By Nicholas Bakalar A good night’s sleep may be critical for the metabolic health of teenagers. Researchers studied 829 boys and girls, average age 13, who wore electronic measuring devices that tracked sleep time, sleep quality and physical activity over seven to 10 days. They also recorded five factors associated with cardiovascular risk: waist circumference, blood pressure, HDL or “good” cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin resistance. Inadequate sleep was common — 31 percent of the children slept less than seven hours a night, and 58 percent had poor sleep efficiency as measured by percentage of time awake after initial sleep onset. Shorter sleep duration and poorer sleep efficiency were associated with higher systolic blood pressure, lower HDL cholesterol, higher triglycerides and higher glucose levels, all indicators of poorer metabolic health. Other studies have found that shorter sleep is associated with obesity, but in this study, published in Pediatrics, the associations were independent of body mass index. The researchers controlled for age and sex, race and ethnicity, TV viewing, fast food consumption and other factors. “It was surprising that we found that the relationship was not fully explained by body mass index,” said the lead author, Elizabeth M. Cespedes Feliciano, a staff scientist at Kaiser Permanente Northern California. “The main takeaway is that using objective measurements, we showed that both quantity and quality of sleep matter for metabolic health.” © 2018 The New York Times Compan

Keyword: Sleep; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25219 - Posted: 07.18.2018

Catherine Offord Researchers at Caltech have designed a noninvasive method to control specific neural circuits in the mouse brain. The technique, published earlier this week (July 9) in Nature Biomedical Engineering, combines ultrasound waves with genetic engineering and the administration of designer compounds to selectively activate or inhibit neurons. Although currently only tested in mice, the approach could offer a novel way to administer therapy to regions of the human brain that are difficult to access using surgery. “By using sound waves and known genetic techniques, we can, for the first time, noninvasively control specific brain regions and cell types as well as the timing of when neurons are switched on or off,” study coauthor Mikhail Shapiro says in a statement. While several emerging methods in neuroscience allow researchers to manipulate brain circuits, most “require invasive techniques such as stereotaxic surgery, which can damage tissue and initiate a long-lasting immune response,” note neuroscientists Caroline Menard and Scott Russo of Quebec City’s Université Laval and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, respectively, in an accompanying News and Views article. “Also, conventional pharmacological approaches lack the spatial, temporal and cell-type specificity required to treat the brain, and can lead to deleterious side effects.” © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 25218 - Posted: 07.17.2018

According to a new National Institutes of Health-funded study, it is not destiny that brings two fruit flies together, but an evolutionary matchmaker of sorts that made tiny adjustments to their brains’ mating circuits, so they would be attracted to one another while rejecting advances from other, even closely-related, species. The results, published in Nature, may help explain how a specific female scent triggers completely different responses in different male flies. “This study reveals how a very small tweak in brain wiring can result in large changes in very complex social behaviors, which can ultimately determine the fate of a species,” said Jim Gnadt, Ph.D., program director at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), which supported the study. “Understanding how variation in brain circuits leads to changes in behavior is one of the primary goals of the NIH’s BRAIN Initiative and this study provides a piece of the puzzle.” Vanessa Ruta, Ph.D., professor at Rockefeller University in New York City, and her colleagues used cutting-edge genetic tools to compare the brain circuits behind courtship behavior in two closely related species of fruit fly, D. melanogaster and D. simulans. Previous studies showed that although males from both species could detect a specific pheromone, or scent, called 7,11-heptacosadiene (7,11-HD), their reactions to it were very different. Male D. melanogaster flies found it attractive while D. simulans males avoided females that carried it. In this study, Dr. Ruta and her team discovered that slight differences in the way the fly’s brains are wired may control these opposite reactions.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 25217 - Posted: 07.17.2018

By Niraj Chokshi Six months after a White House physician told reporters that President Trump had aced a well-regarded test of cognitive impairment, a group of doctors is warning that the exam may have been compromised by the resulting news coverage, which revealed some of its questions. Until it’s clear what effect the exposure has had on the effectiveness of the test, known as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MoCA, doctors should consider using alternatives, said Dr. Hourmazd Haghbayan, an internist at the University of Toronto. “When I saw that this test was being disseminated to the mass population, and in some cases individuals were being invited to take it online, I wondered whether there would be an effect,” Dr. Haghbayan and colleagues wrote in a letter published Monday in the medical journal JAMA Neurology. The group collected data to show how widely the test’s questions were publicized after Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, a rear admiral in the Navy and then the White House physician, mentioned it at a news conference in January. Dr. Jackson, who later withdrew as nominee for veterans affairs secretary under a cloud of scandal, told reporters at the time that Mr. Trump was in “excellent” overall health and that he had landed a perfect MoCA score. “The fact that the president got 30 out of 30 on that exam, I think that there’s no indication whatsoever that he has any cognitive issues,” Dr. Jackson said. Mr. Trump has long faced questions about his mental stability and his fitness for office. He has occasionally responded to them directly, as he did in early January when he described himself on Twitter as “a very stable genius.” Using a Google News search, the researchers found 190 articles published in the days after the announcement that mentioned MoCA in reference to the president. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 25216 - Posted: 07.17.2018

Ashley Yeager Exosomes in the blood that originated from brain cells carry biomarkers that indicate the severity of traumatic brain injuries, researchers reported in Brain Injury in June. The authors say certain proteins in these vesicles could help predict the progression and long-term effects of the brain damage. “Developing a peripheral blood test to track TBIs [traumatic brain injuries] is a holy grail,” says John Lukens, a neuroscientist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine who was not involved in the study. Showing that blood-derived biomarkers can be predictive of the issues individuals with TBIs might experience, he says, is a big advance toward achieving that goal. Past studies have shown that elevated levels of tau and amyloid-β in blood plasma are associated with post-concussive symptoms after a TBI, and postmortem studies of the brains of athletes that have had repeated head injuries also have shown increased levels of tau. The detection of amyloid-β in postmortem brain tissue has been tied to repeated hits to the head that didn’t cause concussions but hinted at brain injury. Other research has also suggested links between brain inflammation, TBIs, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but such connections have been hard to identify using blood biomarkers. In the new study, Jessica Gill, who studies the neurobiology of trauma at the National Institute of Nursing Research, and colleagues collected blood from 60 men and 4 women who served in the military. Some of the individuals had suffered mild TBIs, while others had not. The team then used recently developed nanoparticle sorting technology to isolate individual exosomes—extracellular vesicles that carry contents from their cells of origin—from the soldiers’ blood. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist.

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 25215 - Posted: 07.17.2018

By Mark Fischetti The Same Genes May Underlie Different Psychiatric Disorders Schizophrenia brain. 3-D magnetic resonance image (MRI) of the brain of a schizophrenic patient showing structural changes. Credit: Nancy C. Andreasen Getty Images People who have autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder may have different challenges, but the ailments might arise from a common set of genes. Researchers compared genetic analyses of 700 human brains from deceased individuals who had one of those three disorders, major depression or alcoholism (columns) with brains of individuals who had none of the conditions. They examined 13 groups of genes thought to function together (rows). The scientists found that five groups had a pattern of overactivity or underactivity across at least three of the five conditions (blue and gray panels). Bipolar disorder, for example, was more similar to schizophrenia than to major depression even though clinicians may link bipolar disorder and depression, based on their symptoms. These insights could possibly reveal new treatments, says neurogeneticist Daniel Geschwind of the University of California, Los Angeles, one of the investigators. He adds that one path to that result, which has not yet been tested, could be to “put the different groups of genes in lab dishes and see which drugs reverse any overexpression or underexpression of the genes.” © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 25214 - Posted: 07.17.2018

Sukanya Charuchandra Older individuals with high blood pressure are more likely to have brain lesions than those without high blood pressure and may also have protein tangles, a sign of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published in Neurology on July 11. Coauthor Zoe Arvanitakis, a neurologist at Rush University Medical Center, says these “preliminary data” need further exploration, according to the Associated Press. “We can’t be alarmist,” she says. According to a statement, the researchers were keen to learn if blood pressure had links to signs of brain aging. They tracked 1,288 people who were over the age of 65 until their deaths, an average of eight years. The scientists measured the blood pressure of the subjects once every year and examined their brains postmortem. Of the total number of subjects, two-thirds of the subjects had high blood pressure, while about half had one or more brain infarcts, necrotic regions caused by a loss of blood flow. With higher blood pressure, the risk of brain lesions went up: people with an upper blood pressure of 147 (normal being 120) had a 46 percent higher chance of having one or more lesions. Additionally, those with high pressure were more likely to have protein tangles in their brains. While the paper has “good information,” it also raises many questions, Ajay Misra, a neurologist at New York University Winthrop Hospital who was not involved in this research, tells Health Day. For instance, is higher blood pressure better in some situations? The researchers found that elderly subjects with lower blood pressure had a greater risk of stroke. Misra suggests the higher pressure may be required to keep blood vessels of older adults clear. He adds that a one-size-fits-all blood-pressure guideline may not be appropriate. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 25213 - Posted: 07.17.2018

Laura Beil Neuroscientist Barbara Bendlin studies the brain as Alzheimer’s disease develops. When she goes home, she tries to leave her work in the lab. But one recent research project has crossed into her personal life: She now takes sleep much more seriously. Bendlin works at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, home to the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention, a study of more than 1,500 people who were ages 40 to 65 when they signed up. Members of the registry did not have symptoms of dementia when they volunteered, but more than 70 percent had a family history of Alzheimer’s disease. Since 2001, participants have been tested regularly for memory loss and other signs of the disease, such as the presence of amyloid-beta, a protein fragment that can clump into sticky plaques in the brain. Those plaques are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia. Each person also fills out lengthy questionnaires about their lives in the hopes that one day the information will offer clues to the disease. Among the inquiries: How tired are you? Some answers to the sleep questions have been eye-opening. Bendlin and her colleagues identified 98 people from the registry who recorded their sleep quality and had brain scans. Those who slept badly — measured by such things as being tired during the day — tended to have more A-beta plaques visible on brain imaging, the researchers reported in 2015 in Neurobiology of Aging. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018.

Keyword: Sleep; Alzheimers
Link ID: 25212 - Posted: 07.16.2018

Allison Aubrey Can't cool off this summer? Heat waves can slow us down in ways we may not realize. New research suggests heat stress can muddle our thinking, making simple math a little harder to do. "There's evidence that our brains are susceptible to temperature abnormalities," says Joe Allen, co-director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University. And as the climate changes, temperatures spike and heat waves are more frequent. To learn more about how the heat influences young, healthy adults, Allen and his colleagues studied college students living in dorms during a summer heat wave in Boston. Half of the students lived in buildings with central AC, where the indoor air temperature averaged 71 degrees. The other half lived in dorms with no AC, where air temperatures averaged almost 80 degrees. "In the morning, when they woke up, we pushed tests out to their cellphones," explains Allen. The students took two tests a day for 12 consecutive days. One test, which included basic addition and subtraction, measured cognitive speed and memory. A second test assessed attention and processing speed. "We found that the students who were in the non-air-conditioned buildings actually had slower reaction times: 13 percent lower performance on basic arithmetic tests, and nearly a 10 percent reduction in the number of correct responses per minute," Allen explains. The results, published in PLOS Medicine, may come as a surprise. "I think it's a little bit akin to the frog in the boiling water," Allen says. There's a "slow, steady — largely imperceptible — rise in temperature, and you don't realize it's having an impact on you." © 2018 npr

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 25211 - Posted: 07.16.2018

by Melissa Healy An extra shot of testosterone, it seems, makes a man act like an animal. You know the type: one of those male birds that unfurls some of its most spectacular feathers when the ladies are around, or the buck who uses his crown of antlers to advertise his virility. In short, an animal prone to making showy displays of his power, beauty or wealth to win mates, gain allies and intimidate competitors. But for humans — American men, at least — new research suggests that this testosterone-driven display of prowess finds its expression in a preference for status goods. Whether it’s in his choice of top-shelf alcohol at the club, the watch on his wrist or the clothes he wears, a man under the influence of the male sex hormone is going to reach for the product that says to potential mates (and to competitors for those mates), “U can’t touch this.” This pursuit of status in the choice of manufactured goods is called “positional consumption.” It’s been a hot topic among evolutionary psychologists and now is finding its way into the study of marketing. Researchers from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania gave a supply of gel to 243 men, ages 18 to 55, and asked them to rub it all over their upper body. Some of the gels contained testosterone, others a placebo. Then the researchers asked the subjects to look at pictures and descriptions of five pairs of items — including watches, jeans and jackets — and judge which ones they preferred. © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 25210 - Posted: 07.16.2018

By Vikram K. Jaswal and Nameera Akhtar One of the most widely held beliefs about autistic people — that they are not interested in other people — is almost certainly wrong. Our understanding of autism has changed quite a bit over the past century, but this particular belief has been remarkably persistent. Seventy-five years ago, the first published account of autism described its subjects as “happiest when left alone” and “impervious to people.” Even now, a National Institutes of Health fact sheet suggests that autistic people are “indifferent to social engagement,” and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claims that some “might not be interested in other people at all.” There is no question that autistic people can seem as though they are not interested in others. They may not make eye contact or they may repeat lines from movies that don’t seem relevant in the moment. They may flap their hands or rock their bodies in ways that other people find off-putting. But just because someone appears socially uninterested does not mean that he or she is. As we point out in a paper published last month in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, many autistic people say they are very interested in, and in some cases desperate for, social connection. They experience loneliness, say they want friends and even prefer two-player games to one-player games. As the autistic author Naoki Higashida writes, “I can’t believe that anyone born as a human being really wants to be left all on their own, not really,” adding, “The truth is, we’d love to be with other people.” So why do autistic people act in ways that make it appear they want to be left alone? Autism is a neurological condition that affects how people perceive, think and move. Autistic people say that some of their apparently unsociable behaviors result from these neurological characteristics. Paradoxically, they may behave in these ways when they are trying to engage with other people. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25209 - Posted: 07.16.2018

By Kate Sheridan On Sunday, neuroscientist Brenda Milner turns 100, and she plans to celebrate in two ways: the World Cup finals, followed by a party. “I tipped France from the beginning of the tournament to win, but I must say that Croatia has really impressed me,” she told STAT recently. In her 100 years of life, our understanding of the nervous system has changed dramatically. For example, only a few decades before Milner was born, some scientists still believed the nervous system was an uninterrupted network throughout the body. Now we know it isn’t, and drugs are created specifically to manipulate the movement of chemicals across the gaps between neurons. Milner’s work in memory and language processing has contributed mightily to that shift in understanding, and her decades-long career has made her both witness and player to the growth of neuroscience as a field. Yet as she journeyed from Cambridge University to the British defense ministry during World War II to the Montreal Neurological Institute, perhaps no encounter has shaped her career — and the study of human cognition — as meeting a man in the late 1950’s known as Patient H.M. H.M. was a young man who had epilepsy — and until his death in 2008, very few people knew his real name. A few years before Milner met him, surgeons removed parts of his brain, including his hippocampus, where doctors then thought his seizures began. © 2018 STAT

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 25208 - Posted: 07.16.2018

Laura Sanders Today’s young women are more likely to experience depression and anxiety during pregnancy than their mothers were, a generation-spanning survey finds. From 1990 to 1992, about 17 percent of young pregnant women in southwest England who participated in the study had signs of depressed mood. But the generation that followed, including these women’s daughters and sons’ partners, fared worse. Twenty-five percent of these young women, pregnant in 2012 to 2016, showed signs of depression, researchers report July 13 in JAMA Network Open. “We are talking about a lot of women,” says study coauthor Rebecca Pearson, a psychiatric epidemiologist at Bristol University in England. Earlier studies also had suggested that depression during and after pregnancy is relatively common (SN: 3/17/18, p. 16). But those studies are dated, Pearson says. “We know very little about the levels of depression and anxiety in new mums today,” she says. To measure symptoms of depression and anxiety, researchers used the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale — 10 questions, each with a score of 0 to 3, written to reveal risk of depression during and after pregnancy. A combined score of 13 and above signals high levels of symptoms. From 1990 to 1992, 2,390 women between the ages of 19 and 24 took the survey while pregnant. Of these women, 408 — or 17 percent — scored 13 or higher, indicating worrisome levels of depression or anxiety. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018.

Keyword: Depression; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 25207 - Posted: 07.14.2018

By Sarah Gibbens Can you remember how you felt the first time you rode a bike? What about your first kiss—or your first heartbreak? Memorable moments and the emotions they trigger can resonate in our minds for decades, accumulating and powerfully shaping who we are as individuals. But for those who experience severe trauma, such memories can be haunting, and brutally painful memories can leave people with life-altering mental conditions.  So, what if traumatic memories didn't have to cause so much pain? As our understanding of the human brain evolves, various groups of neuroscientists are inching closer to techniques that manipulate memory to treat conditions such as PTSD or Alzheimer’s.  For now, the work is mainly happening in other animals, such as mice. But as these initial trials show continued success, scientists are looking toward the potential for tests in people, while grappling with the ethical implications of what it means to change a fundamental piece of someone’s identity. Feasibly, we could alter human memory in the not too distant future—but does that mean we should? Neuroscientists usually define a singular memory as an engram—a physical change in brain tissue associated with a particular recollection. Recently, brain scans revealed that an engram isn't isolated to one region of the brain and instead manifests as a colorful splattering across the neural tissue.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 25206 - Posted: 07.14.2018

By Esther Landhuis From savoring a piece of cake to hugging a friend, many of life’s pleasures trigger a similar reaction in the brain—a surge of chemicals that tell the body “that was good, do it again.” Research published Friday in Nature Communications suggests this feel-good circuit may do much more. Using lab tools to activate that reward circuit in mice, scientists discovered that its chemical signals reach the immune system, empowering a subset of bone marrow cells to slow the growth of tumors. The findings have yet to be confirmed in humans. But given the reward system is linked with positive emotions, the research offers a physiological mechanism for how a person’s psychological state could help to stall cancer progression. Plenty of research measures the health impact of stress and negative feelings, says Erica Sloan, a biologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. But the potential for immune activity to shift in response to positive influences through the brain’s reward center—“that’s what I think is really exciting,” says Sloan, who studies neural-immune activity in cancer but was not involved in the present study. The notion that the brain talks to the immune system isn’t new. One of the most compelling examples is the placebo effect—the centuries-old observation that sugar pills can work as well as evidence-based medicine in some people. For years scientists have tried to unravel the biology behind this mysterious phenomenon. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Neuroimmunology; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 25205 - Posted: 07.14.2018

By Smitha Mundasad Global Health Correspondent, BBC News For many years, Dr Andrew Bastawrous could not see clearly enough to spot the leaves on trees or the stars in the sky. Teachers kept telling him he was lazy and he kept missing the football during games. Then, aged 12, his mother took him to have his eyes tested and that changed everything. Now he is a prize-winning eye doctor with a plan to use a smartphone app to bring better vision to millions of children around the world. Dr Bastawrous told the BBC: "I'll never forget that moment at the optometrist. I had trial lenses on and looked across the car park and saw the gravel on the road had so much detail I had had no idea about. "A couple of weeks later I got my first pair of glasses and that's when I saw stars for first time, started doing well at school and it completely transformed my life." Around the world 12 million children, like Dr Bastawrous, have sight problems that could be corrected by a pair of glasses. But in many areas, access to eye specialists is difficult - leaving children with visual impairments that can harm school work and, ultimately, their opportunities in later life. In rural Kenya, for example, there is one eye doctor for one million people. Meanwhile in the US, there is on average one ophthalmologist for every 15,800 people. In 2011 Dr Bastawrous - by now an eye doctor in England - decided to study the eye health of the population of Kitale, Kenya, as part of his PhD. He took about £100,000 of eye equipment in an attempt to set up 100 temporary eye clinics but found this didn't work, as reliable roads and electricity were scarce. It was realising that these same areas had great mobile phone coverage - with about 80% of the population owning a cell phone - that sparked the idea for Peek. © 2018 BBC.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 25204 - Posted: 07.14.2018

By Erica Goode Suppose that, seeking a fun evening out, you pay $175 for a ticket to a new Broadway musical. Seated in the balcony, you quickly realize that the acting is bad, the sets are ugly and no one, you suspect, will go home humming the melodies. Do you head out the door at the intermission, or stick it out for the duration? Studies of human decision-making suggest that most people will stay put, even though money spent in the past logically should have no bearing on the choice. This “sunk cost fallacy,” as economists call it, is one of many ways that humans allow emotions to affect their choices, sometimes to their own detriment. But the tendency to factor past investments into decision-making is apparently not limited to Homo sapiens. In a study published on Thursday in the journal Science, investigators at the University of Minnesota reported that mice and rats were just as likely as humans to be influenced by sunk costs. The more time they invested in waiting for a reward — in the case of the rodents, flavored pellets; in the case of the humans, entertaining videos — the less likely they were to quit the pursuit before the delay ended. “Whatever is going on in the humans is also going on in the nonhuman animals,” said A. David Redish, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Minnesota and an author of the study. This cross-species consistency, he and others said, suggested that in some decision-making situations, taking account of how much has already been invested might pay off. “Evolution by natural selection would not promote any behavior unless it had some — perhaps obscure — net overall benefit,” said Alex Kacelnik, a professor of behavioral ecology at Oxford, who praised the new study as “rigorous” in its methodology and “well designed.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 25203 - Posted: 07.13.2018

Tina Hesman Saey MADISON, Wis. — Giving children with autism a healthier mix of gut bacteria as a way to improve behavioral symptoms continued to work even two years after treatment ended. The finding may solidify the connection between tummy troubles and autism, and provide more evidence that the gut microbiome — the collection of bacteria and other microbes that live in the intestines — can influence behavior. “It’s a long way from saying there’s a cure for autism,” says Michael Hylin, a neuroscientist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale who was not involved in the work. “But I think it’s a promising approach. It’s one that’s worthwhile.” Children with autism spectrum disorders often have gastrointestinal problems. In previous studies, environmental engineer Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown of Arizona State University in Tempe and colleagues discovered that children with autism had fewer types of bacteria living in their guts than typically developing children did. And many of the kids were missing Prevotella bacteria, which may help regulate immune system actions. The researchers wondered whether altering the children’s cocktail of gut microbes to get a more diverse and healthier mix might help fix both the digestive issues and the behavioral symptoms associated with autism. In a small study of 18 children and teenagers with autism, the scientists gave kids fecal transplants from healthy donors over eight weeks. During and two months after the treatment, the kids had fewer gastrointestinal problems, including diarrhea, constipation, abdominal pain and indigestion than before the therapy. Autism symptoms, such as hyperactivity, repetitive actions and irritability, also improved and seemed to be getting even better at the end of the trial than immediately after treatment ended, the team reported last year in Microbiome. But no one knew whether the improvements would last. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018.

Keyword: Autism; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 25202 - Posted: 07.13.2018

/ By Jeremy Samuel Faust Last year, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the federal National Institutes of Health, laid out plans for what is a rarity in the realm of public health: a high quality clinical trial. The “Moderate Alcohol and Cardiovascular Health Trial,” known as MACH15, was to be randomized so that some subjects would be selected to drink and some would not. It would follow participants “prospectively,” over time, not retrospectively. And in the end, the results were to be adjudicated by evaluators blinded to which subjects had been instructed to drink and which to abstain. The goal was an assessment of the effect of alcohol consumption on cardiovascular health. The methodologic problems of the MACH15 trial’s design are considerable. How the outcome measures ever passed muster defies logic. But last month, the National Institutes of Health took the unusual step of shutting down one of its own clinical trials — a $100 million dollar experiment gone wrong. The announcement followed an internal investigation, prompted by a dogged New York Times report, that uncovered inappropriate interactions between the alcohol industry (Anheuser-Busch InBev, Heineken, and others) and the NIAAA in the execution of MACH15. By law, federal health agencies can receive funding from for-profit industry. But direct courting of funding, coordination, and collaboration on research design, and excessive communications are not permitted, and according to The Times and the findings of the NIH’s subsequent internal investigation, these violations occurred early and often during the development of the MACH15 trial. The NIH report concluded that the actions uncovered “calls into question the impartiality of the process and thus casts doubt that the scientific knowledge gained from the study would be actionable or believable.” Copyright 2018 Undark

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25201 - Posted: 07.13.2018

By Jeré Longman Researchers have found flaws in some of the data that track and field officials used to formulate regulations for the complicated cases of Caster Semenya of South Africa, the two-time Olympic champion at 800 meters, and other female athletes with naturally elevated testosterone levels. Three independent researchers said they believed the mistakes called into question the validity of a 2017 study commissioned by track and field’s world governing body, the International Federation of Athletics Associations, or I.A.A.F., according to interviews and a paper written by the researchers and provided to The New York Times. The 2017 study was used to help devise regulations that could require some runners to undergo medical treatment to lower their hormone levels to remain eligible for the sport’s most prominent international competitions, like the Summer Games. The researchers have called for a retraction of the study, published last year in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The study served as an underpinning for rules, scheduled to be enacted in November, which would establish permitted testosterone levels for athletes participating in women’s events from 400 meters to the mile. “They cannot use this study as an excuse or a reason for setting a testosterone level because the data they have presented is not solid,” one of the independent researchers, Erik Boye of Norway, said Thursday. The I.A.A.F. has updated its research, which was published last week, again in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. “The I.A.A.F. will not be seeking a retraction of the 2017 study,” the governing body said in a statement on Thursday. “The conclusions remain the same.” But the statement did little to dampen criticism by the independent researchers. The I.A.A.F. seems “bound to lose” an intended challenge by Semenya to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, a kind of Supreme Court for international athletics, said Boye, a cancer researcher and an antidoping expert. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 25200 - Posted: 07.13.2018