By NICHOLAS BAKALAR People with bipolar disorder are at risk for an array of fatal illnesses, according to a review of 17 studies involving more than 331,000 patients. The researchers, writing in the February issue of Psychiatric Services, looked at studies of patients whose bipolar illness was severe enough to require hospitalization. Mortality in those patients ranged from 35 percent to 200 percent higher than in comparison groups. In the larger studies, almost every cause of death was higher among bipolar patients: cardiovascular, respiratory, cerebrovascular (including strokes), and endocrine (like diabetes). In the smaller studies, mortality from cerebrovascular disease was higher among those with bipolar illness, but they showed inconsistent results, probably because they used smaller samples or less representative populations. Several markers of inflammation — often a precursor of heart attacks and strokes — are higher among bipolar patients than others. The chronic stress of bipolar illness may lead to metabolic syndrome and atherosclerosis, or to insulin resistance, which increase the risk for sudden cardiac death. And psychiatric medications, because many lead to weight gain, may increase the risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disorders. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 12612 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A top medical journal has cast doubt on whether a testosterone patch designed to boost post-menopausal women's flagging sex drive actually works. The Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB) also said the long-term safety of Intrinsa remained unproven. It criticised trials of the treatment as flawed and inconclusive. The makers, Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, said Intrinsa had been thoroughly tested, and had been shown to be effective. The falling away of sexual desire after the menopause is known as hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD). There is some evidence that the condition may be linked to low levels of the sex hormone testosterone. Intrinsa is designed to address the problem by releasing a daily dose of the hormone into the blood stream from a patch worn on the lower abdomen. It is prescribed for women with HSDD who are also receiving therapy to top up levels of another sex hormone, oestrogen. The patch was licensed by the European Medicines Evaluation Agency in July 2006. However, the journal said that key trials of the patches involved highly selective groups of women, and excluded those with various mental or physical conditions that could also affect their sex drive. In some trials, the journal said, a diagnosis of HSDD was made on the basis of short, unvalidated questionnaires. In addition, significant numbers of women who took part in the trial reported that their sex life picked up even though they were given a dummy treatment with no biological effect. This, the journal said, suggested that low levels of testosterone might not have been the problem in the first place. In some instances women reported having sex up to three times a month before the trials - raising questions over whether they had a poor sex drive at all from the outset. (C)BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 12611 - Posted: 03.03.2009

Vitamin B12 is found in meat, dairy products, eggs, fish, shellfish and fortified breakfast cerealsVitamin B12 is found in meat, dairy products, eggs, fish, shellfish and fortified breakfast cereals (CBC) Women with low levels of vitamin B12 before and after conception are at higher risk of giving birth to babies with brain or spinal cord defects, say researchers who recommend that women of childbearing age get enough of the vitamin in addition to folic acid. In the March issue of Pediatrics, Irish and American researchers said women with low B12 had at least 2.5 times the risk of giving birth to a child with neural tube defects that can lead to partial paralysis or death, compared with women with the highest levels of the vitamin. Since the vitamin is more common in meat and animal-based foods, vegans and vegetarians are at greater risk for the deficiency, the researchers said. "Vitamin B12 is essential for the functioning of the nervous system and for the production of red blood cells," said Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethseda, Md. "The results of this study suggest that women with low levels of B12 not only may risk health problems of their own, but also may increase the chance that their children may be born with a serious birth defect." © CBC 2009

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12610 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Carolyn Y. Johnson Two decades ago, medicine seemed on the cusp of a revolution. Doctors would soon treat diseases at their very roots, inserting "good" genes to replace patients' faulty ones. Gene therapy was a seductively straightforward idea that offered promise for treating everything from cancer to sickle cell disease. But only now, after overcoming unexpected scientific obstacles and the high-profile death of a teenage patient, is gene therapy racking up some clear-cut successes. Promising studies are sending ripples of excitement through the field. Some researchers are daring to use the word cure. "Yes, we have endured a few more years of questions about gene therapy: Does it really work? Is it really safe?" said Savio Woo, a professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and a past president of the American Society of Gene Therapy. "Now we can show it does work, and it's safe." That doesn't mean that people will be lining up for gene therapy any time soon. No treatments have been approved yet. But researchers are finally pointing to a few inspiring successes, untainted by the kind of tragedy that cast a shadow on the field in the past. Gene therapy started the year with a bang: Researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that the technique cured eight of 10 children suffering from usually lethal "bubble boy disease," a lack of immunity that leaves children vulnerable to infections. After two to eight years, all the patients were alive, unlike a previous trial. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior; Vision
Link ID: 12609 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Shankar Vedantam For many years, scientists have explored how parental conflicts and other marital problems can affect the well-being of children. Far less attention has been paid to the opposite question: How do children, especially difficult children, influence the quality of married life? Couples who have a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are nearly twice as likely to divorce or separate as couples who do not have children with the psychiatric disorder, according to a definitive new study that is the first to explicitly explore the question. The reason appears simple: Having a child who is inattentive or hyperactive can be extremely stressful for caregivers and can exacerbate conflicts, tensions and arguments between parents. The research topic is sensitive because it can be easily misinterpreted to mean that scientists are blaming kids for the marital woes of their parents; that may be one reason researchers have generally avoided the topic and limited their investigations to how parental conflicts affect children. But increasingly, the evidence suggests that the lines of influence run in both directions. The study, led by psychologists Brian Wymbs and William Pelham and published last year in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, longitudinally tracked a large number of families with and without children diagnosed with ADHD, a disorder characterized by inattention and hyperactivity and often accompanied by conduct problems and oppositional behavior. © 2009 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: ADHD; Stress
Link ID: 12608 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Tina Hesman Saey Parents often report that tummy troubles and autism go hand in hand. Some have even suggested that special diets can reduce autism symptoms. But many experts have dismissed the connection as mere coincidence or have attributed the overlapping conditions to different genetic or environmental factors. Now new research, published in the March Pediatrics, shows that there is a genetic link between autism and gastrointestinal disorders. It’s unclear whether this genetic link means that an environmental therapy such as diet could boost brain function or if just feeling better could be responsible for improved behavior. Researchers from Vanderbilt University had previously linked a genetic variant in the control panel of the MET gene to autism. In the general population, some people have the DNA letter G in a particular position in the control panel, which determines whether the MET gene is active. Other people have a C in that position. That variant of the gene, known as the MET C allele, turns down production of MET, a protein involved in brain development, gut repair and other body functions. Children who inherit copies of MET C from both parents have more than twice the risk of developing autism as children who get the G variety from both parents. In the new study, the Vanderbilt team and additional colleagues found that children with autism who have two copies of MET C are also more likely to have gastrointestinal problems than people who have two copies of the G variant or a combination of G and C. The study is the first to demonstrate a possible genetic cause for the co-occurrence of autism and digestive tract problems. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12607 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Jack Penland For years, scientists have seen a link between odd hours and health-threatening conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but, according to Frank Scheer of Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, “The underlying mechanism was not well understood.” “What we wanted to know,” says Scheer, was if living hours opposite from your internal body clock “would lead to physiological changes that may in the long run lead to increased risk for obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.” Scheer and Steven Shea, also with Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical school, led a team that inverted the hours of ten volunteers over ten days. He says, “We were struck actually by the speed of the changes that we observed.” During the testing the scientists took hourly measurements of blood sugar and hormones such as leptin, which is important in regulating someone’s appetite and body weight. He added, “Even within a few days we observed quite dramatic changes in all these hormone systems.” The results went so far that, “three of the individuals showed blood glucose levels which were consistent with a pre-diabetic state.” In a clinical setting, ten young, healthy and normal-weight volunteers agreed to be tested over ten days. The first two were normal days where blood samples were taken and baseline blood sugar and hormone levels established. Over the next eight days the volunteers lived 28-hour days. In other words, if the normal wake time was 7 am and bed time 11 pm, then it was shifted to waking at 11 am and sleeping at 3 am on the first day, waking at 3 pm on the second and sleeping at 7 am on the third and so on until they were back to a regular day. ©2009 ScienCentral

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Sleep
Link ID: 12606 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Haley Stephenson If nicotine liked muscle receptors as much as it likes brain receptors, a single cigarette would kill. Scientists have finally figured out why the molecule is so picky--a finding that may shed light on the addictiveness of smoking. For nicotine--or any molecule--to interact with its receptor, the two must bind. Having opposite charges on the molecule and the receptor's binding site, referred to as the "box," helps. But the nicotine receptors in the brain and muscles are nearly identical--nicotine has a positive charge, and both receptors' boxes have a negative charge. So something else must explain why the brain loves nicotine whereas muscles shun it. After more than a decade of work, Dennis Dougherty, a chemist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and his colleagues finally have the answer. It turns out that a single amino acid makes all the difference. Near the box region, the brain receptor has a lysine molecule, whereas the muscle receptor has a glycine molecule. What the lysine does, Dougherty and colleagues report online this week in Nature, is change the shape of the brain receptor's box, effectively making its negative charge more accessible to nicotine--a situation known as a cation-pi interaction. "The box reshapes so nicotine can cozy up," Dougherty says. For its part, the box in the muscle receptor is ideally configured for a molecule known as acetylcholine, which helps muscles contract. When Dougherty's team switched out the muscle receptor's glycine for a lysine, the muscle embraced nicotine as if it were acetylcholine. It's a good thing that doesn't happen in the body, says Mark Levandoski, a chemist at Grinnell College in Iowa, who was not part of the study. Smoking would immediately trigger abnormal contractions that would paralyze muscles, like those involved in breathing. "If nicotine were lighting up our muscles the way acetylcholine does, we'd be in big trouble," Levandoski says. © 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12605 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER In seeking bipartisan support for his economic policies, President Obama has tried every tip on the standard hospitality crib sheet: beer and football, milk and cookies, Earth, Wind and Fire. Maybe the president needs to borrow a new crib sheet — the kind with a genuine baby wrapped inside. A baby may look helpless. It can’t walk, talk, think symbolically or overhaul the nation’s banking system. Yet as social emulsifiers go, nothing can beat a happily babbling baby. A baby is born knowing how to work the crowd. A toothless smile here, a musical squeal there, and even hard-nosed cynics grow soft in the head and weak in the knees. In the view of the primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the extraordinary social skills of an infant are at the heart of what makes us human. Through its ability to solicit and secure the attentive care not just of its mother but of many others in its sensory purview, a baby promotes many of the behaviors and emotions that we prize in ourselves and that often distinguish us from other animals, including a willingness to share, to cooperate with strangers, to relax one’s guard, uncurl one’s lip and widen one’s pronoun circle beyond the stifling confines of me, myself and mine. As Dr. Hrdy argues in her latest book, “Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding,” which will be published by Harvard University Press in April, human babies are so outrageously dependent on their elders for such a long time that humanity would never have made it without a break from the great ape model of child-rearing. Chimpanzee and gorilla mothers are capable of rearing their offspring pretty much through their own powers, but human mothers are not. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Evolution
Link ID: 12604 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHICAGO - In a stunning improvement in children's health, far fewer children have high lead levels than 20 years ago, according to new government research. Federal researchers credited the improvement on aggressive efforts to reduce children's exposure to lead in old house paint, soil, water, and other sources. Lead can interfere with the developing nervous system and cause permanent problems with learning, memory, and behavior. Children in poor neighborhoods have generally been more at risk because they tend to live in older housing and in industrial areas. Researchers found that just 1.4 percent of young children had elevated lead levels in their blood in 2004, the latest data available. That compares with almost 9 percent in 1988. "It has been a remarkable decline," said Mary Jean Brown of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a coauthor of the study. "It's a public health success story." The 84 percent drop extends a trend that began in the 1970s when efforts began to remove lead from gasoline. The study was being released today in the March edition of the journal Pediatrics. It is based on nearly 5,000 children, ages 1 to 5, who were part of a periodic government health survey. © 2009 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 12603 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Why do people do good things? Is kindness hard-wired into the brain, or does this tendency arise via experience? Or is goodness some combination of nature and nurture? Dacher Keltner, director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory, investigates these questions from multiple angles, and often generates results that are both surprising and challenging. In his new book, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, Keltner weaves together scientific findings with personal narrative to uncover the innate power of human emotion to connect people with each other, which he argues is the path to living the good life. Keltner was kind enough to take some time out to discuss altruism, Darwinism, neurobiology and practical applications of his findings with David DiSalvo. DISALVO: You have a book that was just released called Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life. What in a nutshell does the term “born to be good” mean to you, and what are you hoping people learn from reading the book? KELTNER: “Born to be good” for me means that our mammalian and hominid evolution have crafted a species—us—with remarkable tendencies toward kindness, play, generosity, reverence and self-sacrifice, which are vital to the classic tasks of evolution—survival, gene replication and smooth functioning groups. These tendencies are felt in the wonderful realm of emotion—emotions such as compassion, gratitude, awe, embarrassment and mirth. These emotions were of interest to Darwin, and Darwin-inspired studies have revealed that our capacity for caring, for play, for reverence and modesty are built into our brains, bodies, genes and social practices. My hopes for potential readers are numerous. I hope they learn about the remarkable wisdom of Darwin and the wonders of the study of emotion. I hope they come to look at human nature in a new light, one that is more hopeful and sanguine. I hope they may see the profoundly cooperative nature of much of our daily social living. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Aggression; Emotions
Link ID: 12602 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower In a virtual setting where fifth-graders become wizards and athletes, and even change sexes, preteens stay true to their real-world selves. Classic sex differences in play preferences, characterized by rough-and-tumble games among boys and intimate conversations among girls, still exist after youngsters adopt a range of personas for virtual encounters, investigators find. Boys who create girl avatars — or computerized altar egos — and girls who create boy avatars still behave consistently with their biological sex, say psychologist Sandra Calvert of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and her colleagues. In their new study, published online February 20 in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, about 13 percent of fifth-graders chose opposite-sex avatars, a practice the researchers call gender-bending. Pairs of kids — all of whom knew each other — experimented more with avatar identities than pairs of unfamiliar children did in a similar, 2003 study led by Calvert. Same-sex pairs showed this pattern most strongly. As fifth-graders learned to construct avatars and use these characters to interact with others in a multi-user domain, or MUD, experimentation with avatar costumes, sexes and names increased sharply. But as in real-world play, MUD play centered on self-exploration rather than self-alteration, Calvert asserts. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 12601 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Solmaz Barazesh Making tough choices won’t get any easier, but scientists have discovered that different types of decisions are made in different areas of the brain’s frontal lobes. Abstract decisions are made toward the front of the lobes and concrete decisions are made toward the back, researchers report in a study published online March 1 in Nature Neuroscience. The find could help scientists understand the organization of the frontal lobes and processes like learning and reasoning, the researchers say. Abstract decisions involve choosing between different categories of options, like deciding whether to send an e-mail or call on the phone instead. Concrete decisions involve translating thoughts into action, like deciding to hit a key to send the e-mail. The brain’s frontal lobes, which sit behind the forehead, “allow us to use what we know about the world to guide our decision making,” says neuroscientist and study coauthor David Badre of Brown University in Providence, R.I. Previous work has shown that neurons fire in different areas of the frontal lobes as different types of decisions are made. That led researchers to think the frontal lobes could be organized into areas with different decision-making tasks. But the new research “provides the first direct evidence of this,” comments neuroscientist Jean-Claude Dreher of the Institute for Cognitive Sciences at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Bron, France. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 12600 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A gene linked to a type of motor neurone disease that runs in families has been found after a 10-year search. Along with a related gene reported last year, it opens up an unexplored area of research into the condition, investigators said. The finding will also help doctors screen and counsel families at risk of the disease, the US and UK team wrote in Science. Up to 10% of cases are inherited within families because of genetic mutations. Motor neurone disease (MND) involves the progressive wasting of the muscles, while usually leaving the mind unaffected. It affects some 5,000 people in the UK. The first MND gene - SOD1 - was found in 1993 and it has been a major focus of research. But then researchers found a protein called TDP-43 is deposited in the neurons of 90% of people with the condition. However, it was not apparent in animal models with the SOD1 mutation, suggesting that the first gene found is not linked with the major underlying biology of the disease. For the past decade the UK and US team have been looking for a gene believed to be located on chromosome 16. They eventually found a mutation in the FUS gene in one family with inherited MND - also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Further studies showed that 4% of all families had FUS mutations. The FUS gene is related to TDP-43, the gene for which was found by the same researchers last year. Professor Christopher Shaw, from the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London, said the FUS gene was a very important clue as to what causes motor neurons to degenerate. "It's very interesting, we really have wrung SOD1 out. We have looked at cells and mice endlessly, but the major pathways are not SOD pathways. The genetic pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are beginning to fit together, leading us in new and exciting directions of research." (C)BBC

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 12599 - Posted: 02.28.2009

By DUFF WILSON AstraZeneca “buried” unfavorable studies of its $4.4 billion blockbuster psychiatric drug Seroquel, according to internal documents released Friday in a legal dispute between the company and lawyers for thousands of people who sued the company because they said the drug caused diabetes and weight gain. In one of the documents, a 1997 e-mail message, Richard Lawrence, an AstraZeneca official, praised Lisa Arventis, the company’s Seroquel project physician at the time, for minimizing adverse findings in a “cursed” study. He wrote: “Lisa has done a great ‘smoke-and-mirrors job!’ ” Lawyers suing AstraZeneca, a British drug maker whose United States headquarters are in Delaware, said the documents show it tried to hide the diabetes link for nearly a decade. “AstraZeneca knew about the risk of weight gain and diabetes in 2000 and not only failed to warn physicians and patients but marketed in a way that represented there was no risk,” Edward F. Blizzard, a Houston-based lead lawyer on the cases, said in a conference call with reporters. Tony Jewell, an AstraZeneca spokesman, said the plaintiffs’ lawyers were trying the case in public because they recently lost their first two cases in court. Judge Anne C. Conway of Federal District Court in Orlando, Fla., dismissed them on summary judgment on Jan. 28 for lack of evidence that the drug caused diabetes in those two cases. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 12598 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An experimental drug seems to help some people with multiple sclerosis to walk better, which could improve their quality of life, researchers said. In this week's issue of the medical journal the Lancet, neurologist Dr. Andrew Goodman of the University of Rochester Medical Center and his colleagues reported the results of their trial comparing Acorda Therapeutics' drug fampridine with a placebo. A progressive decline in mobility is a common feature of MS, and there are few pharmaceutical options to complement physiotherapy. "The data suggest that, for a sub-set of MS patients, nervous system function is partially restored while taking the drug," Goodman said in a statement. Goodman has served as a consultant to the company. "As a clinician, I can say that improvement in walking speed could have important psychological value; it may give individuals the potential to regain some of the independence that they may have lost in their daily lives," he added. The study looked at 301 adults in Canada and the U.S. with MS for 14 weeks. About 35 per cent of subjects who previously had trouble walking increased their walking speed after taking fampridine, compared with eight per cent in those randomly assigned to take a placebo. © CBC 2009

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 12597 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Brendan Borrell On Thursday morning, workers filing into the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium in California were surprised to find 200 gallons (750 liters) of seawater soaking into their spanking new, ecologically sensitive flooring. It turns out that a curious two-spotted octopus had disassembled a water recycling valve and directed a tube to spew out of the tank for about 10 hours, according to the Los Angeles Times. "It found something loose and just pulled on it," the aquarium's education manager Tara Treiber told the Times. "They are very smart creatures." Octopuses, some 300 species of which inhabit tropical waters around the world, can change colors, squirt out poison, and exert a force greater than their own body weight. But calling the eight-armed cousin of your garden snail "smart" seems a bit of a stretch. In fact, the animals are part of an elite group of slimy mollusks known as cephalopods that range from giant squid to the shelled nautilus and all have remarkably large "brains"—at least for creatures sans backbones. Scientists have found that octopuses can navigate their way through mazes, solve problems quickly and remember those solutions, at least for the short term. To find out more about octopus intelligence, we spoke to Jennifer Mather, a comparative psychologist at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. Mather has been studying octopuses for 35 years in an effort to gain insight into the evolution of intelligence. While most scientists hold octopuses in high regard, it's worth noting that not everyone shares Mather's lofty assessment of their intellectual abilities and personalities. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Evolution; Intelligence
Link ID: 12596 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Human ancestors created some remarkably lasting impressions on the eastern African landscape around 1.5 million years ago. Walking across a muddy patch of terrain near what’s now Ileret, Kenya, these ancient individuals left footprints that hardened and have now been excavated by a team of scientists. On close inspection, the preserved footprints provide the oldest evidence for a virtually modern-human foot and walking style in a human ancestor, report geologist Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University in Poole, England, and his colleagues in the Feb. 27 Science. Finding what amounts to the fossilized behavior of these creatures provides new clues to the evolution of upright stance and walking in modern humans. Bennett’s team identifies the ancestor as an early Africa-based Homo erectus, or Homo ergaster as some scientists call it. Measures of the size, spacing and depth of the Ileret impressions allowed the researchers to estimate individuals’ heights, weights and stride lengths, all of which fell within the range of modern humans. Digitized images of the newly discovered footprints show a big toe in line with the other toes, an arrangement that contrasts with the angled, grasping big toes of apes. Other humanlike features of the prints include a pronounced arch and short toes. access © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 12595 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Laura Sanders Prion protein, notorious for causing the brain-wasting mad cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseases, may also be a coconspirator in Alzheimer’s disease, a new study in mice suggests. In mad cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob diseases, misshapen prion proteins do the damage. But the new paper, appearing February 26 in Nature, offers evidence that the harmless version of the prion protein assists the amyloid-beta protein responsible for brain cell death in Alzheimer’s disease. “It’s pretty sensational,” comments Adriano Aguzzi, a neuropathologist at the University of Zurich. “What’s tremendously electrifying is that prion protein may be a genetic sensor for extremely toxic, small concentrations of A-beta.” A-beta proteins can travel alone or in groups in the brain. On their own, A-beta proteins are harmless. Massive, insoluble clumps of A-beta, known as plaques, are probably harmless, too, says study coauthor Stephen Strittmatter, a neuroscientist at Yale University. These plaques may be a gravestone marker of dead brain cells but are probably not the killer. Instead, smaller, soluble clumps of 50 to 100 A-beta proteins, known as oligomers, are the most likely suspect, Strittmatter says. Earlier studies have shown that mice with A-beta oligomers can’t remember how to get through a maze as quickly as mice without A-beta oligomers. Such oligomers prevent cross-talk between certain brain cells in the hippocampus of mice, which helps explain the loss of learning and memory functions in Alzheimer’s disease. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Prions; Alzheimers
Link ID: 12594 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Robert Pool FOR a few months in late 2006 and early 2007, the woman who called herself kristi4 was one of the best-known members of the pro-anorexia community. As the administrator of a blog on LiveJournal.com, she dispensed advice, encouraged others and wrote candidly about her own struggles. Then, late one Friday night, after a series of entries describing what she was planning to do, kristi4 killed herself with an overdose of prescription sleeping pills, muscle relaxants and painkillers. Her death was just one tragic data point in one of the most striking statistics in all of psychology. It has long been known that anorexia has the highest death rate of any mental illness: one out of every five people with anorexia eventually die of causes related to the disease. What has only now been recognised, however, is that a huge number of those deaths are from suicide rather than starvation. Someone who develops anorexia is 50 to 60 times more likely to kill themselves than people in the general population. No other group has a suicide rate anywhere near as high (Archives of General Psychiatry, vol 60, p 179). Recently, psychologists have tried to explain why anorexia and suicide are so intimately connected, something which is helping to answer the wider question of why anyone would commit suicide. If this explanation holds up, it will give psychiatrists a new tool for screening patients and determining which of them are most likely to kill themselves, perhaps saving lives. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Depression; Anorexia & Bulimia
Link ID: 12593 - Posted: 06.24.2010