Lighting up a cigarette or staying on the job while pregnant could increase a woman’s risk of losing their child, claims a new study published earlier this month in the journal Human Reproduction.

The case-control study, completed by researchers from Osaka University and the Osaka Medical Center and Research Institute for Maternal and Child Health, studied the medical records nearly 1,300 Japanese women in order to determine the primary risk factors for what they dub “early spontaneous abortions.”

“No epidemiological studies have examined risk factors for early spontaneous abortions among Japanese women,” the authors write in their study. “In this matched case-control study, we investigated the associations of reproductive, physical and lifestyle characteristics of women and their husbands with early spontaneous abortion <12 weeks of gestation.”

According to their research, the information collected was for 430 cases in which women suffered a miscarriage and 860 instances in which the infants were delivered. They discovered that the risk of early spontaneous abortions was higher in women who had previously suffered a miscarriage, and the higher number of previous occurrences resulted in increased likelihood that it could happen again.

The conditional odds ratio (OR) for women who had one miscarriage was 1.98, versus 2.36 for two and 8.73 for three or more. In comparison, women who smoked had an OR of 2.39 while those who worked outside the home had an OR of 1.65. In conclusion, the authors said that “smoking and working may be important public health issue targets for the prevention of early spontaneous abortions.”

According to Reuters Health reports, “Overall, the researchers found, women who smoked heavily during pregnancy–at least 20 cigarettes per day–were more than twice as likely as the non-smokers to have a miscarriage”¦ Seven percent (32) of the 430 women who suffered a miscarriage smoked that amount, versus four percent (36) of the 860 women who delivered a baby.”

“The current findings do not prove that smoking, itself, was the reason for the increased miscarriage risk seen in the study group,” the news organization added. “But the researchers were able to account for several other factors, including the women’s reported drinking habits and histories of past miscarriages. And the smoking-miscarriage link remained.”

Dr. Sachiko Baba of Osaka University’s Graduate School of Medicine was the lead author on the study. Joining Baba as study co-authors were Hiroyuki Noda, Masahiro Nakayama, Masako Waguri, Nobuaki Mitsuda and Hiroyasu Iso, all of whom represented either the university or the Osaka Medical Center and Research Institute for Maternal and Child Health.

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On the Net:

• Human Reproduction
• Osaka University
• Osaka Medical Center and Research Institute for Maternal and Child Health

The biological effects of general anesthesia are more closely related to those of a coma than natural sleep, claims a new study published in Thursday’s edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

While often times doctors and patients describe being under anesthesia as something similar to going to sleep, the researchers behind the new study have found “significant differences” between the two states, Julie Steenhuysen of Reuters reported on Wednesday. For example, while sleep usually involves different types of phases, a patient under general anesthesia typically only experiences one, which even at its lightest is typically far deeper than the deepest states of sleep.

“A key point of this article is to lay out a conceptual framework for understanding general anesthesia by discussing its relation to sleep and coma, something that has not been done in this way before,” lead author Dr. Emery Brown of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, said in a statement.

“We started by stating the specific physiological states that comprise general anesthesia–unconsciousness, amnesia, lack of pain perception and lack of movement while stable cardiovascular, respiratory and thermoregulatory systems are maintained–another thing that has never been agreed upon in the literature; and then we looked at how it is similar to and different from the states that are most similar–sleep and coma,” Brown added.

While Brown understands why some people have been hesitant to compare anesthesia with a coma, the key difference is that the coma-like state induced in medical procedures is one that “is controlled by the anesthesiologist and from which patients will quickly and safely recover.”

Assisting Brown on the study were co-authors Dr. Ralph Lydic, a sleep specialist from the University of Michigan, and Dr. Nicholas Schiff, an expert in coma from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.

According to Steenhuysen, Schiff points out that under anesthesia, the brain’s activity levels are drastically reduced, similar to what occurs in a coma, and that there are “hints that some of the circuit mechanisms have some overlap.”

“Moreover, understanding this circuit will help us understand the relationship of brain function to consciousness in general–what it is, how it is produced, and what the variety of brain states truly are,” Dr. Schiff added in a separate statement. “Consciousness is a very dynamic process, and now we have a good way of studying it.”

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On the Net:

• New England Journal of Medicine
• Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)
• University of Michigan
• Weill Cornell Medical College

High stem cell count after transplant predicts debilitating syndrome, U-M research finds

A lung transplant can mean a new chance at life. But many who receive one develop a debilitating, fatal condition that causes scar tissue to build up in the lungs and chokes off the ability to breathe.

University of Michigan researchers hope a new diagnostic tool they developed to predict bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS) will allow doctors to intervene earlier and, ultimately, to provide life-saving treatments.

BOS is the leading cause of death for those who survive one year after lung transplantation and more than half of recipients will develop BOS within five years. There is currently no cure.

Vibha Lama, M.D., M.S., an assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, led a team of U-M researchers who recently discovered that patients who had a high number of stem cells in their lungs six months after transplantation were much more likely to develop BOS than those with lower counts.

“Our study provides the first indication of the important role these cells play in both human repair and disease,” Lama says. “It’s very important from the clinical perspective because we didn’t previously have any strong biomarkers for BOS.”

The findings were recently published online ahead of print publication in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The translational study also highlights the importance of the lab-to-bedside cooperation of basic and clinical research, Lama says.

While the exact relationship between the mesenchymal stromal cells and BOS remains unclear, doctors know that most of the cells originate with the donor and not the recipient. Spikes in cell counts are seen shortly after transplantation as the body responds to the injury; those levels usually taper off, but a second rise of cell counts after about six months is linked to a patient’s likelihood of developing BOS.

In 2007, Lama and her colleagues published another discovery about the stem cells, revealing that the cells reside in the transplanted organs, independent of their more commonly known association with bone marrow. That study led to the further exploration of the cells’ involvement with chronic transplant rejection.

The new findings also have the potential to spur research that will help people suffering from other types of lung disease, such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, known as IPF.

Having the biomarker will also allow researchers to readily identify a population of patients ideal for testing new drug interventions and therapies.

“By the time we usually diagnose BOS, there’s already been a huge decline in lung function,” Lama says. “If we can find the disease early, we can potentially do something about it.”

Methodology: Mesenchymal stromal cells were measured in 405 bronchoalveolar lavage fluid samples obtained from 162 lung transplant recipients and patients were observed for BOS development.

Additional U-M authors: Linda Badri; Susan Murray, Sc.D.; Lyrica X. Liu; Natalie M. Walker; Andrew Flint, M.D.; Anish Wadhwa, M.D.; Kevin Chan, M.D.; Galen B. Toews, M.D.; David J. Pinksy, M.D.; Fernando J. Martinez, M.D., M.S.

Funding: The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, American Thoracic Society and Scleroderma Research Foundation.

Dr. Lama also wishes to acknowledge the generous research support of Brian and Mary Campbell, and Elizabeth Campbell Carr.

Disclosure: U-M is filling for patent protection for this test and is actively engaged in finding a commercial partner who can help bring the developments to market.

Citation: American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 2010, doi:10.1164/rccm.201005-0742OC

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On the Net:

• U-M Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine
• Vibha Lama, M.D., M.S.
• American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine

A US food safety agency warned consumers on Monday against eating alfalfa sprouts and spicy sprouts (a mixture of three types of sprouts) from Tiny Greens Organic Farm in Urbana, Illinois, after reports surfaced that the foods were tainted with salmonella, possibly behind the 89 cases found throughout the Midwest.

USA Today received a call from Tiny Greens Organic Farm owner Bill Bagby on Monday evening. Bagby, who was stranded at a family reunion in North Carolina, told USA Today that the Illinois Dept. of Public Health and the US Food and Drug Administration went to his farm in Illinois and took more than 210 samples of “of our water, our alfalfa sprouts, the seed we use to grow the alfalfa sprouts ““ and all of their samples came back negative for salmonella.”

The FDA warning is based on “what they call a statistical association only,” said Bagby. In general FDA and CDC make such an association when a statistically significant number of people become sickened and report eating a given product, despite the lack of any positive evidence linking the product to the outbreak.

The FDA has asked Tiny Greens to do a recall on its alfalfa sprouts grown from a particular lot of alfalfa seed. Bagby said he plans to follow through with the recall, but the company has not yet had time to get the release out due to both the holiday and his being snowed in in an area with spotty phone reception.

He noted that Tiny Greens has “sold thousands of pounds of product to other restaurant chains, other retail chains and none of these have been linked to the outbreak.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has tracked the salmonella outbreak since Nov. 1. It had received reports of people being sick in 15 states and the District of Columbia. The strain of salmonella is common so it is possible some of the cases are not related to the outbreak, said the CDC.

The CDC notes that the elderly, infants and those with impaired immune systems are more likely to have severe illness from salmonella infection, which can cause nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea, fever, chills and blood in the stool.

In a similar report, J&D Produce has warned consumers not to eat certain batches of curly parsley and cilantro that it said may be tainted, though no illnesses have yet been reported associated with that recall.

The US Food Safety and Inspection Service says: “Any raw food of animal origin, such as meat, poultry, milk and dairy products, eggs, seafood, and some fruits and vegetables may carry salmonella bacteria.” But such contamination is easily avoidable, especially when the food is correctly prepared.

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On the Net:

• USDA Salmonella Questions and Answers
• Tiny Greens Organic Farm
• FDA
• CDC

According to a new review of recent research, researchers found that pregnant women who are physically active may gain a little bit less weight than those who are not.

Researchers from Munich, Germany pooled the results of 12 studies and found that women who exercised while pregnant gained an average of 1.3 pounds less than women who didn’t.

Those results alone may not offer pregnant women much incentive to start exercising more, but there are other beneficial reasons to do it, said Dr. Michael Kramer of McGill University in Montreal who reviewed the study findings for Reuters Health.

Exercise can offer positive effects on mood and insulin sensitivity in people overall, and appears to have no negative effects on women during pregnancy, noted Kramer, who is scientific director of the Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Exercise can also help women maintain their pre-pregnancy conditioning, Kramer added. “Women who have been physically active can continue, and women who haven’t can start,” he said. “But they shouldn’t expect major outcomes for them or their baby.”

Women who gain too much weight during pregnancy are at risk from a number of problems, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and labor complications. A recent study found that women who gained more weight during pregnancy had heavier babies, who in turn are themselves more likely to become obese adults, and may be more prone to cancer, allergies, and asthma.

Ina Streuling of the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich and colleagues, investigating if exercise programs help women avoid problems from excessive weight gains, reviewed data from 12 studies that looked at the effect of an exercise intervention on women during pregnancy.

The studies collectively looked at more than 1,000 women, some of whom were randomly assigned to follow exercise programs. The programs encouraged women to exercise three times per week, up to one hour of aerobics, running, biking or muscle strengthening, starting in their first or second trimester.

The studies did not consistently show that exercise was associated with less weight gain during pregnancy, but overall, the data trended in that direction, said Kramer, who was not involved in the review.

Also, some women lost more than the average of 1.3 pounds — more specifically those who were overweight or obese before pregnancy. “To prevent high (weight gain), pregnant women should be physically active,” Streuling noted in an e-mail to Reuters Health.

The team performed another analysis that included studies that combined physical activity and dietary counseling, and found women who followed this program gained almost three pounds less while pregnant.

It’s not very surprising that exercise alone would have only a small impact on weight gain in pregnancy, Kramer explained. What really matters is not only how much women work out, but also how much they eat. “If you do a lot of exercise, you’re going to get hungrier. So unless you cut down on what you eat, you’re not going to lose weight.”

Also, not all of the studies included in the review were of high quality, Streuling noted, and some women not assigned to the exercise regime may have been overall more active in their daily lives, which could also help explain why exercise appeared to have little effect on weight during pregnancy.

The findings of the review appear in the International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

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On the Net:

• McGill University
• Canadian Institutes of Health Research
• Ludwig-Maximilians University
• International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology

New research suggests that more and more people are dying from abusing or misusing drugs, including both prescription and illegal drugs.

The study found that deaths from “accidental poisonings” are more than ten times higher than they were in the late 1960s.

Death from accidental poisoning is higher across all age groups more so than it was a few decades ago, especially among white Americans. 

“I went in expecting to see a blip (in increased accidental poisonings) with the baby boomer(s),” Dr. Richard Miech, the study’s lead author and head of Health and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado Denver, told Reuters Health. After all, he said, “you’ve seen pictures of Woodstock.”

Miech said he was surprised the boomer generation’s impact on the death rates was overshadowed by a “huge increase” in accidental poisoning deaths overall.  He attributes this increase to the growing number of prescription drugs being taken in the U.S. by all age groups.

The team analyzed data from the U.S. Census, which counts all people in the country, as well as a register that tracks the number of deaths from different causes each year.

According to an analysis, white men and women were nine times more likely to die from accidental poisoning in 2005 through 2007 than they ere in 1968 and 1969.  Black men and women were about three times more likely to die from the same cause in recent years than they were 40 years ago.

The greatest proportion of overdoses happens in people in their 40s and 50s, which currently includes the tail-end of the baby boom generation.

In 1968, about one in every 100,000 white women in their early 50’s died from accidental poisoning.  In 2007, about 15 out of every 100,000 did the same. 

The study found that deaths from accidental poisonings are significantly higher for almost every age group.

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the majority of prescription drug abuse involves painkillers like Vicodin.

Miech said that medications like this have become one of the major drivers behind the increasing deaths.  A 2004 government report said that almost half of all Americans take prescription drugs. 

Theodore Cicero, who studies drug abuse at Washington University in St. Louis, told Reuters that a certain percentage of all prescription drugs that are given to patients will be used for non-medical purposes. 

“Even if it’s a very small percentage, when the number of people (getting prescriptions) grows, obviously you’re going to have more drugs in the illicit market,” he said.

Miech said that it is hard to determine if someone with chronic pain is at risk of abuse or misuse.

Death from prescription painkiller overdose has “been an epidemic in the last ten years,” Dr. Wilson Compton, director of the Division of Epidemiology, Services and Prevention Research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told Reuters Health.

Miech said that “Ultimately, I don’t have any silver bullets to come up with a way to reduce this huge increase” in deaths from accidental poisoning.

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On the Net:

• University of Colorado Denver
• Drug Enforcement Administration
• Washington University in St. Louis
• National Institute on Drug Abuse

Abbott Laboratories and U.S. regulators said on Wednesday that the company is recalling about 359 million blood glucose testing strips that could give false results to diabetics.

Abbott said the strips should not be used and would be replaced at no cost. 

The company said it found the problem during a routine internal review, which discovered that certain lots of the strips took too long to absorb the blood from a patient’s finger. 

Abbott said in a statement that the faulty strips could cause patients to try to boost their blood sugar unnecessarily.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a separate statement that it was working with Abbott on the recall.

The FDA said that affected strips were made between January and May and sold both to consumers and healthcare facilities.  It added that heat exposure or prolonged storage of the strips could also be an issue.

Abbott said ReliOn Ultima test strips are used with the ReliOn Ultima blood glucose monitoring system.

The company said that the monitoring systems themselves are not affected by the recall.

The strips are also used with its Precision Xtra, Precision Xceed Pro, MediSense Optium, Optium and Optium EZ.

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On the Net:

• Abbott Laboratories Statement
• FDA Statement

Breakthrough ‘CART’ treatment better than traditional cognitive therapy at altering hyperventilation and panic symptoms

A new treatment program teaches people who suffer from panic disorder how to reduce the terrorizing symptoms by normalizing their breathing.

The method has proved better than traditional cognitive therapy at reducing both symptoms of panic and hyperventilation, according to a new study.

The biological-behavioral treatment program is called Capnometry-Assisted Respiratory Training, or CART, said psychologist and panic disorder expert Alicia E. Meuret at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

CART helps patients learn to breathe in such a way as to reverse hyperventilation, a highly uncomfortable state where the blood stream operates with abnormally low levels of carbon dioxide, said Meuret, one of the researchers conducting the study.

Hyperventilation, a state of excessive breathing, results from deep or rapid breathing and is common in patients with panic disorders.

“We found that with CART it’s the therapeutic change in carbon dioxide that changes the panic symptoms “” and not vice versa,” Meuret said.

CART: Breathing exercises twice a day

During the treatment, patients undergo simple breathing exercises twice a day. A portable capnometer device supplies feedback during the exercises on a patient’s CO2 levels. The goal of these exercises is to reduce chronic and acute hyperventilation and associated physical symptoms. This is achieved by breathing slower but most importantly more shallowly. Contrary to lay belief, taking deep breaths actually worsens hyperventilation and symptoms.

“Most panic-disorder patients report they are terrified of physical symptoms such as shortness of breath or dizziness,” Meuret said. “In our study, cognitive therapy didn’t change respiratory physiology, but CART did effectively reduce hyperventilation. CART was proved an effective and powerful treatment that reduces the panic by means of normalizing respiratory physiology.”

The findings, “Respiratory and cognitive mediators of treatment change in panic disorder: Evidence for intervention specificity,” appeared in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Meuret, who developed CART, is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at SMU and co-directs the department’s Stress, Anxiety and Chronic Disease Research Program. The Beth & Russell Siegelman Foundation funded the research.

CART breathing a proven biological therapy

The study pitted CART against a conventional cognitive therapy treatment, or CT. Traditional CT teaches patients techniques aimed at helping them change and reverse catastrophic thoughts in order to reduce fear and panic.

In the CART-CT study, 41 patients were assigned to complete either a CART or CT treatment program for panic disorder and agoraphobia, a fear of being trapped with no means of escape or help.

Both treatment programs were equally effective in reducing symptoms, said Meuret. But CART was the only treatment to physiologically alter panic symptoms by actively reversing hyperventilation in the patients. Cognitive therapy didn’t change the respiratory physiology, said Meuret.

Treatment helps patients address terror associated with panic

The study is the second randomized control trial to measure CART’s effectiveness. By reversing hyperventilation, patients reported a new ability to reduce panic symptoms by means of changing their respiration.

With CT, Meuret said, if a patient reports shortness of breath, the therapist challenges the assumption by asking how often the person actually has suffocated during a panic attack, then hopes that will reverse the patient’s thinking.

“I found that process very challenging for some of my patients because it acknowledges the symptom but says it’s not a problem,” Meuret said.

“CART, however, tells us a patient’s CO2 is very low and is causing many of the symptoms feared, but it can also show how to change these symptoms through correct breathing. There has been an assumption that if people worry less about symptoms it will also normalize their physiology, but this study shows that this is not the case,” she said. “Hyperventilation remains unchanged, which could be a risk factor for relapse down the road. Apart from hyperventilation being a symptom generator, it is an unhealthy biological state associated with negative health outcomes.”

Broader study planned to measure CART

The researchers plan to branch out with their studies on CART by taking the program into the community, particularly to ethnic minorities. They believe CART is a more universally understood treatment due to its physical exercises “” as opposed to cognitive therapy’s more intellectual methods “” and therefore more accessible to a broader range of people with varying levels of education and different cultural backgrounds. Ongoing studies will test the efficacy of CART in patients with asthma and fear of blood.

Co-authors of the study at SMU were David Rosenfield, associate psychology professor, and psychology graduate students Anke Seidel and Lavanya Bhaskara. Stefan G. Hofmann, psychology professor at Boston University, was also an author on the paper.

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Image Caption: A new treatment that helps people with panic disorder normalize their breathing works better to reduce panic symptoms and hyperventilation than traditional cognitive therapy, says SMU psychologist Alicia Meuret. Credit: Hillsman Jackson, SMU

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On the Net:

• Southern Methodist University
• Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

Cystatin C, a blood marker of kidney function, proved significantly more accurate than the standard blood marker, creatinine, in predicting serious complications of kidney disease, in a study by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.

Among adults who were identified as having chronic kidney disease by high creatinine levels, the researchers found that only patients who also had abnormally high levels of cystatin C were at high risk for death, cardiovascular disease, heart failure, or kidney failure. People with high creatinine but normal cystatin C levels had risks similar to those with normal creatinine levels.

The researchers also found that a “small but important segment” of the study population was missed by creatinine but identified by cystatin C as being at significant risk of serious complications, according to lead author Carmen A. Peralta, MD, MAS, an SFVAMC researcher and an assistant professor of medicine in residence in the division of nephrology at UCSF.

The study of 11,909 participants appears online on December 16, 2010, in the “JASN Express” section of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. The authors analyzed patient data from two prospective studies: the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and the Cardiovascular Health Study, both sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Principal investigator Michael G. Shlipak, MD, MPH, chief of general internal medicine at SFVAMC, said that the current study highlights a potential clinical use for cystatin C as a method for confirming a diagnosis of chronic kidney disease. Shlipak has been a leader among physicians in identifying cystatin C as an alternative, accurate, and reliable marker of kidney function.

Both cystatin C and creatinine are substances made in the body and filtered by the kidneys. High levels of the substances in the blood indicate that the kidneys are losing the ability to filter them, and thus are losing function. “However,” explained Peralta, “creatinine is a byproduct made in muscles, so it is affected by what you eat and especially by how much muscle you have.” Thus, “a bodybuilder with healthy kidneys might have an elevated creatinine level because of high muscle mass, whereas a frail elderly person might have normal or even low levels of creatinine, but in fact this person’s kidneys are not working well ““ it’s just that there’s not much creatinine because there’s not much muscle.”

In contrast, cystatin C is a protein made in cells throughout the body. “In studies so far, it does not seem to be that affected by age or muscle mass or diet,” said Shlipak, who is also a professor in residence of medicine and epidemiology and biostatistics at UCSF.

Shlipak proposes that cystatin C, which can cost as little as $17 per test, be added as a method for confirming or staging chronic kidney disease in guidelines that are currently being formulated by nephrologists. “It’s vital that we have an accurate diagnostic test, because kidney disease does not show symptoms until it’s too late, when your kidneys have almost failed completely,” he said.

“Being missed by creatinine is an important limitation in our current method of diagnosing kidney disease,” said Peralta. Yet, she adds, being falsely identified with kidney disease through inaccurate test results can be disastrous as well. “There is fear and psychological stress, particularly in communities of color, where people have a lot of friends and family members who are on dialysis,” she noted. “You can also be subjected to unnecessary and expensive tests and medications.”

Co-authors of the study are Ronit Katz, DPhil, of the University of Washington; Mark J. Sarnak, MD, MS, of the Tufts-New England Medical Center; Joachim Ix, MD, of UC San Diego; Linda F. Fried, MD, MPH, of Pittsburgh Veterans Affairs Medical Center; Ian De Boer, MD, of UW; Walter Palmas, MD, of Columbia University; David Siscovick, MD, MPH, of UW; and Andrew S. Levey, MD, of Tufts-New England Medical Center.

The research was supported by funds from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the National Institutes of Diabetes Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Some of the funds were administered by the Northern California Institute for Research and Education.

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On the Net:

• University of California – San Francisco
• Journal of the American Society of Nephrology

People who are hypersexual or otherwise addicted to sexual activity are more likely to have anxiety or insecurities about intimate relationships, researchers from Massey University in New Zealand have discovered.

In a study conducted by clinical psychology student Karen Faisandier, more than 880 adult subjects participated in an anonymous online questionnaire about their sex-related activities, including their orientation and their thoughts about how their relationships with others were affected by their sex-related attitudes and behaviors.

“Questions included whether they engaged in online sex, prostitution, sex that made them feel degraded or put them at risk of harm, sex with multiple partners or public indecency,” the university said in a Wednesday press release. “They were also asked about alcohol and drug use, relationship experiences and feelings about themselves.”

Faisandier, who was assisted in the project by clinical psychologist and Sex Therapy New Zealand co-director Robyn Salisbury and academic specialist Dr. Joanne Taylor, used 621 of the responses in her study, classifying approximately two-thirds of them as having problematic sexual behavior and the remaining third in a different category, as they reported engaging in relatively few such practices.

Those in the first group, identified as having ‘out of control sexual behaviors’ or OOCSB, “reported higher rates of insecure styles of attachment, characterized by a perspective of relationships as threatening, and feelings of either anxiety towards or avoidance of closeness or intimacy,” the Massey University press release said.

“In contrast, the non-OOCSB group reported higher rates of secure attachment styles, characterized by a perspective of relationships as safe, partners as trustworthy, and closeness and intimacy desirable and rewarding. OOCSB was associated with higher insecurity in attachment relationships, and the presence of a secure attachment style may be important in healthy sexual relating,” it added.

According to the researchers, OOCSB behaviors include not only frequent participation in sexual activity, but also “impulsive or compulsive sexual thoughts, feelings and actions.”

Faisandier states that the findings “in no way” should be used to indicate the approximate percentage of people who engage in these problematic sexual behaviors. She says that existing research shows that between three and six percent of all adults may engage in “problematic” sexual behavior, and the very nature of the Massey study “means it was more likely to attract people who may have had OOCSB.”

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On the Net:

• Massey University
• Sex Therapy New Zealand

Ecstasy produces loving feelings and alters perception of others

MDMA or ‘ecstasy’ increases feelings of empathy and social connection. These ’empathogenic’ effects suggest that MDMA might be useful to enhance the psychotherapy of people who struggle to feel connected to others, as may occur in association with autism, schizophrenia, or antisocial personality disorder.

However, these effects have been difficult to measure objectively, and there has been limited research in humans. Now, University of Chicago researchers, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, are reporting their new findings in healthy volunteers in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry.

Dr. Gillinder Bedi, author, explained: “We found that MDMA produced friendliness, playfulness, and loving feelings, even when it was administered to people in a laboratory with little social contact. We also found that MDMA reduced volunteers’ capacity to recognize facial expressions of fear in other people, an effect that may be involved in the increased sociability said to be produced by MDMA.”

These data suggest that MDMA produces effects that make others seem more attractive and friendly, which may serve as a significant motivator in its use as a recreational drug. Importantly, it also makes others appear less threatening, which could increase users’ social risk-taking.

“Within the context of treatment, these effects may promote intimacy among people who have difficulty feeling close to others,” observed Dr. John Krystal, Editor of Biological Psychiatry. “However, MDMA distorts one’s perception of others rather than producing true empathy. Thus, MDMA may cause problems if it leads people to misinterpret the emotional state and perhaps intentions of others.”

Certainly, further research in controlled settings is necessary before MDMA could be considered for use as a psychotherapy treatment. But, these findings also underscore the need to understand more about the ways in which different drugs affect social experiences, given that abused drugs are so commonly used in social settings.

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On the Net:

• Biological Psychiatry

The brains of fighter pilots are significantly different from those of the average individual, claims a new study published Tuesday in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Using a series of cognitive tests and MRI scans, researchers from University College London (UCL) studied 11 front-line Tornado fighter pilots from the Royal Air Force (RAF). Each of the pilots were asked to complete two “cognitive control” tasks centered around rapid decision making, and also had their brains scanned using a type of MRI known as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).

In comparison to control group subjects of similar intelligence, the pilots displayed “superior cognitive control, showing significantly greater accuracy on one of the cognitive tasks, despite being more sensitive to irrelevant, distracting information,” the UCL experts said in a press release, adding that the DTI scans “revealed differences between pilots and controls in the microstructure of white matter in the right hemisphere of the brain.”

“Our findings show that optimal cognitive control may surprisingly be mediated by enhanced responses to both relevant and irrelevant stimuli, and that such control is accompanied by structural alterations in the brain,” Masud Husain, a professor at the UCL Institute of Neurology and UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

“This has implications beyond simple distinctions between fighter pilots and the rest of us because it suggests expertise in certain aspects of cognition are associated with changes in the connections between brain areas,” Husain added. “So, it’s not just that the relevant areas of the brain are larger–but that the connections between key areas are different. Whether people are born with these differences or develop them is currently not known.”

According to the UCL press release, the tasks were created to gauge how much distracting information could influence a person’s cognitive processes, as well as each subject’s ability to alter their response plan when presented with conflicting visual information.

For example, one test involved pressing a left or right arrow key in response to an on-screen prompt, which was surrounded by other arrows pointing in different directions. In that test, the experienced pilots were far more accurate than their civilian counterparts, with “no significant difference in reaction time.” Other tasks completed for the study showed similar results.

Husain told BBC News Health Reporter Helen Briggs that the study illustrated that the ability to perform those kinds of tasks were associated to structural differences in areas of the brain, as well as connections between different vital regions. He also told Briggs that the evidence suggests that the pilots “are born like that,” rather than it being a learned or acquired trait.

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On the Net:

• Journal of Neuroscience
• University College London (UCL)

Snapshot of international published research in 2010 reveals continued evidence

If you’re unsure about what foods to eat to maintain a healthy diet, you’re not alone. Increasing evidence continues to point people back to basics ““ and reach for the milk. A study to be published in the January edition of American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reveals that drinking three glasses of milk per day may lead to an 18% decreased risk of cardiovascular disease.

The research conducted at Wageningen and Harvard Universities, examined 17 studies from Europe, USA and Japan, also found no link between the consumption of regular or low-fat dairy and any increased risk of heart disease, stroke or total mortality.

“Milk and dairy are the most nutritious and healthy foods available and loaded with naturally occurring nutrients, such as calcium, potassium and protein, to name a few,” said Dr. Cindy Schweitzer, Technical Director, Global Dairy Platform. “It’s about going back to the basics; maintaining a healthy lifestyle doesn’t have to be a scientific equation.”

According to Dr. Schweitzer, during the past three decades as research sought to understand influencers of cardiovascular disease, simplified dietary advice including consuming only low fat dairy products emerged. However, in 2010 alone, a significant amount of new research was published from all over the world, supporting the health benefits of dairy.

From dispelling the myth that dairy causes heart disease, to revealing dairy’s weight loss benefits, below is a 2010 roundup of select dairy research:

* US researchers examined 21 studies that included data from nearly 350,000 and concluded that dietary intakes of saturated fats are not associated with increases in the risk of either coronary heart disease or cardiovascular disease. The study was published in the January edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

* A study published in the February American Journal of Epidemiology examined 23,366 Swedish men and revealed that intakes of calcium above the recommended daily levels may reduce the risk of mortality from heart disease and cancer by 25%.

* An Australian study published in the April European Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded that overall intake of dairy products was not associated with mortality. The 16-year prospective study of 1,529 Australian adults found that people who ate the most full-fat dairy had a 69% lower risk of cardiovascular death than those who ate the least.

* A Danish study published in the April edition of Physiology & Behavior concluded that an inadequate calcium intake during an energy restricted weight loss program may trigger hunger and impair compliance to the diet.

* In September, an Israeli study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that a higher dairy calcium intake is related to greater diet-induced weight loss. The study, which sampled more than 300 overweight men and women during two years, revealed that those with the highest dairy calcium intake lost 38% more weight than those with the lowest dairy calcium intake.

The amount of dairy recommended per day varies by country and is generally based on nutrition needs and food availability. “In the US and some European countries, three servings of dairy foods are recommended daily, said Dr. Schweitzer.”

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On the Net:

• Global Dairy Platform
• To search for food based guidelines that may include dairy recommendations, visit the FAO Food Guidelines by Country Web site: www.fao.org/ag/humannutrition/nutritioneducation/fbdg/en

Researchers at the University of Hawai’i at MÄÂnoa have developed innovative techniques that could have profound effects on congenital cervical vertebrae malformation research.

In the cover-featured research article of the November issue of Molecular Reproduction and Development, researchers looked into congenital cervical vertebrae malformation in humans that can cause neural problems and increase susceptibility to stillbirth in women. Research advancement on abnormal vertebrae development has been limited due to the lack of lab animals with taxonomic equivalency to humans (animal models), and restrictions on human subject research.

Leading the research effort was Dr. Jinzeng Yang, a molecular biologist in the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources’ Department of Human Nutrition, Food and Animal Sciences. Researchers from Yang’s laboratory have developed a new mouse model that reveals how patterning and developmental proteins can influence cervical vertebrae formation.

The mouse model uses a gene suppression technique that induces skeletal formation. The mice and their offspring appear normal but have striking cervical vertebrae formation. Yang’s new gene suppression technique offers benefits, in this case, over the mouse model generated by complete gene removal (knockout mice), which cause mice to die shortly after birth.

Yang’s laboratory has been studying myostatin, a protein playing a dominant role in reducing muscle mass. By genetically blocking the function of myostatin by its partial DNA sequences, mice were developed with 40 percent more muscle mass. Yang’s graduate student Zicong Li, the first author of the publication, hypothesized that this gene suppression strategy would also work to stimulate skeletal development by inhibiting growth differentiation factor 11 (GDF11), a similar protein to myostatin, and produce live animals. Previously, the mice with complete removal of the GDF11 gene or knockout mice died shortly after birth. In collaboration with Dr. Stefan Moisyadi’s laboratory in the UH Institute of Biogenesis Research, they generated the transgenic mice by using a new single plasmid system of piggyBac transgene delivery, which offers greater transposition rates and precision.

The original research article is titled, “Transgenic Over-Expression of Growth Differentiation Factor 11 Propeptide in Skeleton Results in Transformation of the Seventh Cervical Vertebra into a Thoracic Vertebra.”

Work was supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health.

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Image Caption: This shows the transformation of the seventh cervical vertebra into a thoracic vertebra. Credit: Jinzeng Yang

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On the Net:

• University of Hawaii at Manoa
• The publication is available online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mrd.21252/full