By Rachael Rettner VANCOUVER – A class of drugs being investigated to treat Alzheimer's disease may actually have the opposite effect of the original intent — they may impair memory, a new study in animals suggests. The drugs, known as BACE1 inhibitors, are designed to prevent the formation of the protein plaques in the brain that are a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. However, the new study suggests these drugs interfere with the brain's wiring, potentially affecting the formation of new memories. While the drugs aren't approved by the Food and Drug Administration, several companies are pursuing their development, and some have been tested in human trials. The new findings are not a red light for BACE1 inhibitor development, study researcher Robert Vassar, a professor of cell and molecular biology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said here today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting. But researchers should proceed with caution, Vassar said. "It's something the drug makers need to keep their eyes out for," Vassar told MyHealthNewsDaily. The enzyme BACE1 is involved in forming amyloid beta proteins, which aggregate to form plaques. The drugs are based on the idea that blocking the enzyme could slow the disease, or help with symptoms. © 2012 Yahoo! Inc.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 16411 - Posted: 02.23.2012

By Sandra G. Boodman, Of all the adjustments forced on Rose Anderson and her family, among the hardest was dealing with the crying jags. Around 9 p.m. on Aug. 4, 2004, while Anderson and her family were crossing the street from a New Jersey beach boardwalk to their hotel, a drunk driver barreled into her husband, Richard. He was flung 26 feet before slamming headfirst onto the pavement. A 47-year-old manager for the New York City government, Richard underwent emergency brain surgery and spent three weeks in a coma, followed by nearly two months in the hospital. He suffered a severe traumatic brain injury that left him with permanent cognitive and speech problems and robbed him of his sense of smell and taste. “They were preparing me for a lifetime of therapies,” recalled Rose of the weeks her husband spent at Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in East Orange, N.J. But no one prepared the Andersons for Richard’s unpredictable and uncontrollable weeping, which began weeks after the accident and seemed to worsen with time. “He would cry with almost anyone,” his wife recalled. Thoughts of his dogs, his family or even happy occasions could trigger tears. His teenage daughters found the incidents, which occurred several times a week, almost unbearable. “As things got better, this shined brighter,” said Richard Anderson, who describes himself as a “very chauvinistic kind of guy” who was mortified by his inability to control his emotions. “It was very upsetting to me to have tears just rolling down my face.” © 1996-2012 The Washington Post

Keyword: Emotions; Depression
Link ID: 16410 - Posted: 02.21.2012

By Alan Boyle When Occupy Wall Street and similar protests played out over the past year, the phenomenon looked familiar to Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal: He's seen similar moral outrage over economic inequity expressed by monkeys and chimps. And he thinks we could learn a lesson or two from our fellow primates. "The role of inequity in society is grossly underestimated," he told reporters today, on the final day of this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Vancouver, Canada. "Inequity is not good for your health, basically." Based on primate studies, that goes for the haves as well as the have-nots. Far from being a uniquely human quality, a sense of fairness is something biologists have seen in studies of primates as well as crows and dogs. Even elephants may have an appreciation of inequity, although de Waal said he and his colleagues haven't done such a study with that species because "you don't want to piss off an elephant." One of the classic studies involves capuchin monkeys who were given treats when they exchanged tokens with their human handlers. Two types of treats were offered: cucumber slices (meh...) and grapes (yum!). If one monkey saw that another monkey was consistently getting grapes while she was getting only cucumber slices, she'd quickly start protesting — by flinging the cucumber back at the handler and angrily jumping onto the cage walls. © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: Emotions; Evolution
Link ID: 16409 - Posted: 02.21.2012

Erin Allday It began over a glass of good red wine. Paul Muchowski thought he'd found a molecular compound that could slow down the damage done in the brains of people with neurodegenerative diseases. But he didn't know how to get his hands on the compound, which was made by a major pharmaceutical and wouldn't be loaned out without a lot of cost and hassle. So one night, after a family dinner at his parents' home in Sunnyvale, he asked his dad for help. "Paul says, 'Do you think you could make this compound?' And I said any competent chemist could do it," said Joseph Muchowski, now 75, who had decades of experience making drugs and is far beyond "competent" in chemistry. "I made him just under 50 grams in a week," Muchowski said, "and that's how the relationship started." The relationship is a rare one in science: a father and son, one a highly credentialed chemist, the other an up-and-coming biologist, working together on a new drug that, if it works, could be among the first to treat terrible brain diseases such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's. The pair are working at the Gladstone Institutes, an independent research group affiliated with UCSF. Paul Muchowski, 40, is a full-time investigator at Gladstone. His father, now retired from the Swiss drug maker Roche, splits his time between a lab at Gladstone and his current home just east of Vancouver in British Columbia. © 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.

Keyword: Alzheimers; Huntingtons
Link ID: 16408 - Posted: 02.21.2012

by Jessica Hamzelou Sometimes salt is the good guy, in some forms anyway. Lithium chloride – a salt used as a mood stabiliser in bipolar disorder – appears to enhance the recovery of damaged neurons in mice. The drug may also help people with damaged nerves regain movement. Charbel Massaad at Paris Descartes University in France and his colleagues recreated in mice the nerve damage that sports injuries and diabetes can cause in humans. When such damage occurs, neurons lose their myelin sheath – a coating that insulates the nerve, accelerating electrical impulses. People tend to lose the ability to move limbs as a result. After the mice's facial nerves were damaged, their whiskers became paralysed. The team put lithium chloride in the rodents' drinking water. These mice completely recovered whisker movement within eight days, compared with mice who drank plain water, who had little movement at 20 days. A closer inspection of the nerves revealed that myelin sheaths were much thicker in the treated mice. Massaad hopes the drug will work as well in people: "Lithium could provide a novel, cheap therapy that stimulates myelination," he says. Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1121367109 © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Depression; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 16407 - Posted: 02.21.2012

By LAURIE TARKAN For decades, scientists have looked for explanations as to why certain conditions occur with age, among them memory loss, slower reaction time, insomnia and even depression. They have scrupulously investigated such suspects as high cholesterol, obesity, heart disease and an inactive lifestyle. Now a fascinating body of research supports a largely unrecognized culprit: the aging of the eye. The gradual yellowing of the lens and the narrowing of the pupil that occur with age disturb the body’s circadian rhythm, contributing to a range of health problems, these studies suggest. As the eyes age, less and less sunlight gets through the lens to reach key cells in the retina that regulate the body’s circadian rhythm, its internal clock. “We believe the effect is huge and that it’s just beginning to be recognized as a problem,” said Dr. Patricia Turner, an ophthalmologist in Leawood, Kan., who with her husband, Dr. Martin Mainster, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Kansas Medical School, has written extensively about the effects of the aging eye on health. Circadian rhythms are the cyclical hormonal and physiological processes that rally the body in the morning to tackle the day’s demands and slow it down at night, allowing the body to rest and repair. This internal clock relies on light to function properly, and studies have found that people whose circadian rhythms are out of sync, like shift workers, are at greater risk for a number of ailments, including insomnia, heart disease and cancer. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16406 - Posted: 02.21.2012

Alison Motluk Several students at LeRoy Central School District in northwestern New York state have developed a mysterious Tourette's-like condition, leaving doctors baffled as to the cause. This week, officials with the LeRoy Central School District in northwestern New York state approved a plan for further environmental testing at the town’s high school, where 19 people — 18 girls and one boy — have developed a sudden-onset disorder with symptoms similar to the movement disorder Tourette’s syndrome. The outbreak has captured national attention and led experts to suggest an array of possible explanations — none of which seem to quite work. With speculation running high, here is a look at the facts surrounding the outbreak. How and when did the symptoms appear? Several of the girls report that the symptoms seemed to come out of nowhere — one minute they were asleep, the next they had woken and developed uncontrollable movements and vocalizations. Their tics could be dramatic: arms twitching or jolting out to one side, speech chopped up by nonsense utterings, head jerking, eyes blinking. Some girls have also had blackouts and seizures. The first case was in May last year, the second in early September. By the end of October, eight students were affected. That is when the New York State Department of Health was called in to investigate. © 2012 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Tourettes; Stress
Link ID: 16405 - Posted: 02.20.2012

By REEVE HAMILTON Despite polls showing overwhelming public support and endorsements from celebrities like Lance Armstrong, efforts to establish a statewide smoking ban in the workplace have fallen flat in recent sessions of the Texas Legislature. But a state agency is finding that the billions of dollars it has at its disposal may allow it to be more effective in getting comprehensive tobacco-free policies established — most notably, at university campuses. University administrators around the state are considering campuswide tobacco-free policies as a result of new rules established by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. In January, the institute’s oversight committee adopted a policy that requires grant recipients to have policies prohibiting tobacco use in buildings and structures where financed research is occurring, as well as at the outdoor areas immediately adjacent to those buildings. The grant recipients must also provide smoking cessation services for community members who desire them. For schools that pride themselves on their research function, like the University of Texas at Austin — it has received about $30 million in grants from the institute and is hoping for $88 million more — there is a clear financial incentive to institute changes. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16404 - Posted: 02.20.2012

By RODRIQUE NGOWI BOSTON — U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials plan to investigate whether inhalable caffeine sold in lipstick-sized canisters is safe for consumers and if its manufacturer was right to brand it as a dietary supplement. AeroShot went on the market late last month in Massachusetts and New York, and it's also available in France. Consumers put one end of the canister in their mouths and breathe in, releasing a fine powder that dissolves almost instantly. Each grey-and-yellow plastic canister contains B vitamins, plus 100 milligrams of caffeine powder, about the equivalent of the caffeine in a large cup of coffee. AeroShot inventor, Harvard biomedical engineering professor David Edwards, says the product is safe and doesn't contain taurine and other common additives used to enhance the caffeine effect in energy drinks. AeroShot didn't require FDA review before hitting the U.S. market because it's sold as a dietary supplement. But New York's U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer said he met with FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg and she agreed to review the safety and legality of AeroShot. "I am worried about how a product like this impacts kids and teens, who are particularly vulnerable to overusing a product that allows one to take hit after hit after hit, in rapid succession," Schumer said. © 2012 msnbc.com

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 16403 - Posted: 02.20.2012

By BRIDGET O'SHEA The sounds of chaos bounce off the dim yellow walls. Everywhere there are prisoners wearing orange, red and khaki jumpsuits. An officer barks out orders as a thin woman tries to sleep on a hard bench in a holding cell. This is a harsh scene of daily life inside what has become the state’s largest de facto mental institution: the Cook County Jail. About 11,000 prisoners, a mix of suspects awaiting trial and those convicted of minor crimes, are housed at the jail at any one time, which is like stuffing the population of Palos Heights into an eight-block area on Chicago’s South Side. The Cook County sheriff, Tom Dart, estimated that about 2,000 of them suffer from some form of serious mental illness, far more than at the big state-owned Elgin Mental Health Center, which has 582 beds. Mr. Dart said the system “is so screwed up that I’ve become the largest mental health provider in the state of Illinois.” The situation is about to get worse, according to Mr. Dart and other criminal justice experts. The city plans to shut down 6 of its 12 mental health centers by the end of April, to save an estimated $2 million, potentially leaving many patients without adequate treatment — some of them likely to engage in conduct that will lead to arrests. “It will definitely have a negative impact on jail populations,” said Mr. Dart, who noted that the number of people coming into the jail with mental health problems was already increasing. “It will have direct consequences for us in my general jail population and some of the problems I have here, because a lot of the people with these issues act out more, as you would expect, so that’s a direct consequence.” © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 16402 - Posted: 02.20.2012

By Tina Hesman Saey Scientists have built a better mouse. But rest easy — these mice don’t require improved traps. The new mice may give scientists an advantage in tracing genetic sources of common diseases and investigating interactions between genes and environmental factors. In a series of 15 papers published in the February issues of Genetics and G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics, researchers describe the creation of the new-and-improved mice, known as the Collaborative Cross strains, and some of the ways scientists may use the mice in medical studies. Biomedical researchers use inbred strains of mice to mimic human diseases and probe the genetics involved. Every mouse in an inbred strain is a genetic clone. That’s useful because the mice all generally respond in the same way to a drug or to infection with a virus. And altering the function of a single gene and seeing what happens in these mice can help scientists decipher the role of that gene in disease processes. But because all the mice react so uniformly, they don’t reflect the range of responses humans may have. With conventional laboratory mice, it is also difficult to determine how multiple genes interact with each other or how disease-associated genes are influenced by the environment. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 16401 - Posted: 02.20.2012

By Ella Davies Reporter, BBC Nature Pygmy goats can develop "accents" as they grow older, according to scientists. The young animals, known as "kids", are raised in groups or "creches" with goats of a similar age. Researchers found that when young goats mixed in these social groups their calls became more similar. The animals join an elite group of mammals known to adapt a vocal sound in response to the environment that includes humans, bats and whales. Dr Elodie Briefer and Dr Alan McElligott from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at the University of London, UK published their results in the journal Animal Behaviour. In order to test the goats' vocal repertoire they recorded calls at one-week-old and again when they were aged five weeks. "Five weeks corresponds to the time when, in the wild, they join their social group after spending some time hidden in vegetation to avoid predators," Dr Briefer explained. "We found that genetically-related kids produced similar calls... but the calls of kids raised in the same social groups were also similar to each other, and became more similar as the kids grew older." BBC © 2012

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 16400 - Posted: 02.20.2012

By Laura Sanders VANCOUVER — Living in harsh conditions in an orphanage early in life has long-lasting consequences for a child’s social skills, a new study finds. Children who spent their first two years in a Romanian orphanage behaved abnormally in social interactions with other children, even years after leaving the institution. Life in the orphanage was also linked to brain abnormalities, Charles Nelson of Harvard Medical School reported February 17 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “I think this work nails the really important issues in trying to understand the effects of early life experiences,” said psychologist Janet Werker of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Since 1999, Nelson and colleagues have followed 136 children who were abandoned at birth and placed in an orphanage in Bucharest, Romania — a Spartan environment where the children spent hours staring at a white wall and followed a highly regimented schedule of activities. The kids received very little attention from caregivers. Nelson and his team arranged for half of these children to move into individual homes for foster care. (A bias against foster care in Romania made the situation unusual.) Called the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, the experiment offered a way to test the importance of a good environment. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Stress
Link ID: 16399 - Posted: 02.20.2012

New research provides evidence that wiring in the brains of children with autism differs from typically developing children as early as six months of age, according to a study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry on Friday. "This is the earliest study of brain development using neuro-imaging," says Geraldine Dawson, Ph.D. "By six months of age, even before the symptoms [of autism] emerge, the brain networks that connect different brain regions do not develop correctly." Dawson is not only one of the study authors, she's also the Chief Science Officer of the advocacy group Autism Speaks, which, along with the National Institutes of Health and the Simons Foundation, funded the research. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, along with researchers from other locations of the Infant Brain Imaging Study (IBIS) network, studied 92 babies who were all considered to be at high-risk for developing autism because they had older siblings with the neurodevelopmental disorder. Currently, about one in 110 children in the United States has autism, according to the latest CDC statistics. All 92 infants underwent a type of MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan called diffusion tensor imaging. MRIs do not use radiation and therefore are safe to use on babies. © 2010 Cable News Network.

Keyword: Autism; Brain imaging
Link ID: 16398 - Posted: 02.18.2012

By Gary Stix One of brain researchers’ closest brushes with science fiction in the last 10 years came with the discovery of a chemical that could completely wipe out memory, a molecule that evoked a real-life version of the scenario depicted in the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which a couple undertakes a procedure to erase their memory of each other when the relationship falls apart. Fortunately, the artificial amnesia occurred only in laboratory rats. But the experiment raised an obvious question: What would anyone do with a drug that essentially reformats your mental hard drive? Who would be interested besides a neurotic Woody Allen trying to reboot his life, or a sadistic Josef Mengele type attempting to conduct the kind of scientific experiment that would be judged a war crime at The Hague? A group of researchers have now come up with a more pragmatic answer to this question than incorporating the memory-erasing agent as a plot device in a cyberpunk novel Neuroscientists at McGill University and collaborators have just reported in Molecular Pain that the chemical with the evocative acronym ZIP can selectively wipe out the nervous system’s “memory” of the chronic aches and pains that plague about one in four North Americans, apparently leaving other memories intact. © 2012 Scientific American,

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 16397 - Posted: 02.18.2012

By CARL ZIMMER Fruit flies may seem as if they lead an uneventful life. They look for old fruit to lay their eggs. The maggots then hatch and graze on the yeast and bacteria that make the fruit rot. In reality, however, these flies have to do battle with horrifying enemies. Tiny wasps seek out the maggots and lay eggs inside them. The wasps develop inside the still living flies, feeding on their tissues. When the wasps reach adult size, they crawl out of the dying bodies of their hosts. The flies are not helpless victims, however. In the journal Current Biology, Todd Schlenke, an Emory University biologist, and his colleagues report a remarkable defense the insects use: To kill their parasites, the flies get drunk. Dr. Schlenke discovered this tactic while studying the common fruit fly species Drosophila melanogaster. As they eat yeast, they also eat the alcohol that the yeast produce while breaking down sugar. Their fermentation can leave a rotting banana with an alcohol concentration higher than that of a bottle of beer. This boozy environment can be toxic to animals. The only reason Drosophila melanogaster thrives on rotting fruit is that it has evolved special enzymes that quickly detoxify alcohol. Dr. Schlenke was well aware that many insects gain defenses from their food. Monarch butterflies, for example, are protected from birds by the toxic compounds they get from the milkweed plants they eat. To see how alcohol influences the enemies of the flies, Dr. Schlenke unleashed a parasitic wasp, Leptopilina heterotoma. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Evolution
Link ID: 16396 - Posted: 02.18.2012

An Ontario First Nations leader says a catastrophe is looming with the decision to stop manufacturing the drug OxyContin. Nishnawbe Aski Nation Chief Stan Beardy says thousands of residents of Ontario reserves are addicted to the drug, which is up to twice as strong as morphine. The organization, which represents 49 First Nation communities in northern Ontario, estimates close to half its members are addicted to OxyContin. Health Canada says when the pill is chewed or crushed, then injected or inhaled, it produces a "heroin-like euphoria." The company that produces OxyContin will stop manufacturing the drug in Canada at the end of the month. Purdue Pharma Canada will replace OxyContin with a new formulation called OxyNEO, which is formulated to make abuse more difficult. Beardy says addicts will go into withdrawal, and that scares him. Benedikt Fischer of the Centre for Applied Mental Health and Addictions at B.C.'s Simon Fraser University says there will be a lot of sick people. He says without treatment to help deal with the addiction, a public-health catastrophe is imminent. Copyright © CBC 2012

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 16395 - Posted: 02.18.2012

By Rachel Ehrenberg When it comes to feeling good vibrations, the eyes have it. Experiments in mice and humans show that a protein important for eye development also plays a role in sensing vibrations. An international team has found that mice lacking a protein called c-Maf have deformed Pacinian corpuscles (shown here in a mouse’s leg), the vibration-detectors that surround mouse bones. People have Pacinian corpuscles in their palms and fingertips. When the researchers tested four people with eye cataracts due to malfunctioning c-Maf, those individuals had a hard time detecting high-frequency vibrations, the scientists report online February 16 in Science. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Vision
Link ID: 16394 - Posted: 02.18.2012

By ANDREW POLLACK LOS OSOS, Calif. — Next week, advisers to the Food and Drug Administration will recommend whether the agency should approve the first new prescription diet pill in 13 years. The F.D.A. rejected the drug under review, Qnexa, in 2010, amid safety concerns, and the drug’s manufacturer is now presenting additional data to argue its case. But thousands of people here in central California, where Qnexa’s inventor ran a weight-loss clinic, and others across the country have not had to wait for the drug’s approval. Through a regulatory loophole of sorts, many obesity doctors prescribe two separate drugs that, when taken together, are essentially the same medicine. The widespread use of the unsanctioned combination reflects the often desperate desire for a medicine to help overcome the nation’s epidemic of obesity, doctors and patients say. The experience in this idyllic coastal community about midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles also provides a look at what might happen if Qnexa were approved. Use of the close substitute grew as word spread that some patients had experienced substantial weight loss. Some people here regained weight after stopping the treatment, and some experienced unpleasant side effects such as memory loss. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 16393 - Posted: 02.18.2012

Caitlin Stier, video intern In this video game clip, it looks like Mario is jumping vertically while an enemy tortoise slides by underneath him. But keep watching when the background stops moving and you'll see that their movement is not quite what it seems. The animation, developed by cognitive psychologist Sebastiaan Mathôt from VU University in Amsterdam, is a variation of a common illusion where our perception of an object's motion is affected by a moving background. In a previous Friday Illusion post, we shared a video that exploits the same brain trick. Can you identify it? Let us know your choice by posting the headline in the Comments section below and the first correct answer will receive a New Scientist goodie bag. Good luck! © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 16392 - Posted: 02.18.2012