By Rachel Ehrenberg Nerve cell tendrils readily thread their way through tiny semiconductor tubes, researchers find, forming a crisscrossed network like vines twining towards the sun. The discovery that offshoots from nascent mouse nerve cells explore the specially designed tubes could lead to tricks for studying nervous system diseases or testing the effects of potential drugs. Such a system may even bring researchers closer to brain-computer interfaces that seamlessly integrate artificial limbs or other prosthetic devices. “This is quite innovative and interesting,” says nanomaterials expert Nicholas Kotov of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “There is a great need for interfaces between electronic and neuronal tissues.” To lay the groundwork for a nerve-electronic hybrid, graduate student Minrui Yu of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his colleagues created tubes of layered silicon and germanium, materials that could insulate electric signals sent by a nerve cell. The tubes were various sizes and shapes and big enough for a nerve cell’s extensions to crawl through but too small for the cell’s main body to get inside. When the team seeded areas outside the tubes with mouse nerve cells the cells went exploring, sending their threadlike projections into the tubes and even following the curves of helical tunnels, the researchers report in an upcoming ACS Nano. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 15115 - Posted: 03.19.2011

by John C. Cannon Sonar drives beaked whales long distances from their favorite deep-water habitats, according to the first study conducted during actual U.S. Navy exercises. The finding could explain why these whales sometimes end up in dangerously shallow water where they could strand. It also suggests that the level of sonar that the Navy considers safe may be too high. Blainville's beaked whales belong to a mysterious family of long-snouted whales that prowl kilometer-deep ocean canyons, often far from land. And yet, beaked whales often turn up stranded shortly after the intense sonar exercises the Navy uses to train sailors to detect silent enemy submarines. During one such event in 2000, six beaked whales died on beaches in the Bahamas following Navy testing. Some researchers have hypothesized that sonar noise scares whales into dangerous dive patterns, causing disorienting bends-like symptoms that could throw them off course and into unfamiliar shallow water. But solid evidence for sonar's effects on whale behavior has remained elusive, in part because these whales spend so little time at the surface that charting their behavior is difficult. Previous studies have also played back sonar recordings rather than tracking the effects of actual Navy exercises. So in the new study, animal behaviorist Peter Tyack of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and colleagues enlisted the Navy's help. The researchers set up at the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center in the Bahamas, where the Navy trains sailors in sonar use. With a set of underwater microphones, they listened for the "click trains" of Blainville's beaked whales—signature sets of clicks that the animals use to home in on squid and other favorite prey in the murky depths of the sea. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Hearing; Animal Migration
Link ID: 15114 - Posted: 03.19.2011

By Linda Carroll and JoNel Aleccia A wave of nausea washed over Marcie Iseli shortly after her CT scan finished. Then her head started to feel strange, as if heat was emanating from somewhere deep inside. Her face started to feel uncomfortably warm, like she’d been sunburned. She’d gone in for the brain scan because of headaches and nerve pain on one side of her face, but now doctors had no idea what was wrong with her — especially since the scan showed no abnormalities. Two weeks later, clumps of her hair started falling out, followed by debilitating fatigue and problems with balance and memory. “I lost a 4-inch wide strip of hair that went from one side of my head to the other, recalls the 36-year-old mother of two from Kenova, W.Va. “I went to my family physician and then to a dermatologist who said he’d never seen anything like it.” It was two months before Iseli learned the cause of her mysterious symptoms: She’d gotten an overdose of radiation during the scan of her head, a blast almost eight times the expected amount. Within minutes, Iseli became a victim of radiation poisoning, with some of the same symptoms and possible long-term effects that may face workers now exposed to high levels of radiation at Japan’s ailing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. While Iseli’s targeted medical overdose is not the same as the full-body blast of a nuclear accident, it does offer some insight into the experience of radiation exposure, doctors say. © 2011 msnbc.com

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 15113 - Posted: 03.17.2011

by Ferris Jabr Gene therapy for Parkinson's disease has moved a step closer to acceptance in the wake of its first successful double-blind clinical trial. In 2007, Andrew Feigin of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, New York, and colleagues conducted an open-label trial – one in which both patients and researchers know which trial members are receiving the treatment and which are given a placebo – to assess a new gene therapy for Parkinson's, which is a neurodegenerative disorder. They demonstrated that a gene that codes for glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) can improve the condition of people with the disease when injected into their brains. GAD is an enzyme that catalyses production of an inhibitory neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Typically, people with Parkinson's produce too little GABA, and consequently have overstimulation in an area of the brain called the subthalamic nucleus. This overactivity in turn puts strain on neurons that produce another neurotransmitter – dopamine – which is vital for movement control. This helps explain some of the symptoms of Parkinson's, which include tremors, sluggish movements, rigid muscles and impaired posture and balance. Now the team have put their therapy to the ultimate test: a double-blind clinical trial in which neither the patient nor the clinical staff – other than the surgeons performing the procedures – knew who was receiving the therapy and who was given a placebo. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15112 - Posted: 03.17.2011

Ewen Callaway A sperm's path to an egg is more a deadly obstacle course than a track sprint. The one ejaculated sperm cell in a million that is lucky enough to reach the fallopian tubes, where eggs await fertilization, must conquer thick, gelatinous layers of mucus and cells surrounding the egg to reach its prize. Fortunately for the sperm, there is help. Two studies published today in Nature1,2 show how sperm sense progesterone, a female sex hormone, that has been released by cells surrounding the egg. The hormone may guide the sperm towards the egg as well as giving it a final push to get there, the research suggests. The findings could be used to design a new class of contraceptive drug. "It really is a significant step forward in terms of how we understand what regulates sperm," says Steven Publicover, a reproductive biologist at the University of Birmingham, UK, who was not involved in either study. In some previous experiments, ejaculated human sperm have been shown to swim towards areas with high levels of progesterone. The hormone also causes the cells to beat their whip-like tails more powerfully to make it through to the egg, a condition called hyperactivity. "We've got good reason to think that the response to progesterone matters, but it's bloody difficult to pin it down," says Publicover. Changing channel The latest studies, led by independent teams in Germany and the United States who agreed to publish their findings simultaneously, show that progesterone activates a molecular channel called CatSper, which floods sperm cells with calcium. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 15111 - Posted: 03.17.2011

By Tina Hesman Saey There’s a little Hannibal Lecter in all of us. But while the famous cannibal dined on chunks of his enemies and friends, most people stick to gnawing on themselves at a microscopic level. In fact, the cells of organisms from yeast to humans regularly engage in self-cannibalism. Cells chew on bits of their cytoplasm — the jellylike substance that fills their bellies — and dine on their own internal organs, although usually without the fava beans and Chianti. It may sound macabre, but gorging on one’s own innards, a process called autophagy, is a means of self-preservation, cleansing and stress management. “It has become evident that it is really an essential or vital function,” says Fulvio Reggiori, a cell biologist at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. A munch here gets rid of garbage that might otherwise clog the system. A nibble there rids cells of malfunctioning parts. One chomp disposes of invading microbes. In lean times, all that stands between a cell and starvation may be the ability to bite off and recycle bits of itself. And in the last decade or so it has become clear that self-eating can also make the difference between health and disease. “Too much or too little autophagy is a problem,” says Daniel Klionsky, a cell biologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. A cell that bites off more than it can chew can kill itself, Klionsky says. A few rare genetic diseases are linked to an excess of unsuccessful autophagy: The muscles of people with Danon disease, Pompe disease and X-linked myopathy can become weak after filling up with Pac-Man–like structures that put the bite on the cell’s insides but can’t finish digesting. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 15110 - Posted: 03.17.2011

By Travis Riddle You are probably aware that eating plants is good for you. However, what you may not know is that plants can provide benefits even if your taste buds run for cover at the first mention of spinach. New research is beginning to show that just having plants in your workspace may improve how you think. In a study to be published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, researchers show that the mere presence of plants in an office setting boosts one’s ability to maintain attention. As humans spend more of their lives in front of screens, scientists have devoted more attention to the effects these artificial environments have on the mind. Sometimes, this new study suggests, it may be possible to reap benefits with simple changes in decorating strategy. These findings build on a body of research based on Attention Restoration Theory. According to this theory, the reason why you can stare at spreadsheets for only so long before wanting to toss your computer monitor through the window is that everyone has a limited capacity for this kind of work. This limited capacity system makes use of “directed attention” which is effortful, controlled voluntarily, and diminishes with use. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 15109 - Posted: 03.17.2011

By Susan Milius Not to cause dinner table shouting or new excesses of political punditry — but in a test of a particular leadership skill among elephants, age and experience really did trump youth and beauty. Elephant matriarchs 60 years of age or older tended to assess threats in a simulated crisis more accurately than younger matriarchs did, says Karen McComb of the University of Sussex in Brighton, England. When researchers played recordings of various lion roars, elephant groups with older matriarchs grew especially defensive at the sound of male cats. Younger matriarchs’ families underreacted, McComb and her colleagues report in an upcoming Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B. The older females have it right, McComb says. Male lions rarely attack an elephant, but when they do, they can be especially deadly: A single male can bring down an elephant calf. Studying leadership among animals has become an active research area. “People have become intrigued by some of the parallels between the sorts of characteristics that seem to define a leader in animals and in humans,” McComb says. The new elephant approach “is definitely novel,” says psychologist Mark van Vugt of VU University Amsterdam, who studies the evolution of leadership. The new paper extends a general observation — that older individuals show more leadership in tasks involving specialized knowledge — into situations involving threats. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15108 - Posted: 03.17.2011

By Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Diane Rogers-Ramachandran Stare at the tiny, central black fixation spot on the white cross in a. After 30 seconds, transfer your gaze to a neutral gray background. You should see a dark—almost black—cross fading in and out. It is especially pronounced if you blink your eyes to revive the image to slow down the fading. This effect is called a negative afterimage because the persistent ghost of the cross is the opposite of what you were looking at—it is dark instead of light. When you fixated on the white cross, you “fatigued” the retinal light receptors by bleaching out the cone pigments. So when you look at neutral gray, the region corresponding to where the white cross had been fires less vigorously than the surrounding area, and the net result is that it is seen as a dark cross. Why does the cross fade? Partly because the fatigued receptors recover slowly as the bleached pigment regenerates. In contrast, with real images our eyes are in constant motion—images sail and jerk across the retina as we scan rooms, roads, texts or faces to identify novel or important bits. This continual movement prevents adaptation or fatigue because new patterns are constantly on any retinal area. With intense focus, you can eliminate all voluntary movements, and you should notice certain objects slowly fade away, as in b (termed the Troxler effect or Troxler fading). This fading is intermittent because your eyes never completely stop moving. Microscopic involuntary trembling characterizes even the steadiest fixation. This “physiological nystagmus” allows the brain’s edge-detecting neurons to avoid being fatigued, even during fixation, by providing moment-to-moment refreshing. But an afterimage, unlike a real image, remains stuck to the retina so the neurons are not refreshed and fatigue quickly kicks in. © 2011 Scientific American

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 15107 - Posted: 03.15.2011

Matt Kaplan The logical argument that ancient human ancestors had to have mastered fire before departing balmy Africa for the often freezing climes of Europe is being challenged by a review revealing that there is no evidence to support the idea. Exactly when fire became a tool in the hominin toolbox is a thorny issue. Unlike stone tools, which hold together reasonably well over the course of time and can be dated as having been in hominin hands for at least 2.6 million years, the ash and charcoal that are often the only remains from ancient fires are rare in the fossil record as they are easily destroyed by the elements. Yet because fire makes food so much more energy efficient to consume and has such a key role in providing warmth, most anthropologists have agreed that hominins had to have mastered fire before they headed into Europe. "We assumed fire had to be an element of the human toolkit to survive northern-latitude winters," says archaeologist, Francesco d'Errico at the University of Bordeaux in France. As logical as the argument seems, the review, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, suggests that it is wrong. Wil Roebroeks at Leiden University in the Netherlands and Paola Villa at the University of Colorado Museum in Boulder, searched the European archaeological record for fires and found that the earliest possible evidence comes from two 400,000-year-old sites, one in England that seems to have the remains of an ancient hearth and one in Germany that has a charred wooden tool and heated flint present. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15106 - Posted: 03.15.2011

by Emma Young Every one of us slips into this mysterious state of consciousness every night, yet we are only now waking up to its mind-altering powers "THE interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind." So wrote Sigmund Freud in his 1900 classic The Interpretation of Dreams. He saw this idea as a "once in a lifetime" insight, and for much of the 20th century the world agreed. Across the globe, and upon countless psychoanalysts' couches, people recounted their dreams in the belief that they contained coded messages about repressed desires. Dreams were no longer supernatural communications or divine interventions - they were windows into the hidden self. Today we interpret dreams quite differently, and use far more advanced techniques than simply writing down people's recollections. In sleep laboratories, dream researchers hook up volunteers to EEGs and fMRI scanners and awaken them mid-dream to record what they were dreaming. Still tainted by association with psychoanalysis, it is not a field for the faint-hearted. "To say you're going to study dreams is almost academic suicide," says Matt Walker at the University of California, Berkeley. Nevertheless, what researchers are finding will make you see your dreams in a whole new light. Modern neuroscience has pushed Freud's ideas to the sidelines and has taught us something far more profound about dreaming. We now know that this peculiar form of consciousness is crucial to making us who we are. Dreams help us to consolidate our memories, make sense of our myriad experiences and keep our emotions in check. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 15105 - Posted: 03.15.2011

By Amanda Chan The children of women who experience a stressful life event either during or before pregnancy are at an increased risk of being hospitalized from infectious disease, according to a new study. Children whose mothers experienced a stressful event, such as the death of a loved one or divorce, while they were pregnant were 71 percent more likely to be hospitalized with a severe infectious disease than children of women who did not undergo prenatal stress, said study researcher Nete Munk Nielsen, an epidemiologist at Statens Serum Institute in Denmark. And the children of women who experienced a stressful life event 11 months before conception were 42 percent more likely to be hospitalized with severe infectious disease than the children of stress-free women, Nielsen said. "We speculate that this is due to effects of longer-lasting stress following the stressful life event," Nielsen told MyHealthNewsDaily. The study was published online last week in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Researchers looked at the health data for 1,670,269 Danish children born between 1977 and 2004, and asked their mothers if they experienced the death of a spouse or a child, or had gotten a divorce before or during pregnancy. The children were followed from four weeks after birth until they turned 15. © 2011 msnbc.com

Keyword: Stress; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15104 - Posted: 03.15.2011

By NICHOLAS WADE Every time some human attribute is said to be unique, whether tool-making or language or warfare, biologists soon find some plausible precursor in animals that makes the ability less distinctive. Still, humans are vastly different from other animals, however hard the difference may be to define. A cascade of events, some the work of natural selection, some just plain accidents, propelled the human lineage far from the destiny of being just another ape, down an unexpected evolutionary path to become perhaps the strangest blossom on the ample tree of life. And what was the prime mover, the dislodged stone that set this eventful cascade in motion? It was, perhaps, the invention of weapons — an event that let human ancestors escape the brutal tyranny of the alpha male that dominated ape societies. Biologists have little hesitation in linking humans’ success to their sociality. The ability to cooperate, to make individuals subordinate their strong sense of self-interest to the needs of the group, lies at the root of human achievement. “Humans are not special because of their big brains,” says Kim Hill, a social anthropologist at Arizona State University. “That’s not the reason we can build rocket ships — no individual can. We have rockets because 10,000 individuals cooperate in producing the information.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15103 - Posted: 03.15.2011

— It seems that women become addicted to cocaine more easily than men and find it harder to give up. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Biology of Sex Differences reinforces this position by showing that the motivation of female rats to work for cocaine is much higher than males. Researchers from the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, University of Michigan, found that rats bred to have an elevated stress response and increased impulsiveness are more easily trained to reward themselves with cocaine. They are also more determined, than similar rats with low impulsivity and lower stress responses, in pursuit of their next fix. While cocaine dependency has something to do with thrill seeking and impulsivity, it is also affected by the differences between males and females. At a low dose, for both sets of rats, it was the females who were quickest to learn self-administration and were the most willing to work harder for their next fix. At higher doses, the differences in behaviour between the male and female rats were less apparent. Whilst certain personality types are perhaps predisposed towards drug addiction Dr Jennifer Cummings explained, "An individual's sex continues to increase the likelihood of drug abuse." 1. Jennifer A. Cummings, Brooke A. Gowl, Christel Westenbroek, Sarah M. Clinton, Huda Akil, Jill B. Becker. Effects of a selectively bred novelty-seeking phenotype on the motivation to take cocaine in male and female rats. Biology of Sex Differences, 2011; 2: 3 DOI: 10.1186/2042-6410-2-3 © 1995-2010 ScienceDaily LLC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15102 - Posted: 03.15.2011

Tiffany O'Callaghan A miniaturized positron emission tomography (PET) scanner has opened a fresh window for research into behaviour and brain function simultaneously. The 'wearable' PET, known as the RatCAP, was developed by a team of researchers led by physicist Paul Vaska at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, and allows scans on animals that are awake and moving around. The findings are published online today in Nature Methods. PET uses radioactive tracers to show the metabolism of chemicals in the body in real time. It is a key tool for examining organ function, evaluating blood flow, diagnosing cancer early and researching neurological conditions from Alzheimer's disease to epilepsy. But PET use for behavioural research in animals has been limited — whereas humans can lie still during a PET scan, enabling analysis while they are awake, it is a lot trickier to get animals to do as they're told. That largely limits the use of PET to anaesthetized animals, ruling out simultaneous behavioural studies. The tiny PET developed by the team attaches to the rat's head using a bracket screwed onto the skull, has an inner diameter of 38 mm and weighs just 250 g. For a rat, that is still pretty heavy — nearly the weight of an adult male rat — so to optimize the rat's movement while wearing the RatCAP, the team attached the device to a system of long springs and motion stabilisers fastened to the top of the observation chamber to reduce the weight and allow rat movement. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 15101 - Posted: 03.14.2011

Like a car crash, many of us have been absorbed watching as actor Charlie Sheen descends into a sad spectacle of madness and drug abuse. Earlier this week, we learned from that august web site TMZ.com that a species of pot has been named after the putatively insane actor. Click here to get the scoop from TMZ. Canada has one of the highest rates of marijuana use in the world. According to a 2007 report by the United Nations, nearly 17% of Canadians between the ages of 15 and 64 smoke pot or ingest one of its derivatives. Many people think of cannabis as a harmless drug. Now, a new study may change that view. Researchers from the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and the UK found a side effect of using marijuana that should give parents pause for concern. The study - which was published in the British Medical Journal - tracked more than 1,900 young people age 14 to 24 over a period of 10 years. Researchers found that 13 percent of the participants reported using cannabis at least five times at some point during their lives. That figure rose to 20 percent by the three and half year mark of the study. They concluded that those teens and young adults who use cannabis were nearly twice as likely to exhibit psychotic behaviour at some point compared to those who didn't use the substance. Other studies have found an association between psychotic behaviour and marijuana use. This study was the first to demonstrate that marijuana use precedes the onset of psychotic symptoms. The researchers excluded anyone who reported cannabis use or pre-existing psychotic symptoms prior to the start of the study. The study controlled for factors like social status or wealth and the use of other illicit drugs like crystal methamphetamine and cocaine - factors that independently increase the risk of psychosis - as well as other psychiatric conditions (for example, depression). © CBC 2011

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 15100 - Posted: 03.14.2011

Catherine de Lange, reporter Start watching the video above and you may not believe that it features an ordinary (albeit oversized) chessboard. The board seems to contort inwards but that's because the corners of some of the squares are highlighted with tiny pieces of paper. Once they're blown away, a regular pattern of parallel squares is revealed. This video was created by Greg Ross, an illusion fanatic with his own YouTube page dedicated to the cause. He constructed the illusion after he was baffled by a similar trick. "The one I saw looked as if the black and white squares were warped and bulging outwards towards me. I had to actually use a ruler to prove to myself that they were parallel," he says. To re-create the brain trick, he had to figure out exactly where to place the paper dots to achieve the perception of inward distortion. Then, it took four hours to painstakingly lay out 200 hand-cut paper squares onto a custom-printed board. "Placing the squares on the pattern was one of the most tedious things I've ever done in my life," says Ross. "I had to use tweezers to maneuver them and static electricity repeatedly thwarted my efforts." If you think you know why we perceive this illusion, let us know in the comment thread below and we'll let you know what the experts say next week. (If you're wondering what the blue shape in the video is, it's Ross's hat. He forgot he was wearing it during filming but there was no way he was going to do a re-take.) © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 15099 - Posted: 03.14.2011

Scientists say they have discovered a "maintenance" protein that helps keep nerve fibres that transmit messages in the brain operating smoothly. The University of Edinburgh team says the finding could improve understanding of disorders such as epilepsy, dementia, MS and stroke. In such neurodegenerative disorders, electrical impulses from the brain are disrupted. This leads to an inability to control movement, and muscles wasting away. The brain works like an electrical circuit, sending impulses along nerve fibres in the same way that current is sent through wires. These fibres can measure up to a metre, but the area covered by the segment of nerve that controls transmission of messages is no bigger than the width of a human hair. Signal failure The scientists discovered that the protein Nfasc186 is crucial for maintaining the health and function of the segment of nerve fibres - called the axon initial segment (AIS) - that controls transmission of messages within the brain. They found that the AIS and the protein within it are important in ensuring the nerve impulse has the right properties to convey the message as it should. Professor Peter Brophy, director of the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Neuroregeneration, said: "Knowing more about how signals in the brain work will help us better understand neurodegenerative disorders and why, when these illnesses strike, the brain can no longer send signals to parts of the body." BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Epilepsy; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15098 - Posted: 03.14.2011

An oral drug for multiple sclerosis has been approved for some MS patients in Canada. Until Thursday's announcement, drug treatment options for MS patients in this country were limited to medications taken regularly by injection or infusion. Gilenya, also called fingolimod, is a capsule taken once a day for people with the relapsing-remitting form of MS. These patients have relapses that continue to worsen in severity, disability level, or who are unable to tolerate injections. "It's a very long awaited type of medication for our patients," said Dr. Heather MacLean, a neurologist at the Ottawa Hospital who specializes in MS. Needle injections under the skin are painful and are associated with itching and lumpy skin reactions, and the weekly intramuscular medication can also cause muscle pain, noted MacLean, who has treated patients with the new drug as part of early clinical trials. From her experience, MacLean estimated that 10 to 20 per cent of relapsing-remitting MS patients currently on treatment stand to benefit from Gilenya. "It always surprises me how patients really require different modalities of treatment based on their own personal disease course and their own treatment goals. To have another available option for them, I think they'll be thrilled." Gilenya's manufacturer, Novartis, submitted clinical trial data to Health Canada to get the approval. © CBC 2011

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 15097 - Posted: 03.11.2011

By JAMIE STENGLE DALLAS — Women who enjoy a daily dose of coffee may like this perk: It might lower their risk of stroke. Women in a Swedish study who drank at least a cup of coffee everyday had a 22 to 25 percent lower risk of stroke, compared to those who drank less coffee or none at all. "Coffee drinkers should rejoice," said Dr. Sharonne N. Hayes, a cardiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "Coffee is often made out to be potentially bad for your heart. There really hasn't been any study that convincingly said coffee is bad." "If you are drinking coffee now, you may be doing some good and you are likely not doing harm," she added. But Hayes and other doctors say the study shouldn't send non-coffee drinkers running to their local coffee shop. The study doesn't prove that coffee lowers stroke risk, only that coffee drinkers tend to have a lower stroke risk. "These sorts of epidemiological studies are compelling but they don't prove cause," said Dr. David S. Seres, director of medical nutrition at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. The findings were published online Thursday in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. Copyright 2011 The Associated Press

Keyword: Stroke; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15096 - Posted: 03.11.2011