By Sharon Begley, STAT Living in a city makes people develop schizophrenia. Tell me more: The claim is not quite that stark, but it’s close. For a study published last week, researchers interviewed 2,063 British twins (some identical, some not) at age 18 about “psychotic experiences” they’d had since age 12—such as feeling paranoid, hearing voices, worrying their food might be poisoned, and having “unusual or frightening” thoughts. Among those who lived in the most densely populated large cities, 34 percent reported such experiences; 24 percent of adolescents in rural areas did. The twins are part of a long-running study that has followed them from birth in 1994-95, so the researchers— led by Helen Fisher of King’s College London and Candice Odgers of Duke University—also knew the teens’ family income, parents’ education, where they lived, and more. Conclusion: 18-year-olds raised in big cities were 67 percent more likely to have had psychotic experiences, the researchers reported in Schizophrenia Bulletin. They then used standard statistics tools to account for possible psychosis-related factors other than cities per se. Cities have more people who are poor and uneducated, which are risk factors for schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis, so they controlled for socioeconomic status. Family psychiatric history raises the risk of an individual’s developing psychosis, and since there is some evidence that people with mental illness move to cities, which have more treatment facilities, the researchers controlled for this, too. They also controlled for drug use, some forms of which are more common in urban than rural areas. These calculations brought the extra risk of psychosis among urban teens down to 43 percent. © 2017 Scientific American,

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Stress
Link ID: 23683 - Posted: 05.31.2017

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Exercise may bolster the brain function and thinking skills of people with dementia, according to a new report. The study’s findings suggest that walking a few times per week might alter the trajectory of the disease and improve the physical well-being of people who develop a common form of age-related memory loss that otherwise has few treatments. The study looked at vascular cognitive impairment, the second most frequent form of dementia worldwide, after the better-known Alzheimer’s disease. The condition arises when someone’s blood vessels become damaged and blood no longer flows well to the brain. It is often associated with high blood pressure and heart disease. One of the particular hallmarks of vascular dementia in its early stages, researchers have found, is that it tends to make the brain function less efficiently. In past brain-scan studies, people with a diagnosis of vascular cognitive impairment generally showed more neural activity in parts of their brains that are involved with memory, decision-making and attention than did people without the disease, indicating that their brains had to work harder during normal thinking than healthier brains did. But while a great deal of research attention has been devoted to Alzheimer’s disease, less has been known about the progression of and potential curbs on vascular dementia. Some research has indicated that reducing blood pressure lessens the symptoms of the disease. Exercise can likewise improve blood pressure and cardiovascular health. And some research suggests that frequent, brisk walks may improve memory and physical abilities in those in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. But, rather surprisingly, few past studies had examined whether exercise might also improve brain function in people with vascular dementia. So for the new study, which was published in April in The British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada and other institutions decided to look into the effects of walking on this type of dementia. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 23682 - Posted: 05.31.2017

By Alice Klein A DRUG normally used to treat narcolepsy and excessive daytime sleepiness also seems to improve symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms. The finding supports the idea that ADHD might be a sleep disorder. People who have been diagnosed with ADHD find it difficult to concentrate and are generally hyperactive. But many with the condition also find it difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep at night, and feel drowsy during the day. Could this mean ADHD is a type of sleep disorder? After all, the brain pathways involved in paying attention have also been linked to sleep. And there’s some evidence of similarly disrupted patterns of chemical signalling in the brains of people with sleep disorders and ADHD. One suggestion is that the circadian rhythm that controls our sleep-wake cycle over each 24 hour period may be misaligned in people with ADHD, causing them to be sleepy or alert at the wrong times. This idea inspired Eric Konofal at Robert-Debré Hospital in Paris to try using a drug for narcolepsy and excessive daytime sleepiness to treat ADHD. Mazindol mimics the effects of a brain chemical called orexin, which modulates wakefulness and appetite. It works as a stimulant to keep us awake, and is lacking in people with narcolepsy, who tend to fall asleep at inappropriate times.

Keyword: ADHD; Sleep
Link ID: 23681 - Posted: 05.31.2017

By Emily Underwood Viewed under a microscope, your tongue is an alien landscape, studded by fringed and bumpy buds that sense five basic tastes: salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and umami. But mammalian taste buds may have an additional sixth sense—for water, a new study suggests. The finding could help explain how animals can tell water from other fluids, and it adds new fodder to a centuries-old debate: Does water have a taste of its own, or is it a mere vehicle for other flavors? Ever since antiquity, philosophers have claimed that water has no flavor. Even Aristotle referred to it as “tasteless” around 330 B.C.E. But insects and amphibians have water-sensing nerve cells, and there is growing evidence of similar cells in mammals, says Patricia Di Lorenzo, a behavioral neuroscientist at the State University of New York in Binghamton. A few recent brain scan studies also suggest that a region of human cortex responds specifically to water, she says. Still, critics argue that any perceived flavor is just the after-effect of whatever we tasted earlier, such as the sweetness of water after we eat salty food. “Almost nothing is known” about the molecular and cellular mechanism by which water is detected in the mouth and throat, and the neural pathway by which that signal is transmitted to the brain, says Zachary Knight, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco. In previous studies, Knight and other researchers have found distinct populations of neurons within a region of the brain called the hypothalamus that can trigger thirst and signal when an animal should start and stop drinking. But the brain must receive information about water from the mouth and tongue, because animals stop drinking long before signals from the gut or blood could tell the brain that the body has been replenished, he says. © 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science. A

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 23680 - Posted: 05.31.2017

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D. Evidence continues to mount that professional athletes in a number of contact sports are suffering brain damage as a result of head impacts. But there is no reliable test to detect the injury, called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, in its earliest stages. Even if a doctor strongly suspects that an athlete’s confusion or memory loss is related to C.T.E., proof can only be obtained on autopsy. Now a small study of National Football League players suggests another possibility: that the signs of C.T.E. may be found with a low-cost, noninvasive test that tracks changes in conversational language years before symptoms appear. If it works, the linguistic test also would be valuable in assessing the effectiveness of treatments to prevent cognitive damage because of C.T.E. or to slow its progression. In the study, to be published this week in the journal Brain and Language, researchers at Arizona State University tracked a steeper decline in vocabulary size and other verbal skills in 10 players who spoke at news conferences over an eight-year period, compared with 18 coaches and executives who had never played professional football and who also spoke in news conferences during the same period. The players included seven quarterbacks, one nose tackle, one cornerback and one wide receiver. Although the small sample size and limited study period prevented reaching definitive conclusions, the findings underscored the need for larger, long-term studies of changes in spoken and written language that could be harbingers of severe brain damage later in life. And not just for injuries related to C.T.E. Development of a reliable linguistic tool could also help evaluate head injuries among military personnel and victims of domestic violence, said Dr. Javier Cardenas, who directs the Concussion and Brain Injury Center at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Language
Link ID: 23679 - Posted: 05.30.2017

Nicola Davis People from ethnic minorities have up to a five times greater risk of psychotic disorders than the white British population, researchers say. A new study reveals that the trend holds in both urban and rural settings, with first-generation migrants who arrive in the UK in childhood among those at increased risk. The team behind the study say a number of factors could be at play, including stresses related to the migration process, discrimination and issues related to isolation and integration. James Kirkbride, a psychiatric epidemiologist from University College London and co-author of the research, described the figures as shocking. It’s time to tackle mental health inequality among black people “If this was any other disorder we would be horrified and up in arms and we would be campaigning from a public health perspective on how we could reduce this level of suffering,” he said. “There is a massive health inequality and it hasn’t got much attention.” While psychosis is rare – rates in England stand at about 30 cases per 100,000 people per year – Kirkbride says more should be done to offer services to those in need and to unpick drivers behind raised risks. “In the present climate when issues about migration are at the forefront of the public’s mind, people from ethnic minority backgrounds may face additional stresses that could potentially contribute to mental health problems,” he added. Writing in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin, Kirkbride and colleagues from the University of Cambridge and a collection of NHS foundation trusts describe how they looked at trends among 687 people in the east of England.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 23678 - Posted: 05.30.2017

Rebecca Hersher Diagnosing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can be difficult. The symptoms of the disorder, as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM, have changed multiple times. Even if you know what to look for, many of the symptoms are pretty general, including things like trouble focusing and a tendency to interrupt people. Discerning the difference between people who have a problem and those who are just distracted requires real expertise. Which is why many people were excited when earlier this year a World Health Organization advisory group endorsed a six-question screening test that a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported could reliably identify adults with ADHD. A lot of people were intrigued by the seeming simplicity of the screening. We reported on it, including one implication of the study's findings: that there could be a significant population of U.S. adults with undiagnosed ADHD. But that may not be the case, and even if it is, some ADHD researchers say the six-question screening test is not necessarily the simple diagnostic solution its proponents hope it will be. "Despite the questions put out by WHO and mentioned in JAMA, in America if your talents and temperament don't match your goals and aspirations, that incongruity generates a series of feelings or behaviors that match quite nicely the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-V," explains Dr. Lawrence Diller, a behavioral pediatrician and ADHD specialist who has been following trends in ADHD diagnosis and medication since the mid-1990s. © 2017 npr

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 23677 - Posted: 05.30.2017

Irwin Feinberg, One of the grand strategies nature uses to construct nervous systems is to overproduce neural elements, such as neurons, axons and synapses, and then prune the excess. In fact, this overproduction is so substantial that only about half of the neurons mammalian embryos generate will survive until birth. Why do some neural connections persist, whereas others do not? A common misconception is that neurons that do not make the cut are defective. Although some may indeed be damaged, most simply fail to connect to their chemically defined targets. In a series of brilliant studies performed during the latter half of the 20th century, researchers discovered how pruning works. They found that newborn neurons migrate along chemically defined routes and that when the neurons arrive at their genetically assigned locations, they compete with their “sibling” neurons to connect with predetermined targets. Victorious neurons receive trophic, or nourishing, factors that allow their survival; unsuccessful neurons fade away in a process called apoptosis, or cell death. The timing of cell death is genetically programmed and occurs at different points in the embryonic development of each species. For decades neuroscientists believed that neural pruning ended shortly after birth. But in 1979 the late Peter Huttenlocher, a neurologist at the University of Chicago, demonstrated that this excess production and pruning strategy actually continues for synapses long after birth. Using electron microscopy to analyze carefully selected autopsied human brains, he showed that synapses—the tiny connections between neurons—proliferate after birth, reaching twice their neonatal levels by mid- to late childhood, and then decrease precipitously during adolescence. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23676 - Posted: 05.30.2017

By JANE E. BRODY A neighbor of mine was recently told he has a devastating neurological disorder that is usually fatal within a few years of diagnosis. Though a new drug was recently approved for the illness, treatments may only slow progression of the disease for a time or extend life for maybe two or three months. He is a man of about 60 I’ve long considered the quintessential Mr. Fix-it, able to repair everything from bicycles to bathtubs. Now he is facing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease — a disease that no one yet knows how to fix. I can only imagine what he is going through because he does not want to talk about it. However, many others similarly afflicted have openly addressed the challenges they faced, though it is usually up to friends and family to express them and advocate for more and better research and public understanding. A.L.S. attacks the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movements, like chewing, walking, breathing, swallowing and talking. It is invariably progressive. Lacking nervous system stimulation, the muscles soon begin to weaken, twitch and waste away until individuals can no longer speak, eat, move or even breathe on their own. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that between 14,000 and 15,000 Americans have A.L.S., which makes it sound like a rare disease, but only because life expectancy is so short. A.L.S. occurs throughout the world, and it is probably far more common than generally thought. Over the course of a lifetime, one person in about 400 is likely to develop it, a risk not unlike that of multiple sclerosis. But with the rare exception of an outlier like the brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking, who has had A.L.S. for more than 50 years, it usually kills so quickly that many people do not know anyone living with this disease. Only one person in 10 with A.L.S. is likely to live for a decade or longer. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 23675 - Posted: 05.29.2017

A daily 30-minute regimen designed to help elderly surgery patients stay oriented can cut the rate of postoperative delirium in half and help them return home sooner, according to a test among 377 volunteers in Taipei. After they were moved out of an intensive care unit, 15.1 percent given conventional treatment experienced delirium. But when hospital workers got patients moving faster, helped them brush their teeth, gave them facial exercises and talked to them in ways to help them understand what was happening, the delirium rate was just 6.6 percent. And while the patients who didn’t get the intervention typically stayed in the hospital for 14 days, those who did were discharged an average two days sooner. The study “draws needed attention to delirium,” which can cause problems when confused patients, for example, try to extricate themselves from the tubes and equipment needed to recover, said Lillian Kao, acute care surgery chief for McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, who wasn’t involved with the study. Estimates of delirium’s prevalence vary widely, ranging from 13 percent to 50 percent among people who have non-heart surgery, according to an editorial accompanying the study, which appears in JAMA Surgery. © 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Keyword: Alzheimers; Attention
Link ID: 23674 - Posted: 05.29.2017

By Alex Hickson This totally unique mash-up between neuroscience and art shows the stunningly complex beauty of the human brain. Your brain is terrifyingly complicated and is made up of approximately 86 billion neurons which work together as a biological machine to create who you are. But it takes some real cranium contortion to get your head around what those billions of signals and connected web of cells look like. Artist and neuroscientist Dr Greg Dunn combined talents with artist and physicist Dr Brian Edwards to produce this unprecedented work of wonder. But the shimmering never-before-achieved works of art are not as they appear. They are not brain scans but have been painstakingly created using a combination of neuroscience research, hand drawing, computer simulations and all finished off with glistening gold leaf. Both the artists say they wanted the work to remind people that the most marvelous machine in the universe is in our own heads and hope that the brilliant display will reveal the root of our shared humanity. ‘Self Reflected was created not to simplify the brain’s functionality for easier consumption, but to depict it as close to its native complexity as possible so that the viewer comes away with a visceral and emotional understanding of its beauty,’ they write.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 23673 - Posted: 05.29.2017

By Julie Hecht I have been scaring dog lovers for nearly a decade, and Tamas Farago—lead researcher behind a new study on dog growls and cross-species communication—is mostly to blame. I met Farago in 2010 when visiting his research group—the Family Dog Project at Eotvos Lorand University—to conduct my Masters research. By then, Farago was already immersed in the study of dog vocalizations—particularly their barks and growls—so when my study concluded and it was time to leave Budapest, I departed with not only a deep appreciation for paprika and palinka, but also a few audio clips of dogs growling, courtesy of Farago. Since then, whenever I give a talk about canine science, audience members are sure to chuckle, their faces brightening, as recordings of a dog’s breathy, garbled, fast-paced, play growls take over the room. But when I play the low, elongated aggressive growls corresponding to a dog being approached by a threatening stranger or a dog guarding food, even my hair will often stand up. These growls mean business. If a dog happens to be attending the talk—not that I hold lectures for dogs, but if a human brought their dog—I take note before playing the growls. This is because a 2010 study by Farago and colleagues found that dogs not only listen to growls, but extract meaningful information from them. Here’s how they figured this out: In the study, dogs entered a room where they came across a bone. Fine. Normal so far. Just a bone sitting all alone. But unbeknownst to the dogs, a speaker was concealed in a covered crate sitting just behind the bone, and as the dogs approached, one of three growls was played from the speaker (food guarding, threatening stranger, or play). Excellent work sneaky researchers! © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 23672 - Posted: 05.29.2017

By Ulrich Boser A TECHNICIAN SNAPPED a stretchy electrode cap onto my head, and I felt a cold pinch as she affixed each sensor to my scalp with a dose of icy gel. Perched on an office chair, with a rainbow of wires spiraling from my head, I followed the tech’s instructions to stare at a small orange object while an EEG recording device measured the electrical activity in various regions of my brain. I was checking out the Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., branch of Neurocore, a “brain performance” company owned by the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. DeVos resigned her Neurocore board seat when she joined the Trump Cabinet, but she and her husband maintain a financial stake of between $5 million and $25 million, according to a financial disclosure statement filed with the Office of Government Ethics. The DeVoses’ private-equity firm, Windquest, identifies Neurocore as part of its “corporate family.” The Windquest website posts Neurocore news and includes links for job seekers to apply to Neurocore openings. In other words, the family has a lot riding on Neurocore’s claims that it can help you “train your brain to function better” — addressing problems as diverse as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, anxiety, stress, depression, poor sleep, memory loss and migraines. “Unlike medication, which temporarily masks your symptoms, neurofeedback promotes healthy changes in your brain to provide you with a lasting solution,” touts a Neurocore overview video. “. . . We’ve helped thousands of people strengthen their brain to achieve a happy, healthier, more productive life for years to come.” The company currently has nine offices in Michigan and Florida, though there’s been talk of making a national move. © 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 23671 - Posted: 05.29.2017

Alexandra Sifferlin Like most people, Kevin Hall used to think the reason people get fat is simple. "Why don't they just eat less and exercise more?" he remembers thinking. Trained as a physicist, the calories-in-vs.-calories-burned equation for weight loss always made sense to him. But then his own research--and the contestants on a smash reality-TV show--proved him wrong. Hall, a scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), started watching The Biggest Loser a few years ago on the recommendation of a friend. "I saw these folks stepping on scales, and they lost 20 lb. in a week," he says. On the one hand, it tracked with widespread beliefs about weight loss: the workouts were punishing and the diets restrictive, so it stood to reason the men and women on the show would slim down. Still, 20 lb. in a week was a lot. To understand how they were doing it, he decided to study 14 of the contestants for a scientific paper. Hall quickly learned that in reality-TV-land, a week doesn't always translate into a precise seven days, but no matter: the weight being lost was real, speedy and huge. Over the course of the season, the contestants lost an average of 127 lb. each and about 64% of their body fat. If his study could uncover what was happening in their bodies on a physiological level, he thought, maybe he'd be able to help the staggering 71% of American adults who are overweight. © 2017 Time Inc.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 23670 - Posted: 05.29.2017

By STEPH YIN A female and male get together. One thing leads to another, and they have sex. His sperm fuses with her egg, half of his DNA combining with half of her DNA to form an embryo. As humans, this is how we tend to think of reproduction. But there are many other bizarre ways reproduction can take place. For instance, scientists have discovered a fish carrying genes only from its father in the nucleus of its cells. Found in a type of fish called Squalius alburnoides, which normally inhabits rivers in Portugal or Spain, this is the first documented instance in vertebrates of a father producing a near clone of itself through sexual reproduction — a rare phenomenon called androgenesis — the researchers reported in the journal Royal Society Open Science on Wednesday. The possibility of androgenesis is just one of many mysteries about Squalius alburnoides. It’s not a species in the usual sense, but rather something called a hybrid complex, a group of organisms with multiple parental combinations that can mate with one another. The group is thought to have arisen from hybridization between females of one species, Squalius pyrenaicus, and males of another species, now extinct, that belonged to a group of fish called Anaecypris. To sustain its population, Squalius alburnoides mates with several other closely related species belonging to the Squalius lineage. That it can reproduce at all is unusual enough. Most hybrids, like mules, are sterile because the chromosomes from their parents of different species have trouble combining, swapping DNA and dividing — steps required for egg or sperm production. Squalius alburnoides males circumvent this problem by producing sperm cells that do not divide, and therefore contain more than one chromosome set. This is important because most animals, Squalius alburnoides included, need at least two chromosome sets to survive. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 23669 - Posted: 05.27.2017

Jon Hamilton Impulsive children become thoughtful adults only after years of improvements to the brain's information highways, a team reports in Current Biology. A study of nearly 900 young people ages 8 to 22 found that the ability to control impulses, stay on task and make good decisions increased steadily over that span as the brain remodeled its information pathways to become more efficient. The finding helps explain why these abilities, known collectively as executive function, take so long to develop fully, says Danielle Bassett, an author of the study and an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. "A child's ability to run or to see is very well developed by the time they're 8," she says. "However, their ability to inhibit inappropriate responses is not something that's well developed until well into the 20s." The results also suggest it may be possible to identify adolescents at risk of problems related to poor executive function, says Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which helped fund the study. These include "all kinds of disorders such as substance abuse, depression and schizophrenia," he says. The study is part of an effort to understand the brain changes underlying the development of executive function. It used a technology called diffusion imaging that reveals the fibers that make up the brain's information highways. © 2017 npr

Keyword: ADHD; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 23668 - Posted: 05.27.2017

By Julie Steenhuysen, U.S. deaths from Alzheimer's disease rose by more than 50 percent from 1999 to 2014, and rates are expected to continue to rise, reflecting the nation's aging population and increasing life expectancy, American researchers said on Thursday. In addition, a larger proportion of people with Alzheimer's are dying at home rather than a medical facility, according to the report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Alzheimer’s is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for 3.6 percent of all deaths in 2014, the report said. Researchers have long predicted increased cases of Alzheimer's as more of the nation's baby boom generation passes the age of 65, putting them at higher risk for the age-related disease. The number of U.S. residents aged 65 and older living with Alzheimer's is expected to nearly triple to 13.8 million by 2050. There is no cure for Alzheimer's, a fatal brain disease that slowly robs its victims of the ability to think and care for themselves. According to the report by researchers at the CDC and Georgia State University, 93,541 people died from Alzheimer’s in the United States in 2014, a 54.5 percent increase compared with 1999. © 2017 Scientific American

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 23667 - Posted: 05.27.2017

By JUSTIN GILLIS Global warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases is having clear effects in the physical world: more heat waves, heavier rainstorms and higher sea levels, to cite a few. In recent years, though, social scientists have been wrestling with a murkier question: What will climate change mean for human welfare? Forecasts in this realm are tricky, necessarily based on a long chain of assumptions. Scientific papers have predicted effects as varied as a greater spread of tropical diseases, fewer deaths from cold weather and more from hot weather, and even bumpier rides on airplanes. Now comes another entry in this literature: a prediction that in a hotter world, people will get less sleep. In a paper published online Friday by the journal Science Advances, Nick Obradovich and colleagues predicted more restless nights, especially in the summer, as global temperatures rise. They found that the poor, who are less likely to have air-conditioning or be able to run it, as well as the elderly, who have more difficulty regulating their body temperature, would be hit hard. If global emissions are allowed to continue at a high level, the paper found, then additional nights of sleeplessness can be expected beyond what people normally experience. By 2050, for every 100 Americans, an extra six nights of sleeplessness can be expected every month, the researchers calculated. By 2099, that would more than double, to 14 additional nights of tossing and turning each month for every 100 people, in their estimation. Researchers have long known that being too hot or too cold at night can disturb anyone’s sleep, but nobody had thought to ask how that might affect people in a world grown hotter because of climate change. Dr. Obradovich is a political scientist who researches both the politics of climate change and its likely human impacts, holding appointments at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He started the research while completing a doctoral degree at the University of California, San Diego. © 2017 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 23666 - Posted: 05.27.2017

Patients who are told their medication can have certain side-effects may report these symptoms more often than patients who aren't aware their treatment carries these risks, a study of popular cholesterol pills suggests. Researchers focused on what they dubbed the "nocebo" effect, or the potential for people to complain of treatment-related side-effects when they think they're taking a specific drug but are actually given a placebo, or dummy pill, without any active ingredients. "It has been recognized for many years that when patients are warned about possible adverse reactions to a drug, they are much more likely to complain of these side effects than when they are unaware of the possibility that such side-effects might occur," said senior study author Dr. Peter Sever, a researcher at Imperial College London. To test this "nocebo" effect, researchers first randomly assigned about 10,000 trial participants in the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia to take either a statin pill to lower cholesterol or a placebo, then followed people for around three years to see how often they complained of four known statin side-effects: Patients on statins and on placebo pills reported similar rates of muscle aches and erectile dysfunction, the study found. People taking placebo also reported higher rates of sleep difficulties than patients on statins. ©2017 CBC/Radio-Canada.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 23665 - Posted: 05.27.2017

Laura Sanders Nerve cells in a poorly understood part of the brain have the power to prompt voracious eating in already well-fed mice. Two to three seconds after blue light activated cells in the zona incerta, a patch of neurons just underneath the thalamus and above the hypothalamus, mice dropped everything and began shoveling food into their mouths. This dramatic response, described May 26 in Science, suggests a role in eating behavior for a part of the brain that hasn’t received much scrutiny. Scientists have previously proposed a range of jobs for the zona incerta, linking it to attention, movement and even posture. The new study suggests another job — controlling eating behavior, perhaps even in humans. “Being able to include the zona incerta in models of feeding is going to help us understand it better,” says study coauthor Anthony van den Pol, a neuroscientist at Yale University. The new results may also help explain why a small number of Parkinson’s disease patients develop binge-eating behavior when electrodes are implanted in their brains to ease their symptoms. Those electrodes may be stimulating zona incerta nerve cells, van den Pol suspects. He and his collaborator Xiaobing Zhang, also of Yale, studied the mice with a technique called optogenetics. Mice were engineered so that some nerve cells in the zona incerta fired off signals when hit with blue light. When the light activated these cells, the mice immediately found the food and began eating, the researchers reported. “It’s really quick,” van den Pol says. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2017.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 23664 - Posted: 05.26.2017