Jessica Wright When Abigail was 19 months old, she took a ferry with her mother Gillian across the English Channel during a move from Germany to England. On board, she played with a Belgian toddler whose mother, a doctor, took notice of Abigail’s tight muscles and lack of language. (Gillian asked that we omit their last names to protect their privacy.) “What syndrome does she have?” the doctor asked Gillian. Gillian didn’t know. In the coming years, Abigail would receive diagnoses of autism and intellectual disability; she also has recurrent seizures. But it took 20 years to get an answer to the Belgian doctor’s question. In 2013, Abigail’s doctor, Meena Balasubramanian, enrolled Abigail in Deciphering Developmental Disorders (DDD), a study in which researchers sequence an individual’s genes to find the cause of undiagnosed genetic conditions. In Abigail, they found a de novo, or spontaneous, mutation in a known epilepsy gene called HNRNPU. Gillian learned of the result just last year. Over the past year, this gene has emerged as a new autism candidate associated with a neurodevelopmental syndrome. Finding the genetic cause for Abigail’s condition sparked Balasubramanian’s interest in the gene. She has since collected clinical information from six other people with these mutations, five of whom were identified through DDD. These participants share Abigail’s learning difficulties and seizures. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist.

Keyword: Epilepsy; Autism
Link ID: 25250 - Posted: 07.26.2018

A handful of Alzheimer's patients signed up for a bold experiment: they let scientists beam sound waves into the brain to temporarily jiggle an opening in its protective shield. The so-called blood-brain barrier prevents germs and other damaging substances from leaching in through the bloodstream — but it can block drugs for Alzheimer's, brain tumours and other neurological diseases. Canadian researchers on Wednesday reported early hints that technology called focused ultrasound can safely poke holes in that barrier — holes that quickly sealed back up. It's a step toward one day using the non-invasive device to push brain treatments through. "It's been a major goal of neuroscience for decades, this idea of a safe and reversible and precise way of breaching the blood-brain barrier," said Dr. Nir Lipsman, a neurosurgeon at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre who led the study. "It's exciting." The findings were presented at the Alzheimer's Association international conference in Chicago and published Wednesday in Nature Communications. This first-step research, conducted in just six people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's, didn't test potential therapies; its aim was to check whether patients' fragile blood vessels could withstand the breach without bleeding or other side-effects. ©2018 CBC/Radio-Canada

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 25249 - Posted: 07.26.2018

By Jocelyn Kaiser Basic brain and behavioral researchers will get more than a year to comply with a new U.S. policy that will treat many of their studies as clinical trials. The announcement from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) appears to defuse, for now, a yearlong controversy over whether basic research on humans should follow the same rules as studies testing drugs. Although research groups had hoped NIH would drop its plans to tag basic studies with humans as trials, they say they’re relieved they get more time to prepare and give the agency input. “It’s a positive step forward,” says Paula Skedsvold, executive director of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences in Washington, D.C. At issue is a recently revised definition of a clinical trial along with a set of rules in effect since January that are meant to increase the rigor and transparency of NIH-funded clinical trials. About a year ago, basic scientists who study human cognition—for example, using brain imaging with healthy volunteers—were alarmed to realize many of these studies fit the new clinical trial definition. Researchers protested that many requirements, such as registering and reporting results in the ClinicalTrials.gov federal database, made no sense for studies that weren’t testing a treatment and would confuse the public. NIH then issued a set of case studies explaining that only some basic studies would fall under the trials definition. But concerns remained about confusing criteria and burdensome new paperwork. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Attention; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 25248 - Posted: 07.25.2018

by Juliet Corwin On the deafness scale of mild, moderate, severe or profound, I am profoundly deaf. With the help of cochlear implants, I am able to “hear” and speak. The devices are complicated to explain, but basically, external sound processors, worn behind the ears, send a digital signal to the implants, which convert the signal to electric impulses that stimulate the hearing nerve and provide sound signals to the brain. The implants allow me to attend my middle school classes with few accommodations, but I’m still quite different from people who hear naturally. When my implant processors are turned off, I don’t hear anything. I regard myself as a deaf person, and I am proud to be among those who live with deafness, yet I often feel rejected by some of these same people. My use of cochlear implants and lack of reliance on American Sign Language (I use it but am not fluent — I primarily speak) are treated like a betrayal by many in the Deaf — capital-D — community. In the view of many who embrace Deaf culture, a movement that began in the 1970s, those who are integrated into the hearing world through technology, such as hearing aids or cochlear implants, myself included, are regarded as “not Deaf enough” to be a part of the community. People deaf from birth or through illness or injury already face discrimination. I wish we didn’t practice exclusion among ourselves. But it happens, and it’s destructive. © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 25247 - Posted: 07.25.2018

By Anahad O’Connor Nutrition scientists have long debated the best diet for optimal health. But now some experts believe that it’s not just what we eat that’s critical for good health, but when we eat it. A growing body of research suggests that our bodies function optimally when we align our eating patterns with our circadian rhythms, the innate 24-hour cycles that tell our bodies when to wake up, when to eat and when to fall asleep. Studies show that chronically disrupting this rhythm — by eating late meals or nibbling on midnight snacks, for example — could be a recipe for weight gain and metabolic trouble. That is the premise of a new book, “The Circadian Code,” by Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute and an expert on circadian rhythms research. Dr. Panda argues that people improve their metabolic health when they eat their meals in a daily 8- to 10-hour window, taking their first bite of food in the morning and their last bite early in the evening. This approach, known as early time-restricted feeding, stems from the idea that human metabolism follows a daily rhythm, with our hormones, enzymes and digestive systems primed for food intake in the morning and afternoon. Many people, however, snack and graze from roughly the time they wake up until shortly before they go to bed. Dr. Panda has found in his research that the average person eats over a 15-hour or longer period each day, starting with something like milk and coffee shortly after rising and ending with a glass of wine, a late night meal or a handful of chips, nuts or some other snack shortly before bed. That pattern of eating, he says, conflicts with our biological rhythms. Scientists have long known that the human body has a master clock in the brain, located in the hypothalamus, that governs our sleep-wake cycles in response to bright light exposure. A couple of decades ago, researchers discovered that there is not just one clock in the body but a collection of them. Every organ has an internal clock that governs its daily cycle of activity. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Obesity
Link ID: 25246 - Posted: 07.25.2018

By Frankie Schembri Do you ever find yourself scouring the web for pizza delivery services to satisfy those late-night cravings? You’re not alone: A new study reveals that hungry web surfers around the world all start searching for food-related information at two peak times, 7 p.m. and 2 a.m. Wanting to see if they could spot trends in human behavior based on a massive database of Google searches, a team of scientists analyzed hourly food-related queries from five countries: the United States, Canada, India, Australia, and the United Kingdom. For two 1-week periods, they looked for general food-related keywords such as “pizza delivery” or “Chinese delivery” and country-specific delivery companies like India’s “Swiggy” and “Just Eat,” which serves the United Kingdom and Australia. They also analyzed 5 years of data to see if they could discover seasonal trends. The two spikes in food-related searches occurred across all countries, keywords, days of the week, and seasons, the researchers report today in Royal Society Open Science. They say the peaks likely represent two different groups of people searching for nighttime nourishment, one older (the early birds) and one younger (the night owls). Another hypothesis is that the two groups are simply running on different internal body clocks, which affects when they want their evening calories. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Obesity; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 25245 - Posted: 07.25.2018

Carl Zimmer In the largest genetics study ever published in a scientific journal, an international team of scientists on Monday identified more than a thousand variations in human genes that influence how long people stay in school. Educational attainment has attracted great interest from researchers in recent years, because it is linked to many other aspects of people’s lives, including their income as adults, overall health and even life span. The newly discovered gene variants account for just a fraction of the differences in education observed between groups of people. Environmental influences, which may include family wealth or parental education, together play a bigger role. Still, scientists have long known that genetic makeup explains some of the differences in time spent in school. Their hope is that the data can be used to gain a better understanding of what educators must do to keep children in school longer. With a fuller understanding of the influences exerted by genes, scientists think they will be able to better measure what happens when they try to improve a child’s learning environment. The new study, published in the journal Nature Genetics, finds that many of the genetic variations implicated in educational attainment are involved in how neurons communicate in the brain. A striking number are involved in relaying signals out of neurons and into neighboring ones through connections called synapses. The findings are based on genetic sequencing of more than 1.1 million people. But the subjects were all white people of European descent. In order to maximize the odds of discovering genetic links, the scientists say they needed a very large, homogeneous sample. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Intelligence
Link ID: 25244 - Posted: 07.24.2018

By Dana G. Smith Suicide rates and temperatures are both on the rise, but are these two occurrences connected? A new study suggests maybe so. The research revealed hotter-than-average months corresponded to more deaths by suicide—and the effect isn’t limited to the summer, even warmer winters show the trend. In the study, published in Nature Climate Change, the investigators looked at all of the suicides that occurred in the U.S. and Mexico over several decades (1968 to 2004 for the U.S. and 1990 to 2010 for Mexico), comprising 851,088 and 611,366 deaths, respectively. They then observed how monthly temperature fluctuations over these periods in every county or municipality in both countries correlated to the suicide rates for that region. They discovered that for every 1-degree Celsius (1.8-degree Fahrenheit) rise in temperature, there was a 0.7 percent increase in suicide rates in the U.S. and a 2.1 percent increase in Mexico, averaging a 1.4 percent increment across both countries. That is, over the years, a given county would see more deaths by suicide in warmer-than-average months. Notably, the average temperature of the county did not matter; for example, Dallas and Minneapolis saw a similar rise in suicide rates. The effect did not depend on the month either—it made no difference whether it was January or July. There was also no difference between gender, socioeconomic status, access to guns, air-conditioning and whether it was an urban or rural region. Across the board, when temperatures rose in a given place, so did the number of suicides. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Depression
Link ID: 25243 - Posted: 07.24.2018

Jon Hamilton There's new evidence that a woman's levels of female sex hormones, including estrogen and progesterone, can influence her risk of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. Women are less likely to develop dementia later in life if they begin to menstruate earlier, go through menopause later, and have more than one child, researchers reported Monday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Chicago. And recent studies offer hints that hormone replacement therapy, which fell out of favor more than a decade ago, might offer a way to protect a woman's brain if it is given at the right time, the researchers said. The findings could help explain why women make up nearly two-thirds of people in the U.S. with Alzheimer's, says Maria Carrillo, the association's chief scientific officer. "It isn't just that women are living longer," Carrillo says. "There is some biological underpinning. And because of the large numbers of women that are affected, it is important to find out [what it is]." Scientists have long suspected that sex hormones such as estrogen and progesterone play a role in Alzheimer's. And two studies on dementia and what occurs during a women's reproductive years support that idea. One of the studies looked at nearly 15,000 women in California. And it found an association between a woman's reproductive history and her risk of memory problems later in life. © 2018 npr

Keyword: Alzheimers; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 25242 - Posted: 07.24.2018

By Gina Kolata The task facing Eli Lilly, the giant pharmaceutical company, sounds simple enough: Find 375 people with early Alzheimer’s disease for a bold new clinical trial aiming to slow or stop memory loss. There are 5.4 million Alzheimer’s patients in the United States. You’d think it would be easy to find that many participants for a trial like this one. But it’s not. And the problem has enormous implications for treatment of a disease that terrifies older Americans and has strained families in numbers too great to count. The Global Alzheimer’s Platform Foundation, which is helping recruit participants for the Lilly trial, estimates that to begin finding participants, it will have to inform 15,000 to 18,000 people in the right age groups about the effort. Of these, nearly 2,000 must pass the initial screening to be selected for further tests to see if they qualify. Just 20 percent will meet the criteria to enroll in Lilly’s trial: They must be aged 60 to 89, have mild but progressive memory loss for at least six months, and have two types of brain scans showing Alzheimer’s is underway. Yet an 80 percent screening failure rate is typical for Alzheimer’s trials, said John Dwyer, president of the foundation. There is just no good way to quickly diagnose the disease. The onerous process of locating just 375 patients illustrates a grim truth: finding patients on whom to test new Alzheimer’s treatments is becoming an insurmountable obstacle — no matter how promising the trial. With brain scans, lab tests and memory tests, the cost per diagnosis alone is daunting — as much as $100,000 for each person who ends up enrolled in a trial, Mr. Dwyer said — even before they begin the experimental treatment. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 25241 - Posted: 07.24.2018

By Oliver Newlan The number of antidepressants prescribed to children in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland has risen over the past three years, figures obtained by BBC's File on 4 reveal. In England, there was a 15% rise. Scotland saw a 10% increase. And in Northern Ireland the number rose by 6%. In total, there were 950,000 prescriptions issued between April 2015 and March 2018. Experts have linked the rise to waits for specialist mental health services. Antidepressants should prescribed to children only under close supervision. NHS England, NHS Scotland and the Health and Social Care Board in Northern Ireland all say they are committed to improving child mental health services. NHS Wales was unable to provide prescription figures because it does not hold the data requested. The figures were obtained by Freedom of Information requests and relate to a group of powerful antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). The total number of prescriptions rose from 290,393 in 2015-16 to 330,616 in 2017-18. The steepest increase was seen in the youngest patients, those aged 12 and under, where the number of prescriptions rose on average by 24%, from 14,500 to almost 18,000. Dr Bernadka Dubicka, who chairs the child and adolescent faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: "Currently only one in four children and young people are treated for their mental health problems. "The fact that prescriptions for antidepressants are rising could reflect a slow but steady move towards treating everyone who is unwell. "But the importance of giving children access to psychological therapies cannot be overstated. "What we don't know from today's data is why these antidepressants are being prescribed, and how. "It is vital that they are being used judiciously, monitored carefully, and the risks and benefits of taking them are assessed in each individual case." © 2018 BBC

Keyword: Depression; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25240 - Posted: 07.24.2018

A record number of primary school children are leaving school severely obese, according to new figures from Public Health England. Data for 2016/17 shows one in 25 10 to 11 year olds were severely obese. That's more than 22,000 children, and the highest level since records began. Levels of childhood obesity have remained fairly stable in recent years, but the new analysis shows that severe obesity has been on an upward trend over the last decade. The data from the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) for children for the year 2016/17 has detailed the trends in severe obesity for the first time. The programme found: More deprived areas have a much higher rate of overweight and obese children, compared to the most well-off areas. This disparity is happening at a faster rate in school leavers in year 6, than in reception age. The figures did however show a downward trend of reception age boys being overweight and obese. When records began in 2006/07, one in 32 primary school leavers were severely obese. Severe obesity is BMI on or above the 99.6th percentile for a child's age and sex. Dr Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at Public Health England, said the trends were "extremely worrying and have been decades in the making - reversing them will not happen overnight." She said "bold measures are needed to tackle this threat to our children's health". The Department of Health recently announced the second phase of its childhood obesity plan to help halve childhood obesity by 2030. As part of that, sweets and high-fat snacks will be banned from supermarket checkouts, and there will be tighter restrictions on junk food ads on TV. © 2018 BBC

Keyword: Obesity; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25239 - Posted: 07.24.2018

By Aaron E. Carroll Promising health studies often don’t pan out in reality. The reasons are many. Research participants are usually different from general patients; their treatment doesn’t match real-world practice; researchers can devote resources not available in most physician offices. Moreover, most studies, even the gold standard of randomized controlled trials, focus squarely on causality. They are set up to see if a treatment will work in optimal conditions, what scientists call efficacy. They’re “explanatory.” Efficacy is important. But what we also need are studies that test if a treatment will work in the real world — if they have effectiveness. These different kinds of studies actually exist. They are called pragmatic trials, and a recent one might have helped serve as a brake as the opioid epidemic accelerated. Pragmatic trial design was described more than 50 years ago in the Journal of Chronic Diseases (in a paper reprinted nine years ago in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology). A pragmatic trial seeks to determine if, and how, an intervention might work in practice, where decisions are more complicated than in a strictly controlled clinical trial. Studies are almost never purely pragmatic or explanatory: They fall on a continuum. A recent tool, known as Precis-2, can help researchers devise trials to lean one way or the other. It’s scored on nine domains — eligibility criteria, recruitment, setting, organization, flexibility (delivery), flexibility (adherence), follow-up, primary outcome and primary analysis — on a scale from 1 (explanatory, or “ideal conditions”) to 5 (pragmatic, or “real world”). Why do we need all this? Let’s take chronic pain as an example. Those who suffer from it want relief, and they want it now. Because people know that opioids exist, it’s hard to get them into a trial where they might take less powerful pain medications, like acetaminophen or ibuprofen. It’s also hard to do the long-term studies we need, because patients often want to try other options if the first one doesn’t work. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 25238 - Posted: 07.23.2018

Patti Neighmond If you're in the hospital or a doctor's office with a painful problem, you'll likely be asked to rate your pain on a scale of 0 to 10 – with 0 meaning no pain at all and 10 indicating the worst pain you can imagine. But many doctors and nurses say this rating system isn't working and they're trying a new approach. The numeric pain scale may just be too simplistic, says Dr. John Markman, Director of the Translational Pain Research Program at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. It can lead doctors to "treat by numbers," he says and as a result, patients may not be getting the most effective treatment for their pain. Take the case of 33-year-old Adam Rosette, who was recently hospitalized for fibrous dysplasia, a bone disorder that made it nearly impossible for him to chew or even speak. After brain surgery to remove benign tumors related to the disorder, he was definitely in pain. But he was reluctant to label the pain too high. "I don't think I ever answered higher than a '7' because an '8' would be, in my mind, like I'm missing half of my body or a limb," he recalls. On the pain scale a rating of 4 to 7 is considered moderate. Mild pain is rated 1 to 3. Over 7 is considered severe. Today, Rosette has recovered and is pain-free, but he wonders if "low balling" his pain level while in the hospital, meant he wasn't given adequate pain medication. "You realize you got less medicine and it's been eight hours and they're not allowed to give you more for a while," Rosette says. © 2018 npr

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 25237 - Posted: 07.23.2018

by Caroline Wellbery Jet lag can put the brakes on the most exciting vacations. Almost everyone who has ever flown across time zones knows what it feels like. The experience ranks somewhere between eating day-old cooked oatmeal and nursing a hangover. These food and drink metaphors aren’t just a coincidence. Jet lag, it turns out, affects more than our sleep; it affects our internal organs as well. Given what is known about the importance of intestinal bacteria (called the microbiome) and their connection to immune function and well-being, it’s clear that any discussion of jet lag, and how to deal with it, needs to consider “gut lag”as well. The issues begin with the fact that air travel across time zones disrupts our circadian rhythm — the human internal clock that evolved over millennia to match Earth’s 24-hour cycle of light and dark. One feature of this cycle is that maximum sleepiness coincides with a low point in core body temperature, which is usually unrelated to external temperatures. Core body temperature goes down as you sleep and is usually lowest two to three hours before waking (which also coincides with your deepest sleep). Low core body temperature appears to be a turning point in determining how sleepy or rested you feel, depending on when in the cycle you wake up. When you fly into a new time zone, your core body temperature doesn’t recognize that change and instead continues to dip according to the schedule of the place you have left. If you are awake or wake up before the dip, you are much more likely to feel groggy or out of sorts, especially if you are exposed to light while your body temperature drops. That’s because light and temperature signals come into conflict with each other: The light tells you that you’re wide-awake; the temperature signal tells you that you’re about to enter the deepest point in your sleep. This is when you will mostly strongly feel the unpleasant symptoms of jet lag. © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Sleep
Link ID: 25236 - Posted: 07.23.2018

By Perri Klass, M.D. You probably remember the before and after of learning to ride a bicycle — and perhaps the joy of helping your children learn how. Riding together is a wonderful family activity — good exercise, outdoor time, and it even gets you places. But safety is a vital part of what parents should be teaching. A recent study looked at bicycle-related injuries in children treated in emergency departments in the United States over a 10-year period from the beginning of 2006 through the end of 2017. Over that time, there were more than two million such injuries in children from 5 to 17, which the researchers calculated meant more than 600 a day, or 25 an hour. “That’s a lot,” said Lara McKenzie, principal investigator in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Given the age of the most-injured group, 10 to 14, she said, “I feel this is a group where the parents might view the child as an experienced rider, but perhaps they’re riding in places they shouldn’t ride.” The study did not include fatalities, since it was looking only at children in the emergency room and excluded the 12 who actually died there. Of the injuries, 36 percent were to the upper extremities, 25 percent to the lower extremities, 15 percent to the face, and 15 percent to the head and neck. Many were related to falling off bikes, or crashing into something, Dr. McKenzie said, and when cars were involved, whether stationary or moving, the risk of traumatic brain injury (11 percent) and hospitalization (4 percent) increased. So safety first and foremost: wear helmets. In the new study, “helmet use at the time of injury was associated with lower risk of head and neck injury, and of hospitalization — that’s protective, we know,” Dr. McKenzie said. And it isn’t just about making your children wear helmets; when parents wear helmets, they are not only protecting themselves, but research has shown that when parents model the safe behavior, it’s more likely that children will be putting those helmets on themselves. Make sure the child is riding a bike the right size, and make sure the helmet fits correctly. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 25235 - Posted: 07.23.2018

Olga Khazan For people with bipolar disorder, manic episodes can be euphoric, but they can also be terrifying. In the throes of mania, some people feel like they are superhuman. They start new projects and stay up all night to work on them. In the worst cases, they cease thinking coherently: They might attempt to walk into the sea or fly off the roof. Though medications can help manage the symptoms, no pill is perfect, and all of them have side effects. Bipolar disorder appears to be at least partly genetic, but environmental factors also play a role, perhaps by switching different genes on and off, which might spark manic episodes. And the thing that might be switching on some of these genes, according to a new study, is rather surprising: a category of preservatives in beef jerky called nitrates. For the study, recently published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, researchers asked people being treated for psychiatric disorders at the Sheppard Pratt Health System in Baltimore whether they had ever eaten dry cured meat, undercooked meat, or undercooked fish. Those who had eaten cured meats—which include jerky and meat sticks—were three and a half times more likely to be in the group that was hospitalized for mania compared with the control group. Meanwhile, cured meats were not significantly associated with other types of psychiatric disorders, such as major depression, and none of the other foods participants were asked about was significantly correlated with mania.

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 25234 - Posted: 07.21.2018

Noise from oil and gas pumps can be a real mood-killer for a male sparrow trying to attract a mate, but a team of biologists in southern Alberta has discovered that songbirds are finding ways to cope. Their research involves high fidelity speakers, powerful microphones and many early morning hours spent on a patch of prairie near the small city of Brooks. They blast recordings of various types of oil and gas pumps through the speakers and then track and record the birds' response. The acoustic experiments are producing intriguing results. One songbird species, the Savannah sparrow, appears to be adapting its love songs with a high degree of complexity. "They're doing whatever they can to make the sound go further," said Nicola Koper, a conservation biologist from the University of Manitoba's Natural Resources Institute who is involved in the research. After all, the birds have flown all the way up from the southern U.S. on important business: to breed and raise their young. Fastest declining avian group in Canada The mixed grass prairies in southern Alberta serve as a bug buffet and a nursery for grassland birds, but their territory has shrunk. "We've converted so much of our grassland habitat to cropland, that grassland birds are declining more rapidly than birds of any other ecosystem across North America, including in Canada," said Koper. ©2018 CBC/Radio-Canada

Keyword: Animal Communication; Hearing
Link ID: 25233 - Posted: 07.21.2018

Paul Chisholm Dr. Elliot Tapper has treated a lot of patients, but this one stood out. "His whole body was yellow," Tapper remembers. "He could hardly move. It was difficult for him to breathe, and he wasn't eating anything." The patient was suffering from chronic liver disease. After years of alcohol use, his liver had stopped filtering his blood. Bilirubin, a yellowish waste compound, was building up in his body and changing his skin color. Disturbing to Tapper, the man was only in his mid-30s – much younger than most liver disease patients. Tapper, a liver specialist and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, tried to get the patient to stop drinking. "We had long, tearful conversations," Tapper says, "but he continued to struggle with alcohol addiction." Since then, the young man's condition has continued to deteriorate and Tapper is not optimistic about his chances of survival. It's patient stories like this one that led Tapper to research liver disease in young people. According to a study published Wednesday in BMJ by Tapper and a colleague, fatal liver disease has risen, and young people have been hit the hardest. The study examined the number of deaths resulting from cirrhosis, or scarring of the liver, as well as liver cancer. Data came from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and covered the period from 1999 to 2016. © 2018 npr

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25232 - Posted: 07.21.2018

Laurel Hamers BRAINBOW Scientists have imaged the fruit fly brain in new detail. Colors highlight the paths of nerve cells that have been mapped so far. Cells with bodies close together share the same color, but not necessarily the same function. If the secret to getting the perfect photo is taking a lot of shots, then one lucky fruit fly is the subject of a masterpiece. Using high-speed electron microscopy, scientists took 21 million nanoscale-resolution images of the brain of Drosophila melanogaster to capture every one of the 100,000 nerve cells that it contains. It’s the first time the entire fruit fly brain has been imaged in this much detail, researchers report online July 19 in Cell. Experimental neurobiologists can now use the rich dataset as a roadmap to figure out which neurons talk to each other in the fly’s brain, says study coauthor Davi Bock, a neurobiologist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Va. The rainbow image shown here captures the progress on that mapping so far. Despite the complex tangle of neural connections pictured, the mapping is far from complete, Bock says. Neurons with cell bodies close to each other are colored the same hue, to demonstrate how neurons born in the same place in the poppy seed–sized brain tend to send their spidery tendrils out in the same direction, too. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 25231 - Posted: 07.20.2018