Scientists target drugs and other environmental agents that may play a role Diana Parsell Beth Crowell remembers the day in 1989 when her triplets, Casey, Andrew, and Erin, were about 15 months old. Crowell put Erin down on the floor to crawl. "But she just sat there, fixated on the red shag carpeting," says the Housatonic, Mass., mother of four. The toddlers were often sick, and "none of them made eye contact," Crowell recalls. A medical evaluation was devastating: All three babies had autism. Children with autism typically have trouble communicating, interacting socially, and controlling their behavior. Those most severely affected seem to live in a world of their own. Various treatments sometimes reduce symptoms, especially if children are diagnosed early. But there is no cure for autism, which has baffled the medical community since the disorder was first described in 1943. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently estimated that 1 of every 1,000 children may have autism, or 1 in 500 if those with autism-related disorders such as Asperger syndrome are included. For years, Crowell combed the medical literature trying to figure out what might have gone wrong in her triplets. She doubted that a genetic mutation was solely responsible. Crowell came to suspect that terbutaline, a drug she had taken during pregnancy to prevent premature labor, might have played a role. A team of researchers in Baltimore found her assertion plausible. They knew of experiments showing that rats exposed to terbutaline before birth had brain abnormalities. More recently, they completed a yet-unpublished clinical study that found a higher-than-expected incidence of autism in both children in sets of fraternal twins whose mothers also took terbutaline during pregnancy. The investigators are Andrew Zimmerman of the Kennedy Krieger Institute, independent researcher Susan Connors, and researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Copyright ©2004 Science Service.

Keyword: Autism; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 6413 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Adults with Asperger Syndrome strive to fit in BY KATHLEEN O'BRIEN Geeky. Clueless. Loner. Loser. Just plain odd. All their lives, they have heard these words and society's ruthless verdict that, try as they might, they can never achieve that indefinable state of "fitting in." Finally these people are hearing a new word: Asperger's. At long last, medicine has a label for their quirks. "Before I got a diagnosis, even I thought I was crazy," said one man attending a Middlesex support group. "I thought I was weird, strange. And I didn't know why." Asperger Syndrome is a neuro-biological disorder, a specific form of high-functioning autism in which the individual has difficulty picking up social cues from others. It accounts for roughly 9 percent of autism cases, according to the New Jersey Center for Outreach and Services to the Autism Community. Males are four times as likely to have the lifelong disorder as females. Unlike the classically autistic, however, "Aspies," as some of them like to call themselves, are highly verbal. Often they can't stop talking about bizarrely narrow pet interests. Copyright 2004 NJ.com

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 6412 - Posted: 11.13.2004

By Paul Rincon A new nanotechnology-based technique could lead to a test for diagnosing the early signs of Alzheimer's disease. The Bio-Barcode-Assay can recognise ADDL, a protein that accumulates in the brains of sufferers. It is a million times more sensitive than conventional tests and could revolutionise disease detection. In future, it might form the basis not only of a test for Alzheimer's but also for types of cancer, the human form of mad cow disease and HIV. Doctors currently have no way of diagnosing Alzheimer's disease in their patients. The disease can only be confirmed after death, by studying brain tissue. "Diagnosis [of Alzheimer's] is 100% accurate post-mortem. What you want is the ability to detect the marker so you can begin to think about new types of therapies," said Professor Chad Mirkin, of Northwestern University in Evanston, US. Professor Mirkin and his research group at Northwestern developed the highly sensitive test by manipulating molecules at the nanometre scale (one billionth of a metre). "We have done the first set of experiments that quantify the number of ADDLs in cerebrospinal fluid," Professor Mirkin said. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 6411 - Posted: 11.12.2004

About 30,000 years ago, prehistoric humans seemed to wake up from a slumber and start developing a complex culture. To what do we owe this change? Grandmothers. Rachel Caspari, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan, used fossil records to examine teeth—an indicator of age—in 768 ancient skulls, and was able to estimate the age distributions of prehistoric populations. She studied some from two million years ago and found one older Australopithecine skull for every ten young ones. This ratio jumped to one in five in the early Homo species, and again to four in ten in the Neanderthals. Then, at around 30,000 years ago, Caspari saw two older adults for very one young adult. Caspari chalks the change up to what scientists call the "grandmother hypothesis," which ties jumps in life expectancy to post-menopausal women who, free from caring for their own children, nurture their grandchildren. "The grandmother hypothesis was developed to explain why women have menopause, why humans live beyond their reproductive age," says Caspari. "Humans are unique in that. We're certainly unique among primates in which people live longer than they reproduce. And the suggestion has been that they do that because their grandmothers—post-menopausal women—help keep their kin alive. They contribute a lot to their daughter's families and that increases their reproductive success. They allowed more grandchildren to survive, to reproduce, and they were able to transmit social information that was really important for those groups—who their close kin were, who their enemies were, who their alliances were supposed to be with. They were also able to transmit stories and art and all sorts of things to the next generation." © ScienCentral, 2000- 2004.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 6410 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Malnutrition in the first few years of life leads to antisocial and aggressive behavior throughout childhood and late adolescence, according to a new University of Southern California study. "These are the first findings to show that malnutrition in the early postnatal years is associated with behavior problems through age 17," said Jianghong Liu, a postdoctoral fellow with USC's Social Science Research Institute and the lead author of the study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry's November issue. "Identifying the early risk factors for this behavior in childhood and adolescence is an important first step for developing successful prevention programs for adult violence," she said. For 14 years, researchers followed the nutritional, behavioral and cognitive development of more than 1,000 children who lived on Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa. The sample of boys and girls included children with Indian, Creole, Chinese, English and French ethnicities.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Aggression
Link ID: 6409 - Posted: 11.12.2004

A common class of drugs prescribed to children with depression may have an adverse effect on bone growth, according to a study published online in the journal Endocrinology by researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Researchers looked at the effect of selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on bone accrual in growing mice. The findings showed a reduction in bone mass and size in the mice administered an SSRI. "These findings indicate a potential negative impact of SSRIs on the skeleton and point to a need for further research into the prescribing of these drugs to children and adolescents," said lead author Stuart J. Warden, P.T., Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, IU School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. The study investigated the effects of fluoxetine, more commonly known as Prozac®, on bone growth in young mice. Dr. Warden and his colleagues selected fluoxetine because it is the only prescription antidepressant currently approved by the FDA for children and adolescents. IU researchers began their investigation after preliminary clinical evidence released in other studies showed that SSRI use has been associated with increased bone loss at the hip in elderly women, decreased bone density among men and decreased skeletal growth in children.

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6408 - Posted: 11.12.2004

Stress really can cause miscarriages, a series of studies suggests. The good news is that extra doses of progesterone might safeguard the pregnancies of women at risk. While the cause of most miscarriages is never established, doctors usually attribute them either to abnormalities in the fetus or to illness or health problems in the mother. Most obstetricians dismiss the idea that healthy women can lose healthy babies solely because of stress. But a series of studies by a team in Germany might change their minds. “We can clearly say that stress has a major impact on pregnancy maintenance,” says team leader Petra Arck of Charité, an institute of the University of Berlin. The team has shown that when pregnant mice are deliberately stressed by factors such as loud noise levels, this creates hormonal imbalances that make the immune system more hostile to the fetus. It then attacks the placenta. “That leads to rejection of the fetus because the blood supply can’t be sustained,” says Arck. The chain of events uncovered by her team starts with the release of stress hormones such as cortisol. As cortisol levels rise in the bloodstream, they suppress the production of progesterone, a hormone that is crucial to maintaining a healthy pregnancy. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Stress; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 6407 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jim Giles People with genes thought to protect against variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) may still be at risk of developing some strains of the illness, animal studies suggest. All of the 146 British people who have died from vCJD, which is thought to be caused by eating meat infected with the prion protein that causes mad cow disease, have a genetic variation known as MM. This led some researchers to hope that people with different variants, who make up 60% of the population, may be protected from the disease. But mice with such supposedly protective genes still seem to be susceptible to infection with the rogue protein, report John Collinge and colleagues at University College London in a paper published online by Science1. Researchers are cautious about the study's implications for humans, but say that it adds weight to the possibility that tainted beef could have infected more people than was originally thought. "In future we might see different types of CJD," predicts Markus Glatzel, who studies the disease at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. "This is a very important study." ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 6406 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Roxanne Khamsi Would Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance or Debussy's Clair de Lune have sounded the same if the composers had been born in different countries? Probably not, according to researchers who have found that the melodies composers write are influenced by the language they speak. The team's analysis shows that fluctuations in pitch in music written by classic French composers vary much less than in British music. The difference mirrors the patterns of pitch found in the corresponding languages. Musicologists and linguists have tried to connect cultures' speech with their music in the past but have only had luck with tonal languages, such as Chinese, which assign meaning to words based on their pitch. The new work is the first to connect melody with non-tonal speech. Aniruddh Patel of The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues used advanced computer software to analyse recordings of people saying different sentences in British English and in French. The software measures the pitch of each vowel, then works out the size of the jump in pitch between one syllable and the next. For example, in the word "finding", the second vowel typically registers about 4 semitones higher than the first. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Hearing; Language
Link ID: 6405 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Oxford University has won its bid for the renewal of an injunction against animal rights activists protesting next to its new animal testing centre. It asked the High Court to extend a 45m "no harassment" zone around its research laboratory, claiming work was stopped because of intimidation. The university had also requested an injunction against 10 named defendants. University chiefs had offered to provide a demonstration area opposite the South Parks Road site. Oxford University Vice-Chancellor, Dr John Hood, said on Wednesday: "As an academic institution, freedom of speech within the law is highly valued. By obtaining this injunction, the University of Oxford is not seeking to stifle the views of those groups and individuals with whom we disagree. "Indeed, we are satisfied that this order strikes a fair balance between the legitimate right to protest and the right of individuals to conduct their lawful business without fear of intimidation or violence." Work on the construction of the laboratory was forced to stop on 13 July after contractors complained they had been harassed and intimidated by some animal rights activists. (C)BBC

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 6404 - Posted: 11.11.2004

By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News — Dolphins and humans share a similar brain size, according to the first map of cetacean brain evolution over the past 47 million years. Experts have long known that toothed whales boast exceptionally large brains. Some species, including the famously bright dolphins, have capabilities previously only ascribed to humans and, to some extent, other great apes. For instance, dolphins can recognize themselves in mirrors and understand symbol-based communication systems and abstract concepts. Such intelligence is probably due their big brains, but the evolution of such brains has remained a mystery. To investigate this question, Lori Marino, from Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues carried out the largest fossil study ever done on animals, searching museum collections for four years. The team, whose research will be appear in the December issue of The Anatomical Record, tracked down 66 fossilized cetacean skulls. Copyright © 2004 Discovery Communications Inc

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 6403 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A device that automatically moves electrodes through the brain to seek out the strongest signals is taking the idea of neural implants to a new level. Scary as this sounds, its developers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena say devices like this will be essential if brain implants are ever going to work. Implants could one day help people who are paralysed or unable to communicate because of spinal injury or conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Electrodes implanted in the brain could, in principle, pick up neural signals and convey them to a prosthetic arm or a computer cursor. But there is a problem. Implanted electrodes are usually unable to sense consistent neuronal signals for more than a few months, according to Igor Fineman, a neurosurgeon at the Huntington Hospital, also in Pasadena. This loss of sensitivity has a number of causes: the electrodes may shift following a slight knock or because of small changes in blood pressure; tissue building up on the electrodes may mask the signal; or the neurons emitting the signals can die. To get around these problems, Joel Burdick and Richard Andersen at Caltech have developed a device in which the electrodes sense where the strongest signal is coming from, and move towards it. Their prototype, which is mounted on the skull, uses piezoelectric motors to move four electrodes independently of each other in 1-micrometre increments. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Robotics; ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 6402 - Posted: 06.24.2010

In what could be termed a truly seminal discovery, researchers have shown that when females are more promiscuous, males have to work harder — at the genetic level, that is. More specifically, they determined that a protein controlling semen viscosity evolves more rapidly in primate species with promiscuous females than in monogamous species. The finding demonstrates that sexual competition among males is evident at the molecular level, as well as at behavioral and physiological levels. The researchers, led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Bruce Lahn at the University of Chicago, published their findings in the November 7, 2004, issue of Nature Genetics. Lahn's group studied semenogelin, a major protein in the seminal fluid that controls the viscosity of semen immediately following ejaculation. In some species of primates, it allows semen to remain quite liquid after ejaculation, but in others, semenogelin molecules chemically crosslink with one another, increasing the viscosity of semen. In some extreme cases, semenogelin's effects on viscosity are so strong that the semen becomes a solid plug in the vagina. According to Lahn, such plugs might serve as a sort of molecular “chastity belt” to prevent fertilization by the sperm of subsequent suitors, though they might also prevent semen backflow to increase the likelihood of fertilization. © 2004 Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 6401 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Staff Writer Federal regulators said Tuesday they were cracking down on weight- loss companies making allegedly false claims in their advertising, part of a national campaign against deceptive marketing to people desperate to drop pounds. The Federal Trade Commission said it had sued six companies selling an array of bogus fat cures, including a topical gel touted as a rub-on fat burner and a skin patch made of seaweed. Publications including The Chronicle ran the ads, and the commission said it was sending letters to the newspaper and eight other media companies urging them to tighten their standards to protect consumers from fraudulent or inflated claims. The latest enforcement effort is part of a campaign the commission labeled "Big Fat Lie." Officials said they hoped media companies would voluntarily enlist in the effort. "Sure, you are making a buck off the advertising dollars, but you are basically supporting companies that are ripping off your customers," said Barbara Chun, a staff attorney with the commission in Los Angeles. "It definitely affects your credibility." ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 6400 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Study finds 'apple shaped' seniors more likely to suffer mental loss Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer People with substantial waistlines may run an elevated risk of cognitive decline as they age, scientists reported Tuesday in one of the most ambitious attempts yet to link obesity and mental health. A study led by Dr. Kristine Yaffe, an associate professor at UCSF and chief of geriatric psychiatry at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, is the first to suggest cognitive effects from what is known as metabolic syndrome. Wide girth about the middle is the syndrome's most obvious trait, accompanied by high blood pressure and unhealthy levels of cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose in the blood. The syndrome is a well-known risk factor for cardiovascular disease that is seen in about 1 in 4 adults in the United States, and 40 percent of those older than age 40. The new study, which appears in the latest Journal of the American Medical Association, shows the aging brain also may be affected if one is an "apple-shaped person," Yaffe said in an interview. "Now we know that metabolic syndrome is not just bad for your heart. It's also bad for your brain," Yaffe said. ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 6399 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ALEXANDRA WITZE, The Dallas Morning News SAN DIEGO -- Motherhood doesn't just change your life. It changes your brain. New research, reported last month at a neuroscience meeting in San Diego, suggests having babies permanently alters brain function. If you're a rat, it makes you better at finding and killing dinner quickly. If you're a human, it helps you distinguish between your baby's cry and that of other children. In either case, only mothers undergo these changes. "Clearly these experiences are changing the female brain but in a way that's natural," said Craig Kinsley, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond in Virginia. In earlier research, he showed that mother rats are much better at remembering where things are than rats that have never had babies. That makes sense, he said, because mothers have to be able to run away from the nest, forage for dinner quickly and return with food for their babies. Copyright © 1994-2004 South Bend Tribune

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 6398 - Posted: 06.24.2010

La Jolla, CA. A team of researchers led by The Burnham Institute's Gen-Sheng Feng, Ph.D. has discovered that a protein called Shp2 plays a critical role in obesity. Published on November 9th in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, these results show that Shp2 has potential of becoming a novel pharmaceutical target for treatment of individuals suffering obesity and leptin resistance. In 2003, the World Health Organization identified obesity as a growing global threat affecting more than 300 million people worldwide. Although it is commonly believed that obese individuals can overcome their condition by simply eating less and exercising more, compelling scientific data suggest that the heritability of obesity is greater than breast cancer, heart disease, or schizophrenia. Morbid obesity is considered as the disease of the twenty-first century, with the affected individuals at higher risk for diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and cancer, collectively known as metabolic syndrome. Shp2, a Src homology 2-containing tyrosine phosphatase, was discovered by Dr. Feng and others over a decade ago. It is present in each cell type in the body and is implicated in a variety of growth factor or cytokine pathways present in these cells. The physiological function of Shp2 is largely unknown. Whether it is active in multiple pathways or focused on a single pathway remains to be seen. In recent years, in vitro experiments suggest that Shp2 plays a role in regulating the protein leptin. Leptin, produced in fat cells, is a hormone that regulates body weight, metabolism, and reproduction. The primary action site for leptin is within the hypothalamus, located in the forebrain.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 6397 - Posted: 11.10.2004

There has been much debate over “gay genes”. Now an intriguing study raises another possibility: in some cases, variations in the genetic program we inherit from our parents, rather than in the genes themselves, might determine sexual preference. Our genome is “programmed” by the addition of chemical markers called methyl groups to the DNA, which shut down genes. One of the most dramatic examples of methylation is the shutdown of one of the two X chromosomes (one from each parent) in every woman’s cells, a process called X-inactivation (New Scientist print edition, 10 May 2003). Normally, this process is random; either of the X chromosomes can be inactivated. But when Sven Bocklandt of the University of California, Los Angeles, compared blood and saliva samples from 97 mothers of gay men with samples from 103 mothers without gay children he found this process was extremely skewed in the mothers with gay sons, with one X chromosome being far more likely to be inactivated than the other. Only 4% of the mothers without gay sons showed this skewing, compared with 14% of mothers with at least one gay son. Among mothers with two or more gay sons, the figure was 23%. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 6396 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new study by a New York University professor suggests perceptual maturity in infants develops in the early months after birth as a result of piecing together fragments of the visual scene. The findings, published in the latest issue of Psychological Science, shed new light on our fundamental knowledge of how objects behave, giving weight to the scientific camp that argues such development is a "constructed" rather than an "innate" phenomenon. Advocates of innate perception have based their conclusions on previous research, which typically measured perceptual abilities of four-month-olds and older infants. However, Scott Johnson, a professor of psychology and neural science who conducted the study, compared these abilities in both two- and four-month-olds, finding distinctions in the perceptual skills of the two groups. "These results are only a part of the larger literature on perception, but this study does provide a very important piece of the puzzle," said Johnson. "It is now clear that theories of innate knowledge do not hold up under scrutiny. Instead, the developing visual system seems to build object representations from smaller, visible components, such as the visible portions of a partly occluded object. Isolating how and why this occurs should be the focal point of subsequent scholarship."

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6395 - Posted: 11.10.2004

Paula Gould Damaged spinal cords in mice have been encouraged to grow back by blocking a scar-causing molecule. The result suggests a fresh approach to treatments for sufferers of spinal cord injury. Spinal cord injuries have long been considered incurable because the affected nerve cells do not grow back. Depending on the site and severity of damage, patients can be left paralysed and unable to control important bodily functions. But in recent years, scientists seeking to reverse spinal cord damage have been pursuing a number of different approaches. These include transplanting cells to stimulate growth, removing factors that inhibit repair and using biocompatible materials to 'bridge' gaps between damaged nerve ends. One major barrier to nerve regrowth is scar tissue. Now researchers from the University of Melbourne seem to have found a way to prevent this scarring, which they publish in this week's Journal of Neuroscience1. The team found that mice bred without a molecule called EphA4 produce very little scar tissue around damaged spinal nerves. The researchers believe this is because EphA4 plays an important role in activating cells known as astrocytes, which are responsible for scar-tissue formation. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Regeneration
Link ID: 6394 - Posted: 06.24.2010