Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Building a strong social community for support when using an online weight management program can drastically help a person in their quest for fitness, according to research published Wednesday in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

In the study, researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and their colleagues found that online dieters with higher levels of “social embeddedness” (meaning that they logged in regularly, recorded their weigh-ins and ‘friended’ other members) lost at least eight percent of their total body weight in just six months.

Conversely, the less users interacted with other members of the community, the less weight that they wound up losing. In all, those who did not connect with others lost about five percent of their body weight over six months, while those with between two and nine friends lost nearly seven percent and those with at least 10 friends lost more than eight percent.

“Our findings suggest that people can do very well at losing weight with minimal professional help when they become centrally connected to others on the same weight loss journey,” study author Bonnie Spring, a professor in preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, explained.

“There is an almost Facebook-like social network system in this program where people can friend each other and build cliques,” added senior author Luís A. Nunes Amaral, a chemical and biological engineering professor at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. “In this case, we found the larger your clique, the better your outcomes.”

The authors claim that their study is the first to use study an online weight management program to investigate social network variables and discover what aspects of online connectedness most effectively helped promote weight loss among dieters. They used data from the CalorieKing.com online weight-loss community to analyze user data and uncover trends in this network.

The website, which requires members to pay a fee to access weight-loss tools and an online community, did not include the identities of users but did provide the date that they registered, as well as their age, height, gender and initial weight and time-stamped activities within the online community over a nearly one-year period.

The researchers analyzed user engagement, including recorded weigh-ins, friendship requests and online communication They found that the frequency with which members reported their weight was a good indicator of positive outcomes. They also found that those communicating with others were likely to be more engaged and more likely to get support when needed.

“Those who regularly track their progress, known as self-monitoring, lose more weight in clinical studies,” the university said. “This study found that self-monitoring was associated with greater weight loss, too, but Spring was surprised that even greater weight loss was associated with being highly embedded in a network of other people trying to lose weight.”

“In the clinic, we don’t have the ability to connect people with such a large network of others on the same journey to lose weight,” Spring added. “I was very surprised by how lawfully each step-up in social connectedness translated into greater weight loss. We could clearly see the benefit of the online social network for weight-loss success.”

She noted that online weight loss programs appear to be good alternatives for those unable to attend in-person weight-loss therapy due to lacking time or geographical proximity – especially for those who take full advantage of their self-monitoring and social networking features.

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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Scientists from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Columbia University in New York have discovered the circuitry in the brain that regulates thirst in mice.

The culprits, they report in a paper published Monday in the journal Nature, are two different sets of cells located in a region of the brain known as the subfornical organ (SFO). When the first is switched on, it led the mice to begin drinking immediately, whether they needed to or not. Activating the second suppressed the urge to drink, regardless of dehydration levels.

“We view the SFO as a dedicated circuit that has two elements that likely interact with each other to maintain the perfect balance,” explained Charles Zuker, lead investigator on the study and a researcher in the department of biochemistry and molecular physics at HHMI. “So you drink when you have to and you don’t drink when you don’t need to.”

The circuit ensures the correct fluid intake to maintain blood pressure, electrolyte balance, and cell volume. The search for these brain-based regulators grew out of research conducted by Zuker and his colleagues on the multiple pathways devoted to salt – how the brain senses it and makes sure it’s only appealing in moderation.

The search began in the SFO because it shows signs of increased activity in dehydrated animals. Since the SFO is located outside the blood-brain barrier, it has direct contact with body fluids, meaning that the cells could have the ability to detect electrolyte balance in those fluids.

Oka wanted to discover if there were any specific cells in the SFO that triggered drinking behaviors. By analyzing genetic markers, he found three distinct types of cells in the SFO: excitatory cells, inhibitory cells, and supporting cells called astrocytes.

“If these neurons really mediated key aspects in driving the motivation to drink, then their activation should trigger active drinking, irrespective of the degree of fluid satiety, and if you silence these populations, you should suppress the motivation to drink, even if you are extraordinarily thirsty,” Zuker said.

In order to test those predictions, Oka introduced a light-sensitive protein into cells in the SFO. This allowed the scientists to selectively activate those cells in the mice. Using blue light from a laser, they activated the excitatory SFO cells in hydrated mice, and found that the mouse almost immediately began desiring water.

“There is an animal that is happily wandering around, with zero interest in drinking,” said Zuker. “You activate this group of excitatory neurons, and it just beelines to the water spout. As long as the light is on, that mouse keeps on drinking.”

The mice expressed zero interest in other types of fluids, but would heartily consume water for prolonged periods of time, the study authors said. In fact, some of the creatures were drank up to eight percent of their body weight, or equal to about 1.5 gallons of water for the average human.

Zuker called the findings “very exciting,” and added that the circuit “informs and directs the mouse into a complex program of actions and behaviors: ‘I’m thirsty. I need to identify a source of water. I have to go where the water is. I have to begin to consume that water and I have to continue until this signal is suppressed.’”

Next, they tested the effect of the SFO’s inhibitory neurons. When activated in thirsty mice, the creatures reduced their water intake by approximately 80 percent. Activating those inhibitors did not affect the animal’s interest in food or salt, indicating a different set of neurons for those needs.

Zuker noted that the behavior of the mice was “independent of learning, experience, or context,” suggesting that the thirst-regulating circuit is hard-wired into the brain. Their findings reveal that the brain has an innate circuit which can switch an animal’s water-drinking behavior on and off, and most likely functions as a center for thirst control in the mammalian brain.

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Researchers from Penn State have identified an ingredient in green tea known as epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) that destroys oral cancer cells while leaving healthy cells untouched, according to a new report in the journal Molecular Nutrition and Food Research.

In particular, the study found that EGCG sets off a process in cancer cell mitochondria that leads to the cell’s destruction.

“EGCG is doing something to damage the mitochondria and that mitochondrial damage sets up a cycle causing more damage and it spirals out, until the cell undergoes programmed cell death,” said study author Joshua Lambert, associate professor of food science at Penn State. “It looks like EGCG causes the formation of reactive oxygen species in cancer cells, which damages the mitochondria, and the mitochondria responds by making more reactive oxygen species.”

This destructive cycle also leads to a lower expression of anti-oxidant genes in the cancer cell, lowering its defenses further.

“So, it’s turning off its mechanism of protection at the same time that EGCG is causing this oxidative stress,” Lambert added.

To reach their conclusion, scientists analyzed healthy oral cells along with oral cancer cells to figure out how EGCG was impacting cancer cells, but not the healthy ones. The team also cultivated both kinds of cells on petri dishes and then subjected them to EGCG at concentrations normally seen in the saliva after chewing green-tea gum. At numerous times, the scientists would gather the cells and look for oxidative stress and indications of antioxidant response.

“We also took a lot of pictures, so we could use fluorescent dyes that measure mitochondrial function and oxidative stress and actually see these things develop,” Lambert said.

The study also revealed that a protein called sirtuin 3 is essential to the observed effect.

“It plays an important role in mitochondrial function and in anti-oxidant response in lots of tissues in the body, so the idea that EGCG might selectively affect the activity of sirtuin 3 in cancer cells – to turn it off – and in normal cells – to turn it on – is probably applicable in multiple kinds of cancers,” Lambert said.

The new study expands on previous research by the same team that focused on how green tea could be used as a potential treatment for cancer.

“We’ve published one paper previously just looking at the effect of these green tea polyphenols on oral cancer cells in cultures, and there have been other papers published using oral cancer cells and at least a couple of animal model studies that have looked at oral cancer and prevention of oral cancer,” Lambert said.

The study team said their future work will focus on the effect of EGCG in animal models and in humans. This next stage is being performed with the intention of developing new cancer drugs.

“The problem with a lot of chemotherapy drugs — especially early chemotherapy drugs — is that they really just target rapidly dividing cells, so cancer divides rapidly, but so do cells in your hair follicles and cells in your intestines, so you have a lot of side effects,” Lambert said. “But you don’t see these sorts of side effects with green tea consumption.”

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Shayne Jacopian for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Do you ever have those moments where your brain seems to just… you know… what’s the word…?
What is commonly known as the “brain fart,” or tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) syndrome is an all-too-common phenomenon with no single, universally accepted cause. According to Mashable, the brain fart phenomenon was first described by psychologist William James back in 1890: “A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term.”
It wasn’t until the second half of the 20th century that actual research was done on the TOT syndrome. In 1966, Harvard researchers Roger Brown and David McNeil studied TOT by reading word definitions to subjects and asking them to recall the words. Oftentimes, the subjects would struggle to remember, getting closer and closer over time and showing considerable relief when they finally recalled the words. Brown and McNeil found that if you keep trying to remember a word, you eventually succeed.
Today, there are many possible explanations for what causes brain farts. Some argue that they are caused by a “temporary breakdown in lexical word retrieval,” while others maintain that it’s the entire memory retrieval system that’s temporarily malfunctioning. Still others believe that the “tip-of-the-tongue” moment is simply the feeling that you get when you try to remember something and can’t.
Research indicates that brain farts increase with age and most commonly affect short-term memory. Recent studies suggest that our brains keep more trivial facts and memories in a catch-all “box of junk”, and these are the first to go during cerebral flatulence.
Whether it has a cause, is just an emotion, or only happens when we’re trying to remember things that our brains have already decided aren’t important anyway, flatulence of the noggin is here to stay—it’s just one of those strange quirks of the human psyche.
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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

While the health-promoting qualities of wine have stolen the spotlight, it isn’t the only alcoholic beverage that can be good for you in some ways, according to a new study appearing in the latest edition of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

In fact, Jianguo Fang of the Lanzhou University School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and colleagues report that a compound contained in a popular beer ingredient could help protect brain cells from damage, and may actually slow the development of degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

They explain in a statement that there is mounting evidence to suggest that oxidative damage to neurons plays a role in the development of diseases that originate in the brain. If scientists can discover a method to protect these cells from such damage, they might be able to slow down or even prevent such diseases.

As it happens, there is one compound found in hops that may be able to do just that. That substance, xanthohumol, has attracted the attention of scientists because of its potential benefits, which include antioxidation, cardiovascular protection and anticancer properties. The study authors set out to determine what effect this substance would have on brain cells.

During their experiments, they synthesized xanthohumol with a total yield of five percent in seven steps, then analyzed its neuroprotective function against oxidative stress-induced damage to neuronal cells in the neuron-like rat pheochromocytoma cell line.

They found that the substance demonstrated “moderate free radical-scavenging capacity” in lab conditions, and that pretreating those neuron-like rat cells with xanthohumol at submicromolar concentrations “significantly upregulates a panel of phase II cytoprotective genes as well as the corresponding gene products,” including glutathione, thioredoxin and thioredoxin reductase.

In short, their experiments revealed that the compound found in hops could naturally protect neuronal cells, and could help slow or prevent conditions such as Alzheimer’s. They believe that xanthohumol could be a good candidate for fighting these neurodegenerative disorders.

Last September, scientists from Oregon State University and the Linus Pauling Institute found that the same compound could be used to boost the cognitive function of young mice, but not of older animals. The authors of that study reported that their work was an important advance in the understanding and treatment of age-related memory degradation in humans and other mammals.

Xanthohumol is a flavonoids, a type of compounds found in plants which often gives them their color. Research of flavonoids in blueberries, dark chocolate and wine has become increasingly popular recently due to their apparent nutritional benefits on health issues such as inflammation, cancer, cardiovascular disease and cognitive decay, the Oregon State researchers noted.

Don’t reach for that extra pint of beer just yet, however, as the amount of xanthohumol used in the Oregon State study was far beyond the amount that can be naturally obtained through diet or by drinking alcoholic beverages. Extremely high doses were used were used specifically to enhance the ability of the mice to adapt to changes in the environment, they explained.

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
The negative metabolic effects of consuming sodas and other sugary drinks is well known, but a new study published in the journal Human Reproduction has found that girls who regularly consume sugary drinks tend to start their menstrual periods earlier than other girls.
“Our study adds to increasing concern about the wide-spread consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks among children and adolescents in the USA and elsewhere,” said study author Karin Michels, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. “The main concern is about childhood obesity, but our study suggests that age of first menstruation (menarche) occurred earlier, independently of body mass index, among girls with the highest consumption of drinks sweetened with added sugar.”
“These findings are important in the context of earlier puberty onset among girls, which has been observed in developed countries and for which the reason is largely unknown,” Michels added.
In the study, scientists tracked nearly 5600 girls, ages 9 to 14 years old between 1996 and 2001 and learned that those who consumed greater than 1.5 servings of sugary beverages per day had their first period 2.7 months sooner than those who drank two or fewer sugary drinks a week. This effect was seen regardless of girls’ body mass index (BMI), height, overall food intake as well as other lifestyle factors such as physical exercise.
At the time of joining the study none of the girls had started their periods, and by the end all but 3 percent had started menstruation. The scientists used surveys to ask the female participants about their diet at many points in the study, including how many times they consumed a serving of various kinds of sugary drinks.
At all ages between 9 and 18.5 years, girls who documented consuming over 1.5 servings of sugary drinks each day were, on average, 24 percent more prone to have their first period in the next month in relation to girls drinking two or fewer servings a week, taking into consideration factors that could impact the age of first menstruation, such as BMI, ethnicity or height. The average age of the first period among girls drinking the most sugary drinks was 12.8 years, as opposed to 13 years for those consuming the lowest on average. Diet sodas and fruit juice were not linked with any shift in the age at which girls started their periods.
The scientists explained that drinks with added sugar have a greater glycemic index than naturally-sweetened beverages like fruit juices. These high-glycemic foods create a rapid raise in insulin concentrations in the body. Greater insulin concentrations in turn lead to greater concentrations of sex hormones, and large changes to the levels of these hormones going around in the body has been associated with periods commencing earlier.
Greater caffeine consumption has also been connected with earlier periods. However, the scientists learned that overall sugar or caffeine consumption did not explain the results that they saw, meaning the added sugar was to blame.
“Our findings provide further support for public health efforts to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks,” Michels concluded.
Drink less sugary drinks. Period.
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Women are two times more likely to be diagnosed with depression than men, and new research appearing in the journal Biological Psychiatry suggests that their sex hormones may be to blame.

According to the researchers from the Medical University of Vienna behind the study, previous scientific studies have proven that female sex hormones have a strong effect on the psyche. Also, phenomena such as the postpartum blues and mood swings that occur prior to menstruation on a regular basis further confirm this association, the study authors claim.

Conversely, the male sex hormone testosterone has been found to impact a person’s mood and emotions in a positive way, and now the authors believe that they have discovered the biological mechanism behind this relationship – which could also help explain why men tend to suffer from depression more often as they grow older and their testosterone output falls.

Rupert Lanzenberger from the university’s Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and his colleagues claim to have demonstrated for the first time that testosterone increases the number of serotonin transporters (proteins) in the human brain. Those proteins regulate the concentration of serotonin, and are also the target for antidepressants, the researchers said.

To study this possible effect of testosterone, Lanzenberger and his colleagues used cross-sex steroid hormone treatment of transsexuals who had been seeking gender reassignment therapy. They recruited 33 transsexuals, and used positron emission tomography (PET) both before and after the start of treatment in order to gauge its impact on serotonin transporter levels.

As study author Georg Kranz explained, “Transsexuals are people who feel that they are living in the wrong body and who therefore want high doses of opposite gender hormone therapy to adapt their appearance to that of the other gender. Genetic women are given testosterone, while genetic men are given oestradiol and medications to suppress testosterone production.”

Kranz, Lanzenberger and their colleagues found that serotonin transporter levels in the brain were significantly higher after just four weeks of hormone therapy with testosterone, and that the levels increased further if therapy continued beyond that point. In addition, they also found a link between testosterone levels in the blood and the concentration of serotonin transporters.

“The study has shown that testosterone increases the potential binding sites for commonly prescribed antidepressants such as SSRIs in the brain and therefore provides major insights into how sex hormones affect the human brain and gender differences in psychiatric illnesses,” said Siegfried Kasper, head of the university’s Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy.

“Given the central role of the SERT [serotonin reuptake transporter] in the treatment of depression and anxiety disorders,” the study authors wrote, “these findings may lead to new treatment modalities and expand our understanding of the mechanism of action of antidepressant treatment properties.”

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A study of nine former National Football League players has found that concussions suffered during their careers may be responsible for memory loss and mood issues experienced decades after they retired.

Writing in the February 2015 edition of the journal Neurobiology of Disease, experts from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine report that they conducted a battery of imaging and cognitive tests to gather evidence that accumulated brain damage could be linked to issues being experienced by former NFL stars long after they hung up their jerseys.

The study authors hope that the results of the small-scale study of nine ex-NFL players provide additional evidence that sustaining repeated concussions can have long-term neurological impact on these athletes. The findings also support the call for better player protection, they added.

“We’re hoping that our findings are going to further inform the game,” said study author Dr. Jennifer Coughlin, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the university. “That may mean individuals are able to make more educated decisions about whether they’re susceptible to brain injury, advise how helmets are structured or inform guidelines for the game to better protect players.”

There have been several anecdotal accounts and scientific studies linking permanent brain damage to repeated concussions suffered by football players and other athletes, the authors said. Last fall, the NFL acknowledged that at least one-fourth of players are likely to suffer from cognitive impairments after their careers are over, and several companies have been working on smart helmets and other types of equipment designed to make the game safer.

Despite the awareness of the problem, however, the damage mechanisms and the exact sources of these issues have remained unclear. In order to shed some light on them, Coughlin and her colleagues used put the former players through a battery of tests designed to directly detect brain deficits and to quantify localized molecular differences between their brains and those of healthy people who did not play football.

The players involved in the study had been retired for several decades, and ranged in age from 57 to 74. They had played a variety of different positions and had experienced an array of historical, self-reported concussions, ranging from none for a running back to 40 for a defensive tackle. The authors also recruited nine age-matched control subjects deemed unlikely to have experienced brain trauma.

“Each of the volunteers underwent a positron emission tomography (PET) scan, a test in which an injected radioactive chemical binds to a specific biological molecule, allowing researchers to physically see and measure its presence throughout the body,” the university explained.

“In this case, the research team focused on the translocator protein, which signals the degree of damage and repair in the brain,” they added. “While healthy individuals have low levels of this protein spread throughout the brain, those with brain injuries tend to have concentrated zones with high levels of translocator protein wherever an injury has occurred.”

In addition, the volunteers underwent MRIs, which allowed Coughlin’s team to match the findings of the PET scan with anatomical locations in their brains and to check for structural abnormalities. Each participant was also asked to undergo a series of memory tests.

There was no evidence of brain damage in the control volunteers tests, but the PET scan showed that, on average, the former NFL players had evidence of injury in several temporal medial lobe regions, including the amygdala, which plays a significant role in regulating mood. Those scans also identified damage to many players’ supramarginal gyrus, which is linked to verbal memory.

The PET scans did not reveal evidence of damage in the former players’ hippocampus, an area that plays a role in several aspects of memory, the MRIs revealed some atrophy in the right-side hippocampus, suggesting that the region may have shrunk in size due to previous damage. Also, many ex-players scored low on tests of their verbal learning and memory function.

While the authors emphasize that their pilot study is small in size, they state that the findings indicate that there are molecular and structural changes in specific brain regions of athletes with histories of repetitive hits to the head, even many years after they stepped away from the game.

Currently, the researchers are looking for translocator protein hotspots in both active and recently retired NFL players to help determine if these changes are present shortly after the time of play, or if they only develop over the course of time as a delayed response to injury. They also believe that the molecular brain imaging technique could be used to change the way that football players and other athletes are treated after experiencing a possible concussion.

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Found in bones, tendons and skin – collagen is a fibrous protein that plays a crucial role in the structural make-up of the human body.
New research recently published by a team of German and American scientists has revealed that removing a large amount of water from collagen fibers caused them to contract and generates forces up to 300 times greater than those generate by human muscles.
Published in the journal Nature Communications, the new research could lead to the development of novel materials and orthopedic treatments, the study team said.
The collagen molecule is like a rope, with three string-like proteins draped around one another to create a triple-helical structure. Several of these “ropes” in turn merge to form heavier “coils”, referred to as collagen fibrils. Being only 100 to 500 nanometers thick, the fibrils are still 100,000 slimmer than common rope.
Inside the fibrils, adjoining collagen molecules are not stacked next to one another, but they are arranged in a staggered set up. This results in switching denser and thinner areas over the length of the fibrils. Finally, many fibrils blend together to create collagen fibers.
In the new study, the researchers were able to show that how different collagen structures are affected by changed in water content: from the molecular level, all the way up to the fiber level. The study team both conducted water-based experiments with collagen in a special experimental chamber, and generated a series of computer models that replicated the behavior of collagen fibrils.
“Water is an integral component of collagen,” said study author Admir Masic, a bio-materials researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Germany.
Water makes up about 60 percent of natural collagen’s weight and its molecules attach tightly to collagen along its helical shape, the latter of which the team was able to show using X-ray diffraction. The study team was also able to show the angle of the turns and the width of the helix.
In the drying experiments, the researchers found that when the relative humidity drops from 95 to 5 percent, collagen molecules dry out and shrink in length by 1.3 percent.  The corresponding fibrils shrink by 2.5 percent.
This decrease in length causes increased tension in collagen structures of around 100 megapascals, or 300 times the forces generated by human muscle.
Using an imaging technology called Raman spectroscopy, the researchers found that the contraction is caused by conformational changes to collagen that resemble a rope shortening by forming wave-like patterns. Interestingly, this phenomenon caused the thicker regions of the fibrils to stretch and the thinner regions to shorten.
“With this knowledge, researchers could develop materials that behave in a opposite ways when water is removed from them,” noted study author Luca Bertinetti, a materials scientist from Max Planck.
The study team noted that their findings also suggest that the high tensile strength of dried collagen could play an active structural role in the human body, such as during bone formation. The research said dried-out collagen may act like rebar in a concrete foundation.
“During bone synthesis, water may be removed from collagenous matrix so that the tissue contracts” said study author Peter Fratzl, a director at the institute.
The study team said they now plan to look into the role of collagen in bone and other tissue.
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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is apparently not a postmodern phenomenon; it’s not even a modern phenomenon, according to researchers from Anglia Ruskin University.

Combing through ancient Mesopotamian translations, Professor Hacker Hughes and his team found evidence of the disorder as far back as 1300BC, during the Assyrian Dynasty. Soldiers claimed they were visited by the “ghosts they faced in battle,” and “suddenly lost sight in both eyes, though nothing had touched [them].”

“The sorts of symptoms after battle were very clearly what we would call now post-traumatic stress symptoms,” said Professor Hughes to the BBC.

“They described hearing and seeing ghosts talking to them,” he continued, “who would be the ghosts of people they’d killed in battle- and that’s exactly the experience of modern-day soldiers who’ve been involved in close hand-to-hand combat”

Professor Hughes concluded, “As long as there has been civilization and as long as there has been warfare, there have been post-traumatic symptoms. It’s not a 21^st century thing.”

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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

The association between excessive salt intake and the risk of high blood pressure has been well established, but the exact mechanics for that link are only now coming to light, and it (somewhat unsettlingly) involves the “reprogramming” of a person’s brain.

Researchers from McGill University in Canada, writing in a recent edition of the journal Neuron, explained that by analyzing the brains of rats, they found that ingesting large amounts of dietary salt can interfere with a process that helps maintain healthy arterial blood pressure.

“We found that a period of high dietary salt intake in rats causes a biochemical change in the neurons that release vasopressin (VP) into the systemic circulation,” said Professor Charles Bourque of McGill’s Faculty of Medicine.

“This change, which involves a neurotropic molecule called BDNF (brain-derived neurotropic factor), prevents the inhibition of these particular neurons by other cells,” he added.

Elevated levels of salt intake prevents the body’s arterial pressure detection circuit from inhibiting VP neurons, disabling a natural fail-safe which can allow blood pressure to increase when a high amount of salt is ingested over a long period of time, the researchers said.

The new study provides a better understanding of the association between salt intake and blood pressure, although Bourque and his colleagues believe that more work is required in order to find new targets that could lead to new treatment options for hypertension.

For one thing, the fact that the link was discovered in rats does not necessarily indicate that this reprogramming effect will be found in humans – and if it is, how can it be reversed?

In the meantime, however, Bourque said that the best advice is to continue limiting salt intake.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that all people at least two years of age should consume less than 2,300 mg of sodium each day, and that those over the age of 51, as well as those diagnosed with high blood pressure, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease, should further limit their salt intake to just 1,500 mg per day.

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Two teams of US scientists are currently working on a way to produce “safer” genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that would be unable to spread in the wild, finding a potential solution to a primary concern to critics of genetic engineering research.
According to BBC News, the researchers have altered the genetic code of bacteria so that they can only use synthetic chemicals to grow. If they escaped into nature, they would simply die out, ideally alleviating some of the fears over GMOs and opening the door for their increased use in the fields of agriculture, medicine, and environmental clean-up.
As explained in the journal Nature, the bacteria relies upon an amino acid (one of the building blocks of protein) that does not occur in nature. While the microbes can thrive in the lab as long as they have access to the unnatural amino acid, none survived an experiment in which the artificial supplement was withheld.
Genetically engineered micro-organisms are currently used in the US, Europe, and China in order to produce drugs or fuels under contained industrial conditions, the BBC said. However, scientists are looking to develop internal fail-safe measures to help keep them from spreading if used in real-world conditions.
Re-writing the genetic code
“What we’ve done is engineered organisms so that they require synthetic amino acids for survival or for life,” Yale University professor Farren J. Isaacs, who led one of the two studies, told BBC News. “What we’re seeing here is an important proof of concept that re-coding genomes and engineering dependence on synthetic amino acids is technically feasible in not just E coli but other micro-organisms and multicellular organisms such as plants.”
“Our strains, to the extent that we can test them, won’t escape,” added Daniel J. Mandell, a synthetic biologist at Harvard. The new bacteria is also unable to exchange their DNA with the natural versions of the same bacteria, since they no longer speak each other’s genetic language.
The new studies are a “milestone” in synthetic biology and an important step forward to such containment procedures, the researchers said. The work will help address public concerns over the use of GMOs and protecting natural ecosystems by making it impossible for these microbes to spread or to genetically interact with their naturally occurring counterparts.
Nature reported that the new technique originated in the laboratory of Harvard geneticist George Church.
“Church and Isaacs have independently made this engineered microbe reliant on unnatural amino acids,” the journal said. “The Isaacs team used genomic sequencing to identify sites in essential bacterial proteins where the microbes could incorporate synthetic amino acids without affecting overall function, whereas Church’s group started with the protein structures and added elements to help integrate and accommodate the artificial amino acids.”
Church called the breakthrough “the culmination of a decade of work,” while Isaacs said that they hope to re-write the genetic code of other types of organisms in the near future.
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Shayne Jacopian for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
After a thirteen-year study, Brazilian scientists surveying three hospitals in Campinas concluded that “woman on top” is the most risky sex position for heterosexual men, causing more than half of all penile fractures. Alternatively, “doggy-style” is responsible for 29% of fractured penises, and 21% result from the missionary position.
The average age of the men included in this study was 34, with half of them reporting an audible cracking sound preceding severe pain and swelling, and some waiting for up to six hours before seeking medical attention—scientists attribute this to the embarrassment associated with visiting the hospital for a broken penis.
Of the 42 patients confirmed to have a fractured penis, 28 were injured during heterosexual intercourse and four during homosexual intercourse, with six others injured by “penis manipulation” and four because of “unclear circumstances.”

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The research concluded:
“Our hypothesis is that when woman is on top she usually controls the movement with her entire body weight landing on the erect penis, not being able to interrupt it when the penis suffers a wrong way penetration. The harm is usually minor in woman with no pain, but major in the penis. On the contrary, when the man is controlling the movement, he has better chances of stopping the penetration energy in response to the pain related to the penis harm, minimizing it.”
Of course, this shouldn’t discourage anyone from engaging in whatever kind of sex is appealing. While some activities are more risky than others, in most cases, communication with partners and stopping in the event of discomfort is enough to prevent the majority of sexual injuries. Have fun and stay safe!

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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is issuing a warning about the use of prescription painkillers by women of childbearing age and its connection to birth defects.

In research published Friday in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the CDC revealed that one-fourth of privately-insured women between the ages of 15 and 44, as well as more than one-third of those who were on Medicaid, filed prescriptions for narcotic (opoid) pain medications such as codeine or oxycodone every year from 2008 through 2012.

According to Reuters, opioids are typically taken to treat moderate to severe pain, but if taken by an expectant mother (especially early on in the pregnancy), the CDC warns that they can increase the chances that infants will be born with birth defects. Officials are advising a thorough health assessment of reproductive-age women before prescribing these medications.

Studies of opioid exposure during pregnancy “suggest increase risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes,” including neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), a condition in which the newborn child experiences symptoms of withdraw as the result of drugs or medications taken by the mother during the pregnancy.

The painkillers could also result in birth defects such as gastroschisis (a defect of a baby’s abdominal wall), and congenital heart defects or neural tube defects (serious defects in the baby’s brain and spin). Since exposure during the first weeks of pregnancy is most risky, the agency said that it is important “to assess opioid medication use among all women of reproductive age.”

“Many women of reproductive age are taking these medicines and may not know they are pregnant and therefore may be unknowingly exposing their unborn child,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a statement. “That’s why it’s critical for health care professionals to take a thorough health assessment before prescribing these medicines to women of reproductive age.”

The data

Researchers who analyzed the data from both privately insured women and those enrolled in Medicaid, found that an average of 39 percent of Medicaid-enrolled women and 28 percent of privately insured women had filled an opioid prescription during these four years.

Among private insurance claims, opioid prescription rates were found to be highest among reproductive-aged women in the southern US and lowest in the northeast. Among the Medicaid group, non-Hispanic white women were found to have nearly 1.5 times more opioid prescriptions that non-Hispanic black or Hispanic women, the CDC noted.

“If you are using an opioid pain killer, you should also be practicing effective birth control,” added pediatrition Dr. José F. Cordero. “If you decide to get pregnant or do become pregnant, tell your health care provider about all the medications you are taking right away. You may be able to switch to a safer alternative.”

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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Hearing the soothing sound of a loved one’s voice and listening to familiar stories can help awaken the unconscious brain and speed the recovery of coma patients, according to research published Thursday in the journal Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair.
In the study, researchers from Northwestern University and the Hines VA Hospital found that coma patients who heard familiar stories stored in their long-term memory from family members four times a day for six weeks regained consciousness significantly faster and tended to have an improved recovery compared to those who did not hear such stories.
“We believe hearing those stories in parents’ and siblings’ voices exercises the circuits in the brain responsible for long-term memories. That stimulation helped trigger the first glimmer of awareness,” said lead author Theresa Pape, a neuroscientist from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the Hines VA Hospital.
“It’s like coming out of anesthesia. It’s the first step in recovering full consciousness,” she added. “After the study treatment, I could tap them on the shoulder, and they would look at me. Before the treatment they wouldn’t do that.”
A coma is an unconscious state, typically caused by a traumatic brain injury, in which a patient is unable to open his or her eyes. Patients typically progress from a coma to a minimally conscious or vegetative state that can last for months or even years. Being more aware of their environment allows them to actively participate in physical, speech and occupational therapy.
In addition to benefiting the patient, the familiar voices treatment can also help friends and family members, who usually feel helpless and out of control when a loved one is such a state, Pape said. Recording to the stories can help them feel as though they are playing a role in the patient’s treatment and given them a sense of control over his or her recovery, she added.
The research
In their randomized, placebo-controlled study, the researchers enrolled 15 patients with traumatic head injuries who were in a minimally conscious or vegetative state. Those patients (12 men and 3 women) were an average of 35 years old and had started what is known as Familiar Auditory Sensory Training (FAST) therapy an average of 70 days after suffering their injuries.
First, Pape’s team conducted baseline testing to see whether or not patients would be responive to sounds such as bells and whistles, whether or not they followed directions to open their eyes, and if they were alert enough to visually track a person walking across the room. This data was used to measure if there was improvement following a six-week FAST treatment period.
The researchers also had patients listen to both familiar and non-familiar voices tell different stories in order to obtain a baseline MRI of how the blood oxygen levels in their brains changed while listening. Next, they recruited families to work with therapists to help come up with tales about events that both the patient and the family members participated in.
“It could be a family wedding or a special road trip together such as going to visit colleges,” said Pape. “It had to be something they’d remember, and we needed to bring the stories to life with sensations, temperature and movement. Families would describe the air rushing past the patient as he rode in the Corvette with the top down or the cold air on his face as he skied down a mountain slope.”
Parents and siblings recorded a total of at least eight different stories, and after those stories were played for the patients for six weeks, Pape repeated the earlier baseline tests in an MRI. In one of the tests, patients listened to familiar and unfamiliar voices telling the story they has originally heard at baseline, and the MRI image showed a change in the oxygen level that indicated greater responsiveness to the unfamiliar voice telling a story, but not the familiar one.
“This indicates the patient’s ability to process and understand what they’re hearing is much better,” she explained. “At baseline they didn’t pay attention to that non-familiar voice. But now they are processing what that person is saying.”
A second test
In another test, patients listened to a small bell ringing as before, but this time, their brains had less of a response to that sound, indicating that they were better able to discern which things were important to listen to. The biggest gains came during the first two weeks of the treatment, the study authors said, with smaller steps towards recovering coming over the next month.
Pape is in the process of reviewing the data to determine with the FAST treatment helped the brain’s circuitry (elongated fibers known as axons that transmit signals from between neurons) to become stronger. However, she said that it was only logical that people in a coma would respond favorably to the treatment, even those who had suffered a stroke and not brain trauma.
“This gives families hope and something they can control,” she noted. Pape went on to suggest that families should work with a therapist to help them construct the stories, so that the recorded tales can augment the other treatments that a patient is undergoing.
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