The risks of passive smoking could be twice as bad as previously feared, the British Medical Journal has reported. Researchers from London's St George's and Royal Free hospitals found passive smoking increased the risk of coronary heart disease by 50-60%. The team, which studied 4,792 men over 20 years, said earlier studies which had found a 25-30% increased risk focused on people living with smokers. They did not take account of exposure at work and other places, it added. Doctors at the British Medical Association conference this week have called for a workplace smoking ban. Previous research has linked passive smoking to increased risk of heart disease and stroke. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5723 - Posted: 06.30.2004

By Caroline Ryan Botox could be used to treat a sexual condition which prevents women having full intercourse, scientists say. Iranian researchers have used the muscle-relaxing toxin - normally associated with wrinkle treatment - to treat women with vaginismus. The psychosomatic condition causes muscle spasms that prevent penetrative intercourse. Many thousands of UK women are thought to suffer from the condition, but cases are often unreported or undiagnosed. The work was presented to the European Fertility Conference in Berlin. Vaginismus can be triggered by traumatic events such as relationship problems or feelings of guilt about sex. Women with the condition associate sex with pain, which can have a huge impact on their lives and on their relationships with their partners. The aim of doctors treating the condition is to enable women to have pain-free intercourse, allowing them to break the pattern. Botox is made from the botulinum toxin produced by the bacterium which causes botulism food poisoning. (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5722 - Posted: 06.30.2004

Does stationing themselves in front of the television for hours during the day affect children's ability to sleep? "Sleep experts have known for quite some time that staying up late and watching a lot of TV is one of the ways that people can have trouble falling asleep," says Jeffrey Johnson, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and research scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Now, the first long-term study on the association between television viewing and sleep reveals a relationship between extensive TV watching and the development early adulthood sleep problems. Starting in 1975, Johnson's colleagues analyzed data about TV viewing habits from 759 parents and children. Television viewing was put into three categories: less than an hour per day, one to three hours per day, and three or more hours per day. When the study began, the children were six years old; some randomly selected children from the group were interviewed about their viewing habits at ages 14, 16, and 22 years (their mothers were interviewed separately). If parent and child had differing answers, the higher of the two answers was used. Johnson, whose research was published in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, found that heavy TV viewing was associated with difficulty falling asleep, and waking up in the middle of the night and having trouble getting back to sleep. "Individuals who watched three or more hours of TV per day were about twice as likely as those who watched less than one hour of TV per day to have those two different kinds of sleep difficulties by the time they were young adults," he says. © ScienCentral, 2000- 2004.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 5721 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANAHAD O'CONNOR Laurie Coots, a marketing executive who flies to meetings in other countries twice a week, spent years trying to conquer sleepless nights and chronic jet lag. But nothing worked, she says, and every day was a struggle to stay awake. "It was debilitating," said Ms. Coots, 46, who is from Los Angeles. "I couldn't give an effective presentation because I was always shaky and nervous from being amped up on caffeine and stimulants." Then she found modafinil, a small white pill that revs up the central nervous system without the jitteriness of caffeine or the addiction and euphoria of amphetamines. "Without it my life would not be possible," she said. Since 1998, modafinil, made by Cephalon and sold under the brand name Provigil, has quietly altered the lives of millions of people. No one knows exactly how it works, but sales of the drug are skyrocketing. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 5720 - Posted: 06.30.2004

Being called a bird-brain might not be so bad, after all. Canadian researchers have shown that humans just aren't cut out to discern certain pitches like their feathered friends. Testing completed on humans, rats, and three different species of birds shows that the birds--even ones that have been raised in isolation--are better at identifying, classifying, and memorizing absolute pitches than both humans and rats, with humans performing just slightly better than rats. "It's amazing how dissimilar the results of this test are when you compare humans and birds," said Dr. Chris Sturdy, a psychology professor at the University of Alberta. "Humans and rats are weak by any standard, and they're just awful when you compare them to the songbirds." For the study, humans were given monetary rewards when they memorized or recognized the pitches that were played for them, while the birds (zebra finches, white throated sparrows, and budgerigars) and rats were given food rewards. Sturdy said humans actually perform fairly well in tests of relative pitch, which refers to the relationship between two pitch sounds played one right after the other, allowing the listener to use one pitch as a reference for the other. However, when humans try to comprehend absolute pitch, which refers to pitches played alone without any external standard to contrast them with, their ability is "lackluster at best," he said.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 5719 - Posted: 06.30.2004

Young women with a history of depression are twice as likely to have the metabolic syndrome, a cluster of symptoms that raise the risk of heart disease, according to a new study. Men with a similar history do not suffer as frequently from the same symptoms, writes Leslie S. Kinder, Ph.D., of the Veterans' Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. "Perhaps the health risks linked to depression are more critical to women," Kinder says. Kinder and colleagues looked at results of a national health survey conducted between 1988 and 1994, covering more than 6,000 men and women ages 17 to 39. Women were more likely than men to have experienced a prior episode of depression, and those women who had had at least one episode were also more likely to suffer from the metabolic syndrome. People with the metabolic syndrome have at least three out of five factors linked to heart disease: high blood pressure; high triglycerides; low HDL (good) cholesterol; high fasting blood sugar; or abdominal obesity. "Depression in women was associated with the number of the metabolic syndrome components present," Kinder says, adding that the association between depression and high blood pressure was especially strong.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 5718 - Posted: 06.30.2004

Children who watch a lot of television produce less melatonin, new research suggests - the "sleep hormone" has been linked to timing of puberty. Scientists at the University of Florence in Italy found that when youngsters were deprived of their TV sets, computers and video games, their melatonin production increased by an average 30 per cent. “Girls are reaching puberty much earlier than in the 1950s. One reason is due to their average increase in weight; but another may be due to reduced levels of melatonin,” suggests Roberto Salti, who led the study. “Animal studies have shown that low melatonin levels have an important role in promoting an early onset of puberty.” Salti and colleagues studied 74 children aged between six and 12 years old, who normally watched an average three hours of television in the evening between 2000 and midnight. The youngsters, from the Tuscan town of Cavriglia, were encouraged to watch more TV than usual for a week preceding the study. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5717 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Rockville, MD ––Dogs' ability to discriminate brightness is about half as good as that of humans, according to a study appearing in Volume 4, Issue 3 in the Journal of Vision. In research conducted by scientists from the Veterinary University of Vienna and the University of Memphis, dogs showed a surprising lack of ability to discriminate between grey cards that varied in brightness, says researcher Ulrike Griebel of the University of Memphis. While a great deal is known about dogs' visual acuity and the cellular components of their eyes, there is a paucity of information about their ability to discriminate brightness, says Griebel. Furthermore, she notes that there is relatively little information on how well other animals discriminate brightness. The researchers tested three police dogs--two Belgian shepherds and a German shepherd. The dogs faced a series of pairs of grey squares, which differed in brightness. The task required the dog to determine how much the one square differed in brightness from the other. The correct choice was rewarded with a food treat. The dogs needed a far greater difference in brightness (known as the Weber fraction) than do humans to discriminate between two squares. For the Belgian shepherds the Weber fraction was 0.27; for the German shepherd it was 0.22. Although the researchers did not test humans in their study, previous studies found that humans need a Weber fraction of 0.14 to be able to discern a brightness difference.

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 5716 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Drug targets female brain to boost sex drive. LAURA NELSON Ever since Viagra worked for men - and didn't for women - researchers have been searching for a drug that turns women on. Now a hormone-like drug may hit the spot, by targeting not the genitals, but the brain. The way Viagra works is simple; it dilates blood vessels, increasing blood flow in the genitals. This purely physical effect seems to be sufficient for most men to perform and enjoy sex. But women are more complicated. "The difference between male and female orgasms is that brain effects are more important in women," says John Stevenson, an endocrinologist at the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust. In other words, physical arousal doesn't happen without desire. And that can be much harder to trigger. "People may get the sensory input, but they don't think, 'ooh I'm horny'." James Pfaus, Behavioural neurobiologist, Concordia University, Montreal © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 5715 - Posted: 06.24.2010

When an animal touches something, it stimulates a chain of nerve cells running from the body surface to the spinal cord to the brain. This system is capable of recording a huge variety and intensity of sensations. Amazingly, however, it all occurs through the firing -- or lack of firing -- of these neurons. How that firing, in electrical pulses called "action potentials," records sensory information is a mystery that neuroscientists have been slowly figuring out over 50 years. Last week, a team of researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine reported in the journal Science that they had taken a large step forward. Lauren M. Jones, a graduate student working with Asaf Keller, studied neurons hard-wired into the whisker follicles of rats. In those animals, whiskers are nearly as important as eyes in perceiving their surroundings. Certain neurons only fire when a whisker is moved in one direction but not in a different one -- a fact known for a long time. What Jones discovered is how that information is encoded in the timing of a cell's firing. © 2004 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 5714 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A new charity has pledged to stamp out "quack" interventions for people with autism and similar disorders. The Autism Intervention Research Trust says it will fund studies to see which treatments work and which ones do not. Geoffrey Maddrell, its chairman, said there was no scientific evidence to support some existing treatments. He said the charity would also fund research into new ways of treating autism and related disorders, which affect 500,000 Britons. Mr Maddrell said independent research was needed to help people with the condition. "Hundreds of treatments and other methods of intervention are available but few have been scientifically evaluated and there are still large numbers for whom there is currently no effective help. "In many instances, exaggerated or misleading claims are made for specific approaches. "In the UK, only 8% of autism research activity is currently concerned with intervention and the new research trust has been established to address this vital need". (C)BBC

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 5713 - Posted: 06.28.2004

By BARRY MEIER Forest Laboratories has said a recently concluded test found that its antidepressant Lexapro did not help depressed children and adolescents, an announcement that comes amid the growing controversy over clinical drug tests. The company's announcement is significant because Lexapro contains essentially the same active ingredient as another Forest antidepressant, Celexa, which is widely prescribed for pediatric use. The company made its announcement late Thursday, when it also released a second statement addressing how it had handled its disclosure of results from two trials of Celexa in depressed children. The New York Times reported Monday that Forest officials had not told a medical journal about a failed unpublished study in 2002 of Celexa use in children and adolescents, before the journal published an article this month about a separate test indicating the drug could help young people. Some of the recent article's authors were Forest employees. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5712 - Posted: 06.28.2004

Of all the unsolved mysteries of the human body, it is the brain that most rigidly resists our efforts at understanding it; and that lack of understanding is costing us increasingly dear. Mental illness is reaching epidemic levels. The World Health Organisation claims that mental health problems "are fast becoming the number-one health issue of the 21st century". Clinical depression is the biggest international health threat after heart disease. At the same time, there is a growing dissatisfaction with the drug treatments available. In the UK, the number of prescriptions for antidepressants has more than doubled in 10 years, with 80% of GPs admitting they overprescribe drugs such as Prozac and Seroxat because of the lack of alternative forms of treatment. But though they might not be available on the NHS just yet, alternatives are starting to emerge - and with some promising results. Later this month Dr David Servan-Schreiber, a clinical professor of psychiatry and founding member of Medecins Sans Frontières in the US, will visit Britain to launch his book, Healing Without Freud or Prozac, which has already received an enthusiastic response in Belgium, Switzerland and Canada, where it has sold half a million copies. After a career in conventional medicine, Servan-Schreiber's theory is that exercise can be as effective in treating depression and stress as antidepressants. "It is not that I am against antidepressants," he says. "But there are some natural methods of treatment that have been demonstrated to work for milder forms of depression. It doesn't make any sense to ignore them any longer." Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 5711 - Posted: 06.24.2010

John Travis Find the kid a sports agent. Researchers studying an unusually muscular tot have found that he has gene mutations similar to ones that produce abnormally brawny cattle and mice. Less-severe variations in the same gene may underlie the success of some athletes, the scientists speculate. The boy's mutations disrupt both copies of the gene encoding a muscle protein called myostatin. Previous studies of the gene in animals had suggested that myostatin restrains muscle growth during development and adult life. But scientists didn't know whether the protein serves the same function in people. The boy's powerhouse physique "says pretty definitively that myostatin plays the same role in humans that it does in mice and cattle," concludes Se-Jin Lee of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore. If so, he adds, then drugs to block myostatin might have some benefits in people with muscle-wasting diseases. Lee is a member of the international group of investigators who have studied the boy since 1999 and now report their results in the June 24 New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Copyright ©2004 Science Service.

Keyword: Muscles; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5710 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Drugs widely used to treat Alzheimer's disease have little actual benefit, controversial research suggests. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence recommended in 2001 that cholinesterase inhibitors should be prescribed on the NHS. But a five-year Lancet study by the University of Birmingham concludes that routine prescribing of the drugs is a waste of scarce resources. Alzheimer's experts, however, have challenged the finding. The drugs cost about £1,000 per person per year. In total 565 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease took part in the study. They were given either the cholinesterase inhibitor donepezil (Aricept) or a dummy pill. The main aim of the study was to assess whether donepezil delayed progress of disability or the need for institutional care. The study also looked at the optimal dose and length of treatment, and what effect donepezil has on the mood and behaviour of patients, their ability to undertake daily activities, and whether donepezil relieved the burden on carers. Lead researcher Professor Richard Gray said: "We've known for some time that patients do better on memory tests when they take these drugs but the improvements were small and we wanted to find out whether patients got benefits that really mattered to them - for example, could they go for a walk and find their way home. (C)BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 5709 - Posted: 06.25.2004

By DENISE GRADY The most widely prescribed drug for Alzheimer's disease, Aricept, does not delay the onset of disability or the need for a nursing home, British researchers are reporting today. The researchers say that the drug has "disappointingly little overall benefit" and is not cost-effective, and that better treatments are needed. Experts in the United States are already divided over the usefulness of Aricept and related drugs, and the study is unlikely to end the debate. Most studies have shown that the drugs can produce small improvements in scores on mental tests, but it is not clear whether the gains translate into anything helpful in real life. Even the drugs' staunchest advocates say that they offer modest benefits at best, affording perhaps a short delay in a patient's decline. But when small changes in functioning occur, it may be hard to tell whether they are owing to the drug or to the ups and downs of the disease itself. The new report, being published in today's issue of The Lancet, the British medical journal, is based on a study of 565 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease who were assigned at random to receive either Aricept or a placebo and were then followed for up to three years. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 5708 - Posted: 06.25.2004

Blind, deaf, and hungry, a newborn mouse can't care for itself. Take away its mother, and a pup will scream bloody murder to get help. But if the neuronal receptors that respond to morphine are also taken away, the pup just doesn't seem to care. The finding may shed some light on roots of emotional attachment disorders, as well as drug abuse. The research, reported in the 25 June issue of Science, supports pharmacological evidence from a variety of animals that the opioid reward system helps wee ones bond with others. Opioids are best known as painkillers. They have other effects, too; morphine will turn the shrieks of lonely baby guinea pigs into whimpers. Francesca D'Amato of the CNR Institute of Neuroscience, Psychobiology, and Psychopharmacology in Rome and colleagues tested infant attachment in mouse pups born to parents genetically designed to lack both copies of the ì-opioid receptor gene. First, the researchers removed mom from the living quarters and, 5 minutes later, subjected the pups to a new environment. Normal 8-day-old pups screamed incessantly when placed into a beaker with clean bedding; they screamed about half as much when the beaker contained old fluff that smelled like mom. The mutant mice, though, hardly screamed at all. The lack of screeching was not due to an inability to smell or react to adverse circumstances: When threatening males were near, the mutant pups squealed even more than the normal pups, and all pups freaked comparably when placed in a frigid beaker. In addition, the mutant pups weren't able to discriminate between moms--when given a choice between their own place or a strange mom's nest, all of the normal pups chose their own place. But only a third of the pups lacking the ì-opioid receptor went home. Copyright © 2004 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5707 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Honeybees can precisely regulate the temperature of their nest – and they do it thanks to genetically determined variations in their individual thermostats. The new research has revealed one of the few known benefits of the high genetic diversity found in honeybee colonies. Maintaining a nest temperature of between about 32°C and 36°C is vital during spring and summer, when eggs are developing and hatching. “If they don’t keep the nest at this temperature, the brood won’t develop properly,” says Julia Jones of the University of Sydney, Australia, who led the work. If the temperature drops too low, the worker bees huddle together around the brood to keep it warm. If it gets too high, they stand at the nest entrance and use their wings to fan out hot air. The new work shows that bees with different fathers start fanning at slightly different temperatures. This stops sudden colony-wide shifts between warming and cooling behaviours, and keeps the temperature in the nest more constant. “It’s been shown before that honeybees with different genotypes have different thresholds for certain things – for instance, they’re attracted to different concentrations of nectar," says Jones. "But this is the first time any benefit has been shown from different behaviour thresholds based on genotype in the bees.” © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5706 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ST. THOMAS, U.S. Virgin Islands, /PRNewswire/ -- Legendary biologist Seymour Benzer, whose half century-long career has transformed our understanding of the brain and profoundly influenced generations of scientists, has been selected by an international panel of experts in neuroscience to receive the inaugural 2004 Neuroscience Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation. Each year the Foundation will present a gold medal and a $200,000 unrestricted cash award to an outstanding scientist who has contributed to fundamental advances in the field of neuroscience. This year's prize will be presented on October 23 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego, California. Born in New York City in 1921, Seymour Benzer received his B.S. in physics from Brooklyn College in 1942 and his Ph.D. in physics from Purdue University in 1947. After beginning his career as a solid-state physicist, he switched to biology in 1949. He was on the faculty of Purdue from 1945 until 1967 when he accepted a professorship at the California Institute of Technology where he is still an active Emeritus professor today. In the early 1960s, after having made several major contributions to the understanding of gene structure and the genetic code, Professor Benzer switched fields again and inaugurated and developed the new and immensely important field of neurogenetics. His deceptively simple approach was based on the premise, confirmed by his subsequent work, that the molecular underpinning of neural function and behavior could be dissected by using ingenious genetic screens to isolate behavioral mutants one gene at a time. Using the fruit fly, Drosophila, he altered one gene after the next and showed that a single gene mutation can give rise to a wide variety of behavioral alterations, including aberrations in courtship, in circadian rhythm, and in memory and learning. These studies have revolutionized the field of behavioral genetics and have shown how, through the genetics of the humble fruit fly, the mysteries of how the human brain develops, functions, and becomes sick can be unraveled. Copyright © 2004 Yahoo! Inc.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5705 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have demonstrated that the action of a protein called CBP is essential for the stabilization of long-term memory, a discovery that may help children with a rare but debilitating developmental disorder. They found that when the functions of normal CBP is suppressed in adult rodents, the animals had trouble forming long-term memories, suggesting that CBP is required for the formation of long-term memory and that defects in CBP are involved in cognitive dysfunction. Furthermore, the scientists found that they were able to correct this defect by administering a drug that restored CBP's function. "This is significant," says Mark Mayford, Ph.D., an associate professor of cell biology and a member of the Institute for Childhood and Neglected Diseases at Scripps Research. Before moving to Scripps Research four years ago, Mayford was a faculty member at UCSD, where together with another UCSD scientist Edward Korzus, Ph.D., they initiated the research. "There is a link between this molecule and very severe problems in humans," Mayford added, noting that the findings may be significant for children with the rare but severe developmental disorder known as Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome, which causes growth and mental retardation and several anatomical abnormalities. These children have mutations in their CBP genes.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 5704 - Posted: 06.24.2004