COLUMBUS, Ohio - Researchers here in collaboration with a group in California have discovered that a protein normally thought only to be a component in the immune system actually plays a key role in regulating neurotransmission in the central nervous system -- the CNS -- as well. The protein, tumor necrosis factor alpha, or TNF-alpha, has long been known to be a key player in controlling cell death but this new finding offers new insights into how cells interact within the human nervous system. Understanding this new role of TNF-alpha may provide researchers with possible new approaches to treating illnesses such as dementia, Alzheimer's disease, stroke, epilepsy and spinal cord injury. The report was published in the latest issue of the journal Science.

Keyword: Trophic Factors; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 1761 - Posted: 03.26.2002

DALLAS – A common drug given to multiple sclerosis patients appears to stimulate weakened immune system cells, according to a study published by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. While Copaxone, or glatiramer acetate, has long been known to slow or stop the progression of attacks in MS patients, researchers have not known exactly how the drug treated the disease. In the March issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, lead author Dr. Nitin Karandikar, UT Southwestern assistant professor of pathology and neurology, and colleagues report that Copaxone appears to stimulate a certain type of T cell in MS patients. Produced by the thymus gland, T cells are white blood cells that fight infection and, in healthy people, coordinate the body’s immune response. There are two types of T cells, CD4 and CD8 cells. Both are involved in the immune process that underlies MS and, in MS patients, the cells function abnormally to give rise to this disease. The researchers used flow cytometry to analyze cells taken from MS patients and were able to see the T cells rallying under the effect of Copaxone.

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 1760 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ITHACA, N.Y. -- The tiny Belding's ground squirrels appear to be "kissing". Instead, they are sniffing to analyze secretions from facial scent glands, hoping to learn from the complex odor bouquet who is family and who's not. More remarkably, they are determining in a matter of seconds precisely who is close-enough kin to risk their lives helping -- and perhaps even whether they are too closely related to for mating. "It's as if these squirrels are reading DNA fingerprints and drawing the family tree with their noses," says Cornell University psychology researcher Jill M. Mateo. Her five years of field studies in the California mountains, as reported in the Proceedings: Biological Sciences (April 7), a journal of The Royal Society, Britain's national academy of science, are the first to show how recognition odors allow precise estimates of kinship, even among distant relatives.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 1759 - Posted: 03.26.2002

Less than 7% of all Parkinson Disease (PD) patients across Europe that could benefit from deep brain stimulation have benefited from the Activa® Parkinson’s Control Therapy, despite it being the most significant advance in the treatment of Parkinson’s in more than 30 years. The European Parkinson’s Disease Association (EPDA) announced today new evidence on the current uptake of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease patients and despite its success there are still large numbers of patients waiting or denied access to the therapy. Deep brain stimulation uses Medtronic’s Activa® Parkinson’s Control Therapy which is a pioneering treatment for patients with Parkinson’s disease. It was launched by Medtronic with the support of the EPDA to great acclaim in Europe four years ago in 1998, however considerably low numbers of patients with Parkinson’s disease have received the treatment since that period.

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 1758 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Steve Connor Science Editor Scientists have discovered that Prozac, the antidepressant taken by millions of people around the world, may stimulate the growth of brain tumours by blocking the body's natural ability to kill cancer cells. An international team of researchers led by John Gordon, professor of immunology at Birmingham University, found evidence to suggest cancer cells can be killed by "positive thinking", which could be blocked when people take Prozac. The study, to be published in the journal Blood next week, examined the effects of Prozac and other antidepressants on a group of tumour cells growing in a test tube. The researchers found that the drug prevented the cancer cells from committing "suicide", thereby leading to a more vigorous growth of the tumours.

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 1756 - Posted: 03.26.2002

LONDON By health-newswire.com reporters The effectiveness of a simple “breath test” that may be able to identify children with dyslexia and determine whether they are benefiting from treatment is to be studied by UK researchers. The breath test, developed by scientists from the University of Oxford, works by measuring biochemical imbalances in the body that are thought to underlie some behavioural and learning difficulties. The development of the test follows research by Dr Alexandra Richardson, of the university’s Department of Physiology, who found that some people with conditions such as dyslexia, dyspraxia and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder can be treated with a simple nutritional supplement. © Health Media Group 2002 Terms and Conditions

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 1755 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Eating bat meat may be to blame for mystery illness ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON, — Scientists have long sought to understand a horrific brain disease that once devastated the native people of Guam — Lou Gehrig’s, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s symptoms rolled into one. Now two researchers have uncovered clues that suggest a Chamorro dietary tradition — eating a type of bat that feeds on neurotoxic plants — might be behind the mystery illness. IT’S CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence so far. But if the new theory is proved right, it could be more than another dismal discovery that diet can wreck the human brain. Understanding the Guam disease may help uncover novel ways to treat regular Lou Gehrig’s, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s diseases. The theory, published Monday in the journal Neurology, turns on the principle that changing economies can impact disease. The brain disease peaked after World War II brought guns and cash to Guam, spurring commercial hunting until the bats neared extinction — and then the human disease in turn rapidly waned, said ethnobotanist Paul Alan Cox, who studies how indigenous people relate to their environment. • MSNBC Terms, Conditions and Privacy © 2002

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 1754 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Development of the anterior pituitary gland, from a common primordium in the roof of the embryonic mouth into an organ comprising multiple distinct endocrine cell types, is described by two University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine researchers in a review published March 22, 2002 in the journal Science. M. Geoffrey Rosenfeld, M.D., Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and UCSD professor, and Kathleen M. Scully, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow, UCSD Department of Medicine, provide a step-by-step description of the intricate cell signaling and nuclear events that take place during key steps in pituitary gland development. Lying at the base of the brain, the pituitary is a pea-sized gland that secretes hormones involved in growth, reproduction, lactation, thyroid gland function, and the maintenance of homeostasis (i.e. a constant internal environment). The gland is a complex organ regulating a combination of neural signals from the hypothalamus as well as feedback from target organs. Copyright ©2001 Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 1753 - Posted: 06.24.2010

VENICE, Florida (AP) -- Emiliano Valdez, a boxer from the Dominican Republic who was knocked unconscious during a match two years ago, has died of complications from blows to the head. He was 28. Valdez had been in a coma since suffering serious brain damage during a professional welterweight fight with Teddy Reid at the Venice Arena on Jan. 23, 2000. Reid knocked Valdez unconscious with successive blows in the 10th and final round. He died Wednesday at Bon Secours-Venice Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Venice. Copyright © 2002 CNN/Sports Illustrated.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 1750 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Points to Need for Blood Sugar Control in Diabetic and Obese Women Boston--March, 2002--Diabetic mothers could have a surprising culprit to blame for their high risk of having babies with neural tube defects. Scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center working with mice report in the March 15 Genes and Development that a protein normally involved in programmed cell death may, as a consequence of high blood sugar levels, mistakenly tell the cells of the early developing neural tube to die. It is not clear whether the protein, p53, plays a similar role in human neural tube defects, which include spina bifida (where the spinal cord is not completely enclosed) and exencephaly (where the brain is exposed and the skull is not fully formed). But the report provides a possible explanation for a class defects that appears to be on the rise. Even with good control of diabetes, the risk for neural tube and other birth defects is two to five times higher than normal if a mother has diabetes. That risk could increase as diabetes and obesity, both of which can cause high blood sugar, makes inroads into younger populations. "I think there is a very large population of women at risk for having a baby with a neural tube defect who are not being looked at aggressively because they have not been diagnosed as having diabetes, and yet, their blood glucose may be higher than normal" said Mary Loeken, PhD, who is a researcher at Joslin and assistant professor of medicine (physiology) at Harvard Medical School.

Keyword: Apoptosis; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 1749 - Posted: 03.24.2002

Chemotherapy makes only a marginal difference to the life expectancy of patients with hard-to-treat brain tumours. But scientists are hopeful that in future, new drugs or combinations of treatments will boost survival. Life expectancy was increased, on average, from ten to 12 months for adult patients who received chemotherapy, a study showed, compared to those receiving no extra treatment after surgery and radiotherapy. Two years after treatment, 15 out of every 100 patients assigned chemotherapy in addition to surgery and radiotherapy were still alive, compared to ten out of every 100 receiving only the surgery and radiotherapy. (C) BBC

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 1748 - Posted: 03.23.2002

John Pickrell A newly found, million-year-old African skull is fueling an ongoing debate over whether Homo erectus was a single wide-ranging species or several localized ones. The skull appears similar to those found in Asia, suggesting that the populations were in fact one species. Fossils of H. erectus were discovered in Java in the 1800s. For many years, this species was recognized as the sole link between humans' earliest direct ancestor, Homo habilis, and modern Homo sapiens. H. erectus emerged 1.8 million years ago and may have survived to times as recent as 50,000 years ago. Beginning in the 1980s, with the advent of new methods of analysis, some anthropologists have argued for splitting up H. erectus (SN: 6/20/92, p. 408). Proponents of this argument hold that European and African specimens formerly considered H. erectus belong to another species that they call Homo ergaster. They say that H. ergaster evolved into modern man but the Asia-bound H. erectus came up against an evolutionary dead end. From Science News, Vol. 161, No. 12, March 23, 2002, p. 179. Copyright ©2002 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 1747 - Posted: 06.24.2010

TROY, NY - The cause of Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) has remained elusive since it brought down one of baseball's greatest players 60 years ago. According to Wilfredo "Freddie" Colón, ALS starts "when good proteins go bad." Understanding just why they go bad is a necessary first step toward developing medicines that will help ALS patients live with a manageable disease instead of a death sentence. The Rensselaer biochemist's vital research has recently earned a $1 million, four-year grant from the National Institutes of Health. Copyright © 1996–2001 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 1746 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DAVID AKIN ABritish cybernetics professor is the first human to have a computer chip directly connected to his central nervous system, a technology that eventually could help paralyzed people and allow soldiers to communicate silently in battle. It was announced yesterday that Kevin Warwick, a professor in the department of cybernetics at Reading University in England, underwent surgery over the weekend to have an computer chip inserted in his upper left arm. The chip, about five centimetres long and capable of Internet communication, has been wired to nerve endings. In experiments to take place later this year, Prof. Warwick expects that the chip will record sensations, such as movement and pain, and send them to an external computer. © 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Keyword: Robotics; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 1745 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New Haven, Conn. -- A Yale researcher tracing a recombinant virus as it entered the brains of laboratory animals found it damaged selective areas and then vanished without a trace, raising questions about possible mental problems caused by undetected viruses. "The virus went to areas of the brain that play an important role in functions related to attention," said Anthony Van den Pol, professor of neurosurgery at Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the study published as the cover story in the February issue of the Journal of Virology . "After a few days the virus was eliminated by the immune system, leaving no trace of the virus in the brain, but nerve cells in very specific areas of the brain were lost. This is a potential model for viruses that can cause psychiatric and neurological dysfunction, yet leave no evidence of their presence at later times."

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 1744 - Posted: 03.22.2002

New Haven, Conn. -- A 29-year-old man with multiple sclerosis is the second patient to undergo transplantation surgery at Yale in an effort to repair myelin, the protective brain and spinal cord sheath that is destroyed by the disease, Yale researchers have reported. The surgery took place in two stages March 6-7 and the patient was discharged from Yale-New Haven Hospital March 10. The young man is the second of five patients who are scheduled to participate in the groundbreaking clinical trial. "The patient is doing fine," said Timothy Vollmer, M.D., associate professor of neurology at Yale School of Medicine. "He has a high level of disability because of the location of the lesions in the brain, but he is otherwise healthy."

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 1743 - Posted: 03.22.2002

Brain's negativity-detector might be an unreliable guide. JOHN WHITFIELD Losing money touches part of the brain's emotion circuit behind the forehead, researchers have discovered. The area seems to be a general negativity-detector: the amount lost doesn't matter, and winning leaves it cold. But the brain does take account of previous experience. A run of losses produces a stronger response - as if the loss-detector were smarting at the injustice - psychologists William Gehring and Adrian Willoughby of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, have found1. This reaction seems to mirror the gambler's mistaken belief that, just because the roulette wheel has come up red four times in a row, the next turn is more likely to be black. "The brain thinks it's due a win - it expects things to average out," Gehring suggests. * Gehring, W.J. & Willoughby, A.R. The medial frontal cortex and the rapid processing of monetary gains and losses. Science, 295, 2279 - 2282, (2002). © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 1742 - Posted: 06.24.2010

HOUSTON - A newly identified gene, atrogin-1, is involved in muscle loss associated with cancer, diabetes, fasting and kidney disease as well as in the atrophy occurring with disuse, inactivity, and nerve or spinal injury. This discovery, funded by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) and the Muscular Dystrophy Association, increases the understanding of how muscles atrophy and may lead to development of new treatments for muscle wasting on Earth and in space. "Through a study of rat muscles, we determined that atrogin-1 is found only in muscle," said Dr. Alfred Goldberg, professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School and associate leader of NSBRI's team of scientists focusing on muscle loss in space. "In normal muscles, the amount is low; however, there is a dramatic increase in the production of the atrogin-1 protein in conditions where muscles lose size and strength." Copyright © 2000-2002 National Space Biomedical Research Institute

Keyword: Muscles; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 1741 - Posted: 06.24.2010

St. Louis, — Researchers have for the first time used a blood test to identify Alzheimer’s-type changes in living mice. The test, developed by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Eli Lilly and Company, predicts the amount of amyloid plaque in an animal’s brain, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. To date, the only way to definitively diagnose this disease in humans is by examining a person’s brain after death. “We don’t know if this finding in mice will apply to humans,” says David M. Holtzman, M.D., the Charlotte and Paul Hagemann Associate Professor of Neurology and associate professor of molecular biology and pharmacology at the School of Medicine. “If it does, it has the potential to provide a non-invasive means of detecting Alzheimer’s pathology even before clinical symptoms appear.”

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 1740 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Anatomy of a gamble: Our brains detect wins and losses in a third of a second, then trigger ANN ARBOR---Within about a quarter of a second after we see the outcome of a gamble, our brains have processed whether we've won or lost, according to a University of Michigan study published in the current (March 22) issue of Science. Moreover, choices about the next wager made a few seconds after losses are riskier than choices made after gains, the study found, providing an apparent neurological counterpart of the gambler's fallacy---the misguided belief that a win is bound to follow a string of losses. The study, conducted by U-M psychologists William J. Gehring and Adrian R. Willoughby, confirms the unsettling existence of neurological activity that quickly, automatically and unconsciously evaluates the significance of choices we have made, then guides our subsequent decision-making.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 1739 - Posted: 03.22.2002