By BEN DAITZ, M.D. ALBUQUERQUE, In 1598, Joyce Gonzalez’s great- great- great- great -great -great -great -great -great -great -grandfather followed the famous conquistador Juan de Oņate from Spain to Mexico, then north on the Camino Real, the Royal Road to Santa Fe. In the 1800s, one of Mary Ann Chavez’s distant relatives, possibly a French fur trapper and trader from Quebec, also made his way into northern New Mexico. Mrs. Chavez and Mrs. Gonzalez, though not related, share a Hispanic heritage and a fascination with genealogy. They also share the burden of having forebears with genetic diseases that, like the remote mountain villages in this region, have remained largely hidden from medical diagnosis and treatment. Now, thanks to the efforts of patient advocates and the work of a clinic here at the University of New Mexico Medical School, these illnesses are finally being confronted and studied. “We call it the family curse,” said Mrs. Chavez, 73, “and you don’t know you’ve got it until you’re 40 or 50 when your eyelids start to droop, and you begin to have trouble swallowing and get muscle weakness.” The illness is called oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy, or OPMD, and the largest group of Americans affected are Hispanics living in northern New Mexico. They are descendants of the wandering French-Canadian or, perhaps, early Spanish colonists. Mrs. Chavez’s son, her brother and innumerable aunts, uncles and cousins have all inherited the disease. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Movement Disorders; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 10681 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR Few foods have a reputation for curing insomnia quite like warm milk. According to age-old wisdom, milk is chock full of tryptophan, the sleep-inducing amino acid that is also well known for its presence in another food thought to have sedative effects, turkey. But whether milk can induce sleep is debatable, and studies suggest that if it does, the effect has little to do with tryptophan. To have any soporific effect, tryptophan has to cross the blood-brain barrier. And in the presence of other amino acids, it ends up fighting — largely unsuccessfully — to move across. One study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrated this in 2003. The study, which was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed that eating protein-rich foods — like milk — decreased the ability of tryptophan to enter the brain. The trick, the study showed, is to eat foods high in carbohydrates, which stimulate the release of insulin. Insulin, in turn, makes it easier for tryptophan to enter the brain. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 10680 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY The number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2003, researchers report today in the most comprehensive study of the controversial diagnosis. Experts say the number has almost certainly risen further since 2003. Many experts theorize that the jump reflects that doctors are more aggressively applying the diagnosis to children, and not that the incidence of the disorder has increased. But the magnitude of the increase surprises many psychiatrists. They say it is likely to intensify the debate over the validity of the diagnosis, which has shaken child psychiatry. Bipolar disorder is characterized by extreme mood swings. Until relatively recently, it was thought to emerge almost exclusively in adulthood. But in the 1990s, psychiatrists began looking more closely for symptoms in younger patients. Some experts say greater awareness, reflected in the increasing diagnoses, is letting youngsters with the disorder obtain the treatment they need. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Depression
Link ID: 10679 - Posted: 09.04.2007

By JAMIE TALAN Hailey Ems was born weeks early, on the floor of an upstairs bathroom as emergency medical technicians huddled on a staircase trying to figure out how to get the stretcher upstairs. When she didn’t meet the normal developmental milestones of the first year — crawling, standing and finding her first words — doctors tested her for cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy. Nothing turned up positive. Finally, it was her 10-year-old brother who announced one day, “I don’t think Hailey can hear.” She was 14 months old, and her brother was right. Had Hailey been born in the hospital, she would have been given a hearing test. When she arrived in 2001, such screening was voluntary but routine in the Cincinnati hospital where her mother, Mary, intended to give birth; today, it is mandatory in 40 states and commonly performed in the other 10. But hearing specialists worry that many deaf or hearing-impaired babies who fail the screening are not making it to the next level of testing — a more vigorous hearing exam in which an audiologist uses an EEG-like machine that records the brain’s response to sound. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 10678 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LINDA SIMON One night, sitting in the dark in my car, I see, out of the corner of my eye, something flashing. An emergency vehicle has pulled up behind me, I think, the lights on its roof spinning ominously. It has come to retrieve a body, to speed someone to the hospital, to gather the injured. I turn my head, expecting to see a disaster. But nothing is there. Just the flashing. I know this is not a good sign. The next morning, in a room flooded with sunlight, there is another development: shadowy spots tumble and swirl, as if tenacious, persistent flies were circling my head. Eye floaters are common, of course, and I have noticed them before, but never like this. Now I am assaulted by shadows that come and go and come again. They swarm like a plague, like warnings of darkness. I present myself to the doctor for investigation: myself, which overnight has become my eye. First it is numbed, then the pupil is dilated, then it is peered into through a special magnifying lens. I sit in the dark examining room and think dark thoughts. The flashes flash from time to time, capriciously, or maybe urgently. The eye doctor looks intently. How are you doing? he asks; You’re doing well, he answers. I do not reply except to comment, Not so well, really. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 10677 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By HENRY FOUNTAIN Cats may live in their own world, but they have to survive in this one. So when walking, they are no different from humans or other animals: they use vision to create short-term memories. Even if visual input is removed, studies have shown, a cat can go several steps among obstacles before losing its way. But to really remember something, David A. McVea and Keir G. Pearson of the University of Alberta report in the journal Current Biology, a cat has to do, rather than see. The act of stepping over an object can make for a long-lasting memory of it. Mr. McVea said the work built on their previous research showing that cats remembered information about an obstacle even after it was removed. They had cats step their forelegs over a three-inch barrier, then distracted the animal while the barrier was lowered. When the cat moved again, it raised its rear legs as if the barrier were still there. “That memory of that obstacle lasts for as long as that cat stands there,” Mr. McVea said, though because of the difficulties of herding cats, the longest they were able to distract one was 10 minutes. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 10676 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sally Squires Alcohol, nicotine and cocaine are a few of the substances known to be addictive. Now some scientists wonder whether food should be added to the list. "Are there certain things in food that act on the brain and set up a classic addictive process, like tolerance, withdrawal and craving?" asks psychologist Kelly Brownell, who organized a recent scientific meeting on food addiction at Yale University. While the research is still scanty, the evidence that exists "is extremely interesting and provocative, and suggests to me that something is there," Brownell says. That's not news to the many Lean Plate Club members who recently e-mailed me about their own food struggles. Most asked not to be named, reflecting the sense that they feel stigmatized by behaviors they have trouble controlling. "I feel addicted to food at times," one wrote. "Food is like a drug to me. It can change my emotional state. For many years, I have 'used' food as a feel-good panacea, self-medicating with warm chocolate chip cookies or a pint of Chunky Monkey. I will sit down with a food I like in an upset state of mind and will eat it all immediately, beyond the feeling of fullness. It's like a compulsion to finish the entire thing." © 2007 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 10675 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Carl Zimmer William McGrew spent much of the 1970s observing chimpanzees in Tanzania. One day the chimps did something odd. As two chimpanzees groomed each other's hair, they each lifted an arm overhead. They clasped hands, forming a kind of primate A-frame. McGrew and his collaborator, Caroline Tutin, had just spent months observing another chimpanzee community just a hundred miles away, and they had never seen that gesture before. But at their new field site, the A-frame handshake turned out to be common. A special chimpanzee handshake may not seem like much of a discovery, but McGrew realized that it could change the way we think about human nature itself. In our own species, handshakes are a sign of culture. Travel the world, and you'll find a dizzying range of handshakes and other forms of greeting, from the military salute to the cheek kiss, to the high five, to the hongi of New Zealand--pressing noses to exchange a sacred breath. These greetings are not hard-wired into our genomes. Each one was invented in a particular place and time, and then spread from one person to another. It's the same process that has given rise to all the cultural variation that makes humans so endlessly interesting, from languages to dances to technology. Biologists long believed that culture is unique to humans, because it depended on qualities that only humans were believed to possess--things like the capacity for language and imitation. Animals simply acted on individual instinct; they couldn't follow trends. And yet McGrew saw what looked like a local chimpanzee custom. © 2007 Forbes.com LLC™

Keyword: Evolution; Language
Link ID: 10674 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MALCOLM RITTER NEW YORK -- Scientists are casting a wide net to find better treatments for the crushing depression and uncontrolled manias of bipolar disorder, and some approaches they're testing seem pretty surprising. Like skin patches that prevent seasickness. Or a drug that fights Lou Gehrig's disease. And then there's a newly invented device that resembles a hair dryer in a beauty salon. Some of the strategies were identified by logic, and others by pure chance. Scientists already have evidence that they may someday prove useful against bipolar disorder, also called manic-depression. Doctors yearn for better therapies to treat the condition, which can rip careers and marriages apart and drive people to suicide. It is so complex and mysterious that researchers haven't developed a medication specifically for it since lithium, more than half a century ago. Bipolar disorder appears in various forms and degrees of severity in about one in every 25 American adults at some point in their lives, according to a major study published in May. The disorder is characterized in part by episodes of mania, which are periods of boosted energy and restlessness that can run for a week or more. © 2007 The Associated Press

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 10673 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Alison Abbott Psychiatrists have welcomed the unveiling by a US drug company of the first new class of schizophrenia drugs since the 1950s. According to early clinical-trial data, the prototype drug — codenamed LY2140023 and produced by Eli Lilly researchers in Indianapolis, Indiana — seems to be as effective as olanzapine, the best currently available drug. The drug's developers hope that it will offer psychiatrists a new alternative for treating their patients, and one that may offer greater benefits in relation to the side effects. According to the World Health Organization, schizophrenia affects around 1% of the population worldwide. Its broad range of debilitating symptoms can include delusions, hallucination, disordered thinking, social withdrawal and emotional 'flatness'. Current anti-schizophrenia drugs all work the same way, by reducing levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. But they do not control the disease well in all patients and often have unpleasant side effects. The new drug, LY2140023, is converted in the body into a second compound, called LY404023, which acts by damping down the activity of a different neurotransmitter, glutamate. Lilly researchers say that the trial is an important proof of principle that their new approach to the disease works, but they don't yet know if this particular compound will make it into the clinic. "Our study is the first conclusive evidence for a role of glutamate in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia," says James Monn, one of the research team. ©2007 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 10672 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Detailed structural studies have revealed new insights into why the same prion protein can have different properties and be either weakly or strongly infectious. The researchers said their observations in prions that infect yeast are likely to hold true for the sorts of prions that infect humans and animals. A research team led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Jonathan S. Weissman analyzed the structures of two unmodified yeast Sup35 prion proteins in two infectious conformations. They identified key structural differences that explain the different behaviors of these prions. The researchers published their findings online September 2, 2007, in the journal Nature. Weissman and his colleagues are at the University of California, San Francisco. The scientists studied yeast prions, which are similar to mammalian prions in that they act as infectious proteins. In recent years, mammalian prions have gained increasing notoriety for their roles in such fatal brain-destroying human diseases as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and kuru, and in the animal diseases, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (“mad cow” disease) and scrapie. Yeast and mammalian prions are proteins that transmit their unique characteristics via interactions in which an abnormally shaped prion protein influences a normal protein to assume an abnormal shape. In mammalian prion infections, these abnormal shapes trigger protein clumping that can kill brain cells. In yeast cells, the insoluble prion protein is not deadly; it merely alters a cell's metabolism. Prions propagate themselves by division of the insoluble clumps to create “seeds” that can continue to grow by causing aggregation of more proteins. © 2007 Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 10671 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Megan Rauscher NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - It cannot be assumed that an antidepressant has lost its effectiveness if a patient relapses while continuing on the medication, because the medication may never have been effective in the first place, according to study findings reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. In the study, the majority of relapses occurred in patients who had never been true responders, Dr. Mark Zimmerman, director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital, told Reuters Health. Some patients with major depressive disorder, similar to other medical disorders, respond to placebo, Zimmerman explained. In clinical practice, everyone is given an active drug, so it's not clear if a patient who responds has improve because of the drug or because of "nonspecific" effects, such as the placebo effect. The placebo effect is a sort of "power of suggestion" response in which a patient begins to feel better because he thinks he has received treatment (and doesn't know he has been given a placebo). These responses are usually short-term. Similarly, relapses that occur during a continuation phase of treatment could be because of a true loss of response or they could be because an initial placebo response has worn off. SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, August 2007. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 10670 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Megan Rauscher NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Elderly patients who carry the apolipoprotein E (APOE) e4 allele, a gene mutation implicated in Alzheimer's disease, are at increased risk for experiencing early delirium after surgery, investigators report. They note that postoperative delirium is common in older patients after noncardiac surgery, and it is associated with prolonged hospital stays and increased rates of nursing home placement. Although it is common and may have serious repercussions, no specific cause has been identified, Dr. Jacqueline M. Leung commented to Reuters Health. "Our study results suggest that genetic predisposition plays a role and may interact with anesthetic/surgical factors contributing to the development of early postoperative delirium," she added. Leung, at the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues conducted a study of 190 patients ages 65 or older who underwent major noncardiac surgery requiring anesthesia. Overall, 15.3 percent developed postoperative delirium on the first or second day after surgery. DNA analysis showed that 46 patients (24.2 percent) carried at least one copy of the APOE e4 allele. "The presence of one copy of the e4 allele was associated with an increased risk of early postoperative delirium," the investigators report in the medical journal Anesthesiology. © 1996-2007 Scientific American, Inc

Keyword: Animal Communication; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 10669 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Robert Wilson, of Rush University Medical Center, gave smell tests to 600 incoming study volunteers aged 54 to 100. (The volunteers were all from the ongoing Rush Memory and Aging Project.) For the next five years, he gave the volunteers a battery of thinking and memory tests. The smell test he used, which can be completed in about five minutes, assesses whether the participants can identify 12 familiar smells such as chocolate, rose and smoke. Each odor is released from the paper in the test booklet by scratching with a pencil, and then placed under the volunteer's nose. Wilson compared volunteers who scored below average (four or more errors) on the smell test with above average scorers (one or no errors). The smell test takes about five minutes. His study, published in the July 2007 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, found that people with the low scores were 50 percent more likely to develop certain memory and thinking problems, called Mild Cognitive Impairment or MCI. These symptoms are often an early stage of Alzheimer's. Wilson says, "This suggests that problems with smelling even in healthy aging could be a very, very early sign of Alzheimer's disease." This study builds on the work in two previous studies. In the first study, conducted in 2004, researcher Dev Devanand, of Columbia University Medical Center, found a link between low smell test scores and the likelihood of progression from MCI to Alzheimer's disease. © ScienCentral, 2000-2007.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 10668 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Matt Kaplan There's no news like bad news. The tabloids are full of accidents, gory murders, and mayhem, and people eat it up. But there may be a silver lining, at least for seniors. A new study finds that the human brain reacts less strongly to emotionally negative stimuli as we age, in effect making us more responsive to all things positive and less responsive to the dark and dismal. This bolsters a growing body of evidence showing that aging changes how the brain reacts to emotional stimuli. Much of the media exploits what psychologists call the "negativity bias": our tendency to pay more attention to the bad than to the good. This bias plays a role in a wide range of cognitive areas, making a headline about a murder more attention grabbing than one about a marriage, for example. However, in recent years, research has revealed that as we get older our emotional responses to the world around us become more positive and that the stereotype of the "grumpy old man" may actually be a myth. A number of studies have found that older people typically report a higher sense of well-being than younger people. But is that because the negativity bias declines with age, or does the brain become more responsive to positive stimuli? To explore this question, psychologists Michael Kisley of the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and Stacey Wood of Scripps College in Claremont, California, presented 51 participants with images of puppies, car crashes, toasters, and other things for 1 second at a time. The participants, who ranged from 18 to 81 years of age, were attached to electroencephalograph electrodes and then pressed buttons to categorize the images as emotionally positive, negative, or neutral. © 2007 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Emotions; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 10667 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GINA KOLATA Americans have been getting fatter for years, and with the increase in waistlines has come a surplus of conventional wisdom. If we could just return to traditional diets, if we just walk for 20 minutes a day, exercise gurus and government officials maintain, America’s excess pounds would slowly but surely melt away. Scientists are less sanguine. Many of the so-called facts about obesity, they say, amount to speculation or oversimplification of the medical evidence. Diet and exercise do matter, they now know, but these environmental influences alone do not determine an individual’s weight. Body composition also is dictated by DNA and monitored by the brain. Bypassing these physical systems is not just a matter of willpower. More than 66 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta. Although the number of obese women in the United States appears to be holding steady at 33 percent, for most Americans the risk is growing. The nation’s poor diet has long been the scapegoat. There have been proposals to put warning labels on sodas like those on cigarettes. There are calls to ban junk foods from schools. New York and other cities now require restaurants to disclose calorie information on their menus. But the notion that Americans ever ate well is suspect. In 1966, when Americans were still comparatively thin, more than two billion hamburgers already had been sold in McDonald’s restaurants, noted Dr. Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California. The recent rise in obesity may have more to do with our increasingly sedentary lifestyles than with the quality of our diets. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 10666 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Google "obesity virus" and you will quickly find a small company called Obetech LLC. Its web address is "obesityvirus.com." Retired professor Richard Atkinson started the company after his lab at the University of Wisconsin discovered the virus, called "Ad-36," in chickens. Atkinson and Nikhil Dhurandhar, who is now at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University, filed patents for the test in 1998 after finding that when they infected animals with the virus they gained much more fat than uninfected animals. "The University (of Wisconsin) decided that they didn't think there was anything here, so they did not want to pay for the patents," Atkinson says. "I thought this was important, so I paid for the patents." Dhurandhar is listed as co-discoverer, he says, but he bought out Dhurandhar's share. "At this point, we're the only people who legally can do it," he says of his company. The $450 blood test is a mail-in kit that takes two weeks to process. Atkinson says it's expensive because it's time and labor-intensive, and that the company is working to develop a cheaper test. He thinks finding out if they are positive for the virus could make obese people feel better about themselves, and warn lean people to seek treatment. Other obesity experts disagree. "I see very little rationale for people rushing to be tested to find out if they carry this virus or not," says Randy Seeley, associate director of the University of Cincinnati's Obesity Research Center. "The problem is two-fold: One is, the virus itself is not entirely prevalent; that is to say there are lots of obese individuals who currently aren't testing positive for the virus. Second, what do we do if you do test positive?" © ScienCentral, 2000-2007.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 10665 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The Canadian Press Women who undergo hypnosis just before breast cancer surgery need less anesthetic, and experience lower levels of pain and other side-effects following the surgery, a study suggests. Patients who had a hypnosis session with a psychologist an hour before surgery spent less time in the operating room – about 11 minutes, on average – resulting in significant cost savings, mainly due to reduced operating time, the research shows. "Breast cancer patients are a population in need," lead author Guy Montgomery, a clinical psychologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, said Tuesday from New York. "They're going through a lot both from a psychological perspective as well as a physical perspective from the surgery itself." Patients who underwent hypnosis at discharge had less pain intensity, nausea, fatigue and discomfort, and were less emotionally upset about the whole experience, Montgomery said of those who were hypnotized. To conduct the study, published online Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 200 women scheduled for surgical breast biopsy or lumpectomy were randomly assigned to have either a 15-minute session of hypnosis or a short period of empathetic listening with a psychologist. © CBC 2007

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Attention
Link ID: 10664 - Posted: 06.24.2010

People who stop taking their cholesterol-lowering drugs after a stroke are at much greater risk of death, research suggests. The small-scale study from Spain found the chances of dying, or requiring full-time care were nearly five times higher if statins were interrupted. The article, in the journal Neurology, advises doctors to continue giving the drugs to stroke patients. But experts called for bigger studies before recommendations be made. A UK stroke consultant pointed out that almost a third of stroke patients would find it too hard to swallow the pills. The news follows a British Medical Journal report that found the UK lags behind the rest of western Europe in terms of stroke care. Strokes are the third most common cause of death in the UK, accounting for more than 60,000 deaths a year. A National Audit Office report in 2005 suggested that 550 deaths could be avoided, and an extra 1,700 patients make a full recovery if care was better organised. Many people at high risk of stroke will be at higher risk of heart disease, and may be taking statins as a result. There is already some evidence that people taking statins at the time they have a stroke have a less damaging stroke, potentially because of improved blood vessel function and blood flow. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 10663 - Posted: 08.30.2007

By BENEDICT CAREY It’s a fundamental fact of animal and human life, but researchers still do not know for sure why sleep is necessary. Theories abound: Perhaps the body repairs damaged, worn tissues when asleep. Maybe it recharges itself, as if it were a biological battery. Or perhaps sleep affords the brain the opportunity to integrate important facts, memories and emotional impressions recorded from the previous day. The answer is probably all of the above, but the researchers increasingly are focused on the role sleep plays in stabilizing and consolidating memories. Recent studies appear to catch the process of memory integration in action, and they hint at a neural nightlife that is richer than previously known. The sleeping brain not only sorts important facts from trivia, the findings suggest, but it also replays social interactions and carefully shades experiences with emotional color so they will be more comprehensible. That’s why interruptions to normal sleep can be so insidious. More than 50 million Americans suffer some sleep problem, from mundane nagging insomnia to more exotic disorders, like bruxism, the official name for teeth grinding, restless leg syndrome or narcolepsy. Of these, a disorder called obstructive sleep apnea causes perhaps the most misery: during the night, the upper airway narrows so much that the body jerks awake, continually gasping for breath. Each interruption of sleep breaks the spell of “nature’s soft nurse,” in Shakespeare’s phrase. No one who has slept poorly for a week or more is surprised to hear that sleeping problems are linked to physical problems, like high blood pressure, and emotional trouble, especially depression. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 10662 - Posted: 06.24.2010