defined by the parental threshold for infant crying," says Lester and his co-authors, "so one possibility is that cry-related problems like colic act as a catalyst for dysfunction in already stressed families."

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7087 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower Kids make some unusual friends. Take Simpy, an 8-year-old girl with blue skin and black eyes who likes funny clothes. Then, there's Skateboard Guy. He wears cool shirts and performs amazing tricks on his fancy board, even though he's small enough to chill out in a child's pants pockets. Alicia is only a couple inches high, too, and she has a great sense of humor—for a talking dog with green fur and blue eyes. These are just a few of the imaginary companions that 7-year-olds have described to psychologists led by Marjorie Taylor of the University of Oregon in Eugene. The team was surprised by how common invented friends are among kids that age. Nearly one-third of the 100 7-year-olds that the researchers questioned were playing with pretend pals. The psychologists report that, overall, 65 of the children that they tracked from age 3 to 7 reported having hung out with an imaginary buddy at some time in their lives. Many children who had imaginary friends at age 3 later dropped them only to invent a new such friend by age 7. About one in four of the kids who described a pretend friend had kept it a secret from parents. A diverse cross-section of kids played with make-believe buddies, the team found. Although preschool girls described imaginary companions more often than their male peers did, that sex disparity vanished by age 7. Copyright ©2005 Science Service.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7086 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GARDINER HARRIS A 30-year-old drug to treat hyperactivity made by Abbott Laboratories should be banned immediately because of its toxic effects on the liver, a citizen's group said yesterday in a petition to federal drug regulators. At least 13 patients have died since 1975 taking the drug, known as Cylert or pemoline, according to the group. Reports given to the Food and Drug Administration show that at least 193 patients have suffered serious consequences from the drug, said Dr. Peter Lurie, deputy director of the group, Public Citizen. Dr. Lurie said that several newer drugs worked as well as Cylert without its potentially lethal side effects. "This is an outmoded drug," he said, "and there is no reason for it to be still on the market." Melissa Brotz, a spokeswoman for Abbott, said the company planned to discontinue selling its version of the drug "in the next several months" because of declining sales. A spokesman for the drug agency said the petition would be reviewed. Copycat versions of the drug are also sold by generic-drug manufacturers. Sales of all versions have declined substantially since 1999, when the drug agency stiffened warnings on the drug's label. Last year, doctors in the United States wrote about 117,000 prescriptions for Cylert and its generic equivalents, the petition said. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 7085 - Posted: 03.25.2005

CINCINNATI--Scientists at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine have discovered the cause of a deadly type of secondary stroke known as cerebral vasospasm. A constriction of the blood vessels in the brain, cerebral vasospasm usually occurs three to 10 days following a massive brain bleed known as hemorrhagic stroke. Sixty percent of patients who survive the initial stroke develop vasospasm, and 40 percent of them die from it. Vasospasm, says neurology department researcher Joseph Clark, PhD, results from a buildup of toxins caused by bleeding from the initial stroke. "Normally the cerebral spinal fluid that envelopes the brain carries off wastes and exchanges them for nutrients at what's called the blood-brain barrier," Dr. Clark says. "After a hemorrhagic stroke, however, toxins given off by the brain bleed contribute to the development of specific molecules that later causes the constricting vasospasm." A research team led by Dr. Clark has now identified the molecules that trigger vasospasm, a breakthrough, he says, that "raises hopes of developing not only new ways to treat the condition, but also a diagnostic test to determine which hemorrhagic stroke survivors are at greater risk."

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 7084 - Posted: 03.25.2005