Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Some consumers see energy drinks as a sugary alternative to a cup of coffee, but new research from the World Health Organization has found that the drinks could pose a significant health risk to the general public.

Published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health, the new research cites the drinks’ high levels of caffeine as cause for concern. These drinks can also be slugged down quickly, unlike a ‘Venti’ from Starbucks, raising the potential for abuse and caffeine overdose.

To reach their conclusion, the researchers started by searching scientific databases using the terms “energy drinks” and “adverse effects.” Next, the team examined publications retrieved from the search and selected those deemed to be relevant. Only English-language studies were considered.

“From a review of the literature, it would appear that concerns in the scientific community and among the public regarding the potential adverse health effects of the increased consumption of energy drinks are broadly valid,” the authors wrote in their published report.

The study team noted that one study in their review, from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), found total energy drink caffeine intake was 43 percent in children, 13 percent in teenagers and 8 percent in adults.

The study team also found that over 70 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 29 who consume energy drinks use them to make cocktails. Several research studies have demonstrated that this practice is even more dangerous than drinking alcohol by itself, possibly due to the fact that sweetened energy drinks make it more difficult for people to recognize when they are becoming drunk.

“As energy drink sales are rarely regulated by age, unlike alcohol and tobacco, and there is a proven potential negative effect on children, there is the potential for a significant public health problem in the future,” the authors conclude.

To guard against the potential public health threat posed by energy drinks, the study team suggested a cap on caffeine levels in energy drinks that is evidence-based. The researchers also said public health officials should be made conscious of the prospective dangers of excess caffeine usage, possibly screening patients with a background of diet issues and drug abuse for heavy intake of energy drinks.

The researchers also called for educating the public on the risks of mixing the drinks alcohol, as well as labeling that warns about the dangers of caffeine overdose, which include vomiting, heart palpitations and, in rare cases, death.

“The full impact of the rise in popularity of energy drinks has not yet been quantified, but the aggressive marketing of energy drinks targeted at young people, combined with limited and varied regulation have created an environment where energy drinks could pose a significant threat to public health,” the authors wrote.

Pushing back against the conclusions of the new study, Gavin Partington, director general of the British Soft Drinks Association, told The Guardian that the WHO researchers had failed to consider scientific articles that may have exonerated the consumption of energy drinks.

“Several of the policy recommendations it makes are already well established through the BSDA’s voluntary code and EU regulation,” he noted.

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Provided by Rosalie Grivell, University of Adelaide

It might not be obvious on the scales, but healthy eating and increased physical activity from walking during pregnancy is directly associated with a range of improved outcomes at birth, according to researchers from the University of Adelaide.

Results of the world’s biggest study of its kind – offering healthy eating and exercise advice to pregnant women who are overweight or obese – were published October 14 in two papers in the journal BMC Medicine.

“While it might have been expected that healthier eating and increased physical activity during pregnancy would be associated with differences in weight gain, our findings highlight that weight gain in pregnancy is not an ideal measure of pregnancy health,” says study leader Professor Jodie Dodd, from the University of Adelaide’s Robinson Research Institute and the Women’s and Children’s Hospital.

“Importantly, however, these changes in diet and physical activity were directly associated with significant improvements in outcomes for babies.

“Women who received dietary and lifestyle advice increased the number of servings they consumed per day of fruits and vegetables, while reducing the percentage of energy in their diet derived from saturated fats.

“Women were also successful in increasing their physical activity, with about 15-20 minutes of brisk walking on most days of the week,” Professor Dodd says.

Study leaders have previously reported a significant reduction in the number of babies born over 4kg to women who received the diet and lifestyle advice during pregnancy. The researchers can now report a range of other benefits for these babies, including a reduced chance of moderate to severe respiratory distress syndrome and reduced length of stay in hospital.

“Approximately 50% of women are overweight or obese during pregnancy. Until this study was conducted, there had been little evidence about the overall benefits of dietary and lifestyle interventions on this group of women,” says study co-author Dr. Rosalie Grivell from the University’s Robinson Research Institute.

“Our hope is that by following some simple, practical and achievable lifestyle advice, pregnant women can improve their health and the outcomes for their babies. We would, of course, recommend that these lifestyle changes be adopted as much as possible before women become pregnant,” Dr. Grivell says.

This study has been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

> Continue reading…

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

While smoking is slowly being relegated to the fringes of our society, the habit is continuing to have a significant effect on the health of the American population.

According to a new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, approximately 14 million medical conditions across the US can be tied to the habit.

Using data from the 2009 US Census, National Health Interview Survey and National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey – study researchers found that about 11 million Americans have reported major medical conditions affiliated with smoking. The study team also determined that another 3 million have conditions currently unreported.

“That’s obviously an immense number,” study author Brian Rostron, a statistician at the US Food and Drug Administration, told Reuters. “It’s continuing to be a problem. Even if people are former smokers, they have lasting lung damage.”

The estimate of 14 million is up from 12.7 medical conditions found a decade ago by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study team said they weren’t sure if the increase is due to better survey methods or those with smoking-related conditions living longer due to better treatments.

“For each annual death, there are 15 to 20 people living with major disease caused by smoking,” study author Terry Pechacek, an expert on smoking at the CDC told HealthDay. “Smoking not only will kill you, it will damage your health and make your life worse.”

The study team also found that between 40 and 50 percent of current tobacco users over the age of 65 reported a minimum of one smoking-related ailment, with 17 percent of men and 14 percentage of women reporting a number of conditions.

The most commonly-reported condition was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, with 4.3 million. COPD was followed by 2.3 million heart attacks, 1.8 million incidents of diabetes, 1.1 million strokes and over a million instances of cancers, affecting everything from the lungs to the esophagus.

In looking at lung function tests, the study researchers concluded that COPD cases were actually being underreported and about 7.5 million Americans are living with the condition. This underreporting of COPD led the researchers to increase their estimate to 14 million affected Americans.

Pechacek, a deputy director at the Office of Smoking and Health at the CDC, said that COPD amplifies the breathing difficulties older individuals normally acquire.

“It’s a creeping disease, and people accept the fact that they can’t walk up two flights of stairs just because of ageing, but that does becomes a clinical condition,” he told Reuters reporter Kathryn Doyle.

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Steven A. Schroeder, an internal medicine expert from the University of California, San Francisco, said the new study should emphasize the direct and long-term health impacts of smoking.

“Tobacco control has been called one of the most important health triumphs of the past 50 years,” Schroder said. “Yet, although we have come a long way, there is still much more to be done, with the number of smokers worldwide now just short of 1 billion people.”

“The article by Rostron et al is a stark reminder of that unfinished work,” he added.

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Provided by Duke Medicine

Researchers have known for decades that stress contributes to heart disease. But a new analysis by researchers at Duke Medicine shows mental stress may tax women’s hearts more than men’s.

The research appears online Oct. 13, 2014, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

“Normally when under stress, we fight back or run away. In order to do that, we need to pump more blood to the body,” said Wei Jiang, M.D., the study’s senior author and professor of medicine, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine. “According to the data, women were not reacting that way as well as men were.”

In their analysis, Duke researchers reviewed data on 254 men and 56 women who had a history of ischemic heart disease or decreased blood flow to the heart. The group was part of a Duke study published in 2012 called REMIT, which evaluated the impact of an anti-depressant medicine to reduce stress-induced heart trouble.

Participants performed stressful tasks, such as describing an event that made them angry, while researchers monitored their heart function and other vital signs.

During times of stress, 57 percent of female participants experienced reduced blood flow to the heart, or ischemia, as compared to 41 percent of men. Ischemia is a prevalent component of cardiovascular disease and often the factor that leads to death.

Differences between the sexes could provide clues on how to tailor heart disease education, prevention and treatment for women and men. Heart disease kills about 600,000 people each year and remains the leading cause of death in the US for both men and women, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

But studies have shown disparities in the outcomes of ischemic heart disease, with women faring worse than men. CDC surveys have found disparities in women’s awareness of heart disease risks, and how quickly women seek treatment for their symptoms.

In the Duke study, women under mental stress expressed a greater increase in negative emotions and a greater decrease in positive feelings. By contrast, men had greater rise in blood pressure in response to mental stress, the data showed.

“Men may have been expressing less changes in emotions, but they had an obvious negative physiologic response to stress,” said Zainab Samad, M.D., M.H.S., the study’s lead author and assistant professor of medicine at Duke.

The data also found sex distinctions in blood platelet behavior. The aggregation of platelets can lead to a blockage that could cause a heart attack. Despite the use of medications designed to keep blood platelets from clustering together, the platelets of female participants under mental stress were still clumping to a greater extent than those of male participants.

Samad said that with further research, this detail could help tailor blood-thinning medications for more effective use in women.

“The impact of negative physiologic responses to mental stress needs to be recognized in cardiovascular risk assessment in both sexes,” Samad said. “These differences may be potential reasons for differences in outcomes, and may also serve as avenues for further research. This could be a signal that we have been looking for to treat heart disease better, especially in women.”

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Despite years of protests from children, scientists may just have found a good reason for eating broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage. These vegetables contain a molecule known as sulforaphane, and researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital for Children (MGHfC) and Johns Hopkins have found that a daily treatment of sulforaphane may improve some symptoms of autism spectrum disorders.

The findings, published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrate that patients with autism spectrum disorders show improvement in both behavioral and communication assessments in as little as four weeks of daily doses of the molecule.

“Over the years there have been several anecdotal reports that children with autism can have improvements in social interaction and sometimes language skills when they have a fever,” explained Andrew Zimmerman, MD, who also published a 2007 paper documenting the fever effect while he was at Johns Hopkins. “We investigated what might be behind that on a cellular level and postulated that it results from fever’s activation of the cellular stress response, in which protective cellular mechanisms that are usually held in reserve are turned on through activation of gene transcription.” Zimmerman is now based at UMass Memorial Medical Center as a professor of Pediatric Neurology and affiliated with the MGHfC Department of Neurology.

Currently a professor of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at Johns Hopkins, Paul Talalay, MD, isolated sulforaphane in the 1990s, finding that the molecule supports key aspects of the cell stress response. Zimmerman worked with Talalay’s team to investigate sulforaphane’s possible benefits for treating autism. Despite the fact that the underlying mechanism for autism and other disorders on the autism spectrum is unknown, researchers do know that several molecular abnormalities have been identified, including some related to the cellular stress response. The clinical trial began at the Lurie Center after Zimmerman moved to MGHfC in 2010.

The participant cohort consisted of 44 young men diagnosed with moderate to severe autism spectrum disorder. They were randomly assigned to receive a daily dose of either sulforaphane that was extracted from broccoli sprouts, or a placebo dose. Neither the participants, their caregivers or the investigators knew who was receiving the drug or not. Caregivers and staff used standardized measurements of behavior and social interaction at the onset of the study and again at 4, 10 and 18 weeks after treatment began. After 18 weeks, treatment was discontinued and additional assessments of 22 of the participants were performed after another four weeks.

Boys were chosen for this study because out of the 1 to 2 percent of the world’s population affected by autism spectrum disorder, the number of boys affected outweighs the number of girls by a factor of five, according to the CDC. Kanwaljit Singh, MD, MPH, from both MGHfC and the Lurie Center, reports that of the 40 participants who returned for at least one evaluation, the average scores for each assessment were noticeably different for the 26 who received the molecule when compared to the 14 who did not. By the 4 week visit, some caregivers had already started noticing a difference in behavior. By the end of the study, the identities of the majority of the patients receiving sulforaphane had been guessed by both caregivers and researchers. The caregivers of 17 of the 26 on sulforaphane judged their patients to have improvements in behavior, social interaction and calmness while on active treatment.

At the end of active treatment, the patients were assessed again using the Aberrant Behavior Checklist and the Social Responsiveness Scale. The scores of those on sulforaphane had decreased 34 and 17 percent, respectively. These decreases indicate improvement in irritability, lethargy, repetitive movements, hyperactivity, communication, motivation and mannerisms. The patients were also assessed using the Clinical Global Impression Scale, which indicated that 46 percent of the drug recipients exhibited noticeable behaviors in social interaction, 54 percent in aberrant behaviors and 42 percent in verbal communication.

“We believe that this may be preliminary evidence for the first treatment for autism that improves symptoms by apparently correcting some of the underlying cellular problems,” said Talalay, who has researched these vegetable compounds for the past 25 years.

“We are far from being able to declare a victory over autism, but this gives us important insights into what might help,” says Zimmerman.

By the time of the 4 week post treatment assessment, most, but not all, of the improvements had disappeared. This is a strong indication that the sulforaphane was the catalyst for the changes. “It seems like sulforaphane is temporarily helping cells to cope with their handicaps,” Talalay says.

“When we broke the code that revealed who was receiving sulforaphane and who got the placebo, the results weren’t surprising to us, since the improvements were so noticeable,” added Zimmerman. “The improvements seen on the Social Responsiveness Scale were particularly remarkable, and I’ve been told this is the first time that any statistically significant improvement on the SRS has been seen for a drug study in autism spectrum disorder.

“But it’s important to note that the improvements didn’t affect everyone – about one third had no improvement – and the study must be repeated in a larger group of adults and in children, something we’re hoping to organize soon,” he said. “Ultimately we need to get at the biology underlying the effects we have seen and study it at a cellular level. I think that will be done, and I hope it will teach us a lot about this still poorly understood disorder.”

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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Google is currently testing out a new service that would allow users to video chat with medical professionals while searching for symptoms or general health information, various media outlets reported over the weekend.
The new service was first revealed when a Reddit user posted a screenshot of the service (which appeared to be in “limited trial”) and Google officials confirmed its authenticity to Engadget’s Jon Fingas on Saturday.
Fingas described it as “a Helpouts-style feature” and said that where there weren’t many details as to how the video chat service works in practice, company officials have confirmed that Google is testing it out. The Mountain View, California-based company is covering all costs during the trial phase, he added, but users would likely have to pay for these virtual appointments if and when the service is given a Web-wide release.
Helpouts, Dante D’Orazio of The Verge explained, is a do-it-yourself marketplace that allows experts in a variety of fields to give how-to lessons and advice to Google users over video chat. Helpouts services cover a variety of fields – from guitar lessons to baking advice – and can range in cost from free to $20 per hour or more.
“When you’re searching for basic health information – from conditions like insomnia or food poisoning – our goal is provide you with the most helpful information available. We’re trying this new feature to see if it’s useful to people,” a Google spokesperson told Gizmodo reporter Darren Org on Sunday.
The healthcare-related offshoot was discovered when the Reddit user conducted a search for “knee pain” on his Android smartphone, said Org. A small blue video icon appeared as part of the results, giving him the option to “talk with a doctor now.” Clicking on the box further explains that, based on his search query, the service determined that he was trying to learn more about a medical condition and could benefit from chatting with a healthcare professional.
As for the potential benefits of this service, UberGizmo’s Adnan Farooqui explained that, while it is “quite common” for people to conduct Internet searches related to symptoms they might be experiencing, the amount of information (and misinformation) available online makes it possible “to think you’ve got something when the reality is quite different.”
“This is why online searches should never replace a visit to an actual doctor,” he added, “but what if you could do that as you search your symptoms online? … Obviously there will be certain limitations when visiting a doctor over the internet as opposed to visiting them in person but it would probably be cheaper.”
Google first launched Helpouts as an offshoot of their Hangouts service in November 2013, offering the assurance that all of computer experts, fitness gurus and other professionals offering their service would be put through a vetting process. Furthermore, Google noted at the time that all teachers, personal trainers, doctors and the like would be required to have the proper licensing and qualifications.
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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Researchers writing in the October 9 edition of the journal Cell report they have for the first time successfully converted human embryonic stem cells into insulin-producing beta cells equivalent in nearly every way to regular, normally-functioning beta cells.
The discovery, which was the work of a team led by Douglas Melton of the Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is being hailed as a breakthrough in the search for an effective way to treat type 1 diabetes – a disease which affects an estimated three million Americans each year.
According to BBC News online health editor James Gallagher, Melton and his colleagues were able to produce hundreds of millions of the cells in their laboratory. Furthermore, their tests on mice demonstrated that the cells could treat the disease, which is caused when the immune system begins destroying the cells that are responsible for controlling blood glucose levels.
“Beta cells in the pancreas pump out insulin to bring down blood sugar levels,” Gallagher said. “But the body’s own immune system can turn against the beta cells, destroying them and leaving people with a potentially fatal disease because they cannot regulate their blood sugar levels. It is different to the far more common type 2 diabetes.”
Melton, who started his search for a cure for type 1 diabetes when his infant son Sam was diagnosed with the disease 23 years ago, said that he hopes to start human transplantation trials using the cells within a few years’ time. The professor, whose daughter also has type 1 diabetes, said in a statement that his team is now “just one preclinical step away from the finish line.”
“The breakthrough comes after 15 years of seeking a bulk recipe for making beta cells, which sense the level of sugar in the blood and keep it in a healthy range by making precise amounts of insulin,” said John Lauerman of Bloomberg Businessweek. He added that the technique, which “begins with human stem cells, which have the ability to become any type of tissue or organ,” is “an important step toward understanding and treating diabetes.”
“This is part of the holy grail of regenerative medicine or tissue engineering, trying to make an unlimited source of cells or tissues or organs that you can use in a patient to correct a disease,” added Albert Hwa, director of discovery science at JDRF, a New York-based type 1 diabetes research group that funded Melton’s work.
The Harvard researcher explained to Lauerman that their research has led to the development of a six-step recipe for making mature, insulin-secreting beta cells that takes 30 days. He added that laboratories will be able to use the cells to test drugs to treat type 1 diabetes, as well as to gain new insight as to how the disease originally occurs.
In addition, since the researchers successfully manufactured the millions of beta cells required for transplantation, Telegraph Science Editor Sarah Knapton said that it could spell the end of daily insulin injections for the 400,000 type 1 diabetes patients in the UK and the over 30,000 Americans newly diagnosed with the disease each year.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition in which a person’s pancreas stops producing insulin, which is the hormone that enables people to get energy from food, the JDRF explains. The disease occurs when the body’s immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, called beta cells, and when the amount of sugar in the blood is too high for too long, it can cause serious damage to the body’s organs.
Jose Oberholzer, an associate professor of surgery, endocrinology, and diabetes, as well as bioengineering, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the work “will leave a dent in the history of diabetes.” Likewise, Rockefeller University professor Elaine Fuchs called the team’s findings a “remarkable achievement.”
Fuchs added that the work was “one of the most important advances to date in the stem cell field. For decades, researchers have tried to generate human pancreatic beta cells that could be cultured and passaged long-term under conditions where they produce insulin. Melton and his colleagues have now overcome this hurdle and opened the door for drug discovery and transplantation therapy in diabetes.”
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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Individuals who live close to the coast tend to be more physically active than those living inland, researchers from the University of Exeter Medical School claim in a new study published online Thursday in the journal Preventative Medicine.
[ Watch the Video: How Can Coastlines Improve Health? ]
As part of their investigation, lead author Dr. Mathew White and his colleagues analyzed data from more than 180,000 men and women from throughout England, examining the amount of exercise that people get through leisure activities. They found that, generally speaking, people living near the coast tended to be in better health.
On the whole, those living near the coast were more likely to meet physical activity guidelines than those living inland. However, the researchers also found that the effect was particularly noticeable on the western coast of the country, but not the eastern coast. They also found that visiting the coast was essential in stimulating physical activity.
“It’s clear that our coastal paths and beaches provide a wonderful resource for encouraging and enabling physical activity,” Dr. White, a lecturer in the university and a social/environmental psychologist by trade, said in a statement. “Participants reported a number of activities from simply walking to more obvious exercise such as swimming or running.”
“However, we’re unsure why we’re only seeing these effects in western regions of the country,” he added. “Of course, people in the east also exercise but it doesn’t seem to be so connected to coastal activities. We might have uncovered untapped potential for east coast resorts and destinations to be used to encourage exercise and promote healthy lifestyles.”
Participants for the study were drawn from Natural England’s Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment Survey (2009–2012), and the data analyzed was based on self-reported physical activity for leisure and transport. Dr. White and his colleagues also accounted for other factors, including age, social status and season. However, they found that none of those characteristics could account for the regional differences in their findings.
“Whilst not everyone can live near a beach, there are around 8 million people in England who live within 5km of the coast,” said co-author Dr. Ben Wheeler, a senior research fellow at the university who specializes in the interplay between environment, socio-economic status and public health.
“Combined with over 130 million visits a year from those living further inland, it’s clear that coastal locations could offer a fantastic opportunity to get more people active,” he added. “Whilst plenty of questions remain unanswered, our research suggests that government policy needs to ensure these natural spaces are protected and responsibly promoted.”
According to the researchers, current UK guidelines recommend a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate exercise each week, and health experts suggest that such physical activity can help reduce the risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and depression.
Recent research has demonstrated that those living close to a coast tend to be healthier than those living inland, and the authors of the new study suggest that their findings indicate that increased levels of physical activity could help explain why. They added that their study is the largest of its kind to ever be conducted in Europe.
“In general, our findings replicate and extend work from Australia and New Zealand,” Dr. White and his colleagues wrote in their study. “Further work is needed to explain the marked regional differences in the relationship between coastal proximity and physical activity in England to better understand the coast’s potential role as a public health resource.”
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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

As you go across the United States from east to west, folks tend to go to bed later and later – according to a newly-released report from Jawbone. The report also found that cities and college towns tend to have later bedtimes.

Based on data from Jawbone’s sleep-tracking UP device, the non-scientific study found that Brooklyn residents have the latest average bedtime – 12:07 a.m. Average bedtime for the rest of New York City was also very close to midnight.

As expected – other cities known for nightlife, like Miami and Las Vegas, also had relatively late bedtimes. Some late average bedtimes were also found toward the middle of the country, but these tended to be centered around major universities, like Indiana University and The Ohio University.

Writing about the findings on Jawbone’s blog, company data scientist Tyler Nolan pointed out that amounts of daylight do seem to have an effect on people’s bedtimes.

“On the westerns extremes of time zones, people tend to go to bed later, and on the eastern edges they go to bed earlier,” he wrote.

“The starkest difference can be seen on the Kentucky/Tennessee borders between Eastern Time and Central Time, splitting the states in half,” Nolan added. “The average difference in bedtime across the time zone border is 16 min (excluding Hamilton County, TN, since it contains Chattanooga), and some places it’s as high as 30 minutes.”

The daylight-related findings in the Jawbone report, which was not a scientific study, are consistent with previous research which has indicated circadian rhythms are affected by exposure to daylight. The survey was based on more than 1 million UP wearers. The company said it combined less-populous counties with neighboring counties “to generate significant results.”

If people living in urban areas and college towns are staying out later to drink alcohol – they may be falling asleep quicker when they get home, yet having trouble getting quality sleep once they do pass out.

A study published in January of last year by scientists at the London Sleep Centre discovered that alcohol effectively disrupts REM sleep. The UK researchers found that alcohol may in fact completely remove high-quality REM sleep from the typical sleep cycle.

“This review has for the first time consolidated all the available literature on the immediate effects of alcohol on the sleep of healthy individuals,” said study author Irshaad Ebrahim, medical director at The London Sleep Centre.

Insufficient quality sleep could have a damaging influence on focus, motor skills and memory. Ebrahim said he wants this review to help people know that even short term use of alcoholic beverages does not enhance the quality of sleep, and should avoid using it as a sleep aid. He noted that nursing homes and hospital wards have been known to use alcohol in this way.

“Alcohol on the whole is not useful for improving a whole night´s sleep,” added co-author Chris Idzikowski, of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre. “Sleep may be deeper to start with, but then becomes disrupted. Additionally, that deeper sleep will probably promote snoring and poorer breathing. So, one shouldn´t expect better sleep with alcohol.”

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Provided by University of Utah

A new study from the University of Utah confirms that substantial numbers of teens are sexting – sending and receiving explicit sexual images via cellphone. Though the behavior is widely studied, the potentially serious consequences of the practice led the researchers to more accurately measure how frequently teens are choosing to put themselves at risk in this fashion.

The study surveyed 1,130 undergraduate students about their experiences sexting in high school. Nearly 20 percent reported they had sent a nude photo of themselves to another via cellphone and 38 percent had received such a picture. Of the number who had received a sext, nearly one in five had forwarded the picture to someone else.

“The results are nearly identical to the findings from our 2013 study of high school students,” said Don Strassberg, professor of psychology at the University of Utah and lead author on both studies. “We believe the consistency reflects a valid estimate of the prevalence of teen sexting – and the numbers are considerable.”

Strassberg points out the risks of using a cellphone to send intimate messages goes well beyond that of sharing say, print photographs as a form of flirting.

“Nothing has changed in that realm – except that the technology makes it easy and thus, more vulnerable to misuse,” he said. “You lose control of the image the moment you push ‘send.’ From there the risks, which can be especially grave for teens, range from embarrassment and humiliation to unwanted sexual advances to cyberbullying and blackmail, and though rare, possibly to felony charges for pornography trafficking because they are minors.”

According to Strassberg, the results of the two sexting studies from his lab, as well as those from studies conducted across the US, demonstrate that sending naked selfies is not limited to former US congressmen or Hollywood starlets, but is going on in high schools across the country and in significant numbers. This behavior continues, despite the potentially serious consequences that can occur when sexting goes wrong.

How the study was conducted

The research, published online in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, was conducted at the University of Utah over a three-year period. Participants were students enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes and queried about their experiences sexting during high school – after 2007, when it became more commonplace. Though the research was completed at a single, public institution, a quarter of the 1,130 students surveyed attended high school outside Utah, and 7 percent outside the United States, providing a measure of economic and geographic diversity.

In addition, the definition of “sext” used in the study was very specific – sending, receiving and forwarding sexually explicit cellphone photos that reveal genitals of either sex or female breasts. The specificity of the definition and study design were intended to overcome the methodological variety of other previous studies and draw more reliable conclusions about how widespread sexting is.

“Sexting is far from a rare occurrence,” said Strassberg, “and the ability of a recipient to forward on a sext to others can be problematic, especially for young women who share an explicit photo. Because once a sext has been sent, the sender has no control over who, or how many, will eventually see that picture. Other than the adolescent mentality that overestimates benefits over risks, we don’t yet know why teens are choosing to put themselves at risk.”

And although men and women both sext, there are striking differences between the sexes. Equal numbers of men and women reported that they had sent a sext, but significantly more men than women said they had received a sext – 47.1 percent of males versus 32.1 percent of females. That may be in large part because of the participants who had received a sext, men were significantly more likely to have forwarded the picture than were women, 24.2 percent versus 13 percent.

Who gets sexts? Mostly “boyfriend/girlfriends,” although women indicated that as the target 83 percent of the time, while for men it was 55 percent. Men sent sexts to “a friend (not a boyfriend/girlfriend)” 31 percent of the time versus 15 percent for the women in the survey. Strikingly, men said they sexted “someone I wanted to date or hook up with” (12 percent) or “an acquaintance I just met” (2.4 percent), while women did neither. Strassberg concludes that these differences, which are all statistically significant, are consistent with findings that men have more positive attitudes toward casual sex than do women.

Researchers also looked at the role of religiosity in a teen’s sexting behavior. Participants were asked to rate the importance of religion in their lives on a five-point scale from “extremely important” to “not at all important.” Those describing religion as extremely important were far less likely to have sent a sext than others, only 4.6 percent for males and 6.9 percent for females. The same difference between those rating religion as extremely important and others held for those having received a sext – only 10.8 percent for males and 10.7 for females – even though they have less control over receiving than sending.

Strassberg concludes that there are still a number of important questions about teen sexting that need reliable answers before adults can decide how – or even if – they should respond to the popular phenomenon. Further study is warranted to better understand teen motives, get a clearer sense of their appreciation of possible consequences of sexting and whether sexting increases or decreases initiation of physical sexual interaction, among other issues.

Provided by Robert Perkins, University of Southern California
Sugar consumption led to memory problems and brain inflammation
Studying rats as model subjects, scientists found that adolescents were at an increased risk of suffering negative health effects from sugar-sweetened beverage consumption.
Adolescent rats that freely consumed large quantities of liquid solutions containing sugar or high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in concentrations comparable to popular sugar-sweetened beverages experienced memory problems and brain inflammation, and became pre-diabetic, according to a new study from USC. Neither adult rats fed the sugary drinks nor adolescent rats who did not consume sugar had the same issues.
“The brain is especially vulnerable to dietary influences during critical periods of development, like adolescence,” said Scott Kanoski, corresponding author of the study and an assistant professor at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Kanoski collaborated with USC’s Ted Hsu, Vaibhav Konanur, Lilly Taing, Ryan Usui, Brandon Kayser, and Michael Goran. Their study, which tested a total of 76 rats, was published online by the journal Hippocampus on Sept. 23.
About 35 to 40 percent of the rats’ caloric intake was from sugar or HFCS. For comparison, added sugars make up about 17 percent of the total caloric intake of teens in the U.S. on average, according to the CDC.
The rats were then tested in mazes that probe their spatial memory ability. Adolescent rats that had consumed the sugary beverages, particularly HFCS, performed worse on the test than any other group – which may be the result of the neuroinflammation detected in the hippocampus, Kanoski said.
The hippocampus is a part of the temporal lobe located deep within the brain that controls memory formation. People with Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias often suffer damage to the hippocampus.
“Consuming a diet high in added sugars not only can lead to weight gain and metabolic disturbances, but can also negatively impact our neural functioning and cognitive ability.” Kanoski said. Next, Kanoski and his team plant to see how different monosaccharides (simple sugars) and HFCS affect the brain.
This research was funded by USC institutional support.
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Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
The authors of two new studies published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) analyzed the use of different types of vaccines to help better prevent and control pandemic bird flu virus.
In one of the studies, Saint Louis University professor of infectious diseases, allergy and immunology Dr. Robert Belshe and his colleagues found that a vaccine designed to protect against an old strain of avian flu helped prepare a person’s immune system to rapidly respond when a vaccine designed to protect against a different and newer form of the virus was given one year later.
Furthermore, when a lower dose of the new avian flu vaccine is combined with an adjuvant (a chemical that causes a person’s immune system to produce more antibodies), it worked better in triggering an immune response than a stronger dose of the vaccine without the adjuvant. What that essentially means is the vaccine against the newer form of the flu can be combined with an adjuvant to make it stretch further and allow more people to be vaccinated.
Dr. Belshe explained that both of these findings represent key strategies researchers can use to continue analyzing how to help combat new strains of avian flu which people have yet to be exposed to, and which could consequently spread into a pandemic outbreak and potential health emergency. Since planning for influenza pandemics is vitally important, he said the research can help experts respond quickly to potential health threats.
The authors looked at two different two H5 influenza vaccines, and recruited 637 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 49 at eight clinical sites throughout the US. Some of the participants had previously been given one or two doses of Vietnam bird flu vaccine as part of a previous study, and those individuals had developed “an immunologic memory” when they received a booster dose of a new, investigational Anhui bird flu vaccine, Dr. Belshe said.
Previously unvaccinated volunteers received various doses of the new Ahnui bird flu vaccine, the researchers noted. Two doses were needed to stimulate an antibody response in the previously unvaccinated participants, and when paired with the immune-system boosting adjuvant, a 7.5 microgram dose of Anhui vaccine was found to be more effective in eliciting an immune response against bird flu that a higher 90 microgram dose without the adjuvant.
In the second study, a team of researchers led by Dr. Mark J. Mulligan of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta conducted a clinical trial of an experimental H7N9 avian influenza vaccine, and found that it was believed to be protective in 59 percent of study participants who received two injections of the vaccine at the lowest dosage when mixed with an adjuvant to boost immune response.
However, without the adjuvant, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)-sponsored study of 700 healthy adults between the ages of 19 and 64 found that those who received the vaccine had a minimal immune response, regardless of how large a dosage of the investigational vaccine they received, the agency revealed in a statement Tuesday.
The volunteers were divided into groups based on the dosage of vaccine they received and whether or not they were given an adjuvant (MF59) at the start of the trial and three weeks into it. Those receiving the vaccine without adjuvant had minimal immune response, even at the highest vaccine dosages, based on an assessment after 42 days with a standardized blood test known as the hemagglutination (HAI) antibody assay.
“This clinical trial gave us valuable information about the use of H7N9 flu vaccine combined with adjuvant and makes us better prepared for a potential pandemic,” Dr. Mulligan said in a statement. “We must continue to test and improve vaccines for all flu strains, as these viruses have the ability to mutate and spread rapidly.”
In an editorial accompanying the two studies, Dr. John J. Treanor of the University of Rochester said the research will help “provide important information that expands the available options for confronting pandemic influenza, and may help surmount those obstacles,” and that the two papers – along with other studies like them – effectively demonstrate that “a prepandemic vaccination program is certainly feasible.”
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Provided by Lawson Health Research Institute

New research shows probiotic yogurt can reduce the uptake of certain heavy metals and environmental toxins by up to 78% in pregnant women. Led by Scientists at Lawson Health Research Institute’s Canadian Centre for Human Microbiome and Probiotic Research, this study provides the first clinical evidence that a probiotic yogurt can be used to reduce the deadly health risks associated with mercury and arsenic.

Environmental toxins like mercury and arsenic are commonly found in drinking water and food products, especially fish. These contaminants are particularly high in areas where mining and agriculture are prevalent, and in the developing world where regulations for industrial activities are limited or poorly enforced. Even at low levels, chronic exposure to heavy metals has been linked to certain cancers and delayed neurological and cognitive development in children. Yet in Canada, 15% of reproductive-aged women possess mercury levels that pose a high risk for neurodevelopmental abnormalities in their children.

Research suggests some naturally occurring bacteria in the body can influence toxic metal levels. Lactobacillus rhamnosus GR-1 is a probiotic strain that has already been used safely and effectively in yogurt in Canada with positive immune benefits. Previous lab research at Lawson showed it can also bind to heavy metals, but clinical research was needed to confirm whether this mechanism would prevent the body from absorbing them.

In the study, Dr. Gregor Reid, a Scientist at Lawson and Western University, and Jordan Bisanz and Megan Enos, trainees at Lawson and graduate students at Western, assessed 44 school-aged children and 60 pregnant women living in Mwanza, Tanzania near Lake Victoria. This area is known for having particularly high environmental pollution. Tanzania is also home to a network of community yogurt kitchens previously set up with the scientists to provide a locally-sourced, low-cost source of nutrition. The goal of the study was to assess existing metal levels in the environment and participants’ bodies, map their natural bacteria to identify any potential links to metal absorption, and determine whether the probiotic-supplemented yogurt could influence metal absorption.

The scientists found mercury and lead levels were up to seven times higher than what is typically found in Canadian children. Silver cyprinids, small fish consumed widely in the region, were found to contain especially high levels of mercury and arsenic. DNA sequencing identified two bacteria present in children with the highest concentrations of heavy metals, suggesting the presence of these bacteria may be linked to metal absorption.

After consuming the probiotic-supplemented yogurt, the children showed positive, but not statistically effective, results. The pregnant women showed more dramatic outcomes. The probiotic yogurt protected them from further uptake of mercury by up to 36% and arsenic by up to 78%.

“The findings are exciting for many reasons,” says Dr. Reid, senior author on the publication. “First, they show a simple fermented food, easily made by resource disadvantaged communities, can provide benefits in addition to nutrition and immunity. Second, the results are relevant for many parts of the world, including Canada, where exposure to these toxins occurs daily. Finally, it confirms more attention needs to be paid to these toxins, especially in children and pregnant women.”

“Seeing the children, you would never think they were walking around with such high levels of toxins,” says Bisanz, the first author on the paper. “I hate to think of the consequences for them as they age. The children and pregnant women all loved the yogurt. If we could only scale up these yogurt kitchen concepts, the impact on quality of life could be massive.”

This study was funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The study is published today in mBio, the journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A wide range of complex neurodevelopment disorders make up the autism spectrum disorder. In the US, the rate of children being born with some version of autism is on the rise. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that in 2000, the rate of autism was an estimated 1 child in every 150. In 2010, that rate had increased to 1 child in every 68. Autism occurs in all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups, and is five times more common among males than females. Despite the rising prevalence, researchers still do not know exactly what causes autism.

People who suffer from autism have a variety of symptoms, including difficulty interacting with others, repetitive behaviors, and hypersensitivity to stimuli like sound and touch. A new study from MIT describes a hypothesis that could account for the wide variety of behavioral symptoms. It may also provide a neurological foundation for many of the disparate features of autism spectrum disorder. The results of their study have been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to the study, autism might be rooted in an impaired ability to predict events and other people’s actions. The world is a “magical” place to the autistic child, rather than an orderly one, because of seemingly random and unpredictable events. If this is true, then repetitive behaviors and an insistence on a highly structured environment become coping strategies rather than symptoms. If validated, the MIT team’s unifying theory could offer new strategies for the treatment of autism.

“At the moment, the treatments that have been developed are driven by the end symptoms. We’re suggesting that the deeper problem is a predictive impairment problem, so we should directly address that ability,” MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences Pawan Sinha explained in a recent statement.

“I don’t know what techniques would be most effective for improving predictive skills, but it would at least argue for the target of a therapy being predictive skills rather than other manifestations of autism,” he added.

Parental reports of autistic children insisting on very controlled, predictable environments lead the team to consider the idea of prediction skills as a possible underlying cause for autism.

“The need for sameness is one of the most uniform characteristics of autism,” Sinha says. “It’s a short step away from that description to think that the need for sameness is another way of saying that the child with autism needs a very predictable setting.”

Most of us routinely use prediction skills to manage daily activities and events. For example, we predict other people’s behaviors, or the likely trajectory of a ball in flight, to know how to behave in that situation. The MIT team believes that autistic children may not have the same computational abilities for prediction.

Such a deficit could produce many of the most common autism symptoms such as repetitive behaviors and insistence on rigid structure — which have been shown to soothe anxiety. This is true even for people without autism.

“These may be proactive attempts on the part of the person to try to impose some structure on an environment that otherwise seems chaotic,” Sinha says.

Prediction, and the lack thereof, also plays a role in sensory stimuli. People with prediction skills are able to handle background noises because they can predict that the noise will continue and therefore block it out. This is true with other stimuli as well. A lack of prediction skills would explain why such sensory stimuli overwhelm autistic children.

Another symptom of autism is an inability to understand another person’s thoughts, feelings or emotions – called the “theory of mind.” The researchers suggest that this stems from an inability to predict behaviors based on past interactions.

The study indicates that the timing of the predictive impairment may play a major role in the different symptoms of autism displayed by different children.

“In the millisecond range, you would expect to have more of an impairment in language,” Sinha says. “In the tens of milliseconds range, it might be more of a motor impairment, and in the range of seconds, you would expect to see more of a social and planning impairment.”

The theory also suggests that some cognitive skills which are based more on rules than prediction would be unharmed, or even enhanced, by the lack of prediction skills in autistic individuals. These skills would include things such as math, drawing and music — traditionally noted as strengths for autistic children.

The researchers have already started testing elements of the prediction deficit hypothesis. “The hypothesis is guiding us toward very concrete studies,” Sinha says. “We hope to enlist the participation of families and children touched by autism to help put the theory through its paces.”

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May we suggest – Autism Spectrum Disorder (revised): The Complete Guide to Understanding Autism by Chantal Sicile-Kira. Newly revised and updated, this award-winning guide covers every aspect of understanding and living with autism today.

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