By Kerry Klein With their suction cup mouths filled with concentric circles of pointy teeth that suck the body fluid of unsuspecting victims, lampreys may seem like the stuff of horror movies. And indeed the 50-centimeter-long, eellike creatures can wreak havoc on freshwater communities when they invade from the sea, with a single sea lamprey able to kill 18 kilograms of fish in its lifetime. Now, the U.S. government has approved of a new way to combat these fearsome fish by using their own sense of smell against them. Sea lampreys are a particular problem in the Great Lakes regions of the United States and Canada. They hitchhiked into the region more than a century ago, likely attaching themselves to ships or fish that traveled along shipping channels from the Atlantic Ocean. Although most lampreys are mere parasites in their native habitats, those in the Great Lakes are far worse, says Nicholas Johnson, a research ecologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hammond Bay Biological Station on Lake Huron in Millersburg, Michigan. “They kill their host, they get too big, they eat too much,” he says. “They’re really more of a predator.” After the toothy invaders proliferated in the mid-20th century, ecosystems all but collapsed, taking prosperous fishing and tourism industries with them. “It’s fair to say that lamprey[s] changed the way of life in the region,” says Marc Gaden of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, a joint U.S. and Canadian organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that’s tasked with managing the rebounding ecosystems. “Just about every fishery management decision that we make to this day has to take lamprey into consideration.” © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 21808 - Posted: 01.21.2016

By Geoffrey Giller The experience of seeing a lightning bolt before hearing its associated thunder some seconds later provides a fairly obvious example of the differential speeds of light and sound. But most intervals between linked visual and auditory stimuli are so brief as to be imperceptible. A new study has found that we can glean distance information from these minimally discrepant arrival times nonetheless. In a pair of experiments at the University of Rochester, 12 subjects were shown projected clusters of dots. When a sound was played about 40 or 60 milliseconds after the dots appeared (too short to be detected consciously), participants judged the clusters to be farther away than clusters with simultaneous or preceding sounds. Philip Jaekl, the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in cognitive neuroscience, says it makes sense that the brain would use all available sensory information for calculating distance. “Distance is something that's very difficult to compute,” he explains. The study was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE. Aaron Seitz, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California, Riverside, who was not involved in the work, says the results may be useful clinically, such as by helping people with amblyopia (lazy eye) improve their performance when training to see with both eyes. And there might be other practical applications, including making virtual-reality environments more realistic. “Adding in a delay,” says Nick Whiting, a VR engineer for Epic Games, “can be another technique in our repertoire in creating believable experiences.” © 2016 Scientific American,

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 21807 - Posted: 01.21.2016

by Emily Reynolds We know more about what the brain does when it's active than we do when it's at rest. It makes sense -- much neuroscientific research has looked to understand particular (and active) processes. James Kozloski, a researcher at IBM, has investigated what the brain does when it's resting -- what he calls 'the Grand Loop'. "The brain consumes a great amount of energy doing nothing. It's a great mystery of neuroscience," Kozloski told PopSci. He argued that around 90 percent of the energy used by the brain remained "unaccounted for". He believes that the brain is constantly 'looping signals', retracing neural pathways over and over again. It's a "closed loop", according to Kozloski, meaning it isn't reliant on external inputs as much of the brain's activity is. Kozloski tested his theory by running his model through IBM's neural tissue simulator and found that it could potentially account for genetic mutations such as Huntington's. He argued that information created by one mutated gene could, through the 'Grand Loop', affect an entire neural pathway. So what happens when our brain is at work? And how does expending energy affect our neural processes? Much historic research into anxiety has found that people tend to exert more energy or force when they're being watched -- something that leads to slip-ups or mistakes under pressure.

Keyword: Attention; Brain imaging
Link ID: 21806 - Posted: 01.21.2016

By David Shultz It’s a familiar image: a group monkeys assembled in a line, picking carefully through each other’s hair, eating any treasures they might find. The grooming ritual so common in many primate species serves to both keep the monkeys healthy as well as reinforce social structures and bonds. But according to new research on vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus, seen above), the behavior may also improve a pelt’s insulation by fluffing it up like a duvet, scientists report in the American Journal of Primatology. To test the difference between groomed or ungroomed fur, the team manually combed vervet monkey pelts either with or against the grain for 50 strokes. The fluffed up “backcombed” pelts simulated a recently groomed monkey, whereas the flattened pelts simulated an ungroomed state. Using a spectrophotometer, the researchers then measured how much light was reflected by each pelt and calculated the pelt’s total insulation. They found that a thicker, fluffier coat could improve a monkey’s insulation by up to 50%, keeping the animal warmer in the cold and cooler in the heat. Thus, grooming may help the vervets maintain a constant body temperature with less effort, freeing up more energy for sex, foraging, and participating in monkey society. In the face of climate change, the authors note, such flexibility could soon become enormously important. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Emotions; Stress
Link ID: 21805 - Posted: 01.21.2016

A map for other people’s faces has been discovered in the brain. It could help explain why some of us are better at recognising faces than others. Every part of your body that you can move or feel is represented in the outer layer of your brain. These “maps”, found in the motor and sensory cortices (see diagram, below), tend to preserve the basic spatial layout of the body – neurons that represent our fingers are closer to neurons that represent our arms than our feet, for example. The same goes for other people’s faces, says Linda Henriksson at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. Her team scanned 12 people’s brains while they looked at hundreds of images of noses, eyes, mouths and other facial features and recorded which bits of the brain became active. This revealed a region in the occipital face area in which features that are next to each other on a real face are organised together in the brain’s representation of that face. The team have called this map the “faciotopy”. The occipital face area is a region of the brain known to be involved in general facial processing. “Facial recognition is so fundamental to human behaviour that it makes sense that there would be a specialised area of the brain that maps features of the face,” she says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 21804 - Posted: 01.20.2016

By David Shultz A rat navigating a maze has to rank somewhere near the top of science tropes. Now, scientists report that they’ve developed an analogous test for humans—one that involves driving through a virtual landscape in a simulated car. The advance, they say, may provide a more sensitive measure for detecting early signs of Alzheimer’s disease. “I think it’s a very well-done study,” says Keith Vossel, a translational neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), who was not involved with the work. In the rodent version of the so-called Morris Maze Test, researchers fill a large cylindrical container with water and place a platform just above the waterline. A scientist then places a rat into the tank, and the rodent must swim to the platform to avoid drowning. The experimenter then raises the water level just above the height of the platform and adds a compound to the water to make it opaque. The trial is repeated, but now the rat must find the platform without seeing it, using only its memory of where the safe zone exists relative to the tank’s walls and the surrounding environment. In subsequent trials, researchers place the rat at different starting points along the tank’s edge, but the platform stays put. In essence, the task requires the rat to move to a specific but invisible location within a circular arena from different starting points. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 21803 - Posted: 01.20.2016

The Chamorro people of the Pacific island of Guam know it as lytigo-bodig. For decades, they have been struck down by a mysterious illness that resembles the muscle-wasting disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s-like dementia. It now looks like we have a clue that could point to a way of slowing its development. Lytigo-bodig is a progressive disease. ALS symptoms arrive when people are in their mid-40s and early 50s. By the time they reach their 60s, they also have the shaking and lack of coordination that characterises Parkinson’s, before the cognitive problems associated with dementia also set in. “Initially they stumble a bit, but as their muscles wither, they need help with eating and going to the toilet, as well as having difficulty swallowing and breathing,” says Paul Cox of the Institute for Ethnomedicine in Wyoming. For a long time, a chemical called BMAA, found in the cycad seeds that the Chamorro grind up to make flour, has been suspected as the cause of the disease. The toxin builds up in the cyanobacteria that grow in the roots of cycad plants. It also accumulates in the tissue of seed-eating flying foxes, which the Chamorro hunt and eat. To see if they could confirm BMAA as the culprit, Cox fed fruit spiked with the toxin to vervet monkeys for 140 days. They estimated this was equivalent to the dose a typical islander might get over a lifetime. Although they didn’t show cognitive problems, the animals did develop brain abnormalities called tau tangles and deposits of amyloid plaque. The density and placement of these abnormalities were similar to those seen in the islanders. “The structure of the pathology is almost identical,” says Cox. “We were stunned.” © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease ; Parkinsons
Link ID: 21802 - Posted: 01.20.2016

It seems like the ultimate insult, but getting people with brain injuries to do maths may lead to better diagnoses. A trial of the approach has found two people in an apparent vegetative state that may be conscious but “locked-in”. People who are in a vegetative state are awake but have lost all cognitive function. Occasionally, people diagnosed as being in this state are actually minimally conscious with fleeting periods of awareness, or even locked-in. This occurs when they are totally aware but unable to move any part of their body. It can be very difficult to distinguish between each state, which is why a team of researchers in China have devised a brain-computer interface that tests whether people with brain injuries can perform mental arithmetic – a clear sign of conscious awareness. The team, led by Yuanqing Li at South China University of Technology and Jiahui Pan at the South China Normal University in Guangzhou showed 11 people with various diagnoses a maths problem on a screen. This was followed by two possible answers flickering at frequencies designed to evoke different patterns of brain activity. Frames around each number also flashed several times. The participants were asked to focus on the correct answer and count the number of times its frame flashed. The brain patterns from the flickering answers together with the detection of another kind of brain signal that occurs when someone counts, enabled a computer to tell which answer, if any, the person was focusing on. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 21801 - Posted: 01.19.2016

By Emily Underwood Roughly half of Americans use marijuana at some point in their lives, and many start as teenagers. Although some studies suggest the drug could harm the maturing adolescent brain, the true risk is controversial. Now, in the first study of its kind, scientists have analyzed long-term marijuana use in teens, comparing IQ changes in twin siblings who either used or abstained from marijuana for 10 years. After taking environmental factors into account, the scientists found no measurable link between marijuana use and lower IQ. “This is a very well-conducted study … and a welcome addition to the literature,” says Valerie Curran, a psychopharmacologist at the University College London. She and her colleagues reached “broadly the same conclusions” in a separate, nontwin study of more than2000 British teenagers, published earlier this month in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, she says. But, warning that the study has important limitations, George Patton, a psychiatric epidemiologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, adds that it in no way proves that marijuana—particularly heavy, or chronic use —is safe for teenagers. Most studies that linked marijuana to cognitive deficits, such as memory loss and low IQ, looked at a single “snapshot” in time, says statistician Nicholas Jackson of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, lead author of the new work. That makes it impossible to tell which came first: drug use or poor cognitive performance. “It's a classic chicken-egg scenario,” he says. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Intelligence
Link ID: 21800 - Posted: 01.19.2016

Finding out what’s going on in an injured brain can involve several rounds of surgery, exposed wounds and a mess of wires. Perhaps not for much longer. A device the size of a grain of rice can monitor the brain’s temperature and pressure before dissolving without a trace. “This fully degradable sensor is definitely an impressive feat of engineering,” says Frederik Claeyssens, a biomaterials scientist at the University of Sheffield, UK. The device is the latest creation from John Rogers’s lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They came up with the idea of a miniature dissolvable brain monitor after speaking to neurosurgeons about the difficulties of monitoring brain temperature and pressure in people with traumatic injuries. Unwieldy wires These vital signs are currently measured via an implanted sensor connected to an external monitor. “It works, but the wires coming out of the head limit physical movement and provide a nidus for infection. You can cause additional damage when you pull them out,” says Rogers. It would be better to use a wireless device that doesn’t need to be extracted, he says. So Rogers’s team developed an electronic monitor about a tenth of a millimetre wide and a millimetre long made of silicon and a polymer. These materials, used in tiny amounts, are eventually broken down by the body, and don’t trigger any harmful effects, says Rogers. “The materials individually are safe. The total amount is very small. It’s about 1000 times less than what you’d have in a vitamin tablet.” © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 21799 - Posted: 01.19.2016

By SINDYA N. BHANOO Male zebra finches learn their courtship songs from their fathers. Now, a new study details the precise changes in brain circuitry that occur during that process. As a young male listens to his father’s song, networks of brain cells are activated that the younger bird will use later to sing the song himself, researchers have found. As the learning process occurs, inhibitory cells suppress further activity in the area and help sculpt the song into a permanent memory. “These inhibitory cells are really smart — once you’ve gotten a part of the song down, the area gets locked,” said Michael Long, a neuroscientist at NYU Langone Medical Center and an author of the new study, which appears in the journal Science. Zebra finches learn their courtship song from their fathers and reach sexual maturity in about 100 days. At this point, they ignore their fathers’ tutoring altogether, Dr. Long said. In their study, he and his colleagues played recorded courtship songs to young and old birds and monitored neural activity in their brains. In sexually mature birds, the courtship song did not elicit any neural response. Understanding the role of the inhibitory cells in the brain could help researchers develop ways to manipulate this network, Dr. Long said. “Maybe we could teach old birds new tricks,” he said. “And extrapolating widely, maybe we could even do this in mammals, maybe even humans, and enrich learning.” © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 21798 - Posted: 01.19.2016

By Emily Underwood The boisterous songs a male zebra finch sings to his mate might not sound all that melodious to humans—some have compared them to squeaky dog toys—but the courtship tunes are stunningly complex, with thousands of variations. Now, a new study helps explain how the birds master such an impressive repertoire. As they learn from a tutor, usually their father, their brains tune out phrases they’ve already studied, allowing them to focus on unfamiliar sections bit by bit. The mechanism could help explain how other animals, including humans, learn complex skills, scientists say. The study is a “technical tour de force,” and “an important advance in our understanding of mechanisms of vocal learning and of motor learning generally,” says Erich Jarvis, a neuroscientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Many species—including humans, chimpanzees, crows, dolphins, and even octopuses—learn complex behaviors by imitating their peers and parents, but little is known about how that process works on a neuronal level. In the case of zebra finches, young males spend the whole of their teenage lives trying to copy their fathers, says Michael Long, a neuroscientist at New York University in New York City. It comes out “all wrong” at first, but after practicing hundreds of times, the birds “sound a lot like dad.” In the new study, Long’s graduate student Daniela Vallentin used a tiny electrode implant to record the activity of neurons in a region of the finch brain called the HVC, which is essential for birdsong learning and production. Weighing less than a penny, the implant can be affixed to a bird’s head and record activity in the brains of freely moving and singing birds, Long says. The researchers also used a powerful light microscope to visualize the activity of individual neurons as the birds listened to a fake “tutor” bird that taught young finches only one “syllable” of a song at a time. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 21797 - Posted: 01.18.2016

Fergus Walsh Medical correspondent UK doctors in Sheffield say patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) are showing "remarkable" improvements after receiving a treatment usually used for cancer. About 20 patients have received bone marrow transplants using their own stem cells. Some patients who were paralysed have been able to walk again. Prof Basil Sharrack, of Sheffield's Royal Hallamshire Hospital, said: "To have a treatment which can potentially reverse disability is really a major achievement." Around 100,000 people in the UK have MS, an incurable neurological condition. Most patients are diagnosed in their 20s and 30s. The disease causes the immune system to attack the lining of nerves in the brain and spinal cord. The treatment - known as an autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) - aims to destroy the faulty immune system using chemotherapy. It is then rebuilt with stem cells harvested from the patient's own blood. These cells are at such an early stage they've not developed the flaws that trigger MS. Prof John Snowden, consultant haematologist at Royal Hallamshire Hospital, said: "The immune system is being reset or rebooted back to a time point before it caused MS." About 20 MS patients have been treated in Sheffield in the past three years. Prof Snowden added: "It's clear we have made a big impact on patients' lives, which is gratifying." In MS the protective layer surrounding nerve fibres in the brain and spinal cord - known as myelin - becomes damaged. The immune system mistakenly attacks the myelin, causing scarring or sclerosis. © 2016 BBC.

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 21796 - Posted: 01.18.2016

Patricia Neighmond When Cathy Fields was in her late 50s, she noticed she was having trouble following conversations with friends. "I could sense something was wrong with me," she says. "I couldn't focus. I could not follow." Fields was worried she had suffered a stroke or was showing signs of early dementia. Instead she found out she had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD. Fields is now 66 years old and lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. She's a former secretary and mother of two grown children. Fields was diagnosed with ADHD about eight years ago. Her doctor ruled out any physical problems and suggested she see a psychiatrist. She went to Dr. David Goodman at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who by chance specializes in ADHD. Goodman asked Fields a number of questions about focus, attention and completing tasks. He asked her about her childhood and how she did in school. Since ADHD begins in childhood, it's important for mental health professionals to understand these childhood experiences in order to make an accurate diagnosis of ADHD in adulthood. Online screening tests are available, too, so you can try it yourself. Goodman decided that Fields most definitely had ADHD. She's not alone. Goodman says he's seeing more and more adults over the age of 50 newly diagnosed with ADHD. © 2016 npr

Keyword: ADHD
Link ID: 21795 - Posted: 01.18.2016

By Melinda Beck Here’s a sobering thought for the holidays: Chronic heavy drinking can cause insidious damage to the brain, even in people who never seem intoxicated or obviously addicted. Experts say alcohol-related brain damage is underdiagnosed and often confused with Alzheimer’s disease, other forms of dementia or just getting older. Now, brain imaging is revealing how long-term alcohol abuse can change the structure of the brain, shrinking gray-matter cells in areas that govern learning, memory, decision-making and social behavior, as well as damaging white-matter fibers that connect one part of the brain with others. “As we get older, we all lose a little gray-matter volume and white-matter integrity, but in alcoholics, those areas break down more quickly. It looks like accelerated aging,” says Edith Sullivan, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University, who has studied alcohol’s effects for years. Long-term alcohol abuse also changes how the brain regulates emotion and anxiety and disrupts sleep systems, creating wide-ranging effects on the body. Increasingly, clinicians are diagnosing “alcohol-induced neurocognitive disorder” and “alcohol-related dementia.” How much is too much and over what period of time? ©2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 21794 - Posted: 01.18.2016

Laura Sanders Signals in the brain can hint at whether a person undergoing anesthesia will slip under easily or fight the drug, a new study suggests. The results, published January 14 in PLOS Computational Biology, bring scientists closer to being able to tailor doses of the powerful drugs for specific patients. Drug doses are often given with a one-size-fits-all attitude, says bioengineer and neuroscientist Patrick Purdon of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. But the new study finds clear differences in people’s brain responses to similar doses of an anesthetic drug, Purdon says. “To me, that’s the key and interesting point.” Cognitive neuroscientist Tristan Bekinschtein of the University of Cambridge and colleagues recruited 20 people to receive low doses of the general anesthetic propofol. The low dose wasn’t designed to knock people out, but to instead dial down their consciousness until they teetered on the edge of awareness — a point between being awake and alert and being drowsy and nonresponsive. While the drug was being delivered, participants repeatedly heard either a buzzing sound or a noise and were asked each time which they heard, an annoying question designed to gauge awareness. Of the 20 people, seven were sidelined by the propofol and they began to respond less. Thirteen other participants, however, kept right on responding, “fighting the drug,” Bekinschtein says. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2016.

Keyword: Consciousness; Sleep
Link ID: 21793 - Posted: 01.16.2016

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. Federal health officials on Friday advised pregnant women to postpone traveling to 13 Latin American or Caribbean countries and Puerto Rico where mosquitoes are spreading the Zika virus, which has been linked to brain damage in babies. Women considering becoming pregnant were advised to consult doctors before traveling to countries with Zika cases, and all travelers were urged to avoid mosquito bites, as were residents of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. “We believe this is a fairly serious problem,” said Dr. Lyle R. Petersen, chief of vector-borne diseases for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “This virus is spreading throughout the Americas. We didn’t feel we could wait.” The C.D.C. advisory applies to 14 Western Hemisphere countries and territories: Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It applies to the entire countries “unless there is specific evidence the virus is not occurring somewhere,” Dr. Petersen said. This appears to be the first time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised pregnant women to avoid a specific region. The warning is expected to affect the travel industry and could affect the Summer Olympics, set for Brazil in August. Officials at Brazil’s Health Ministry were not available for comment Friday night. Hours earlier, Philip Wilkinson, a spokesman for the Rio 2016 organizing committee, said that Olympic venues “will be inspected on daily basis during the Rio 2016 Games to ensure there are no puddles of stagnant water and therefore minimize the risk of coming into contact with mosquitos.” Dr. Petersen said he did not want to speculate about how his agency’s warning might affect the Olympics. “This is a dynamic situation,” he said. “We’re going to wait and see how this all plays out. Viruses can spread in a population for some periods of time.” © 2016 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 21792 - Posted: 01.16.2016

by Bethany Brookshire The high fiber refrain never seems to stop. We all know that we’re supposed to eat more fiber and focus on whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables. But when forced to choose between chewy, crumbly, flavorless oat bran and delicious white buttered toast for breakfast, it’s easy to tune out. But that fiber isn’t for you. It fuels and sustains your gut microbes — and those in your kids, and grandkids and great-grandkids, too, a study in mice finds. The results suggest that when we pass our genes on to our children, we also pass on a gut ecosystem that reflects our previous dietary choices. (No pressure.) The Food and Drug Administration recommends that Americans eat about 25 grams of dietary fiber per day. But most people don’t hit that mark. “The average American gets 10 to 15 grams of dietary fiber,” says Erica Sonnenburg, a microbiologist at Stanford University. If that doesn’t make you feel ashamed, compare your diet to the Hadza, hunter-gatherers who live in Tanzania. “The tubers they’re eating are so fibrous [that people] chew for a while and spit it out,” Sonnenburg says. It’s hard to calculate exactly how much fiber the Hadza get from the tubers, but Sonnenburg says that some some speculate it’s between 100 and 150 grams per day at certain times of year. That high level of fiber is reflected in their guts. “What all the studies have found is that these populations who are living a more traditional lifestyle are the best approximation for our ancient microbiota. They all harbor microbiota that’s much more diverse.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2016. A

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 21791 - Posted: 01.16.2016

Angus Chen A new method of delivering medication for opioid addicts gained approval from a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel this week. It's a matchstick-like insert designed to slip under the skin and release a drug over a period of months. Some physicians say the implant will be a useful addition to the currently short lineup of medication-assisted treatment options. The rod is called Probuphine, developed by the companies Braeburn Pharmaceuticals and Titan Pharmaceuticals. It contains a medication called buprenorphine which the FDA approved for opioid addiction in 2002 and is currently widely in use. The FDA typically follows the advice of its advisory panels on approvals. This molecule binds to opioid receptors in the body, but doesn't hit them as hard as something like heroin or morphine would. So it can reduce cravings without giving a full high. It's often taken in combination with a medication called naloxone, which negates the effect of any additional opiates and acts as an antidote for overdoses. Right now, patients must hold a tablet or a film under their tongue or in their cheek until it dissolves every day. This gives a long-lasting implant a few advantages over oral daily doses. Probuphine lasts up to six months. So unless patients want to dig underneath their skin to tear the thing out, there's no deviating from the treatment. "With the Suboxone [a daily combination of buprenorphine and naloxone], you can go on these drug holidays," says Patrick Kennedy, a former congressman and former opiate addict who urged the panel to approve Probuphine. "If I knew I had access to another drug, OxyContin, I would just stop taking the Suboxone and — you know." © 2016 npr

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 21790 - Posted: 01.16.2016

By Dina Fine Maron We may be able to keep our gut in check after all. That’s the tantalizing finding from a new study published today that reveals a way that mice—and potentially humans—can control the makeup and behavior of their gut microbiome. Such a prospect upends the popular notion that the complex ecosystem of germs residing in our guts essentially acts as our puppet master, altering brain biochemistry even as it tends to our immune system, wards off infection and helps us break down our supersized burger and fries. In a series of elaborate experiments researchers from Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital discovered that mouse poop is chock full of tiny, noncoding RNAs called microRNAs from their gastrointestinal (GI) tracts and that these biomolecules appear to shape and regulate the microbiome. “We’ve known about how microbes can influence your health for a few years now and in a way we’ve always suspected it’s a two-way process, but never really pinned it down that well,” says Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, not involved with the new study. “This [new work] explains quite nicely the two-way interaction between microbes and us, and it shows the relationship going the other way—which is fascinating,” says Spector, author of The Diet Myth: Why the Secret to Health and Weight Loss Is Already in Your Gut. What’s more, human feces share 17 types of microRNAs with the mice, which may portend similar mechanisms in humans, the researchers found. It could also potentially open new treatment approaches involving microRNA transplantations. “Obviously that raises the immediate question: ‘Where do the microRNAs come from and why are they there?,’” says senior author Howard Weiner, a neurologist at both Harvard and Brigham. The work was published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. © 2016 Scientific American

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 21789 - Posted: 01.14.2016