redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online
Researchers from the University of South Florida (USF) have reportedly discovered that an alternative salt form of lithium might be a safer, less toxic way to treat bipolar disorder and other neuropsychiatric conditions.
Publishing a paper in a recent edition of RSC Advances, the journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the study authors discuss how oral lithium salicylate was able to produce steady lithium levels for up to 48 hours in rats – without the toxic side effects typically linked with the rapid absorption of current FDA-approved lithium carbonate.
While lithium carbonate has been tremendously effective in treating the mania associated with bipolar disorder, as well as reducing the likelihood of suicide during the depressive phases of the condition, it can also cause such side effects as diarrhea, vomiting, weight gain, hand tremors and even decreased thyroid function.
As a result of those adverse effects, patients often stop taking the medication, and alternative treatments that are less toxic than lithium carbonate but equally as effective are not forthcoming, the researchers said. However, they report that the discovery that lithium salicylate could potentially be more effective than lithium carbonate in treating these conditions, only without the toxicity, could be an important step forward in the field of lithium-based treatments.
“Despite its narrow therapeutic window and the emergence of proprietary alternatives, U.S. FDA-approved lithium therapeutics are still regarded as the ‘gold standard’ for the treatment of the manic phase of bipolar disorder,” Dr. Adam J. Smith, a neuroscientist at the USF Health Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair, said in a statement.
“Our previous research suggested that re-engineering lithium therapeutics by crystal engineering might produce better performance with reduced toxicities,” he continued, explaining that crystal engineering is the design and synthesis of molecular solid crystal structures with desired properties using intermolecular interactions.
As part of the study, Dr. Smith and his colleagues examined the impact of two previously untested lithium salts (salicylate and lactate) on laboratory rats. They found that these two substances, each of which is structurally different from lithium carbonate, demonstrated “profoundly different pharmacokinetics” – or absorption and distribution of the drug – when compared to the more widely used version of the substance.
According to Dr. Smith, this is likely the first pharmacokinetic study of lithium salicylate and lithium lactate in lab animals, and the results support previous findings suggesting that an ideal method of lithium preparation would both even-out the high blood level peaks while also slowing declining blood concentrations.
“This is exactly the pharmacokinetic profile produced by lithium salicylate in our study,” said senior author Dr. Doug Shytle, also of the USF Health Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair. “Remarkably, lithium salicylate produced elevated levels of lithium in the blood and brain 48 hours after the dose, but without the sharp peaks that contribute to the toxicity problems of lithium in the currently used form.”
The 48-hour time frame represents a crucial difference between between lithium salicylate and current FDA-approved lithium therapeutics, according to the study authors. If they can manage to duplicate these preclinical outcomes in humans, it would allow for patients to take less frequent doses and experience fewer problematic side effects than current conventional lithium treatments.
“Psychiatry has long struggled with the fact that, while lithium is highly effective for treating bipolar disorder, the narrow therapeutic window and side effect profile often makes lithium both difficult and sometimes dangerous to work with clinically,” explained Dr. Todd Gould, an expert in the neurobiology of bipolar disorder and the lithium at the University of Maryland.
“The pharmacokinetic data by Dr. Smith and colleagues suggests that lithium salts other than the commonly used lithium carbonate may have a broader therapeutic window and potentially fewer side effects,” he added. “Studies in humans will be needed to confirm safety and demonstrate that the pharmacokinetic profile observed in rats is similarly observed in humans.”

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new study, led by Georgetown University, reveals that a blood test has been discovered and validated that can predict, with 90 percent accuracy, if a healthy person will develop mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease within three years.

The study, published in Nature Medicine, indicates the possibility of developing treatment strategies for Alzheimer’s at an earlier stage. Therapy at these earlier stages would be more effective at slowing or preventing the onset of symptoms. The researchers say that their study is the first known report of blood-based biomarkers for preclinical Alzheimer’s.

Ten lipids, or fats, that predict disease are identified in the blood by the new test, which could be ready for use in clinical trials in as little as two years. The researchers are hopeful for other diagnostic uses as well.

“Our novel blood test offers the potential to identify people at risk for progressive cognitive decline and can change how patients, their families and treating physicians plan for and manage the disorder,” says Howard J. Federoff, MD, PhD, professor of neurology and executive vice president for health sciences at Georgetown University Medical Center.

To date, there is no cure or effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Approximately 35.6 million people suffer from the disease worldwide, and according to the World Health Organization (WHO), that number will double every 20 years. They predict 115.4 million sufferers by 2050.

There have been many efforts to develop drug therapies to slow or reverse the disease’s progression, but according to Federoff, all have failed so far. He believes that one reason for this failure is that the drugs were evaluated too late in the disease process.

“The preclinical state of the disease offers a window of opportunity for timely disease-modifying intervention,” Federoff says. “Biomarkers such as ours that define this asymptomatic period are critical for successful development and application of these therapeutics.”

The researchers recruited 525 healthy participants aged 70 and older. The participants all gave blood samples at the beginning of the study and at various points during the study. Over the five-year study period, 74 participants met the criteria for either mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD) or a condition known as amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), in which memory loss is prominent. Forty-six of this group were diagnosed upon enrollment in the study and 28 (called converters) developed aMCI or mild AD during the study.

During the study’s third year, 53 participants who developed aMCI/AD (including 18 converters) and 53 cognitively normal matched controls were selected for the lipid biomarker discovery phase of the study. The lipids were not the initial focus of the study; instead, they were an outcome.

The researchers discovered a panel of 10 lipids that appear to reveal the breakdown of neural cell membranes in study participants who develop symptoms of cognitive impairment or AD. The team validated the panel using the remaining 21 aMCI/AD participants (including 10 converters), and 20 controls. To determine if the subjects could be characterized into the correct diagnostic categories based solely on the panel of 10 lipids identified in the discovery phase, the data was analyzed blind.

“The lipid panel was able to distinguish with 90 percent accuracy these two distinct groups: cognitively normal participants who would progress to MCI or AD within two to three years, and those who would remain normal in the near future,” Federoff says.

The research team also investigated the possibility that the APOE4 gene, known to be a risk factor for developing AD, would contribute to accurate classifications of the groups. They found it was not a significant predictive factor, however.

“We consider our results a major step toward the commercialization of a preclinical disease biomarker test that could be useful for large-scale screening to identify at-risk individuals,” Federoff says. “We’re designing a clinical trial where we’ll use this panel to identify people at high risk for Alzheimer’s to test a therapeutic agent that might delay or prevent the emergence of the disease.”

[ Watch the Video: EyeMusic Live Demo at AIPAC ]

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Normally, people perceive colors and shapes visually, but what if you could “hear” them? A new study from Hebrew University shows that using sensory substitution devices (SSDs), colors and shapes can now be conveyed to the brain noninvasively through other senses.

Prof. Amir Amedi, of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences and the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Medicine, leads the study at the Center for Human Perception and Cognition, which is offering tools to the blind and visually impaired via training with SSDs to receive environmental visual information and interact with it in ways otherwise unimaginable.

Yissum, the Hebrew University’s Technology Transfer Company, has patented the work of Prof. Amedi and his team.

Using their existing senses, SSDs are non-invasive sensory aids that provide visual information to the blind. One example of an SSD would be a miniature camera connected to a small computer (or smart phone) and stereo headphones, which the user would wear. Using a predictable algorithm, the images are converted into a “soundscape” that allows the users to listen to and then interpret the visual information obtained by the camera.

EyeMusic SSD is an SSD available at the Apple App Store that plays pleasant musical notes to convey information about colors, shapes and locations of objects in the world around the user.

Combining the SSD equipment with a unique training program allows the blind to achieve various complex, visual-linked abilities. Recent studies published in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience and Scientific Reports used EyeMusic SSD with blind and blindfolded-sighted users. The users were shown to correctly perceive and interact with objects, such as recognizing different shapes and colors or reaching for a beverage.

EyeMusic was also used to show that other fast and accurate movements can be guided by the EyeMusic tool and visuo-motor learning. The team published two studies in Neuron and Current Biology, demonstrating that the blind can characterize sound-conveyed images into complex object categories—for example, faces, houses and outdoor scenes, plus everyday objects. The participants were also able to locate people’s positions, identify facial expressions and read letters and words.

SSDs are not widely used in the blind community, despite these encouraging behavioral demonstrations. The reasons that have prevented their adoption, however, have changed for the better over the past few years, according to an article published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. Due to technological advances, SSDs are much cheaper, smaller and lighter. They are also able to run on a standard smartphone. Training and performance have also been enhanced by new computerized training methods and environments.

Contrary to the widely-held conception of the cortex being divided into separate vision-processing areas, auditory areas, etc., the Hebrew University research has demonstrated that over the last decade, new findings have shown that many brain areas are characterized by their computational task, and can be activated using senses other than the one commonly used for this task, even for people who were never exposed to “original” sensory information at all—for example, a person born blind that never saw one photon of light during his lifetime.

The research team showed that when users process “visual information” through the SSD, congenitally blind people who learned to read by touch using the Braille script or through their ears with sensory substitution devices use the same areas in the visual cortex as those used by sighted readers. An example of this technique, recently published in Current Biology, revealed that blind subjects use SSD equipment and training to “see” body shapes.

An entire network of regions in the human brain are dedicated to processing and perception of body shapes. This network starts in the areas processing vision in the cortex, leading to the “Extrastriate Body Area” (EBA), and further connecting to multiple brain areas deciphering people’s motion in space, their feelings and intents.

The EBA in the blind was found to be functionally connected to the whole network of body-processing found in the sighted. This finding bolsters the researchers’ new theory of the brain as a sensory-independent task machine instead of a pure sensory machine based on vision, audition or touch.

“The human brain is more flexible than we thought,” says Prof. Amedi. “These results give a lot of hope for the successful regaining of visual functions using cheap non-invasive SSDs or other invasive sight restoration approaches. They suggest that in the blind, brain areas have the potential to be ‘awakened’ to processing visual properties and tasks even after years or maybe even lifelong blindness, if the proper technologies and training approaches are used.”

Rebekah Eliason for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
A study from Northwestern Medicine has led to a new theory regarding the development and cause of endometriosis. The chronically painful disease, which affects 1 in 10 women, has been linked to two previously unstudied genes.
This innovative research regarding endometriosis suggests that an integral part of the disease and its progression is epigenetic modification, which is a process that will either enhance or disrupt the reading of DNA.
Matthew Dyson, research assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, along with Serdar Bulun, MD, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Feinberg and Northwestern Memorial Hospital, were able to recognize a novel role for a family of key gene regulators found in the uterus.
“Until now, the scientific community was looking for a genetic mutation to explain endometriosis,” said Bulun, a member of the Center for Genetic Medicine and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University. “This is the first conclusive demonstration that the disease develops as a result of alterations in the epigenetic landscape and not from classical genetic mutations.”
Heather C. Guidone, Surgical Program Director at The Center for Endometriosis Care explains that, “Endometriosis results when tissue similar to that which lines the uterus grows in other areas of the body. The persistent survival of these cells results in chronic pelvic pain, organ dysfunction, infertility and more. Although the cause of the disease has remained unknown on a cellular level, there have been several different models established to explain its development.”
Since endometriosis is only found in menstruating primates, it is likely that the unique evolution of uterine development and menstruation are connected with the disease. Retrograde menstruation, the movement of cells up the fallopian tubes and into the pelvis, has long been considered by scientists as a probable cause of endometriosis. Since most women experience retrograde menstruation at some point, this model fails to explain why only ten percent of women develop the disease. In addition, this theory is insufficient at explaining instances where endometriosis arises independent of menstruation.
Bulun and Dyson theorize that there is an epigenetic switch that allows the expression of the genetic receptor GATA6 instead of GATA2. This results in progesterone resistance leading to development of the disease.
“We believe an overwhelming number of these altered cells reach the lining of the abdominal cavity, survive and grow,” Bulun said. “These findings could someday lead to the first noninvasive test for endometriosis.”
Bulun hopes that one day clinicians could prevent the disease by placing teenagers predisposed to this epigenetic change on a birth control pill regimen.
In further research, Dyson intends to investigate the epigenetic fingerprint that results from the presence of GATA6 instead of GATA2 and use the information as a potential diagnostic tool since such epigenetic differences are readily detectable.
“These findings have the potential to shift how we view and treat the disease moving forward,” Bulun said. This study was published in PLoS Genetics.

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have developed two inexpensive adapters that enable a smartphone to capture high-resolution images from the front and back of the eye.
The new technology will make it easy for patients to take a picture of the eye and share it securely with other health practitioners or store it in the patient’s electronic record.
Robert Chang, MD, one of the developers and assistant professor of ophthalmology, said the technology is like Instagram for the eye.
Publishing a paper in the Journal of Mobile Technology in Medicine, the team wrote that the technology is an opportunity to increase eye-care services as well as improve the ability to advise patients on their own care remotely.
Standard photography equipment used to exam the eye can be very costly and require extensive training to use properly. Primary care physicians and emergency department staff also sometimes lack this equipment.
“Adapting smartphones for the eye has the potential to revolutionize the delivery of eye care — in particular, to provide it in places where it’s less accessible,” David Myung, MD, PhD, lead author of two upcoming papers describing the development and clinical experience with the devices, said in a statement. “Whether it’s in the emergency department, where patients often have to wait a long time for a specialist, or during a primary-care physician visit, this new workflow will improve the quality of care for our patients, especially in the developing world where ophthalmologists are few and far between.”
For example, imagine a car accident victim arriving in the emergency department with an eye injury resulting in blood inside the front of their eye, said Myung.
“Normally the physician would have to describe this finding in her electronic record with words alone. Smartphones today not only have the camera resolution to supplement those words with a high-resolution photo, but also the data-transfer capability to upload that photo securely to the medical record in a matter of seconds,” Myung said in a statement.
Chang, senior author of the paper, said that ophthalmology is a highly image-oriented field. He said that with smartphone technology, inexpensive attachments help health-care staff take a picture needed for an eye consultation.
“I started entertaining the idea of a pocket-sized adapter that makes the phone do most of the heavy lifting,” said Myung. “It took some time to figure out how to mount the lens and lighting elements to the phone in an efficient yet effective way.”
After taking an image of the front of the eye, he focused on visualizing the inside lining of the back of the eye, or the retina.
“Taking a photo of the retina is harder because you need to focus light through the pupil to reach inside the eye,” said Myung.
The researchers then used optics theory to determine the perfect working distance and lighting conditions for a simple adapter that connects a conventional examination lens to a phone. They shot hundreds of photos with various iterations until they were able to finally get it all right.
The team said the initial adapters will be available for purchase for research purposes only while the team seeks guidance from the Food and Drug Administration.
“We have gotten the production cost of each type of adapter to under $90 but the goal is to make it even lower in the future,” Chang said in a statement.

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Researchers from the University of Adelaide’s School of Dentistry say a visit to the dentist could eventually require a detailed look at a patient’s genes.

The team wrote in the Australian Dental Journal that one day dentists may have to look at a patient’s genes to determine which ones are being switched on and off. The researchers believe that this field of epigenetics will have a big role to play in the future of dental hygiene.

“Our genetic code, or DNA, is like an orchestra – it contains all of the elements we need to function – but the epigenetic code is essentially the conductor, telling which instruments to play or stay silent, or how to respond at any given moment,” co-author Associate Professor Toby Hughes said in a statement.

He said in terms of oral health, epigenetic factors help orchestrate healthy and unhealthy states in our mouths.

“They respond to the current local environment, such as the type and level of our oral microbes, regulating which of our genes are active. This means we could use them to determine an individual’s state of health, or even influence how their genes behave. We can’t change the underlying genetic code, but we may be able to change when genes are switched on and off,” Hughes said.

He and colleagues at the university have been studying the underlying genetic and environmental influences on dental hygiene. Hughes says that since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2007, epigenetics has had an increasing role in biological and medical research.

“Dentistry can also greatly benefit from new research in this area,” Hughes said in a statement. “It could open up a range of opportunities for diagnosis, treatment and prevention.”

Scientists already know that genome plays a role in dental development, as well as a range of other oral disease. They also understand that oral microbiota plays a key role in the state of oral health.

“We now have the potential to develop an epigenetic profile of a patient, and use all three of these factors to provide a more personalized level of care,” says Hughes. “Other potential oral health targets for the study of epigenetics include the inflammation and immune responses that lead to periodontitis, which can cause tooth loss; and the development and progression of oral cancers.”

Eventually, the researchers say this technique could mean dentists will be able to create a “personalized medicine” approach to managing common oral diseases in patients.

“What’s most exciting is the possibility of screening for many of these potential oral health problems from an early age so that we can prevent them or reduce their impact,” Hughes said.

American Chemical Society

Beer drinkers know that hops are what gives the drink its bitterness and aroma. Recently, scientists reported that the part of hops that isn’t used for making beer contains healthful antioxidants and could be used to battle cavities and gum disease. In a new study in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, they say that they’ve identified some of the substances that could be responsible for these healthful effects.

Yoshihisa Tanaka and colleagues note that their earlier research found that antioxidant polyphenols, contained in the hop leaves (called bracts) could help fight cavities and gum disease. Extracts from bracts stopped the bacteria responsible for these dental conditions from being able to stick to surfaces and prevented the release of some bacterial toxins. Every year, farmers harvest about 2,300 tons of hops in the United States, but the bracts are not used for making beer and are discarded. Thus, there is potentially a large amount of bracts that could be repurposed for dental applications. But very few of the potentially hundreds of compounds in the bracts have been reported. Tanaka’s group decided to investigate what substances in these leaves might cause those healthful effects.

Using a laboratory technique called chromatography, they found three new compounds, one already-known compound that was identified for the first time in plants and 20 already-known compounds that were found for the first time in hops. The bracts also contained substantial amounts of proanthocyanidins, which are healthful antioxidants.

—

Julie Cohen, University of California – Santa Barbara
Researchers use animal models to demonstrate that the net result of cocaine use is a balance of both positive and negative effects

On the other side of the cocaine high is the cocaine crash, and understanding how one follows the other can provide insight into the physiological effects of drug abuse. For decades, brain research has focused on the pleasurable effects of cocaine largely by studying the dopamine pathway. But this approach has left many questions unanswered.
So the Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory (BPL) at UC Santa Barbara decided to take a different approach by examining the motivational systems that induce an animal to seek cocaine in the first place. Their findings appear in today’s issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
“We weren’t looking at pleasure; we were looking at the animal’s desire to seek that pleasure, which we believe is they key to understanding drug abuse,” said Aaron Ettenberg, a professor in UCSB’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences who established the BPL in 1982. The lab has been particularly active in the development and use of novel behavioral assays that provide a unique approach to the study of drug-behavior interactions.
The findings suggest that the same neural mechanism responsible for the negative effects of cocaine likely contribute to the animal’s decision to ingest cocaine. “Just looking at the positive is looking at only half the picture; you have to understand the negative side as well,” said Ettenberg.
“It’s not just the positive, rewarding effects of cocaine that drive this desire to seek the drug” he said. “It’s the net reward, which takes into account the negative consequences in addition to the positive. Together the two determine the net positive output that will lead to the motivated behavior.”
Ettenberg’s team chose to study norepinephrine (also called noradrenaline), because cocaine is known to act upon this primary neurotransmitter. The researchers chose two places in the brain — the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and the central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) — because both have been implicated in the aversive effects of such emotional processes as fear conditioning and general anxiety. Norepinephrine is a major transmitter in these two brain systems and plays a part in regulating anxiety.
Lead author Jennifer Wenzel chose a unique way to reproduce the results of previous work she had done at UCSB, where she earned her Ph.D. in 2013. An earlier study used reversible lesions in the BNST and CeA to block the function in these two areas and then examined their effects in a unique animal model of cocaine self-administration.
For that study, the investigators trained rats to run down a custom-built 6-foot-long runway for a daily dose of cocaine. Each day they responded more quickly than the last, demonstrating an increasing motivation to get cocaine.
“Over several trials, however, rats developed an ambivalence about entering the goal box: they rapidly approached the goal but then turned and retreated back toward the start box,” Wenzel explained. “These retreats can happen several times before rats finally enter the goal box and receive an injection of cocaine.”
This retreat behavior became more and more prevalent as testing continued and reflects the animals’ learning that negative effects (the crash) follow the positive effects (euphoria) of cocaine. Blocking the function of the BNST or the CeA resulted in a dramatic decrease in retreat behavior because the negative effects of the drug were blocked.
In the newly published paper, the researchers used drugs that selectively block the action of the neurotransmitter, noradrenaline, in the BNST and CeA rather than the entire function. The results were similar to those in the earlier study. “If you put norepinephrine antagonists directly into the BNST or the CeA, you can prevent or dramatically attenuate the negative effects of cocaine, leaving the positive effects intact,” Ettenberg explained. “So the animals show fewer retreats in the runway.”
The study looked at acute cocaine use with only one injection a day, which is not considered a model of addiction. So the natural extension of this paper’s line of inquiry is how the positive and negative systems associated with cocaine use change when animals are exposed to multiple doses in any given day (i.e. addiction). Subsequent studies have demonstrated that as the animals become addicted to the drug, the positive consequences get reduced and negative effects get exaggerated so the net experience is less positive. To overcome the decreased positive effects, users increase the dose, which creates a behavioral spiral.
“We need to more fully understand the underlying neuronal mechanisms altered by cocaine before we can treat people,” Ettenberg said. “Once we understand how the brain systems producing the positive/euphoric and negative/anxiety effects of the drug interact, we might be able to produce treatments that address the balance between these two opposing actions, both of which serve as strong driving forces. We therefore need to understand both of these systems in order to come up with a rational treatment down the line.”
—

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
The World Health Organization (WHO) is recommending that people cut their sugar intake in half in order to combat the obesity epidemic.
WHO’s 2002 recommendation stated that sugars should make up less than 10 percent of total energy intake per day. However, the latest recommendations by the organization says that sugars should be less than 5 percent of total energy intake, or about six teaspoons.
“Much of the sugars consumed today are “hidden” in processed foods that are not usually seen as sweets. For example, 1 tablespoon of ketchup contains around 4 grams (around 1 teaspoon) of sugars. A single can of sugar-sweetened soda contains up to 40 grams (around 10 teaspoons) of sugar,” WHO said in a statement.
The new guidelines are based on analyses of published scientific studies on the consumption of sugars and how that relates to excess weight gain and tooth decay in adults and children. The proposed limits apply to all monosaccharides and disaccharides that are added to food by the manufacturer, cook or consumer. These limits also apply to natural sugars found in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit concentrations.
“Obesity now affects half a billion people in the world, and it is on the rise in all age groups and particularly in low- and middle-income countries,” Francesco Branca, WHO’s director of nutrition for health and development, told Reuters.
The organization said there is an increasing concern that consumption of free sugars may result in both reduced intake of food containing more nutritionally adequate calories and an increase in total caloric intake, which could lead to an unhealthy diet, weight gain and an increased risk of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).
Free sugars also play a role in dental disease, which cost between five and 10 percent of health budgets in industrialized countries.
“The objective of this guideline is to provide recommendations on the consumption of free sugars to reduce the risk of NCDs in adults and children, with a particular focus on the prevention and control of weight gain and dental caries,” WHO said in a statement.
The organization said when the guidelines are finalized, program managers and policy planners should assess current intake of free sugars relative to a benchmark and develop measures to decrease intake of free sugars through public health interventions.
WHO’s announcement comes a day after Britain’s chief medical officer suggested a sugar tax be set into place in order to curb obesity rates, according to BBC News. Sally Davies told a health select committee this week that research has shown that sugar is addictive, and one day a sugar tax may need to be introduced.
“We have a generation of children who, because they’re overweight and their lack of activity, may well not live as long as my generation,” Davies told the committee. “We may need to move towards some form of sugar tax, but I hope we don’t have to.”

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Cheap parents rejoice! Australian researchers have found that giving buckets, boxes and other makeshift toys to children help them be more creative and active than being in a normal playground setting.

Based on long-term research by scientists from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, the new study found that simple, common objects given to children during recess and lunchtime can minimize sedentary time by 50 percent, improve imagination and improve social and problem-solving skills.

“Conventional playgrounds are designed by adults – they don’t actually take into consideration how the children want to play,” said study author Brendon Hyndman, currently a physical education lecturer at the University of Western Sydney. “At a time when childhood obesity is growing and playgrounds are shrinking, we need a creative approach to stimulate physical activity among schoolchildren.”

The study, which included 120 students between the ages of 5 and 12, involved placing buckets, pipes, exercise mats, hay bales and swimming pool noodles in the play areas at Emmaus Catholic Primary School in the Australian town of Ballarat. The researchers then recorded the students’ behavior. These behaviors were compared with those of children at another school in the area which had conventional play equipment such as monkey bars and slides.

The researchers found that sedentary behavior, considered sitting or standing around, dropped from nearly 62 percent to just over 30 percent of children when the kids were provided with the additional items by the researchers. The study team also found that students who played with the common objects took 13 more steps per minute and played more vigorously compared to those in the conventional playground.

“These results could be applied to anywhere that children play and shift the debate on the best way to keep our children healthy,” Hyndman said.

The new study comes after a report presented in November at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2013 found that today’s children are about 15 percent less physically fit than their parents from a cardiovascular standpoint.

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Adding more fish to your diet could help boost good cholesterol levels, according to a new study published in PLOS ONE.

Scientists at the University of Eastern Finland found that people who increase their intake of fish to a minimum of three to four fatty fish servings per week could increase the number of HDL particles in their blood, which are believed to protect against cardiovascular diseases.

Although many studies have been performed that reveal the benefits of fish, the latest study provides new information on how the consumption affects the size and lipid concentrations of lipoproteins which transport lipids in the blood.

Participants eating fish had salmon, rainbow trout, herring and vendace during the study, with no added butter or cream. The fish used did not include low-fat fish such as zander and perch, which have been observed to lower blood pressure.

Researchers carried out a detailed analysis on the participants to look at their lipoprotein particles. The method allowed the team to look at a total of 14 different particle classes. Not only did the study look at fish consumption, but also looked at the effects of whole grain, fish and bilberries. They said the study emphasizes that increasing overall LDL cholesterol is important.

The study included 131 participants with impaired glucose metabolisms and signs of metabolic syndrome who were randomized into three groups with 12-week periods. The team said 106 subjects completed the study, and they used serum metabolic profiles to study lipoprotein subclasses and lipids as well as low-molecular-weight metabolites.

“There were no significant differences in clinical characteristics between the groups at baseline or at the end of the intervention,” the authors wrote in the journal. “Mixed model analyses revealed significant changes in lipid metabolites in the HealthyDiet group during the intervention compared to the Control group.

“According to tertiles of changes in fish intake, a greater increase of fish intake was associated with increased concentration of large HDL particles, larger average diameter of HDL particles, and increased concentrations of large HDL lipid components, even though total levels of HDL cholesterol remained stable.”

The team concluded that the results suggest that consumption of a diet rich in whole grain, bilberries and fatty fish adds to good cholesterol in the body. They said these changes may be related to known protective functions of HDL such as reverse cholesterol transport and could explain the known positive effects of fish consumption against atherosclerosis.

“People shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking that if their standard lipid levels are OK, there’s no need to think about the diet, as things are a lot more complicated than that. Soft vegetable fats and fish are something to prefer in any case,” Postdoctoral Researcher Maria Lankinen, first author listed on the paper, said in a statement.

[ Watch The Video: Liftware Stops Shakey Hands ]

University of Michigan Health System

For people whose hands shake uncontrollably due to a medical condition, just eating can be a frustrating and embarrassing ordeal – enough to keep them from sharing a meal with others.

But a small new study conducted at the University of Michigan Health System suggests that a new handheld electronic device can help such patients overcome the hand shakes caused by essential tremor, the most common movement disorder.

In a clinical trial involving 15 adults with moderate essential tremor, the device improved patients’ ability to hold a spoon still enough to eat with it, and to use it to scoop up mock food and bring it to their mouths.

The researchers measured the effect three ways: using a standard tremor rating, the patients’ own ratings, and digital readings of the spoon’s movement.

The results are published online in the journal Movement Disorders by a research team that includes U-M neurologist and essential tremor specialist Kelvin Chou, M.D., as well as three people from the small startup company, Lift Labs, that makes the device, called Liftware. The study was funded by a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health that the researchers applied for together.

Public-private partnership – with a Michigan difference

The technology came full circle to its test in the UMHS clinic. The company’s CEO, Anupam Pathak, Ph.D., received his doctorate from the U-M College of Engineering – where he first worked on tremor-cancelling advanced microelectronic technologies for other purposes.

The concept is called ACT, or active cancellation of tremor. It relies on tiny electronic devices that work together to sense movement in different directions in real time, and then make a quick and precise counter-motion.

Lift Labs, based in San Francisco, developed the device, which resembles an extra-large electronic toothbrush base. It can adjust rapidly to the shaking of the user’s hand, keeping a detachable spoon or other utensil steady. In other words, it shakes the spoon in exactly the opposite way that the person’s hand shakes.

But to truly test whether their prototype device could help essential tremor patients overcome their condition’s effects, the Lift Labs team turned to Chou, who with his colleagues sees hundreds of essential tremor patients a year.

UMHS offers comprehensive care for the condition as part of its Movement Disorders Center. Chou and his colleagues have experience in prescribing a range of medication to calm tremors, and evaluating which patients might benefit from advanced brain surgery to implant a device that can calm the uncontrollable nerve impulses that cause tremor.

“Only about 70 percent of patients respond to medication, and only about 10 percent qualify for surgery, which has a high and lasting success rate,” says Chou, who is an associate professor in the U-M Medical School’s departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery. “People get really frustrated by tremor, and experience embarrassment that often leads to social isolation because they’re always feeling conscious not just eating but even drinking from a cup or glass.”

The trial, Chou says, showed that the amplitude of movement due to the tremor decreased measurably, and that patients could move the spoon much more normally. Though the trial did not include patients with hand tremors caused by other movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, the device may be useful to such patients too, he notes.

Says Pathak, “A key aspect of Liftware is a design with empathy. We hear of people struggling every day, and decided to apply technology in a way to directly help. We hope the final product is something people can feel proud of using, and allow them to regain independence and dignity.”

How the study was done

The researchers tested the device’s impact both with the microelectronics turned on, and with them turned off so there was no correction for movement. Patients and Chou could not tell by feeling the device whether it was on or off.

All three measures – objective rating by Chou, subjective rating by patients, and digital data from the device’s connection to a computer – showed improvement for eating and transferring items when the device was turned on, compared to when it was off.

When the patients were asked to simply hold the spoon halfway between the table and their mouth, the two objective measures showed improvement when the device was on, though the patients didn’t report a significant difference themselves.

“Our data show this device has very good potential to assist those who have tremor and aren’t candidates for surgery,” he says. “Compared with other devices designed to limit tremor by weighting or constraining limbs, this approach allows movement and is easier to use.”

The study included 15 adults between the ages of 59 and 80 whose tremor caused them to spill food or drink. They had experienced tremor for anywhere from 5 years to 57 years. All of the patients stopped taking their medication temporarily before testing the Liftware device. Five of the patients had undergone deep brain stimulation, but turned off their tremor-controlling implant for the study.

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Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Children who outgrow a food allergy are not always out of the woods. In some cases, an allergy to the same food can return, often becoming more severe and more persistent.

Pediatric allergy experts with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have reached out to healthcare providers and caregivers, asking them to carefully monitor children with food allergies for early signs of eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), a severe and painful type of allergy that has been increasingly more common in recent years.

“These two types of allergy have some elements in common, but patients with EoE usually don’t go on to develop tolerance to the foods that trigger EoE,” pediatric allergist Jonathan M. Spergel, MD, PhD, a pediatric allergist with CHOP, said in a statement.

Spergel is also director of CHOP’s Center for Pediatric Eosinophilic Disorders, one of the top programs in the nation for EoE treatment.

His research was presented today at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) in San Diego by Solrun Melkorka Maggadottir, MD, also of CHOP.

EoE involves swelling and inflammation of the esophagus, along with excessive levels of immune cells called eosinophils. EoE is known to cause weight loss, vomiting, heartburn and difficulty swallowing. This painful disorder affects people in any age group, but is usually first discovered in children with feeding difficulties.

Spergel and colleagues compared EoE with IgE-mediated food allergy, a more familiar type of food allergy that occurs when antibodies mount an exaggerated immune response against proteins in particular foods, such as nuts, eggs or milk. These foods can trigger a host of problems, including vomiting, hives and other skin reactions.

For the study, the team performed a retrospective analysis of 1,375 children seen at CHOP for EoE between 2000 and 2012. Of those, 425 could be shown to have a definite food causing their disorder – most commonly milk, egg, soy, or wheat. Of these children, 17 had gone on to develop EoE to a food after outgrowing IgE-mediated allergy to that same food.

“The pattern we found in those 17 patients suggests that the two types of food allergy have distinct pathophysiologies—they operate by different mechanisms and cause different functional changes,” said Spergel. “However, this pattern also raises the possibility that prior IgE-mediated food allergy may predispose a patient to developing EoE to the same food.”

About 10 percent of patients who undergo desensitization therapy for IgE-mediated food allergies go on to develop EoE to the same food, noted Spergel.

He added this is a high enough percentage that healthcare providers and caregivers need to consider it when treating patients with food allergies.

In desensitization therapy, a clinician exposes a patient to miniscule amount of an allergy-producing food, then gradually increases the amount, aiming for the patient to become tolerant to that food.

This desensitization therapy has been shown to be hugely successful in some children with peanut allergies.

Researchers from University of Cambridge reported in January that they were able to offer 84 percent of children with peanut allergies in their study group the ability to eat the equivalent of five peanuts per day after six months of desensitization therapy.

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

The movement-based part of an insomniac’s brain tends to be more active and demonstrate greater neuroplasticity than the same region in good sleepers, researchers from Johns Hopkins Medical Institution report in the March issue of the journal Sleep.

Study leader Rachel E. Salas, an assistant professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins, and her colleagues found that the increased brain plasticity in the motor cortex of people with chronic insomnia was more adaptable to change than those who do not struggle to get a good night’s sleep.

In addition, the researchers found more “excitability” among neurons in this region in patients who frequently have difficulty sleeping, which suggests that insomniacs are constantly living in a state of elevated information processing which could help interfere with their attempts to get enough slumber.

“Insomnia is not a nighttime disorder,” Dr. Salas said in a statement Friday. “It’s a 24-hour brain condition, like a light switch that is always on. Our research adds information about differences in the brain associated with it.”

They hope that their findings, which were obtained using a painless and noninvasive process known as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), can lead to improved diagnosis and treatment of this common and often difficult to manage sleep disorder, which impacts an estimated 15 percent of all Americans.

TMS, which has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat some individuals suffering from depression, delivers electromagnetic currents to precise locations in the brain. The process temporarily and safely disrupts the function of a targeted area (such as the mood control region of the brain).

The researchers recruited 28 adults, 18 of whom had suffered from insomnia for at least one year, and outfitted each of them with an electrode on their dominant thumbs and an accelerometer to measure the thumb’s speed and direction. Each was then given a series of 65 electrical pulses using TMS, which stimulated parts of the motor cortex as the study authors looked for involuntary thumb movements linked to the procedure.

“Subsequently, the researchers trained each participant for 30 minutes, teaching them to move their thumb in the opposite direction of the original involuntary movement. They then introduced the electrical pulses once again,” the institute said. The goal was to measure the extent to which each of the participants’ brains could be conditioned to move their thumbs involuntarily in the newly trained direction, indicating the plasticity of their motor cortexes.

Since a link between decreased daytime memory and concentration has been associated with a lack of sleep during the nighttime, Dr. Salas and her associated believe that the brains of good sleepers could be more easily retrained. However, their research indicates that the opposite is true: the brains of men and women suffering from chronic insomnia were found to have far more neuroplasticity than their counterparts.

According to the Johns Hopkins researchers, “the origins of increased plasticity in insomniacs are unclear, and it is not known whether the increase is the cause of insomnia. It is also unknown whether this increased plasticity is beneficial, the source of the problem or part of a compensatory mechanism to address the consequences of sleep deprivation associated with chronic insomnia.”

Dr. Salas said that the increased metabolism, elevated cortisol levels and heightened anxieties described in chronic insomnia could be associated with increased plasticity in some way. There is no objective test for insomnia, nor is there a single treatment plan that is effective for all patients, but the new study shows that TMS could help diagnose the condition and potentially prove to be a way to treat it by reducing excitability.

University of Southern Denmark

Endocrine disrupters are not the only worrying chemicals that ordinary consumers are exposed to in everyday life. Also nanoparticles of silver, found in e.g. dietary supplements, cosmetics and food packaging, now worry scientists. A new study from the University of Southern Denmark shows that nano-silver can penetrate our cells and cause damage.

Silver has an antibacterial effect and therefore the food and cosmetic industry often coat their products with silver nanoparticles. Nano-silver can be found in e.g. drinking bottles, cosmetics, band aids, toothbrushes, running socks, refrigerators, washing machines and food packagings.

“Silver as a metal does not pose any danger, but when you break it down to nano-sizes, the particles become small enough to penetrate a cell wall. If nano-silver enters a human cell, it can cause changes in the cell”, explain Associate Professor Frank Kjeldsen and PhD Thiago Verano-Braga, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Southern Denmark.

Together with their research colleagues they have just published the results of a study of such cell damages in the journal ACS Nano.

The researchers examined human intestinal cells, as they consider these to be most likely to come into contact with nano-silver, ingested with food.

“We can confirm that nano-silver leads to the formation of harmful, so called free radicals in cells. We can also see that there are changes in the form and amount of proteins. This worries us”, say Frank Kjeldsen and Thiago Verano-Braga.

A large number of serious diseases are characterized by the fact that there is an overproduction of free radicals in cells. This applies to cancer and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Kjeldsen and Verano-Braga emphasizes that their research is conducted on human cells in a laboratory, not based on living people. They also point out that they do not know how large a dose of nano-silver, a person must be exposed to for the emergence of cellular changes.

“We don’t know how much is needed, so we cannot conclude that nano-silver can make you sick. But we can say that we must be very cautious and worried when we see an overproduction of free radicals in human cells”, they say.

Nano-silver is also sold as a dietary supplement, promising to have an antibacterial, anti-flu and cancer-inhibitory effect. The nano-silver should also help against low blood counts and bad skin. In the EU, the marketing of dietary supplements and foods with claims to have medical effects is not allowed. But the nano-silver is easy to find and buy online.

In the wake of the University of Southern Denmark-research, the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration now warns against taking dietary supplements with nano-silver.

“The recent research strongly suggests that it can be dangerous”, says Søren Langkilde from the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration to the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR).

Ref: Insights into the Cellular Response Triggered by Silver Nanoparticles using Quantitative Proteomics. ACS NANO. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nn4050744

Image 2 (below): Thiago Verano-Braga, Ph.D., of the University of Southern Denmark. Credit: Birgitte Svennevig/University of Southern Denmark

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A large new study conducted by a team of American and Swedish researchers has found a connection between paternal age and the risk of a child developing cognitive or behavioral problems.

The finding is particularly alarming considering the recent trend of couples putting off raising a family to pursue their careers or other interests.

“We were shocked by the findings,” said study author Brian D’Onofrio, an associate professor of psychology and brain sciences at Indiana University Bloomington.

“The specific associations with paternal age were much, much larger than in previous studies,” D’Onofrio added. “In fact, we found that advancing paternal age was associated with greater risk for several problems, such as ADHD, suicide attempts and substance use problems, whereas traditional research designs suggested advancing paternal age may have diminished the rate at which these problems occur.”

Published in JAMA Psychiatry, the study was based on a massive data set: everyone born in Sweden from 1973 to 2001. The study team found that a child born to a 45-year-old father is 3.5 times more likely to develop autism, 13 times more likely to develop ADHD, twice as likely to develop a psychotic disorder, 25 times more likely to receive a diagnosis for bipolar disorder and 2.5 times more likely to exhibit suicidal behavior or a substance abuse problem when compared to a child with a 24-year-old father.

For most of these issues, the odds of development increased steadily with paternal age, indicating there is no age threshold at which childbearing suddenly becomes riskier.

The study team compared siblings in their research, which considers factors for children living in the same house to be very similar. When they did this, they found that the connections with advancing paternal age were much stronger than for the general population. The team also compared the development of first-cousins to control for sibling relationships and birth order.

The authors also considered parents’ highest level of education and income, because older parents are considered to be more mature and financially secure. However, the findings were extremely consistent, as the connections between mental problems and advancing paternal age continued.

“The findings in this study are more informative than many previous studies,” D’Onofrio said. “First, we had the largest sample size for a study on paternal age. Second, we predicted numerous psychiatric and academic problems that are associated with significant impairment. Finally, we were able to estimate the association between paternal age at childbearing and these problems while comparing differentially exposed siblings, as well as cousins.”

“These approaches allowed us to control for many factors that other studies could not,” he concluded.

The conclusions of the study are particularly troubling as the average age for having a child has been escalating for both men and women over the last four decades. For men the average age is three years older than it was in 1970, according to the study researchers. They noted that the implications of this trend are yet to be understood.

“While the findings do not indicate that every child born to an older father will have these problems,” D’Onofrio said, “they add to a growing body of research indicating that advancing paternal age is associated with increased risk for serious problems. As such, the entire body of research can help to inform individuals in their personal and medical decision-making.”