Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Male infertility prevents many couples from being able to conceive a child and a new study published in the journal Nature Communications has found a specific protein that is a major determining factor in determining a sperm’s ability to fertilize an egg.

The protein, known as Chd5, is responsible for effectively packaging DNA inside the head of a sperm, where space it at a premium.

Each cell in the body contains an entire copy of a person’s genome – which would extend to about 6 feet if completely unraveled into a single strand. To pack this enormous span of DNA, cells snugly compress our DNA into every cell nucleus. The DNA is packed like thread wrapped around protein spools, known as histones. The system allows for thread to be easily unwound at any moment to permit accessibility to the DNA.

In a sperm cell, which contains half of a genome, genetic material must be even more condensed. To conserve some space, histones are substituted with small proteins called protamines. This is done through a repackaging process called chromatin remodeling. Only about 50 micrometers long, a sperm must be effectively constructed to search for an egg and deliver its genetic payload.

In the new study, researchers found the Chd5 is a major regulator of chromatin remodeling during sperm maturity. Study author Alea Mills, a professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, said she first became interested in Chd5 after her research team found it to be a strong tumor suppressor in 2007.

“We know this ability has something to do with chromatin remodeling – that when defective, causes normal cells to transform into tumors,” Mills said. “But the most dramatic chromatin reorganization occurs when specialized cells carrying our genetic blueprint develop into sperm cells. It makes sense that Chd5 would be functioning there, too.”

The study team found that when they took out both copies of the Chd5 gene from lab mice, the rodents had significant fertility defects, including low sperm counts and reduced sperm motility. The faulty sperm could not fertilize eggs when in vitro fertilization (IVF) was executed in the lab.

Looking closer, the team discovered that histones were not efficiently substituted with protamines in the mice without Chd5, resulting in a more irregular, less compact genome. This haphazard packaging resulted in the DNA double helix becoming damaged and breaking at several points throughout.

“So in addition to infertility, loss of Chd5 may put future generations – the rare embryos that do get fertilized with defective sperm – at risk for disease,” Mills said. “Chd5 may protect a person from medical conditions related to DNA damage and spontaneous mutations, like cancer and autism.”

The researchers said their current work is looking at the role of Chd5 in human fertility through the analysis of Chd5 levels using testes biopsies taken from men with fertility defects.

“We found that men with more severe defects had the lowest levels of Chd5,” Mills said. “While it is only a correlation at this point, we are eager to understand fully how Chd5 affects sperm development in humans.”

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Many of us drift through life without any clear direction or purpose to guide our steps. Although this has caused many sleepless nights for those who love such a person, does it really cause problems? According to a new study from Carleton University, it just might.

The study, published in Psychological Science, found that, regardless of your age, having a sense of purpose may help you live longer — which could have implications for promoting positive aging and adult development.

“Our findings point to the fact that finding a direction for life, and setting overarching goals for what you want to achieve can help you actually live longer, regardless of when you find your purpose,” says Patrick Hill of Carleton University . “So the earlier someone comes to a direction for life, the earlier these protective effects may be able to occur.”

Researchers have shown in previous studies that finding a purpose for one’s life will lower the risk of mortality significantly above other factors known to predict longevity. Hill notes, however, that almost no research has investigated whether the benefits of purpose vary over time, such as across different developmental periods or after important life transitions..

Hill collaborated with University of Rochester Medical Center professor Nicholas Turiano. To find an answer to this question. They analyzed data obtained from the national representative Midlife in the US (MIDUS) study.

Using data from over 6,000 participants, Hill and Turiano focused their research on self-reported life purpose — for example, “Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them” — along with other psychosocial variables to gauge the participants’ positive relations with others and their experience of positive and negative emotions.

MIDUS followed the participants over a 14 year period. During that time, 569 (approximately 9 percent) died. The researchers found that those who died reported a lower sense of purpose in life. The deceased participants also had fewer positive relations than the participants who survived.

The researchers were surprised to see how consistently a feeling of greater purpose in life predicted lower mortality risks across the lifespan. The same benefits were visible for younger, middle-aged and older participants.

“There are a lot of reasons to believe that being purposeful might help protect older adults more so than younger ones,” says Hill. “For instance, adults might need a sense of direction more, after they have left the workplace and lost that source for organizing their daily events. In addition, older adults are more likely to face mortality risks than younger adults.”

“To show that purpose predicts longer lives for younger and older adults alike is pretty interesting, and underscores the power of the construct,” he explains.

Retirement has been a known mortality factor for quite a while, and the researchers found that having purpose even mitigated this risk. The effects of a greater sense of purpose were found to be consistent even after factors such as positive relations and positive emotions were taken into account.

“These findings suggest that there’s something unique about finding a purpose that seems to be leading to greater longevity,” says Hill.

The research team has continued their studies, investigating whether having a purpose could lead to healthier lifestyle choices, which would boost longevity. They hope to discover whether their findings hold true for outcomes other than mortality, as well.

“In so doing, we can better understand the value of finding a purpose throughout the lifespan, and whether it provides different benefits for different people,” Hill concludes.

[ Watch The Video: Children Of Nicotine-Addicted Parents More Likely To Become Heavy Smokers ]

Georgetown University Medical Center

The more time a child is exposed to a parent addicted to smoking, the more likely the youth will not only take up cigarettes but also become a heavy smoker.

So warns a team of researchers led by Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center scientists in Pediatrics. The study, published online today, is among the first to take a prospective, intergenerational view of the impact a parent’s behavior has on smoking risk for their adolescent offspring.

The findings suggest that parental smoking cessation early in their children’s lives is critical to prevent habitual smoking in the next generation.

“It is difficult to dissuade children from smoking if one or both parents are heavily dependent on cigarettes,” says the study’s lead investigator, Darren Mays, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor of oncology at Georgetown Lombardi. “It is also important for parents who smoke to know that their children may model the behavior, particularly if a parent is nicotine dependent.”

Mays says nicotine dependence is characterized by strong cravings to smoke, needing more nicotine to feel the same effects and feeling discomfort (withdrawal) without the drug.

“Our study supports the need for pediatric clinics to be vigilant about the smoking habits of their patients and their patients’ parents,” Mays adds. “For parents who want to quit help can be provided.” Raymond Niaura, PhD, the study’s leader and senior author, is an adjunct professor of oncology at Georgetown Lombardi, and associate director for science of the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies in Washington.

“This is one of the most comprehensive analyses of smoking risk in adolescents as it relates to family life,” he says. “The findings that exposure to parental nicotine dependence is a critical factor influencing intergenerational transmission of smoking are striking and troubling – but they give us a direction to go in reducing that risk.”

The study is a continuation of research Niaura began as a professor at Brown University, where he co-led the New England Family Study (NEFS).

More than 400 parents and their participating adolescent children ages 12-17 (second and third generations of NEFS participants), were interviewed at the beginning of the study with the children interviewed two more times, one year and then five years later.

The study shows that the more years a child was exposed to a parent’s nicotine dependent smoking (using American Psychiatric Association criteria) the greater the risk that an adolescent would begin smoking or experimenting with cigarettes.

“We believe social learning plays an important role in intergenerational smoking,” Mays says. “If social learning is key, then children can also learn from a parent who smokes that it is possible — and wise — to quit.”

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Guys who are less tall may feel as though they wound up with the short end of the stick, but new research appearing in the peer-reviewed medical journal PLOS ONE suggests that they are more likely to outlive their taller male counterparts.

In the study, researchers from the Kuakini Medical Center, the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) and the US Veteran Affairs department concluded that shorter men were more likely to have a protective form of the longevity gene, also known as FOXO3.

The presence of this gene results in smaller body size and a longer lifespan, as well as lower blood insulin levels and a lower prevalence of cancer. The authors studied over 8,000 American men of Japanese ancestry, monitoring their health conditions closely for nearly five decades.

All of the subjects were participants in the Kuakini Honolulu Heart Program (HHP) and the Kuakini Honolulu-Asia Aging Study (HAAS). The Kuakini HHP began in 1965, and the 8,006 participants (all but three of whom also participated in this study) were born between the year of 1900 and 1919.

“We split people into two groups – those who were 5-foot-2 and shorter, and 5-4 and taller,” Dr. Bradley Willcox, one of the researchers involved in the study and a professor at JABSOM’s Department of Geriatric Medicine, said in a statement. “The folks that were 5-2 and shorter lived the longest. The range was seen all the way across from being 5-foot tall to 6-foot tall. The taller you got, the shorter you lived.”

“This study shows, for the first time, that body size is linked to this gene,” he added. “We knew that in animal models of aging. We did not know that in humans. We have the same or a slightly different version in mice, roundworms, flies, even yeast has a version of this gene, and it’s important in longevity across all these species.”

Dr. Willcox and his colleagues emphasize that additional research is required in order to verify the results of their work, as well as to make sure that the findings can be applied to other ethnic groups of populations. He added that there is no specific height or age range, because no matter what a person’s height is, he or she can make up for having a regular FOXO3 gene and not a longevity-enhanced one by living a healthy lifestyle.

About 1,200 men who participated in the study lived into their 90s and 100s, and nearly 250 of them are alive today. The project was funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National Institute on Aging, as well as the Kuakini Medical Center and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Mental health experts have long touted the benefits of a strong social support network, particularly in times of stress. But what if that support network is a source of stress?
A new study published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health has found that frequent arguments with friends and family can actually increase mortality in middle age, especially in men and those not gainfully employed.
Study author Rikke Lund, of the University of Copenhagen Department of Publich Health, told the Daily Mail that men could be particularly susceptible to the negative effects of constant conflict because they tend to have smaller social networks than women.
“Previous research seem to say it is stress on your cardiovascular system which is associated with increase in blood pressure which is associated with heart disease,” she told the British news organization. “Men to report smaller networks than women. They say their spouse or partner is their main confident. They may have a good friend or close colleague but their network is smaller.”
“Women tend to have larger networks and they share the stress they have with good friends and family member,” Lund added. “Men will limit their conversations with friends and family. The one person they have as a confident is actually the one putting the worries and demands on them then that could be making them more vulnerable.”
For the study, the team surveyed almost 10,000 individuals between 36 and 52 years of age on their closest social relationships. All the volunteers were already participants in the Danish Longitudinal Study on Work, Unemployment and Health.
The social scientists looked at whom in a person’s social network – partners, children, other relatives, friends and neighbors – were a source of stress or conflict, and how often conflict arose. They also looked to see if having a job had an effect. Mortality of study volunteers was tracked from 2000 to the end of 2011 with information from the Danish Cause of Death Registry.
Almost half the 226 men and 196 women who died during the study period did so from cancer, while circulatory issues, liver disease, and accidents and suicide comprised the remainder.
Around 10 percent of volunteers said that their partner or children were a regular source of stress, about six percent said this was true about other relatives and two percent said the same for friends. Six percent said they had recurrent disputes with their partner or children, two percent with other family members, and one percent with friends or neighbors.
After considering confounding factors, the investigation revealed that frequent worries or demands associated with close relationships were linked to a 50- to 100-percent elevated mortality rate from all causes.
Regular arguments with anyone in the social circle were linked with a 100- to 200-percent increase in mortality rate as opposed to volunteers who said these incidents were uncommon.
Additionally, participants who were unemployed were at noticeably greater risk than those who had very similar stressors but were employed. Men also seemed to be significantly prone to stress attributed to their female partners, with a bigger likelihood of death than that commonly linked with being a man or with this particular relationship stress factor.
While personality may have a part in how people respond to stress, the authors noted that conflict management skills may also help to lower premature deaths linked with social relationship stress.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

How you shake hands can say a lot about you and a new study from researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna, Austria has found that a handshake can reveal how a population group is aging.

In a report published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, the Austrian researchers compared hand-grip strengths between two population groups: people who had completed secondary education and those who hadn’t. The researchers discovered that, based on hand-grip strength, participants with less education appeared to be older than their more educated counterparts.

“We found that based on this survey, a 65-year-old white women who had not completed secondary education has the same handgrip strength as a 69-year-old white women who had completed secondary education,” said study author Serguei Scherbov, a research director at IIASA. “This suggests that according to a handgrip strength characteristic their ages are equivalent and 65 year-old women ages 4 years faster due to lower education attainment.”

The study team assessed conclusions from over 50 published scientific studies that concentrate on people of all ages worldwide. Because the biomarker is already widely referenced, the information is readily available. The researchers discovered that the biomarker could be used to contrast different population groups.

“Hand-grip strength is easily measured and data on hand-grip strength now can be found in many of the most important surveys on aging worldwide,” said co-author Warren Sanderson, an IIASA researcher who is also a behavioral sciences professor at Stony Brook University in New York.

The two researchers said their long-term goal is to establish new biomarkers of aging founded on people’s attributes, such as their longevity, well-being, any disability and other crucial demographic aspects. Previously, the team has shown that gauging age just by the quantity of years people have lived does not effectively gauge the aging process. Using characteristic-based techniques, like a hand-grip measure, the scientists said they can detect inconsistencies in the aging process among population groups that may not have become apparent otherwise.

“Our goal is to measure how fast different groups in a society age. If some group is getting older faster than another, we can ask why that might be and see whether there are any policies that could help the faster aging group,” Scherbov said.

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new meta-analysis of 20 studies published over the past 19 years has helped researchers form the conclusion that eating more fruits and vegetables could reduce the worldwide risk of stroke. The combined studies involved more than 760,000 men and women who had 16,981 strokes.

Publishing the study results in the American Heart Association’s journal Stroke, the researchers found that global stroke risk decreased by 32 percent with every 200 grams of fruit consumed each day and 11 percent with every 200 grams of vegetables consumed each day.

“Improving diet and lifestyle is critical for heart and stroke risk reduction in the general population,” said Yan Qu, MD, the study’s senior author, director of the intensive care unit at Qingdao Municipal Hospital and professor at the Medical College of Qingdao University in Qingdao, China.

Our bodies receive calories and energy from macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein and fat), but our bodies also need micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals, which naturally come from fruit and vegetables.

“In particular, a diet rich in fruits and vegetables is highly recommended because it meets micronutrient and macronutrient and fiber requirements without adding substantially to overall energy requirements,” added Qu.

Studies have shown that high fruit and vegetable consumption can lower blood pressure and improve microvascular function. It also has favorable effects on body mass index, waist circumference, cholesterol, inflammation and oxidative stress, note the researchers.

The beneficial effects of consuming fruits and vegetables applied consistently to men and women, stroke outcome and by type of stroke; and researchers found no significant difference in the effect on age (younger or older than 55). Also, the team adjusted the findings for several factors, including smoking, alcohol use, blood pressure, cholesterol, physical activity and other dietary variables.

The meta-analysis combined the study results of six US studies, eight European studies and six Asian studies and determined, based on the overall results of these 20 studies, that fruit and vegetable consumption remains low worldwide, especially among low- and middle-income countries.

The World Health Organization (WHO) notes that by increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables up to 600 grams each day could reduce the risk of ischemic stroke by 19 percent globally.

Stroke is the leading cause of death in China, with an estimated 1.7 million people dying in 2010. It is the number four cause of death in the US and the leading cause of disability.

The research team found that citrus fruits, apples and pears, and leafy vegetables were the best at reducing the overall risk of stroke.

“The effect of other types of fruit and vegetables on stroke risk still needs to be confirmed,” Qu said in a statement, cited by Reuters.

The team cannot say for certain that eating fruits and vegetables caused fewer strokes among the study participants. There could be other factors that influenced the results – such as people who eat more fruit and vegetables generally lead healthier lives overall.

“It doesn’t surprise me too much in that it seems to confirm what a lot of other studies have shown,” Dr. David A. Miller, director of the Advanced Primary Stroke Center at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, told Reuters.

“We still don’t know if there is anything inherent in the fruits and vegetables or whether it’s their effect on blood pressure… It’s a chicken and egg type of thing,” added Miller, who was not involved in the meta-analysis or any of the studies used in the meta-analysis.

Miller pointed out that the researchers also found people who controlled other risk factors – such as weight and smoking – had the lowest risk of stroke. “Eating fruits and vegetables is helpful, but it’s not the only thing,” he said.

The American Heart Association advises that adults should eat four to five servings each of fruits and vegetables daily. A diet rich in a variety of colors and types is the best way of getting important nutrients that most people don’t get enough of, including vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Previous research has linked being raised on breast milk to lower prevalence of obesity, diabetes and inflammatory bowel disease later in life and a newly published study indicated that this positive effect could be due to breast milk’s promotion of beneficial bacteria in the gut.

Published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the new study found that breastfeeding stimulates the development of helpful lactic acid bacteria in a newborn’s gut flora, which are advantageous to the growth of the child’s immune system.

“We have become increasingly aware of how crucially important a healthy gut microbial population is for a well-functioning immune system. Babies are born without bacteria in the gut, and so it is interesting to identify the influence dietary factors have on gut microbiota development in children’s first three years of life,” said study author Tine Rask Licht, research manager at the National Food Institute at the Technical University of Denmark.

The study indicated that there are substantial transformations in the intestinal bacterial make-up from nine to 18 months after the end of breastfeeding. Additionally, a child’s gut flora continues to develop up through age three, as it becomes significantly more intricate and more fixed.

“The results help to support the assumption that the gut microbiota is not – as previously thought – stable from the moment a child is a year old. According to our study important changes continue to occur right up to the age of three,” Licht said. “This probably means that there is a ‘window’ during those early years, in which intestinal bacteria are more susceptible to external factors than what is seen in adults.”

“The results from the study can be used to support initiatives that can be used to help children develop a type of gut microbiota, which is beneficial for the immune system and for the digestive system,” she added. “This could for example be advice to mothers about breastfeeding or the development of new types of infant formula to promote the establishment of beneficial bacteria in the gut.”

Another study released in April highlighted the importance of breastfeeding by finding that not breastfeeding combined with low birth weight can result in developing chronic inflammation and affiliated health problems later in life.

“There were good reasons to hypothesize that breastfeeding was important to influencing levels of inflammation in adulthood,” said study author Thomas McDade, a biological anthropologist at Northwestern University. “It changes the microbiome. It promotes development of the immune system. Children who are breastfed get fewer infectious diseases and are less likely to become overweight.”

Published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the previous study was based on health information from over 10,000 US adults, including their birth weight and the length of time they were breastfed as newborns. The study considered the role parenting might play in a child’s development by including the health of siblings raised by the same parents.

The researchers found that even inside the same family, birth weight and breastfeeding make a difference with respect to inflammation in adulthood.

American Chemical Society (ACS)
Pregnant women go through a lot to bring a baby into this world: 2 a.m. food cravings, hypersensitivity to certain smells and morning sickness, not to mention labor and delivery. In honor of Mother’s Day, the American Chemical Society’s (ACS’) newest Reactions video highlights the chemistry behind a pregnant woman’s altered sense of taste and smell, how mom’s diet influences baby’s favorite foods and other pregnancy phenomena.

And because moms always deserve more, we’ve created a bonus video on what scientists believe causes dreaded morning sickness in pregnant women.

Subscribe to the series at http://youtube.com/ACSReactions and follow us on Twitter @ACSReactions.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 161,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Krishna Ramanujan, Cornell University

Coffee drinkers, rejoice! Aside from java’s energy jolt, food scientists say you may reap another health benefit from a daily cup of joe: prevention of deteriorating eyesight and possible blindness from retinal degeneration due to glaucoma, aging and diabetes.

Raw coffee is, on average, just 1 percent caffeine, but it contains 7 to 9 percent chlorogenic acid (CLA), a strong antioxidant that prevents retinal degeneration in mice, according to a Cornell study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (December 2013).

The retina is a thin tissue layer on the inside, back wall of the eye with millions of light-sensitive cells and other nerve cells that receive and organize visual information. It is also one of the most metabolically active tissues, demanding high levels of oxygen and making it prone to oxidative stress. The lack of oxygen and production of free radicals leads to tissue damage and loss of sight.

In the study, mice eyes were treated with nitric oxide, which creates oxidative stress and free radicals, leading to retinal degeneration, but mice pretreated with CLA developed no retinal damage.

The study is “important in understanding functional foods, that is, natural foods that provide beneficial health effects,” said Chang Y. Lee, professor of food science and the study’s senior author. Holim Jang, a graduate student in Lee’s lab, is the paper’s lead author. Lee’s lab has been working with Sang Hoon Jung, a researcher at the Functional Food Center of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea. “Coffee is the most popular drink in the world, and we are understanding what benefit we can get from that,” Lee said.

Previous studies have shown that coffee also cuts the risk of such chronic diseases as Parkinson’s, prostate cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and age-related cognitive declines.

Since scientists know that CLA and its metabolites are absorbed in the human digestive system, the next step for this research is to determine whether drinking coffee facilitates CLA to cross a membrane known as the blood-retinal barrier. If drinking coffee proves to deliver CLA directly into the retina, doctors may one day recommend an appropriate brew to prevent retinal damage. Also, if future studies further prove CLA’s efficacy, then synthetic compounds could also be developed and delivered with eye drops.

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology funded the study.

David Orenstein, Brown University
The average US child snacks three times a day. Concerned about the role of snacking in obesity, a team of researchers set out to explore how eating frequency relates to energy intake and diet quality in a sample of low-income, urban schoolchildren in the Boston area. They expected that snacking would substantially contribute to kids’ overall energy intake, and the new data confirm that. But they were surprised that the nutritional value of snacks and meals differed by age.
The findings, led by first author E. Whitney Evans, a postdoctoral research fellow at Brown University and the Weight Control and Diabetes Center at The Miriam Hospital, are published online in the journal Public Health Nutrition.
“Unexpectedly, in elementary school-age participants we found that overall eating frequency and snacks positively contributed to diet quality,” wrote Evans and colleagues from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, where Evans did the research under the guidance of senior author Aviva Must, professor and chair of the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. “In adolescents, however, our results suggested that snacks detract from overall diet quality while each additional meal increased diet quality.”
The diet quality differences by age were significant. Among the 92 school-age children aged 9 to 11 in the study, each snack raised their diet quality by 2.31 points, as measured on the Healthy Eating Index, 2005 developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Among the 84 teens in the study, aged 12 to 15, each snack dragged the quality score down by 2.73 points whereas each meal increased the quality score by 5.40 points.
Overall, each snack contributed about half as much to total daily energy intake as each meal, making them high-stakes eating moments, Evans said.
“Snacks don’t have to be vilified,” said Evans who is both a parent and a registered dietitian. “Snacks can be beneficial to children’s diets when made up of the right foods. But we do need to be aware that snacks do positively contribute to energy intake in children.”
The best snacks at any age, she said, are ones that are nutrient-rich, rather than calorically dense.
Evaluating eating
To conduct the study, Evans and a team of registered dietitians asked kids (with parental consent) at four Boston-area schools to provide some basic demographic information. Then, on two separate occasions, the kids completed a 24-hour diet recall, in which they recounted what they ate during the previous day. The kids were provided with references to help them describe what and how much they consumed.
Evans, Must and their colleagues determined the number of meals and snacks reported by each child, along with their total energy intake and diet quality score, as measured by the Healthy Eating Index, 2005. In all their analyses, the researchers accounted for variables such as gender, ethnicity, eligibility for free and reduced-price lunches, maternal education, and levels of physical activity.
The study data do not overtly explain why snacking has opposite effects on diet quality depending on a child’s age, but the researchers note that younger children more frequently depend on (and perhaps abide) grownups, while older kids are more often make their own snacking choices.
Snacks strategies
The findings suggest a clear decay in snacking quality as children age, but rather than despairing, parents, educators and other care providers can make use of the findings, Evans said. One step could be to emphasize good snacking habits among younger kids, who may be relatively receptive to such messages, so that their potential decline may start from a better place. Another is to recognize that adolescents may be inclined to make worse choices and take steps to prevent that.
“It’s important to help adolescents understand the implications of snacking,” Evans said. “For example, snacks that could occur as mindless eating in front of the television may be the ones that increase their weight over time.”
A third strategy is to embrace the clear importance of meals, especially for adolescents. The diet quality score rose 5.40 points with each meal for teens and 3.84 points with each meal for younger kids.
“Meals, especially family meals, really have a great potential for increasing the diet quality of adolescents,” Evans said.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Numerous studies have shown that physical, emotional and cognitive therapy involving domestic animals can be very therapeutic, and new research from The Ohio State University has found that interactive therapy with horses can bring relief to people with Alzheimer’s disease.
According to the study team’s report, published in the journal Anthrozoös, people with Alzheimer’s were able to groom, feed and walk horses with assistance and these activities immediately boosted their mood and made them more agreeable later in the day. Irritability and resistance to care are two major symptoms of the cognitive disease.
“We wanted to test whether people with dementia could have positive interactions with horses, and we found that they can—absolutely,” said study author Holly Dabelko-Schoeny, associate professor of social work at OSU. “The experience immediately lifted their mood, and we saw a connection to fewer incidents of negative behavior.”
“Our focus is on the ‘now.’ What can we do to make them feel better and enjoy themselves right now? Even if they don’t remember it later, how can we help in this moment?” she added.
In the study, eight Alzheimer’s patients agreed to break with their regular regimen and take a bus to the Field of Dreams Equine Education Center in Blacklick, Ohio. Eight other patients stayed behind at the healthcare facility and were given other activities.
At the center, patients spent time with horses under the direction of National Church Residences caretakers, as well as staff and students from OSU.
The clients stopped at the farm once a week for an entire month, to ensure that every individual had four visits overall. They groomed the horses, gave them a bath, walked them, and provided them buckets of grass. The four horses were picked for their mild dispositions and calmness when dealing with new people and new circumstances.
To monitor behavior, the scientists used a rating system called the Modified Nursing Home Behavior Problem Scale, involving staff at the center tracking when volunteers fidgeted, brushed aside care, became annoyed on days they visited the farm or remained at the center.
The scientists saw noticeable signs that the clients had enjoyable experiences during their time on the farm. Even volunteers who generally acted withdrawn became fully involved in the experience.
The study team also assessed the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the patients’ saliva, which was extracted with mouth swabs. For volunteers with less significant dementia, the scientists saw a boost in cortisol levels, possibly as a result of “good stress” of simply being in a new scenario, they said.
Study author Gwendolen Lorch, assistant professor of veterinary clinical medicine at OSU, suspected that taking Alzheimer’s patients out to a peaceful rural area may have also had a beneficial effect.
“They found the quietness and smells of the country very relaxing and restful. This was in contrast to their normal day care environment and their intercity dwelling,” Lorch said. “It is difficult to tell what factors made this successful, but we do know that it was most likely a combination of events.”
A study published last week revealed that therapy with horses also helped school kids reduce their stress levels.
Published in the Human-Animal Interaction Bulletin, the study found that when school kids work with horses they have significantly lower levels of stress hormones throughout their day. The researcher said these findings could help implications for preventative care since high levels of stress hormones are linked to physical and mental ailments.

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

With the ongoing threat of the dangerous Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus, experts have been feverishly looking for a source of the infection, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 130 people since first being detected in June 2012 – and first reported three months later in September 2012.

Studies on the virus have revolved around bats, goats, sheep, and camels, with the most reliable sources having been camels, based on several recent reports. A study conducted by scientists at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna shows that the MERS coronavirus in man and camels from a single region are most identical. Their findings, which indicate the virus has been transmitted from camels to humans, is published in the journal Eurosurveillance.

While it has been confirmed recently that the Arabian camel is the origin of the infectious disease, the transmission pathways of the disease have not been clear until now.

Norbert Nowotny and Jolanta Kolodziejek, virologists from the Institute of Virology, have been investigating the transmission pathways of the MERS coronavirus and found that the virus from infected humans and Arabian camels from the same geographical region share nearly identical RNA sequences.

“This indicates transmission between animals and man. The process is referred to as zoonosis. With this knowledge we can specifically react to the spread of the virus. Vaccinations of camels are currently being discussed. We will thus be able to halt the spread of the virus,” Nowotny said in a statement.

In studying camels from the Oman region, researchers found five with MERS coronavirus and compared the RNA sequence with those of MERS coronavirus from Qatar and Egypt. Their analyses showed that the viruses differ from region to region.

“This means that there is no specific ‘camel MERS coronavirus strain’, but that one virus infects both, camels and humans,” said Nowotny.

The researchers found that virus levels were surprisingly high in the nasal mucosa and conjunctiva of camels. Therefore they presume that the transmission pathway from animals to humans most likely occurs through these contact sites, especially through nasal discharge.

While MERS causes severe pneumonia and renal failure in humans, camels show little to no symptoms, except for occasional nasal discharge.

MERS is similar to the SARS coronavirus that originated in China and killed nearly 800 people around the world in 2002 and 2003.

“While the SARS coronavirus probably crossed the species barrier only once by passing from bats to humans, we may presume that the MERS coronavirus is being constantly transmitted from camels to humans,” explained Nowotny.

Nowotny and colleagues in a previous study (www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1473309913701646) showed that MERS coronaviruses do in fact infect camels, after discovering antibodies against the virus in the dromedary animals. The current genetic analysis of MERS permits more exact conclusions.

LESSONS FROM SARS

While MERS and SARS share similarities, there is a distinction to be drawn. SARS sickened more than 8,000 people in 2002 and 2003, of which nearly 10 percent died. With MERS, so far only 424 cases have been detected since the first reported case in September 2012. However, the fatality rate is much higher in MERS, killing about a third of patients infected.

Another distinction between the two coronaviruses is prevalence. SARS was a global killer, while MERS has mostly been confined to the Middle East. There have been some cases reported outside the Middle East, but all were in people who either had traveled to the Middle East or was in close contact with the infected traveler.

Despite MERS’ higher incidence of death, it is still not yet a global concern, according to Marc Sprenger, director of the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC).

“Even though our understanding of MERS is only a slowly evolving one, we can see important differences between it and SARS,” Sprenger told CNN via email. “Perhaps the most important one is that MERS is spreading much slower than SARS — we have not yet seen sustained human to human transmission.”

“A similarity with SARS is that both SARS and MERS are zoonotic (when the virus can jump from animal to human) viruses. MERS appears to be a zoonotic virus resulting from multiple introductions and re-introductions into the (human) community,” he explained.

While MERS has been slow to infect large numbers of people over a short period of time, there has been a recent uptick in cases. An alarming spike has been recorded over the past week, both in case numbers and deaths. According to Arab News, 16 cases of MERS have been reported in the last 24 hours. As well, ECDC figures show that more cases have been reported in April of 2014 than all of the past 18 months combined.

The protocols Hong Kong and other countries honed in on following the SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003 offer the best measures at limiting the spread of coronaviruses. Knowledge, in the form of public education, is key to halting the spread of coronaviruses.

Saudi Arabia is now learning transparency, which is key to combating the deadly disease. Evidence of this is seen in the recent replacement of the country’s secretive health minister Abdullah Al-Rabeeah. The country swore in Adel Fakieh, who is a proponent of public education and openness.

The emergence of SARS not only took the world by surprise, noted Prof. Malik Peiris, director of Hong Kong University’s School of Public Health, but it also marked the re-emergence of infectious diseases as a major global concern.

In the wake of SARS, Hong Kong has now become a center for infectious disease epidemiology and virology, Peiris said. As well, public education about hygiene and disease containment in Asia and around the world are much better following SARS.

“The consciousness of hygiene, issues of coughing and sneezing in public, the use of hand wipes and alcohol wipes … and people wearing masks when they have respiration infection — importantly, that is not to protect themselves but to protect others (from infection),” Peiris told CNN’s Euan McKirdy. “These are direct results of SARS.”

The research into antibodies developed at the time of SARS has been invaluable in the development of MERS studies, and the models of virus behavior developed during the 2003 SARS outbreak have added to the urgency of developing an antidote for MERS before it becomes a global pandemic, according to a South China Morning Post report.

“The MERS coronavirus may undergo further genetic changes and one day become as transmissible as the SARS coronavirus,” Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, an expert in infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong, told the newspaper. “Therefore we must prepare for this scenario before it happens.”

DANGER IN AMERICA

While there have only been limited numbers of cases reported outside the Middle East, US health experts have been monitoring the disease closely in case of signs of the virus on American soil.

To date, MERS cases outside the Middle East have been confined to the Old World. Today, however, the first human case of infection from MERS has been diagnosed inside the United States.

The case is in a health worker who had traveled to Saudi Arabia. The male patient had traveled via British Airways on April 24 from Riyadh to London and then taking a connecting flight from Heathrow to the US. He landed in Chicago and took a bus to an undisclosed city in Indiana.

The man began experiencing respiratory ailments on April 27 – including cough, shortness of breath, as well as fever – and checked into the ER at Community Hospital in Munster, Indiana on April 28, being admitted the same day.

Because of his travel history, Indiana health officials took a blood sample and sent it off to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for MERS testing. The health agency returned a confirmation on the sample on Friday, May 2.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said on a conference call the first US case of MERS was “of great concern because of its virulence,” proving fatal in about a third of infections, reported Reuters.

Still, Schuchat maintains the case represents “a very low risk to the broader general public,” but MERS has been shown to spread to healthcare workers and there are no known treatments for the disease.

At the time of this report, the patient is in stable condition with no other suspected cases of MERS on US soil.

“It was only a matter of time before the United States had a case,” virologist Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, of Columbia University in New York, told Reuters reporters Julie Steenhuysen and Sharon Begley. “Most of us thought it was not a question of if, but when. Am I more concerned as a result of this case? No.”

He maintained that the greatest reason why he is not overly concerned is because, despite the limited knowledge of the virus and its transmission pathways, the virus has been largely associated with bats and camels, with camels being the most likely reservoir from which humans become infected.

And likely because MERS was a disease of the Old World with limited cases seen outside the Middle East, the US politicians and health experts had no reason to be overly concerned. But with a case now confirmed in the US, things may begin to change.

“Now the U.S. is going to be more interested. I think it will have an impact on the number of scientists here who will be encouraged to work on MERS and congressmen will stand up and rail about the importance of this,” Lipkin added.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

While some Americans are struck down by random accidents or hereditary conditions, many Americans are killed each year due to preventable diseases, such as lung cancer.

According to the Mobidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), people living in the southeastern US states comprised 28 to 33 percent of all possible preventable deaths – the largest percentage for any region. The report also found that the top five causes of death – heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, and unintentional injuries – are responsible for 63 percent of all US deaths in 2010.

“This data is yet another demonstration that when it comes to health in this country, your longevity and health are more determined by your ZIP code than they are by your genetic code,” Dr. Tom Frieden, CDC director, said during a recent news conference.

The new report is based on the quantity of deaths from each cause that might have been avoided if all states had the same loss of life as the states with the smallest death rates. If this were the case – 91,757 premature deaths from heart disease, 84,443 premature deaths from cancer, 28,831 premature deaths from chronic lower respiratory disease, 16,973 premature deaths from stroke and 36,836 premature deaths from preventable injuries could have all been prevented.

“As a doctor, it is heartbreaking to lose just one patient to a preventable disease or injury – and it is that much more poignant as the director of the nation’s public health agency to know that far more than a hundred thousand deaths each year are preventable,” Frieden said. “With programs such as the CDC’s Million Hearts initiative, we are working hard to prevent many of these premature deaths.”

The authors said they did not add all of these premature deaths together because stopping some premature deaths may propel people to other causes of death. For instance, an individual who prevents premature death from heart disease still might die early from a different preventable condition, such as an unintentional injury.

The CDC researchers called out several major lifestyle factors behind premature deaths. They said risk of heart disease can be greatly reduced by cutting tobacco use, maintaining a healthy diet, staying physically active, as well as monitoring health conditions such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.

The CDC also said premature cancer risk can be cut by taking many of the steps listed above as well as moderating exposure to the sun, alcohol consumption and preventing certain infections – such as the human papillomavirus, which has been linked to cervical and other cancers.

To prevent avoidable accidents that may cause premature death, the health agency suggested wearing seatbelts while in a moving vehicle, using a helmet while on a motorcycle and avoiding unsafe environments both at home and in the workplace.

“We think that this report can help states set goals for preventing premature death from the conditions that account for the majority of deaths in the United States,” said report author Dr. Harold W. Jaffe, the CDC’s associate director for science. “Achieving these goals could prolong the lives of tens of thousands of Americans.”

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new study, from the Stanford University School of Medicine and Montana State University, demonstrates that, when implanted into the reproductive system of a mouse model, stem cells created from adult, infertile men will yield primordial germ cells. Primordial germ cells normally become sperm cells.

The findings, published in Cell Reports, help to further our understanding of a genetic cause of male infertility and basic sperm biology. The research team says that their approach holds considerable potential for clinical applications.

All of the infertile male participants suffer from a genetic mutation that prevents their bodies from producing mature sperm. The study suggests that the men with this condition — called azoospermia — might have produced germ cells at some point in their early lives, but these cells were lost as the men matured to adulthood.

“Our results are the first to offer an experimental model to study sperm development,” said Renee Reijo Pera of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine and Montana State University. “Therefore, there is potential for applications to cell-based therapies in the clinic, for example, for the generation of higher quality and numbers of sperm in a dish.”

“It might even be possible to transplant stem-cell-derived germ cells directly into the testes of men with problems producing sperm,” she added. Considerable study to ensure safety and practicality is needed, however, before reaching that point.

Infertility is a fairly common problem, affecting between 10 and 15 percent of couples in the US. The researchers say that many men are affected by genetic causes of infertility, most commonly due to the spontaneous loss of key genes on the Y sex chromosome. Until now, the causes of infertility at the molecular level have not been clear.

The fact that the research team was able to create primordial germ cells from the infertile men is very promising, but they note that these stem cells created far fewer of these sperm progenitors than the stem cells of men without the genetic mutations. They are sure, however, that this research provides a much needed model to study the earliest steps of human reproduction.

“We saw better germ-cell differentiation in this transplantation model than we’ve ever seen,” said  Reijo Pera, former director of Stanford’s Center for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Education. “We were amazed by the efficiency. Our dream is to use this model to make a genetic map of human germ-cell differentiation, including some of the very earliest stages.”

Humans share many cellular and physiological processes with common laboratory animals such as mice or fruit flies. In reproduction, however, there are significant variances, making it challenging to recreate the human reproductive processes in a laboratory setting. In addition, many crucial steps, such as the development and migration of primordial germ cells to the gonads, occur in the relatively short first days or weeks after conception.

Reijo Pera collaborated with Cyril Ramathal, PhD, a postdoctoral student at Stanford, to create what is known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from the skin samples of five men. The iPSCs closely resemble embryonic stem cells in their ability to become nearly any tissue in the body. Two of the participants were fertile, the remaining three carried a type of mutation on their Y chromosome known to prevent the production of sperm.

Regardless of the fertility or infertility of the men from whom they were derived, the primordial germ cells stopped differentiating in the mice before becoming mature sperm. The researchers believe this is because of the differences in the human and mouse reproductive processes. They were surprised, however, by the fact that the infertile men’s iPSCs could be used to create germ cells at all.

Prior studies using mice with a similar type of infertility discovered that the mice had germ cells as newborns, but that these cells were quickly depleted. The findings of the new study indicate that infertile human men might have had at least a few functioning germ cells as newborns or infants. The team says that more study is required, but they believe that their findings suggest these men might be able to have children of their own later in life by collecting and freezing some of this viable tissue during their childhood.

“This research provides an exciting and important step for the promise of stem cell therapy in the treatment of azoospermia, the most severe form of male factor infertility,” said Michael Eisenberg, MD, an assistant professor of urology at Stanford and director of the male reproductive medicine and surgery program. “While the study clearly demonstrates the importance that genetics play in spermatogenesis, it also suggests that some of these limitations could potentially be overcome.”

A previous study by Reijo Pera in 2009 demonstrated that it was possible to generate functional, sperm-producing germ cells from human embryonic stem cells grown in a laboratory under certain conditions. These cells are difficult to obtain, however, as they were derived from human embryos donated for research after in vitro fertilization procedures. Another challenge in using these cells for infertile couples wanting their own genetic children is that the child would inherit a portion of the genome from the embryo from which the cells were derived. Finally, the process required to create these cells required the stem cells to be engineered to overexpress several genes in order to drive the embryonic stem cells to become germ cells.

The stem cells created from the infertile men’s skin samples, however, required no artificial manipulation. These cells differentiated into what the team called “germ-cell-like cells” simply by virtue of the environment in which they were placed—in this case, the seminiferous tubules of mice, where the animals’ sperm production takes place. Without manipulation, the cells expressed many genes known to be expressed in primordial germ cells, and underwent a genetic reprogramming process called demethylation associated with sperm production.

“We found that the induced pluripotent stem cells were very efficiently driven down that lineage pathway,” said Reijo Pera. “This system has shown that the genetic background of the person from whom the stem cells are derived affects how many primordial germ cells are made. We’re now able to recapitulate that process and begin to study things like gene expression patterns and the distinct steps involved in this process.”

When the stem cells from the infertile men were compared to those of the fertile men, stark differences surfaced. The infertile men each carried a mutation in a region of the genome known as AZF1, which are associated with the production of few or no sperm. Their stem cells, according to the researchers’ estimations, were 50-to 100-fold less efficient in their ability to become primordial germ cells than the stem cells of the fertile men.

“Studying why this is the case will help us understand where the problems are for these men and hopefully find ways to overcome them,” said Reijo Pera.

“Our studies suggest that the use of stem cells can serve as a starting material for diagnosing germ cell defects and potentially generating germ cells,” she said. “This approach has great potential for treatment of individuals who have genetic/idiopathic causes for sperm loss or for cancer survivors who have lost sperm production due to gonadotoxic treatments.”

“In addition, it provides very intriguing possibilities for men rendered sterile after cancer treatments,” said Eisenberg. “Being able to efficiently convert skin cells into sperm would allow this group to become biologic fathers. Infertility is one of the most common and devastating complications of cancer treatments, especially for young boys and men.”

The research team intends to continue their studies using non-human primates for future implantation studies, in addition to exploring the effects of other types of infertility-associated mutations on germ cell production.

[ Watch The Video: Region’s First MRI-Guided Brain Biopsy At UC San Diego Health System ]

UC San Diego

Neurosurgeons at UC San Diego Heath System have, for the first time, combined real-time magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology with novel non-invasive cellular mapping techniques to develop a new biopsy approach that increases the accuracy of diagnosis for patients with brain cancer.
“There are many different types of brain cancer. Making an accurate diagnosis is paramount because the diagnosis dictates the subsequent course of treatment,” said Clark C. Chen, MD, PhD, vice-chairman of research, division of neurosurgery, UC San Diego School of Medicine. “For instance, the treatment of glioblastoma is fundamentally different than the treatment for oligodendroglioma, another type of brain tumor.”
Chen said that as many as one third of brain tumor biopsies performed in the traditional manner can result in misdiagnosis. He cited two challenges with conventional biopsy.
“First, because distinct areas of brain tumors exhibit different cell densities and higher cell densities are generally associated with higher tumor grade, biopsies taken from one region may yield a different diagnosis than if another area is biopsied,” said Chen. “Second, because tumors are hidden within the brain, surgeons must use mathematical algorithms to target where the biopsy should occur. As with all calculations, the process is subject to errors that the surgeon cannot easily correct in real time once the biopsy has begun.”
Chen’s team applied an MRI technique called Restriction Spectrum Imaging (RSI) to visualize the parts of the brain tumor that contain different cell densities.
“RSI allows us to identify the regions of the cell that are most representative of the entire tumor,” said Chen. “By targeting biopsies to these areas, we minimize the number of biopsies needed but still achieve a sampling that best characterizes the entire tumor.”
To ensure a targeted biopsy, Chen performs the procedure in the MRI suite while the patient is under general anesthesia. Because conventional biopsy equipment cannot be used in the MRI, Chen uses a special MRI-compatible system called ClearPoint®. This system utilizes an integrated set of hardware, software, and surgical equipment to allow the surgeon to target and visualize the path of the biopsy as well as the actual biopsy site, intraoperatively.
“Surgeons have been performing brain biopsies in a near blind manner for the past fifty years. The ability to see where the biopsy needle is located and where the biopsy is being performed in real time is groundbreaking,” said Chen. “This combination of technologies gives me an opportunity to immediately adjust my surgical approach while minimizing risk.”

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

While previous genetic research efforts have been able to identify a person’s ancestral origins within around 430 miles, a new system devised at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom can zero in on a person’s origin down to a particular village or island.

According to a new report in the journal Nature Communications, the Sheffield researchers were able to develop a system called Geographic Population Structure (GPS) that is capable of geo-locating someone’s ancestral home from 1,000 years ago.

The study team said their breakthrough came when they could determine where the gene pools that produced someone’s DNA were last mixed. They added that this development has enormous implications for life-saving personalized medicine, improving forensic science and for the study of communities whose ancestral roots are under debate, such as African Americans and Roma gypsies.

Genetic admixture takes place when folks from two or more formerly separated populations start interbreeding, according to the researchers. This leads to the development of new gene pools that represent a mixture of the originator gene pool.

“If we think of our world as being made up of different colors of soup – representing different populations – it is easy to visualize how genetic admixture occurs,” said study author Eran Elhaik, a population geneticist from the University of Sheffield. “If a population from the blue soup region mixes with a population from the red soup region their off-springs would appear as a purple soup.”

[ Watch the Video: Using GPS To Track DNA ]

“The more genetic admixture that takes place, the more different colors of soup are introduced which makes it increasingly difficult to locate your DNA’s ancestry using traditional tools like Spatial Ancestry analysis (SPA) which has an accuracy level of less than 2 percent,” Elhaik continued.

“What we have discovered here at the University of Sheffield is a way to find not where you were born – as you have that information on your passport – but where your DNA was formed up to 1,000 years ago by modeling these admixture processes,” he concluded “What is remarkable is that, we can do this so accurately that we can locate the village where your ancestors lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago – until now this has never been possible.”

To test their GPS tool, the study team evaluated DNA from 10 villages on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia as well as over 20 islands in Oceania. The study revealed that 25 percent of the residents in Sardinia could be linked directly to their home village and most of the rest within 31 miles of their village. For Oceania, almost 90 percent of participants could be traced to their island.

“This is a significant improvement compared to the alternative SPA tool that placed Oceanians in India,” Elhaik said.

“This technique also means that we can no longer easily classify people’s ethnic identities with one single label,” he continued. “It is impossible for any of us to tick one box on a form such as White British or African as we are much complex models with our own unique identities. The notion of races is simply not plausible.”

Study author Tatiana Tatarinova, a genetics researcher at USC, developed a website making the GPS tool available to the public.

“To help people find their roots, I developed a website that allows anyone who has had their DNA genotyped to upload their results and use GPS to find their ancestral home,” Tatarinova said.

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

It is well known that some things in life are contagious, such as social conditions like pregnancy or divorce. According to a new study from the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Technische Universität Dresden, stress is also contagious and can be damaging to one’s health. Simply observing another person in a stressful situation, according to their findings, is enough to make our own bodies release the stress hormone, cortisol.

In our fast-paced society, stress becomes a major health threat with a wide range of psychological (burnout, depression, and anxiety) and physiological (headaches, chest pain, fatigue and insomnia) problems. The Mayo Clinic also lists effects that stress can have on behaviors, including over / under eating, angry outbursts, drug or alcohol abuse, and social withdrawal. People who live relatively peaceful and stress free lives themselves have constant contact with people suffering from stress – whether in real life or on television. This contagious stress, or empathic stress as the researchers call it, can affect the general environment in a quantifiable psychological manner through increased concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol.

“The fact that we could actually measure this empathic stress in the form of a significant hormone release was astonishing,” Veronika Engert, lead researcher from the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, said in a recent statement.

Engert’s surprise is due to the fact that previous studies have experienced significant difficulties inducing firsthand stress to begin with. Empathic stress reactions of the person observing were found to be independent of (“vicarious stress”) or proportional to (“stress resonance”) the stress reactions of the actively stressed individuals. “There must be a transmission mechanism via which the target’s state can elicit a similar state in the observer down to the level of a hormonal stress response.“

During the testing, subjects were divided into two groups. One group was tested for direct stress. They were asked to complete difficult mental arithmetic tasks and interviews, while two supposed behavioral analysts assessed their performance. The second group observed directly stressed individuals — partially through a one-way mirror and partially through video transmissions.

The team found that only five percent of those directly stressed were able to remain calm. The other 95 percent displayed a psychologically significant increase in cortisol levels.

In the observational group, 26 percent of those not exposed to any direct stress at all showed a significant increase in cortisol as well. When the observer and the stressed person being observed were partners in a couple relationship, the effect as particularly strong — 40 percent. But a relationship isn’t necessary for empathic stress to occur. Even when observing complete strangers, ten percent of the observers displayed stress themselves.

When the events where observed through a one-way mirror, 30 percent of the observers experienced a stress response. Virtual observation through video transmission effected 24 percent. “This means that even television programs depicting the suffering of other people can transmit that stress to viewers,” says Engert. “Stress has enormous contagion potential.”

The effects of stress magnify when it becomes chronic. “A hormonal stress response has an evolutionary purpose, of course. When you are exposed to danger, you want your body to respond with an increase in cortisol,” explained Engert. “However, permanently elevated cortisol levels are not good. They have a negative impact on the immune system and neurotoxic properties in the long term.” For example, people who work as caregivers or the family members of someone who is chronically stressed have an increased risk for the potentially harmful side effects of empathic stress.

The researchers also found that men and women suffer from empathic stress with equal frequency, despite common perceptions otherwise. “In surveys however, women tend to assess themselves as being more empathic compared to men’s self-assessments. This self-perception does not seem to hold if probed by implicit measures.”

The research team intends to focus their future studies on revealing exactly how the stress is transmitted and what can be done to reduce its potentially negative influence on society.

Findings of this research were publish April 17, 2014 in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Vienna University of Technology

A new dental filling material, developed at the Vienna University of Technology, is easier to harden. It makes dental treatment faster and easier.

In modern dentistry, amalgam fillings have become unpopular. Instead, white composite materials are more commonly used, which at first glance can hardly be distinguished from the tooth. The majority of these composites are based on photoactive materials that harden when they are exposed to light. But as the light does not penetrate very deeply into the material, the patients often have to endure a cumbersome procedure in which the fillings are applied and hardened in several steps. The Vienna University of Technology in collaboration with the company Ivoclar Vivadent have now developed a new generation of photoactive materials based on the element Germanium. Simply put, improved photoreactivity is good news for everyone who wants to spend as little time as possible in the dental chair.

Hardening With Light

Similar to natural tooth enamel, modern dental composites consist of a mixture of different material components. In addition to inorganic fillers they can also contain photoactive organic resins which react to light of a particular wavelength and readily solidify.

Professor Robert Liska and his team at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have been working with such photoactive substances for a long time. Similar photoactive substances are used for additional applications including protective coatings and modern 3d-printing.

The penetration depth of the light depends on its wavelength. “Usually, light in the violet and ultraviolet region is used”, says Robert Liska. It is also possible to use light with longer wavelengths, which penetrates deeper into the material, but then the polymerization process is less efficient. If the filling cannot be hardened in one step, the procedure has to be repeated several times. If the cavity is large, this can be rather uncomfortable.

Germanium-based Compound Initiates Chain Reaction

This problem can now be solved with a new Germanium-based molecule. It only makes up 0.04% of the composite material, but it plays a crucial role. The molecule is split into two parts by blue light, creating radicals, which initiate a chain reaction: molecular compounds, which are already present in the filling, assemble into polymers, and the material hardens.

The Germanium-based photo initiator was created at the Vienna University of Technology and then extensively tested by Ivoclar Vivadent. At Graz University of Technology, the physicochemical mechanism was investigated further. Using this new compound, the hardening depth could be increased from 2 mm to 4 mm, which considerably reduces the duration of the medical procedure.

Based on these excellent results, the Vienna University of Technology and Ivoclar Vivadent have made additional strides to further extend their collective research interests in dental materials. Already in 2012, the Institute for Applied Synthetic Chemistry together with the Institute for Materials Science and Technology with collective funding from Ivoclar Vivadent and the Christian Doppler Research Association put into place a Laboratory for “Photopolymers in digital and restorative dentistry”. Since its inception the laboratory has Goals for the laboratory include the development of improved photosensitive substances for dentistry with additional research efforts placed on 3D-printing of ceramic implants.

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Typically, diagnosing depression involves discussions about symptoms with a doctor or a therapist. It isn’t an exact science, because until now, there wasn’t an empirical test for most mental illnesses. A new study from the Medical University of Vienna (MedUni Vienna) might just change that. The study findings, published in PLOS ONE, demonstrate that in principle it might be possible to use a blood test to detect depression.

The transport of the neurotransmitter serotonin, known for improving mood, into a cell is facilitated by a protein in the cell membrane called a serotonin transporter (SERT) — which regulates neural depression networks. A lack of serotonin is often to blame for depressive conditions, making SERT the target of choice for many anti-depression drug therapies.

SERT is not just present in the brain, but also occurs in large quantities in organs such as the intestines or the blood. The SERT present in blood makes sure that blood platelets maintain the proper concentration of serotonin in the blood plasma, working identically to the way it performs in the brain.

The MedUni Vienna team, which included Christian Scharinger and Ulrich Rabl, working under the supervision of Lukas Pezawas at the Department of Biological Psychiatry, University Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, and others, used functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) images of the brain, in conjunction with pharmacological investigations to demonstrate a close relationship between the speed of serotonin uptake in blood platelets and the function of a depression network in the brain.

Because it is primarily active at rest, and processes content with strong self reference, the network is called the “default mode network.” Recent studies have revealed that the network is actively suppressed during complex thought processes, which is essential for adequate levels of concentration. Patients who suffer from depression have a difficult time suppressing the network during thought processes. This leads to negative thinking and poor concentration.

“This is the first study that has been able to predict the activity of a major depression network in the brain using a blood test. While blood tests for mental illnesses have until recently been regarded as impossible, this study clearly shows that a blood test is possible in principle for diagnosing depression and could become reality in the not too distant future,” explained Pezawas. Being able to detect the processes of the depression network through a blood tests makes it a very real possibility that a blood test for diagnosing depression could be in our near future.