The North American Menopause Society (NAMS)

New meta-analysis shows benefits of ancient Chinese method on today’s menopausal hot flashes

In the 2,500+ years that have passed since acupuncture was first used by the ancient Chinese, it has been used to treat a number of physical, mental and emotional conditions including nausea and vomiting, stroke rehabilitation, headaches, menstrual cramps, asthma, carpal tunnel, fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis, to name just a few. Now, a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials which is being published this month in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS), indicates that acupuncture can affect the severity and frequency of hot flashes for women in natural menopause.

An extensive search of previous studies evaluating the effectiveness of acupuncture uncovered 104 relevant students, of which 12 studies with 869 participants met the specified inclusion criteria to be included in this current study. While the studies provided inconsistent findings on the effects of acupuncture on other menopause-related symptoms such as sleep problems, mood disturbances and sexual problems, they did conclude that acupuncture positively impacted both the frequency and severity of hot flashes.

Women experiencing natural menopause and aged between 40 and 60 years were included in the analysis, which evaluated the effects of various forms of acupuncture, including traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture (TCMA), acupressure, electroacupuncture, laser acupuncture and ear acupuncture.

Interestingly, neither the effect on hot flash frequency or severity appeared to be linked to the number of treatment doses, number of sessions or duration of treatment. However, the findings showed that sham acupuncture could induce a treatment effect comparable with that of true acupuncture for the reduction of hot flash frequency. The effects on hot flashes were shown to be maintained for as long as three months.

Although the study stopped short of explaining the exact mechanism underlying the effects of acupuncture on hot flashes, a theory was proposed to suggest that acupuncture caused a reduction in the concentration of β-endorphin in the hypothalamus, resulting from low concentrations of estrogen. These lower levels could trigger the release of CGRP, which affects thermoregulation.

“More than anything, this review indicates that there is still much to be learned relative to the causes and treatments of menopausal hot flashes,” says NAMS executive director Margery Gass, MD. “The review suggests that acupuncture may be an effective alternative for reducing hot flashes, especially for those women seeking non- pharmacologic therapies.”

A recent review indicated that approximately half of women experiencing menopause-associated symptoms use complementary and alternative medicine therapy, instead of pharmacologic therapies, for managing their menopausal symptoms.

The article, “Effects of acupuncture on menopause-related symptoms and quality of life in women on natural menopause: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials”, will be published in the February 2015 print edition of Menopause. The meta-analysis was supported by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan.

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University College London

Labeling people with moderately high blood sugar as pre-diabetic is a drastically premature measure with no medical value and huge financial and social costs, say researchers from UCL and the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota.

The analysis, published in the BMJ, considered whether a diagnosis of pre-diabetes carried any health benefits such as improved diabetes prevention. The authors showed that treatments to reduce blood sugar only delayed the onset of type 2 diabetes by a few years, and found no evidence of long-term health benefits.

Type 2 diabetes is typically diagnosed with a blood test that measures levels of hemoglobin A1c, which indicates average blood sugar level over the last three months. People with an A1c over 6.5% can be diagnosed with diabetes but the latest guidelines from the American Diabetes Association (ADA) define anyone with an A1c between 5.7% and 6.4% as having pre-diabetes.

If the ADA guidelines were adopted worldwide, a third of the UK adult population and more than half of adults in China would be diagnosed with pre-diabetes. The latest study questions the logic of putting a label on such huge sections of the population, as it could create significant burdens on healthcare systems without conferring any health benefits. Previous research has shown that type 2 diabetes treatments can do more harm than good for people with A1c levels around 6.5%, let alone people below this level.

3.2 million people in the UK are currently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, but approximately 16 million would fall into the ADA’s pre-diabetes category. There is a condition known as impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) that affects around 3.7 million adults in the UK (8%). People with IGT are at high risk of diabetes, but the test is more time-consuming than a simple A1c blood test. There is evidence to suggest that interventions can delay the progression of IGT into diabetes, but the ADA category of pre-diabetes also includes another 12 million people who are at a much lower risk of progressing to diabetes, for whom any benefit from treatment is unknown.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that “use of ‘pre-diabetes’ is discouraged to avoid any stigma associated with the word diabetes and the fact that many people do not progress to diabetes as the term implies.” Guidance from the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) broadly aligns with the WHO statement, looking to “move away from describing ‘pre-diabetes’ as a separate condition”. So in the way of official authoritative organizations, ADA is pretty much on its own in using this term. Yet it has caught on heavily in the global scientific literature and because of ethnic differences in A1c levels, it may be an even less valid category in other countries and demographics.

“Pre-diabetes is an artificial category with virtually zero clinical relevance,” says lead author John S Yudkin, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at UCL. “There is no proven benefit of giving diabetes treatment drugs to people in this category before they develop diabetes, particularly since many of them would not go on to develop diabetes anyway.

“Sensibly, the WHO and NICE and the International Diabetes Federation do not recognise pre-diabetes at present but I am concerned about the rising influence of the term. It has been used in many scientific papers across the world, and has been applied to a third of adults in the UK and half of those in China. We need to stop looking at this as a clinical problem with pharmaceutical solutions and focus on improving public health. The whole population would benefit from a more healthy diet and more physical activity, so it makes no sense to single out so many people and tell them that they have a disease.”

Previous studies have tested the effectiveness of giving people with IGT a drug called metformin, which is used to lower blood sugar in people with diabetes. The drug reduced the risk of developing diabetes by 31% over 2.8 years, probably by delaying its onset rather than by completely halting its development. But people who go on to develop diabetes are often treated with metformin anyway and there is no evidence of long-term benefits to starting the treatment early.

“The ADA recommends treating pre-diabetes with metformin, but the majority of people would receive absolutely no benefit,” explains Professor Yudkin. “There are significant financial, social and emotional costs involved with labelling and treating people in this way. And a range of newer and more expensive drugs are being explored as treatments for ‘pre-diabetes.’ The main beneficiaries of such recommendations would be the drug manufacturers, whose available market suddenly leaps to include significant swathes of the population. This is particularly true in emerging economies such as China and India, where regulating the healthcare market is a significant challenge.”

“Healthy diet and physical activity remain the best ways to prevent and to tackle diabetes,” says co-author Victor Montori, Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA. “Unlike drugs they are associated with incredibly positive effects in other aspects of life. We need to keep making efforts to increase the overall health of the population, by measures involving public policy rather than by labelling large sub-sections of the population as having an illness. This is a not a problem to be solved at the bedside or in the doctor’s surgery, but rather by communities committed to the health of their citizens.”

Tel Aviv University

New TAU study confirms creative energy in Parkinson’s sufferers is greater than in healthy individuals

Prof. Rivka Inzelberg of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Sagol Neuroscience Center at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, documented the exceptional creativity of Parkinson’s patients two years ago in a review for Behavioral Neuroscience. Since then, she has conducted the first empirical study to verify a link between Parkinson’s disease and artistic inclination.

That empirical study, now published in the Annals of Neurology, definitively demonstrates that Parkinson’s patients are more creative than their healthy peers, and that those patients taking higher doses of medication are more artistic than their less-medicated counterparts.

“It began with my observation that Parkinson’s patients have a special interest in art and have creative hobbies incompatible with their physical limitations,” said Prof. Inzelberg. “In my last paper, I reviewed case studies from around the world and found them to be consistent. In my present research, we conducted the first comprehensive study to measure the creative thinking of Parkinson’s patients. This was not a simple task, because how does one measure, or quantify, creativity? We had to think creatively ourselves.”

Measuring artistic creativity

Prof. Inzelberg and a team of researchers from TAU, the Sheba Medical Center, and Bar-Ilan University conducted a full battery of tests on 27 Parkinson’s patients treated with anti-Parkinson’s drugs and 27 age- and education-matched healthy controls. Some of the tests were well-known and others newly adapted for the purpose of the study. The tests included the Verbal Fluency exam, in which a person is asked to mention as many different words beginning with a certain letter and in a certain category (fruit, for example) as possible.

The participants were then asked to undergo a more challenging Remote Association Test, in which they had to name a fourth word (following three given words) within a fixed context. The groups also took the Tel Aviv University Creativity Test, which tested their interpretation of abstract images and assessed the imagination inherent in answers to questions like “What can you do with sandals?” The final exam was a version of the Test for a Novel Metaphor, adapted specifically for the study.

Throughout the testing, Parkinson’s patients offered more original answers and more thoughtful interpretations than their healthy counterparts.

In order to rule out the possibility that the creative process evident in the hobbies of patients was linked to obsessive compulsions like gambling and hoarding, to which many Parkinson’s patients fall prey, participants were also asked to fill out an extensive questionnaire. An analysis indicated no correlation between compulsive behavior and elevated creativity.

Express yourself

The conclusions from the second round of testing — in which the Parkinson’s participants were split into higher- and lower-medicated groups — also demonstrated a clear link between medication and creativity. Parkinson’s patients suffer from a lack of dopamine, which is associated with tremors and poor coordination. As such, they are usually treated with either synthetic precursors of dopamine or dopamine receptor agonists.

According to Prof. Inzelberg, the results are hardly surprising, because dopamine and artistry have long been connected. “We know that Van Gogh had psychotic spells, in which high levels of dopamine are secreted in the brain, and he was able to paint masterpieces during these spells — so we know there is a strong relationship between creativity and dopamine,” said Prof. Inzelberg.

Prof. Inzelberg hopes her research will be instrumental in spreading awareness. Parkinson’s patients often feel isolated by their physical limitations, so artistic work could provide a welcome outlet of expression. “After my first paper, I helped organize exhibits of patients’ paintings in Herzliya and Raanana and received feedback about similar exhibits in Canada and France,” said Prof. Inzelberg. “These exhibits were useful in raising funds for Parkinson’s research, providing occupational therapy for patients — and, most importantly, offering an opportunity for patients to fully express themselves.”

Prof. Inzelberg is currently researching additional forms of creativity in Parkinson’s patients.

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
While the late Steve Jobs was a notorious stickler for design details, one element of the iPad may have gotten by the mercurial tech guru – namely the element nickel, which is known to cause allergic reactions in many people.
According to a new report in the journal Pediatrics published on Monday, an 11-year-old boy was treated at a San Diego hospital recently for an allergic reaction he had to an Apple iPad. The latest report is just one in a series of cases linked to nickel in numerous tech gadgets.
Report author Dr. Sharon Jacob, a dermatologist at Rady Children’s Hospital in California, told The Associated Press that allergic reactions to nickel aren’t life-threatening, but can be extremely discomforting and may require treatment if skin reactions become infected.
The allergic reaction in the Pediatrics case initially produced scaly patches on the boy’s skin, but later led to a different kind of reaction that erupted all over his body. This second reaction didn’t respond to the usual treatment. The child’s condition was eventually determined to be a reaction to nickel and traced to a family iPad purchased in 2010.
“He used the iPad daily,” Jacob said, adding that placing a protective case around the device led to the child’s symptoms improving.
Apple spokesman Chris Gaither told the AP that the company had no comment when asked if nickel is used to make all iPad models.
According to an advisory about cellphones posted online by the Toronto-based Nickel Institute, the risk of a reaction to nickel comes from contact with the outer surfaces of tech devices “over prolonged periods of time.”
“The length of time required to elicit an allergic reaction will vary from 5 or 10 minutes to never, depending on the sensitivity of the individual,” the advisory said.
From zippers to eyeglasses, nickel is found in many everyday items and Jacob said nickel allergies are becoming either more common or progressively more recognized. She pointed to national data indicating that about 1-in-4 children who get skin tests for allergies have nickel allergies, compared to about 17 percent a decade ago.
Recent research has been pointing to support for the so-called ‘hygiene hypothesis,’ which says children are more allergic than ever due to growing up on ultra-sanitary conditions. A report published back in June found that infants who are exposed to rodent and pet dander, roach allergens and household bacteria within their first year of life are less likely to contract allergies.
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Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe online

Three-dimensional printing may soon replace human cadavers in the study of gross human anatomy in the world’s medical schools.

The practice of learning on medical cadavers is a rite of passage in the medical education community that is instrumental in informing students on the complex inner workings of the muscular, skeletal and circulatory systems of the human body. Medical schools rely on good-natured individuals who bequeath their bodies for the advancement of science for their supply of study cadavers.

Despite the obvious benefits of cadaver use in the education process, some medical schools are unable or unwilling to engage in the practice. This could either be because they lack the facilities for the cost-prohibitive process of properly storing the body or because the school is in a region that frowns on the practice for cultural reasons. Only a couple of years ago, these issues were insurmountable. Today, however, we have the steady march of technology to thank for the education of future physicians.

Experts from Australia’s Monash University have developed a new training kit that consists of anatomical body parts all created by the relatively new practice of 3D printing. This innovation will likely find excellent practical use in the regions detailed above as well in medical schools currently employing the use of human cadavers in their course of study.

Called the ‘3D Printed Anatomy Series,’ it is believed to be the first commercially available resource of its kind. Absolutely no human tissue is used in its production, yet the kit contains all the major parts of the body required to teach anatomy of the limbs, chest, abdomen, head and neck.

Aside from taking the place of the cadaver for intricate and intensive study, professor Paul McMenamin, Director of the university’s Center for Human Anatomy Education, sees the new kit as being a learning aid for both medical trainees and other health professionals. Additionally, use of his newly designed kit could be a significant contributor to the development of new surgical treatments.

“For centuries, cadavers bequested to medical schools have been used to teach students about human anatomy, a practice that continues today. However, many medical schools report either a shortage of cadavers, or find their handling and storage too expensive as a result of strict regulations governing where cadavers can be dissected,” McMenamin explained.

Continuing, he stated, “Without the ability to look inside the body and see the muscles, tendons, ligaments and blood vessels, it’s incredibly hard for students to understand human anatomy. We believe our version, which looks just like the real thing, will make a huge difference.”

The ‘3D Printed Anatomy Series’, created with the use of both CT and surface laser scanning, produces the body structures in either a plaster-like powder or in plastic. The plastic printing allows for a higher resolution than the parts printed in plaster. Additionally, printing in plastic allows for the accurate reproduction of colors encountered in an actual cadaver.

“Radiographic imaging, such as CT, is a really sophisticated means of capturing information in very thin layers, almost like the pages of a book,” McMenamin noted. “By taking this data and making a 3D rendered model, we can then color that model and convert that to a file format that the 3D printer uses to recreate, layer by layer, a three-dimensional body part to scale.”

The Monash University team, currently in negotiations with potential commercial partners, believes the ‘3D Printed Anatomy Series’ will go on sale later this year. The team is excited by what they believe to be several benefits their new product offers over the traditional cadaver.

“Even when cadavers are available, they’re often in short supply, are expensive and they can smell a bit unpleasant because of the embalming process,” McMenamin stated. “As a result, some people don’t feel comfortable working with them.”

McMenamin concluded, “Our 3D printed series can be produced quickly and easily, and unlike cadavers they won’t deteriorate – so they are a cost-effective option too.”

McMenamin and his team have produced and published further details on their new anatomical kit in the online version of the journal Anatomical Sciences Education.

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[ Watch the Video: Stress, Comfort Foods Can Pack On Pounds In Women ]

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Feeling stressed? If you are, it could cause you to gain weight down the road.

According to a new study in the journal Biological Psychiatry, going through one or more stressful events the day prior to eating a single high-fat meal can decrease the body’s metabolism and possibly lead to weight gain.

In the study, a team of scientists surveyed 58 women on the previous day’s stresses before giving them a meal with 930 calories and 60 grams of fat. The scientists then assessed their metabolic rate via their respiration and measured blood sugar, insulin, triglycerides and the stress-related hormone cortisol.

On average, women who reported more than one stressor through the previous day burned over 100 fewer calories than non-stressed women within the seven hours that passed after consuming the high-fat meal, a change that could lead to weight gain of almost 11 pounds a year.

The stressed women also had greater levels of insulin, which plays a role in the storage of fat, and less fat oxidation, the transformation of large fat molecules into smaller molecules that can be utilized as fuel.

“This means that, over time, stressors could lead to weight gain,” said study leader Jan Kiecolt-Glaser, professor of psychiatry and psychology at The Ohio State University. “We know from other data that we’re more likely to eat the wrong foods when we’re stressed, and our data say that when we eat the wrong foods, weight gain becomes more likely because we are burning fewer calories.”

Conducted primarily at Ohio State’s Clinical Research Center, the study included women with an average age of 53. During their initial visit, women were surveyed and given three standardized meals to establish a dietary standard for 24 hours. Volunteers were told to fast for 12 hours before reporting for the next visit.

Upon the subsequent admission, women were surveyed about the previous day’s stress. The researchers found that 31 respondents said they had at least one previous day stressor on one visit and 21 cited stressors at both visits. Stressors included arguments, trouble with their children or work-related pressure. Six women didn’t report any stressor at either visit.

During the second appointment, some participants were given a meal of eggs, turkey sausage, biscuits and gravy, which they were told to eat within 20 minutes.

“This is not an extraordinary meal compared to what many of us would grab when we’re in a hurry and out getting some food,” Kiecolt-Glaser said.

For a control comparison to the meal high in saturated fat, other participants were given a meal high in monounsaturated fat, which is linked to a range of health benefits.

“We suspected that the saturated fat would have a worse impact on metabolism in women, but in our findings, both high-fat meals consistently showed the same results in terms of how stressors could affect their energy expenditure,” said study author Martha Belury, professor of human nutrition at Ohio State.

The researchers found insulin in stressed women shot up right after the high-fat meal was eaten and then dropped to levels seen in non-stressed women after another 90 minutes. They also saw a link between a history of depression in some volunteers and a quicker jump in triglycerides after the meal.

“With depression, we found there was an additional layer. In women who had stress the day before and a history of depression, triglycerides after the meal peaked the highest,” Kiecolt-Glaser said. “The double whammy of past depression as well as daily stressors was a really bad combination.”

While stress and depression may be difficult factors to manage, the study team said their findings point to a need to keep healthy food options nearby during mentally strenuous periods.

“We know we can’t always avoid stressors in our life, but one thing we can do to prepare for that is to have healthy food choices in our refrigerators and cabinets so that when those stressors come up, we can reach for something healthy rather than going to a very convenient but high-fat choice,” Belury said.

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

When viewing pornographic material, people with compulsive sexual behavior experience brain activity similar to that experienced by drug addicts, according to a University of Cambridge study appearing in the July 11 edition of the journal PLOS ONE.

The results of the study lend evidence that the condition, which is also known as hypersexuality or sex addiction, should be viewed as a legitimate mental health disorder and considered for inclusion in the American Psychological Association’s handbook of mental-health disorders (the DSM-5), explained Live Science staff writer Jillian Rose Lim.

While the researchers themselves advise that their findings do not necessarily indicate that pornography itself is addictive, as there are observable differences in the in the brains of patients who have been diagnosed with compulsive sexual behavior and those who have not, the study does indicate that members of the former category experienced heightened activity in the same regions of the brain affected when addicts use drugs.

According to BBC News, the Cambridge researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of 19 male volunteers while they were viewing pornographic videos, all of whom were described as being obsessed with sexual thoughts and behaviors.

When compared to the brains of healthy individuals, the study authors found that so-called sex addicts had higher levels of activity in three parts of the brain: the ventral striatum, dorsal anterior cingulate and the amygdala, said James Gallagher, health editor of the BBC website. Furthermore, the patients were found to have started watching pornography at earlier ages and in higher proportions than the healthy volunteers.

“The patients in our trial were all people who had substantial difficulties controlling their sexual behavior and this was having significant consequences for them, affecting their lives and relationships,” corresponding author Dr. Valerie Voon explained in a statement. “In many ways, they show similarities in their behavior to patients with drug addictions. We wanted to see if these similarities were reflected in brain activity, too.”

“This is the first study to look at people suffering from these disorders and look at their brain activity, but I don’t think we understand enough right now to say it is clearly an addiction,” she added in an interview with Gallagher. “We don’t know if some of these effects are predispositions, meaning that if you have greater activity in these areas are you more likely to develop these behaviors or if it is an effect of the pornography itself – it’s very difficult to tell.”

UCLA psychologist Rory Reid, who was not involved in the study, told Lim that compulsive sexual behavior is defined as having an excessive preoccupation with sexual intercourse, and using it as a method of coping with stress or difficult experiences.

He called the Cambridge study a significant step forward in associating hypersexuality with addiction, noting that the MRI scans demonstrate that the brains of these individuals “confirm high sexual desire in regions we might expect.” However, he also pointed out that the study does not confirm whether or not sex is addictive, and if these particular individuals have such an addiction.

Additional evidence is required to answer those questions, Reid added. Likewise, Dr. Voon and her colleagues told Live Science that their findings must be replicated, and that further research will be required before compulsive sexual behavior can definitively be identified as an addiction or psychological disorder.

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

An in-depth comparison of the nutritional quality and safety of food production methods has revealed that organic crops contain more antioxidants, as well as fewer and less frequent pesticide-related residue.

Lead investigator Carlo Leifert, a professor at the Newcastle University School of Agriculture in the UK, and an international team of colleagues examined 343 peer-reviewed publications that compared the nutritional quality and safety of both organic and conventionally grown fruits, vegetables and grains.

The study authors conducted a meta-analysis of techniques to quantify differences between the two different types of food production, and most of the papers they reviewed looked at crops that had been grown in the same region using the same soil – reducing the amount of variables in terms of nutritional content and safety parameters.

Leifert’s team discovered there were multiple nutritional benefits associated with the methods used to produce crops. For instance, they said that a plant grown on a conventionally-managed field would typically be exposed to high levels of synthetic nitrogen, and would convert the additional resources into sugar and starch production.

When that occurs, the harvested portion of the plant is likely to contain lower amounts of antioxidants and other beneficial nutrients. In all, organic crops typically had between 18 percent and 69 percent higher antioxidant concentrations, and people who consume this type of food exclusively would receive an extra 20 percent to 40 percent of these nutrients – roughly equal to two additional daily servings of fruits or veggies.

[ Video: Major Study Documents Nutritional And Food Safety Benefits Of Organic Farming ]

In addition to learning there were nutritional and food safety benefits to organic farming. Leifert’s team also found that the quality and reliability of comparison studies on the topic had vastly improved over the past few years, leading to the discovery of significant differences in both categories that had gone undetected by earlier studies.

For instance, the meta-analysis included the results of a 2010 Washington State University project which compared conventional and organic strawberries grown in California. In a statement, the author of that study, John Reganold, said it was “impressive” and that the “major nutritional findings” were “similar to those reported” in his paper.

The study also found that, without being exposed to chemical pesticides, organic plants and crops tended to produce a greater amount of phenols and polyphenols in order to defend themselves from pest attacks. When consumed by people, phenols and polyphenols can help prevent coronary heart disease, stroke, some forms of cancer and other ailments that are at least partially the result of oxidative damage, the study authors explained.

Furthermore, pesticide residues were reportedly up to four times more likely in conventional foods than in organic ones, as the latter method does not allow synthetic pesticides to be applied to crops. Crops harvested from organically managed fields were not free of pesticides. They did occasionally contain residue, but at levels between 10-fold to 100-fold lower than the corresponding type of conventionally-grown fruits, vegetables or grains.

“In a surprising finding, the team concluded that conventional crops had roughly twice as much cadmium, a toxic heavy metal contaminant, as organic crops,” WSU explained. “The leading explanation is that certain fertilizers approved for use only on conventional farms somehow make cadmium more available to plant roots. A doubling of cadmium from food could push some individuals over safe daily intake levels.”

For the most part, however, WSU researcher and study co-author Charles Benbrook said that the study tells “a powerful story of how organic plant-based foods are nutritionally superior and deliver bona fide health benefits.” He added that he and his colleagues “learned valuable lessons from earlier reviews on this topic, and we benefited from the team’s remarkable breadth of scientific skills and experience.”

In a separate statement, Dr. Jessica Shade, Director of Science Programs for The Organic Center (TOC), said: “This is a ground-breaking study. This important research should help greatly to dispel consumer confusion about the benefits of organic. The nutritional differences between conventional and organic crops have always been a much debated topic. This significant study reevaluates the issue from a more inclusive, statistically accurate standpoint and strongly shows that organic fruits and vegetables have definite health benefits to conventionally grown products.”

The study results are scheduled to be published in the British Journal of Nutrition (available free of charge) on July 15, 2014.

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Rebekah Eliason for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Around the globe, health conscious people have sought out antioxidant supplements and eaten diets rich in antioxidants for decades in an attempt to live healthy lives for a long time. Surprisingly, recent clinical trials have dashed the hopes of people taking antioxidant supplements to reduce the risk of cancer.

In almost all antioxidant trials, there have been no protective effects against cancer. Among several of the trials, researchers found a link between the supplements and an increased risk of certain types of cancer. One specific trial found that smokers who take extra beta-carotene increased their risk of lung cancer instead of lowering the risk.

The authors proposed in a brief paper why antioxidant supplements might not reduce the development of cancer and why they actually seem to be harmful.

The team’s discoveries are based on recent information about the understanding of the system in our cells that works to naturally balance between oxidizing and anti-oxidizing compounds. These chemical compounds are involved in a reaction known as redox, which are essential to cellular chemistry.

Within cells, essential oxidants such as hydrogen peroxide are manufactured. It is understood that in large quantities oxidants are toxic, but cells naturally create their own antioxidants to neutralize them and keep the balance. Many people decided to give the body a boost in this process by taking lots of antioxidants to counter the toxic effects of hydrogen peroxide and other “reactive oxygen species,” or ROS, as they are called by scientists. Since cancer cells are known to generate higher ROS levels to feed their growth, people were all the more anxious to help the body neutralize the toxic species.

Study leaders David Tuveson, MD, PhD, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor and Director of Research for the Lustgarten Foundation, and Navdeep S. Chandel, PhD, suggest that taking pills or eating antioxidant foods are ineffective because they do not reach the critical site in cells where the tumor-promoting ROS are produced. Instead, supplements and dietary antioxidants will accumulate in other areas of the cell, “leaving tumor-promoting ROS relatively unperturbed,” the researchers say.

In cancer cells, quantities of both ROS and natural antioxidants are higher. Higher levels of antioxidants are a natural defense by cancer cells to keep high oxidant levels in check to enable continued growth. In fact, say Tuveson and Chandel, therapies that raise the levels of oxidants in cells may be beneficial, whereas those that act as antioxidants may further stimulate the cancer cells. Radiating actually kills cancer cells by dramatically raising oxidant levels. Chemotherapeutic drugs actually work the same way by killing tumor cells from oxidation.

The authors then suggest in an interesting paradox that, “genetic or pharmacologic inhibition of antioxidant proteins,” which is a concept that has been successfully tested in models of rodent lung and pancreatic cancers, might be a helpful therapeutic approach in humans. The authors say the key is to identify the antioxidant proteins and pathways used only by cancer cells and not healthy cells. If antioxidant production is impeded in healthy cells, the delicate redox balance of normal cellular function will be destroyed.

In further research, the authors propose to profile antioxidant pathways in tumor and adjacent normal cells in hopes of identifying possible therapeutic targets.

This study was published July 10, 2014 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

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Rebekah Eliason for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

According to a new study, as daily temperatures rise, more patients seek treatment for kidney stones. The research team discovered among several US cities with varying climates there is a correlation between hot days and kidney stones in 60,000 people.

“We found that as daily temperatures rise, there is a rapid increase in the probability of patients presenting over the next 20 days with kidney stones,” said study leader Gregory E. Tasian, MD, MSc, MSCE, a pediatric urologist and epidemiologist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), who is on the staff of the Hospital’s Kidney Stone Center as well as the Hospital’s Center for Pediatric Clinical Effectiveness (CPCE).

The research team analyzed medical records of both adults and children with kidney stones. Over 60,000 records between the years of 2005 and 2011 were studied along with weather reports in each patient’s area. The team reviewed patient data from Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

As the mean daily temperatures rose above 50 F (10 C), the team discovered the risk of kidney stones increased in every city except Los Angeles. There was only a short delay between high daily temperature and kidney stone presentation. Within three days of hot day exposure, the level of kidney stones peaked.

“These findings point to potential public health effects associated with global climate change,” said Tasian.

“However,” he cautions, “although 11 percent of the U.S. population has had kidney stones, most people have not. It is likely that higher temperatures increase the risk of kidney stones in those people predisposed to stone formation.”

Since higher temperatures lead to dehydration, during hot days there are higher levels of calcium and other minerals that lead to the growth of kidneys stones present in people’s urine.

Approximately half a million patients each year in the US seek help in the emergency room for this painful condition. Over the past three decades, the amount of patients with kidney stones has markedly increased. The condition is more common in adults, but the amount of children developing kidney stones in the last 25 years has also dramatically increased. Currently the factors causing the rise in kidney stones are unknown, but suggested theories include changes in diet and fluid intake. If stones do not pass by themselves, surgery becomes necessary.

Additionally, the team discovered that in three cities — Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia — extremely low outdoor temperatures also increased the number of kidney stones. According to the authors, this may be a result of people staying indoors among warmer temperatures, diet changes and decreased physical activity.

Tasian added that while the five US cities have climates representative of those found throughout the world, future studies should explore how generalizable the current findings are.

Other studies should analyze how risk patterns vary in different populations, including among children, represented by a small sample size in the current study.

In addition to analyzing kidney stones, this study was intended to see how patterns of global warming affect health. “Kidney stone prevalence has already been on the rise over the last 30 years, and we can expect this trend to continue, both in greater numbers and over a broader geographic area, as daily temperatures increase,” concluded Tasian. “With some experts predicting that extreme temperatures will become the norm in 30 years, children will bear the brunt of climate change.”

This study was published in Environmental Health Perspectives.

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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
While YouTube might be a popular destination for viral videos and sports highlight reels, it’s also useful for raising awareness of skin cancer and prevention techniques, according to a news report in the Dermatology Online Journal.
“No matter what field you’re in, social media is the future of how we communicate around the world,” said study author Chante Karimkhani, a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado’s Cancer Center.
The researchers investigated YouTube search terms related to dermatology such as “sun protection, skin cancer, skin cancer awareness, and skin conditions.” Results included 100 videos having a collective 47 million views. The video clips were shared more than 100,000 times and drove over 6,300 subscriptions to distinct YouTube channels.
For instance, of the videos for “skin cancer,” 25 percent were academic and a different 25 percent were what the scientists described as “complementary and alternative medicine videos.” Overall, just 35 percent of videos across all dermatology search terms we uploaded by or included a biomedical expert.
The CU researchers said these results indicate a new chance to spread research straight to the public.
“It used to be that researchers and journals depended on independent media to interpret their findings for the public. It could be a little like a game of telephone,” Karimkhani said. “Now through social media, journals can have their own presence – their own mouthpiece directly to the public that may include patients or health care providers or even other researchers.”
The research pointed to the tanning industry’s presence on YouTube and suggested that viewers should be interested in dermatology issues as well.
The scientists said that as more academic institutions, scientists and journals acknowledge the promise and take on the challenge of social media, data straight from these reputable and well-meaning sources could possibly modify the popular conversation.
The need for greater education was on full display last month when dermatologists conducted more than 710 skin cancer screenings at the Aspen Ideas Festival (AIF) and found 190 precancerous lesions, 80 atypical moles and 89 potential non-melanoma skin cancers.
Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, which sent the dermatologists, said the festival made for the ideal screening location, given its given high altitude, thinner atmosphere, and higher levels of UV radiation.
“Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the world, but also one of the most preventable and treatable forms,” said Dr. Mark Lebwohl, chairman of the department of dermatology in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “When caught early the cure rate is nearly 100 percent. In addition, our department is working on innovations that we hope will identify skin cancers earlier and treat them more effectively.”
“A lot of people said they haven’t been screened in years, which was surprising because some had a family history of melanoma,” said Dr. Rita Linker, who participated in the screenings and found one potential melanoma. “I was also surprised about the amount of sun damage among young people.”

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Just over a year ago I reported on the announcement of the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, the scientific cousin to the wildly successful Human Genome Project.

In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama announced the new study saying, “Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy – every dollar. Today our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s. They’re developing drugs to regenerate damaged organs, devising new materials to make batteries 10 times more powerful. Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation.”

A year after the ambitious announcement, redOrbit detailed some of the early work already commencing in the field of anxiety and depression and how the work being done will be aimed initially at helping members of our armed services who have returned from battle theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injuries (TBI).

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the arm of the government tasked with identifying academic and private institutions currently working on research projects that can further the BRAIN Initiative. This week DARPA announced they have awarded funding to two more universities to aid them in launching their programs for restoring active memory. This latest program is called ‘Restoring Active Memory’ (RAM).

According to a statement by DARPA, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) will serve as leaders of a multidisciplinary team tasked with developing and testing electronic interfaces that can sense memory deficits as a result of an injury. The devices are also intended and expected to help restore normal brain function to the affected area.

Funding in the amounts of $15 million and $22.5 million will be granted to UCLA and Penn, respectively. The full funding, over a four year time period, will be contingent upon both institutions consistently meeting a series of technical milestones. An additional $2.5 million grant has been earmarked for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the development of an implantable neural device. This device is intended as a supplement to the UCLA-led effort.

“The start of the Restoring Active Memory program marks an exciting opportunity to reveal many new aspects of human memory and learn about the brain in ways that were never before possible,” said DARPA Program Manager Justin Sanchez. “Anyone who has witnessed the effects of memory loss in another person knows its toll and how few options are available to treat it. We’re going to apply the knowledge and understanding gained in RAM to develop new options for treatment through technology.”

As mentioned above, much of the initial benefit is aimed at returning servicemembers who have suffered one form or another of a TBI. However, this injury affects more than just those coming home from the war fronts. It is estimated that as many as 1.7 million US civilians also suffer from a TBI. The condition frequently results in a reduced capacity to form or retain new memories following the injury as well as causing difficulty in retrieving memories formed prior to the incident.

Caretakers recognize the insidious nature of TBIs and frequently lament the fact that there are currently no effective therapies in existence to alleviate or mitigate the long-term consequences. DARPA hopes the RAM program will be the necessary driver for the future development of TBI focused technologies.

“We owe it to our servicemembers to accelerate research that can minimize the long-term impacts of their injuries,” Sanchez said. “Despite increasingly aggressive prevention efforts, traumatic brain injury remains a serious problem in military and civilian sectors. Through the Restoring Active Memory program, DARPA aims to better understand the underlying neurological basis of memory loss and speed the development of innovative therapies.”

The goal of the RAM program, specifically, is to develop and test wireless, fully implantable neural-interface medical devices that can be used as “neuroprosthetics.” These devices will serve as a sort of bridge across the TBI induced gaps that interfere with an individual’s ability to encode new memories and retrieve old ones.

The UCLA team will focus on a region of the brain known as the entorhinal area. Previous research done at the university showed human memory could be facilitated by stimulating this portion of the brain, known to be involved in both learning and memory. This region, considered by neuroscientists to be the front door to the hippocampus, is integral in helping situations encountered in one’s day-to-day become lasting memories.

On the other side of the country, the Penn team’s approach will be based on the understanding that memory is the result of complex interactions among multiple regions of the brain. This group of researchers will record the neural activity of patients who have already had electrodes implanted in multiple areas of the brain. The neural activity will be captured as the participants play computer-based memory games. The team will measure the biomarkers of successful memory function – patterns of activity that accompany the successful formation of new memories and the successful retrieval of old ones. This early work by the Penn team will lead to a better understanding of the brain and how brain stimulation therapy can possibly aid in restoring normal brain function following injury or the onset of a neuropsychological illness, like Alzheimer’s disease.

The RAM program, in addition to its human trials, will also support animal studies meant to advance the state-of-the-art quantitative models that currently account for the encoding and retrieval of complex memories and memory attributes.

DARPAs neuroscience efforts in the BRAIN Initiative, of which RAM is a part, are informed by members of an independent ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) panel. This panel is employed as a means of oversight to supplement the existing institutional review boards present on the research lead’s campuses that govern human clinical studies and animal use.

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Australian researchers reveal that sudden, acute episodes of low back pain are not linked to weather conditions such as temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind direction and precipitation. Findings published in Arthritis Care & Research, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), indicate that the risk of low back pain slightly increases with higher wind speed or wind gusts, but was not clinically significant.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) nearly everyone experiences low back pain at some point in their life, making it the most prevalent musculoskeletal condition and affecting up to 33% of the world population at any given time. Those with musculoskeletal (bone, muscle, ligament, tendon, and nerve) pain report that their symptoms are influenced by the weather. Previous studies have shown that cold or humid weather, and changes in the weather increase symptoms in patients with chronic pain conditions.
“Many patients believe that weather impacts their pain symptoms,” explains Dr. Daniel Steffens with the George Institute for Global Health at the University of Sydney, Australia. “However, there are few robust studies investigating weather and pain, specifically research that does not rely on patient recall of the weather.”
For the present case-crossover study 993 patients seen at primary care clinics in Sydney were recruited between October 2011 and November 2012. Weather data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology were sourced for the duration of the study period. Researchers compared the weather at the time patients first noticed back pain (case window) with weather conditions one week and one month before the onset of pain (control windows).
Results showed no association between back pain and temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind direction or precipitation. However, higher wind speed and wind gusts did slightly increase the chances of lower back pain, but the amount of increase was not clinically important.
“Our findings refute previously held beliefs that certain common weather conditions increase risk of lower back pain,” concludes Dr. Steffens. “Further investigation of the influence of weather parameters on symptoms associated with specific diseases such as fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, and osteoarthritis are needed.”

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Smallpox is a deadly virus that was all but wiped off the face of the Earth in the late 1970s, but on Tuesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that random bottles of smallpox were found in at a federal lab near Washington, DC. This is the second such announcement within the past month.

In a statement, the CDC said that its employees had stumbled upon “vials labeled ‘variola,’ commonly known as smallpox, in an unused portion of a storage room in a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) laboratory.”

The six vials appeared intact, sealed with melted glass and holding freeze-dried smallpox virus. There was no evidence that lab workers or the larger public are at risk, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner told Reuters.

“The vials appear to date from the 1950s,” the CDC statement continued. “Upon discovery, the vials were immediately secured in a CDC-registered select agent containment laboratory in Bethesda, [Maryland].”

The recent discovery follows an incident involving the CDC possibly sending live anthrax specimens to a CDC lab that was ill-prepared to deal with them, potentially subjecting dozens of staff to the pathogen.

Skinner told Reuters that the discovered smallpox vials will be tested to see if the virus is alive and dangerous. After the tests, which may take up to 14 days, the samples will likely be destroyed, he added.

Smallpox has essentially been wiped out for the past 35 years, but the CDC keeps samples of the virus that causes it for research at its facility in Atlanta. Samples of the pathogen are also kept at the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk, Russia.

The CDC said it had notified the World Health Organization about the discovery and invited the international organization to observe the destruction of the old specimens.

In April, an investigation into smallpox epidemics revealed that children born during them are more resistant to other pathogens later in life.

In the study, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Germany found children who were conceived during the wave of measles that hit the Canadian province of Quebec in 1714 and 1715 died significantly less often from smallpox 15 years on compared to children who had been conceived before the measles epidemic.

“We have proved that parents can essentially prepare their children for future diseases,” said study author Kai Willführ, a bio-demographer at Max Planck. “The underlying mechanism is not purely genetic, nor is the children’s resistance restricted to single pathogens.”

Past research has referred to this a “functional trans-generational effect.” Parents who encountered an increased disease load during conception gave their children protection against the encountered infection, as well as against different illnesses.

“The way children’s bodies fight diseases seems to be optimized for a world with high pathogen load if it was also high at conception,” Willführ said. “It was only during conception and pregnancy that measles could have given an advantage that parents passed on to the next generation.”

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
One of the hardest parts of new parenthood is never getting enough sleep. Once an hour, every night, the baby cries out for food, comfort, or to be cleaned. Most new parents report feeling more exhausted in the morning than they did the night before.
Professor Avi Sadeh led a team of researchers from Tel Aviv University’s (TAU) School of Psychological Sciences to conduct the first study to examine why interrupted sleep can be as physically detrimental as no sleep. The findings, reported in Sleep Medicine, reveal a causal link between interrupted sleep patterns and many negative effects, including compromised cognitive abilities, shortened attention spans, and negative moods. The team, which included Michal Kahn, Shimrit Fridenson, Reut Lerer, and Yair Ben-Haim, found that interrupted sleep is equivalent to no more than four consecutive hours of sleep.
“The sleep of many parents is often disrupted by external sources such as a crying baby demanding care during the night. Doctors on call, who may receive several phone calls a night, also experience disruptions,” said Prof. Sadeh. “These night wakings could be relatively short — only five to ten minutes — but they disrupt the natural sleep rhythm. The impact of such night wakings on an individual’s daytime alertness, mood, and cognitive abilities had never been studied. Our study is the first to demonstrate seriously deleterious cognitive and emotional effects.”
“In the process of advising these parents, it struck me that the role of multiple night wakings had never been systematically assessed,” said Prof. Sadeh, who directs a sleep clinic at TAU. Professor Sadeh advises exhausted and desperate parents on how to cope with their children’s persistent night wakings. “Many previous studies had shown an association, but none had established a causal link. Our study demonstrates that induced night wakings, in otherwise normal individuals, clearly lead to compromised attention and negative mood.”
Student volunteers at TAU’s School of Psychological Sciences participated in the study, where their sleep patterns were monitored at home using wristwatch-like devices. The devices detected both sleep and wake states. First, the students slept a full eight-hour night. The second night, they were awakened four times by phone calls. After each call, they had to complete a small computer task before returning to bed after 10-15 minutes of wakefulness. Following each night, the students were asked to complete certain computer tasks to assess alertness and attention. They also completed a questionnaire to assess their mood. Even after only one night of interruptions, the research team found a direct correlation between compromised attention, negative mood, and disrupted sleep.
“Our study shows the impact of only one disrupted night,” said Prof. Sadeh. “But we know that these effects accumulate and therefore the functional price new parents — who awaken three to ten times a night for months on end — pay for common infant sleep disturbance is enormous. Besides the physical effects of interrupted sleep, parents often develop feelings of anger toward their infants and then feel guilty about these negative feelings.”
“Sleep research has focused in the last 50 years on sleep deprivation, and practically ignored the impact of night-wakings, which is a pervasive phenomenon for people from many walks of life. I hope that our study will bring this to the attention of scientists and clinicians, who should recognize the price paid by individuals who have to endure frequent night-wakings.”
The team is continuing their research by investigating interventions for infant sleep disturbances to decrease the detrimental effects on parents.
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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Eating healthy, being physically active, limiting alcohol consumption and avoiding cigarettes could add 10 years to your life, public health physicians from the University of Zurich report in what is being called the first study to ever investigate the impact of behavioral factors on life expectancy in numbers.

Writing in a recent edition of the journal Preventive Medicine, lead author Eva Martin-Diener of the university’s Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM) and his colleagues examined the impact of the World Health Organization’s four behavioral risk factors for non-communicable diseases on a person’s life expectancy.

Each of the factors (smoking, alcohol, poor diet and inactivity) were analyzed both individually and combined, allowing them for the first time to depict the consequences of an unhealthy in numbers. The study authors looked at over 16,000 individuals who participated in two Swiss population studies from between 1977 and 1993, assessing smoking status, alcohol consumption, physical activity level and diet at baseline.

They discovered that a person who smokes, drinks a lot, tends to be physically inactive and has an unhealthy diet has a mortality rate that is 2.5 times higher in epidemiological terms than a person who is health-conscious, the authors said. In fact, a healthy lifestyle “can help you stay ten years’ younger,” Martin-Diener said in a statement.

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She and her fellow investigators used information from the Swiss National Cohort (SNC) for their research, and focused their efforts on cardiovascular diseases and cancer, which are the primary causes of death in Switzerland. They then correlated data on tobacco use, fruit consumption, exercise and alcohol consumption from 16,721 individuals between the ages of 16 and 90, tracking corresponding deaths through the year 2008.

The effect of the four types of behavior was still visible when biological risk factors such as weight and blood pressure were accounted for, the study authors noted. Hazard ratios for the combination of all factors combined ranged from zero to 2.41 (1.99–2.93) in men and 2.46 (1.88–3.22) in women.

Furthermore, for 65-year-old men, the probability for surviving the next 10 years was 86 percent for those with no other risk factors and 67 percent for those with all four. For women, the numbers were 90 percent and 77 percent, respectively. In 75-year-olds, the probabilities were 67 percent and 35 percent in men, and 74 percent and 47 percent in women.

“The effect of each individual factor on life expectancy is relatively high,” said Martin-Diener. Of the four, however, smoking appeared to be the most harmful. When compared to a group of non-smokers, tobacco users have a 57 percent increased risk of premature death, while each of the other four factors (unhealthy diet, lack of exercise and alcohol abuse) resulted in an elevated mortality risk of approximately 15 percent per factor.

“We were very surprised by the 2.5 fold higher risk when all four risk factors are combined,” added fellow investigator and ISPM colleague Brian Martin. The research was financially sponsored by the Swiss Heart Foundation and the Swiss Cancer League.

Image 2 (below): Charts for probabilities of surviving the next 10 years for 65 and 75-year-olds with differing health behaviour. Legend: e. g. box top right: a 75-year-old man today who at the start of the study smoked, drank a lot and hardly ate any fruit has a 35 percent probability of surviving the next ten years. E. g. box bottom left: a 65-year-old woman with positive health behaviour in all four areas has a 90 percent probability of still being alive in ten years’ time. Credit: Preventive Medicine/UZH

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Chobani yogurt recalled in September 2013 was found to contain the most virulent form of a fungus called Mucor circinelloides, according to a new research paper published in the journal mBio.
The fungus is associated with infections in immune-compromised people and has been known to survive in mice, which spread the fungus via feces for as long as 10 days after ingestion.
“Typically when people think about food-borne pathogens, they think about viruses or bacteria, they don’t think of fungi,” said study author Soo Chan Lee, a senior research associate at Duke University. “Our research suggests it may be time to think about fungal pathogens and develop good regulations to test them in manufacturing facilities.”
The study was based on a single case, a Texas couple who became ill after eating a casserole made with the recalled product. The couple said the casserole had been cooked for over 30 minutes at 350 degrees F. They both said they had diarrhea and the man said he also vomited after eating the casserole again.
The study tested the couple’s tub of plain yogurt that had been stored in their fridge at 37 degrees F, yet had half-inch to one-inch colonies growing on its surface. After using DNA barcoding technology, the team was able to identify its exact subspecies – the most virulent strain, Mucor circinelloides forma circinelloides (Mcc).
“There are three closely related species, and one of them we typically find infecting humans,” said study author Joseph Heitman, a professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke. “There was some chance that this yogurt isolate would be the human pathogenic form, and we found that it was.”
To assess the virulence of the strain, the team injected spores from the fungus into mice via their tail vein, they discovered it produced a deadly infection in four out of five diabetic mice, chosen as a model for the system of immune-compromised humans. However, when mice were given spores by mouth, it resulted in serious weight loss in only one out of five cases.
The researchers also found that the fungus survived passage through the gastrointestinal tract of the mice, suggesting it could opportunistically colonize an immune-compromised host.
“We still don’t know if the fungus is infecting the gastrointestinal tract, or if it is producing some sort of toxin that makes people sick,” Heitman said.
The scientists sequenced the complete genome of the fungus to check for clusters of genes that could create toxic molecules called secondary metabolites. Even though they uncovered a quantity of candidates, the team wasn’t certain if the fungus is making any toxins that could clarify the symptoms felt by people who consumed the contaminated yogurt.
The team also tested 16 other samples of Chobani yogurt and did not find Mucor circinelloides in any of them. The scientists asked the FDA for more data on its analyses of the recalled product or access to the samples the agency had acquired. The agency denied their requests.
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Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe online

Ask any emergency room nurse or doctor and they will tell you that the effect on human behavior of a full moon cannot be denied. Besides anecdotal accounts of general human lunacy when the moon looms large in the night sky, there has been murmurs for some time in the scientific community that the Earth’s natural satellite also affects our sleep. All studies thus far have been inconclusive.

As reported in Time Magazine and other outlets last year, researchers from the University of Basel, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Switzerland Center for Sleep Medicine conducted a study in 2000 that followed 33 volunteers over a period of three years in intermittent sleep lab study. Data variables collected in the study included brain wave activity during sleep, melatonin levels of the participants and the amount of time it took each individual to fall asleep and remain in a state of deep sleep. The original purpose of the study was intended simply to learn more about general human sleep patterns as they pertained to both age and gender.

What made last year’s revelation interesting was that the Swiss researchers revisited the collected data to explain how the moon played a role in human sleep patterns. Their new findings showed people average as much as 20 minutes less sleep on nights with a full moon. Additionally, achieving sleep takes five minutes longer than normal and once asleep people tend to enjoy 30 minutes more REM sleep. The Swiss study’s new results were published in the journal Current Biology.

In that journal paper, the researchers rather remarkably explained, “The aim of exploring the influence of different lunar phases on sleep regulation was never a priori [sic] hypothesized. We just thought of it after a drink in a local bar one evening at full moon.”

That interesting admission led researchers from the University of Gothenburg’s Sahlgrenska Academy to build on the original work reported last year. It must be pointed out that, with the Swiss exception, many studies have previously been undertaken with the goal of either proving or disproving any correlation between sleep and the lunar cycle. One large study at the Max Planck Institute analyzed data from more than 1,000 people over 26,000 nights of sleep, only to arrive at the conclusion that there was no correlation.

This is where Michael Smith and his fellow researchers at Gothenburg step in. The team analyzed data collected in a previous study that focused on a cohort of 47 healthy 18- to 30-year-olds. Their findings, published also in the journal Current Biology, support the theory that a correlation between the lunar cycle and sleep patterns does, in fact, exist. Their paper is entitled ‘Human sleep and cortical reactivity are influenced by lunar phase.’

“Our study generated findings similar to the Swiss project,” Smith says. “Subjects slept an average of 20 minutes less and had more trouble falling asleep during the full moon phase. However, the greatest impact on REM sleep appeared to be during the new moon.”

Much like the Swiss study, Smith and his team began their study looking not at the moon but in a completely different direction. “The purpose of our original study was to examine the way that noise disturbs sleep,” Smith noted. “Re-analysis of our data showed that sensitivity, measured as reactivity of the cerebral cortex, is greatest during the full moon.”

As their findings explain, greater cortical reactivity was found in both men and women. However, only men had a discernible amount of trouble falling asleep when the moon was full. Additionally, men slept less than the women studied. Skeptics in the scientific community are quick to note that the study might be wrought with error due to issues of both age and gender differences. They also highlight more subtle factors like the physical condition of the individual participants and exposure to light during the day may also be variables that were not properly accounted for.

Fully aware of the points made by skeptics in the community, Smith believes the results of his study should be considered for more intensive future study.

“The rooms in our sleep laboratories do not have any windows,” he explains. “So the effect we found cannot be attributable to increased nocturnal light during full moon. Thus, there may be a built-in biological clock that is affected by the moon, similar to the one that regulates the circadian rhythm.”

“But all this is mere speculation – additionally, more highly controlled studies that target these mechanisms are needed before more definitive conclusions can be drawn,” Smith concludes.

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April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

More people are turning to Internet sources for medical advice and information, and that includes pregnant women. A research team from Penn State found that pregnant women are unhappy with how often they turn to online sites with their medical questions. The study findings were published in a recent issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

“We found that first-time moms were upset that their first prenatal visit did not occur until eight weeks into pregnancy,” said Jennifer L. Kraschnewski, assistant professor of medicine and public health sciences, Penn State College of Medicine. “These women reported using Google and other search engines because they had a lot of questions at the beginning of pregnancy, before their first doctor’s appointment.”

The researchers found that many women, even following their first visit to the obstetrician, returned to search engines and social media to find answers to their questions. These women felt like the literature provided by their doctor’s office was insufficient. The team reports that the structure of prenatal care in the US has changed very little in the last 100 years, despite the rapid evolution of technology.

The original focus of the study was to gather information for the development of a smartphone app for women to use during pregnancy. The discovery that a majority of women were dissatisfied with the structure of their prenatal care was an incidental outcome of that research.

Four focus groups, made up of a total of 17 pregnant women over the age of 18 who owned smartphones, were conducted by the research team. Most of the participants agreed that they turned to technology to fill their knowledge gaps about pregnancy because they were dissatisfied with the structure of prenatal visits—saying the visits were not responsive to their individual needs. The women were not satisfied with the questionable accuracy of the online information, either.

The information disseminated by the doctors’ offices were considered to be outdated to the participants. They would prefer to receive their information in different formats than pamphlets, flyers and books. Instead, they would rather watch videos and use social media and pregnancy-tracking apps and websites.

“This research is important because we don’t have a very good handle on what tools pregnant women are using and how they engage with technology,” said Kraschnewski, also an affiliate of the Penn State Institute for Diabetes and Obesity. “We have found that there is a real disconnect between what we’re providing in the office and what the patient wants.”

Kraschnewski stresses that regulation of medical information on the Internet is nearly non-existent. This could become problematic by alarming patients unnecessarily. According to a 2008 study, less than four percent of the millions of websites that surface when searching for common pregnancy terms were created or sponsored by doctors.

“Moving forward, in providing medical care we need to figure out how we can provide valid information to patients,” said Kraschnewski. “We need to find sound resources on the Internet or develop our own sources.”

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Karolinska Institutet
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have headed a study that has provided new knowledge about the EphA2 receptor, which is significant in several forms of cancer. This is important knowledge in itself – but just as important is how this study, which is published in the highly respected journal Nature Methods today, was conducted. The researchers used the method of DNA origami, in which a DNA molecule is shaped into a nanostructure, and used these structures to test theories about cell signalling.
It was previously known that the EphA2 receptor played a part in several forms of cancer, such as breast cancer. The ligand, i.e., the protein that communicates with the receptor, is known as an ephrin molecule. Researchers have had a hypothesis that the distance between different ligands – in this case the distance between ephrin molecules – affects the level of activity in the communicating receptor of the adjacent cells.
The Swedish researchers set out to test this hypothesis. They used DNA building blocks to form a stable rod. This has then been used as a very accurate measure of the distance between molecules.
“We use DNA as the construction material for a tool that we can experiment with”, says Björn Högberg, principal investigator at the Department of Neuroscience. “The genetic code of the DNA in these structures is less important in this case.”
The researchers attached proteins, or ephrins, to the DNA rod at various intervals, for example 40 or 100 nanometers apart. The DNA rods were then placed in a solution containing breast cancer cells. In the next step, the researchers looked at how active EphA2 was in these cancer cells.
It turned out that if the ephrin molecules were placed close together on the DNA rod, the receptor in question became more active in the cancer cells, and the cells also became less invasive in respect of the surrounding cells, which could be an indication that they became less prone to metastasis. This was true even though the amount of protein was the same throughout the experiments, i.e., the number of attached molecules remained the same.
“For the very first time, we have been able to prove this hypothesis: the activity of EphA2 is influenced by how closely spaced the ligands are on the surrounding cells,” says Björn Högberg. “This is an important result in itself, but the point of our study is also that we have developed a method for examining how cells react to nearby cells in a controlled environment, using our custom DNA nano-calipers.”
The researchers describe the cell communication as a form of Braille, where the cells somehow sense the protein patterns of nearby cells, and where the important thing is not only the amount of proteins, but to a great extent the distance between them as well. This study found that a cluster of proteins would communicate more actively than sparsely spaced proteins, even if the concentration was the same.
“This is a model that can help us learn more about the importance of the spatial organization of proteins in the cell membrane to how cells communicate with each other, something that will hopefully pave the way for a brand new approach to pharmaceuticals in the long term,” says Ana Teixeira, a principal investigator at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology . “Today, the function of the pharmaceuticals is often to completely block proteins or receptors, but it is possible that we should rather look at the proteins in their biological context, where the clustering and placement of various proteins are relevant factors for the effect of a drug. This is probably an area where there is important knowledge to obtain, and this is a way of doing it.”
The study is financed by funds from the Swedish Research Council, the Strategic Research Program in Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine (StratRegen) at Karolinska Institutet, Vinnova, Carl Bennet AB.

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe online

Last month, redOrbit reported on the breakdown of alcohol consumption on a state-by-state and city-by-city level and discovered some very interesting and unexpected statistics. That study was based on data collected from the personal breathalyzer product put out by San Francisco-based BACTrack.

That study was only possible because each participant, individuals who had purchased the BACTrack product and linked it to their geo-enabled cellphone, had already consumed alcoholic beverages. A new alcohol calculation tool has recently been unveiled by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which aims to educate drinkers on the alcoholic content and strengths of their preferred beverages before imbibing.

India’s Zee News, reporting on the new effort by the NIAAA, pointed out the calculator is “supposed to be used as an educational guide only, and consumers should be aware that bars and restaurants will have slightly different recipes for making the cocktails that the calculator presents.” This is important to keep in mind for the frequent or even casual drinker who repeatedly visits the same watering hole. Chances are if your bartender recognizes you they pour with a heavier hand.

According to the NIAAA’s own site, everyone going out for happy hour or a night out on the town are urged to practice restraint, limiting themselves to no more than one standard drink per hour. “Note that it takes about two hours for the adult body to completely break down a single drink,” the site cautions. “Stay within low-risk levels: For men, no more than four standard drinks on any day (and 14 per week), and for women, no more than three on any day (and 7 per week).”

Why the disparity between consumption models for men and women? Well, according to drinksmarter.org, the physical differences between men and women are significant enough that alcohol affects women far faster than it does men. For instance, on average, healthy women have approximately 10 percent more body fat than men. Alcohol cannot be absorbed by body fat which means the effects of alcohol are considerably more concentrated as they surge through a typically smaller system.

While arguments could certainly be made for the deleterious health effects of alcohol consumption, such as liver damage, weight gain, long-term brain impairment and depression among many others, perhaps one very important benefit from better understanding the judgment-impairing beverage you are about to consume would be a decrease in the amount of drinkers who choose to drive drunk or even mildly impaired. According to MADD.org, statistics for the most recent period available showed a national increase in drunk driving deaths on American roads and highways between 2011 and 2012 of 4.6 percent.

The NIAAA developed their alcohol content calculation tool, I’m certain, with the best of intentions. However, after toying with it for just a few moments, it really felt more a novelty than a tool that will be able to effectively educate drinkers to modify their habits and moderate their overall intake. Perhaps information gleaned from the tool will help those who were previously unaware of just how much they were imbibing.

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Canadian Medical Association Journal

Obesity, especially excessive belly fat, is a risk factor for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).

Excessive belly fat and low physical activity are linked to progression of the disease in people with COPD, but it is not known whether these modifiable factors are linked to new cases.

A team of researchers in Germany and the United States looked at the relationship of waist and hip circumference, body mass index (BMI) and physical activity levels to new cases of COPD in a large group of men and women in the US. They looked at data on 113,279 people between the ages of 50 and 70 years who did not have COPD, cancer or heart disease at the beginning of the study (1995). During the 10-year follow-up period, COPD developed in 3648 people. People with large waist circumference (110 cm or over in women and 118 cm or over in men) had a 72% increased risk of COPD.

“We observed a stronger positive relation with abdominal body fat than with total body fat and COPD,” writes Dr. Gundula Behrens, Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany, with coauthors. “In particular, overweight as measured by BMI emerged as a significant predictor of increased risk of COPD only among those with a large waist circumference.”

A large waist was a robust predictor of COPD in smokers as well as in people who had never smoked.

Pollution, smoking and toxic particles in workplace dust are thought to cause COPD through chronic inflammation and impaired ability to heal injury to the lungs. “Increased local, abdominal and overall fat depots increase local and systemic inflammation, thus potentially stimulating COPD-related processes in the lung,” write the authors.

People with a large hip circumference and who were physically active at least 5 times a week were 29% less likely to experience COPD. Exercise can reduce inflammation, oxidative stress and enhance healing.

Underweight people had a 56% increased risk of COPD. Possible reasons include malnutrition and reduced muscle mass leading to increased COPD susceptibility and progression through inflammatory processes and impaired lung repair capacity.

“Our findings suggest that next to smoking cessation and the prevention of smoking initiation, meeting guidelines for body weight, body shape and physical activity level may represent important individual and public health opportunities to decrease the risk of COPD. Physicians should encourage their patients to adhere to these guidelines as a means of preventing chronic diseases in general and possibly COPD in particular,” conclude the authors.

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University of Oxford

Poor nutrition and health, not race or ethnicity, cause most of the current wide disparities in fetal growth and newborn size

Babies’ growth in the womb and their size at birth, especially their length, are strikingly similar the world over – when babies are born to healthy, well-educated and well-nourished mothers.

That’s the finding of a landmark international study, INTERGROWTH-21st, led by Oxford University researchers, which involved almost 60,000 pregnancies in eight defined urban areas in Brazil, China, India, Italy, Kenya, Oman, the UK and USA.

Worldwide there are wide disparities in the average size of babies at birth. This has significant consequences for future health, as small for gestational age babies who are already undernourished at birth often face severe short- and long-term health consequences.

It has previously been suggested that ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ are largely responsible for differences in the size of babies born in different populations and countries. These new results show that race and ethnicity are not the primary factors. What matters more is the educational, health and nutritional status of the mothers, and care provided during pregnancy.

The researchers carried out ultrasound scans from early pregnancy to delivery to measure babies’ bone growth in the womb, using identical methods in all countries and the same ultrasound machines provided by Philips Healthcare. They also measured the length and head circumference of all babies at birth.

They have demonstrated that if mothers’ educational, health and nutritional status and care during pregnancy are equally good, babies will have equal chances of healthy growth in the womb and future good health.

The researchers report their findings in The Lancet, Diabetes & Endocrinology. They were funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“Currently we are not all equal at birth. But we can be,” said the lead author Professor Jose Villar of the Nuffield Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, University of Oxford. “We can create a similar start for all by making sure mothers are well educated and nourished, by treating infection and by providing adequate antenatal care.

“Don’t tell us nothing can be done. Don’t say that women in some parts of the world have small children because they are predestined to do so. It’s simply not true.”

Key points

• The study involved almost 60,000 pregnancies in eight defined urban areas in Brazil, China, India, Italy, Kenya, Oman, the UK and USA.
• Babies’ bone growth in the womb and their length and head circumference at birth are strikingly similar the world over – when babies are born to educated, healthy and well-nourished mothers.
• Overall, no more than 4% of the total difference in fetal growth and birth size could be attributed to differences between the eight populations in the study.
• Improving the education, health and nutrition of mothers everywhere will boost the health of their babies throughout life within the next generation.
• Results are in complete agreement with the previous WHO study using the same methodology from birth to 5 years of age.

In 2010, an estimated 32.4 million babies were born already undernourished in low- and middle-income countries, which represents 27% of all live births globally. This is closely associated with illness and death in infancy and childhood. Small size at birth has an impact on adult health too, with increased risks of diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Smaller babies also result in substantial costs for health services and a significant economic burden on societies as a whole.

Part of the problem in starting to improve pregnancy outcomes is that fetal growth and newborn size are currently evaluated in clinics around the world using at least 100 different growth charts. In other words, there are no international standards at present for the fetus and newborn, while such standards do exist for infants and children.

“This is very confusing for doctors and mothers and makes no biological sense. How can a fetus or a newborn be judged small in one clinic or hospital and treated accordingly, only for the mother to go to another city or country, and be told that her baby is growing normally,” said Professor Stephen Kennedy, University of Oxford, one of the senior authors of the paper.

The final aim of the INTERGROWTH-21st study is to construct international standards describing optimal growth of a baby in the womb and as a newborn – standards to reflect how a baby should grow when mothers have adequate health, nutrition and socioeconomic status.

The researchers adopted the same approach taken by the WHO’s Multicentre Growth Reference Study of healthy infants and children, which established international growth standards from birth to 5 years of age that are now used in more than 140 countries worldwide.

The INTERGROWTH-21st results fit perfectly with the existing WHO standards for infants. The mean length at birth of the newborns in the INTERGROWTH-21st study was 49.4 ± 1.9 cm, compared with 49.5 ±1.9 cm in the WHO infant study.

From now on international standards can be used worldwide to make judgements on growth and size from conception to 5 years. “Just think, if your cholesterol or your blood pressure are high, they are high regardless of where you live. Why should the same not apply to growth?” said Professor Villar.

Professor Ruyan Pang, from Peking University, China, one of the study’s lead investigators, said: “The INTERGROWTH-21st results fit perfectly with the existing WHO Infant and Child Growth Standards. Having international standards of optimal growth from conception to 5 years of age that everyone in the world can use means it will now be possible to evaluate improvements in health and nutrition using the same yardstick.”

Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta, from The Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan and the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada, who is the Chair of the Steering Committee of this global research team, says: “The fact that when mothers are in good health, babies grow in the womb in very similar ways the world over is a tremendously positive message of hope for all women and their families. But there is a challenge as well. There are implications in terms of the way we think about public health: This is about the health and life chances of future citizens everywhere on the planet. All those who are responsible for health care will have to think about providing the best possible maternal and child health.”

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Unhealthy foods and beverages are regularly portrayed in a positive light on children’s television programming in the UK, according to new research currently appearing online in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

As part of their research, experts from The Children’s Ark at University Hospital Limerick, National Children’s Research Centre, the Centre for Interventions in Infection, Inflammation & Immunity at Graduate Entry Medical School, the University of Limerick, and Dalhousie University looked at how different types of food and drinks were portrayed in weekday children’s television programs aired on two UK television stations in 2010.

While legislation governing the broadcast of TV advertisements for products high in sugar and fat have been implemented in both England and Ireland, those regulations do not apply to the content of the actual programs, according to the study authors. So the investigators assessed the frequency and type of food and drink product portrayals in kids programs aired on the commercial-free BBC and RTE TV stations.

In all, the authors recorded 1,155 food and beverage mentions in 82.5 hours of child-specific television broadcasting on those two stations, meaning that they accounted for 4.8-percent of the total televised material. Each cue lasted an average of 13.2 seconds, and just under 40-percent of the content was American in nature.

The authors then analyzed the mentions based on type of product, product placement, product use, motivation, outcome and characters involved. They found that sweet snacks were the most frequently mentioned type of food (13.3 percent), followed by candy/confectionery (11.4 percent). Tea and coffee was the type of beverage mentioned most often (13.5 percent), followed by sugar-sweetened beverages (13 percent).

Nearly half of all food cues were for unhealthy foods (47.5 percent), while one-quarter of all drink mentions were for sweetened beverages, the study authors said. Nearly all of the mentions involved a major program character, with 95 percent of them “goodies” or heroic characters and 90 percent of whom were not overweight.

The cue was presented positively 32.6 percent of the time, negatively 19.8 percent of the time, and neutrally in 47.5 percent of the time, they added. The motivation associated with each mention were social or celebratory 25.2 percent of the time, related to hunger or thirst in 25 percent of the time, and health-related just two percent of the time.

The researchers also directly compared the content of the UK and Irish programs spanning 27.5 recorded hours of shows, and found that the BBC tended to include more food and drink cues than RTE (2.3 hours to 45.6 minutes).

“Comparison of UK and Irish placements showed both to portray high levels of unhealthy food cues. However, placements for sugar-sweetened beverages were relatively low on both channels,” the study authors wrote.

“This study provides further evidence of the prominence of unhealthy foods in children’s programming,” they added. “These data may provide guidance for healthcare professionals, regulators and program makers in planning for a healthier portrayal of food and beverage in children’s television.”

While it is generally accepted that there is a link between the advertising of unhealthy food and drinks to young children and the consumption of those products by the same kids, the study authors note that the impact of unhealthy food and drink content in TV shows aimed at youngsters remains unclear.

However, they note that based on their observations, it appears as though “eating and drinking are common activities within children specific programming, with unhealthy foods and beverages especially common and frequently associated with positive motivating factors, and seldom seen with negative outcomes.”

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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Eating foods that are high in protein can be a more effective way to lose weight than the more traditional calorie-counting method, according to research presented this week at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology in Manchester, England.

While the nutritional values of food are typically given in standard energy units such as kilojoules or kilocalories, University of Sydney nutritional ecologist Professor David Raubenheimer and his colleagues argue that this method is too simplistic, and that more emphasis needs to be placed on the role of macronutrients.

Those macronutrients (carbohydrates, fats and proteins) typically interact in order to regulate appetite and energy intake, the researchers explained Thursday in a statement. In apes and monkeys, the study authors found that the correct balance of nutrients was more important than the overall energy intake of the creatures.

“Foods are complex mixtures of nutrients and these do not act independently but interact with one another. The appetite systems for different nutrients compete in their influence on feeding,” said Raubenheimer.

Eating nutritionally-balanced foods prevent competition in those appetite systems, meaning that when one nutrient requirement is fulfilled, the others are as well. However, many types of foods do not have the correct balance, possessing a protein-to-carbohydrate ratio that is too high or too low. As a result, for an animal to obtain the right amount of muscle-building protein, they would have to consume too many or too few fats or carbohydrates.

As part of their research, Raubenheimer and his fellow investigators monitored baboons living near human settlements. They found that, despite eating different food combinations each day, the creatures maintained a consistent balance in which one-fifth of their overall energy needs came from protein. However, their total energy intake varied greatly – in fact, the energy intake range could be five times greater on occasion.

The professor said that the findings suggest that the baboon places a higher value on maintaining the right balance of micronutrients over the total energy intake. Previous research had demonstrated that other primates also tend to forage to maintain a balanced diet, but noted that they prioritized protein over fat or carbohydrates when seasonal unavailability of some food types made it impossible to consume regular levels of all three.

However, gorillas have the opposite approach, tending to consume significantly higher amounts of protein in order to maintain their target carbohydrate consumption levels, Raubenheimer said. He added that this demonstrates “that there is diversity even among closely related primates. It also demonstrates that an energy-only approach is not adequate to understand primate foraging or for making conservation decisions.”

Humans typically behave like spider monkeys and orangutans, tending to prioritize protein over the other types of nutrients. As a result, if people eat a low-protein diet, they will over-eat fats and carbohydrates in order to ensure that they reach their protein consumption targets. The study authors believe that this could help explain the rapid rise in obesity levels in the Western World, despite the decrease of protein consumption, over the past six decades.

“We can use this information to help manage and prevent obesity, through ensuring that the diets we eat have a sufficient level of protein to satisfy our appetite,” said Raubenheimer. While these findings could explain why high-protein diets can help people lose weight, the professor cautions that people need to get the right balance of fats and carbohydrates as well – otherwise, those “imbalanced” could result in “other health problems.”

“A simple rule for healthy eating is to avoid processed foods – the closer to real foods the better,” he added. “Whilst it is clear that humans are generalist feeders, no human population has until recently encountered ‘ultra-processed foods’ – made from industrially extracted sugars, starches and salt. Our bodies and appetites are not adapted to biscuits, cakes, pizzas & sugary drinks and we eat too much of them at our peril.”

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Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

It’s official: English heavy metal rock band Motorhead has been declared one of the most hardcore rock and roll acts on Earth according to neurosurgical researcher Dr. Ariyan Pirayesh Islamian of Germany’s Hannover Medical School.

The connection between Dr. Islamian’s expertise in hard rock and neurosurgical research might not at first be evident. But it was a fateful visit by a 50-year-old patient in January 2013 that began to tie the two worlds together.

The study centers on an unidentified German man who finally relented and visited the Medical Center at Hannover after a persistent, two week long headache that affected his entire head. A CT scan revealed a subdural hematoma, also known as ‘bleeding on the brain.’

After completing a full history of the patient, who had no previous head injuries or substance abuse issues, the doctors finally determined the cause was directly related to his penchant for wildly and violently thrusting his head back and forth to music with a hard and driving beat. This act is more popularly known as headbanging. And as it turned out, this man had just attended a Motorhead concert with his son where, it was determined, he had engaged in quite a lot of headbanging.

As reported by the Huffington Post, doctors at Hannover had to drill a hole into the patient’s skull in order to remove a clot before draining the brain over a period of six days. The patient was later released and has since made a full recovery. In a follow up scan, the doctors noted the presence of a benign cyst in the man’s brain that likely increased his vulnerability to the traumatic brain injury. Despite the potential severity of this situation, doctors claim other fellow headbangers can go as wild as they like.

“There are probably other higher risk events going on at rock concerts than headbanging,” Dr. Colin Shieff, neurosurgeon and trustee of the British brain injury advocacy group Headway told the Associated Press. “Most people who go to music festivals and jump up and down while shaking their heads don’t end up in the hands of a neurosurgeon.”

Echoing Dr. Shieff’s sentiment, Dr. Islamian told the CBC, “We are not smartasses who advise against headbanging.” Continuing he said, “Our purpose was not only to entertain the readership with a quite comical case report on complications of headbanging that confirms the reputation of Motorhead as undoubtedly one of the hardest rock ‘n’ roll bands on Earth, but to sensitize the medical world for a certain subgroup of fans that may be endangered when indulging themselves in excessive headbanging.”

After having checked available medical literature, the study group claimed they had found only three cases of subdural hematoma attributed to headbanging. This fact underlies the rarity of the complication.

Dr. Islamian believes that even though subdural hematomae are relatively rare the incidence rate among headbangers may be higher, though they likely go unreported. This is because the symptoms are clinically silent or cause only mild, temporary headaches.

The study authors highlight the potential dangers surrounding headbanging in a Case Report published in The Lancet.

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Motörhead – Aftershock: Tour Edition

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe online
What good is sitting alone in your room? If a new psychological study by researchers from the University of Virginia (UVa) and Harvard University is to be believed, it’s not good at all. Well, at the very least, it certainly isn’t enjoyable.
Interestingly, the team found participants much preferred the presence of a distraction, even going so far as to opt for hurting themselves rather than to sit quietly alone with only their thoughts. The findings of this study will be published today in the journal Science.
Over 11 associated studies, Uva psychologist and lead author on the study, Timothy Wilson along with fellow Harvard and Uva colleagues tested subjects across a very broad age range and in multiple environments. Across almost every variable it was determined that people don’t like to simply ponder, think or daydream. Instead, participants preferred doing external activities such as listening to music or using a smartphone. Still others opted to give themselves mild electric shocks rather than sit in silence for a short time.
“Those of us who enjoy some down time to just think likely find the results of this study surprising – I certainly do – but our study participants consistently demonstrated that they would rather have something to do than to have nothing other than their thoughts for even a fairly brief period of time,” Wilson said.
In the studies, participants were asked to sit and do nothing for periods of time ranging from six to 15 minutes. The early studies utilized college age students who reported the experience as being highly unenjoyable and that it was hard to concentrate. It was then the team cast a wider net and conducted next studies with participants ranging in age from 18 to 77. The results of both groupings provided essentially the same findings.
“That was surprising – that even older people did not show any particular fondness for being alone thinking,” Wilson said.
Many reading this might think this avoidance of undisturbed alone time might be a symptom of our tech-gadget friendly and attention-span sapped modern society. However, Wilson believes the ready use of smartphones might actually be a response to what he believes is an innate desire by many to always have something to do.
Wilson’s assertion is backed up by previous broad surveys that have shown people really prefer not to disengage from the world. This could likely be attributable to the extended amounts of time people expend watching television, socializing or reading. In those previous surveys, very few people allocated any time to simply relaxing or thinking.
It might seem like a no-brainer that someone sitting in a room in a laboratory might feel self-conscious during a period meant to be dedicated to silent mindfulness. However, the results were repeated even when participants were instructed to sit and think in their own homes.
“We found that about a third admitted that they had ‘cheated’ at home by engaging in some activity, such as listening to music or using a cell phone, or leaving their chair,” Wilson said. “And they didn’t enjoy this experience any more at home than at the lab.”
The team also conducted another experiment where participants were randomly assigned the task of sitting only with their thoughts or spending the same amount of time doing something, though making sure they were not communicating with anyone during the assigned time. The group that was allowed to read or listen to music reported a higher satisfaction with the time than their thinking counterparts and even reported they had a far easier time maintaining concentration.
Building even further on their study, the team next posited whether participants would rather sit with their thoughts in silence or engage in an activity far less pleasant than listening to music or reading a magazine.
Given the option of administering a mild electric shock to themselves by pushing a button or allowing themselves to sit and think for a short period, many participants opted for the electric shock.
The breakdown in gender for this portion of the study was interesting. According to the researchers, 12 of the 18 men in the study chose to give themselves at least one electric shock during the 15-minute “thinking” period. Of the 24 female participants, six opted for the shock. Prior to the study beginning, each participant had received a sample of the shock and reported that they would pay to avoid being shocked again.
“What is striking,” the investigators write, “is that simply being alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self-administer an electric shock that they had earlier said they would pay to avoid.”
As an explanation for why two-thirds of male participants, compared to one-fourth of female participants, chose to self-administer a shock, Wilson and his team explained that men tend to seek “sensations” more than women.
The team next intends to explore the exact reasoning why people find it difficult to be alone with their own thoughts. As Wilson explains, everyone enjoys daydreaming or fantasizing at times but that enjoyment is most likely a result of it having occurred spontaneously.
“The mind is designed to engage with the world,” he said. “Even when we are by ourselves, our focus usually is on the outside world. And without training in meditation or thought-control techniques, which still are difficult, most people would prefer to engage in external activities.”
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Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it. This is the major finding of a new study investigating the link between stress and the development of insomnia.

“Our study is among the first to show that it’s not the number of stressors, but your reaction to them that determines the likelihood of experiencing insomnia,” stated lead author Vivek Pillai, PhD and research fellow at the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. “While a stressful event can lead to a bad night of sleep, it’s what you do in response to stress that can be the difference between a few bad nights sleep and chronic insomnia.”

The study results, published in this month’s issue of the journal Sleep, show that coping with a stressful event by opting to bury one’s head in the sand or engaging in alcohol or drug use could be a major factor in developing insomnia due to stress. Just as detrimental to a good night’s sleep is the act of cognitive intrusion, where recurrent thoughts about the stressor continually pop into your mind, which can account for 69 percent of the total effect of stress exposure on insomnia.

The researchers availed themselves of a community-based sample of 2,892 good sleepers who presented no lifetime history of insomnia. Each participant provided examples of stressors experienced in the past year, such as divorce, death, financial issues or major illness to provide the study with a baseline. Participants also rated the severity and duration of each event.

In the initial questionnaire, measurements of cognitive intrusion and coping strategies employed by the participants were noted. After one year, the study was able to identify participants who had developed an insomnia disorder, defined as having symptoms of insomnia occurring at least three nights per week for a duration of one month or longer. Insomnia is also responsible for individuals experiencing daytime impairment or distress.

“This study is an important reminder that stressful events and other major life changes often cause insomnia,” said American Academy of Sleep Medicine President Dr. Timothy Morgenthaler. “If you are feeling overwhelmed by events in your life, talk to you doctor about strategies to reduce your stress level and improve your sleep.”

Most importantly, the authors of the study claim their research has identified potential targets for therapeutic interventions to educate and improve on coping responses to stress that could reduce the overall risk of insomnia. Mindfulness-based therapies, in particular, are effective in combating cognitive intrusion and improving sleep.

“Though we may not be able to control external events, we can reduce their burden by staying away from certain maladaptive behaviors,” said Pillai.

Approximately 15 to 20 percent of the adult population will experience short-term insomnia disorder, according to The American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Short-term insomnia disorder is characterized by a time span of less than three months. It also is more prevalent among women than with men.

Supported by funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institutes of Health, this research was performed under the supervision of Thomas Roth, PhD, and Christopher Drake, PhD, both of the Sleep & Research Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

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