An analysis of the first known public database collecting reports on food fraud and economically-inspired adulteration in the industry has revealed the ingredients most likely to be at the center of such scams, the US Pharmacopeial Convention (USP)– the organization that created the database — announced in an April 5 press release.
According to the USP’s review of scholarly journal reports, the full results of which were published in the April issue of the Journal of Food Science, the seven ingredients most involved in cases of food fraud are: olive oil, milk, honey, saffron, orange juice, coffee, and apple juice.
A Huffington Post report listed some of the primary adulterants in each of those seven ingredients:
– Olive oil – deodorants, corn oil, hazelnut oil and palm oil
– Milk – whey, bovine milk protein, melamine and cane sugar
– Honey – high-fructose corn syrup, glucose, fructose, and more
– Saffron – sandlewood dust, starch, yellow dye, gelatin threads, and more
– Orange juice – fungicide, grapefruit juice, marigold flower extract, corn sugar and paprika extract
– Coffee – chicory, roasted corn, caramel, malt, glucose, leguminous plants and maltodextrins
– Apple juice – arsenic, high-fructose corn syrup, raisin sweetener and synthetic malic acid
MSNBC.com‘s Rob Neill notes that the study was commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security.
For the purposes of the study, food fraud is defined as a “collective term that encompasses the deliberate substitution, addition, tampering or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients or food packaging, or false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain,” the Huffington Post added.
“This database is a critical step in protecting consumers,” Dr. John Spink of Michigan State University, one of the researchers involved in the study, said in a statement.. “Food fraud and economically motivated adulteration have not received the warranted attention given the potential danger they present.”
“We recently defined these terms and now we are defining the scope and scale,” he continued. “As many do not believe a concept or risk exists if it does not appear in a scholarly journal, we believe that publication of this paper in the Journal of Food Science will allow us to advance the science of food fraud prevention.”
“Well-designed compendial testing approaches can be very powerful tool for guarding against food fraud,” added lead author Dr. Jeffrey C. Moore. “Their potential to detect both unknown and known adulterants is a significant benefit in an environment where no one knows and is worried about what harmful adulterant criminals will use to create the next generation of fake food ingredients.”
The USP Food Fraud Database can be viewed online at www.foodfraud.org.

Researchers reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday that about 15 percent of autism cases in families with a single autistic child are associated with spontaneous mutations that occur in six cells.

Several papers published in the April 4 issue of the journal show how gene mutations may contribute to the development of autism.

For the studies, the researchers sequenced the DNA of about 1,000 families, each of which had an autistic child.

The gene mutations identified in the study were discovered with a new genomics technology known as exome sequencing.

One group of researchers from Yale University said that with further characterization of the genes and sequencing of genes in thousands of families, they will be able to develop novel therapeutics and preventive strategies for autism.

“We now have a good sense of the large number of genes involved in autism and have discovered about 10 percent of them,” Joseph Buxbaum, PhD, Director of the Seaver Autism Center, said in a statement. “We need to study many more parents and their affected children if we are to uncover the genes important in ASD. As these genes are further characterized, this will lead to earlier diagnosis and novel drug development.”

The studies all found that de novo mutations account for a substantial fraction of the risk for autism.  These types of mutations show up in affected children for the first time and result from mutations in the production of sperm or egg.

“When the same mutations are found in multiple affected children and none are found in children without autism, we believe that we have identified mutations that collectively affect a higher proportion of individuals with autism,” Buxbaum said in a press release.

Researchers found that less than half of the autism cases studied carried a potentially protein-altering de novo point mutation.

“These data suggest that there is a role for de novo point mutations in the coding region of the genome for autism, but they do not constitute a sufficient cause,” Benjamin Neale, a research affiliate at the Broad Institute and an assistant in genetics at MGH, said in a press release. “That is to say, most de novo variants do not fully explain the disorder in an individual.”

The researchers were also able to link variations in three specific genes to a markedly increased risk for autism.

“Prior to the advent of new DNA sequencing technology, we were largely wandering in the dark searching for autism genes,” Matthew State, senior author of one of the papers, said in a press release. “Now we are getting a clear view of the genetic landscape and finally have the tools in hand to find a large proportion of the many genes contributing to autism.”

Studies involving twins also helps reveal a strong genetic component to autism, but a large number of cases occur in families that have not had a history with the condition.

The Yale study found that de novo mutations were more frequently in children born to older fathers, offering a partial explanation for the increased risk for autism in children of older parents.

The team believes that the percentage of autism cases linked to these de novo mutations will increase.

“With every new gene we discover, we learn more about potential treatments for patients with autism,” Stephan Sanders, lead author of one of the papers in Nature, said in a press release.

Most US teenagers have used alcohol and drugs by the time they reach adulthood and more than 15 percent of them meet the criteria for substance abuse, according to a new survey published in the April issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.
The survey of more than 10,000 US teens found that 4 out of 5 (78.2 percent) teens had tried alcohol before the age of 18. The results of the survey also showed that some 18 percent of adults meet the criteria for “lifetime abuse” of alcohol and 11 percent meet that criteria for drug abuse, with onset of abuse starting in teenage years for many.
“It´s in adolescence that the onset of substance abuse disorders occurs for most individuals,” lead author Joel Swendsen, director of research at the National Center of Scientific Research in Bordeaux, France, told Reuters. “That’s where the roots take place.”
For the study, Swendsen and colleagues examined the frequency, age of onset and socio-demographic factors related to alcohol and drug use and abuse by US teens. The cross-sectional survey included a nationally representative sample of 10,123 adolescents ages 13 to 18 years old. The study and survey were conducted between February 2001 and January 2004.
Researchers found that median age at onset was 14 years old for regular alcohol use with or without dependence; 14 years old for drug abuse with dependence; and 15 years old for drug abuse without dependence.
“Because the early onset of substance use is a significant predictor of substance use behavior and disorders in a lifespan, the public health implications of the current findings are far reaching,” the study authors noted.
Based on 3,700 teens in the survey who were between the ages of 13 and 14, the team found that roughly one in ten had consumed alcohol on a regular basis, defined as 12 drinks within a year. That number jumped to about one in five when the team surveyed 2,300 17- to 18-year-olds.
Swendsen and colleagues said nearly one in three of the regular users in the oldest age group met the criteria for lifetime alcohol abuse.
Sixty percent of the teens surveyed said they had the opportunity to use illicit drugs, such as marijuana, cocaine, stimulants and painkillers. About one in ten 13- to 14-year-olds said they had used at least one such drug, and that increased to 40 percent in the oldest age group. Marijuana was the most common type of drug used, followed by prescription drugs.
Swendsen and colleagues noted that while the probability of alcohol and drug use increased with age, the rates were almost always lowest in black and other racial/ethnic groups compared to white or Hispanic adolescents.
“The reason we worry about [drug and alcohol use] is that the earlier [teens] use these substances the earlier they become addicted to it,” Susan Foster, vice president and director of policy research and analysis at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University in New York, told Reuters.
Foster, who was not part of the study, said using such drugs at such an early age is especially dangerous because the brain is still developing. “There´s really a type of rewiring that goes on with continued use than can result in an increased interest in using and an inability to stop using,” she added.
Foster, whose organization published a comprehensive report on substance abuse in adolescents last year, said the findings of the latest study are consistent with that research. “We´ve had spikes and declines of abuse across the population,” she said.
Swendsen and colleagues also noted that strategies need to target adolescents to prevent drug and alcohol abuse, but also need to take into account the different factors that influence it.
“We don´t need to bombard them with information that´s beyond their stage of development, but don´t think a 13-year-old doesn´t know what cannabis is,” Swendsen told Reuters.
“The prevention of both alcohol and illicit drug abuse requires strategies that target early adolescence and take into account the highly differential influence that population-based factors may exert by stage of substance use,” the authors concluded.

[ Watch the Video ]

Research could lead to new rehabilitative therapies when visual cortex is damaged

It’s a chilling thought–losing the sense of sight because of severe injury or damage to the brain’s visual cortex. But, is it possible to train a damaged or injured brain to “see” again after such a catastrophic injury? Yes, according to Tony Ro, a neuroscientist at the City College of New York, who is artificially recreating a condition called blindsight in his lab.

“Blindsight is a condition that some patients experience after having damage to the primary visual cortex in the back of their brains. What happens in these patients is they go cortically blind, yet they can still discriminate visual information, albeit without any awareness.” explains Ro.

While no one is ever going to say blindsight is 20/20, Ro says it holds tantalizing clues to the architecture of the brain. “There are a lot of areas in the brain that are involved with processing visual information, but without any visual awareness.” he points out. “These other parts of the brain receive input from the eyes, but they’re not allowing us to access it consciously.”

With support from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, Ro is developing a clearer picture of how other parts of the brain, besides the visual cortex, respond to visual stimuli.

In order to recreate blindsight, Ro must find a volunteer who is willing to temporarily be blinded by having a powerful magnetic pulse shot right into their visual cortex. The magnetic blast disables the visual cortex and blinds the person for a split second. “That blindness occurs very shortly and very rapidly–on the order of one twentieth of a second or so,” says Ro.

On the day of Science Nation’s visit to Ro’s lab in the Hamilton Heights section of Manhattan, volunteer Lei Ai is seated in a small booth in front of a computer with instructions to keep his eyes on the screen. A round device is placed on the back of Ai’s head. Then, the booth is filled with the sound of consistent clicks, about two seconds apart. Each click is a magnetic pulse disrupting the activity in his visual cortex, blinding him. Just as the pulse blinds him, a shape, such as a diamond or a square, flashes onto a computer screen in front of him.

Ro says that 60 to nearly 100 percent of the time, test subjects report back the shape correctly. “They’ll be significantly above chance levels at discriminating those shapes, even though they’re unaware of them. Sometimes they’re nearly perfect at it,” he adds.

Ro observes what happens to other areas of Ai’s brain during the instant he is blinded and a shape is flashed on the screen. While the blindness wears off immediately with no lasting effects, according to Ro, the findings are telling. “There are likely to be a lot of alternative visual pathways that go into the brain from our eyes that process information at unconscious levels,” he says.

Ro believes understanding and mapping those alternative pathways might be the key to new rehabilitative therapies. “We have a lot of soldiers returning home who have a lot of brain damage to visual areas of the brain. We might be able to rehabilitate these patients,” he says. And that’s something worth looking into.

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On the Net:

• NSF
• City College of New York

Those who are regular consumers of fast food products are over 50% more likely to become clinically depressed than those who abstain from burgers, fries, pizza and other related foods, researchers from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) and the University of Granada have discovered.

Furthermore, according to lead author Almudena Sánchez-Villegas, the study, which has been published in the journal Public Health Nutrition, also demonstrated a dose-response relationship, which essentially means that the more fast food or commercial baked foods (doughnuts, croissants, etc.) a person eats, the higher the risk that they will become depressed as a result.

The research also discovered that subjects who ate the highest quantities of these types of foods have poor overall dietary habits (i.e. eating fewer servings of fruits and vegetables, fish, and nuts) and poor exercise habits, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) said in a press release on Friday.

They are also more likely to be single, the researchers discovered, according to FECYT.

As part of their study, Sánchez-Villegas and colleagues followed a sample of nearly 9,000 individuals affiliated with the SUN Project (University of Navarra Diet and Lifestyle Tracking Program).

None of them had ever been diagnosed or treated for depression before the start of the study, and after an average of six month’s worth of assessment, nearly 500 of them had either received such a diagnosis or had started taking antidepressants.

“This new data supports the results of the SUN project in 2011, which were published in the PLoS One journal,” the FECYT media advisory said. “The project recorded 657 new cases of depression out of the 12,059 people analyzed over more than six months. A 42% increase in the risk associated with fast food was found, which is lower than that found in the current study.”

While Sánchez-Villegas admits that “more studies are necessary,” the researcher adds that “the intake of this type of food should be controlled because of its implications on both health (obesity, cardiovascular diseases) and mental well-being.”

However, in an interview with Dr. Alethea Turner of ABC News, Yale University´s Prevention Research Center Director Dr. David Katz suggested that the study may have the cause-effect relationship reversed.

“Higher intake of fast food may very well increase risks of depression by causing poor health in general. But depression may also increase fast food intake,” he said. “We use the term ℠comfort food´ for a reason. It can help alleviate stress, anxiety, and depression. So it may be that people with depression are turning to [fast food] for relief.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Friday that they would not ban the use of a controversial chemical used in food packaging, various media outlets have reported.

According to Bloomberg‘s Jack Kaskey, the FDA rejected a request from environmental advocates seeking the agency to prohibit the use of bisphenol A, also known as BPA, in cans and other forms of packaging. In their ruling, the FDA determined that opponents of BPA, which has been used in epoxy linings for the past 50 years to keep canned foods and beverages fresh longer, “didn´t provide enough data to support a rule change,” he added.

“The information provided in your petition was not sufficient to persuade FDA, at this time, to initiate rulemaking to prohibit the use of BPA in human food and food packaging,” Acting Associate FDA Commissioner David H. Horsey wrote in a letter to, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the New York-based advocacy group that filed the lawsuit in 2008, according to Kaskey.

At least trace amounts of BPA, which Bloomberg said is created by combining phenol and acetone, are present in the systems of a reported 90% of all US citizens. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) report that the substance could have a negative impact on the brains and prostates of fetuses and young children, and Kaskey added that some scientists believe that BPA can cause adverse effects on the reproductive and nervous systems, especially in infants and small children.

“Scientists are still working to determine what effects BPA, which mimics estrogen in the body, has on human health once ingested,” added Bettina Boxall and Eryn Brown of the Los Angeles Times. “They know that“¦ it has been shown to have negative effects in mice, including developmental and reproductive abnormalities, precancerous changes in the prostate and breasts, and other health problems. In epidemiological studies, researchers have reported correlations between BPA levels in people and higher risk of ailments including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and liver problems.”

Despite rejecting the NRDC’s petition, Boxall and Brown report that they have not completely ruled out regulating the substance in the near future. FDA spokesman Douglas Karas told the Times that the verdict was “not a final safety determination on BPA“¦ There is a commitment to doing a thorough evaluation of the risk of BPA.”

The Associated Press (AP) said that despite the findings regarding BPA in animals, they cannot necessarily be applied to humans, and that research provided by the NRDC were “too small to be conclusive.”

“The FDA is out-of-step with scientific and medical research,” Dr. Sarah Janssen, the NRDC´s senior scientist for public health, told the AP. “This illustrates the need for a major overhaul of how the government protects us against dangerous chemicals.”

Researchers with the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) have discovered that women spend more time in labor today than they did five decades ago, various media outlets reported on Friday.

According to Amy Norton of Reuters, the NIH study found that American females spend approximately two to three hours longer, on average, in labor compared to 1960. Most of that extra time is spent in the first stage of labor, or the time during which the cervix opens until it is wide enough to allow the mother to begin pushing.

The results, which will be published in a future edition of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG), were consistent, regardless of weight, age or ethnicity, though there was a tendency for modern mothers to be older and heavier than those who have birth 50 years ago, said MyHealthNewsDaily Staff Writer Rachael Rettner.

“Older maternal age and increased BMI (body-mass index, a ratio of weight to height) accounted for a part of the increase. We believe that some aspects of delivery-room practice are also responsible for this increase,” lead author and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Epidemiologist Dr. Katherine Laughon, told reporters, including HealthDay’s Steven Reinberg, during a conference call on Friday afternoon.

According to both Reinberg and Rettner, Laughon and her colleagues analyzed the birth data of nearly 40,000 women who had children between 1959 and 1966, as well as more than 98,000 women who delivered from 2002 through 2008. They discovered that 21st century women spent 2.6 hours longer in labor during their first birth and 2.0 hours longer during each subsequent birth, and that they were more likely to take epidurals and four times more likely to have a Cesarean delivery than their predecessors from the 1950s and 1960s.

“Women are in labor longer [today] because they are admitted [to the hospital] earlier,” Dr. Michael Cabbad, the chairman of obstetrics/gynecology as well as the chief of maternal/fetal medicine at The Brooklyn Hospital Center (TBH) in New York, told HealthDay on Friday. “There is a tendency for women to come to the hospital in an earlier phase of labor because of fear of arriving too late.”

The researchers report that more research is required to pinpoint all the factors responsible for this phenomenon. As Laughon told David, “We weren’t able to fully address the potential reasons with this study.”

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On the Net:

• National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AJOG)
• National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
• The Brooklyn Hospital Center (TBH)

A new study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that people suffering from a common form of sleep disorder are also increasing their risk of depression, reports Health.com.

In the new research, men who are diagnosed with sleep apnea have been found to be more than twice as likely as other men to show signs of clinical depression. And researchers saw a bigger risk when looking at the link in women with sleep apnea: a fivefold risk increase of depression.

And this is only scratching the surface. CDC researchers believe that more than 80 percent of the people suffer some form of sleep apnea go undiagnosed, passing off symptoms as normal sleeping habits, which tend to include snorting or gasping for air during sleep. This group of people had a threefold risk of depression over those who had no trouble sleeping at night.

Carl Boethel, MD, a sleep specialist at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, who was not involved in the research, said sleep apnea is way underdiagnosed. “Physicians in the sleep community and in the psychiatric community need to do a better job of screening and getting effective treatment,” he remarked.

Sleep apnea is a dangerous sleep disorder that, if gone untreated, can lead to other serious health problems such as diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure and congestive heart failure, as well as depression and anxiety. The causes of sleep apnea are attributed to oversized tonsils, airway structure, and excess fat around the windpipe, often due to overall obesity.

Because sleep apnea is often associated with obesity, the CDC scientists took into account body mass index in their analysis.

The study, appearing in the April issue of the journal SLEEP, is the first of its kind to look at a representative cross-section of the U.S. population. Data was taken from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), an annual survey conducted by the CDC.

Researchers found that 6 percent of men and 3 percent of women had received a sleep apnea diagnosis. They further found that 7 percent of men and 4 percent of women who had not received a diagnosis for sleep apnea had also reported breathing problems on at least 5 nights per week.

The team assessed depression using a standard questionnaire that asked participants how often in the past two weeks had they felt “little interest or pleasure in doing things” or had feelings of depression or hopelessness. The researchers found that five percent of men and eight percent of women had scores indicating “probable” depression.

Michael Weissberg, MD, co-director of the insomnia and sleep disorders clinic at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in Denver, said one of the most complicating factors of the effects of sleep apnea and depression is the fact that it can be difficult to distinguish between them.

“There probably is an important connection between depression and sleep apnea, but it’s hard to sort out who has what,” Weissberg told Health.com. “Sleep disruption, particularly insomnia, can be a risk factor for developing depression, and a lot of symptoms of people who have sleep apnea — they feel lousy, they can’t think straight — are similar to symptoms people have in depression.”

The CDC said their study only offered an association and not cause and effect. They said they could not rule out the possibility that some other unknown factor may contribute to both sleep apnea and depression. However, they said it is plausible to think that sleep apnea could directly cause depression.

Lead author on the work, Anne Wheaton, PhD, an epidemiologist at the CDC, said previous research has shown a link between sleep apnea and mood swings. And the momentary drop in oxygen levels a person gets during an apnea could lead to changes in the brain by triggering stress or inflammation.

“Interrupted sleep may be associated with problems as far as what’s going on in the brain,” Wheaton says. “You need that steady sleep.”

One factor the CDC researchers ruled out affecting depression risk was snoring not attributed to sleep apnea. More than a third of men and 1 in 5 women who reported snoring at least five nights per week were no more likely to be depressed than those who never snored.

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On the Net:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine
• University of Colorado School of Medicine
• SLEEP

One company known as the “Walmart of weed” is setting up shop in Washington D.C. a few miles from the White House and federal buildings.

The weGrow store will be opening on Friday in Washington, coinciding with the first concrete step in implementing city law to allow D.C. residents to purchase marijuana for medical reasons.

WeGrow said it provides the necessary tools to pioneers of a “green rush,” a movement it considers similar to the gold rush where nearly $9 billion could be made in the medical marijuana business in the next five years.

There have been 16 states that have decided to legalized marijuana for medical use to treat a variety of health problems, from anxiety and back pain to HIV/AIDS and cancer-ailments.

About 7 percent of Americans, or 17.4 million people, said they used marijuana in 2010, which is up from 5.8 percent in 2007, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

A Gallup poll last year found that 50 percent of Americans say that marijuana should be made legal, and 70 percent support medical uses for pot.

WeGrow does not sell pot or seeds to grow it, but it instead provides products and services to help cultivators grow their own plants for personal use or for sale at dispensaries.

The first weGrow store was first opened in Sacramento last year by founder Dhar Mann.  He said he started the store after he was kicked out of a mom and pop hydroponics store in California just for mentioning marijuana.

Since its opening, the store has opened a location in Phoenix, San Jose and Flagstaff.  It has also expanded in New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.

WeGrow said it has plans to expand its business into Oregon, Washington State and Michigan as well.

On Friday, D.C. officials will announce those who are eligible to apply for permits to grow and sell medical marijuana to dispensaries under the district’s 2010 law.  Applicants must sign a statement saying they understand a license does not authorize them to break federal law.

“They do so at their own peril because I can’t imagine that the federal government is going to allow marijuana selling for any purpose right in their backyard,” Kevin Sabet, a former senior adviser to the president’s drug czar and an assistant professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Florida, told the Houston Chronicle.

“Whether it’s D.C. or all the way out in California, the government’s been pretty clear that medical marijuana doesn’t pass the giggle test.”

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On the Net:

• weGrow
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
• University of Florida College of Medicine

Brett Smith for Redorbit.com

In what can be described as a scenario straight out of a Hollywood movie, hospital officials report that Richard Lee Norris, of Hillsville, Va., is recovering well after a 36-hour full-face transplant surgery that not only gave him a new appearance, but also functioning teeth, tongue, and a new set of jaws.

Eduardo Rodriguez, the lead surgeon for the operation, said he hoped the transplant would give Norris his life back after living for years as a recluse. Norris was shot in the face in 1997 and had multiple life-saving and reconstructive surgeries since then. While these surgeries allowed him to continue living, his appearance prevented him from truly returning to society or holding a job. Before the surgery, Norris wore a prosthetic nose and a mask whenever he left his parents´ house where he currently resides.

The transplanted face came from an anonymous donor, whose family had been consulted specifically about donating the face along with several other life-saving organs.  Rodriguez said Norris´s new face did not resemble the donor´s and is “a combination of two individuals, a true blend.”

Over 150 doctors, nurses, and medical staffers were involved in the groundbreaking operation. The procedure, which used innovative surgical and computerized techniques, was designed to give Norris a more socially acceptable face with complete functionality. Before the surgery, Norris had no nose and only part of his tongue. He was able to taste food but could not smell it.

“He could not smell for the past 15 years, and that was the most dramatic thing: immediately, on day three, he could finally smell,” Rodriguez said according to The Guardian.

There have been several concerns with the procedure in the past both ethical and medical. These concerns primarily revolve around the possibility of the transplant failing. Ethicists critical of the procedure say improperly functioning facial muscles could result in a worse situation for the patient. Experts, like Iain Hutchison, of Barts and the London Hospital, who criticize the procedure based on medical grounds, say blood vessels in the donated tissue could clot, immunosuppressants could fail, or the procedure might increase the patient’s risk of cancer.

Researchers at the University of Maryland found that transplants involving a large amount of bone marrow with its own blood supply saw fewer or no rejections of transplanted tissue, Norris´s surgeon Rolf Barth said. Norris will have to take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of his life, but the jawbone transplant could mean a lower risk of rejection, according to Barth.

The surgery was also enabled by research funded by the Department of Defense’s Office of Naval Research. In an attempt to improve the quality of reconstructive surgery for injured veterans, the department has invested in both hand and facial surgery research. The government estimates that 200 troops might be eligible for face transplants.

This was the 23rd face transplant since doctors began doing the procedure seven years ago. The first full face transplant was performed in France in 2005 on a woman who was mauled by a Labrador. During that operation, teams of doctors grafted a nose, lips, and a chin onto the face of the 38-year-old mother of two.

Childhood exposure to bacteria and other germs may help build immunity to various microbes later on in life, researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) claim in a new study.
According to Carrie Gann of ABC News, this belief is known as the “hygiene hypothesis,” and suggests — in contrast to the common belief that people should strive to remain germ free regardless of circumstances — that bacteria and other germs may be “a necessary part of a healthy immune system, helping our body’s defenses beef up and fight future illnesses. When a person’s exposure to germs is decreased, problems may arise.”
In a press release detailing their findings, the BWH experts say that the hygiene hypothesis helps to explain the increase of allergic reactions and auto-immune diseases in cities throughout the world, and that medical professionals have claimed that various sociological and environmental changes, such as the use of antibiotics among younger patients, have contributed to this phenomenon.
However, no scientific study had ever discovered a biological basis for this belief. They say that their study, which was published Thursday in Science Express, changes that.
“The researchers show that in mice, exposure to microbes in early life can reduce the body´s inventory of invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, which help to fight infection but can also turn on the body, causing a range of disorders such as asthma or inflammatory bowel disease,” Nature‘s Helen Thompson reported on March 22.
The BWH researchers report that, after studying the immune systems of both “germ-free mice” and those who have received normal exposure to bacteria and other microbes, they discovered that the germ-free mice “had exaggerated inflammation of the lungs and colon resembling asthma and colitis, respectively.”
“Most importantly, the researchers discovered that exposing the germ-free mice to microbes during their first weeks of life, but not when exposed later in adult life, led to a normalized immune system and prevention of diseases,” they added. “Moreover, the protection provided by early-life exposure to microbes was long-lasting, as predicted by the hygiene hypothesis.”
The researchers warn that additional research is required to see whether or not the hypothesis holds true for humans as well, but according to Gann, experts claim that the biological mechanism analyzed in the mice during this study is similar in people.
Likewise, Erika Von Mutius, head of the Munich University Children’s Hospital Asthma and Allergy Department, told Nature that the findings “complement what we see in epidemiology“¦ It supports the idea that the microbiome is very important and the age of exposure is decisive.”

Over the past two decades, the number of people living on their own in the US and UK has doubled. Based on research published in BioMed Central´s journal BMC Public Health, people who live alone are almost 80% more likely to be depressed compared to those who live with others.
The research analyzed the number of people who are currently taking antidepressants to arrive at their conclusion.
The reasons for living alone were different between men and women. A third of the risk of living alone for women was attributed to sociodemographic factors, such as lack of education and low income. Men, on the other hand, were more at risk for factors such as poor job climate and heavy drinking.
While previous research suggests the elderly and single parents face mental health risks when living alone, not much research has been done concerning the effects of living alone on young, work-a-day individuals.
A research team from Finland set out to study this working-age group of people and determine the effects of living alone.
To conduct their research, the team followed 3,500 working-age men and women for seven years. The team compared their living arrangements with several risk factors, such as psychosocial, sociodemographic, and health risks, like smoking and heavy drinking. The team than analyzed this data against data from those who take antidepressants. Antidepressant information came from the National Prescription Register.
“Our study shows that people living alone have an increased risk of developing depression,” said Dr. Laura Pilkki-RÃ¥back, who conducted the research at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. “Overall there was no difference in the increased risk of depression by living alone for either men or women. Poor housing conditions (especially for women) and a lack of social support (particularly for men) were the main contributory factors to this increased risk.”
Researchers suggest one of the main reasons causing these younger people to move on their own is an issue of “social capital”. While social capital has no formal and agreed-upon definition, infed.org suggests that social capital is “The central idea is that ‘social networks are a valuable asset´. “A sense of belonging and the concrete experience of social networks (and the relationships of trust and tolerance that can be involved) can, it is argued, bring great benefits to people.”
Without this social capital, the younger, working generation is more likely to strike out on their own. Living without this kind of social network and structure is proven to have adverse effects on mental health.
While the researchers were able to prove that living alone was a common factor in those who began to take antidepressants, they were not able to confirm if those who were already taking antidepressants were more likely to move out on their own. Furthermore, as people only seek professional care if their depression symptoms are severe enough, those experiencing mild depression who have not sought out professional care were not able to be analyzed. As it stands, one thing is certain: It is best to live with someone if you can rather than live alone.