Campaigners have urged the government to stop tobacco companies adding chocolate and other similar ingredients to cigarettes. It follows reports that British American Tobacco has been carrying out tests on chocolate and alcohol-flavoured cigarettes. The company says the tests are part of a long-running programme to improve the flavour and casing of cigarettes. But campaigners say it could encourage children to smoke. Scientists from BAT have been testing the impact of 482 different ingredients on cigarettes. These include chocolate, cocoa, wine, sherry, maple syrup and vanilla. Some of these are already use in its cigarettes. "The tests were carried out at an independent laboratory in Canada," a spokeswoman for BAT told BBC News Online. "BAT like every other tobacco company uses different substances to enhance the flavour of cigarettes. We are not alone in this and we make no secret of it." (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5583 - Posted: 06.03.2004

A new drug to treat ADHD - attention deficit hyperactivity disorder - has been licensed for use in the UK. The launch will reignite the debate about whether it is right to use drugs to control the condition, thought to affect around 5% of children. The drug, amoxetine, has been welcomed as an alternative treatment if existing drugs do not help. But some experts say diet should be used to manage children's symptoms instead. Unlike currently available drugs, amoxetine, which will be available on prescription from July, is not a stimulant, and therefore is unlikely to carry a potential for abuse. Children with ADHD have extreme difficulty sitting still, learning or concentrating. Looking after affected children can be exhausting for parents. Guidelines from the NHS watchdog the National Institute of Clinical Excellence say only the most severely affected should be given drug therapy. Until now, only the methylphenidate class of drugs - which includes Ritalin - have been available to treat ADHD. Some doctors have expressed concern it could lead to depression or be abused by drug-users because of its amphetamine content. (C)BBC

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 5582 - Posted: 06.03.2004

What goes on in the brain of a gambler? Researchers have found that the feeling of excitement might be linked to the release in the brain of dopamine, a chemical associated with the pleasure people get from eating, sex, and drugs. David Zald, psychology professor at Vanderbilt University, and his team used positron emission topography (PET) to observe the brain activity in nine people who were given gambling-like activities to perform. "The main thing that we wanted to see, first off, was whether we could image dopamine release in humans while they were winning money," says Zald. "Our key hypothesis was that we would indeed be able to see dopamine release while people are winning money." In the first gambling-like activity, the person chose one of four cards, knowing a reward of one dollar was possible, but not knowing when; in other words, the reward was unpredictable. In the second activity, the people knew they would get the reward with every fourth card chosen, so the reward was predictable. In the third activity, people chose cards without expecting to get a reward at all. © ScienCentral, 2000-2004.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5581 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers seize moment to make tobacco data public. MICHAEL HOPKIN Public-health researchers have unveiled a project to tackle what they describe as information concealment by the UK-based multinational firm British American Tobacco (BAT). The group aims to publish some 8 million pages of the company's documents on an independent website, making them more easily accessible. The researchers accuse BAT of obstructing public attempts to access papers at its depository in Guildford, UK, and allege that some files detailing the company's activities have been removed or altered. The facility, they say, limits visitor numbers, doesn't provide an easily searchable index of its material, and does not allow onsite photocopying of documents. Visitors must request copies from BAT, which can take up to 12 months to arrive. "This sort of conduct raises questions as to the true public availability of the depository's contents," says Kelley Lee, a public-health expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a project member. BAT denies that any files have been deleted. Regarding access to the depository, "it was never designed to work like a public library", says Michael Prideaux, BAT's corporate and regulatory affairs director. He adds that researchers are welcome to reproduce material given to them by BAT. (C) Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 5580 - Posted: 06.03.2004

Genetic technique may yield BSE-proof calves. MICHAEL HOPKIN Researchers in the United States and Japan claim to have created cow embryos that cannot produce the protein responsible for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Without it, the animals should be immune to mad cow disease. A “handful" of the BSE-free cows will be born early next year, the researchers say. The calves will be tested with a small dose of mad cow protein to see whether they are truly resistant to the disease. The BSE-causing protein, called a prion, is present in both healthy and diseased cattle; it is only when it twists out of shape that it causes problems. When normal prion protein comes into contact with the disease-causing version it can flip into the malignant form, causing rogue prions to spread through the brain. This leads to coordination problems, behavioural changes and death. The US and Japanese researchers aimed to bypass this problem by creating genetically engineered cows that do not produce prions at all. This means that they should be safe from small doses of diseased prions, explains James Robl, president of biotechnology firm Hematech in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and one of the leaders of the team. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 5579 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sherry Seethaler University of California, San Diego neurobiologists have uncovered evidence that sheds light on the long-standing mystery of how the brain makes sense of the information contained in electrical impulses sent to it by millions of neurons from the body. In a paper published this week in the early on-line version of the journal Nature, a UCSD team led by Massimo Scanziani explains how neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain sort out information before deciding how to respond. The paper will appear in a forthcoming print issue of Nature. Light, sound and odors, for example, are transformed by our sensory organs into a code made of series of electrical impulses that travel along neurons from the body to the brain. Information about the onset and the intensity of a stimulus is thought to be sent to the brain by the timing and frequency of these electrical impulses. How information is sorted by the brain has been an open question. The group discovered that different neurons in the brain are dedicated to respond to specific portions of the information. Copyright ©2001 Regents of the University of California.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 5578 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Flexible brain-wiring could guard against epilepsy. TANGUY CHOUARD The nervous system is not hard-wired, according to research on spinal cord cells in tadpole embryos. Nerve cells can change their function as they develop, responding to their own electrical activity rather than playing a role that is preordained by genetics, say US biologists. Scientists thought that the precise nature of each nerve cell was determined by an irreversible programme of development, initiated by the cell's genetic code. But Nick Spitzer and his fellow neurobiologists from the University of California, San Diego, challenge that fatalistic view in this week's Nature1,2. The team finds that certain patterns of electrical activity in a young nerve cell can override its basic genetic instructions, changing the way that the cell will communicate with its peers. Nerve cells use neurotransmitter chemicals to talk to each other, and different chemicals will either excite or inhibit activity in neighbouring cells. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Epilepsy; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5577 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Sitting blindfolded with a device equipped with 144 pixels in his mouth, any journalist would wonder about his career choice. But after a few minutes of experimentation, you have to recognize that the system developed by neuropsychologist Maurice Ptito of Université de Montréal, together with colleagues in Denmark and the United States , to allow blind people to “see with their tongue” appears strangely effective. In just the first few minutes, the subject is able to build up a fairly clear picture of the letter “T” placed in various positions and transmitted by electrical impulses to the device on his tongue. The Tongue Display Unit (TDU) can activate areas that are normally reserved for visual information and are unused when someone suffers from congenital blindness. “The tongue will never replace the eye, of course,” says Prof. Ptito. “But for people born blind, the cerebral cortex, which is normally used for vision, is reactivated by this device. The electrical activity, recorded by a scan, is very clear about this.” When we press the researcher to find out more about possible applications of this system, he delights in describing a miniaturized system worthy of the Bionic Man. “We can imagine a camera installed in the eye, which transmits an image from a device worn on the belt. This would send an electrical stimulus to the lingual stimulator mounted on a trip indicator the user wears under the palate. To have access to the camera’s images, all he would have to do is press his tongue against it.” In the shorter term, we can imagine a system that would replace the Braille alphabet. In fact, if the tongue were capable of “reading” the letters of the alphabet, it would be able to read texts broadcast via electrical signals. When it has been perfected, this system could considerably improve the quality of life of blind persons. It would be a “hands-off” non-invasive system.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Vision
Link ID: 5576 - Posted: 06.24.2010

St. Paul, Minn. – People with low income are more likely to develop brain cancer, according to a study published in the May 25 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study compared the rate of brain cancer among people with low income (those enrolled in Medicaid) to all other people who developed brain cancer in the state of Michigan. Medicaid is a government program providing medical assistance for people with very low incomes. The study was conducted by identifying all of the new cases of brain cancer that occurred during a two-year period in the state of Michigan, and classifying those with low income as those who were eligible for Medicaid. Brain cancer cases occurring in people under age 25 or over age 84 were not included. A total of 1,006 cases were studied. The overall rate of brain cancer was 8.1 cases per 100,000 people. Of those with low incomes, there were 14.2 cases per 100,000 people, compared to 7.5 cases per 100,000 for all other persons. The difference was greatest among younger people. Men under age 44 with low incomes were at least four times more likely to develop brain cancer than those not classified as having low income. Women with low incomes under age 44 were at least 2.6 times more likely to develop brain cancer than those who were not classified as having low income.

Keyword: Miscellaneous; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5575 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Javacia N. Harris Doctors have long said that repeatedly losing and regaining weight won't sculpt the body of your dreams. Now, Seattle researchers have found that so-called "yo-yo dieting" might even make you sick. A recent study by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington says frequently losing and regaining weight may weaken the immune system, leaving the dieter more susceptible to illness. In a study of overweight but otherwise healthy women, scientists found that people who intentionally lost and regained weight five times or more in the past 20 years had a weakened immune system compared to those who maintained the same weight for five or more years. The results provide strong evidence that yo-yo dieting could be a health risk, said Cornelia Ulrich, senior author of the study and an assistant member of Fred Hutchinson's Public Health Sciences Division. This new information could serve as a warning to the 50 percent of women in Western countries who the study says are trying, or have recently tried, to lose weight. Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 5574 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GARDINER HARRIS PHOENIX, — In the midst of a worldwide debate on whether depressed children should be treated with antidepressant drugs like Prozac, a landmark government-financed study has found that Prozac helps teenagers overcome depression far better than talk therapy. But a combination of the two treatments, the study found, produced the best result. The study, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, was the first to compare psychotherapy and drug treatment for depressed adolescents. Statistically, the researchers found, talk therapy — in which a patient discusses problems with a therapist — was by itself no more effective in reducing the depression than treatment with placebos. But when combined with drug treatment, psychotherapy appeared to provide added benefit and to reduce the risk of suicide. The findings are likely to reassure psychiatrists, pediatricians and others who increasingly prescribe antidepressants to teenagers and children. Millions of young people take the drugs. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5573 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. Preliminary results from the world's largest survey on mental health indicate that mental illness is widespread and undertreated, and that wealthy people with mild illness receive more and better treatment than poor people with severe illness. From 1 to 5 percent of the populations of most of the countries surveyed had serious mental illness, according to the findings, being published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association. And in most of the countries, 9 to 17 percent of those interviewed had had some episode of mental illness in the last year, whether serious or less severe, said the study, by researchers from the World Health Organization and Harvard Medical School. Around the world, the authors found, mental illness causes as many lost days of work as any physical problem like cancer, heart attack or back pain."The level of role impairment we found to be associated with serious mental disorders was staggering: more than a month in the past year when the respondents reported being totally unable to work," said one chief author, Dr. Ronald C. Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 5572 - Posted: 06.02.2004

Summer is approaching, but that doesn't mean kids should stop using their brains. New research confirms that during the teen years, the brain is ripe for learning new things. Scientists used to think there was a spurt of the production of gray matter, the tissue of the brain responsible for information processing, during the first eighteen months of life, and then a steady decline. But in the late 1990s, brain scientist Jay Giedd discovered a second spurt of gray matter production just before puberty, followed by a period of "pruning" during the teenage years. "The second wave increases throughout childhood, peaks at about age eleven in girls and twelve in boys, and then in the teen years it prunes or thins down," Giedd explains. "The teen brain is particularly active in terms of the growth of connections and pruning back of those connections. It's a very tumultuous time in terms of the brain development story." Now, a new study reveals for the first time the actual sequence of brain development between the ages of five and twenty. Giedd, chief of brain imaging at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and his colleagues at the NIMH and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), have created a unique time-lapse 3D animation of the maturing brain by using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology to scan the brains of thirteen healthy children and teenagers every two years for ten years. © ScienCentral, 2000-2004.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5571 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Kenneth J. Bender, Pharm.D., M.A., Psychiatric Times Two advisory committees of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration met in an unusual joint session in February to consider whether antidepressant treatment provokes suicidality in children. At the end of this first of two planned meetings, they recommended that the FDA warn practitioners about this possible risk. The Psychopharmacological Drugs Advisory Committee and the Pediatric Subcommittee of the Anti-Infective Drugs Advisory Committee received summaries of spontaneous drug reports and of experiences in clinical trials with children; called expert witnesses on suicide research; and heard dramatic testimony from families of suicide victims, as well as from those whose children had benefited from antidepressant treatment. According to Russell Katz, M.D., the events identified in the clinical studies by the pharmaceutical manufacturers will be independently reclassified by a group at Columbia University with particular expertise in adolescent suicidality. At a second meeting this summer, the committees may also hear expert testimony on improving prospective assessment and monitoring for suicidality and possibly improving antidepressant clinical trial designs to more clearly ascertain whether benefit outweighs risk. © 2004 Psychiatric Times. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 5570 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Timothy D. Brewerton, M.D. , Psychiatric Times Eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN) and binge-eating disorder (BED), remain one of the most complex and clinically challenging groups of mental disorders in our nomenclature. There are no easy solutions, and the bottom line of this article is that pharmacological agents are not the primary treatment of choice. Although a number of agents have been found in randomized controlled trials to be beneficial, they are by and large insufficient as stand-alone treatments. Space does not allow a comprehensive overview of this topic, but the reader is referred to a recent review by Steinglass and Walsh (2004). In addition, the revised American Psychiatric Association practice guidelines for the treatment of eating disorders (APA, 2000) and the recently released National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) Guidelines (2004) are useful resources regarding the use of drug therapy within the context of a comprehensive treatment approach. No pharmacological agents have ever been shown in double-blind, placebo-controlled trials to significantly improve AN when given outside a structured, inpatient program. Food remains the "drug of choice" for this population, for reasons that will be elaborated below. Of course, administering food in the interest of weight restoration is much easier said than done, given the profound denial and resistance typical of this disorder. There are a handful of drugs found to be statistically better than placebo in randomized controlled trials, but there is little clinical significance of these findings. Lithium (Eskalith, Lithobid) was shown in one controlled trial to be statistically better than placebo in a small group of patients being treated at the National Institute of Mental Health on an intensive, highly structured, specialized treatment unit (Gross et al., 1981). However, the effect was small, and eating disorder specialists generally deem the potential risks of lithium treatment in this population to be far greater than the possible benefits, largely due to the danger of lithium toxicity secondary to dehydration and electrolyte imbalances from starvation, compulsive exercising and/or purging. Another study found amitriptyline (Elavil) statistically better than placebo for patients who are both bulimic and anorexic, while cyproheptadine (Periactin) was better for restricting anorexia (Halmi et al., 1986). However, other studies have had mixed results. © 2004 Psychiatric Times. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 5569 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Paul Mackin, M.D., Ph.D., MRCPsych, and Allan H. Young, M.D., Ph.D., MRCPsych Psychiatric Times May 2004 Vol. XXI Issue 6 Mood disorders are leading causes of both morbidity and mortality. Depressive disorder and bipolar disorder (BD) rank among the leading causes of disability worldwide (Murray and Lopez, 1997). Traditionally, mood disorders were considered to be relapsing and remitting conditions characterized by complete inter-episode recovery, but recent evidence has suggested that even during periods of euthymia, neurocognitive impairments known to be present during mood episodes may still persist (Ferrier and Thompson, 2002). Both Kraepelin (1896) and Freud (1905) regarded endocrinology as potentially important in the causation and treatment of major psychiatric disorders, and the role of dysfunctional endocrine systems in the pathogenesis of mood disorders has been the focus of research for many decades. Poor understanding of the complexity of endocrine systems and their interaction with neural networks, combined with primitive methodology, frustrated early attempts to establish links between endocrine dysfunction and mood disorders (Michael and Gibbons, 1963). More recently, developments in the field of neuroendocrinology have highlighted the significance of endocrine systems in the etiology and pathogenesis of mood disorders. © 2004 Psychiatric Times. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 5568 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Some of the genes that allow nerve cells and some other types of cells to send elaborate chemical messages to each other appear to have been transferred to animals or their immediate ancestors from bacteria eons ago, according to a study by researchers from the National Library of Medicine and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, both part of the National Institutes of Health. Specifically, the genes contain the information needed to make enzymes, which, in turn are crucial for making the complex molecules that cells use to communicate with each other. These cell-signaling molecules play a role in learning, memory, mental alertness, sleep patterns, and allergic responses. The study was published on the web at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01689525 and will appear in the July issue of Trends in Genetics. "By studying these enzymes in bacteria, we may be able to get a better idea of how they work in human beings," said the study's first author, Lakshminarayan Iyer, Ph.D., Research Fellow, of the National Center for Biotechnology Information of the National Library of Medicine (NLM).

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 5567 - Posted: 06.02.2004

— Renaissance artistic genius Michelangelo may have had Asperger's syndrome, a milder form of autism that causes people to have difficulties with social interaction, experts say. A by-product of Asperger's can be a special talent in a particular area such as art, music or mathematics. The research by U.K. and Irish autism experts, published in the Journal of Medical Biography, argued that Michelangelo met a number of the criteria for Asperger's. "Michelangelo was aloof and a loner," said Dr. Muhammad Arshad, a psychiatrist at the Five Boroughs Partnership in Warrington, northwest England, and Michael Fitzgerald of Trinity College Dublin. "Like the architect John Nash (1752-1835), who also had high-functioning autism, he had few friends," they said, referring to the famed U.K. architect whose imposing Regency buildings and crescents are dotted around London. Copyright © 2004 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 5566 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service A major advance towards producing prion-free cows that would be immune to mad cow disease has been made by researchers at companies in the US and Japan. Their principle aim is to make genetically modified cattle that produce pharmaceuticals in their milk. But the companies hope that also making the animals resistant to BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) will reassure consumers. The researchers have now achieved the considerable feat of creating cell lines which have both copies of the cow's PrP gene switched off. The PrP protein can be switched to an infectious state by contact with a mutated prion. This switch causes prion diseases such as BSE in cows and variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD) in humans. Making live animals from these cell lines should be relatively straightforward using cloning techniques similar to those that created Dolly the sheep. The companies say they have no intention of producing prion-free animals destined for human consumption. Instead they want to assuage public fears about pharmaceuticals derived from cow's milk, even though the process used to extract proteins from milk has already been shown to remove prion contamination. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 5565 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Alzheimer’s disease could be caused by the deactivation of what are known as “presenilin genes”. Using mice as a model for the study of Alzheimer’s in humans, a scientific team headed by the researcher Carlos Saura, from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, has discovered that when these genes mutate and stop working they cause neuro-degeneration and memory loss, giving rise to what in humans would be Alzheimer’s. The discovery, published in Neuron, is totally unexpected, since up till now it was thought that the alteration that caused Alzheimer’s was exactly the opposite, that is to say, an excess of presenilin activity. Since 1995 it has been known that family hereditary Alzheimer’s is caused mainly by mutations in presenilin genes, but it was thought that the alteration of these genes caused Alzheimer’s due to an increase in their activity. Research by doctor Carlos Saura, of the Neuroscientific Institute (l’Institut de Neurociències (IN)) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, using mice, genetically modified to decrease the activity of presenilin genes, has shown that these genes take part in the process of memory consolidation and neuron survival, but in a different way to that expected. The results, published in the journal Neuron last April, show that the absence of activity of these genes in mice, used as a model for the study of Alzheimer’s in humans, causes symptoms very similar to those observed in persons suffering from Alzheimer’s: progressive memory loss and neuro-degeneration. The authors suggest that mutations in presenilins could be a cause of Alzheimer’s, mainly due to loss of functionality.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 5564 - Posted: 06.24.2010