Image Credit: Photos.com

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Connie K. Ho for RedOrbit.com

New findings from the Grady Trauma Project report that traumatized people who take a type of blood pressure medication often have less intense post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.

The results show that angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB) could be used to help treat patients with PSTD. The study was conducted with over 5,000 low-income Atlanta residents who were exposed to violence as well as physical and mental abuse, which resulted in high civilian PTSD. There was 505 participants in the study, all of which who experienced at least one traumatic event. 35 percent of the participants met the criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD. Out of the 98 participants who were taking ACE inhibitors or ARB, 26 were diagnosed with PTSD.

“These results are particularly exciting because it’s the first time ACE inhibitors and ARBs have been connected to PTSD, and it gives us a new direction to build on,” remarked senior author Dr. Kerry Ressler, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine, in a prepared statement.

The symptoms of PTSD include hyperarousal, avoidance/numbing, and intrusive thoughts. Patients would report the number of times they had each of the disorders, which were then combined to give a PTSD symptom score. In the experiment, participants who took ACE inhibitors or ARBs had about a 30 percent decline in their PTSD symptom score. They also reported less intense levels of hyperarousal and intrusive thoughts. However, there wasn´t any significant change recorded for other blood pressure medications like beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, and diuretics.

“These data come from an observational study, not a randomized clinical trial, so it is important to limit our interpretation until larger, placebo-control, double-blinded trials can be performed. Still, they provide evidence from a human population that could be followed up in a rigorous controlled trial,” explained Ressler, also a researcher at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, in the statement. This class of medications has been widely prescribed for hypertension for years and their safety profiles are well known, so our results could be translated into action relatively quickly.”

The study shows how PTSD is linked to physiological factors and how blood pressure regulation can affect PTSD symptoms. It also shows how Angiotensin II, a hormone related to blood pressure regulation, is affected by ACE inhibitors and ARBs. Though, the team of researchers was surprised to find that the beta-blockers did not have any significant change on PTSD symptoms, as many athletes and musicians utilize the medication to help with performance anxiety symptoms.

“Beta blockers did appear to have a trend toward an effect, but the effects of the angiotensin medications were stronger, and when people in our study took both, only the angiotensin medications survived statistical analysis” Ressler explained in the statement. “Beta blockers may be useful in the moment for decreasing social or performance anxiety, but their efficacy in PTSD treatment is still an open question.”

The results are published in a recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Image Credit: Photos.com

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Connie K. Ho for RedOrbit.com

Mark your calendars: May is Healthy Vision Month. Since 2003, the National Eye Institute (NEI) has promoted May with this national eye health observance. During Health Vision Month, NEI hopes to increase awareness about early diagnosis and treatment of vision loss.

The NEI, under the National Institute of Health (NIH), helps develop the federal government´s research on the visual system and eye diseases. The NIH is the country´s primary medical research agency, analyzing causes, treatments, and cures for common and rare diseases. With the NEI support, basic and clinical science programs can research sight-saving treatments.

“Vision changes as people get older, but vision loss is not a normal part of aging,” remarked Dr. Paul A. Sieving, the NEI Director, in a prepared statement.

A number of common eye diseases can affect millions of Americans, including glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). There are new discoveries that can help treat diseases, but early diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up care is always the best option. Physicians state that there are are normally no symptoms of eye diseases, so comprehensive dilated exams are utilized so that doctors can closely examine the back of the eye for any signs of an eye disease.

In particular, the retina, a layer of tissue in the back of the eye that senses light, is an important part of the eye. There are various diseases that can damage it. Glaucoma can damage the optic nerve which sends visual information from the retina to the brain. African Americans who are 40 and older as well as Mexican Americans ages 60 and up have a higher risk of having glaucoma. Diabetic retinopathy, a side effect of diabetes, can cause swelling, leakage, and blockage of blood vessels that help the retina. Those with diabetes type 1 or 2 are in danger of having diabetic retinopathy. AMD occurs when the center part of the retina cannot function anymore. AMD especially affects those who are past smokers, those who have a family history of AMD, or those who are over the age of 50.

Luckily, research is being done by the NEI on treatments for rare eye diseases. For example, scientists have helped treat patients with Leber congenital amaurosis, a rare retinal disease, with gene transfer therapy. There is also progress being made in the areas of stem cell therapy and transplantable retinal tissue. Scientists have also worked on an Age-Related Eye Disease studies that analyze the high levels of antioxidants and zinc to lower the risk of developing AMD. Likewise, comparisons of AMD Treatment Trials by the NEI found that the two most popular drugs used to treat AMD, one for the use in the eye and the other created to treat cancer, were both effective.

“As the largest vision research organization in the world, the NEI is making tremendous gains in the understanding of common and rare vision disorders,” noted Sieving. “Through new tools for DNA analysis, the NEI is identifying gene variations that influence eye disease risk. Scientists can then study these genes to understand disease pathways and identify therapeutic targets.”

Learn more about keeping eyes healthy online with NEI online.

There is now overwhelming evidence that all babies should be offered screening for heart defects at birth, according to a major new study published online in The Lancet.

Heart defects are the most common type of birth defects in the UK. Although newborns often show no visible signs of the condition, if not treated promptly it can be fatal.

The research, led by a Queen Mary, University of London academic with a colleague from the University of Birmingham, shows that a non-invasive test called pulse oximetry offers an accurate and cost effective screening tool.

Pulse oximetry measures the amount of oxygen circulating in the blood stream using a sensor placed on a thin part of the body such as the fingertip, or earlobe, or in the case of the newborn, the foot.

Heart defects in newborns, also known as congenital heart disease, affect almost one percent of babies born in the UK each year — around 5,000 in total.

Previous research indicates that around half of these babies will be undiagnosed when mother and baby are discharged from hospital. Surgery can successfully treat the most serious cases but it is most effective when the defect is picked up early.

The new research, which brings together the results of 13 separate studies, is the largest of its kind and includes data on close to 230,000 babies.

It shows that pulse oximetry can successfully detect birth defects and that it is most accurate when used to screen babies around 24 hours after birth. Researchers say it could easily be combined with existing newborn screening which checks for other, less common types of birth defects

Results showed that using pulse oximetry picked up more than three quarters (76.5 per cent) of heart defects.

They also showed that the test hardly ever wrongly diagnosed healthy babies as having a heart defect. This means that there is very little unnecessary stress for parents given an incorrect diagnosis of a heart defect.

Currently some heart defects are picked up by ultrasound scan carried out when a woman is around 20 weeks pregnant or by physical examination of the newborn baby, but many cases are missed.

The research was led by Dr Shakila Thangaratinam, a Clinical Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London. She said: “Heart defects in newborn babies are thankfully rare but their potential impact is devastating.

“This study is really important because by including such large numbers of babies, we can show that pulse oximetry is effective at picking up defects, without misdiagnosing healthy babies. Previous research also indicates that it is cost-effective.

“This study is the best evidence yet that using pulse oximetry to screen for heart defects should be included in the newborn health checks.”

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On The Net:

• Queen Mary, University of London
• Lancet

Opiate withdrawal among infants increased three-fold between 2000 and 2009 due to prescription painkiller abuse among mothers-to-be, according to a first-of-its-kind study in the United States.
The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also found that the number of women testing positive for illegal or legal opiates increased fivefold in the same period.
That´s more than 13,500 infants per year, or one drug-addicted baby born every hour, said lead author Stephen Patrick, research fellow of neonatal-perinatal medicine at the University of Michigan.
Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), a withdrawal syndrome of infants, typically caused by administration of drugs, is a common occurrence in the medical sense of the term. But illicit drug abuse (specifically opiates) during pregnancy is associated with a much more significant increased risk of adverse NAS outcomes such as low birth weight and mortality, wrote the authors of the study.
Increased irritability, hypertonia (increased muscle tone), tremors, feeding intolerance, seizures, and respiratory distress are some of the more acute signs and symptoms of NAS. Withdrawal symptoms associated with NAS have been described in 60 to 80 percent of newborns exposed to heroin and methadone in utero.
Based on records obtained from more than 4,000 US hospitals, the researchers examined patterns in the national incidence of NAS and maternal opiate use at the time of delivery and to characterize trends in national health care costs associated with NAS between 2000 and 2009. They used the Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID) to identify newborns with NAS by International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) code.
The Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) was used to identify mothers using diagnosis-related groups for vaginal and cesarean deliveries. Clinical conditions were identified using ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes. NAS and maternal opiate use were described as an annual frequency per 1,000 hospital births. All hospital charges were adjusted for inflation to 2009 costs.
What the researchers discovered was alarming. Between the 10-year study period, the rate of newborns diagnosed with NAS increased from 1.2 to 3.39 per 1,000 hospital births a year. Also during this time period, opiate use in pregnant women increased from 1.19 to 5.63 per 1,000 hospital births per year.
“Compared with all other hospital births, newborns with NAS were significantly more likely to have respiratory diagnoses (30.9 percent), to have low birth weight (19.1 percent), have feeding difficulties (18.1 percent), and have seizures (2.3 percent). Newborns with NAS were also more likely to be covered by Medicaid (78.1 percent) and reside in zip codes within the lowest income quartile (36.3 percent),” wrote the authors.
Medical costs for dealing with NAS rose significantly, with the average costs growing from $39,400 in 2000, to $53,400 in 2009, a 35 percent increase after adjusting for inflation. Hospital length of stay for newborns diagnosed with NAS averaged 16 days, and remained relatively unchanged during the study period. During the ten-year study period, total charges for NAS have increased from $190 million to $720 million, after inflation adjustments.
Despite rising health costs due to NAS, the country is obligated to help these newborns, as they “have made no choices around drug abuse and addiction” and are “the most vulnerable and the most blameless” members of society, said Marie Hayes, a psychology professor at the University of Maine, who co-wrote an accompanying editorial with the study, but was not involved in the study.
Unlike the 80s and 90s, when cases of newborns addicted to crack cocaine were on the rise, many newborns today are hooked on powerful prescription painkillers, such as Vicodin and OxyContin, said Patrick.
“The prevalence of drug use among pregnant women hasn´t changed since the early 2000s, but the types of drugs that women are using” are changing, Andreea Creanga, a researcher with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told Liz Szabo of USA Today. Creanga noted that about 4.5 percent of pregnant women use illegal drugs.
The CDC identifies prescription-painkiller abuse as a major health threat, noting that these drugs now cause more overdose deaths than heroin and cocaine combined. The death rate from overdoses is three times higher in 2007 (12 in 100,000) than in 1991, according to a recently released CDC report. Most of that increase came from prescription drugs, the report noted.
Many mothers didn´t know that prescription painkillers were harmful to their unborn children, perhaps because the drugs are technically legal, Mark Hudak, a spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), told Szabo. Other mothers are addicted when they become pregnant and are unable to quit.
Sometimes, babies are exposed to multiple drugs while in the womb. These can include tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and antidepressants, said Howard Heiman, associate chief of the neonatal intensive care unit at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York. Researchers need to find better ways to treat drug-addicted mothers and to identify and treat addicted babies as early as possible.
“In conclusion, newborns with NAS experience longer, often medically complex and costly initial hospitalizations. The increasing incidence of NAS and its related health care expenditures call for increased public health measures to reduce antenatal exposure to opiates across the United States,” wrote the authors.
The team´s study was published early and will be presented at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Boston.
The study was supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program.
According to background information in the study, 16.2 percent of pregnant teens and 7.4 percent of pregnant women aged 18 to 25 use illicit drugs.

Nationwide poll found 7 out of 10 women suffering from menopausal symptoms are not treated
Women going through menopause now have a first-of-its-kind interactive guide to help them better understand their menu of treatment options, including whether hormone therapy may be right for them. The Endocrine Society and its Hormone Health Network today released the “Menopause Map,” an online tool to help women and their doctors discuss which hormonal and non-hormonal treatment options would be most effective and safe to relieve the sometimes debilitating symptoms of menopause. A new accompanying survey found that the majority of women facing challenging symptoms are concerned about hormone treatment and are not discussing it, or other non-hormonal options, with their doctor. The Map was developed by Endocrine Society physician experts who specialize in menopause management.
The tool is based on the latest unbiased research and is intended to jumpstart conversations between women and their doctors about the choices available to them as they approach and experience menopause.
Hormone therapy has been under intense scrutiny since 2002, when a large government study called the Women’s Health Initiative http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/whi/ (WHI) reported that hormone therapy–specifically the combination of estrogen and progestin together–increased the risk for blood clots, stroke, breast cancer and heart attacks. The researchers halted the study and concluded that the risks of hormone therapy outweighed the benefits. Although the study was designed to evaluate the role of hormone therapy in the prevention of diseases related to aging, many women and their doctors also abandoned it as therapy for menopausal symptoms.
Over the past 10 years, additional research has found that the level of risk depends on the individual woman, her health history, age, and the number of years since her menopause began. In general, younger women (under 60) who have recently started menopause are at a lower risk than older women when taking low doses of hormone therapy.
“Left with the false impression that hormone therapy isn’t a safe option, far too many women have suffered in silence thinking their options for symptom relief were limited or non-existent,” says Cynthia Stuenkel, MD, a member of The Endocrine Society and an endocrinologist specializing in menopause at the University of California, San Diego. “We know that for some women, hormonal therapy provides the only relief for severe menopausal symptoms. Women deserve some clear answers and helpful tools to engage their doctors in meaningful conversations about the multiple choices available to improve their menopausal symptoms.”
When a woman enters menopause, she stops menstruating and her body produces less of the sex hormones estrogen and progesterone. The process of menopause takes years. During that time, women may experience moderate to severe symptoms, including hot flashes, interrupted sleep, vaginal dryness, and other symptoms that affect her quality of life.
The survey found that 72 percent of women currently experiencing symptoms have not received any treatment for them. Other findings include:
Majorities of menopausal women experiencing symptoms have not talked to their primary health care provider or OB/GYN about hormone therapy (62%) or non-hormone options (61%), and half of them have not talked about lifestyle changes;
Nearly half (49%) of menopausal women experiencing symptoms have a negative impression of hormone therapy; and
While the sample sizes of African Americans and Latinos in the survey are small, only 17 percent of African-American respondents say they have talked to their doctors about hormone therapy, compared to 39 percent of white women and 35 percent of Latinas, suggesting that disparities may exist.
“Unfortunately, as in many health care issues, significant disparities exist. Add to that, many primary care doctors don’t have enough information about the latest research or what to prescribe,” Dr. Stuenkel says. “We want to make health care providers across the nation aware of this tool so that they can facilitate better discussions with their patients.”
The “Menopause Map” is an online interactive tool that guides a woman through the different options available to get relief from her symptoms through a series of prompting questions about those symptoms and her personal health history. The Map also has links to questionnaires that help assess current risk for breast cancer, heart disease, and stroke. The tool weighs hormonal and non-hormonal therapies against the risks based on individual symptoms and medical history.
The Map was not designed to be a self-diagnostic tool. It’s recommended that women print out their results along with a list of provided questions to discuss the best treatment options for them with their provider. Women should revisit this tool to check their symptoms and have a continuous, informed dialogue with their provider.
The important facts to know about hormone therapy are:
Women 60 years and older should not use menopausal hormone therapy.
Women 50-59 years or younger, with no family or personal history of breast cancer, no history of heart disease or stroke, and with moderate to severe menopausal symptoms are the best candidates for hormone therapy.
If considering hormone therapy, women should talk with their health care provider to determine a plan that is right for them.
In addition, lifestyle approach also helps alleviate symptoms and benefit long-term health.
For those who decide on hormone therapy, this is an ongoing process and might require a period of trial and error to find the right fit for each individual woman.
For those who decide on non-hormonal options, there are several proven therapies available that may help with symptoms. It is important women share information about all medications they are using, including over-the-counter drugs and nutritional supplements, to make sure the choice of therapy doesn’t interact with other medications.
The Menopause Map can be found at www.hormone.org/MenopauseMap.
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On The Net:

• The Endocrine Society

A new imaging study has reportedly discovered a link between diminished activity in part of the brain with the likelihood that a teenager will start smoking, drinking, or abusing drugs.

The research, said to be the largest imaging study of the human brain ever conducted, was completed by an international team of scientists including Robert Whelan and Hugh Garavan of the University of Vermont. The researchers looked at nearly 1,900 14-year-old participants, and discovered that many of the teenagers were at risk of experimenting with illicit substances because of differences in their brain.

One of the key findings of the study, according to a university press release, is diminished activity in a network that involved the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a prefrontal cortex region in the frontal lobes of the brain which has been found to be involved in the cognitive processing of decision-making.

Some of the networks “are not working as well for some kids as for others,” Whelan said, which in turn makes them more impulsive and more likely to choose to partake of smoking, drinking, or drug use when given the chance. Garavan added that testing for lower function in this and related cognitive networks could potentially be used by researchers as “a risk factor or biomarker for potential drug use.”

In addition, the research team was able to show that other, newly discovered brain networks have a correlation with the symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

While the University of Vermont news release says that there has been speculation between ADHD and the potential for drug use, as both are said to be issues that plague impulsive individuals, the Whelan/Garavan team discovered that they are actually controlled by different networks within the brain.

“This strengthens the idea that risk of ADHD is not necessarily a full-blown risk for drug use as some recent studies suggest,” the university said. “The impulsivity networks — connected areas of activity in the brain revealed by increased blood flow — begin to paint a more nuanced portrait of the neurobiology underlying the patchwork of attributes and behaviors that psychologists call impulsivity — as well as the capacity to put brakes on these impulses, a set of skills sometimes called inhibitory control.”

Their findings were published online Sunday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted on Friday to approve a new drug to treat erectile dysfunction (ED), various media outlets have reported.

The medication, Stendra (genetic name: avanafil), is produced by California-based pharmaceutical company Vivus Inc. and is the first product from that company to receive FDA approval, according to Jennifer Corbett Dooren of the Wall Street Journal.

Like Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra, Stendra is a phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE-5) inhibitor which works by increasing blood flow to the penis, Medical News Today said Friday. It is the first PDE-5 inhibitor to be approved by the federal drug agency in a decade, added MedPage Today Staff Writer Charles Bankhead.

“This approval expands the available treatment options to men experiencing erectile dysfunction, and enables patients, in consultation with their doctor, to choose the most appropriate treatment for their needs,” Dr. Victoria Kusiak, deputy director of the Office of Drug Evaluation III in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a press release, according to Daniel J. DeNoon of WebMD Health News.

Bankhead said that the FDA opted to approve Stendra based largely on the results of three randomized, controlled clinical trials involving more than 1,200 ED patients. In one of those trials, scientists observed that men achieved erection in as little as 15 minutes after taking the drugs, and that the rate of erections sufficient for sexual intercourse increased from under 15% to 57% with the new medication (compared to 27% with placebos).

“In clinical trials, 77% of men with general ED were able to get erections after taking Stendra, compared to 54% of men taking an inactive placebo pill. Among men with diabetes-related ED, 63% were able to get erections after taking the drug, compared to 42% of men taking placebo,” said DeNoon. “Stendra resulted in successful intercourse for 57% of men with general ED (vs. 27% of men taking placebo) and for 40% of men with diabetes-related ED (vs. 20% of men taking placebo).”

Dooren said that the FDA has warned that, like other PDE-5 inhibitors, Stendra should not be used by anyone who takes nitrates for chest pain because it could result in a risky decrease in blood pressure. They also reported that the primary side effects from the trials included headaches, redness in the face or in other parts of the body, nasal congestion, or back pain.

She added that Vivus is also “awaiting an FDA decision on its proposed obesity drug Qnexa, which is expected in mid-July“¦ An FDA advisory panel voted 20-2 in support of the product in February in advance of an initial April 17 FDA deadline“¦ Qnexa is a controlled-release formulation that combines low doses of two older generic drugs: the stimulant phentermine, which cuts appetite, and topiramate, which increases the sense of feeling full.”

Jason Farmer for RedOrbit.com

A recent study by the CDC found that more than 40 million American workers, which are about 30 percent of the nation´s civilian workforce, are getting fewer than six hours of sleep per night.

The CDC says these sleep deprived workers are posing a real and potentially fatal risk to themselves and their coworkers by not getting a good seven to nine hours of sleep, the recommended amount by the National Sleep Foundation.

According to the CDC, in 2010 alone, a total of 4,547 workers died from occupational injuries, and approximately 49,000 died from illnesses that were work-related.

In the survey of more than 15,000 workers, the CDC found that some workers were more likely to be sleep deprived than others, depending on their occupation and the shift they worked. The study found that forty-four percent of those working the night-shift said they were not getting enough sleep. The rates of insufficient amounts of sleep were high among workers in the fields of healthcare and social assistance, and highest in the transportation and warehouse industries.

Author of the CDC study, Dr. Sara Luckhaupt, a medical officer in the division of surveillance, hazard evaluations, and field studies at the CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Washington, D.C. told Ryan Jaslow of CBS News, “Not surprisingly, workers who work the night shift are more likely to not get enough sleep”. Dr. Luckhaupt also found that people who work more than 40 hours a week or have more than one job are also less likely to get enough sleep.

A March National Sleep Foundation poll found that 50 percent of pilots, 44 percent of truck drivers, and 29 percent of bus, taxi and limousine drivers reported rarely getting a good night’s sleep before work.

An estimated 20% of vehicle crashes are linked to driving while drowsy, according to the CDC.

The CDC study found that those in the middle age groups of 30 to 44 years (31.6 percent) and 45 to 64 years (31.8 percent) were less likely to get the recommended amount of sleep than workers aged 18 to 29 years (26.5 percent) or older than 65 years (21.7 percent).

Dr. Michael J. Breus, a sleep expert and clinical psychologist, told WebMD that if you fall asleep in less than 10 minutes, you’re probably sleep deprived.

Breus also told Jaslow, “If you hit the snooze button more than twice you are probably sleep-deprived.”

The CDC´s Luckhaupt told WebMD that employers should take steps to ensure their workers are getting enough sleep. She suggests altering night shift schedules or limiting the number of consecutive shifts for employees.

In addition to safer workplace environments, research continues to confirm that getting the recommended amount of sleep is imperative for good health. A recent study found that people who don’t get enough sleep run a significantly greater risk for developing diabetes and becoming obese.

Researchers from the American Heart Association have found that people who got about a third-less than the recommended amount of sleep ate over 500 additional calories a day on average. Lack of sleep was linked to important hormones that regulate appetite control and overeating.

Women who smoke in pregnancy may be more likely to have a child with high-functioning autism, such as Asperger´s Disorder, according to preliminary findings from a study by researchers involved in the U.S. autism surveillance program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .

“It has long been known that autism is an umbrella term for a wide range of disorders that impair social and communication skills,” says Amy Kalkbrenner, assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee´s Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health, lead author of the study. “What we are seeing is that some disorders on the autism spectrum, more than others, may be influenced by a factor such as whether a mother smokes during pregnancy.”

The study was published April 25, 2012, in an advance online release by the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Smoking during pregnancy is still common in the U.S. despite its known harmful impacts on babies.  Kalkbrenner found that 13 percent of mothers whose children were included in the study had smoked during pregnancy.

Kalkbrenner and colleagues´ population-based study compared smoking data from birth certificates of thousands of children from 11 states to a database of children diagnosed with autism maintained by the CDC´s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (ADDMN). Of the 633,989 children, born in 1992, 1994, 1996 and 1998, 3,315 were identified as having an autism spectrum disorder at age 8.

“The study doesn´t say for certain that smoking is a risk factor for autism,” Kalkbrenner says. “But it does say that if there is an association, it´s between smoking and certain types of autism,” implicating the disorders on the autism spectrum that are less severe and allow children to function at a higher level. That connection, she adds, needs further study.

April is Autism Awareness Month, and several studies of possible links between environmental factors and autism are being published by Environmental Health Perspectives at the same time as Kalkbrenner´s study. “The CDC recently released data indicating that 1 in 88 children has an autism spectrum disorder, making such environmental studies even more timely,” says Kalkbrenner.

Because autism involves a broad spectrum of conditions and the interplay of genetics and environment is so complex, no one study can explain all the causes of autism, she adds. “The goal of this work is to help provide a piece of the puzzle. And in this we were successful.”

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Image Caption: Smoking during pregnancy is still common in the U.S. despite its known harmful impacts on babies. Credit: Rohit Seth/Veer

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On The Net:

• UWM News
• Environmental Health Perspectives

Researchers have found that violence in the lives of children can cause changes in their DNA equivalent to seven to 10 years of premature aging. Scientists measured this cellular aging by studying the ends of children´s chromosomes, called telomeres.

Telomeres are DNA sequences that act like the plastic tips on shoelaces, which prevent the DNA in chromosomes from unraveling. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres become shorter until a cell dies when it can´t divide anymore, reports Liz Szabo for USA Today.

Idan Shalev, a post-doctoral researcher in psychology and neuroscience at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy and lead author of the study in today´s Molecular Psychiatry says, “This is the first time it has been shown that our telomeres can shorten at a faster rate even at a really young age, while kids are still experiencing stress.”

The researchers analyzed DNA samples from twins at ages 5 and 10 and compared telomere length to three kinds of violence: domestic violence between the mother and her partner, being bullied frequently, and physical maltreatment by an adult. Moms were also interviewed when kids were 5, 7, and 10 to create a cumulative record of exposure to violence.

The research team plans to further explore the new findings by measuring the average length of telomeres in the twins after they become adults. They´ll also repeat the study in a second, older group of 1,000 individuals in the Dunedin Study, who have been under observation since their birth in the 1970s in New Zealand.

The study suggests that children exposed to such stresses could be expected to develop age-related diseases such as heart attacks or memory loss, seven to 10 years earlier than their peers.

Whether or not these changes are reversible is not clear. Shalev and colleagues plan to study the children for longer periods of time to see what happens later on in life.

“Research on human stress genomics keeps throwing up amazing new facts about how stress can influence the human genome and shape our lives,” said Caspi, the Edward M. Arnett Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience.

“The study confirms a small-but-growing number of studies suggesting that early childhood adversity imprints itself in our chromosomes,” says Charles Nelson, a professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at Harvard Medical School.

In a 2011 study, Nelson and colleagues found shorter telomeres in Romanian children who had spent more time in institutions, compared with children sent to foster care.

Nathan Fox, a professor of human development at the University of Maryland and co-author of the 2011 paper explains, “We know that toxic stress is bad for you. This paper provides a mechanism by which this type of stress gets ℠under the skin´ and into the genes.”

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” said Terrie Moffitt, study co-author, “Some of the billions of dollars spent on diseases of aging such as diabetes, heart disease and dementia might be better invested in protecting children from harm.”

First-of-its-kind research presented as an abstract at the 2012 American Society for Nutrition suggests eating pistachios may positively impact bacterial profile of the digestive tract

A preliminary 16-person study suggests that eating pistachios may help alter levels of potentially beneficial bacteria in the gut, a finding that holds promise for supporting digestive health(1). The research, presented as an abstract this week at the Experimental Biology conference, is the first study of pistachios and almonds and their modulating role on the gut microbiota composition.

“Gut microbiota, or the microbial environment in the gastrointestinal tract, provides important functions to the human host,” said Volker Mai, PhD, lead study author and assistant professor at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “Modifying microbiota towards a ‘beneficial’ composition is a promising approach for supporting intestinal health, with potential effects on overall health, and it appears that pistachios may play a role in this modification.”

Pistachios Deliver Essential Compounds to the Gut

Pistachios appear to have prebiotic characteristics; they contain non-digestible food components such as dietary fiber, which remain in the gut and serve as food for naturally occurring bacteria. They also contain phytochemicals that have the potential to modify microbiota composition. Foods with prebiotic properties may enhance the growth of beneficial bacteria in the digestive tract.

To examine this relationship between prebiotics found in pistachios and the gut, researchers conducted a feeding study at the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center in Maryland. Sixteen healthy individuals were randomly assigned to eat an American-style, pre-planned diet that included either 0 ounces, 1.5 ounces or 3 ounces of pistachios or almonds per day. Each participant’s diet was calorie-controlled to ensure they neither gained nor lost weight during the intervention. Multiple stool samples were collected throughout the study and analyzed for bacterial community composition. The researchers also quantified the amounts of Lactic Acid Bacteria and Bifidobacteria in the stool, two groups of live microorganisms that reside in the digestive tract and help break down food substances.

After controlling for age, dietary factors and other relevant variables, the researchers observed that after 19 days, people who ate up to 3 ounces of pistachios (about 147 nuts or 2 servings) per day had increased changes in levels of various gut bacteria. According to the abstract, people who ate pistachios showed an increase in potentially beneficial butyrate-producing bacteria. Butyrate has been shown to be a preferred energy source for colonic epithelial cells and is thought to play an important role in maintaining colonic health in humans(2). The difference in gut microbes was stronger in people who ate pistachios rather than almonds. The researchers used “modern high throughput sequencing” to quantify specific gut bacterial DNA signatures before and after nut consumption. According to the researchers, this is the first study using this method to observe that pistachios and almonds may have the ability to help change the amounts of bacteria thriving in the gut.

“Fibers and incompletely digested foods, including nuts, that reach the proximal colon provide compounds required for maintaining a diverse microbiota,” said Mai. “While still in the early stages of research, this study is a promising sign that increasing consumption of nuts, specifically pistachios, provides a novel means to modify the number of the gut’s ‘healthy’ microbiota, with potential health benefits.”

In-Shell Pistachios Offer a Package of Nutrients

A one-ounce serving of pistachios, with 49 kernels and 160 calories, provides 3 grams of dietary fiber, which is 12 percent of the recommended daily value, more than is found in a serving of wheat bread. Pistachios are also an excellent source of vitamin B6, copper and manganese and a good source of phosphorus and thiamin.

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On The Net:

• Fleishman-Hillard, Inc.
• Pistachio Health

Finding adds to evidence about the biology of this mysterious disease

Chronic fatigue syndrome, a medical disorder characterized by extreme and ongoing fatigue with no other diagnosed cause, remains poorly understood despite decades of scientific study. Although researchers estimate that more than 1 million Americans are affected by this condition, the cause for chronic fatigue syndrome, a definitive way to diagnose it, and even its very existence remain in question. In a new study, researchers have found differing brain responses in people with this condition compared to healthy controls, suggesting an association between a biologic functional response and chronic fatigue syndrome.

The findings show that patients with chronic fatigue syndrome have decreased activation of an area of the brain known as the basal ganglia in response to reward. Additionally, the extent of this lowered activation was associated with each patient’s measured level of fatigue. The basal ganglia are at the base of the brain and are associated with a variety of functions, including motor activity and motivation. Diseases affecting basal ganglia are often associated with fatigue. These results shed more light on this mysterious condition, information that researchers hope may eventually lead to better treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome.

The study was conducted by Elizabeth R. Unger, James F. Jones, and Hao Tian of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Andrew H. Miller and Daniel F. Drake of Emory University School of Medicine, and Giuseppe Pagnoni of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. An abstract of their study entitled, “Decreased Basal Ganglia Activation in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Subjects is Associated with Increased Fatigue,” will be discussed at the meeting Experimental Biology 2012, being held April 21-25 at the San Diego Convention Center. The abstract is sponsored by the American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP), one of six scientific societies sponsoring the conference which last year attracted some 14,000 attendees.

More Fatigue, Less Activation

Dr. Unger says that she and her colleagues became curious about the role of the basal ganglia after previous studies by collaborators at Emory University showed that patients treated with interferon alpha, a common treatment for chronic hepatitis C and several other conditions, often experienced extreme fatigue. Further investigation into this phenomenon showed that basal ganglia activity decreased in patients who received this immune therapy. Since the fatigue induced by interferon alpha shares many characteristics with chronic fatigue syndrome, Unger and her colleagues decided to investigate whether the basal ganglia were also affected in this disorder.

The researchers recruited 18 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, as well as 41 healthy volunteers with no symptoms of CFS. Each study participant underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging, a brain scan technique that measures activity in various parts of the brain by blood flow, while they played a simple card game meant to stimulate feelings of reward. The participants were each told that they’d win a small amount of money if they correctly guessed whether a preselected card was red or black. After making their choice, they were presented with the card while researchers measured blood flow to the basal ganglia during winning and losing hands.

The researchers showed that patients with chronic fatigue syndrome experienced significantly less change in basal ganglia blood flow between winning and losing than the healthy volunteers. When the researchers looked at scores for the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory, a survey often used to document fatigue for chronic fatigue syndrome and various other conditions, they also found that the extent of a patient’s fatigue was tightly tied with the change in brain activity between winning and losing. Those with the most fatigue had the smallest change.

Results Suggest Role of Inflammation

Unger notes that the findings add to our understanding of biological factors that may play a role in chronic fatigue syndrome. “Many patients with chronic fatigue syndrome encounter a lot of skepticism about their illness,” she says. “They have difficulty getting their friends, colleagues, coworkers, and even some physicians to understand their illness. These results provide another clue into the biology of chronic fatigue syndrome.”

The study also suggests some areas of further research that could help scientists develop treatments for this condition in the future, she adds. Since the basal ganglia use the chemical dopamine as their major neurotransmitter, dopamine metabolism may play an important role in understanding and changing the course of this illness. Similarly, the difference in basal ganglia activation between the patients and healthy volunteers may be caused by inflammation, a factor now recognized as pivotal in a variety of conditions, ranging from heart disease to cancer.

Estimates from the CDC suggest that annual medical costs associated with chronic fatigue syndrome total about $14 billion in the United States. Annual losses to productivity because of lost work time range between $9 and $37 billion, with costs to individual households ranging between $8,000 and $20,000 per year.

On The Net:

• Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology

Adults who were physically abused during childhood are more likely than their non-abused peers to have suicidal thoughts, according to a new study from the University of Toronto.

The study, published online this month in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior , found that approximately one-third of adults who were physically abused in childhood had seriously considered taking their own life. These rates were five times higher than adults who were not physically abused in childhood. The findings suggest that children exposed to physical abuse may be at greater risk for suicidal behaviours in adulthood.

Investigators examined gender specific differences among a sample of 6,642 adults, of whom 7.7 per cent reported that they had been physically abused before the age of 18. They found that a strong association between childhood physical abuse and subsequent suicidal behaviours remained even after taking into account other known risk factors, such as adverse childhood conditions, health behaviours and psycho-social stressors.

“This research provides important new knowledge about the enduring effects of abuse in childhood,” says lead author Esme Fuller-Thomson, Sandra Rotman Chair at University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and Department of Family and Community Medicine. “The findings have important clinical implications for healthcare providers, suggesting the need to screen for suicidal ideation among adults who have experienced childhood physical abuse and highlighting the importance of providing preventive treatment to childhood abuse survivors.”

The findings open up further areas of research. Previous studies have theorized that habituation to high levels of pain and fear through childhood abuse may contribute to adults’ ability to inflict injury or harm on themselves. Recent research suggests suicide may have developmental origins relating to abuse — that physical or sexual abuse may lead to changes in the stress reponse in the brain which increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior .

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On The Net:

• University of Toronto

Lawrence LeBlond for RedOrbit.com
What would you expect to pay to have your appendix removed if so needed? $1,500? $182,000? How about any amount in between? A new study shows that hospital charges are all over the map when it comes to such procedures, and most people are left in the dark when it comes to medical costs, reports ABC News.
Researchers of the study, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found wide variations in charges for medical procedures even among appendectomy patients treated at the same hospital.
One such procedure, performed on Augustin Hong, a then-34-year-old financial professional living in San Francisco, cost a staggering $60,000. Hong, who went to the ER with severe abdominal pain, was diagnosed with acute appendicitis, and subsequently had his appendix removed by doctors.
Hong had not worried too much about the cost of the procedure because he had health insurance. But that all changed when the bills started to arrive. “That´s when I got nervous,” said Hong, who is now 36.
In all, Hong was charged $59,283, including $5,264 for the doctors. According to the Healthcare Blue Book, that figure is six times the fair price for an appendectomy in Northern California ($8,309, which includes a four-day admission).
“My initial thought was, it was a good thing I had insurance,” said Hong. But he soon realized the hospital was not in his insurance network. And while the insurer agreed to pay more than half of his bill, Hong was still left with a $23,000 bill.
The researchers, as well as other healthcare experts, said the results aren´t unique to California and show the system is definitely broken.
“There´s no method to the madness,” said lead author Dr. Renee Hsia, an emergency room physician and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. “There´s no system at all to determine what is a rational price for this condition or this procedure.”
The inconsistencies seen in patient bills can be partly explained by differences in amount of care needed and where the treatment took place. The researchers note that some patients may have needed more costly procedures, including multiple imaging scans, or perhaps longer hospital stays. Some patients may have been treated without the need for surgery, though most had appendectomies, and some were sicker and needed more intensive care.
After reviewing charges from more than 19,000 patients, the UCSF researchers found that the cost for treatment of uncomplicated appendicitis, the same disease Hong had, ranged from $1,529 to $182,955.
“We expected to see variations of two or three times the amount, but this is ridiculous,” Hsia told the New York Times. “There´s no rhyme or reason for how patients are charged or how hospitals come up with charges.”
“There´s no other industry where you get charged 100 times the same amount, or 121 times, for the same product,” she said.
Hsia, who is an ER doctor herself, said she has no idea what the hospital charges are for various procedures. When patients ask her, she has to tell them she doesn´t know. “It´s heartbreaking for me” to know people can be bankrupted by medical bills, she said, when “so many are struggling to get by already.”
Hospital charges appear on patients´ bills, but they often bear no relation to the discounted fees that insurers usually end up paying. Still, some patients do get stuck paying the retail price. These include those who are uninsured, and those with high-deductible plans or limited coverage. But even those who are fully insured, like Hong, can get stuck paying full retail price.
Some providers who have already agreed to discounted payments from insurers may still try to bill insured patients for additional fees, a practice called balance billing.
Hong´s misfortunes, as it turned out, was that he sought out emergency care closest to his home. And while the hospital was not part of his insurance network, nobody informed him of this, even though he provided his insurance card and had to wait 30 hours for surgery, plenty of time to be transferred to another hospital within his insurance network.
Hsia and colleagues found huge variations in price, even within the same county. In Fresno County, for instance, the researchers found the smallest range of charges, but there was still a difference of $46,204 between the highest and lowest hospital appendectomy charge.
They found that for-profit hospitals tended to charge more than county hospitals, and charges increased with a patient´s age. Charges were also higher from Medicaid patients and the uninsured. And those with other health problems like diabetes and congestive heart failure were charged even more.
Hsia noted that the patient whose appendectomy cost $182,955 also had cancer. But that patient did not receive cancer treatment during the hospital stay in which her appendix was removed.
And after reviewing all the cases and accounting for individual variations in health, the researchers were unable to explain a third of the variations in cost differences.
The wide range in hospital prices isn´t limited to appendectomy. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh in 2007 posed as patients trying to get pricing information from hospitals in advance of a procedure, which is a right under California state law. They found that hysterectomy charges ranged from $3,500 to $65,300 and gallbladder removal charges ranged from $2,700 to $36,000. A colonoscopy screening might cost anywhere from $350 to $5,805.
Fewer than one-third of the 353 hospitals that were queried responded for pricing information. And those that did often did not provide all the information requested or say whether physician fees were included, said Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, an assistant professor of medicine at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and a RAND policy analyst who was the senior author of that study.
“In the past decade, there has been an aggressive push to make the patient a more active consumer who shops around for care,” Mehrotra said according to Times reporter Roni Caryn Rabin. “The question is, can they do it?”
It´s not likely, he believes. “The current process does not facilitate that by any means. It´s a crazy process. If we want consumers to play this role, we need to fix this system,” Mehrotra added.
Until that happens, consumers will continue to struggle with hospital charges that can seem completely arbitrary.
Hsia, whose research was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, said there´s “no standard in the United States for reasonable prices or reference pricing … If you go to a hospital, they can charge you whatever they want. Negotiated rates are trade secrets.”
“No one is protected,” Hsia tolc ABC News. “Even with insurance, it is a crazy and secret system.”
“Consumer empowerment can only occur if prospective patients actually have easy access to user-friendly, reliable information,” Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt explained in his 2006 article, ℠The Pricing of U.S. Hospital Services: Chaos Behind a Veil of Secrecy.´
California started to require hospitals in 2006 to publish average charges for common procedures. Despite this ruling, charges were rarely posted on hospital websites, making the information difficult to obtain. Furthermore, published charges rarely reflect negotiated payments.
Some websites, however, have cropped up allowing consumers to search for the average prices of common procedures and services via ZIP codes. And a few hospitals and insurance companies have made treatment cost estimators available to help patients prepare for hospital procedures and their costs.
Despite these efforts, patients still have relatively few options and are left without valuable information. It´s a fact which Hong can attest to.
“Before you get sick, for young people especially, it would help to spend a few minutes to figure out which hospitals near you are covered by [your] insurance,” he told ABC News. “That would have saved me a lot of sleepless nights and thousands of dollars.”

Connie K. Ho for RedOrbit.com

A research group from the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Fragoso presented new study findings at the Experimental Biology 2012 conference in San Diego that described a connection between drinking alcohol and being diagnosed with breast cancer.

Experimental Biology is a meeting of six different scientific societies. This year´s Experimental Biology 2012 conference was sponsored by the American Association of Anatomists (AAA), the American Physiological Society (APS), the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), the American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP), the American Society for Nutrition (ASN), and the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). The conference was held in conjunction with a meeting by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, which has over 12,000 members at the undergraduate and graduate level.

The team was led by María de Lourdes Rodríguez-Fragoso, who believes that a protein called CYP2E1is the direct correlation between alcohol consumption and breast cancer.

“Cells have different mechanisms to remove toxic substances, such as ethanol, the chemical name for alcohol, that represent a potential risk to them,” remarked Rodríguez-Fragoso, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Morelos in Mexico, in a prepared statement. “Unfortunately, sometimes these mechanisms produce other toxic substances, including some that are associated with the development of different types of cancer.”

The team found that CYP2E1 is located in the mammary epithelial cells. These are the breast cells where most breast cancers forms. The group tested ethanol with various samples that had different level of CYP2E1. Cells that had low levels of CYP2E1 were not as much affected by the ethanol treatment as cells that had higher levels of CYP2E1.

“We knew that CYP2E1 could break down ethanol and that doing so created unstable, highly reactive chemicals known as free radicals,” commented Rodríguez-Fragoso in the statement.

In the project, Rodríguez-Fagoso also worked with researcher Scott Burchiel and his team from the University of New Mexico.

“Our results showed that ethanol-treated human mammary cells had an increase in free radical production, oxidative stress and the activation of cellular mechanisms that cause cells to increase their proliferation rate,” explained Rodríguez-Fagoso. “”So if you are a woman who naturally expresses higher levels of CYP2E1 and you consume alcohol, you would be at a greater risk for developing breast cancer than a woman who expresses lower amounts of CYP2E1.”

A couple of months ago, the group took the study further and analyzed CYP2E1 levels in breast tissues of women who had mammaplasties. Rodríguez-Fragoso is confident that her team will be able to find a method of diagnosis focused on CYP2E1 levels.

“Preliminary results show that there is great variability in the expression of this enzyme among the analyzed samples,” commented Rodríguez-Fragoso. “This means that each individual will have a different response to alcohol, and each should take different precautions to minimize their risk of developing breast cancer.”

This news comes at the right time, as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that breast cancer will be a leading cause of death, with over 40,000 people dying from the epidemic and an extra 220,000 people who will be diagnosed with the illness.

“If we can prevent the development of breast cancer associated with alcohol intake by timely diagnoses of markers such as CYP2E1,” noted Rodríguez-Fragoso, “then the annual numbers of new cases and deaths could be diminished significantly.”

People rely on their eyes for most things they do — yet the information provided by our visual sensing system is often distorted, unreliable and subject to illusion.
Researchers at The Vision Centre, Australia, are throwing new light on the tricks the brain plays on its owner as it struggles to make sense of the visual and other sensory signals it constantly receives.
“We tend to regard what we see as ℠the real world´,” says Dr Isabelle Mareschal, a researcher with the Vision centre and University of Sydney. “In fact a lot of it is distortion, and it is occurring in the early processing of the brain, before consciousness takes over.”
“Our latest work shows that the cells of the primary visual cortex create small distortions, which they then pass on to the higher levels of the brain, to interpret as best it can.”
A common example of this that is often exploited by artists and designers is known as the tilt illusion where perfectly vertical lines appear tilted because they are placed on an oriented background.
In a new article in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Dr Mareschal and Professor Colin Clifford report a series of groundbreaking experiments in which they trace the origins of the tilt illusion to the cells of the primary visual cortex — the first stage of vision processing, before the conscious mind takes over.
“We wanted to test at what level the illusion occurs in the brain, unconscious or conscious — and also to see if the higher brain is aware of the illusions it is receiving and how it tries to correct for them,” she explains.
“The answer is that the brain seeks more contextual information from the background to try to work out the alignment of the object it is seeing.”
The team subjected volunteers to a complex test in which they had to indicate the orientation of a vertical line, which was perceived as constantly tilting from side to side, against a fuzzy background that was also changing.
“These illusions happen very fast, perhaps in milliseconds,” Dr Mareschal says. “And we found that even the higher brain cannot always correct for them, as it doesn´t in fact know they are illusions.”
This is one of the reasons that people´s eyes sometimes mislead them when looking at objects in their visual landscape.
Normally she says, it doesn´t matter all that much — but in the case of a person driving a car fast in traffic, an athlete performing complex acrobatic feats, a pilot landing an aircraft or other high-speed uses of sight, the illusion may be of vital importance by causing them to misinterpret the objects they ℠see´.
The brain uses context, or background, to interpret a host of other visual signals besides the orientation of objects — for example it uses it to tell color, motion, texture and contrast — so the Vision Centre research has wide scope for understanding how the brain interprets the world visually and indeed how the brain itself works.
“We propose that our technique is a powerful tool that could be applied to contextual effects in other realms, such as colour or depth,” the researchers conclude. “Distinguishing visual processes by their dependence on a complete, conscious representation of the stimulus is a critical step toward formulating a comprehensive model of cortical processing.”
Their paper “Dynamics of unconscious contextual effects in orientation processing” by Isabelle Mareschal and Colin W. G. Clifford, appears in the journal the Proceedings of the Academy of Science (PNAS).
The Vision Centre is funded by the Australian Research Council as the ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science.
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On The Net:

• The Vision Centre
• PNAS
• ARC Centre of Excellence in Vision Science

Lee Rannals for RedOrbit.com
Scientists are studying how the brain’s blood flow causes a “brain freeze,” which could eventually lead to a better understanding of other types of headaches.
A brain freeze is a near-instantaneous headache that occurs when someone is taking a bite of ice cream, or slurping down an Icee.
Scientists still do not have a handle on exactly why this phenomenon occurs, but they have determined that those who suffer migraines are more prone to experiencing a brain freeze than people who do not have these types of headaches.
Previous studies meant to assess what physiological changes have prompt headaches relied on various drugs, or brought in patients already experiencing a migraine.  However, these methods have limitations.
Pharmacological agents can induce other effects that can make research results misleading, and since researchers cannot wait for migraine suffers to experience a migraine in the lab, those studies miss the period of headache formation.
A brain freeze ended up being a perfect fit for the researches because it is easy to bring on, and resolves quickly.
During the new study, volunteers were brought into a lab and were given ice water through a straw at room temperature to try and induce a brain freeze.
Once a volunteer had a brain freeze, they would raise their hand when they felt the pain, and raise it again once the pain dissipated.
The team studied the blood flow in the brain of the participants who were experiencing a brain freeze.  They found that the sudden headache seems to be triggered by an abrupt increase in blood flow in the anterior cerebral artery, and disappears when this artery constricts.
The team believes that the dilation, then quick constriction, may be a type of self-defense for the brain.
“The brain is one of the relatively important organs in the body, and it needs to be working all the time,” Jorge Serrador of Harvard Medical School, the study leader, said in a press release. “It’s fairly sensitive to temperature, so vasodilation might be moving warm blood inside tissue to make sure the brain stays warm.”
He said that because the skull is a closed structure, the sudden influx of blood could raise pressure and induce pain.  This could be a way to bring pressure down in the brain before it reaches dangerous levels, Serrador added.
He said similar alterations in blood flow could be at work in migraines, post traumatic headaches, and other headache types.  The results could help researchers find ways to control blood flow and offer new treatments for these conditions.
Their study entitled “Cerebral Vascular Blood Flow Changes During ‘Brain Freeze” will be discussed this week at the Experimental Biology 2012 conference.

An Army medical researcher has reportedly developed a potential vaccine carrier he believes will extend the shelf life of essential vaccines, allowing for stockpiles of them to be created and shortages of these critical treatments to be avoided, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) said in a statement Sunday.
The findings, which were presented Sunday afternoon at the Experimental Biology 2012 meeting, were discovered by U.S. Army Major Jean M. Muderhwa. Muderhwa, a researcher at the Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) / San Antonio Military Medical Center (SAMMC), said that he has developed a microemulsion — a clear, thermodynamically stable, isotropic liquid mixtures of oil, water and surfactant — which he says “has been found to be both stable and a good candidate for delivering a variety of antigens.”
He created the microemulsion with what appears to be a simple recipe with five components, which interact in a special way. Muderhwa’s solution is created by combining oil, water, glycerol (which is used in skin-care products), a mixture of the surfactants Span 80 and Tween 60, and an aluminum adjuvant-adsorbed protein used in vaccines to amplify the immune system’s protective response to antigens — a combination which he says has a “synergy” and had been sitting in his laboratory for half a year without showing signs of degradation.
“If I were to make an emulsion (of oil and water), which is just a cream and white, that emulsion would separate within weeks,” he said in a statement. “If you make a vaccine containing an emulsion, it’s only (good for) probably a few months because the emulsion is not thermodynamically stable. The surface tension is too high, and the molecules are repelling one another until the emulsion fails.”
“You can make those particles in a cream smaller and smaller and smaller,” Muderhwa added. “The way you do that is you have to lower the surface tension to near zero. You know if you take water and put it in the oil, they don’t mix. So you have to add a compound that can bring them together. If you take egg yolk — it has phospholipids, and these are emulsifiers — that helps to bring the water and oil to combine.”
Muderhwa, a native of the Democratic Republic of the Congo who studied biochemistry at the University of Languedoc Roussillon in Montpellier (France) and biophysics at the University of Minnesota, believes that what he has discovered could be a game-changer when it comes to keeping up with the demand for vaccines.
“There is a need (for new vaccine carriers like this) especially if we want to stockpile a vaccine,” he said. “The (U.S. Agency for International Development) and FDA are responsible for stocking, for example, the influenza vaccine in the case of epidemic. They have to deliver them as quickly as possible. So if you have a vaccine just sitting on the shelf for more than 10 or 20 years, you don’t have to worry about its stability.”
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Image 2: This is US Army Major Jean M. Muderhwa’s microemulsion vaccine carrier. Credit: Courtesy of US Army Major Jean M. Muderhwa