By BARRY MEIER The two drug trials were known within SmithKline Beecham as Study 329 and Study 377. Study 329 suggested that the company's popular drug Paxil might help depressed adolescents. Study 377, completed not long afterward, indicated that Paxil provided no more benefit than a sugar pill in treating depressed young people. But only the favorable study was widely publicized by Paxil's maker. The company chose not to discuss publicly the trial with negative results, and those findings came to light only when an outside researcher on the study team decided to disclose them at a medical conference. "That particular study would have been buried," said that researcher, Dr. Robert Milin of the Royal Ottawa Hospital in Canada. "It would have been buried to the public." Federal regulators in this country are now scrambling to reassess the effectiveness and safety of antidepressants like Paxil, after British regulators touched off a controversy last year by asking drug companies for unpublished data from antidepressant trials. That data suggested that several antidepressants, including Paxil, might give rise to suicidal thoughts in some young users - a potential problem not revealed in any published studies. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5596 - Posted: 06.05.2004

Not all sugars are equal, at least when it comes to weight gain and health Philadelphia, PA -- Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, the University of California, Davis and other collaborating colleagues report that drinking beverages containing fructose, a naturally-occurring sugar commonly used to sweeten soft drinks and other beverages, induces a pattern of hormonal responses that may favor the development of obesity. It is estimated that consumption of fructose has increased by 20-30% over the past three decades, a rate of increase similar to that of obesity, which has risen dramatically over the same time span. Data from the present study suggest a mechanism by which fructose consumption could be one factor contributing to the increased incidence of obesity. In the study, reported in the June 4 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 12 normal-weight women ate standardized meals on two days. The meals contained the same number of calories and the same distribution of total carbohydrate, fat and protein. On one day the meals included a beverage sweetened with fructose. On the other day, the same beverage was sweetened with an equal amount of glucose, another naturally-occurring sugar that is used by the body for energy.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Obesity
Link ID: 5595 - Posted: 06.05.2004

Dementia in AIDS patients is caused by a large, late invasion of HIV-infected macrophages--large, long-lived cells of the immune system that travel throughout the body and ingest foreign antigens to protect against infection--into the brain, according to researchers at Temple University's Center for Neurovirology and Cancer Biology (http://www.temple.edu/cnvcb/), debunking a longstanding "Trojan Horse" theory that early infection by macrophages remains latent until the latter stages of AIDS. The results of their study, "Macrophage/Microglial Accumulation and Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen Expression in the Central Nervous System in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Encephalopathy," was published in the June issue of the American Journal of Pathology [June 2004; Volume 164, Number 6] (http://ajp.amjpathol.org/). The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurodegenerative Disorder and Stroke and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "Basically, one of the longstanding models for how HIV causes dementia is the 'Trojan Horse' model," says Jay Rappaport, Ph.D., a professor of biology at the Center, who led the study. "According to this model, early during HIV infection, there may be a few macrophages that are infected and get into the brain and establish an infection in the resident microglia [long-term resident macrophages of the brain]. Then, late in the disease, there's a resurgence of the HIV virus from the macrophages." Rappaport and his collaborators believe that this longstanding theory does not hold true, that the early invasion of HIV-infected macrophages are controlled and cleared away by the body's immune system.

Keyword: Miscellaneous; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5594 - Posted: 06.05.2004

PORTLAND, Ore. – A peculiar form of a gene mutation known to increase a person's risk for Parkinson's disease is puzzling doctors about how to counsel patients who have the anomaly. A study by researchers at the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine's Parkinson Center of Oregon, the University of Washington School of Medicine and the New York State Department of Health, Wadsworth Center, raises concerns about whether patients testing positive for a single mutation of the parkin gene, rather than the two mutations typically required for developing Parkinson's, can be accurately informed about their risks of developing the disease or passing it on to their children. The study represents "a call for getting more information about the gene," said John "Jay" G. Nutt, M.D., OHSU professor of neurology, and physiology and pharmacology, and Parkinson center director. "What are the clinical implications of finding this gene?" What's alarmed doctors is that in the clinical setting, the single mutation appears to be common: 18 percent of patients with early-onset Parkinson's disease – those diagnosed before age 40 – tested positive for parkin gene mutations, and of that group, 70 percent had only one mutation.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5593 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Zeroing in on the genetic basis of language By Gary Marcus From our common ancestor with chimpanzees, it took only six million years, give or take, to develop the ability to speak. And, as we now know, the vast majority of our genetic material has been inherited unchanged. Language, and whatever else separates us from chimpanzees, has its origins in alterations to no more than about 1.5% of the nucleotides in the genome,1 a pretty neat trick, when you consider how handy talking can be. How did evolution pull it off? Some important clues have already come in, such as a recent study showing that there has been an important change in a gene relating to jaw structure that may have opened the way to the rapid expansion of the human brain,2 which is about four times the size of a chimp's. But size isn't everything. While a human-sized brain might be a necessary prerequisite for language, it is hardly likely to be sufficient. Whales and elephants have significantly larger brains than ours, but they don't have anything as complex as human language. Only with further evolutionary changes to our brains, perhaps in the last 100,000 years,3 did our ancestors begin to talk. © 2004, The Scientist LLC, All rights reserved.

Keyword: Language; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5592 - Posted: 06.24.2010

| By Nicole Johnston In the relative quiet following the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the United Kingdom, BSE returned to the headlines recently with a sole case found in the United States and new strains of BSE prion protein identified in France, Italy, and Japan. And, in May, French researchers said they found scrapie prion in sheep muscle, showing for the first time that prions have a direct path to the grocery store.1 While these events made headlines, other discoveries in the prion world also were occurring. Researchers have started, and only started, to get to the core of some fundamental questions involving prions. One of these is whether infectivity can be established in mammals using purified prion protein; the answer appears to be no. Investigators can isolate the protein from diseased animals, but they cannot reestablish infection in an uninfected animal. Researchers aren't sure why, but theories abound: The purified prion protein may not refold correctly, or perhaps other cellular factors act as accomplices. Answering the infectivity question would help confirm the role of prions in neurodegenerative diseases associated with mammalian transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). "With mammals, the difficulty is that nobody has been able to take normal prion protein [PrPC], convert it in a test tube, and then infect animals," says biophysicist Witold Surewicz of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. And that crucial missing link is what bothers prion skeptics such as Yale neurophysiologist Laura Manuelidis. "Nobody has shown that the protein is infectious." © 2004, The Scientist LLC, All rights reserved.

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 5591 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An alternative treatment has been licensed in the UK to treat children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Charmaine Wainwright, whose son Andrew - now 15 - was diagnosed with ADHD seven years ago, tells BBC News Online how atomoxetine has helped them. "I noticed something was different from an early age, probably even before he went to school. "I was working as a child-minder, and the other children would sit down and read, or paint, for hours on end. But he would do it for two minutes and then he'd be off." Andrew continued to behave in the same way when he went to school. It was only when Charmaine read a newspaper article about ADHD that she realised her son could be affected.

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 5590 - Posted: 06.04.2004

Anger dies hard—in some over long stretches of time, in others not at all. Michael Van Burger understands this better than anyone. After years of therapy he still stuffs down anger over the most negligible slights. "I just smile and nod and it really internally is very unpleasant," says the 32-year-old Manhattan hair stylist. "My heart races. I start to stutter. I feel like the blood is boiling out of my face. And I get a major headache." People like Van Burger who have a history of headache and hold in or onto anger may be exacerbating the problem by triggering chronic headaches, clinical psychologist Robert Nicholson told Discover Magazine. "Little research has been done on the role that anger has and managing your anger has in relationship to headache," explains Nicholson, of St. Louis University School of Medicine and lead researcher of a study on anger and headache. "Some choose to manage their anger by holding their anger in. We know from research that that can have some negative impacts on their health." © ScienCentral, 2000-2004.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 5589 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(Philadelphia, PA)—Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that norepinephrine (adrenaline) plays an important role in animals in determining behavioral effects in some of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants, regardless of which biochemical pathway the drug uses to alleviate symptoms of depression. This finding -- published in the May 2004 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- should help scientists design more effective drugs for patients. Using genetically-altered mice unable to produce norepinephrine, they tested behavioral changes brought on by two different antidepressant classes. With the exception of one drug, they found that those lacking norepinephrine did not respond to the drugs. “Millions of Americans suffer from major depressive disorders and this study helps us understand how antidepressant drugs are processed to produce clinical therapeutic effects. It helps us understand how to redesign better drugs and which treatments will work better for which patients,” says the study’s lead author, Irwin Lucki, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology and Director of the Behavioral Psychopharmacology Laboratory at Penn.

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5588 - Posted: 06.24.2010

More pavements may encourage Americans to walk. HELEN PEARSON Public-health officials in the United States are proposing a new and drastic way to fight the onslaught of obesity: they want to redesign entire towns to make them exercise-friendly. The suggestion comes amid increasing concern over the population's growing girth: around two-thirds of adult Americans are now classed as overweight or obese. Many recent health campaigns urge people to walk, cycle or be otherwise active during the day. But that's easier said than done; in a typical US housing estate, the only way to reach workplaces, shops and schools is by car. Many streets lack pavements, and cycle paths are virtually unheard of. To really fight the flab, US public-health officials are now realizing that they may have to change the entire layout of towns. The suburban mansion and sport-utility vehicle(SUV) may fulfil the American dream, they say, but it is taking an unforeseen toll on health. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 5587 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Neuroscience can at last explain why we can't see faults in our partners or children. Raj Persaud reports Can science help us to understand love? Many argue that a Shakespearean Sonnet, Rachmaninov piano sonata or Jane Austen novel is much better at communicating insights into why we become irresistibly drawn to one person. But now neuroscience promises to offer revealing new insights that could solve some of the mysteries at the heart of love. A study of whether there are different forms of love has been launched by Dr Andreas Bartels and Prof Semir Zeki from the Wellcome Department of Neuroimaging at University College London. They have attempted to unravel for the first time whether the love between a parent and a child is the same as the emotion shared by lovers and whether all forms of intense attachments are basic variations on the same theme. Scientists have a cold eyed view of the purpose of love. The tender intimacy and selflessness of a mother's love might be celebrated by inspiring music, literature and art. Many great artists have been profoundly affected by the relationship between mother and child, as depicted by Da Vinci's Virgin and Child, Van Gogh's First Steps and so on. © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.

Keyword: Emotions; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5586 - Posted: 06.24.2010

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a lawsuit yesterday charging one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world with hiding significant information about risks of its antidepressant medicine Paxil for use in teenagers. Last year the Food and Drug Administration warned that patients under age 18 should not take Paxil because of a possible increased risk of suicidal impulses. The warning followed a similar action in England. In 2002, more than 2 million prescriptions for Paxil were written for children and adolescents in the United States. The lawsuit, the first of its kind from a state attorney general's office, states that GlaxoSmithKline engaged in "repeated and persistent fraud by concealing and failing to disclose to physicians information about Paxil." The only antidepressant medicine approved for children is Prozac, yet once a medicine is federally approved for adults it can be prescribed "off label" for any medical or psychiatric condition, including use in children. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5585 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dr. Luanne Metz, an associate professor of neurosciences and physician-scientist in the Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Medicine, has found that minocycline, a drug currently used to treat such conditions as acne, decreases the activity of lesions in the brains of people suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS). The results of her study are published in the May edition of the Annals of Neurology. The randomized study looks at ten people with active relapsing-remitting MS - characterized by clearly defined attacks (relapses) followed by partial or complete recovery (remissions). It assesses the effect of oral minocycline on people with active lesions in their brains. Each participant was given an MRI at the onset of the study, and then every four weeks after that, to determine whether or not the lesions caused by MS were getting worse or stabilizing. "For reasons that are still unclear, people with MS suffer from immune system malfunctions which trigger attacks of the nerve cells and myelin in the central nervous system,” says Metz, Director of the Calgary Health Region’s world renowned MS Clinic. “Current treatments being used today do not eliminate MS completely – they only lessen the severity and slow progression of the disease. Our new findings are exciting because we discovered that minocycline significantly reduces the activity of the lesions in the brain. These findings offer us the possibility of a new and safe treatment option for people with MS.”

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 5584 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Campaigners have urged the government to stop tobacco companies adding chocolate and other similar ingredients to cigarettes. It follows reports that British American Tobacco has been carrying out tests on chocolate and alcohol-flavoured cigarettes. The company says the tests are part of a long-running programme to improve the flavour and casing of cigarettes. But campaigners say it could encourage children to smoke. Scientists from BAT have been testing the impact of 482 different ingredients on cigarettes. These include chocolate, cocoa, wine, sherry, maple syrup and vanilla. Some of these are already use in its cigarettes. "The tests were carried out at an independent laboratory in Canada," a spokeswoman for BAT told BBC News Online. "BAT like every other tobacco company uses different substances to enhance the flavour of cigarettes. We are not alone in this and we make no secret of it." (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5583 - Posted: 06.03.2004

A new drug to treat ADHD - attention deficit hyperactivity disorder - has been licensed for use in the UK. The launch will reignite the debate about whether it is right to use drugs to control the condition, thought to affect around 5% of children. The drug, amoxetine, has been welcomed as an alternative treatment if existing drugs do not help. But some experts say diet should be used to manage children's symptoms instead. Unlike currently available drugs, amoxetine, which will be available on prescription from July, is not a stimulant, and therefore is unlikely to carry a potential for abuse. Children with ADHD have extreme difficulty sitting still, learning or concentrating. Looking after affected children can be exhausting for parents. Guidelines from the NHS watchdog the National Institute of Clinical Excellence say only the most severely affected should be given drug therapy. Until now, only the methylphenidate class of drugs - which includes Ritalin - have been available to treat ADHD. Some doctors have expressed concern it could lead to depression or be abused by drug-users because of its amphetamine content. (C)BBC

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 5582 - Posted: 06.03.2004

What goes on in the brain of a gambler? Researchers have found that the feeling of excitement might be linked to the release in the brain of dopamine, a chemical associated with the pleasure people get from eating, sex, and drugs. David Zald, psychology professor at Vanderbilt University, and his team used positron emission topography (PET) to observe the brain activity in nine people who were given gambling-like activities to perform. "The main thing that we wanted to see, first off, was whether we could image dopamine release in humans while they were winning money," says Zald. "Our key hypothesis was that we would indeed be able to see dopamine release while people are winning money." In the first gambling-like activity, the person chose one of four cards, knowing a reward of one dollar was possible, but not knowing when; in other words, the reward was unpredictable. In the second activity, the people knew they would get the reward with every fourth card chosen, so the reward was predictable. In the third activity, people chose cards without expecting to get a reward at all. © ScienCentral, 2000-2004.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5581 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers seize moment to make tobacco data public. MICHAEL HOPKIN Public-health researchers have unveiled a project to tackle what they describe as information concealment by the UK-based multinational firm British American Tobacco (BAT). The group aims to publish some 8 million pages of the company's documents on an independent website, making them more easily accessible. The researchers accuse BAT of obstructing public attempts to access papers at its depository in Guildford, UK, and allege that some files detailing the company's activities have been removed or altered. The facility, they say, limits visitor numbers, doesn't provide an easily searchable index of its material, and does not allow onsite photocopying of documents. Visitors must request copies from BAT, which can take up to 12 months to arrive. "This sort of conduct raises questions as to the true public availability of the depository's contents," says Kelley Lee, a public-health expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a project member. BAT denies that any files have been deleted. Regarding access to the depository, "it was never designed to work like a public library", says Michael Prideaux, BAT's corporate and regulatory affairs director. He adds that researchers are welcome to reproduce material given to them by BAT. (C) Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5580 - Posted: 06.03.2004

Genetic technique may yield BSE-proof calves. MICHAEL HOPKIN Researchers in the United States and Japan claim to have created cow embryos that cannot produce the protein responsible for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Without it, the animals should be immune to mad cow disease. A “handful" of the BSE-free cows will be born early next year, the researchers say. The calves will be tested with a small dose of mad cow protein to see whether they are truly resistant to the disease. The BSE-causing protein, called a prion, is present in both healthy and diseased cattle; it is only when it twists out of shape that it causes problems. When normal prion protein comes into contact with the disease-causing version it can flip into the malignant form, causing rogue prions to spread through the brain. This leads to coordination problems, behavioural changes and death. The US and Japanese researchers aimed to bypass this problem by creating genetically engineered cows that do not produce prions at all. This means that they should be safe from small doses of diseased prions, explains James Robl, president of biotechnology firm Hematech in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and one of the leaders of the team. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 5579 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sherry Seethaler University of California, San Diego neurobiologists have uncovered evidence that sheds light on the long-standing mystery of how the brain makes sense of the information contained in electrical impulses sent to it by millions of neurons from the body. In a paper published this week in the early on-line version of the journal Nature, a UCSD team led by Massimo Scanziani explains how neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain sort out information before deciding how to respond. The paper will appear in a forthcoming print issue of Nature. Light, sound and odors, for example, are transformed by our sensory organs into a code made of series of electrical impulses that travel along neurons from the body to the brain. Information about the onset and the intensity of a stimulus is thought to be sent to the brain by the timing and frequency of these electrical impulses. How information is sorted by the brain has been an open question. The group discovered that different neurons in the brain are dedicated to respond to specific portions of the information. Copyright ©2001 Regents of the University of California.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 5578 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Flexible brain-wiring could guard against epilepsy. TANGUY CHOUARD The nervous system is not hard-wired, according to research on spinal cord cells in tadpole embryos. Nerve cells can change their function as they develop, responding to their own electrical activity rather than playing a role that is preordained by genetics, say US biologists. Scientists thought that the precise nature of each nerve cell was determined by an irreversible programme of development, initiated by the cell's genetic code. But Nick Spitzer and his fellow neurobiologists from the University of California, San Diego, challenge that fatalistic view in this week's Nature1,2. The team finds that certain patterns of electrical activity in a young nerve cell can override its basic genetic instructions, changing the way that the cell will communicate with its peers. Nerve cells use neurotransmitter chemicals to talk to each other, and different chemicals will either excite or inhibit activity in neighbouring cells. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Epilepsy; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5577 - Posted: 06.24.2010