STANFORD, Calif. - Researchers at Stanford University Medical Center have identified a genetic marker that can explain why some people experience side effects to common antidepressants while others do not. They also found that a key liver enzyme involved in breaking down these antidepressants surprisingly played no role in the development of side effects nor in how well the drugs worked. The findings may lead to fewer side effects for patients undergoing antidepressant drug therapy. "Antidepressants are among the most widely prescribed medications in the world," said lead author Greer Murphy Jr., MD, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. "One of the mysteries at this point is why some people get debilitating side effects and others don't." To start solving the mystery, Murphy and Alan Schatzberg, MD, the Kenneth T. Norris Jr. Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, wanted to find differences among patients in the function of proteins - and the genes that encode those proteins - that could account for the varied response to drug treatment. Their findings appear in the October issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Keyword: Depression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 4306 - Posted: 09.30.2003

-- Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have linked a defective protein in Huntington's disease to gridlock in the transportation system that moves signals and vital protein cargoes within the brain, eventually leading to neuron cell death. Published in the September 25, 2003 issue of the journal Neuron, their studies in Drosophila, the fruit fly, showed that a protein called huntingtin is critical for normal neuronal transportation. When the protein is defective, however, it appears to physically blocks traffic in the narrow axons that are the long pipes of the nerve cells. Although defective huntingtin genes have previously been linked to Huntington's disease, this is the first study to illustrate that the defective protein may cause neuronal damage by aggregating (sticking together) and blocking axonal traffic. Copyright © 1992-2003 Bio Online, Inc.

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 4305 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New Haven, Conn. -- Midlife postmenopausal women who received daily treatment with estrogen showed improved oral reading and verbal memory performance, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in the September issue of the journal Menopause. "This is the first study to specifically examine the effect of estrogen on reading ability," said principal investigator Sally Shaywitz, M.D., professor of pediatrics and in the Yale Child Study Center . Most of the research examining the association between estrogen use and cognitive function has focused on global, more non-specific, mental status or memory as the principal outcome. "The study also shows that estrogen may benefit younger postmenopausal women engaged in everyday activities, such as reading," Shaywitz added. "It should encourage physicians caring for postmenopausal women to inquire about and take seriously concerns about difficulties in reading and in memory."

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 4304 - Posted: 09.25.2003

Resistance exercise may directly reset the body clocks in skeletal muscle, according to research published in Genome Biology this week. This result may partly explain how exercising early in the day helps jet-lagged bodies readjust to their new time zone. Many processes in the body vary in a 24-hour rhythm called the circadian rhythm. These rhythms are controlled by molecular clocks, in organs such as the liver, in tissues such as skeletal muscle, and in the hypothalamus, a part of the brain. The clock in the hypothalamus is the central controller and keeps all the peripheral clocks in synch. Exercise can reset circadian rhythms. Most scientists thought this process was mediated purely by inputs to the hypothalamus, which can alter the expression of genes in the central clock. Now researchers, from the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, the University of California, and Northwestern University, have found that exercise can also alter the expression of clock genes in the muscles themselves.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 4303 - Posted: 09.25.2003

By JOHN O'NEIL Several years ago, Dr. Peter M. Meyer and his colleagues asked a large group of menopausal women how many of them were bothered by forgetfulness. "Every hand in the room went up," he recalled. But tests conducted over several years turned up no evidence to support the idea that menopause actually interfered with memory, according to an article released yesterday. The study, which was published in the journal Neurology, involved 803 women who had not yet reached menopause or were in early stages when the research began. Once a year, the women were tested on their ability to repeat long strings of numbers backward and to identify pairs of symbols and digits quickly. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 4302 - Posted: 09.25.2003

NewScientist.com news service Being smart is not always a good thing in the evolutionary race, suggests a new study by Swiss researchers If intelligence were always a positive attribute, it would always be selected for by natural selection. But it is not - people and animals have their dolts as well as their Einsteins. To evolutionary biologists, that diversity means that theoretically, there must be some cost to being smart. Now for the first time, researchers have shown that in fruit flies at least, it doesn't always pay to be clever. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Intelligence; Evolution
Link ID: 4301 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Neanderthals were not driven from northern Europe by vastly superior human hunters, suggests an analysis of hunting remains. The study by Donald Grayson of the University of Washington and Francoise Delpech of the University of Bordeaux challenges a popular theory that the primitive peoples died out because they were far less skillful hunters. The pair examined the fossilised remains of butchered animals from a cave in southwest France. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 4300 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service An anti-epilepsy drug has shown promising results for treating cocaine addiction in a preliminary US trial. Gamma-vinyl-GABA (GVG), also known as vigabatrin, works in part by blocking the craving for cocaine. When combined with counselling, 40 per cent of addicts successfully gave up their habit for the duration of the sixty-day study. "This is unheard of in addiction treatment," says Stephen Dewey, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and one of the study team. "There are no medicines that are effective at blocking cocaine craving in addicts." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Epilepsy
Link ID: 4299 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Inflatable organ may aid camouflage. JOHN WHITFIELD Octopuses can get erections, US researchers have discovered. They are the first soft-bodied animal found to have erectile tissue. The inflatable organ, called the ligula, lies at the tip of a male octopus' mating arm. When it's not aroused, the two-spot octopus (Octopus bimaculatus) "has an exceptionally tiny ligula that's very hard to see", says Janet Voight of the University of Chicago1. But Voight glimpsed a rather different ligula while watching a failed mating. "It was quite prominent," she recalls. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 4298 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Brain scan reveals amyloid deposits in live mice. HELEN R. PILCHER A new test takes a step towards diagnosing Alzheimer's disease in living patients. In mice it reveals amyloid plaques - a telltale sign of this type of dementia1. A test would help doctors to catch the disease early on, when therapies may be more effective. Currently, Alzheimer's can be confirmed only after death - doctors use cognitive tests and brain scans to assess memory-impaired patients, with about 85% accuracy. Brain plaques appear before clinical symptoms, so something like the mouse screen could catch the disease before memory begins to falter. "We'll be able to design better drug trials," says test co-developer Brian Bacskai of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 4297 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers excited about seizure drug By Jamie Talan A medicine developed to treat epileptic seizures has shown effectiveness in helping longtime cocaine addicts refrain from drug use. Eight addicts who received the medicine daily for six weeks have been clean for more than two months, some for almost 90 days. Twelve addicts dropped out.All were volunteers in a study, published yesterday in the journal Synapse, that was conducted by scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York University School of Medicine and an addiction treatment clinic in Mexico. "This is unheard of in addiction treatment," said Stephen Dewey, a scientist at the Brookhaven lab in Upton. "There are no medicines that are effective at blocking cocaine craving in addicts." Copyright © Newsday, Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Epilepsy
Link ID: 4296 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Cells taken from cloned mouse embryos have been used to successfully treat a condition similar to Parkinson's disease in humans. The breakthrough, by US researchers, could assist the search for a cure for the common brain condition. The embryonic "stem cells", reports the journal Nature Biotechnology, were grown into new tissue which was implanted into the mouse brain. However, many obstacles stand in the way of human treatments, say experts. The team, from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, is not the first to use embryonic stem cells to treat Parkinsonism in mice, but they are the first to use cells which were cloned from the "patient". Although embyronic stem cells - taken from a five-day-old embryo, are all the same, they have the ability, when placed in the right biochemical conditions, to be transformed into any cell type in the body. (C) BBC

Keyword: Parkinsons; Stem Cells
Link ID: 4295 - Posted: 09.22.2003

A "significant" link has been found between smoking and facial deformities in children, according to research. The study found that smoking in early pregnancy increased the risk of babies developing a facial cleft by up to three times. The work was carried out by Professor Peter Mossey, from Dundee University's Dental School, who is leading a World Health Organisation project looking at the causes of cleft palates and lips across the globe. Professor Mossey said the development of the palate takes place during a critical 48-hour period during the early stages of pregnancy at 6-8 weeks and can be disturbed by smoking. He said: "Although there are other factors contributing, smoking appears to be a major risk factor for cleft palate in children. "Often women don't know that they are pregnant at this early stage and may still be smoking and binge drinking without realising that this could have serious consequences for the baby developing in their womb. (C) BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 4294 - Posted: 09.22.2003

By MARC LACEY LUI, Sudan — The children of Lui scoop their beans and mush from plates laid out on the dirt, using only their tiny fingers, often aware that something bad is about to happen. Their necks begin to swing forward and back. "Nodding disease," as the malady has been called, takes hold. "I don't feel good when I eat," said Malesh Reuben, a skinny 12-year-old who has been nodding this way for five years. About 300 children in and around this jungle village in southern Sudan have the mysterious ailment. It typically strikes during or just after a meal. The neurological disorder has left epidemiologists baffled. One of the few things understood about nodding is that it appears unique to southern Sudan. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Sleep
Link ID: 4293 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NICHOLAS WADE Researchers in Iceland say they have discovered the first gene that underlies common forms of stroke, a disease that affects more than 600,000 people a year in the United States. People with a particular version of the gene have a three to five times greater risk of stroke, said the researchers, who are at Decode Genetics, a company based in Reykjavik. This is as large as or larger than known environmental risk factors like high blood pressure, high cholesterol and smoking. Dr. Kari Stefansson, the chief executive of Decode, said that the new gene makes an enzyme that is a good target for drugs, and that the Roche pharmaceutical company in Switzerland was already testing several such drugs in laboratory rats. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 4292 - Posted: 09.22.2003

New York, New research from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), Cornell University, and The University of Connecticut describes a novel way of producing therapeutic nerve cells that can cure mice with Parkinson's-like disease. The work, which will be published in the October issue of Nature Biotechnology (available online September 21), provides the first evidence that cloned cells can cure disease in an animal model. In 2001, Lorenz Studer, MD, Head of the Stem Cell and Tumor Biology Laboratory at MSKCC, and his colleagues at Rockefeller University published research in which they generated unlimited numbers of genetically matched dopamine nerve cells using cloned stem cells whose genetic material originated from the mouse's own tail. Dopamine neurons are nerve cells that are lost in patients who have Parkinson's disease. (See press release http://www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/3122.cfm for more information.) Because the initial method worked for cells derived from some mice but not others, Dr. Studer and his colleagues developed a better, more efficient way of selectively generating dopamine neurons that eliminates that variability in order for therapeutic cloning to work consistently for every animal. While they did not yet develop a new cell line for each of the mice treated, their results prove in principle that the method can work for all cloned cell lines tested.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Stem Cells
Link ID: 4291 - Posted: 09.22.2003

A scientist based in the UK says she has proved that lions can count. Biologist Karen McComb of Sussex University used a big loudspeaker and recordings of lions in various numbers to experiment with African lions. She then recorded the number and type of roars that came back from lions around. "What they did was closely controlled by how many were roaring from the loudspeaker, and how many of themselves there were," Karen McComb of Sussex University explained to BBC World Service's Science In Action programme. "Their likelihood of approaching increased as their own group size increased - and also decreased as the number of intruders roaring from the loudspeaker increased. "Their behaviour was best predicted by a variable that we called odds, which was the ratio of number of defenders to number of intruders." (C) BBC

Keyword: Animal Communication; Hearing
Link ID: 4290 - Posted: 09.21.2003

By GINA KOLATA To many, the good life may be lying on a hammock strung between palm trees, sipping a long cool drink, doing nothing, planning nothing, worrying about nothing. But the latest scientific research offers more evidence that this version of the the good life and good health may not be the same thing. Of course, the research is preliminary and involves mostly insects and rodents, but some experts, like Dr. Mark Mattson, chief of the laboratory of neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, are taking no chances. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Obesity
Link ID: 4289 - Posted: 09.21.2003

By Kathleen Lavey, Lansing State Journal Before Rick Knupfer was wheeled into the operating room for brain surgery 13 months ago, he tried to focus on a single word: souffle. It had become a family joke in the preceding days as he struggled to understand language after a tumor invaded his brain. "The week before, we went to a very nice French restaurant in Detroit," said his wife, Joyce Meier. They discussed the upcoming surgery. "We said if I could say 'souffle,' at least I could eat,' " said Rick, now 54, who lives in Okemos with Joyce and their 10-year-old son, Christopher. In the recovery room after the delicate, 12-hour procedure, Rick did recall "souffle." He had four more words as well: "This can't be me." Not the man who traveled the state promoting learning and linking scholars to communities as executive director of the Michigan Humanities Council.

Keyword: Language
Link ID: 4288 - Posted: 09.21.2003

Stressful life events seem to make the symptoms of multiple sclerosis worse, a British Medical Journal study suggests. Dutch researchers followed 73 patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. They found during periods of stress patients were twice as likely to develop new symptoms, or a more severe form of their existing symptoms. The reason for the apparent link is unclear, although it is possible that stress triggers the release of hormones that affect the immune system. The finding suggests that giving people with MS coaching on how to deal with stress may help to delay the development of symptoms. Researcher Dr Rogier Hintzen, a neurologist at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, said: "The knowledge that stressful events are associated with disease activity adds important information to the limited insight that patients and their caregivers have on this unpredictable disease." (C) BBC

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Stress
Link ID: 4287 - Posted: 09.20.2003