Are memory loss and dementia inevitable if you live past 90? Not necessarily, say some scientists. Doctors have been reluctant to study the oldest old because of the belief that dementia is inevitable and, at this stage of the game, untreatable. “We have a pretty good sense of what is normal versus abnormal cognitive aging, or how one thinks as one gets older, up until about age 90,” says Bradley Boeve, a behavioral neurologist at the Mayo Clinic. “Beyond age 90, there isn’t much information on what is normal in terms of memory functioning, language functioning, attention, and concentration.” So Boeve and his team studied the mental and physical functioning of 111 people over ninety years old, including 97-year-old nun Sister Bibiana Lewis, who is functioning at a higher level than some people half her age: “I have a schedule I follow. Two days of the week I play pool, two days of the week I [play] ping-pong, and two days of the week I go bowling. I walk the treadmill for a mile, six days a week; I don’t do it on Sunday.” And how does she stay mentally alert? “I read a lot, some fiction, but heavy books. I work the New York [Times] crossword puzzle.” © ScienCentral, 2000-2003

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 3856 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MELODY PETERSEN Documents released yesterday in the case of a drug company whistle-blower shed light on how extensively doctors were involved in promoting unapproved uses of a Warner-Lambert drug, Neurontin. Warner-Lambert paid dozens of doctors tens of thousands of dollars each to speak to other physicians about how Neurontin, an epilepsy drug, could be prescribed for more than a dozen other medical uses that had not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The top speaker for Neurontin, Dr. B. J. Wilder, a former professor of neurology at the University of Florida, received more than $300,000 for speeches given from 1994 to 1997, according to a court filing. Six other doctors, including some from top medical schools, received more than $100,000 each. Other doctors were paid to write reports on how Neurontin worked for a handful of their patients, the court papers said. Still others were paid to prescribe Neurontin in doses far exceeding the approved levels as part of a clinical trial that Warner-Lambert created to market the medicine, according to the court papers, which are new documents filed in the lawsuit by the whistle-blower. The papers are backed up by hundreds of pages of corporate documents and memos recently filed with the court. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 3855 - Posted: 05.30.2003

Handsome men may have better semen, a study suggests. Researchers in Spain have found that men who are regarded as attractive by women are also more fertile. Their sperm move faster and are generally healthier. The study is the latest to suggest that good looks can be a pointer to good health. In April, researchers in Australia found that men with chiselled jaws and classic masculine features are in better physical health than their less manly peers. These and similar findings have led scientists to conclude that women who seek attractive male partners are, in fact, searching for the healthiest men, most able to father and provide for their children. (C) BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 3854 - Posted: 05.29.2003

We humans are nothing if not talkative. Indeed, it's one of our most salient characteristics as a species. But exactly how we came to be so chatty is less obvious. Despite decades of research into the subject, anthropologists are still struggling to reconstruct the chain of events that produced our unique oral capabilities. Now the results of a new study suggest that one part of the story they thought they had nailed in fact needs revision. Conventional wisdom holds that the repositioning of the human larynx that occurs during infancy--a key morphological prerequisite to speech--is particular to our kind. But Takeshi Nishimura of Kyoto University in Japan and colleagues have discovered that this southward migration of the larynx to a spot between the pharynx and the lungs occurs in our speechless relative the chimpanzee, too. The team employed magnetic resonance imaging (see image) to track development in three chimps during the first two years of life. © 1996-2003 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 3853 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANNE EISENBERG COCHLEAR implants that restore some hearing to the profoundly deaf have improved steadily over the past two decades. Although they are called implants, however, these systems still lie mainly outside the ear. Most of the apparatus - including the microphone, processor and batteries that transform speech into electrical signals passed on to electrodes embedded in the cochlea - is still typically worn behind the ear or in a shirt pocket. Researchers hope that one day the entire apparatus, which is designed to stimulate the auditory nerves of people who have lost or damaged cells in the cochlea, can be implanted in the body. But before that goal can be reached, cochlear implants will need to use far less power. Currently the batteries must be changed as often as every four hours. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 3852 - Posted: 05.29.2003

-- In some genetic conditions, inheriting one bad, or mutant, gene copy from either parent is sufficient to cause disease. University of Iowa researchers have shown that it is possible to silence a mutant gene without affecting expression of the normal gene. The findings suggest that the gene-silencing technique might one day be useful in treating many human diseases, including cancer, Huntington's disease and similar genetic disorders, and viral diseases, where it would be desirable to selectively turn off certain genes that cause problems. In particular, the UI researchers were able to silence mutant genes without affecting the normal gene copy even when the mutant and the normal gene differ by as little as a single letter in the genetic code. The study will appear this week in the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (www.pnas.org). Copyright © 1992-2003 Bio Online, Inc.

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 3851 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Spiderman may help to train pilots and treat stroke patients. HELEN R. PILCHER Playing video games could be good for your vision. A new study suggests that action games might help to rehabilitate visually impaired patients or train military personnel. Male undergraduates who played driving or shoot-em-up games such as Grand Theft Auto and Medal of Honor several times a week for at least six months beat non-gamers in lab vision tests1, found Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester in New York state. Game-players react to fast-moving objects more efficiently, explains Bavelier, and can track up to five objects at a time - 30% more than non-players. "They can process more information more quickly over time," she says. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 3850 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Men's underarms may hold clue to new fertility drug. HELEN R. PILCHER Ladies! Looking for a way to relax? Then try sniffing a man's underarm. New research shows that armpit sweat calms female volunteers. It also shifts menstrual cycles, so the discovery could give rise to perspiration-derived drugs to manipulate female fertility. "The underarm contains physiologically active pheromones," says chemist George Preti of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelpha, Pennsylvania, who led the study. These behaviour-altering chemicals - which are common throughout the animal world - can affect the brain, and hence our bodies, without our even realizing it. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 3849 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHAPEL HILL -- Last March, a multi-center national study made headlines by concluding that taking a combination of the hormones estrogen and progestin did not improve the quality of life for women who are free of menopause-related symptoms but did expose them to a slightly higher risk of heart attacks, strokes and breast cancer. For that reason, many medical scientists began recommending against the combined therapy in the absence of such symptoms, saying the risks of estrogen plus progestin outweighed the benefits. The latest findings from Women's Health Initiative studies provide new evidence that the combined hormone therapy significantly boosts the risks of dementia and strokes in postmenopausal women while not improving what scientists call "global cognitive function" -- how the brain works.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Alzheimers
Link ID: 3848 - Posted: 05.28.2003

With an estimated 44 million adults affected, chances are that you know someone with a mental disorder. Many scientists believe that a variety of these brain ailments arise from complicated interactions between multiple genes and the environment. Now new technologies, including a tool known as a microarray that allows researchers to evaluate thousands of genes in a single experiment, are helping push the field forward. In examples of recent work, microarray studies provided insights into how sets of genes link to depression and schizophrenia. Altogether, new findings are helping researchers better understand the underpinnings of mental disease so they can develop improved treatments. Harrowing feelings of sadness, hopelessness and pessimism have sapped away your friend’s interest to participate in life and kept her under the covers for days. You wonder what put your pal in the glare of depression. Now, new technologies, including a tool known as a microarray, are helping push the field forward. In examples of recent work, microarray studies provided new insights into how sets of genes link to depression and schizophrenia. Copyright © 2003 Society for Neuroscience

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 3847 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BARRON H. LERNER, M.D. What would you do if your baby was born intersex, with sex organs and external genitalia not clearly male or female? How would you choose whether to bring up your child as a boy or a girl and decide whether doctors should perform corrective genital surgery? A series of new studies and a book, "Intersex and Identity" (Rutgers University Press, 2003), seek to provide the answers to these questions. Yet despite this research, the ultimate choices may have less to do with a child's medical condition than with the hospital selected for childbirth. If this sounds like an anomaly in an era of evidence-based medicine, you are right. It was only a dozen years ago that decisions about intersex children, who make up roughly 1 in 2,500 births, were made independently by physicians. So when infants were born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, in which the female sex organs do not respond to hormones in utero, doctors shortened the enlarged clitorises and created vaginas. Surgeons converted boys born with extremely small penises, a condition known as micropenis, into girls, building clitorises and vaginas. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company |

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 3846 - Posted: 05.28.2003

Jane Elliott BBC News Online health staff When Nadien Lucas went to bed she could hear the sound of cars and a horse in the field behind her house. But just hours later there was a deafening silence. For two years she lived in a world without sound, until doctors fitted her with a cochlear implant and finally restored her hearing. She had suffered from a viral infection and lost the hearing in one ear, but doctors reassured her that she would be able to hear with her remaining ear, which had also been affected. But then overnight this last contact with the hearing world was shattered. When she woke up she could not hear the toilet flushing or the tap water running. (C)BBC

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 3845 - Posted: 05.26.2003

Alzheimer's affects four million people worldwide Scientists have taken a step towards finding out why memory deteriorates with age. Researchers in the United States have found that memory loss may be linked to so-called brain tangles. These occur when twisted fragments of proteins within nerve cells clog up the cells. Large numbers of these tangles are already known to cause Alzheimer's disease. This latest research, by Dr Angela Guillozet and colleagues at Northwestern University, indicates that these tangles also occur in people who do not have Alzheimer's. They examined the brains of eight dead people. Three had suffered from mild cognitive impairment - a more severe form of memory loss than that associated with ageing but less severe than Alzheimer's. The remaining five had healthy brains. The researchers found tangles in all of the brains. However, the number of tangles was higher in those with mild cognitive impairment. (C) BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 3844 - Posted: 05.26.2003

New research by psychologist Dr Stephen Joseph at the University of Warwick reveals that women who experience traumatic childbirth can develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a serious condition of anxiety usually associated with events like wars and assaults. Although health workers and psychologists are increasingly aware of postnatal depression, post-traumatic stress disorder goes widely unrecognised. Some PTSD symptoms are very similar to those experienced by those with postnatal depression, so health professionals sometimes misdiagnose the condition. However, the conditions are distinct and women with PTSD often go undetected by health workers as this is not a condition that is routinely screened for. Posttraumatic stress can develop after exposure to a frightening event or ordeal in which physical harm occurred or was threatened. Studies suggest between 2 - 5% of women might develop PTSD following difficult and traumatic childbirth, and a much larger number are likely to suffer from some of the symptoms of PTSD, such as intrusive thoughts about what happened and nightmares, even if they don't develop the full syndrome.

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 3843 - Posted: 05.26.2003

Genetics professor's amusing look into the science of maleness Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer HOUGHTON MIFFLIN; 222 PAGES; $25 In "Y: The Descent of Men," Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College in London and author of the much-admired "Darwin's Ghost" and "The Language of Genes," gives us one of the more arresting openers of this spring's crop of nonfiction. "Ejaculate," he suggests, "if you are so minded and equipped, into a glass of chilled Perrier. There you will see a formless object, but look hard enough -- or at least so eighteenth-century biologists believed -- and a baby appears: the male gift to the female, whose only job is to incubate the child produced with so much labor by her mate. So central seemed a husband's role that his wife was a mere seedbed, a step below him in society, in the household, and, most of all, in herself." ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 3842 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MATT RIDLEY VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Alarming as it was to learn last week that mad cow disease had appeared in North America, the news could have been far worse. Thanks to advances in bioscience and technology, we can now stop an epidemic like mad cow disease, and its human offshoot, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, in its tracks. Little is known so far about the particular case discovered last week in western Canada. The black Angus cow was 6 to 8 years old, officials said, and had lived on six ranches and had had five or more calves. Nine herds have been quarantined so far. In Britain, the mad cow epidemic that began in the late 1980's infected nearly 200,000 cattle before it was halted, and more than 120 people died through infected meat. The episode shattered the British public's confidence in government reassurances about food safety, and contributed heavily to British and European refusal to accept official assurances about the safety of genetically modified crops. The environmental movement managed to make much of this distrust, using it to promote fears of interfering with nature, whether through technology or industrial agriculture. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 3841 - Posted: 06.24.2010

It’s estimated that at least 4.5 million U.S. adolescents are cigarette smokers. Each day, nearly 4,800 teens smoke their first cigarette, and nearly 2,000 of them will become regular smokers. That’s almost two million annually. “Of all the people alive in this world today, we expect half a billion will be killed by cigarette smoking—two-thirds in poor countries,” Greg Connolly director of the Tobacco Control Program at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, told PBS’s NOVA. “And of those two-thirds, half are children under the age of 18.” Now some teenagers are smoking cigarettes they perceive to be safer than conventional ones—additive-free cigarettes, and hand-rolled unfiltered cigarettes from India called bidis. Bidis, which are wrapped in tendu leaves, are especially appealing to teens because they are cheaper than regular cigarettes, and come in flavors like strawberry, chocolate, and black licorice. © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 3840 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Maybe you really are what you eat. This would solve the long-time mystery of why so many of Guam's Chamorro people – up to a third per village -- suffered a devastating neurological disease. A new study suggests that they gorged on flying fox bats that in turn had feasted on neurotoxin-laden cycad seeds. "Through the consumption of cycad-fed flying foxes, the Chamorro people may have unwittingly ingested large quantities of cycad neurotoxins," say Clark Monson of the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Sandra Banack of California State University, Fullerton, and Paul Cox of the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Kalaheo, Hawaii, in the June issue of Conservation Biology. Guam's indigenous Chamorro people historically had a high incidence of a neurological disease with similarities to Lou Gehrig's, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Called ALS-PDC (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-Parkinsonian dementia complex), the disease's symptoms range from muscle weakness and paralysis to dementia. The rate of ALS-PDC has been as much as 100 times higher in Guam's Chamorro people than in the continental U.S.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 3839 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Brain changes that occur with cocaine use and the tendency toward relapse may be reduced by a behavioral treatment using extinction training--a form of conditioning that removes the reward associated with a learned behavior. NIDA-funded researchers found that extinction training during cocaine withdrawal produces changes in brain receptors for glutamate, a brain chemical found in the nucleus accumbens, the reward center of the brain. A reduction in glutamate input from cortical brain regions by chronic cocaine use is thought to contribute to persistent cravings for the drug. The researchers trained rats to self-administer cocaine by pressing a lever and to associate the availability of cocaine with certain environmental cues (lights and noise). Once the rats had learned to expect cocaine when they pressed the lever, cocaine and the cues were removed so that the rats did not receive the cocaine that they were anticipating. One group of rats received this extinction training during cocaine withdrawal while another group did not receive the training. After extinction training was over, the researchers exposed the rats to the cocaine-associated cues and administered cocaine to induce relapse.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 3838 - Posted: 05.24.2003

When it comes to tolerating spicy foods, not all mouths are created equal. Findings published today in the journal Science help explain why that is the case. Researchers have identified a lipid molecule that plays a critical role in controlling the severity of a burning sensation. Scientists have known for some time that it is a compound known as capsaicin that gives chili peppers their kick. In the mouth, the capsaicin receptor (TRPV1) governs the level of pain that can accompany a spicy meal. Elizabeth D. Prescott and David Julius of the University of California, San Francisco, investigated a specific binding site within TRPV1. They discovered that a lipid molecule known as PIP2 is usually bound to the receptor, but in the presence of capsaicin, it is released, creating a painful sensation. The strength with which PIP2 is bound to TRPV1, the researchers found, thus determines how sensitive the neurons are to the spice. © 1996-2003 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 3837 - Posted: 06.24.2010