Approximately 15.3 percent of children (ages 6 to 11) and 15.5 percent of adolescents (ages 12 to 19) are considered obese, with 30.3 percent of children and 30.4 percent of adolescents considered overweight. To fight this epidemic, a committee of experts reporting to Congress on a two-year study by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences is proposing a national initiative. "Obesity in children and adolescents has reached such an epidemic proportion that we really have no time to wait to try to address this problem," says Thomas Robinson, director of the Center for Healthy Weight at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University School of Medicine, who was on the committee. "There's no single recommendation we make…or no even handful of recommendations that we make, or that others have proposed, that will address this epidemic and start to turn it back upon itself. Instead we need to see a comprehensive national plan to address this epidemic. A lot of the environmental and policy recommendations in this report are pushing towards making lots of very small changes, or moderately-sized changes that will add up over time to large changes in weight." Robinson says the committee did not find a lot of research evidence about what prevention methods actually work, so it also called for the initiatives to be continually evaluated and revised over time. © ScienCentral, 2000- 2004.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 6176 - Posted: 06.24.2010

COLLEGE STATION, - Intense traumatic events, such as maternal separation, occurring early in the life of an infant may weaken its immune system, making it more susceptible to viral infections later in life that could trigger multiple sclerosis, reveals research at Texas A&M University. The research, by a psychologist Mary Meagher from the College of Liberal Arts and an immunologist Jane Welsh from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M, shows that exposure to prolonged maternal separation during the first two weeks of life altered immune, endocrine and behavioral responses to acute "Theiler's virus" infection in mice. Theiler's virus attacks the central nervous system during the first few weeks of infection, which is accompanied by polio-like symptoms. If the virus persists in the central nervous system, a subsequent chronic phase of the disease develops which is similar to multiple sclerosis in humans. Researchers use Theiler's virus to investigate the role of stress in autoimmune diseases, or diseases that cause the body to attack its own cells as if they were foreign pathogens - a similar process occurs in multiple sclerosis, Meagher explains.

Keyword: Stress; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 6175 - Posted: 10.01.2004

A veterinarian analyzes the turf battles that have transformed the animal laboratory By Madhusree Mukerjee The one time I saw the inside of an animal laboratory, at a prestigious university, the veterinarian who showed me around was subsequently fired for that transgression. So it is little surprise that Larry Carbone, a laboratory animal veterinarian, gives us few peeks behind the door: the book has virtually no anecdotes. Instead he takes off the lab's roof to offer a bird's-eye view--distant, measured and worded with sometimes excruciating care--of the battles raging within. A veterinarian's oath binds her to "the benefit of society through the protection of animal health, the relief of animal suffering, the conservation of animal resources, the promotion of public health, and the advancement of medical knowledge." It imposes contradictory tasks on the laboratory animal veterinarian. "So you keep them healthy until the scientists can make them sick," Carbone quotes a skeptic as saying. A lab animal vet can please no one, it seems--certainly not the animal lover, who suspects her split loyalties, nor the animal researcher, who resents her attempts to oversee not just animal care but also experimental practice. Carbone, who holds doctorates in veterinary medicine and in the history and philosophy of science, is a vet in the animal facility at the University of California at San Francisco. In early chapters of What Animals Want, he describes the unending philosophical debates over animal care and use, while in the more interesting later chapters he documents the jostling that determined the rather limited turf of the lab animal vet. © 1996-2004 Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 6174 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An ancient virus that likely infected one of our primate ancestors 50 million years ago may contribute to the nervous system damage that causes multiple sclerosis (MS). A snippet of the virus's DNA, now embedded in the human genome, boosts production of damaging compounds in the brains of mice with a condition like MS, according to a report in the October issue of Nature Neuroscience. MS is a debilitating neurological disease caused by the destruction of oligodendrocytes, cells that build the myelin sheaths that surround the signal transmitting axons of neurons. Damaged sheaths lead to the primary symptoms, including muscle spasms, vision impairments, and memory problems. Some scientists have suggested that infectious agents such as viruses or bacteria spark an autoimmune response that causes the disease. The new study suggests a novel alternative: that the culprit could already be hiding in human DNA. Approximately 8% of the human genome is made up of DNA from viruses that slipped in their genetic material as our ancestors evolved. Called human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs), the vast majority of these ancient viruses are no longer functional. One exception is HERV-W. It carries instructions for making the protein syncytin, a critical element in the formation of the placenta. But HERV-W may have a dark side too. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 6173 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New research shows that young people who have been treated for mental health problems, have a history of foster care, or who already abuse other drugs have an increased risk of abusing or becoming dependent on inhalants. In addition, adolescents who first begin using inhalants at an early age are more likely to become dependent on them. The study by Dr. Li-Tzy Wu and her colleagues is published in the October 2004 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services. The most commonly used inhalants reported by participants were glue, shoe polish, and gasoline. Other inhalants used by the participants included nitrous oxide, lighter fluid, spray paints, correction fluid, and paint solvents. Boys were more likely to have ever used gasoline or nitrous oxide, while girls favored glue, shoe polish, spray paints, correction fluid, and aerosol sprays. “These findings suggest inhalant abuse and addiction in young people are associated with a host of co-occurring problems that may be influenced by family and other social factors,” says NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow. “And, inhalant abuse may be escalating. Data reported in NIDA’s Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey show that past-year use of inhalants rose 14 percent from 2002 to 2003 — the only increase of any substance reported by MTF between 2002 and 2003.”

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 6172 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — The mystery of why eyes in certain paintings and photographs appear to move has been solved: it has to do with how we perceive two and three dimensions, a new study finds. According to a paper published in a recent issue of the journal Perception by James Todd, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, and his colleagues, the optical illusion "is in the misleading information provided by the picture," Todd said. No matter what angle you look at a painting from, the painting itself doesn't change, since it's on a flat surface. The patterns of light and dark remain the same. But three-dimensional objects, in life, change with the way light falls on them as viewers move around the object. "When observing real surfaces in the natural environment, the visual information that specifies near and far points varies when we change viewing direction," Todd said. Copyright © 2004 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 6171 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Certain brain changes that are common in normal aging are not the beginnings of Alzheimer's disease. Recent research by cognitive aging experts suggests that changes related to Alzheimer's disease appear in distinct regions of the brain and reflect unique pathology compared with changes that occur in older adults without dementia. “We're getting a better understanding of the complex constellation of factors that change [in the brain] with aging,” said Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher Randy L. Buckner of Washington University in St. Louis. “When you start to look across the literature, lots of data points converge suggesting there are certain changes that take place in aging that are not what cause Alzheimer's disease.” Buckner is the author of a review article published in the September 30, 2004, issue of Neuron, that points out recurring distinctions between factors that influence what he calls executive function, which more commonly falters with normal aging, and the decline in long-term memory typical of Alzheimer's. Executive function involves the cognitive processes used to complete complex, goal-oriented tasks. Elderly individuals with no symptoms of dementia may have difficulty attending to one thing when distractions are present, for example, or they may experience difficulties in complex, novel situations. © 2004 Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 6170 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New Haven, Conn. -- In this week's issue of Nature, a Yale mathematician presents models showing that the most recent person who was a direct ancestor of all humans currently alive may have lived just a few thousand years ago. "While we may not all be 'brothers,' the models suggest we are all hundredth cousins or so," said Joseph T. Chang, professor in the Department of Statistics at Yale University and senior author on the paper. Chang established the basis of this research in a previous publication with an intentionally simplified model that ignored such complexities as geography and migration. Those precise mathematical results showed that in a world obeying the simplified assumptions, the most recent common ancestor would have lived less than 1,000 years ago. He also introduced the "identical ancestors point," the most recent time -- less than 2,000 years ago in the simplified model -- when each person was an ancestor to all or ancestor to none of the people alive today. The current paper presents more realistic mathematical and computer models. It incorporates factors such as socially driven mating, physical barriers of geography and migration, and recorded historical events. Although such complexities make pure mathematical analysis difficult, it was possible to integrate them into an elaborate computer simulation model. The computer repeatedly simulated history under varying assumptions, tracking the lives, movements, and reproduction of all people who lived within the last 20,000 years.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 6169 - Posted: 09.30.2004

By ERIC NAGOURNEY The voice on the other end of the telephone is alluring, and the image in your mind is too. But can you hear what a person looks like? Maybe so. And when you speak up, be careful. It seems that a voice may also convey information on your sex life. When researchers asked volunteers to listen to recordings of people counting to 10 and rate the attractiveness of the voices, they found that the voices rated highest belonged to people having more active sex lives. Moreover, their physical characteristics (broad shoulders and narrow hips in men, narrow waist and broad hips in women, and symmetry in both) conformed to conventional notions of attractiveness. An author of the study, Dr. Gordon G. Gallup Jr., a psychologist at the State University of New York at Albany, pointed out the obvious, that the voice instantly conveyed basic information about a person's sex and age, but he said the voice also "seems to be a medium for the transmission of biologically relevant information." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Language
Link ID: 6168 - Posted: 09.29.2004

Adolescent drinking is nothing new. During the late 1970s underage drinking reached a peak, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and alcohol is now believed to be the number one drug of choice among children and adolescents. "What has happened in recent years is there's been a split," explains Aaron White, an alcohol researcher in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center. "There's been an increase in sort of a heavy, repeated binge-type drinking and also an increase in abstention. Most adults when they drink, they drink slowly, they have a few glasses of wine at dinner or beer at the football game or something like that, whereas a lot of young people drink as much as they can and as quickly as they can." As part of the ongoing Seattle Social Development Project, sociologist Sabrina Oesterle and her colleagues at the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington in Seattle looked at the long-term health effects of adolescent binge drinking. "We already know that binge drinking in adolescence has immediate health consequences for teenagers," says Oesterle. "So we were especially interested whether drinking, especially heavy drinking in adolescence, has long-term health consequences that we could see in young adulthood." © ScienCentral, 2000- 2004.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6167 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Michael Hopkin The British scientist who created Dolly the sheep has applied for a licence to clone human embryos in the search for treatments for motor neuron disease. If approved, the research should give experts a far better picture of what happens to the dying brain cells that characterize this condition. Ian Wilmut, of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, and his colleagues submitted their proposal today to the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). They hope to receive a decision early next year and could potentially begin cloning around April 2005. Motor neuron disease, a range of related conditions including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, causes around 1,000 deaths in Britain every year. The brain cells that govern movement gradually die off, leaving sufferers paralysed but, usually, with their intellect intact. The causes are still poorly understood, says Wilmut. Around 2% of cases are linked to mutations in a gene called SOD1, although experts are still unclear about how this triggers disease. And a further 8% of patients inherit their disease and therefore presumably have some other genetic predisposition. ©2004 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Stem Cells
Link ID: 6166 - Posted: 06.24.2010

While Parkinson's disease typically brings to mind symptoms such as tremors and slow movement, researchers have found that nearly half of all Parkinson's patients also suffer from depression. While it might seem natural that someone who has a disease such as Parkinson's might become depressed, it's not so simple, says neurologist Irene Richard, M.D., of the University of Rochester Medical Center. "Many patients assume that's it's normal to feel this way. They might say, 'If you had Parkinson's disease, you'd feel this way too.' That's not true. If you treat the depression, they'll still have the other symptoms of the disease, but they feel better. It's one aspect of the disease that may be very treatable," says Richard. "People diagnosed with other serious diseases that may also be disabling, such as rheumatoid arthritis, aren't nearly as likely to become depressed." Richard and co-author William McDonald, M.D., a psychiatrist at Emory University, discussed the links between depression and movement disorders like Parkinson's disease in a review article in the August 24 issue of the journal Neurology. In an article titled, "Can 'blue' genes affect mood and movement?" the two noted that a team from Columbia University has linked a gene known to cause a movement disorder known as dystonia with a type of early-onset depression. Now they and other physicians around the country are exploring possible links between mood and movement in other disorders such as Parkinson's disease.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Depression
Link ID: 6165 - Posted: 09.29.2004

By DENISE GRADY Most people have heard of the placebo effect, in which patients given sugar pills feel better because they think the pills are medicine. But few would like to be on the receiving end of a placebo: a person who asks for a painkiller wants the real thing. The medical profession, at least officially, frowns upon prescribing placebos, because it usually involves lying, implies disrespect and can destroy trust in doctors. Some hospitals ban placebos, except in experiments, and then participants must be told that they might be given inert pills or shots. A new survey, though, suggests that the profession may not always practice what it preaches. In the survey, of 89 doctors and nurses in Israel, 60 percent said they had given patients placebos. Many said placebos could sometimes work, and more than a third reported prescribing them as often as once a month. The patients given fake medicine included women in labor and people suffering from pain, anxiety, agitation, vertigo, sleep problems, asthma and drug withdrawal. Most had no idea that they were getting placebos. Among the prescribers, 68 percent told patients they were receiving real medicine, 17 percent said nothing at all, 11 percent said the medicine was "nonspecific" and 4 percent told patients the truth. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Depression
Link ID: 6164 - Posted: 09.28.2004

By ABIGAIL ZUGER When bedtime comes, as all children and sick people know, the boogeymen come out of the closet. Darkness, silence and isolation can turn chairs into tigers, and make even trivial health problems seem ominous and hopeless. But illness that goes bump in the night may not be just a patient's inner child coming out. Doctors have sensed for centuries that many diseases actually do get worse at night, and science has begun to confirm this impression. The emotions nighttime elicits, although they certainly do not help matters, are not primarily to blame. Instead, it is the body's internal chemicals and hormones, cycling like the invisible gears of a giant cuckoo clock, that send diseases out to strut their stuff at night, then rotate into the background by dawn. Fever burns in the evening. Asthma, ulcers and certain forms of arthritis worsen at night. Heart attacks and strokes brew in the predawn hours and often erupt after sunrise. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 6163 - Posted: 09.28.2004

DALLAS – – UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas researchers have uncovered damage in a specific, primitive portion of the nervous systems of veterans suffering from Gulf War syndrome. UT Southwestern researchers report that damage to the parasympathetic nervous system may account for nearly half of the typical symptoms – including gallbladder disease, unrefreshing sleep, depression, joint pain, chronic diarrhea and sexual dysfunction – that afflict those with Gulf War syndrome. Their findings will be published in the October issue of the American Journal of Medicine and are currently available online. "The high rate of gallbladder disease in these men, reported in a previous study, is particularly disturbing because typically women over 40 get this. It's singularly rare in young men," said Dr. Robert Haley, chief of epidemiology at UT Southwestern and lead author of the new study. The parasympathetic system regulates primitive, automatic bodily functions such as digestion and sleep, while the sympathetic nervous system controls the "fight or flight" instinct.

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 6162 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Donald Rogers, Pharm.D., BCPS With the help of the National Pharmaceutical Council and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (2001), pain management has exploded into the 21st century. Such entities have confirmed that pain should be monitored as the fifth vital sign and that the assessment, treatment and monitoring of pain should be available to every patient, despite their social, economic or cultural background. Any institution that fails to do so runs the risk of not being accredited by such organizations. Although close in proximity within the English dictionary, pain and psychiatry are two terms not often thought of in the same sentence. As pain clinics and pain teams emerge in attempts to meet the requirements of accrediting agencies, many fail to address or even acknowledge the psychiatric component of pain. As a result, psychiatrists are often left out of the equation. Furthermore, many practitioners question the role that a psychiatrist would play in the treatment of pain or feel it is outside the psychiatrist's scope of practice. After all, what would a psychiatrist know about the treatment of osteoarthritis, postherpetic neuralgia or fibromyalgia? Based on such premises, this article will serve multiple purposes. First, it will present the reader with a compelling argument for the inclusion of psychiatry in pain management. It will also present data supporting the need to rule out pain-related syndromes in the psychiatric setting. A brief review of terminology will familiarize the reader with the classification of pain. Two sections will then present the medical approach and potential psychiatric interventions to pain management. The latter will emphasize what the psychiatrist needs to accomplish to make sure the patient is treated as a whole. Finally, pharmacologic treatment alternatives and potential interactions with medical medications will be reviewed.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 6161 - Posted: 09.28.2004

Chronic use of opiate drugs may alter brain neurons to make animal brains more sensitive to stress, according to a new study. If the research proves applicable to humans, the findings may help explain how hospital patients who have received morphine may be susceptible to stress disorder, attention problems and sleep disturbances. The effects on the brain may also contribute to better understanding of drug addiction. The study, published in the September 22 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, was the first to show that chronic opiate use disrupts the stress response of nerve cells in the noradrenergic system. This system, using a neurotransmitter called norepinephrine, influences the brain's arousal and attention levels when a stressful event occurs. The researchers observed that the norepinephrine neurons of rats that had received morphine infusions for a week discharged more frequently in response to a stressor, compared to neurons of rats that had not received morphine. "The increase in neuron firing indicated the neurons were more sensitive to stress, and we also found this sensitization translated into behavioral changes--as shown in the rats' swimming behavior," said study leader Rita J. Valentino, Ph.D., a behavioral neuroscientist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Stress
Link ID: 6160 - Posted: 09.28.2004

Drum the tip of a finger on a typewriter key quickly "eeeeee." Now, stop and type "e" take a moment, type "e," take another moment, type "e" again. The motion in both cases is exactly the same, performed by the same finger. But the brain processes that make the two different streams of 'e's are utterly different, according to a study done by a University of Southern California neural specialist and colleagues. The insight may lead to, among other things, better movement control by humanoid robots, but also new ways of movement rehabilitation. And perhaps it even offers some insight into the effect of music. Dr. Stefan Schaal, an associate professor in the computer science department of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering led the international team that used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans to test a longstanding question regarding "rhythmic" versus "discrete" movement. "Rhythmic movements like walking, chewing or scratching are found in many organisms, ranging from insects to primates," notes Schaal in an article published in Nature Neuroscience Sept. 26. "In contrast, discrete movements like reaching and kicking are behaviors that have reached sophistication in young species, particularly in primates."

Keyword: Biomechanics
Link ID: 6159 - Posted: 09.28.2004

DES MOINES, Iowa - Azy and Indah are heading to school this week — a unique experience for two clever orangutans whose classroom will eventually encompass more than 200 acres of lowlands, river forest and lakes. On Tuesday, the inquisitive primates will become the first residents of the Great Ape Trust of Iowa. While there, researcher Rob Shumaker and a team of scientists will study the behavior and learning capabilities of the apes. Azy, 26, and Indah, 24, who are brother and sister, have never lived in the wild. They were born at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., where they have been part of a research program, the Orangutan Language Project, since 1995. Shumaker developed the program, which allows the long-haired apes to communicate by selecting symbols on a computer monitor. "The opportunities that lie ahead for them and this world-class research center are limitless," said Shumaker, the trust's director of orangutan research. Construction of the Great Ape Trust began in 2003 at the site of a former sand and gravel quarry. Besides orangutans, the Des Moines campus also will house bonobos, chimpanzees and lowland gorillas. Some consider the site the most comprehensive ape research facility in the world. Copyright © 2004 Yahoo! Inc.

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 6158 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Harvey McGavin Fortifying foods such as flour and pasta with folic acid could significantly reduce the likelihood of babies being born with disabilities such as spina bifida, a study shows. The number of babies with neural tube defects, brain or spine abnormalities, has fallen by more than 75 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador since a law forced fortification of staple foods with folic acid. Women who take folic acid supplements while trying to conceive reduce the risks of having a baby with neural tube defects. The Food Standards Agency advises a daily supplement of 400 micrograms. Folic acid occurs naturally in green leafy vegetables, brown rice, yeast extract, oranges and bananas. More than 30 countries already decree fortification of food products, leading to a fall in the number of babies being born with defects. In Newfoundland and Labrador, folic acid has been added to all flour, cornmeal and pasta since 1998. Researchers found the proportion of babies born with neural tube defects in the province has fallen by 78 per cent in six years. ©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 6157 - Posted: 06.24.2010