NewScientist.com news service New research suggests why babies whose parents smoke tobacco are more likely to die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or cot death. The experiments show that nicotine produces a double whammy, not only directly disrupting a baby's breathing, but also disrupting the early development of the neural circuits that guard against the stopping of breathing during sleep. Hugo Lagercrantz, one of the researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden says: "I think it is most dangerous to smoke during pregnancy, because nicotine may set the sensors that detect low oxygen levels wrongly. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Sleep
Link ID: 2619 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Looking away during an injection really could reduce the pain you feel, new UK research shows. Marisa Taylor-Clarke at University College London poked volunteers' forearms with a two-pronged, compass-like device. They were asked to tell whether they had been touched in one place or two, under four different experimental conditions. In no instance were the volunteers able to see the actual touch. In the first, they saw their forearms immediately before and afterwards. In the second, the area about to be touched was magnified. In the third, they looked at another object, and in the fourth, their arm was in total darkness throughout. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 2618 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Proof that human bone marrow cells can travel to diseased muscle BOSTON - Researchers have found that donor cells from a bone marrow transplant given to a one year old boy later diagnosed with muscular dystrophy remained in the patient's muscle 13 years later. The findings, by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Children's Hospital Los Angeles, suggest that human bone marrow cells can become part of diseased muscle fibers and be detected many years after transplantation. The new results, reported in the September 2002 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, come from a patient who suffers from two serious genetic diseases. When he was six months old, doctors at Children's Hospital Los Angeles diagnosed this patient with X-linked severe combined immune deficiency (SCID). Often known as "bubble boy disease" after David Vetter, the patient who lived in a germ-free plastic bubble for 12 years, SCID results from a genetic mutation that greatly reduces the body's ability to fight off disease. Patients have little resistance to infections such as pneumonia and meningitis, which can therefore be life threatening.

Keyword: Stem Cells; Muscles
Link ID: 2617 - Posted: 09.10.2002

Pilot project for stroke victims to begin this fall A Queen's neuroscientist's invention to help understand the role of the brain in arm and leg movement will dramatically improve the assessment and rehabilitation of stroke and spinal cord victims. It will also help lay the groundwork for development of neural prostheses that can re-activate paralyzed limbs. Dr. Stephen Scott's unique mathematical model, combined with his new experimental device, KINARM (Kinesiological Instrument for Normal and Altered Reaching Movement), enables researchers for the first time to objectively quantify and manipulate the mechanics of limb movement in multi-joint motor tasks. This device has already generated several new observations on how the brain coordinates limb movements. In a pilot project to begin this fall at St. Mary's by the Lake Hospital, the device will be used to quantify motor function of stroke patients. Motor patterns will be examined first for a number of simple tasks while subjects maintain fixed arm postures, then for more sophisticated tasks where they learn to make reaching movements while the robot applies complex novel loads to assess their ability to learn new motor skills.

Keyword: Robotics; Stroke
Link ID: 2616 - Posted: 09.10.2002

Copyright © 2002 AP Online By JOHN PORRETTO, AP Business Writer DETROIT - The death of a city councilwoman after weight-reduction surgery has focused attention on a newly available technique in which a noose is tightened around the stomach. Councilwoman Brenda Scott, who weighed more than 300 pounds, died Sept. 2 from an infection caused by a stomach perforation, three days after surgery at Port Huron Hospital. The medical examiner ruled the death an accident. Scott, 47, underwent a procedure called Lap-Band Adjustable Gastric Banding, which won approval from the Food and Drug Administration in June 2001. The procedure has been done on nearly 90,000 people in other countries, mostly in Europe, over the past nine years. Copyright © 2001 Nando Media

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 2615 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ST. PAUL, MN -- A new study challenges previous findings that patients undergoing elective coronary bypass grafting (CABG), or valve replacement, experience long-term cognitive decline. According to the study published in Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology, that's not always the case. The study compared the cognitive abilities of 52 patients prior to their CABG surgery and five years after. None of the patients showed clinically significant cognitive decline (defined as a decline of 1 standard deviation or more in at least two of the seven-part Wilcoxon tests administered). Other studies have reported late cognitive decline after CABG, however, none of these long-term follow-up studies included a control group like this one conducted at a hospital in Würzburg, Germany. According to neurologist Wolfgang Müllges, MD, the study author, "No individual patient showed a global decline at follow-up as compared to baseline. Seven patients (13 percent) had worse results in one single test."

Keyword: Stress; Intelligence
Link ID: 2614 - Posted: 09.10.2002

ST. PAUL, MN -- Patients with motor neuron disease, including ALS, were significantly more likely to been slim and to have been varsity athletes, according to a new study conducted by Nikolaos Scarmeas and a team of epidemiologists from Columbia University. The study is published in the latest issue of Neurology, the American Academy of Neurology's scientific journal. ALS, sometimes called "Lou Gehrig's Disease" after the famous baseball player whose career was cut short by the disease, has been associated with many patients who were lean throughout their lives as well as being athletes, said Lewis P. Rowland, MD, with the Neurological Institute in New York, and a co-author of the study. The case-control study compared variables including BMI (body mass index), age at onset of the disease, sex, slimness, and participation in varsity athletics of 279 patients with motor neuron disease and 152 with other neurological diseases.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Obesity
Link ID: 2613 - Posted: 09.10.2002

By Jonathan Amos BBC News Online science staff in Leicester People are bad at spotting liars because they look for the wrong signals, according to research presented to the British Association's annual science festival in Leicester. In a lecture on the psychology of lying, polygraph machines were also criticised as being poor at detecting falsehoods. The work was explained to the festival by psychologist Dr Richard Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire, an expert in the science of deception. "People are really dreadful at detecting when someone is lying," he told the BBC. "They think that liars avoid eye contact and fidget a lot. In fact, liars maintain more eye contact and they don't fidget." (C) BBC

Keyword: Emotions; Stress
Link ID: 2612 - Posted: 09.09.2002

By MIM UDOVITCH Claire is 18. She is a pretty teenager, with long strawberry-blond hair, and she is almost abnormally self-possessed for a girl from a small town who has suddenly been descended upon by a big-city reporter who is there to talk to her, in secret, about her secret life. She is sitting on the track that runs around the field of her high school's football stadium, wearing running shorts and a T-shirt and shivering a little because even though we are in Florida -- in the kind of town where, according to Claire, during ''season'' when you see yet another car with New York plates, you just feel like running it down -- there's an evening chill. Claire's is also the kind of town where how the local high school does in sports matters. Claire herself plays two sports. Practice and team fund-raisers are a regular part of her life, along with the typical small-town-Florida teenage occupations -- going to ''some hick party,'' hanging out with friends in the parking lot of the Taco Bell, bowling, going to the beach. Another regular part of her life, also a common teenage occupation, is anorexia -- refusal to eat enough to maintain a minimally healthy weight. So she is possibly shivering because she hasn't consumed enough calories for her body to keep itself warm. Claire first got into eating disorders when she was 14 or 15 and a bulimic friend introduced her to them. But she was already kind of on the lookout for something: ''I was gonna do it on my own, basically. Just because, like, exercise can only take you so far, you know? And I don't know, I just started to wonder if there was another way. Because they made it seem like, 'You do drugs, you die; be anorexic and you're gonna die in a year.' I knew that they kind of overplayed it and tried to frighten you away. So I always thought it can't be that bad for you.'' Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 2611 - Posted: 09.09.2002

By LISA SANDERS, M.D. The E.M.T.'s responded to a call about a young woman lying on the ground, her arms and legs jerking rhythmically and her eyes squeezed shut. The strangers who called 911 had no information on the woman whose seizure they witnessed. The E.M.T.'s checked her vital signs and rushed her to the local hospital. By the time the on-call team -- an intern and I -- were summoned to her bedside, the E.R. doctor had given her six milligrams of Ativan, a strong sedative used in the treatment of status epilepticus, seizures that won't stop. A thorough examination showed nothing unexpected for someone who had just experienced a grand mal seizure (one involving convulsions and a loss of consciousness). ''I've had seizures all my life,'' the patient explained when she woke up several hours later. ''But lately I've had several, even though I've been taking my medicine.'' She said she took Dilantin, a commonly prescribed drug, for the seizures. She added that she was very appreciative of the attention being given to her, since she'd just moved to the area and didn't have a local doctor yet. Copyright The New York Times Company

Keyword: Epilepsy; Miscellaneous
Link ID: 2610 - Posted: 09.09.2002

Some patients who suffer a burst blood vessel in their head could be suffering from a tissue disorder which could be identified with a skin test, say doctors. Aneurysms are areas of blood vessel which have become weakened and bulge outwards. Occasionally, the pressure of the blood flow can burst the vessel, often causing dangerous internal bleeding. If it happens inside the skull - an intracranial aneurysm - this is a type of stroke that can cause brain damage or even death. Experts at the University of Heidelberg in Germany say they are a long way from a reliable screening test for the condition, but feel at least some people are vulnerable to aneurysm because of a disorder of "connective tissue". This is found in the joints and skin as well as the walls of blood vessels, and helps keep all three flexible and strong. Aneurysm may occur, say the researchers, when the connective tissue in the artery wall somehow loses its strength and stretches outwards. (C) BBC

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 2609 - Posted: 09.08.2002

Psychologists have come up with an explanation for why most mothers instinctively cradle their babies in their left arms. Research shows that if a woman is given a baby or a doll to hold she is twice as likely to hold it on her left, rather than her right hand side. Brenda Todd and Victoria Bourne, psychologists at the University of Sussex, believe the reason is that the right side of the female brain is specialised for interpreting faces and emotions. They tested 32 right handed volunteers, of whom 12 were male, on their cradling bias. The volunteers also took a test to determine which side of the brain they used for face processing. The researchers found that females who cradled on the left showed signs that the right side of their brain controlled the way they processed information about faces. No such relationship was found for males. (C) BBC

Keyword: Laterality; Emotions
Link ID: 2608 - Posted: 09.08.2002

by Elizabeth Fried Ellen, LICSW Psychiatric Times Vol. XIX Issue 8 After numerous hospitalizations, electroconvulsive therapy and a battery of drug trials, a college senior remained suicidal. Looking for advice on her patient, a psychiatrist brought the case to a team meeting, only to be told by a senior colleague, "You can't save them all." "That kind of attitude is one I feel strongly can't exist in any counseling center or outpatient clinic," the psychiatrist said, her voice still filled with anger and disgust. "It's a ridiculous attitude." The psychiatrist did not give up on the patient, who has been symptom-free for over five years and is now happily married and employed. "Hopelessness is the biggest predictor of suicide," the psychiatrist told Psychiatric Times . "As a parent of someone who will one day go to college, I empathize with all the parents and have the expectation that the people they go to will not give up on them." © 2002 Psychiatric Times

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 2607 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Four decades ago, a wave of American draft dodgers fled to Canada rather than fight in Vietnam. Some turned to planting marijuana seeds to make a living and spurred an underground industry that is now booming across British Columbia. Over the last year or so, a new generation of Americans has flocked into western Canada, fleeing the Bush administration's crackdown on the clubs that say they provide marijuana to sick people, particularly in California. A handful who face drug charges and convictions in the United States have applied for political asylum. Hundreds more American marijuana smokers live underground existences here, local marijuana advocates say. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2606 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Severin Carrell Chemists have discovered a potential cure for smoking – inspired by cannabis's ability to make people hungry. The new drug, called Rimonabant, has another potentially valuable side effect from the cannabis link: people who take the drug have not only been found to give up smoking, but they quickly lose weight as well. In a month-long trial of 360 smokers who were trying to quit, Rimonabant's takers lost an average of 2.5lb in weight while a control group given a placebo drug gained more than 2.5lb in weight. © 2002 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2605 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Montana man had symptoms similar to mad cow disease David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor Researchers at UC San Francisco are analyzing the brain tissue of a Montana elk hunter who died last month with symptoms of a rare human disorder similar to mad cow disease in cattle and the chronic wasting disease that has felled elk and deer in the Midwest and Rocky mountains. Last October, 50-year-old Gary Padgham of Bozeman first showed the stumbling gait, the dementia and the impaired vision and memory loss that are typical of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, known also as CJD. He was taken to a hospital in Seattle where doctors first diagnosed his illness as Huntington's disease, and then as CJD. Padgham was later moved to Monterey where his family lives, and after he died in August his body was taken to UCSF for a specialized autopsy. ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle.

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 2604 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Skimping on sleep may be bad for your health Kristin Cobb As bleary-eyed college students in exam week will attest, lack of sleep impairs mood, performance, and judgment. They might guess, however, that the fast food and candy gobbled down during an all-nighter are far worse for bodily health than are the lost hours of slumber. After all, scientists have long been preaching that too many Big Macs and too few workouts are bad for you, but they have yet to demonstrate any definitive health costs of chronic sleep loss. Bolstered by new evidence, however, some scientists are suggesting that poor sleep habits are as important as poor nutrition and physical inactivity in the development of chronic illness. They say that this country's sleep debt may be contributing to its current epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. People in the United States sleep an average of 7.0 hours on weeknights, 1.5 hour less than they did a century ago, according to the National Sleep Foundation in Washington, D.C. One-third of the population sleeps 6.5 or fewer hours, far less than the 8 hours that many sleep specialists recommend. From Science News, Vol. 162, No. 10, Sept. 7, 2002, p. 152. Copyright ©2002 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Sleep; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 2603 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Nathan Seppa Scientists have developed an unusual vaccine that prevents some strokes in laboratory rats. The treatment works by desensitizing the animals' immune system to a protein residing within their blood vessels. When displayed on a blood vessel's lining, the protein, called E-Selectin, facilitates the binding of white blood cells to the vessel wall and elicits an inflammatory reaction that can lead to a stroke. By continually exposing rats to human E-Selectin using a nasal spray, researchers short-circuited that inflammatory process. The researchers tested the nasal vaccine in rats bred to have high blood pressure and hence an elevated risk of stroke. Rats receiving repeated doses of the nasal spray over their lifetime remained significantly less susceptible to stroke than were rats getting sprays containing saline mist or an innocuous chicken protein. From Science News, Vol. 162, No. 10, Sept. 7, 2002, p. 147. Copyright ©2002 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 2602 - Posted: 06.24.2010

TORONTO, -- A Canadian Senate committee has proposed that Canada legalize marijuana, allow it to be grown by licensed dealers and perhaps be sold in corner stores to people 16 or older. Such a policy would make Canada one of the world's most tolerant countries toward the drug. In a report, the committee found that marijuana was less harmful than alcohol and should not be treated as a criminal problem, but as a public health issue. The report called for amnesty for people convicted of marijuana possession. "Whether or not an individual uses marijuana should be a personal choice that is not subject to criminal penalties," Sen. Pierre Claude Nolin, chairman of the committee, said at a news conference. "But we have come to the conclusion that, as a drug, it should be regulated by the state much as we do for wine and beer." © 2002 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2601 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jane Elliott BBC News Online Health Staff To Ian Stewart the machinations of office politics are a complete mystery. Facial expressions leave him bemused and he cannot lie, not even little white lies. For Mr Stewart is autistic and he admits he finds the world a baffling place. "I just feel I am living on the wrong planet. I find the world a very strange place. "It is like being a pilot without radar, you cannot see a missile coming." Autism is a developmental disability that affects the way a person communicates and interacts with other people. (C) BBC

Keyword: Autism; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 2600 - Posted: 09.06.2002