By NICHOLAS WADE Walking through the Tai forest of Ivory Coast, Klaus Zuberbühler could hear the calls of the Diana monkeys, but the babble held no meaning for him. That was in 1990. Today, after nearly 20 years of studying animal communication, he can translate the forest’s sounds. This call means a Diana monkey has seen a leopard. That one means it has sighted another predator, the crowned eagle. “In our experience time and again, it’s a humbling experience to realize there is so much more information being passed in ways which hadn’t been noticed before,” said Dr. Zuberbühler, a psychologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Do apes and monkeys have a secret language that has not yet been decrypted? And if so, will it resolve the mystery of how the human faculty for language evolved? Biologists have approached the issue in two ways, by trying to teach human language to chimpanzees and other species, and by listening to animals in the wild. The first approach has been propelled by people’s intense desire — perhaps reinforced by childhood exposure to the loquacious animals in cartoons — to communicate with other species. Scientists have invested enormous effort in teaching chimpanzees language, whether in the form of speech or signs. A New York Times reporter who understands sign language, Boyce Rensberger, was able in 1974 to conduct what may be the first newspaper interview with another species when he conversed with Lucy, a signing chimp. She invited him up her tree, a proposal he declined, said Mr. Rensberger, who is now at M.I.T. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 13661 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Cristen Conger Caffeine has a stronger effect on boys than on girls, finds a new study that zeros in on the drug's health impacts on adolescents. More kids are consuming more and more caffeinated drinks, but the stimulant's effects on their growing bodies are still largely unknown. The study, which was published in Behavioural Pharmacology, looked at how consuming caffeinated beverages affected children between 12 and 17 years old. It found that boys would work significantly longer at a computer game to win a caffeinated soda than girls would. The study also controlled for factors including regular caffeine consumption, thirst and boredom. Jennifer R. Temple, lead researcher and neurobiologist at University of Buffalo, said she expected caffeinated drinks to work most strongly on those in the study who routinely consumed the most caffeine, regardless of sex. Instead, the results revealed a relationship between gender and the desire for caffeinated soda. "We aren't sure (why boys responded more), but we speculate that it could have to do with circulating hormones and their effect on the metabolism of caffeine," Temple said. © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13660 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Bob Holmes Sometimes it pays to give underlings a treat. Dominant male chacma baboons allow lower-ranking males to mate with their females as a way to protect the dominant male's own offspring in their absence. That's the conclusion reached by Louise Barrett of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, who studied 11 years of observations from a baboon troop in De Hoop Nature Reserve, South Africa. Chacma baboons have a despotic social structure in which a single alpha male can almost completely monopolise mating opportunities by guarding females during their oestrus periods. Yet Barrett found that subordinate males in the De Hoop troop fathered 23 of 64 offspring during that time. Closer analysis showed that this was not because the alpha male was too tired, too busy, or too inexperienced to guard the females. Instead, he appeared to be willingly ceding copulations to subordinate males Spare dads The alpha male's apparent generosity may be a strategy for protecting his young after he is no longer around. When an alpha male dies or wanders off, new alpha males – usually from an outside group – move in, and tend to try to kill infants from the previous regime. Having "spare dads" in the troop may help ensure that these infants receive protection, says Barrett. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Aggression; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13659 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Benjamin Radford Earlier this week, research published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Pediatrics found no evidence that special diets have any influence on autistic children. This was a blow to some parents of autistic children who had hoped for a cure, but things took a more tragic twist when Diane Sawyer of "ABC Nightly News" followed a report of the autism study with,"We asked Jenny McCarthy, the actress and activist for a response." Um, okay. The news directors at ABC News presumably have some of the world's top experts on hand to provide context and commentary to the new study by scientists and researchers who have spent decades studying autism. Instead, they asked McCarthy, a former model and actress who has no formal education in medicine or autism. Her expertise comes from being the mother of an autistic child -- a sort of “Mommy Doctorate” M.D., which is sort of like saying that owning a car qualifies a person as a mechanic. McCarthy has managed to tap into a strong anti-science, anti-medicine conspiracy theory sentiment that made convicted felon Kevin Trudeau (best-selling author of "Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About") a rich man. You might think that I'm too harsh on McCarthy. But who knows how many parents buy her best-selling books or see her on "Larry King Live" or ABC News and decide she must be right, and refuse to vaccinate their children for measles, chicken pox, mumps, influenza, polio, hepatitis and more, fearing the vaccine will make them autistic? © 2009 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 13658 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(HealthDay News) -- A new study adds to growing evidence that autism is caused by a miswiring of connections in a child's developing brain, resulting in impaired information flow. According to researchers at Children's Hospital Boston, it may be possible to one day treat the problem with drugs that target the molecular pathways that cause the miswiring. The study authors looked at a rare disorder called tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), which causes benign tumors throughout the body, including the brain. Many people with TSC have epilepsy and intellectual disabilities, and about 25 percent to 50 percent of TSC patients have autism spectrum disorders. In this study, the researchers found that mutations in one of TSC's causative genes (TSC2) prevent growing nerve fibers (axons) from locating their proper targets in the developing brain. The team focused on a nerve fiber (axon) route between the eye's retina and the visual processing area of the brain in mice. When neurons were deficient in TSC2, their axons failed to end up in the correct locations. That's because the axons' tips, called growth cones, didn't respond to navigation cues from molecules called ephrins. "Normally, ephrins cause growth cones to collapse in neurons, but in tuberous sclerosis the axons don't heed these repulsive cues, so keep growing," senior investigator Dr. Mustafa Sahin, of the hospital's neurology department, said in a news release. © 2010 ScoutNews, LLC

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 13657 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The visual pathway that underlies a migraine sufferer's sensitivity to light has been uncovered by Harvard scientists. The researchers studied two groups of blind people who suffered migraine headaches. They found light triggered a reaction in a group of brain neurons that remained active for some time. Migraines are one-sided throbbing headaches that cause nausea and affect up to six million people in the UK. The researchers, writing in the journal Nature Neuroscience, said they noted that even blind people who had migraines experienced sensitivity to light or photophobia. The observation led them to the idea that the signals transmitted from the retina via the optic nerve were somehow triggering worsening of the pain. They looked at 20 blind people who fell into two groups - the first were totally blind due to eye diseases such as retinal cancer and glaucoma. They were unable to see images or to sense light and therefore could not maintain normal sleep-wake cycles. Patients in the second group were legally blind due to retinal degenerative diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa. Although they were unable to perceive images, they could detect the presence of light and maintain normal sleep-wake cycles. The patients in the second group described intensified pain when they were exposed to light, in particular to blue or grey wavelengths. Rami Burstein, professor of anaesthesia and critical care medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston, US, led the study. (C)BBC

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Vision
Link ID: 13656 - Posted: 01.11.2010

by Peter Aldhous IF YOU'RE hoping to find out about using pills to treat alcohol addiction, the Alcoholics Anonymous website is the wrong place to look. Search there for "medication" and the closest you'll come is a warning about the dangers of turning to prescription drugs or narcotics as a substitute for alcohol. The website of the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs, California, reveals little more. It does at least discuss one possible medication to treat alcoholism, but the drug is curtly dismissed. "Naltrexone is not a cure for alcoholism nor is it in any way a treatment," writes James West, the centre's former medical director. "The treatment of alcoholism involves a complete psychological, spiritual and emotional shift, whereby victims of the disease are released at the core of their being from the compulsion to drink." Dig through the wealth of addiction support groups online and you'll come across two responses again and again - pharmacological treatments to alcohol addiction are either ignored, or they are actively rejected as a crutch that must be abandoned. "The dogma has been that you can't treat a chemical addiction with another chemical," says Markus Heilig of the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) in Bethesda, Maryland. "It's well-meaning but naive, and in the end very destructive." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13655 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers have identified a key epigenetic mechanism in the brain that helps explain cocaine's addictiveness, according to research funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The study, published in the January issue of the journal Science, shows how cocaine affects an epigenetic process (a process capable of influencing gene expression without changing a gene's sequence) called histone methylation. These epigenetic changes in the brain's pleasure circuits, which are also the first impacted by chronic cocaine exposure, likely contribute to an acquired preference for cocaine. "This fundamental discovery advances our understanding of how cocaine addiction works," said NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow. "Although more research will be required, these findings have identified a key new player in the molecular cascade triggered by repeated cocaine exposure, and thus a potential novel target for the development of addiction medications." Researchers gave one group of young mice repeated doses of cocaine and another group repeated doses of saline with a final dose of cocaine to determine how the effects of chronic cocaine exposure differed from one-time exposure. The study confirms that one of the mechanisms by which cocaine alters the reward pathway is by repressing G9A, a histone demethylating enzyme that plays a critical role in epigenetic control of gene expression.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 13654 - Posted: 01.11.2010

By Ford Vox Late last year, the world was captivated by the story of Rom Houben, a Belgian man who suffered a traumatic brain injury and was misdiagnosed for 23 years as being in a vegetative state. In fact, media outlets reported breathlessly, Houben had been conscious the whole time, trapped inside his motionless body, until a heroic doctor used cutting-edge scans to find normal brain activity. What's more, that doctor discovered a way for Houben to communicate, allowing the "locked-in" man to tell his harrowing tale to visiting reporters (Houben reportedly has a book on the way). It was a fantastic story that ruled the headlines for a few days, but unfortunately, it was only partly true, and the resulting media circus distorted the work of Houben's doctor, Steven Laureys. In reality, Laureys didn't need advanced technology to diagnose Houben, who doesn't meet the definition of a locked-in patient. Laureys actually can't verify that the patient was fully conscious for all those 23 years. Nor did Laureys acquaint Houben with "facilitated communication," a controversial aided-speech method that has Houben reliant on the hand of a therapist to peck out letters on a keyboard. (This method has been debunked time and again, including in a famous series of child-abuse trials involving severely autistic children.) But as the story gained more and more media attention, the narrative changed, and Laureys's work was increasingly misinterpreted. The doctor now sees his name linked to facilitated communication and seems driven to defend the method, even though the case is more accurately seen as a vindication for a simple but elegant observational test that can be used to determine a patient's level of consciousness. Laureys, who directs the Coma Science Group at the University of Liege, Belgium, is well regarded for his research on consciousness in brain-injury patients, especially for devising new ways to distinguish patients in a vegetative state from a minimally conscious one (the latter sees waxing and waning of awareness). It's an important distinction: minimally conscious patients have a better chance of recovery than vegetative ones. © 2010 Newsweek, Inc.

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 13653 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Coloured lights could be used to find treatments for brain disorders such as epilepsy, a study has suggested. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology team discovered a way to shut down brain activity using flashes of yellow and blue lasers. They hope to adjust this to switch off neurons that generate an electrical impulse abnormally, causing seizures. This could help experts understand how the brain works and, ultimately, offer treatment targets, Nature reports. The work relies on two genes found in natural organisms like algae that need light to make energy. These genes, known as Arch and Mac, contain the genetic code for light-activated proteins. The MIT team engineered brain neurons to express Arch and Mac. By doing this, they were able to control the brain cells of mice and monkeys using light. Light activates proteins which, in turn, lowers the voltage in the neurons and prevents them from generating an electrical signal, known as firing. Arch responds to blue light, Mac to yellow, and both recover afterwards. Now the researchers plan to closely examine the neural circuits of the brain in the lab to find targets that, when shut down, could treat epilepsy as well as other conditions including Parkinson's disease and chronic pain. Ed Boyden, who led the research, said: "Silencing different sets of neurons with different colours of light allows us to understand how they work together to implement brain functions. These tools will help us understand how to control neural circuits, leading to new understandings and treatments for brain disorders." (C)BBC

Keyword: Epilepsy
Link ID: 13652 - Posted: 01.09.2010

Philip Ball Why does Handel's Water Music and The Beatles' 'Here Comes The Sun' sound happy, while Albinoni's Adagio and 'Eleanor Rigby' sound sad? Some might say it's because the first two are in major keys, while the second two are in minor keys. But are the emotional associations of major and minor intrinsic to the notes themselves, or are they culturally imposed? Many music psychologists suspect the latter, but a new study now suggests that there's something fundamentally similar about major or minor keys and the properties of happy or sad speech, respectively. Neuroscientist Daniel Bowling and colleagues at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, compared the sound spectra — the profiles of different acoustic frequencies – of speech with those in Western classical music and Finnish folk songs. They found that the spectra in major-key music are close to those in excited speech, while the spectra of minor-key music are more similar to subdued speech 1. Most cultures share the same acoustic characteristics of happy or sad speech, the former being relatively fast and loud, and the latter slower and quieter. There's good reason to believe that music mimics some of these universal emotional behaviours, supplying a universal vocabulary that permits listeners sometimes to deduce the intended emotion in unfamiliar music. References 1. Bowling, D. L. et al. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 491- 503 (2010). © 2010 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 13651 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Ray Tallis MOST neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest this orthodoxy. Among them are those who focus on claims neuroscience makes about the preciseness of correlations between indirectly observed neural activity and different mental functions, states or experiences. This was well captured in a 2009 article in Perspectives on Psychological Science by Harold Pashler from the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues, that argued: "...these correlations are higher than should be expected given the (evidently limited) reliability of both fMRI and personality measures. The high correlations are all the more puzzling because method sections rarely contain much detail about how the correlations were obtained." Believers will counter that this is irrelevant: as our means of capturing and analysing neural activity become more powerful, so we will be able to make more precise correlations between the quantity, pattern and location of neural activity and aspects of consciousness. This may well happen, but my argument is not about technical, probably temporary, limitations. It is about the deep philosophical confusion embedded in the assumption that if you can correlate neural activity with consciousness, then you have demonstrated they are one and the same thing, and that a physical science such as neurophysiology is able to show what consciousness truly is. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 13650 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Linda Geddes PARENTS hoping to shield their children from sex stereotypes by giving them gender-neutral toys may be fighting a losing battle, especially if their offspring are boys. It seems that hormones released both before birth and well into the first few months of life may dictate the type of toys and play that boys are drawn to. By the age of 3, boys and girls show differences in their play preferences. Boys are more strongly drawn to balls, vehicles and construction toys than girls and tend to prefer playing with larger groups, whereas girls are more likely to prefer play with a few individuals. To what extent these differences are biologically programmed rather than a result of social pressure is hotly debated. Recent research hints that exposure to differing levels of hormones in the uterus might sway the preferences that both boys and girls have for "boy-like" toys later on. No one had looked at whether the surges in testosterone and oestrogen that boys and girls experience in the early months of life also affect behaviour. "We tend to think of early development as a time when hormones aren't having effects," says Gerianne Alexander of Texas A&M University in College Station and colleagues. To investigate the effects of these hormone surges on behaviour, Alexander and her colleagues used eye-tracking software to measure levels of interest in animations of a ball versus a doll and a group of figures versus an individual figure, in 21 boys and 20 girls aged 3 to 4 months. The researchers measured levels of oestrogen in the girls' saliva and testosterone in the boys' and compared the lengths of their index and middle fingers - a guide to prenatal testosterone exposure. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13649 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Charles Q. Choi Newly discovered painted scallops and cockleshells in Spain are the first hard evidence that Neandertals made jewelry. These findings suggest humanity's closest extinct relatives might have been capable of symbolism, after all. Body ornaments made of painted and pierced seashells dating back 70,000 to 120,000 years have been found in Africa and the Near East for years, and serve as evidence of symbolic thought among the earliest modern humans (Homo sapiens). The absence of similar finds in Europe at that time, when it was Neandertal territory, has supported the notion that they lacked symbolism, a potential sign of mental inferiority that might help explain why modern humans eventually replaced them. Although hints of Neandertal art and jewelry have cropped up in recent years, such as pierced and grooved animal-tooth pendants or a decorated limestone slab on the grave of a child, these have often been shrugged off as artifacts mixed in from modern humans, imitation without understanding, or ambiguous in nature. Now archaeologist João Zilhão at the University of Bristol in England and his colleagues have found 50,000-year-old jewelry at two caves in southeastern Spain, art dating back 10,000 years before the fossil record reveals evidence of modern humans entering Europe. At the Cueva (Cave) Antón, the scientists unearthed a pierced king scallop shell (Pecten maximus) painted with orange pigment made of yellow goethite and red hematite collected some five kilometers from that site. © 2010 Scientific American,

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 13648 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Maia Szalavitz It's hardly a secret that taking cocaine can change the way you feel and the way you behave. Now, a study published in the Jan. 8 issue of Science shows how it also alters the way the genes in your brain operate. Understanding this process could eventually lead to new treatments for the 1.4 million Americans with cocaine problems, and millions more around the world. The study, which was conducted on mice, is part of a hot new area of research called epigenetics, which explores how experiences and environmental exposures affect genes. "This is a major step in understanding the development of cocaine addiction and a first step toward generating ideas for how we might use epigenetic regulation to modulate the development of addiction," says Peter Kalivas, professor of neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina, who was not associated with the study. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2009.) Though we think about our genes mostly in terms of the traits we pass on to our children, they are actually very active in our lives every day, regulating how various cells in our bodies behave. In the brain this can be especially powerful. Any significant experience triggers changes in brain genes that produce proteins — those necessary to help memories form, for example. But, says the study's lead author, Ian Maze, a doctoral student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, "when you give an animal a single dose of cocaine, you start to have genes aberrantly turn on and off in a strange pattern that we are still trying to figure out." © 2010 Time Inc.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 13647 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dopamine, a chemical with a key role in setting people's moods, could have a much wider-ranging impact on their everyday lives, research suggests. Experiments show that altering levels of the chemical in the brain influences the decisions people make. One expert said the results showed the relative importance of "gut feeling" over analytical decision making. The Current Biology study could help understand how expectation of pleasure can go awry, for example in addiction. It follows previous research by the University College London team, which, using imaging techniques, detected a signal in the brain linked to how much someone enjoyed an experience. They found that signal could in turn predict the choices a person made. With the suspicion that the signal was dopamine, the researchers set up a study to test how people make complex decisions when their dopamine system has been tampered with. The 61 participants were given a list of 80 holiday destinations, from Greece to Thailand, and asked to rate them on a scale of one to six. They were then given a sugar pill and asked to imagine themselves in each of 40 of the destinations. Researchers then administered L-Dopa, a drug used in Parkinson's disease to increase dopamine concentrations in the brain, before asking them to imagine the other holidays. They rated all the destinations again, and a day later they were asked where they would prefer to go, out of paired lists of holidays. The extra dopamine gave people higher expectations when rating holiday options. And that translated into the choice of trip they made a day later. Study leader Dr Tali Sharot, from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuro-imaging at UCL, said humans made far more complex decisions than other animals, such as what job to take and whether to start a family, and it seemed dopamine played an important part in that. (C)BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Attention
Link ID: 13646 - Posted: 01.09.2010

By Jacqueline Stenson If you’re trying to motivate yourself to get moving in the new year, here’s some added inspiration: Mounting research shows that exercise isn’t just good for the body, it’s also good for the brain — and not just the brains of older folks. While much of the research on the effects of exercise on the mind has focused on countering dementia in seniors, recent studies show that kids and young to middle-aged adults can get a brain boost as well. One large new study, for instance, found that teenage males in the best cardiovascular shape performed better on various cognitive tests at age 18 than their less fit counterparts. And those who improved their fitness levels between the ages of 15 and 18 achieved higher test scores than those who decreased their fitness during that time. What’s more, the fittest 18-year-olds were more likely to achieve both higher educational and socioeconomic status later in life, according to results published in December in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We cannot determine from this study alone that physical fitness causes better cognitive functioning,” says study author Georg Kuhn, a professor at the Center for Brain Repair and Rehabilitation at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. “But taken together with other studies, we can assume that better cardiovascular fitness may optimize cognitive performance and academic achievements.” © 2010 msnbc.com

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Alzheimers
Link ID: 13645 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Emily Laut When it came to insect penises, Charles Darwin had it right. The famed naturalist suspected that insect genitalia, which are frequently festooned with bizarre combinations of hooks, spines, and knobs, essentially functioned like peacock tails. That is, they helped males beat out their rivals for females. Now, researchers have confirmed this hypothesis by zapping fly penises with a laser. Darwin's hypothesis relies on something called preinsemination sexual selection. Basically, the idea holds that the male with the most effective strategy for getting a female to mate with him--attractive plumage, for instance--is most likely to pass on his genes to the next generation. But since then, studies in various insects have suggested that sexual selection can happen during or even after mating. Researchers noticed, for example, that certain flies engage in courtship displays only after copulation has begun, perhaps as a way to get the female to favor a male's sperm over that of his competitors. (Female flies typically mate with multiple males over a short time period.) They also reasoned that the complicated penis ornaments might help sweep away other males' sperm during mating. But there was no direct way to test this. Enter laser beams. Evolutionary ecologist Michal Polak of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio and entomologist Arash Rashed now of the University of California, Berkeley, modified a laser commonly used to cut very small things, like the nerve cells of nematodes, so that it could zap off the hooks on fruit fly penises. "We can cut the tiniest of structures with the highest of precision," says Polak, all without harming the fly. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 13644 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ANDREW POLLACK It seemed like the offer of a lifetime — earn $2,500 by flying to France aboard a private luxury jet. Even if it wins Food and Drug Administration approval, Nuvigil would have to compete with cheap jet-lag treatments like coffee. But as the fine print made clear, there would be no Eiffel Tower or chateaux, no foie gras or Bordeaux. Travelers were confined to a laboratory in either Toulouse or Rouffach with electrodes attached to their heads, testing whether a drug could keep their jet-lagged bodies awake. That drug, Nuvigil from Cephalon, could become the first medicine specifically approved by the Food and Drug Administration to combat jet lag. A jet-lag antidote might seem to be the latest lifestyle drug, a further step in the “medicalization” of something that is not an illness. But sleep specialists, who call the affliction “jet lag disorder,” say that while not exactly a disease, it is a condition that can be dangerous — as when someone tries to drive a car right after arriving in a distant time zone. For Cephalon, a company in Frazer, Pa., whose business tactics have attracted federal attention, the approval for jet lag is part of a plan to extend patent protection for its core franchise in stay-awake drugs. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Sleep
Link ID: 13643 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sam Kean Here we go again. Late last year, scientists seemed to be homing in on the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)—excessive tiredness and other symptoms that have no known biological cause--by finding a supposed viral link. But a new paper challenges that link, a development that may plunge the field back into the same confusion and acrimony that has characterized it for years. Many CFS patients report that their symptoms began after an acute viral infection. Yet scientists have been unable to pin CFS on common viruses such as the Epstein-Barr virus. As a result, patients have faced skepticism for years that CFS might not be a real disease, or that it is perhaps a psychiatric disorder. A team of American researchers thought it finally struck pay dirt last October when it reported in Science that it found DNA traces of a virus in the blood cells of two-thirds of 101 patients with CFS, compared with 4% of 218 healthy controls. XMRV is a rodent retrovirus also implicated in an aggressive prostate cancer, though why it might cause or be associated with CFS remains unclear. Other scientists were dubious about the XMRV connection. They criticized the Americans for not explaining enough about the demographics of their patients and the procedures to control for contamination. Several virologists around the world practically sprinted to their labs to redo the experiments, and the discovery that a clinic associated with the Science paper was selling a $650 diagnostic test for XMRV made the issue more pressing. A British team already exploring the XMRV-prostate cancer link won the race, submitting a paper to debunk the claim on 1 December. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Depression; Emotions
Link ID: 13642 - Posted: 06.24.2010