redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Pregnant mothers who eat peanuts are less likely to give birth to children who suffer from peanut allergies than those who avoid consuming them altogether, according to a study appearing in Monday’s edition of JAMA Pediatrics.

According to the AFP news agency, the researchers looked at over 8,200 American children, and found 140 cases of youngsters who were allergic to nuts. They went on to analyze what the mothers ate during and soon after pregnancy, and found that those women who ate at least five servings of peanuts or tree nuts (cashews, almonds, walnuts, etc.) were far less likely to have children with nut allergies than expectant mothers who avoided them entirely.

“Our study showed increased peanut consumption by pregnant mothers who weren’t nut allergic was associated with lower risk of peanut allergy in their offspring,” senior study author Dr. Michael Young of the Boston Children’s Hospital’s Division of Allergy and Immunology, explained in a statement. “Assuming she isn’t allergic to peanuts, there’s no reason for a woman to avoid peanuts during pregnancy.”

Dr. Young told CNN that their study is the first to demonstrate that mothers who eat peanuts or tree nuts during pregnancy could actually be enhancing their unborn child’s tolerance to them. The study controlled for factors such as a family history of nut allergies and other dietary practices, and contradicts previous studies which claimed that consuming nuts during pregnancy either had no impact on or actually raised the risk of allergies in infants.

“Our study supports the hypothesis that early allergen exposure increases the likelihood of tolerance and thereby lowers the risk of childhood food allergy. Additional prospective studies are needed to replicate this finding,” the study authors wrote. “In the meantime, our data support the recent decisions to rescind recommendations that all mothers avoid P/TN during pregnancy and breastfeeding.”

“The data are not strong enough to prove a cause-and-effect relationship. Therefore, we can’t say with certainty that eating more peanuts during pregnancy will prevent peanut allergy in children,” Dr. Young added. “But we can say that peanut consumption during pregnancy doesn’t cause peanut allergy in children. By linking maternal peanut consumption to reduced allergy risk we are providing new data to support the hypothesis that early allergen exposure increases tolerance and reduces risk of childhood food allergy.”

However, Dr. Adam Fox, consultant children’s allergist at Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust, told BBC News that while the study was interesting, its results were inconclusive. He also pointed out that there is convincing evidence suggesting that nut allergies do not develop until after a child is born.

“With such differing results from different studies, it is currently impossible to offer advice about exactly what mothers should do regarding nut consumption during pregnancy but current international guidance is that there is no need to either avoid nuts, nor to actively eat them,” Dr. Fox added.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Increased awareness of the long-term effects of concussions is causing changes at all levels of contact sports, and with this increased awareness in mind, the Professional Football Athletic Trainers Society (PFATS) has announced a partnership with USA Football to increase player safety by endorsing USA Football’s Heads Up Football program.

The endorsement comes after the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Football League (NFL) revealed earlier this week they would be collaborating to learn more about the effects of traumatic brain injuries.

“Athlete safety is advanced through education, and that is the heart of USA Football’s Heads Up Football program,” said John Norwig, president of PFATS. “Education converts awareness into action. This program is establishing needed standards and behavior modification built upon the best medical science and research. Young athletes deserve this level of commitment. We are proud to endorse it.”

PFATS, which includes over 100 certified NFL trainers, works to promote the best medical care practices found in sports medicine, exercise science and nutrition. The trainers’ association comes as approximately 600,000 youth football players in America registered for Heads Up Football in 2013. The health and safety program offers coach certification, instruction on safe tackling techniques, concussion recognition training and proper equipment fitting instruction. It is scheduled to be tested on the high school level this fall in 35 schools across 10 states.

“PFATS will help our nonprofit office further develop a better and safer game for young athletes who enjoy the fun, fitness and other rewards that football affords,” said Scott Hallenbeck, executive director of USA Football. “We value their trust, partnership and continued leadership in athlete care and injury prevention.”

On the professional level, the NFL is working with the NIH on eight projects that will investigate the long-term effects of successive head injuries and how to advance the diagnosis of brain injuries.

“We need to be able to predict which patterns of injury are rapidly reversible and which are not. This program will help researchers get closer to answering some of the important questions about concussion for our youth who play sports and their parents,” said Story Landis, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

Two of the projects are larger cooperative efforts focused on investigating long-term changes that occur in the brain years after a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and also how head traumas can cause a progressive brain degeneration condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

“Although the two cooperative agreements focus on different aspects of TBI, their combined results promise to answer critical questions about the chronic effects of single versus repetitive injuries on the brain, how repetitive TBI might lead to CTE, how commonly these changes occur in an adult population, and how CTE relates to neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease,” Landis said.

NIH also plans to fund six pilot projects that will support the early stages of sports-related concussion projects. If the pilot studies look promising, they will be expanded into larger projects, the NIH said.

Researchers have used one of the brightest X-ray sources in the world to map the three-dimensional structure of an important cellular gatekeeper known as a G protein-coupled receptor, or GPCR, in a more natural state than has been previously possible. The new technique, described Friday in the journal Science, is a major leap forward in exploring GPCRs, a vast, hard-to-study family of proteins that plays a key role in human health and is targeted by an estimated 40 percent of modern medicines.

“For the first time we have a room-temperature, high-resolution structure of one of the most difficult to study but medically important families of membrane proteins,” said lead researcher Vadim Cherezov, a pioneer in GPCR research at The Scripps Research Institute.

“And we have validated this new method so that it can be confidently used for solving new structures.”

In the experiment, researchers examined the human serotonin receptor, which plays a role in learning, mood and sleep and is the target of drugs that combat obesity, depression and migraines. The scientists prepared crystallized samples of the receptor in a fatty gel that mimics its environment in the cell.

With a newly designed injection system, they streamed the gel into the path of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray pulses, which hit the crystals and produced patterns used to reconstruct a high-resolution, 3D model of the receptor.

The technique eliminates one of the biggest hurdles in the study of GPCRs – the fact they are particularly difficult to crystallize in the large sizes needed for conventional X-ray studies at synchrotrons.

Because LCLS is millions of times brighter than the most powerful synchrotrons and produces ultrafast snapshots, it allows researchers to use tiny crystals and collect data in the instant before any damage sets in. Furthermore, the samples do not have to be frozen to protect them from X-ray damage, and can be examined in a more natural state.

“This is one of the niches that LCLS is perfect for,” said Staff Scientist Sébastien Boutet, a staff member at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and a co-author of the report.

“With really challenging proteins like this you often need years to develop crystals that are large enough to study at synchrotron X-ray facilities.”

Cherezov said even after samples of a GPCR are crystallized and imaged, it can take several months to optimize the crystal size and collect enough synchrotron X-ray data to produce structural information.

The experiment demonstrates that an LCLS experiment using smaller crystals can potentially condense that timeline to a matter of days, he said.

Disorders linked to GPCRs include hypertension, asthma, schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease. Because of their vital role in regulating cells’ signaling and response mechanisms and their importance to human health, advances in receptor-related research garnered the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

To date, scientists have only been able to map the structures of a relative handful of the estimated 800 GPCRs in humans. Although the human serotonin structure had been determined earlier with conventional methods, that effort took much longer and showed the receptor in a less realistic environment.

The more accurate the structure, the better scientists can use it to tailor effective drug treatments without side effects, meaning this new technology could eventually lead to an efficient platform for designing drugs based on GPCR structures, the researchers said.

“I view these recent experiments as just the beginning,” Cherezov said.

“Now it is time to start making a serious impact on the field of structural biology of G protein-coupled receptors and other challenging membrane proteins and complexes. The pace of structural studies in this field is breathtaking, and there is still a lot unknown.”

The team has also studied two other GPCRs and a membrane enzyme, and will begin follow-up research next month.

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

While typical causes of headaches include stress, lack of sleep, heat, noise, sunlight and eyestrain, new research published in the journal Pediatric Neurology has uncovered a potential new trigger for migraines in teenagers: chewing gum.

The study, which was led by Dr. Nathan Watemberg of the Tel Aviv University-affiliated Meir Medical Center, found that 26 out of 30 headache patients (87 percent) reported “significant improvement” after they stopped chewing gum, including 19 of which reported “complete headache resolution,” the doctor explained in a statement Thursday.

Furthermore, 20 of the patients who experienced improvement during the study, which took place at Meir Medical Center’s Child Neurology Unit and Child Development Center and in community clinics, agreed afterwards to resume their gum-chewing habits. Every single one reported “an immediate relapse of symptoms,” Dr. Watemberg said.

Headaches are common during childhood, and increase in frequency during adolescence, especially among girls, the researchers said. Little medical research had been conducted on the relationship between gum chewing and headaches, and as Dr. Watemberg previously discovered during dental studies, teenage girls were found to be especially avid gum chewers.

The investigators asked the 30 gum-chewing patients, all of whom were between the ages of six and 19 and suffered chronic migraines, to kick the habit for one month. Those individuals had chewed gum for between one to six hours per day, and after a month without chewing gum, nearly two-thirds of them reported the headaches had entirely disappeared and seven others reported a decrease in the frequency and intensity of the headaches.

“Two previous studies linked gum chewing to headaches, but offered different explanations,” the university said. “One study suggested that gum chewing causes stress to the temporomandibular joint, or TMJ, the place where the jaw meets the skull. The other study blamed aspartame, the artificial sweetener used in most popular chewing gums. TMJ dysfunction has been shown to cause headaches, while the evidence is mixed on aspartame.”

The doctor said that he believes the TMJ explanation is more likely. Since gum only maintains its flavor for a brief period of time, it would appear that it does not contain high levels of aspartame, he explained.

If the artificial sweetener did cause headaches, Dr. Watemberg said that there would be far more headaches resulting from consumption of diet soft drinks and other, similar products. However, since most people chew gum even after it loses its flavor, it suggests that doing so places a noteworthy burden on the already heavily-used joint.

“Every doctor knows that overuse of the TMJ will cause headaches. I believe this is what’s happening when children and teenagers chew gum excessively,” the doctor said. He added that the study’s findings could be used right away, allowing teenagers suffering from chronic headaches with immediate and effective treatment without requiring time-consuming and expensive diagnostic tests and/or the use of prescription medication.

[ Watch the Video: Blind Rage Or Blood Inflammation? ]

Rebekah Eliason for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

According to a study with nearly 200 participants, people with intermittent explosive disorder (IED) possess elevated amounts of two markers of systemic inflammation in their blood. IED is a psychiatric illness characterized by impulsivity, hostility and recurrent aggressive outbursts.

This study is the first of its kind and is carefully controlled to document the direct relationship between inflammatory markers and recurrent, problematic, impulsive aggression in people diagnosed with IED, but not people with good mental health or with other psychiatric disorders.

“These two markers consistently correlate with aggression and impulsivity but not with other psychiatric problems,” said senior study author Emil Coccaro, MD, the Ellen C. Manning professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Chicago. “We don’t yet know if the inflammation triggers aggression or aggressive feelings set off inflammation, but it’s a powerful indication that the two are biologically connected, and a damaging combination.”

This disorder of impulsive aggression, including outbursts such as “road rage,” is disruptive to the lives of those with IED along with their family, friends and colleagues. People suffering from IED are prone to overreact during stressful situations by bouts of uncontrollable anger and rage.

Often the IED outbursts are out of proportion to the level of stressors that trigger them. At first, the angry blow-ups may be explained away by friends as “simply bad behavior,” Coccaro said, “But intermittent explosive disorder goes beyond that. It has strong genetic and biomedical underpinnings. This is a serious mental health condition that can and should be treated.”

Along with causing professional and social difficulty, IED is known to predispose people to other mental illnesses including, depression, anxiety and alcohol or drug abuse. According to a 2010 study, people with IED also have an increased risk for certain other health issues such as coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, ulcers, headaches and chronic pain.

IED is a common disorder found in 2006 by Coccaro and colleagues to affect up to five percent of adults, approximately 16 million Americans. Usually, episodes start in males during adolescence around age thirteen and at age nineteen for females.

In this study, researchers focused their efforts on two markers, C-reactive protein (CRP and interleukin-6 (IL-6), which cause inflammation in blood levels. Each protein has previously been associated with impulsive aggressive behaviors in humans, cats and mice.

In response to an infection or injury, the liver will produce CRP. This is designed to help focus the immune system towards dead or damaged cells. The other marker, IL-6 is secreted by white blood cells in an effort to stimulate immune responses of fever and inflammation. When IL-6 is produced, it also increases the production of CRP.

Participants included 197 physically healthy volunteers who were measured for CRP and IL-6 levels. Of the subjects, 69 had been diagnosed with IED, 61 had psychiatric disorders not involving aggression and 67 did not have any psychiatric disorder.

On average, both the CRP and IL-6 levels were higher in participants with IED when compared to both psychiatric and normal controls. For example, the average CRP levels were double for those with IED than in normal healthy volunteers. Both types of markers were significantly elevated in subjects with the strongest background of aggressive behaviors. Since each marker independently correlated with aggression, the authors noted this suggested that “both have unique relations with aggression.”

Previous studies have indicated there are connections between inflammatory response and depression or stress, said Coccaro. In healthy people, exposure to endotoxins, which set off powerful immune reactions, there is a much higher brain reaction to social threat exposure such as photographs of an angry or fearful face than people who were not exposed to the endotoxin.

In summary, the discoveries reported in the new paper suggest that “medications that reduce inflammation may also drive down aggression,” Coccaro said.

Celebrex or aspirin, which are anti-inflammatories, may make a difference for people with IED. As the treatments available are only able to put less than 50 percent of patients into remission, the authors said that “Additional strategies for the examination and intervention of human impulsive aggression are needed.”

This study was published December 18, 2013 in JAMA Psychiatry.

Rebekah Eliason for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new study from Duke reveals that the genetic trait responsible for predisposing some people to strong stress reactions may also cause the risk of heart attack or death to rise by 38 percent.

This discovery provides a new biological explanation for why some people are inclined towards cardiovascular disease. Since in these cases the disease is linked to stress, the findings suggest that behavior modification and drug therapies targeting stress reduction may lower heart attack related disability and deaths.

Redford B. Williams Jr., M.D., director of the Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Duke University School of Medicine and senior author of the paper, said, “We’ve heard a lot about personalized medicine in cancer, but in cardiovascular disease we are not nearly as far along in finding the genetic variants that identify people at higher risk. Here we have a paradigm for the move toward personalized medicine in cardiovascular disease.”

Building on previous work at Duke and elsewhere, Williams and his colleagues were able to identify a variation in a DNA sequence known as single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). In this sequence variation, one letter from the genetic code is swapped with another causing a change in the gene’s function. Specifically the team focused on the SNP occurring on the gene responsible for making a serotonin receptor that causes a hyperactive reaction to stress.

Last year, a study was published reporting that men with the genetic variation were found to contain twice as much cortisol in their blood after exposure to stress than men without the variant. Commonly known as the “stress hormone,” cortisol is designed to support the body’s biological response to stressful situations that cause negative emotions. This vital hormone is produced in the adrenal glands.

Beverly H. Brummett, PhD, associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke and lead author of the paper, said, “It is known that cortisol has effects on the body’s metabolism, on inflammation and various other biological functions, that could play a role in increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease. It has been shown that high cortisol levels are predictive of increased heart disease risk. So we wanted to examine this more closely.”

Several years of data from heart catheterization patients at Duke was formed into a large database used by researchers to run a genetic analysis of over 6,100 white participants. Of those studied, two-thirds were men and one-third was women. Approximately 13 percent of the group was found to possess the genetic variation for the overactive stress response.

Those found to carry the genetic variation corresponded with patients who had the highest rates of heart attacks and deaths when evaluating the median follow-up time of six years. Even when taking into account age, obesity, smoking history, other illnesses and the severity of their heart disease, the studied genetic trait was found to be associated with a 38 percent increased risk of heart attack and death.

“This finding requires independent replication and evaluation in a more diverse population,” said Peter Kaufmann, Ph.D., deputy branch chief of the Clinical Applications and Prevention Branch at the NIH’s National, Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). “This research may one day help to identify patients who should be candidates for more intensive disease prevention and treatment strategies.”

Both Williams and Brummett said the researchers are developing a hypothesis about why this genetic trait can lead to heart disease problems. Specifically, they are focusing on an enzyme, known as MMP9, found in blood that becomes elevated as cortisol levels rise. MMP9 softens the hard plaque that builds up on blood vessel walls which causes the risk of rapture to be more likely and produces clots that can cause heart attack or death.

“We plan to study this further,” Williams said. “But what this work suggests already is that we have a found genetic variant that can be easily identified, so we can begin to develop and test early interventions for those heart patients who are at high risk of dying or having a heart attack.”

“The exciting part to me this is that this genetic trait occurs in a significant proportion of people with heart disease,” Brummett said. “If we can replicate this and build on it, we may be able to find ways to reduce the cortisol reaction to stress – either through behavior modification or drug therapies – and reduce deaths from heart attack.”

The team’s study was published in the December 18, 2013 issued of the journal PLOS ONE.

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

University of Adelaide researchers are opening back up the debate on whether or not artificial sweeteners are bad for us. The team wrote in the journal Diabetes Care they found artificially sweetened drinks were no different than simply drinking a glass of water. These findings contradict other studies in human and laboratory-based research.

“This is a controversial area because there’s a lot of conflicting research into artificial sweeteners,” said senior author and associate professor at the University of Adelaide’s School of Medicine Chris Rayner.

Rayner says the debate centers on whether artificial sweeteners have a negative impact on our bodies, such as leading to the storage of fat. Scientists also question whether or not they have a beneficial impact, such as producing responses that signal fullness to the brain, or if they are inert and produce no impact whatsoever.

“In our most recent study involving healthy men, we found that the gut’s response to artificially sweetened drinks was neutral – it was no different to drinking a glass of water,” the researcher added.

Studies have been unclear as to whether artificial sweeteners have a positive or negative effect, and Rayner says his team was fixed on trying to understand more about what was going on inside our bodies.

Population-level studies have not even agreed on the effects of long-term artificial sweetener intake in humans. However, study co-author Dr. Richard Young pointed out that a recent study has shown an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes in regular and high consumers of artificially sweetened drinks.

“Those studies indicate that artificial sweeteners may interact with the gut in the longer term, but so far no-one’s managed to determine the actual mechanisms through which these sweeteners act,” Dr Young says. “It’s a complicated area because the way in which the sweet taste receptors in our gut detect and act on sweetness is very complex.”

The team said it appears artificial sweeteners have limited impact in the short term, but in people in a pre-diabetic or diabetic state, who are more likely to be regularly high users of artificial sweeteners, it might be a different story. Young said this is why more research in this area is still needed.

Last week the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) ruled the artificial sweetener aspartame is safe for moderate consumption. The European agency said it reexamined clinical evidence, listened to stakeholders and considered over 200 comments submitted online and determined the sweetener was safe. EFSA said its opinion represents one of the most comprehensive risk assessments of aspartame ever undertaken.

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

For Christians around the world, this time of the year centers around the story of a virgin birth, but new research appearing in the holiday edition of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) reports that as many as one out of every 200 babies born in the US were delivered by women claiming never to have had sex.

In the study, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill interviewed 7,870 females between the ages of 15 and 28, according to Reuters reporter Sharon Begley. Out of 5,340 pregnancies reported in the group, 45 (0.8 percent) occurred in women who reportedly conceived without the assistance of intercourse or assisted reproductive technology.

“The study participants who claimed they were pregnant virgins were more likely than not to have taken a chastity pledge, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the incidence of virgin births increased during the week just before Christmas,” noted Rebecca Savastio of the Guardian Liberty Voice. “The same participants were more likely to have had an upbringing where sex was not discussed in the household.”

In fact, Begley said that 31 percent of the so-called pregnant virgins reported having signed chastity pledges, while just 15 percent of non-virgin pregnant women had taken such vows of abstinence. Furthermore, 28 percent of the parents of these self-proclaimed virgin mothers said that they lacked sufficient knowledge to discuss sex and contraception with their daughters, while just five percent of non-virgin mothers reported likewise.

While the authors noted that self-reporting of delicate issues such as this are subject to a degree of responder bias and/or potential misclassification, they said that “around 0.5% of women affirmed their status as virgins and did not use assisted reproductive technology, yet reported virgin births.”

“Reporting dates of pregnancy and sexual initiation consistent with virgin pregnancy was associated with cultural mores highly valuing virginity, specifically signing chastity pledges, and with parental endorsement of items indicative of lower levels of communication about sex and birth control,” they added.

The self-identified virgins tended to be younger than admitted non-virgins when they gave birth, with a median age of 19.3 years for the former and 21.7 years for the latter. The researchers noted that, while perceived importance of religion was linked to virginity, no such association was discovered for virgin pregnancies.

“Each year, the BMJ Christmas edition publishes untraditional science papers,” Begley added. “In addition to the report on virgin pregnancies, the latest BMJ includes papers on whether there is a local baby boom nine months after home sports teams triumph (only a small one, but statistically significant) and whether an apple a day would keep the British doctor away (yes, saving about 8,500 lives in the United Kingdom each year).”

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Stimulating the ear through acupuncture could be an effective method when trying to lose weight. The new research, published in the journal Acupuncture in Medicine, has found a five point stimulation of the outer ear may be better than single point at reducing abdominal fat.

Ear acupuncture is based on the understanding that the outer ear represents all parts of the body. Dr Paul Nogier first noticed that a patient’s back-ache was cured after sustaining a burn on the ear back in 1956. Since then, the approach has been used to treat drug addiction and help people give up smoking and lose weight.

Researchers from Kyung Hee University in South Korea compared acupuncture of five points on the outer ear to one point using a sham treatment on 91 overweight adults. The five point acupuncture method involved sticking small needles 0.07-inches deep into regions of the ear that purportedly affected the shen-men, spleen, stomach, endocrine and hunger.

Study participants were asked to follow a restrictive diet and not to take any extra exercise during the eight week period of their treatment. Researchers randomly assigned 31 people to the five point treatment and asked the participants to keep them in place with surgical tape for a week. After this period, the participants were given the same treatment on the other ear, with the process repeated over eight weeks.

Thirty people in the study were assigned to the same treatment process, but at just the one hunger point. Another 30 people were given a placebo treatment, during which they underwent the same process and timescales as the others but the needles were removed immediately after insertion.

All of the study participants were weighed and measured at the start and end of the trial, as well as four weeks in. These measurements included body-mass-index (BMI), waist circumference, body fat mass, percentage body fat and blood pressure to see what impact acupuncture could have had on the individual.

The authors say 24 people dropped out before the eight weeks ended, 15 of which were in the sham treatment group. They suggest these people may have found it harder to regulate their desire to eat and cope with the restrictive diet.

The participants in the five-point treatment who kept going for the entire period with the active treatment showed a 6.1 percent reduction in BMI after four weeks compared with the placebo group, which saw no reduction in BMI. The group using the one-point treatment saw a 5.7 percent reduction in BMI.

The study saw waist circumferences also shrink, with the largest drop seen in the group on the five-point treatment compared with the placebo group. Body fat measures also fell after eight weeks, but only in those receiving the five-point treatment.

Researchers conclude both five and one point approaches can help treat obesity, but the five point approach may be more appropriate for tackling abdominal fat.

[ Watch the Video: Pet Dogs May Shield Kids From Later Allergies ]

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Previous research has shown that children who grow up in a house with a dog are less likely to develop severe allergies and now a new study from an American team of researchers has found that gut bacteria may play a role in that relationship.

According to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), mice that were exposed to dust from houses where pet dogs are allowed both inside and outdoors had their community of gut microbes altered and experienced a diminished immune system reaction to common allergens.

The study team was also able to identify a specific bacterial species, Lactobacillus johnsonii, that is critical in safeguarding air passages against both allergens and viral infection.

“We set out to investigate whether being exposed to a distinct house dust microbiome associated with indoor/outdoor dogs mediated a protective effect through manipulation of the gut microbiome and, by extension, the host immune response,” said study author Susan Lynch, an associate professor of gastroenterology at the University of California, San Francisco.

“The results of our study indicate that this is likely to be one mechanism through which the environment influences immune responses in early life,” she added.

The researchers noted that while their results were obtained using tests of lab mice – the results also point to a mechanism explaining the lowered allergy risk among children raised with dogs.

Mice in the study were exposed to cockroach or protein allergens. The researchers found that the mice’ inflammatory responses in the lungs were significantly cut in mice that had been exposed to dog-associated dust, compared to both mice that were exposed to dust from dog-free homes and mice not exposed to any dust.

L. johnsonii was one species of gut bacteria that appeared to convey a lower inflammation response based on initial results. When researchers fed this species by itself to the mice, they discovered that it led to the aversion of the airway inflammation response to allergens or even respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. Severe RSV infection in infants is linked with elevated risk of developing asthma.

The researchers also found that the beneficial effects were associated with lowered numbers and activity of asthma-associated immune cells.

While the level of protection afforded by L. johnsonii was still less than that provided by the full complement of microbes from dog-related dust, the finding did suggest that other, readily-available bacterial species could be used to provide full protection.

Lynch said her own work along with other recent similar studies has convinced her that “the composition and function of the gut microbiome strongly influence immune reactions and present a novel avenue for development of therapeutics for both allergic asthma and a range of other diseases.”

She added that her study points to changes in the gut microbiome having wide-reaching effects beyond the digestive tract.

The researchers had previously shown that a home with an inside-outside pet was linked to a considerably more diverse house dust microbiome that augmented species found in the gastrointestinal tract of humans.

[ Watch the Video: Health Benefits Of Wine Include Boosting Immune System ]

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

Don’t feel guilty if you choose to indulge in a glass of wine or two this holiday season. According to new research, appearing Tuesday in the journal Vaccine, you could be strengthening your immune system and helping your body fight off infections.

As part of the study, lead author Ilhem Messaoudi, an associate professor of biomedical sciences in the University of California, Riverside’s School of Medicine, and her colleagues trained a dozen rhesus macaques to self-administer alcohol.

Each creature was first vaccinated against small pox, then allowed to access either a four-percent ethanol solution or calorically-matched sugar water, based on whether they were part of the experimental or the control group. They also had free access to water as an alternative fluid, as well as a supply of food, the researchers noted.

The monkeys’ daily ethanol consumption was monitored over the course of a 14 month period, and they were vaccinated a second time halfway through the study period. Messaoudi’s team discovered that there was a distinct variation of daily ethanol intake over a nine-month period of self-administration.

“Like humans, rhesus macaques showed highly variable drinking behavior. Some animals drank large volumes of ethanol, while others drank in moderation,” stated Messaoudi, who collaborated on the paper with behavioral neuroscience professor Kathleen Grant.

Essentially, the macaques were divided into two different groups based on their ethanol consumption. The first group included animals that consumed a greater amount of alcohol, with blood ethanol concentration (BEC) levels exceeding the legal limit of 0.08 percent. This group was dubbed the “heavy drinkers.”

The second group included animals that consumed less alcohol. They averaged BEC levels between 0.02 percent and 0.04 percent, and were designated to be “moderate drinkers” by the investigative team.

“Prior to consuming alcohol, all the animals showed comparable responses to vaccination,” explained Messaoudi. “Following exposure to ethanol, however, the animals showed markedly different responses after receiving the booster vaccine.”

She and her associates discovered that the animals who consumed the greatest amount of ethanol demonstrated greatly diminished vaccine responses in comparison with the control group. However, animals that consumed moderate amounts of alcohol demonstrated signs of enhanced vaccine responses.

The results of the research could lead to an enhanced understanding of how the immune system works, and could also lead to breakthroughs in ways to improve our biological response to vaccines and infections, the researchers said. This could be especially beneficial in seniors, who receive virtually no benefits from influenza vaccines, and other vulnerable populations.

“These surprising findings indicate that some of the beneficial effects of moderate amounts of alcohol consumption may be manifested through boosting the body’s immune system,” said Messaoudi. “This supports what has been widely believed for some time: moderate ethanol consumption results in a reduction in all causes of mortality, especially cardiovascular disease.”

“It has been known for a long time that moderate alcohol consumption is associated with lower mortality,” she added. “Our study, conducted on non-human primates, shows for the first time that voluntary moderate alcohol consumption boosts immune responses to vaccination.”

Messaoudi is quick to point out that she is not advocating people to turn to alcohol for immune system support if they have a personal or family history of alcohol abuse. However, she said that the average person would appear to benefit health-wise by having a glass of wine with dinner – especially when it comes to heart and immune health.

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced last week it would allow the marketing of a magnetic device aimed at relieving migraine headache pain for the first time.
The FDA is green lighting eNeura to start marketing its Cerena Transcranial Magnetic Stimulator (TMS) as the first device to relieve pain caused by migraine headaches which are preceded by a visual, sensory or motor disturbance. This type of migraine headache affects about 10 percent of the population around the world, and it is three times more common in women than in men.
The World Health Organization ranks migraine in the top 20 causes of disability, and the National Headache Foundation estimates the condition costs the US $24bn a year.
“Millions of people suffer from migraines and this new device represents a new treatment option for some patients,” Christy Foreman, director of the Office of Device Evaluation in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a statement.
The Cerena TMS is a prescription device used after the onset of pain associated with migraine headaches preceded by an aura. The device requires people to use both hands to hold it against the back of their head while pressing a button to release a pulse of magnetic energy to stimulate the occipital cortex in the brain.
The FDA reviewed a randomized controlled clinical trial of 201 patients who had mostly moderate to strong migraine headaches and who had auras preceding at least 30 percent of their migraines. The study showed nearly 38 percent of the subjects who used the Cerena TMS were pain-free two hours after using the device, compared to about 17 percent of patients in the control group.
Cerena TMS was not shown to help relieve migraine pain of those subjects who were experiencing symptoms such as sensitivity to light, sensitivity to sound and nausea. A few rare adverse events were reported during the study for both the device and the control groups, including single reports of sinusitis, aphasia and vertigo. The FDA did say dizziness may be associated with the use of the device.
“Patients must not use the Cerena TMS device if they have metals in the head, neck, or upper body that are attracted by a magnet, or if they have an active implanted medical device such as a pacemaker or deep brain stimulator,” the FDA said.
The agency advised that the device not be used in patients with suspected or diagnosed epilepsy or a personal or family history of seizures.

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

According to newly released guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics, pregnant women, infants and young children should strictly avoid raw or unpasteurized milk and dairy products.

In announcing the new guidelines, lead author Dr. Yvonne Maldonado noted the number of raw milk products available on the market.

“We have no scientific evidence that consuming raw milk provides any advantages over pasteurized milk and milk products,” said Maldonado, a pediatrician at Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. “But relative to the amount of raw-milk products on the market, we do see a disproportionately large number of diseases and illnesses from raw milk.”

According to a 2011 survey by the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, raw milk and raw-milk products are legal to sell in 30 states. However, only a few are allowed to be sold in grocery stores.

While the Food and Drug Administration banned interstate shipment and sales over state lines of raw milk and some raw-milk products in 1987, it has no legal authority over these products being sold within an individual state’s borders. The FDA does make an exception on cheeses that have been aged at least 60 days, allowing them to be transported across state lines for sale if the products are clearly labeled as unpasteurized.

Before pasteurization, contaminated milk was one of the major causes of childhood disease and death. Modern-day advocates of raw-milk consumption say that cows are healthier now compared to cows from that era. Maldonado said that even healthy herds can host organisms that cause serious infections in children and pregnant women.

“There have been recent studies demonstrating that even healthy dairy animals in good facilities carry some of these organisms on their udders, or the organisms are somewhere in their environment, and the milk can be contaminated with them,” Maldonado said. “When these organisms are ingested, especially by young babies or pregnant women, they can cause severe illness.”

The academy’s guidelines on raw milk are similar to those put out by the American Medical Association, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the International Association for Food Protection, the National Environmental Health Association, the FDA and the World Health Association. It called for a nationwide ban on the sale of all unpasteurized milk and milk products.

In endorsing the prohibition, the statement cited a particular pathogenic strain of E. coli bacteria that can cause severe illness and even liver failure. The bacterium is capable of living in raw-milk cheese even after 60 days of aging and has been linked to E. coli outbreaks. In addition to many species of bacteria, the organization’s statement also cites viruses that could inhabit raw milk, like giardia, rabies and norovirus.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), norovirus is the most frequent cause of acute gastroenteritis in the United States, causing between 19 and 21 million illnesses, 56,000 and 71,000 hospitalizations and between 570 and 800 deaths annually.

The statement from the AAP also calls for pediatricians to lobby their state lawmakers in support of state bans.

Peter Suciu for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A new study from Northwestern University has raised serious concerns for those backing the recent push to decriminalize marijuana. Study researchers found unhealthy changes in the brain structures of heavy marijuana users,  changes that resemble those found in the brains of individuals with schizophrenia.

The study looked at daily marijuana use that began between the ages of 16 to 17 and lasted for about three years. At the time of the study, participants had not been using marijuana for about two years.

“The study links the chronic use of marijuana to these concerning brain abnormalities that appear to last for at least a few years after people stop using it,” said study author Matthew Smith, an assistant research professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University. “With the movement to decriminalize marijuana, we need more research to understand its effect on the brain.”

The study cohort included 97 subjects: healthy controls, subjects with a marijuana use disorder, people with schizophrenia but no history of a marijuana use disorder and schizophrenic patients with a marijuana use disorder.

Ninety percent of the 15 marijuana smokers who had schizophrenia in the study began using marijuana heavily before they showed signs of the mental disorder. The researchers also found that marijuana-related brain abnormalities are linked to a poor working memory performance, according to their report in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin.

“The abuse of popular street drugs, such as marijuana, may have dangerous implications for young people who are developing or have developed mental disorders,” said study author Dr. John Csernansky, chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University. “This paper is among the first to reveal that the use of marijuana may contribute to the changes in brain structure that have been associated with having schizophrenia.”

Researchers conducted a structural MRI on participants to correlate abnormalities in these regions with working memory, the ability to remember and instantly process information. While previous research has found effects of marijuana on the cortex, few studies have looked at chronic marijuana use in otherwise healthy people and individuals with schizophrenia, the researchers noted.

The team found that memory-related structures in the brains of chronic users appeared to shrivel and collapse inward, perhaps due to a decrease in neurons. While all of the chronic users in the study showed evidence of brain alterations, subjects with schizophrenia had more significant deterioration in the thalamus, a key structure for learning, memory and communications between brain regions.

The study team added that chronic marijuana use could boost the underlying process driving schizophrenia.

“If someone has a family history of schizophrenia, they are increasing their risk of developing schizophrenia if they abuse marijuana,” Smith said.

“A tremendous amount of addiction research has focused on brain regions traditionally connected with reward/aversion function, and thus motivation,” noted study author Dr. Hans Breiter, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern. “This study very nicely extends the set of regions of concern to include those involved with working memory and higher level cognitive functions necessary for how well you organize your life and can work in society.”

“If you have schizophrenia and you frequently smoke marijuana, you may be at an increased risk for poor working memory, which predicts your everyday functioning,” Smith said.

[ Watch the Video: If You’re Binging At Christmas, Get Plenty Of Exercise ]

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Scientists writing in The Journal of Physiology say that exercise lessens many of the harmful physiological effects that take place after Christmas binge eating.

Previous studies have shown that even a few days of eating more calories than you burn can cause detrimental health impacts, making the holidays a tough time for the tummy. However, this new study counters this thought, showing that a daily bout of exercise generates vast physiological benefits even when consuming thousands of calories more than you burn.

“This new research shows that the picture is more sophisticated than ‘energy’ alone: exercise has positive effects even when we are actively storing energy and gaining weight,” James Betts, one of the researchers from The University of Bath, said in a statement.

The team found that after just one week of overeating, people being monitored for the study showed poor blood sugar control and their fat cells were expressing genes that lead to unhealthy metabolic changes and disrupted nutritional balance. However, the negative effects due to these short bursts of binge eating were markedly less for those who were exercising.

During the study, 26 healthy young men were asked to be generally inactive in their daily activities. Half of the men were asked to exercise daily on a treadmill for 45 minutes, and everyone involved in the study was asked to overeat. The non-exercising group increased their caloric intake by 50 percent, while the exercising group increased it by 75 percent.

“Our research demonstrates that a short period of overconsumption and reduced physical activity leads to very profound negative changes in a variety of physiological systems – but that a daily bout of exercise stops most of these negative changes from taking place,” Jean-Philippe Walhin, a researcher on the study, said in a statement.

Dr Dylan Thompson, senior author on the paper, talked about how one of the features from the team’s study was critical.

“A critical feature of our experiment is that we matched the energy surplus between groups – so the exercise group consumed even more energy and were still better off at the end of the week,” Thompson said.

After a week, the study participants had blood insulin measurements and biopsies of fat tissue taken, which led to some striking results. The non-exercising group showed a significant and unhealthy decline in their blood sugar control, and their fat cells were over expressing genes linked to unhealthy metabolic changes and were under-expressing genes involved in well-functioning metabolism. However, the men who were asked to exercise had stable blood sugar levels and their fat cells showed less “undesirable” genetic expression.

“Short-term overfeeding and reduced physical activity had a dramatic impact on the overall metabolic health of the participants and on various key genes within fat tissue – and exercise prevented these negative changes even though energy was still being stored,” said Walhin.

Thompson suggests that if someone is facing a period of overconsumption and inactivity, then they should consider a daily bout of exercise to prevent the many negative changes that take place.