Erin Allday, Chronicle Staff Writer -- Increasingly powerful antipsychotic drugs available on the market, and growing evidence that starting these medications early can help children with conditions like bipolar disorder, is putting doctors under more pressure than ever to diagnose and treat young people with mental illnesses. As a result, some doctors say, mental illness, especially bipolar disorder, has been overdiagnosed much the same way attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was in the 1980s. "ADHD was the diagnosis du jour in the '80s. Now it's become bipolar disorder," said Dr. Andrew Giammona, who heads the psychiatry department at Children's Hospital Oakland. "We're in a quick-fix society, and parents want to believe that if we had this treatment, we can get it fixed and move on." Before the 1990s, bipolar disorder was a rare diagnosis in children under age 19. By 1994, U.S. doctors were reporting about 25 cases per 100,000 young people, and by 2002 that number had jumped to 1,000 cases per 100,000, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Medication was prescribed for about two-thirds of those patients, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Antipsychotic medications are among the most popular made by pharmaceutical companies. Earlier this month, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel recommended approval of three antipsychotic drugs for use in treating schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in children and teens. The FDA will make a final decision on Geodon, Seroquel and Zyprexa in the coming weeks. © 2009 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12989 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists at the University of Alberta have found there are significant differences in the way our brains function, depending on whether we are early risers or night owls. Using magnetic resonance imaging-guided brain stimulation, neuroscientists tested muscle torque and the excitability of pathways through the spinal cord and brain. "We found that the brains of morning people are more excitable in the morning and evening people are completely opposite," neurophysiology researcher David Collins said Tuesday. "The evening people ... it's almost a perfect storm of excitability in the central nervous system, where the brain is maximal in the evening and the spinal cord is maximal in the evening.... They generate the most force in the evenings," he said. David Collins, neurophysiology researcher at the University of Alberta (CBC)David Collins, neurophysiology researcher at the University of Alberta (CBC) "Morning people ... their brains are most excitable in the morning, but their spinal cords are most excitable in the evening," Collins said. The results may suggest that morning people are performing below their maximum possible level at all times of the day because of this, he said. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 12988 - Posted: 06.24.2010

P. Murali Doraiswamy is the head of biological psychiatry at Duke University and is a Senior Fellow at Duke’s Center for the Study of Aging. He’s also the co-author of The Alzheimer’s Action Plan, a guide for patients and family members struggling with the disease. Q: What do you think are the biggest public misconceptions of Alzheimer's disease? DORAISWAMY: The two biggest misconceptions are “It’s just aging” and “It’s untreatable, so we should just leave the person alone.” Both of these misconceptions are remnants of an outdated view that hinders families from getting the best diagnosis and best care. They were also one of the main reasons I wanted to write this book. Although old age is the single biggest risk for dementia, Alzheimer’s is not a normal part of aging. Just ask any family member who has cared for a loved one with Alzheimer’s and they will tell you how different the disease is from normal aging. Alzheimer’s can strike people as young as their forties; there are some half a million individuals in the United States with early-onset dementia. Recent research has pinpointed disruptions in specific memory networks in Alzheimer’s patients, such as those involving the posteromedial cortex and medial temporal lobe, that appear distinct from normal aging. The larger point is that while Alzheimer’s is still incurable it’s not untreatable. There are four FDA-approved medications available for treating Alzheimer symptoms and many others in clinical trials. Strategies to enhance general brain and mental wellbeing can also help people with Alzheimer’s. That’s why early detection is so important. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 12987 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Anil Ananthaswamy How blind and deaf people approach a cognitive test regarded as a milestone in human development has provided clues to how we deduce what others are thinking. Understanding another person's perspective, and realising that it can differ from our own, is known as theory of mind. It underpins empathy, communication and the ability to deceiveMovie Camera – all of which we take for granted. Although our theory of mind is more developed than it is in other animals, we don't acquire it until around age four, and how it develops is a mystery. You can test for theory of mind via the false-belief test, in which two children are shown playing. One puts a toy under the bed and leaves the room. The second then removes it and puts it in the toy box. On returning, where will the older child look for the toy? Those under the age of four choose the box, while older children correctly say under the bed. Where does this leap in understanding come from? According to one hypothesis, children gradually deduce that other people have internal experiences that are different from their own by observing the facial expressions and gestures of others over time. To test this idea, neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues scanned the brains of 10 congenitally blind adults as they answered questions about the beliefs of people described to them. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Language; Autism
Link ID: 12986 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Lauren Neergaard, Associated Press -- Puzzling new research suggests women have a harder time than men looking at babies with facial birth defects. It's a surprise finding. Psychiatrists from the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, who were studying perceptions of beauty, had expected women to spend more time than men cooing over pictures of extra-cute babies. Nope. Instead, the small study being published Wednesday raises more questions than it can answer. First the background: The McLean team already had studied men and women looking at photos of adults' faces on a computer screen. The participants rated facial beauty, and could do various keystrokes to watch the photos longer. A keystroke count showed men put three times more effort into watching beautiful women as women put into watching handsome men. Lead researcher Dr. Igor Elman wondered what else might motivate women. Enter the new baby study. This time 13 men and 14 women were shown 80 photos of babies, 30 of whom had abnormal facial features such as a cleft palate, Down syndrome or crossed eyes. Participants rated each baby's attractiveness on a scale of zero to 100, and used keystrokes to make the photo stay on the screen longer or disappear faster. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 12985 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway CLEVER HANS's gift was just too good to be true. The Arabian stallion wowed the crowds in early 20th-century Europe with his apparent ability to stomp out the answers to simple mathematical problems, such as 12 - 3 = 9. He could even add fractions and factorise small numbers (see image). Then in 1907, a German psychologist, Oskar Pfungst, proved that Hans was no animal savant. In a scientific trial of sorts, Pfungst demonstrated that Hans could do arithmetic only when his owner, a maths teacher, or another questioner provided unconscious body cues hinting that Hans had reached the correct answer. With blinkers on or with the questioner hidden, Hans's abilities vanished. So, too, did the notion that animals could count. Much has changed, however, in the century since Clever Hans's ignominious exposure. Few now doubt that primates have a sense of number, and even distantly related animals, including salamanders, honeybees and newly hatched chicks, seem to have the knack, with some able to perform basic arithmetic. What's more, the skills of this growing mathematical menagerie resemble our own innate abilities. Could basic mathematics have evolved hundreds of millions of years ago? "The ability to represent time and space and number is a precondition for having any experience whatsoever," says Randy Gallistel, a psychologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12984 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Katherine Harmon Compared with other mammals, primates—from lemurs to humans—have huge brains. But scientists still don't know exactly why—or even when—our brains ballooned. A new study, published yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, postulates that even without big brains, early primates were able to do a lot of primatelike things—a finding that calls into question many of the prevailing evolutionary theories. "At the beginning, we didn't have an exceptionally large brain," says Jonathan Bloch, an associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Florida's Florida Museum of Natural History and co-author of the paper, talking about primates in general. To explain the expansion in primates' brains, researchers have put forth various possible mechanisms. Tree dwelling, for instance, may have required more brainpower to coordinate muscles and joints for life off the ground. Changes in diet, too, such as consuming fruits instead of leaves, could have led to more calories being available for brain development. Bloch and his colleagues, however, propose that the owner of the rare, 54-million-year-old skull, an Ignacius graybullianus from an extinct side branch of the primate family tree, was already doing these things with a decidedly nonprimate brain. Not only was the I. graybullianus's brain about two thirds the relative size of those of the smallest modern primates, "it doesn't look anything like a primate's brain," says Richard Kay, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University who wasn't involved in the study but was first to describe this particular skull (in 1989). If forced to come up with a modern-day comparison, he says, "I'd be looking at a hedgehog." © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12983 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Peter F. MacNeilage, Lesley J. Rogers and Giorgio Vallortigara The left hemisphere of the human brain controls language, arguably our greatest mental attribute. It also controls the remarkable dexterity of the human right hand. The right hemisphere is dominant in the control of, among other things, our sense of how objects interrelate in space. Forty years ago the broad scientific consensus held that, in addition to language, right-handedness and the specialization of just one side of the brain for processing spatial relations occur in humans alone. Other animals, it was thought, have no hemispheric specializations of any kind. Those beliefs fit well with the view that people have a special evolutionary status. Biologists and behavioral scientists generally agreed that right-handedness evolved in our hominid ancestors as they learned to build and use tools, about 2.5 million years ago. Right-handedness was also thought to underlie speech. Perhaps, as the story went, the left hemisphere simply added sign language to its repertoire of skilled manual actions and then converted it to speech. Or perhaps the left brain’s capacity for controlling manual action extended to controlling the vocal apparatus for speech. In either case, speech and language evolved from a relatively recent manual talent for toolmaking. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, was thought to have evolved by default into a center for processing spatial relations, after the left hemisphere became specialized for handedness. In the past few decades, however, studies of many other animals have shown that their two brain hemispheres also have distinctive roles. Despite those findings, prevailing wisdom continues to hold that people are different. Many investigators still think the recently discovered specializations of the two brain hemispheres in nonhumans are unrelated to the human ones; the hemispheric specializations of humans began with humans. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Laterality; Evolution
Link ID: 12982 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ewen Callaway Some fathers show their affection by spending time with their children, others spoil their kids rotten. Some fish, on the other hand, value their offspring so much that they devour them before a predator gets the chance. Savage as it may seem, filial cannibalism makes perfect sense for animals such as sand gobies that invest time and energy in raising large numbers of offspring, says Ashley Chin-Baarstad, a biologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, who led the study. In a role reversal of sorts, male sand gobies tend the eggs from multiple females, who go off on a search for more mates. But a long summer breeding season gives the males ample time to raise multiple broods and, rather than waiting until the eggs have hatched, sometimes they simply make a snack of them. "They've decided it's just not worth it right now and for whatever reason they want to leave," Baarstad says. By eating their eggs, they can at least recoup some of their investment. To determine under what circumstances sand gobies decide to eat their offspring, Baarstad's team mated dozens of males and females in outdoor tanks that mimicked conditions in the wild. Males kept close guard on their hundreds of eggs, all buried safely in the sand. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Stress
Link ID: 12981 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lynne Peeples Music may calm the savage beast or, at least, make the workday seem shorter. A new study now adds cardiovascular health to the list of music's potential benefits, suggesting it can directly trigger physiological changes that modulate blood pressure, heart rate and respiration. "Music induces a continuous, dynamic—and to some extent predictable—change in the cardiovascular system," said Luciano Bernardi, a professor of medicine at the University of Pavia in Italy and lead author on the paper published in the journal Circulation, in a statement. Understanding the mechanisms of how swelling crescendos and deflating decrescendos affect our physiology, he suggests, could lead to potential new therapies for stroke and other conditions. Bernardi and his colleagues had previously found that changes in the cardiovascular and respiratory systems mirrored musical tempo. To extend this knowledge to the body's response to changing rhythms, they enlisted 24 volunteers—half experienced singers, the remainder with no musical training. While participants listened to five random selections of Beethoven, Bach, Puccini and other classical artists as well as a two-minute segment of silence, monitors recorded physiological signals. The researchers found that selections with crescendos, especially those with a series of them (think: Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody), led to proportional constriction of blood vessels and increases in blood pressure, heart rate and respiration. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Hearing; Emotions
Link ID: 12980 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Women who suffer from migraine headaches in middle age accompanied by neurological aura (visual disturbances, dizziness or numbness that can precede migraines) are more likely to have damage to brain tissue in the cerebellum later in life, according to a study by researchers at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and the Icelandic Heart Association in Reykjavik. Researchers noted that many people have these types of "silent" brain lesions, but their effect on physical and cognitive function in older people is not well studied. The study appears in the June 24, 2009, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers found that women are more susceptible than men to localized brain tissue damage identified on magnetic resonance images (MRI) and that women who reported having migraines with aura were almost twice as likely to have such damage in the cerebellum as women who reported not having headaches. Researchers noted that while the study shows an association in women between migraine and cerebellar tissue damage later in life, the functional significance of such brain changes remains an open question. The cerebellum is located in the lower back side of the brain and is involved in functions such as motor activity, balance and cognition. Migraine headaches affect approximately 11 percent of adults and 5 percent of children worldwide and are more common in women than in men. Migraines are often accompanied by extreme sensitivity to light and sound, nausea and vomiting. Some individuals with migraine also experience neurological aura symptoms, including temporary visual disturbances that can appear as flashing lights, zig-zag lines or loss of vision.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12979 - Posted: 06.25.2009

By TARA PARKER-POPE As head of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. David A. Kessler served two presidents and battled Congress and Big Tobacco. But the Harvard-educated pediatrician discovered he was helpless against the forces of a chocolate chip cookie. In an experiment of one, Dr. Kessler tested his willpower by buying two gooey chocolate chip cookies that he didn’t plan to eat. At home, he found himself staring at the cookies, and even distracted by memories of the chocolate chunks and doughy peaks as he left the room. He left the house, and the cookies remained uneaten. Feeling triumphant, he stopped for coffee, saw cookies on the counter and gobbled one down. “Why does that chocolate chip cookie have such power over me?” Dr. Kessler asked in an interview. “Is it the cookie, the representation of the cookie in my brain? I spent seven years trying to figure out the answer.” The result of Dr. Kessler’s quest is a fascinating new book, “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite” (Rodale). During his time at the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Kessler maintained a high profile, streamlining the agency, pushing for faster approval of drugs and overseeing the creation of the standardized nutrition label on food packaging. But Dr. Kessler is perhaps best known for his efforts to investigate and regulate the tobacco industry, and his accusation that cigarette makers intentionally manipulated nicotine content to make their products more addictive. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 12978 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Have to solve a problem? Try taking a nap. REM, not incubation, improves creativity by priming associative networks (The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) But it has to be the right kind of nap — one that includes rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep, the kind that includes dreams. Researchers led by Sara C. Mednick, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, gave 77 volunteers word-association tests under three before-and-after conditions: spending a day without a nap, napping without REM sleep and napping with REM sleep. Just spending the day away from the problem improved performance; people who stayed awake did a little better on the 5 p.m. session than they had done on the 9 a.m. test. Taking a nap without REM sleep also led to slightly better results. But a nap that included REM sleep resulted in nearly a 40 percent improvement over the pre-nap performance. The study, published June 8 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that those who had REM sleep took longer naps than those who napped without REM, but there was no correlation between total sleep time and improved performance. Only REM sleep helped. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 12977 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER Spoken clearly, the sounds “dah” and “bah” are easy to distinguish. Yet if you play a film clip in which the soundtrack says “dah” while the image on the screen shows a mouth saying “bah,” people will swear they heard “bah.” If you ask people to count the number of times that a light flashes, and you flash the light seven times together with a sequence of eight beeping tones, people will say the light flashed eight times. When confronted with conflicting pieces of information, the brain decides which sense to trust. In the first scenario, those clearly percussing lips could never be articulating a “d,” and so vision claimed the upper hand. But on matters that demand a temporal analysis, and making sense of similar sounds in a sequence, the brain reflexively counts on hearing. Click click click. You can listen to a series of clicks at 20 beats per second and know they are separate clicks rather than a single continuous tone. Run a series of images together at 20 frames per second and — welcome to the movies. “The temporal resolution of our vision,” said Barbara Shinn-Cunningham of Boston University, “is an order of magnitude slower than what our auditory system can cope with.” It’s easy to take hearing for granted, that sprawling stereophonic Babylonia where the gates never close and there are soapboxes for all. You can shut your eyes against a bright sun or avert your gaze from a grim scene. But when one neighbor’s leaf blower sets off another neighbor’s car alarm, hey, where are my earlids? We’ve been called the visual primate, and the size of our visual cortex dwarfs the neural platform assigned to audition. Most people, when asked, claim they would rather lose their hearing than their sight. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 12976 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By HENRY FOUNTAIN A few years ago, researchers determined that when male mice are courting, they produce ultrasonic vocalizations that have an elaborate structure, similar to bird songs. Left unanswered was the question of whether mice sing for a similar purpose — to mark their territory and attract mates. Kurt Hammerschmidt of the German Primate Center in Göttingen and colleagues have provided a partial answer to that question. In a paper in Biology Letters, they report that male mice songs definitely elicit interest from the opposite sex. The researchers exposed females to the recorded songs of males, to calls made by newborn pups and to control sounds. They found that the females responded only to the males’ songs, by approaching the source of the sound. But Dr. Hammerschmidt said there were some surprises in the data. Females became habituated to the male songs very quickly, and only responded the first time they heard the sounds. Dr. Hammerschmidt said that this may be because the songs are important only when males are close by. So if a female hears a song but then doesn’t actually see a mate, she may lose interest. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12975 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALAN SCHWARZ No direct impact caused Paul McQuigg’s brain injury in Iraq three years ago. And no wound from the incident visibly explains why Mr. McQuigg, now an office manager at a California Marine base, can get lost in his own neighborhood or arrive at the grocery store having forgotten why he left home. But his blast injury — concussive brain trauma caused by an explosion’s invisible force waves — is no less real to him than a missing limb is to other veterans. Just how real could become clearer after he dies, when doctors slice up his brain to examine any damage. Mr. McQuigg, 32, is one of 20 active and retired members of the military who recently agreed to donate their brain tissue upon death so that the effects of blast injuries — which, unlike most concussions, do not involve any direct contact with the head — can be better understood and treated. The research will be conducted by the Sports Legacy Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Waltham, Mass., and by the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, whose recent examination of the brains of deceased football players has found damage linked to cognitive decline and depression. Whether single, non-impact blasts in battle can cause the same damage as the years of repetitive head bashing seen in football is of particular interest to researchers. The damage, primarily toxic protein deposits and tangled brain fibers, cannot be detected through noninvasive procedures like M.R.I.’s and CT scans. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 12973 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Linda Geddes When you brush your teeth, the toothbrush may actually become part of your arm – at least as far as your brain is concerned. That's the conclusion of a study showing perceptions of arm length change after people handle a mechanical tool. The brain maintains a physical map of the body, with different areas in charge of different body parts. Researchers have suggested that when we use tools, our brains incorporate them into this map. To test the idea, Alessandro Farné of the University of Claude Bernard in Lyon, France, and colleagues attached a mechanical grabber to the arms of 14 volunteers. The modified subjects then used the grabber to pick up out-of-reach objects. Shortly afterwards, the volunteers perceived touches on their elbow and fingertip as further apart than they really were, and took longer to point to or grasp objects with their hand than prior to using the tool. The explanation, say the team, is that their brains had adjusted the brain areas that normally control the arm to account for the tool and not yet adjusted back to normal. "This is the first evidence that tool use alters the body [map]," says Farné. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Robotics
Link ID: 12972 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The controversial withdrawal of a common painkiller has dramatically cut suicides, say researchers. A gradual phase-out of co-proxamol led to 350 fewer suicides and accidental deaths in England and Wales, a study in the British Medical Journal reports. Regulators removed the drug's licence in 2007 after fears about the risk of overdose but the move proved unpopular with some patients and doctors. Arthritis Care says some patients now struggle to control their pain. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency announced the withdrawal in 2005. GPs were encouraged to move patients to other painkillers before the drug's licence was revoked in 2007. After that time doctors could prescribe the drug on a "named patient basis" for those who could not manage their pain with alternatives but as it is unlicensed they did so at their own risk. Study leader Professor Keith Hawton, director of the Centre for Suicide Research at Oxford University, said before the restrictions co-proxamol was responsible for a fifth of all drug-related suicides. By the 2007 deadline, prescribing of the drug had fallen by 59%, his analysis showed. Over the two-year period, deaths from co-proxamol fell by 62%. Specifically there were 295 fewer suicides and 349 fewer deaths from the drug including accidental overdoses. The research also showed that had been no increase in deaths from other painkillers, despite large increases in their use. Professor Hawton said authorities in the US were now considering withdrawing co-proxamol, which is a mixture of paracetamol and an opioid drug. "This marked reduction in suicides and accidental poisonings involving co-proxamol during this period, with no evidence of an increase in deaths involving other analgesics, suggests the initiative has been effective," he added. (C)BBC

Keyword: Depression; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 12971 - Posted: 06.22.2009

By Carolyn Y. Johnson With tactics that range from subterfuge to ultrasound beams, scientists are searching for a solution to one of medicine’s most intractable problems: how to get drugs into the brain. Standing in the way is the blood-brain barrier, a formidable defense system that keeps out pathogens and toxins but also bars many potential therapies from reaching the seat of maladies such as brain cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. “The system is supposed to protect us from substances that could be noxious to the brain. Unfortunately, it is also quite efficient in removing various drugs that can actually help in curing certain diseases,’’ said Adam Chodobski, a professor of emergency medicine at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University, who studies the blood-brain barrier. A wall of tightly packed cells, which line the tiny blood vessels that permeate the brain, is the first line of defense. Between those cells is a kind of mortar called a “tight junction,’’ which prevents molecules in the blood from slipping through. Protein pumps act as sentinels, expelling substances that don’t belong, and other brain cells also play a role in the barrier. The barrier is not a solid wall - it lets in oxygen and nutrients, for example, which brain cells can’t live without. And some harmful microbes and cancer cells can get across, as well as a small fraction of medications. Many drugs can’t pass through, however, meaning that doctors who need to deliver a specific drug to the brain may need to drill a hole in the brain. Several technologies exist, including injections and implantable wafers that secrete chemotherapy, but the invasiveness of the procedures limits the number of applications. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12970 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer LaRue Huget Imagine feeling hungry -- starving, even -- all the time, no matter how much you eat. So hungry that you would shoplift, sneak, steal or secretly order takeout food to sate your appetite, without regard for consequences. Kate Kane doesn't have to imagine; she knows. Washington Post readers met Kane in November 2004 when Ranit Mishori, a physician who frequently writes for the paper, reported on Kane's struggle with hyperphagia, or excessive eating. As Mishori noted, Kane's ravenous desire for food is a key symptom of Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), a genetic disorder that affects not only appetite but also muscle tone, metabolism, stature and cognitive ability. About 4,500 Americans are known to have the syndrome, but experts believe it may be undiagnosed in as many as 25,000 others. Kane's father, Jim Kane of Towson, this month helped organize a conference for researchers who work with genetic disorders that are characterized by hyperphagia. The event's prime goal was to have participants join forces to learn what causes hyperphagia, in hope of eventually devising a treatment or cure. Those who gathered in Baltimore for the conference, including researchers from the National Institutes of Health, have another aim, though, one with far broader implications. If they can tease out the physiological, genetic and chemical causes of hyperphagia among people with disorders, that knowledge may prove a potent tool in combating obesity in the general population. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 12969 - Posted: 06.24.2010