[ Watch the Video: The New Buzz About Drunk Driving ]
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Researchers writing in the journal Injury Prevention say that even just a little bit of alcohol could be causing fatal car crashes.
University of California, San Diego researchers studying accidents in the US say that “minimally buzzed” drivers are more often to blame for fatal car crashes than sober drivers. The team used the official US Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database for the study, which reports on the blood alcohol content (BAC) in increments of 0.01 percent.
The researchers focused on “buzzed driving” rather than drunk driving, which is considered as having a BAC of 0.01 percent to 0.07 percent versus 0.08 percent and above, respectively. The team found that drivers with a BAC of 0.01 percent are 46 percent more likely to be “officially and solely” to blame by accident investigators than sober drivers. They also determined that the chances of causing a wreck increases steadily and smoothly from BAC 0.01 to 0.24 percent, meaning that there is no sudden transition when comparing a buzzed driver to a drunk driver.
The study discovered that these buzzed drivers are not punished more severely than sober drivers, because even though the research indicates they are more likely to have caused a wreck due to their state the law says BAC of 0.07 percent and below is legal to drive.
UC San Diego sociologist David Phillips, who led the study, said that police, judges and the public at large treat BAC of 0.08 percent as a sharp, definitive, meaningful boundary, and they do not impose severe penalties on those below the legal limit.
“The law should reflect what official accident investigators are seeing,” Philips said in a statement.
The team looked at more than 50 drive factors coded in the FARS database, including unambiguous factors like driving through a red light or driving on the wrong side of the road. The analyses also takes advantage of a “natural experiment.”
“Because the two drivers collide in exactly the same circumstances and at exactly the same time, this natural experiment automatically standardizes many potentially confounding variables,” including weather and roadway conditions,” the authors wrote in the journal.
Philips said there is no safe combination of drinking and driving, and no point at which it is harmless to consume alcohol and get behind the wheel of a car.
“Our data support both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s campaign that ‘Buzzed driving is drunk driving’ and the recommendation made by the National Transportation Safety Board, to reduce the legal limit to BAC 0.05 percent. In fact, our data provide support for yet greater reductions in the legal BAC,” Philips said in a statement.
The researcher added that although federal agencies are recommending reducing the legal BAC limit, there has been little research on the dangers of driving at low levels like 0.01 percent.
“We appear to be the first researchers to have provided nationwide evidence on traffic accidents caused by minimally buzzed drivers,” he said.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new study from researchers at the University of North Carolina has found that fast food isn’t necessarily the cause of childhood obesity – it’s a symptom.

The study, which was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, said poor dietary habits that obese children learn at home are the main cause of their weight problems.

“This is really what is driving children’s obesity,” said study author Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. “Eating fast foods is just one behavior that results from those bad habits. Just because children who eat more fast food are the most likely to become obese does not prove that calories from fast foods bear the brunt of the blame.”

In the study, researchers looked at data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) collected between 2007 and 2010. The team analyzed dietary intake in nearly 4,500 children between 2 years and 18 years old. The children were categorized as being non-consumers of fast food, low consumers (less than or equal to 30 percent of calories from fast food) or high consumers (more than 30 percent of calories from fast food).

The researchers discovered that fast food is only a small portion of a larger dietary pattern established by children’s parents and caregivers. The obese children’s diet often includes too few fruits and vegetables and too much processed food and overly-sweet beverages. This unhealthy diet pattern is often reinforced in the meals students are offered as school lunches.

“The study presented strong evidence that the children’s diet beyond fast- food consumption is more strongly linked to poor nutrition and obesity,” said study author Jennifer Poti, doctoral candidate in UNC’s Department of Nutrition. “While reducing fast-food intake is important, the rest of a child’s diet should not be overlooked.”

Popkin noted that a better understanding of the patterns behind childhood obesity is important in the attempt to foster healthier habits, such as the reduction of sugary drink consumption and the greater inclusion of fresh vegetables and fruits.

“Children who rely on fast foods may tend to have parents who do not have the means, desire or time to purchase or prepare healthy foods at home,” Popkin said. “This is really what is driving children’s obesity and what needs to be addressed in any solution.”

Another study published this week from University of Illinois researchers found three main predictors for preschool obesity risk: a lack of adequate sleep, having parents with high body mass index (BMI) and having their eating habits restricted for weight control purposes.

Published in the journal Childhood Obesity, the study included data from a survey sent to over 300 children and their parents living in east-central Illinois. The study’s conclusion was based on the first round of data collected when the youngsters were two years old.

“What’s exciting here is that these risk factors are malleable and provide a road map for developing interventions that can lead to a possible reduction in children’s weight status,” said study author Brent McBride, director of the university’s Child Development Laboratory. “We should focus on convincing parents to improve their own health status, to change the food environment of the home so that healthy foods are readily available and unhealthy foods are not, and to encourage an early bedtime.”

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A newly developed genetic therapy for treating a type of inherited blindness called choroideremia is showing some promise and allowing patients to see incrementally more than they had before the treatment, according to a new report in The Lancet.

Six patients in the study had one eye treated with the gene therapy in operations at the Oxford Eye Hospital in the United Kingdom. After six months, the treated eye showed improved vision in dim light compared to the untreated eye, and two of the six patients could successfully read more lines on an eye chart than before the treatment.

“My left eye, which had always been the weaker one, was that which was treated as part of this trial,” said Jonathan Wyatt, the first patient to be treated. “Now when I watch a football match on the TV, if I look at the screen with my left eye alone, it is as if someone has switched on the floodlights. The green of the pitch is brighter, and the numbers on the shirts are much clearer.”

Caused by defects in the CHM gene on the X chromosome, Choroideremia affects approximately 1 in 50,000 people, almost all males. The first symptoms of the condition typically crop up in boys during the later stages of childhood. The incurable disease gradually advances until vision is completely gone. Without a protein coded by the CHM gene, pigment cells in the retina of the eye gradually stop functioning and then die off. As the condition advances, the retina slowly shrinks in size from cell loss, eliminating vision.

The new therapy utilizes a specially engineered virus to deposit a properly functioning CHM gene into the retina. Once the gene is delivered into the retina, it begins to produce protein and prevent cell die off.

“If we were able to treat people early, get them in their teens or late childhood, we’d be getting the virus in before their vision is lost,” said study author Robert MacLaren of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology at the University of Oxford. “If the treatment works, we would be able to prevent them from going blind.”

“’It is still too early to know if the gene therapy treatment will last indefinitely, but we can say that the vision improvements have been maintained for as long as we have been following up the patients, which is two years in one case,” he added.

McLaren added that the new treatment has potential for treating other retina conditions such as age-related macular degeneration, “because it has for the first time shown that gene therapy can be applied safely before the onset of vision loss.”

After the promising results were seen in the first six patients, three more patients were administered a higher dose of the gene therapy. Wayne Thompson, 43, was treated in April as part of the follow-up trial.

“One night in the summer, my wife called me outside as it was a particularly starry evening. As I looked up, I was amazed that I was able to see a few stars. I hadn’t seen stars for a long, long time,” he said. “For a long time I lived with the certainty of losing vision. Now I have uncertainty of whether the trial will work, but it is worth the risk.”

[ Watch the Video: Sedentary Lifestyle Kills Women Faster ]

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has added to the growing body of medical evidence indicating that a sedentary lifestyle can lead to significant health problems.

The study, which included 93,000 postmenopausal American women, found that participants with the most waking sedentary time died earlier than the least inactive group of participants – even after accounting for factors such as physical mobility, chronic disease status, demographic factors and fitness level.

Study author Rebecca Seguin noted that habitual exercisers saw the same level of risk as those who did not exercise regularly if they have large amounts of inactivity.

“The assumption has been that if you’re fit and physically active, that will protect you, even if you spend a huge amount of time sitting each day,” said Seguin, assistant professor of nutritional sciences in Cornell University. “In fact, in doing so you are far less protected from negative health effects of being sedentary than you realize.”

The study team discovered that women with over 11 hours of inactivity per day saw a 12 percent increase in untimely death due to any cause compared with the most active group who had four hours or less of sedentary time. The most inactive group also saw a higher risk for death from cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and cancer by 13, 27 and 21 percent, respectively.

The average women begins to lose muscle mass at age 35, a shift that hastens with menopause. Although regular exercise, particular weight lifting, helps to counteract the muscle loss, the researchers also discovered that inactivity makes this type of body maintenance more difficult.

“In general, a use it or lose it philosophy applies,” Seguin said. “We have a lot of modern conveniences and technologies that, while making us more efficient, also lead to decreased activity and diminished ability to do things. Women need to find ways to remain active.”

She suggested that younger women can adopt “small changes that make a big difference.”

“If you’re in an office, get up and move around frequently,” she said. “If you’re retired and have more idle time, find ways to move around inside and outside the house. Get up between TV programs, take breaks in computer and reading time and be conscious of interrupting prolonged sedentary time.”

The researchers noted that their study included an ethnically diverse set of women between the ages of 50 and 79 who were followed over twelve or more years as part of the national Women’s Health Initiative Study.

The new study is particularly alarming when considering another report published in December that found American mothers are less physically active than they were 45 years ago.

“Mothers with older children experienced an average decline of more than 11 hours per week, decreasing from 32 hours per week in 1965 to less than 21 hours in 2010,” the researchers said. “These dramatic declines in physical activity and energy expenditure corresponded with large increases in sedentary behaviors such as watching TV.”

“Mothers with older children reported an average increase in sedentary behaviors of 7 hours per week, from 18 hours in 1965 to 25 hours in 2010; while mothers with young children increased sedentary behaviors by almost 6 hours a week, from 17 hours per week to nearly 23 hours per week,” they added.

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

A lack of adequate sleep, having parents with high body mass index (BMI), and having their eating habits restricted for weight control purposes are the three most significant risk factors when it comes to childhood obesity for preschoolers, according to researchers from the University of Illinois.

“We looked at 22 variables that had previously been identified as predictors of child obesity, and the three that emerged as strong predictors did so even as we took into account the influence of the other 19,” said Brent McBride, director of the university’s Child Development Laboratory. “Their strong showing gives us confidence that these are the most important risk factors to address.”

“What’s exciting here is that these risk factors are malleable and provide a road map for developing interventions that can lead to a possible reduction in children’s weight status,” he added. “We should focus on convincing parents to improve their own health status, to change the food environment of the home so that healthy foods are readily available and unhealthy foods are not, and to encourage an early bedtime.”

McBride and his colleagues collected data from a survey distributed to over 300 children and their parents, each of whom were recruited from east-central Illinois. Their findings were based on the first round of data collected when the youngsters were two years old, and a paper detailing their work was published last October in the journal Childhood Obesity.

The study authors reported a vast array of information regarding the subjects, including the healthy history of both the parents and the children, as well as eating practices. Furthermore, research assistants also visited the homes of each subject, checked their height and weight, and subjected the information to statistical analysis. Based on the results of that analysis, the investigators were able to come up with several recommendations for families.

According to Illinois nutritional sciences graduate student Dipti Dev, parents should understand that they tend to pass their food preferences onto their children, and that those tastes are often firmly established during the preschool years. Food environments that cause moms and dads to be overweight or obese will likely have the same impact on young sons and daughters.

“Similarly, if you are a sedentary adult, you may be passing on a preference for television watching and computer games instead of playing chasing games with your preschooler or playing in the park,” she added, also warning that restricting access to some foods will only make cravings for those items increase.

“If kids have never had a chance to eat potato chips regularly, they may overeat them when the food appears at a friend’s picnic,” McBride said. He added that it is essential to change the food environment in the house, making sure that fruits, vegetables and other healthy options are available when junk foods are not.

In addition, McBride said that parents need to remember that it will take multiple exposures to a certain type of food before he or she will try it and acquire a taste for it. Kids will need to be offered some foods several times, and they will also have to see their parents partaking of those products as well.

“Don’t use food to comfort your children when they are hurt or disappointed, do allow your preschoolers to select their foods as bowls are passed at family-style meals (no pre-plating at the counter – it discourages self-regulation), and encourage all your children to be thoughtful about what they are eating,” the university added.

The US Department of Health and Human Services and the Illinois Transdisciplinary Obesity Prevention Program funded the study.

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Research has found a link between reading disabilities and less gray matter in the brain for people with dyslexia. However, new evidence from Georgetown University Medical Center’s Center for the Study of Learning suggests that this is a consequence of poorer reading experiences and not the root cause of the disorder.
Prior to this research, scientists assumed that the difference in the amount of gray matter might, in part, explain why dyslexic children have difficulties correctly and fluently mapping the sounds in words to their written counterparts during reading. The new findings, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, have turned this assumption of causality on its head.
The researchers compared two control groups with a group of dyslexic children. One of the control groups was an age-matched group included in most previous studies, while the other was a group of younger children who were matched at the same reading level as the children with dyslexia.
“This kind of approach allows us to control for both age as well as reading experience,” explains neuroscientist Guinevere Eden, DPhil, a professor of pediatrics at GUMC. “If the differences in brain anatomy in dyslexia were seen in comparison with both control groups, it would have suggested that reduced gray matter reflects an underlying cause of the reading deficit. But that’s not what we observed.”
When matched by age with the control group, the dyslexic group showed less gray matter. This is consistent with previous findings. These results are not replicated when the dyslexic children were matched with younger children at the same reading level.
“This suggests that the anatomical differences reported in left hemisphere language processing regions appear to be a consequence of reading experience as opposed to a cause of dyslexia,” says Anthony Krafnick, PhD. “These results have an impact on how we interpret the previous anatomical literature on dyslexia and it suggests the use of anatomical MRI would not be a suitable way to identify children with dyslexia,” he says.
The researchers say that their work helps to determine the fine line between experience-induced changes in the brain and differences that are the cause of cognitive impairment. Prior studies have shown that illiterate adults gaining reading skills induces growth of brain matter. Discrepancies have been noticed between dyslexic people and their typical reading peers who undergo similar learning-induced changes. The dyslexic people have not enjoyed the same reading experiences and thus have not undergone similar changes in brain structure.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

While many have claimed that reality shows on MTV have no redeeming values, a new study has found that the popular shows “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” may have actually contributed to a record drop in teen pregnancies.

Teen pregnancy rates have been falling over the past two decades, and many experts point to the Great Recession as playing a big role in this phenomenon. However, the new study’s statistical analysis has found that the two MTV shows contributed to a 5.7 percent drop in teen births, equivalent to about one-third of the overall reduction in teen births over the course of a year-and-a-half after the show’s premier in 2009.

Published on Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the study investigated whether the two shows affected teens’ interest in contraception or abortion, and if it ultimately resulted in a change in the teen pregnancy rate.

“In some circles, the idea that teenagers respond to media content is a foregone conclusion, but determining whether the media images themselves cause the behavior is a very difficult empirical task,” said study author Melissa Schettini Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland.

In the study, the researchers analyzed Nielsen ratings data – along with metrics taken from Google and Twitter. The study team then looked at any impact on teen birth rates using Vital Statistics Natality data set.

The researchers found that Internet searches and social media posts about birth control and abortion jump precisely when either show is on and where it is most popular.

“Our use of data from Google Trends and Twitter enable us to provide some gauge of what viewers are thinking about when they watch the show,” said Phillip B. Levine, an economist at Wellesley College. “We conclude that exposure to 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom was high and that it had an influence on teens’ thinking regarding birth control and abortion.”

In their report, the study team said that “the introduction of 16 and Pregnant along with its partner shows, Teen Mom and Teen Mom 2, led teens to noticeably reduce the rate at which they give birth.”

The researcher noted that they were unable to conduct a separate analysis of abortions, but some data has shown that teen abortion rates also fell over the same period of time as the study—indicating that the shows likely caused a decrease in pregnancy rather than higher incidence of abortion.

“When we developed ’16 and Pregnant,’ teen birth rates were reported to be on the rise, so we created this series as a cautionary tale on the hard realities of teen pregnancy. We are deeply grateful to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy for their expert guidance,” said Stephen Friedman, President of MTV. “We’ve always believed that storytelling can be a powerful catalyst for change, and are incredibly heartened by this news.”

“The entertainment media can be, and often is, a force for good,” said Sarah Brown, CEO of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “One of the nation’s great success stories of the past two decades has been the historic declines in teen pregnancy. MTV and other media outlets have undoubtedly increased attention to the risks and reality of teen pregnancy and parenthood and, as this research shows, have likely played a role in the nation’s remarkable progress.”

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new study from a team of American researchers has found that older adults can experience decade-long cognitive benefits from as few as ten mental training sessions.

The study, which was published on Monday in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, also found that additional ‘booster’ sessions could further increase participants’ gains in reasoning ability and speed for processing information.

“Showing that training gains are maintained for up to 10 years is a stunning result because it suggests that a fairly modest intervention in practicing mental skills can have relatively long-term effects beyond what we might reasonably expect,” said study author Dr. George Rebok, a psychiatry and behavioral sciences professor at Johns Hopkins University.

The Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) study included over 2,800 participants with an average age of nearly 74 years at the outset. Volunteers were assigned to one of three cognitive training groups or a control group, which did not receive training. A memory training group was given strategies for remembering word lists, text material, and the key points of narratives. A reasoning group was shown strategies on how to solve pattern-based problems, a skill that translates when reading bus schedules or filling out order forms. The third cognitive group received speed-of-processing coaching that trained participants to recognize and locate visual information quickly, a skill that comes in handy when driving or looking up contact information.

Each cognitive training session was held in small groups for 60 to 75 minutes at a time. Ten sessions were conducted over the course of five to six weeks.

Ten years after the study began, participants in the cognitive training groups reported having less difficulty with daily cognitive activities. Approximately 60 percent of participants in the training groups, compared with 50 percent of the control group, were at or above their ability level of for performing daily tasks such as taking medications, cooking, and balancing their finances. Memory capacity improved up to five years after the intervention, but after ten years – there was no longer a significant benefit. The reasoning and speed-of-processing groups still demonstrated noteworthy improvements compared to their counterparts in the control group at the ten-year mark.

The researchers also discovered that a four-session supplemental training at 11 and at 35 months after the original 10-session course provided additional and long-lasting improvements in the reasoning group and in the speed-of-processing group.

“Our findings provide support for the development of other interventions for senior adults, particularly those that target cognitive abilities showing the most rapid decline with age and that can affect their everyday functioning and independence,” Rebok said. “Such interventions have potential to delay the onset of difficulties in daily functioning.”

He added that even marginal delays in the onset of cognitive decline can add up to a major public health, as well as help mitigate rising health care costs.

The study team called for more research on how relatively short interventions can have lasting effects on everyday functioning. The team added that they were interested in determining if the training sessions help older adults preserve their safe driving skills.

[ Watch the Video: Memory Enhancement From Coffee Consumption ]
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online
While caffeinated beverages such as coffee and tea are commonly consumed by people looking for an early morning energy boost, new research appearing in the journal Nature Neuroscience suggests that they could also serve as a memory enhancer.
Michael Yassa, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, and his colleagues report in their study that caffeine has a positive impact on long-term recollection in humans, enhancing some memories for roughly one full day after consumption.
“We’ve always known that caffeine has cognitive-enhancing effects, but its particular effects on strengthening memories and making them resistant to forgetting has never been examined in detail in humans,” Yassa explained. “We report for the first time a specific effect of caffeine on reducing forgetting over 24 hours.”
In a double-blind trial, the study authors recruited participants who did not eat or drink products that contained caffeine on a regular basis. They had the subjects study a series of images, and then randomly provided them with either a 200mg caffeine tablet or a placebo five minutes later. Salivary samples were taken to measure the caffeine levels of the subject before they took the pills, then again one hour, three hours and 24 hours later.
The following day, both groups were quizzed to see how well they could recognize images they had been exposed during the previous day’s study session, the researchers said. One of the pictures included on the test was the same as the previous day, some were similar but not exactly identical, and some were entirely new.
[ Watch the Video: Coffee Time? How Caffeine Can Boost Your Memory ]
“More members of the caffeine group were able to correctly identify the new images as ‘similar’ to previously viewed images versus erroneously citing them as the same,” the university said in a statement. The investigators noted that this ability is known as pattern separation, and it is indicative of a higher level of memory retention.
“If we used a standard recognition memory task without these tricky similar items, we would have found no effect of caffeine,” Yassa added. “However, using these items requires the brain to make a more difficult discrimination – what we call pattern separation, which seems to be the process that is enhanced by caffeine in our case.”
Only a handful of previous studies have examined caffeine’s impact on long-term memory, the researchers said, and most of those had found that the substance had little to no effect on retention. The difference between this study and previous papers is that the participants only consumed caffeine tablets after first looking at and attempting to memorize the various images they would later be asked to identify.
“Almost all prior studies administered caffeine before the study session, so if there is an enhancement, it’s not clear if it’s due to caffeine’s effects on attention, vigilance, focus or other factors,” Yassa, who has since relocated his lab to the  University of California-Irvine, said. “By administering caffeine after the experiment, we rule out all of these effects and make sure that if there is an enhancement, it’s due to memory and nothing else.”
“The next step for us is to figure out the brain mechanisms underlying this enhancement,” he added. “We can use brain-imaging techniques to address these questions. We also know that caffeine is associated with healthy longevity and may have some protective effects from cognitive decline like Alzheimer’s disease. These are certainly important questions for the future.”

Rebekah Eliason for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Researchers from Newcastle University have discovered that an antioxidant called Tiron provides complete protection against certain types of sun damage and could ultimately be beneficial in keeping skin looking younger for longer.

In laboratory tests, the researchers compared protection by different antioxidants against sun damage from UVA radiation or free radical stress. Some of the antioxidants tested are commonly found in food or cosmetics. Although UVB radiation is responsible for causing sunburn, it is UVA radiation that penetrates at a deeper level and damages DNA by producing free radicals that tear down skin collagen, which is responsible for the skin’s elasticity.

The research team, funded by BBSRC and Unilever, discovered that the most effective antioxidants targeted one of the tiny organelles called mitochondria that are located inside of skin cells. For the study, they compared the antioxidants that specifically targeted mitochondria to non-specific antioxidants that target the whole cell. Resveratrol, found in red wine, and curcumin, found in curries, were some of the antioxidants studied that target the entire cell.

The team discovered that Tiron was the most effective mitochondrial-targeted antioxidant. It provided skin cells 100 percent protection against UVA sun damage as well as stress-induced damage from the release of damaging enzymes.

Mark Birch-Machin, Professor of Molecular Dermatology at Newcastle University said, “To discover that Tiron offers complete protection against UVA damage is exciting and promising, however, it is early days as Tiron is not a naturally occurring compound and has not yet been tested for toxicity in humans although there have been a few studies on rats.”

Dr Anne Oyewole, co-author of the study, said “This finding on Tiron provides us with a platform to study an antioxidant – preferably a naturally occurring compound with a similar structure which could then be safely added to food or cosmetics.”

As our skin is constantly exposed to sunlight, damaging ultraviolet radiation from the sun infiltrates skin cells and causes an increase of reactive oxygen free radicals that damage skin. If there are too many of the damaging particles, they can cause damage to the DNA inside of skin cells.

Over years of exposure, an accumulation of mutations increases aging and destroys the supportive structures of skin, such as collagen and elastin, which causes the formation of wrinkles. In recent studies, there have been suggestions that damage from the reactive oxygen species could also lead to increased development of skin cancers.

Adding antioxidants from substances such as green tea, red wine, turmeric and tomatoes, along with using certain cosmetic creams with antioxidant properties, can neutralize the damage done to our skin cells from free radicals. Potentially, they can slow down the rate of aging and reduce the rate of other skin lesions induced by the sun.

This study developed the first method that compares the potency of different antioxidants based on a skin cell system.

Scientists treated skins cells with a varying panel of antioxidants and then exposed them to a physiological dose of UVA radiation. This is the amount of radiation skin would be exposed to on a typical warm summer day. Using a polymerase chain reaction machine, DNA from the skin cells was copied and assessed to determine the amount of DNA damage.

Using this assessment method, Tiron, a chemically derived compound, was discovered to give 100 percent protection against damage to the mitochondrial DNA.

In comparison, resveratrol was shown to give 22 percent protection from UVA radiation and stress-induced damage. The commonly used laboratory-based antioxidant NAC gives twenty percent protection against oxidative stress and eight percent against UVA. Curcumin was discovered to only provide sixteen percent protection from oxidative stress and eight percent from UVA.

Tiron was able to provide 100 percent protection against UVA radiation as well as oxidative stress.

In future research, the team plans to increase their understanding of the mechanism of Tiron and develop a similar compound that will be tested for toxicity among humans. It is several years before the compound is projected to be ready for use as a supplement or skin product.

This study is published in The FASEB Journal.

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

The liquid form of one of the leading prescription pediatric medicines used to treat influenza is currently in short supply, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced in a drug shortage notice posted on Monday.

According to the notice, the shortage only applies to the oral suspension version of Tamiflu (Oseltamivir) and is due to an increased demand for the product. The 30mg, 45mg and 75mg capsule versions remain readily available.

“There has been strong and early demand for Tamiflu Oral Suspension (OS) and we are experiencing a temporary delay in the packaging of Tamiflu OS,” Tara Iannuccillo, a spokeswoman for Roche Holding AG’s Genentech unit, which manufactures the drug and supplies it to retail pharmacies through distributors, confirmed to Bill Berkrot of Reuters on Thursday.

Rita Rubin of WebMD Health News notes that the shortage should be a short-lived one, lasting only until the middle of the month. She said that the parents of patients unable to get the liquid form should consult with their doctor or pharmacists, as they can mix 75mg Tamiflu capsules into a liquid for those who need to take the drug that way.

The FDA website also said that parents can give children at least one year of age the 30mg or 45mg Tamiflu capsules mixed with a thick, sweet liquid such as chocolate syrup, Rubin said. In addition, Berkrot said that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that individuals should get flu shots in order to help prevent the virus.

“We are seeing a big uptick in disease in the past couple of weeks,” Dr. Joe Bresee, chief of Epidemiology and Prevention in the CDC’s Influenza Division, told Reuters. “There is still a lot of season to come. If folks haven’t been vaccinated, we recommend they do it now.”

According to Dr. Maria Simbra of KDKA news in Pittsburgh, Tamiflu is a prescription medication approved for use by anyone at least 14-days old that has been experiencing flu-like symptoms for less than 48 hours. The treatment shortens the course of the patient’s illness, and can also be used as a preventive medicine for children at least 12 months old.

As previously reported by redOrbit’s own Lawrence LeBlond, the H1N1 strain that was responsible for a global pandemic during the 2009-2010 flu season is the dominant influenza strain again this season. Furthermore, 25 states are reporting widespread flu activity, meaning that the virus has spread to at least half of all geographic regions within a state.