by Arlene Weintraub Like hundreds of other executives whose companies are trying to develop blockbuster weight-loss drugs, Amylin Pharmaceuticals (AMLN) CEO Daniel M. Bradbury has been riveted by the saga of a once-promising medication called Acomplia. The Sanofi-Aventis (SNY) drug, which is on sale in 20 countries, got clobbered last June in a review by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. Bradbury watched a live simulcast as an FDA advisory panel grilled Sanofi executives over the memory loss, dizziness, depression, and other side effects reported by people who took Acomplia in clinical trials. Most worrisome, at least four people on the drug committed suicide. When it came time to vote on whether the FDA should approve the drug, the results weren't pretty. "No," declared the first panelist. "No," echoed the second, and so on, until all 14 panelists had given Acomplia the thumbs-down. Pleased though they may have been to witness a rival's misfortune, the 20-odd companies with obesity drugs in the works took a clear message from Sanofi's drubbing: The FDA isn't playing around. If a diet medication poses health concerns, it won't get a free pass—and with no FDA approval, there will be no payoff for all the time and money drugmakers have expended. "We're going to have to be extremely sensitive to safety," acknowledges Bradbury. The first company to create the magic pill that helps people shed pounds without getting sick will reap an astronomical windfall. About a third of the people in the U.S. are obese, putting them at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and some types of cancer. Another third are merely overweight, but still desperate for a drug that will return them to their former svelte selves. The market for weight-loss treatments (BusinessWeek, 1/10/08) in the U.S., including diet programs, herbal products, and the like, is worth some $33 billion a year. Copyright 2000-2008 by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 11411 - Posted: 06.24.2010

-- Archaeologists have unearthed the skull of a young woman in northern Greece who is believed to have undergone head surgery in the third century, Greek news media reported Wednesday. A Greek team discovered the skeleton at an ancient cemetery in Veria, with the skull including an injury that led them to conclude the surgery had been performed. "We think that there was a complex surgical intervention that only an experienced doctor could have performed," said Ioannis Graikos, the head of the archaeological dig. "Medical treatment on the human body in the Roman Veria is part of a long tradition that began with Hippocrates up to Roman doctor Celsus and Galen," he said, cited in the Ta Nea newspaper. Hippocrates is believed to have lived in the fifth century BC, Celsus between 25 BC to 50 AD, and Galen from 131 to 201. The procedure believed to have been carried out was a trepanation, an ancient form of surgery to address head injuries or illnesses. In 2003, Greek archaeologists discovered a man's skull in a tomb on the Aegean island of Chios from the second century B.C. that had also undergone a trepanation. © 2008 Discovery Communications, LLC

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion
Link ID: 11410 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nikhil Swaminathan The last time Olivier Ameisen formally practiced medicine was in the early summer of 1997. After two decades in the field, the French-born physician, then running a clinic on Manhattan's Upper East Side, abruptly rang up his secretary one morning and told her to clear his schedule. She laughed in disbelief when he explained why. He was ill, he told her; he was an alcoholic, and he was afraid his drinking might interfere with his patients' care. Anyone familiar with his resume would have responded the same way. Ameisen was a stellar medical student at the University of Paris—which he entered at the age of 16. Moving to the U.S., he began a fellowship in 1983 at New York–Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, swiftly becoming an attending physician there in 1986. (The same year, he added teaching appointments at the hospital-affiliated Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University.) But things began to sour in 1994, when the then 41-year-old bachelor opened a private practice. Although the venture was initially successful—he broke even in four months instead of the usual two years—he became gripped by an irrational fear that he might not be able to provide for a future family. "That's when I started binging at home," says Ameisen, now 54. As time went by, "my fear," he says, "was to be drunk and have a patient call me and say, 'I have chest pain,' and have me tell him, 'Okay, go play tennis.'" © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 11409 - Posted: 06.24.2010

People with schizophrenia use different areas of their brain to process some short-term memories, research suggests. The finding by US scientists might help explain why the condition is often linked with enduring memory problems. The study, by Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, found healthy subjects used the right side of the brain to remember specific locations. However, schizophrenic patients used a wider network of areas on both sides of the brain. Researcher Professor Sohee Park said: "This suggests that while healthy people recruit a specialised and focused network of brain areas for specific memory functions, schizophrenic patients seem to rely on a more diffuse and wider network to achieve the same goal." The researchers, who used scans to monitor brain activity during trials of memory, also found a fundamental difference in the way healthy people and schizophrenic patients made errors. When healthy people forgot, they had no confidence in their response for that trial and the brain areas used during correct memory trials remained inactive. In other words, their pattern of brain activation was tightly coupled to their actual memory performance. However, when schizophrenic patients forgot, they were very confident that they had remembered correctly, and their brain activation pattern looked exactly the same whether they had remembered correctly or not. (C)BBC

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 11408 - Posted: 03.12.2008

By Rick Weiss Americans are not as sleep-deprived as they think they are and, in fact, appear to be getting more Z's these days than they got a few years ago, according to an independent analysis of government statistics. The new findings run counter to the widespread public perception that Americans are getting less and less sleep because of increasing workplace demands and the plethora of distractions available around the clock on the Internet and cable television. "Many Americans work too much, but most do not seem to be cutting corners on their sleep to do so," said John P. Robinson, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, who led the analysis with faculty colleague Steven Martin. Their report, "Not So Deprived: Sleep in America, 1965-2005," scheduled for release by the university today, finds that Americans on average got 59 hours of sleep per week in 2005, the latest year for which precise statistics are available. That is three hours more than in 2000. The new numbers contrast significantly with the 2008 "Sleep in America" poll, the oft-quoted survey conducted annually by the Washington-based National Sleep Foundation, which advocates for better diagnosis and treatment of sleep problems. Released last week, that survey concluded that Americans get an average of 48 hours of sleep per week. © 2008 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 11407 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By David Segal Viagra turns 10 this month, and didn't time just fly? It seems like only yesterday we started guffawing at the Symbolism for Dummies ads on TV for the little blue pill and its "erectile dysfunction" rivals -- footballs tossed through tires, faucets erupting. The spots ended with a list of potential side effects that sounded like a satire of potential side effects. "More than four hours ?" we winced. "Ouch." However discomfiting the commercials, the Food and Drug Administration's approval of Viagra -- on March 27, 1998 -- is a landmark day in the history of sex. It seemed at the time like a biomedical revolution was upon us all, and about five minutes after word of the magical med went global, the question first was asked: Where is the women's version of Viagra? The short answer: They're still working on it. A bunch of companies have tried and failed to create "pink Viagra," as it's often called. Other companies have drugs in late stages of clinical testing, including a gel that recently began a make-or-break nationwide study with several thousand women. Give us five years, maybe less, say the most optimistic researchers and doctors. Though it's unclear exactly how many women would ask for a prescription, no one doubts that the first company that gets to market a remedy for female sexual dysfunction, as it's formally known, will earn a fortune. © 2008 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 11406 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Chris and Uta Frith When Leo Kanner first diagnosed a group of 11 children as autistic in 1943, he described the syndrome as one of "extreme aloneness." ("Aut" is greek for "self," and autism translates as "the state of being unto one's self.") The syndrome afflicts 1 in every 160 individuals, and it leaves them emotionally isolated, incapable of engaging in many of the social interactions that most of us take for granted. An autistic individual can be highly intelligent (as measured with IQ tests), but will still have profound difficulties dealing with other people. We know that autism is a biological disorder with a strong genetic component and a basis in the brain. It's much harder, however, to figure out what happens in the brain during social interactions. After all, it's not easy to be social inside a brain scanner. You're stuck inside a small tube, unable to do anything but press a few buttons. Scientists have solved this problem by playing simple games in which two players interact while their brains are being scanned. Chiu et al. employed this technique in a recent study, which was the first to examine brain activity in autistic individuals while they were engaged in social interactions. The subjects were playing a "trust" game involving money. At the start of each round, an "investor" receives a stake of $20. He or she can keep it all or "invest" some of it with a "trustee." Any money that gets invested is tripled, and the trustee then has the option of returning some portion of that amount back to the investor. For example, if the investor keeps $10 and invests $10, then the trustee has $30 to divide ($10 x 3). If the trustee decides to keep all the money, however, the investor cannot do anything about it. © 1995-2007 Scientific American Inc.

Keyword: Autism; Emotions
Link ID: 11405 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Nora Schultz A food supplement used by athletes and body builders to boost muscle power might help to prevent brain damage and death of newborn babies from oxygen starvation, researchers say. Problems with the placenta and umbilical cord before or during birth can reduce the fetal oxygen supply. One in 300 babies in developed countries suffers birth injuries as a result, and one in 20 babies in the UK are born by emergency caesarean section because doctors worry they may not be getting enough oxygen. Now Zoe Ireland and David Walker at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, think they may have found a simple way to reduce the risks. They fed pregnant spiny mice a diet containing 5% of the organic acid creatine, which can protect cells by providing energy when oxygen levels are low. When the researchers starved the mice of oxygen just before birth, 95% of pups whose mothers had been fed creatine survived, compared to only 63% of pups whose mothers did not receive the supplement. "The pups of supplemented mice also grew better, and this may be because their suckling reflex was less affected by brain damage," says Ireland. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 11404 - Posted: 06.24.2010

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- In a world where Nature is "red in tooth and claw" as Tennyson wrote, a handful of predatory garter snakes have won an evolutionary arms race against a tribe of rough-skinned newts so poisonous that the toxin in just one newt could kill thousands of mice or a dozen humans. It's a saga of what biologists call co-evolution. For many millennia the two species have competed against each other, evolving through natural selection in order to survive in the territory they share. Generation after generation, the newts have developed more and more powerful poison in their skins to protect themselves against the hungry snakes, and the snakes have evolved stronger and stronger resistance to the poison, so they can eat the newts in safety. Now biologists tracking more than 20,000 garter snakes and 500 newts in 28 habitats along the Pacific coast have discovered four sites in California where the snakes have clearly won the arms race: Evolution has given them a kind of super-resistance that overcomes the strongest poison the newts can possibly stir up. In other words, the snakes are free to gobble up their prey with impunity from now on. © 2008 Hearst Communications Inc

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Evolution
Link ID: 11403 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(HealthDay News) -- Researchers say they've discovered a biomarker for depression that could lead to a quick lab test to determine whether a particular antidepressant is making headway against the disease. "This may be a very simple biochemical indicator for depression," said study co-author Mark Rasenick, director of the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The test "wouldn't tell you which [medication] to start, but it would tell you if the one you're taking is working." It may even be possible to use the test to determine whether rounds of psychotherapy are reaping any benefit, he said. For now, however, such a test is a hypothetical, pending further exploration of the finding reported in the March edition of The Journal of Neuroscience. At issue is whether the brain itself shows physical or chemical signs of depression. The researchers looked at the interaction of neurotransmitters and a protein called Gs alpha. In brain cells, the protein acts like a kind of butler, passing messages from neurotransmitters on the outside and amplifying their messages, Rasenick explained. © 2008 Forbes.com LLC™

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 11402 - Posted: 06.24.2010

An hour sniffing exhaust fumes may not just give you a headache - it could even alter the way the brain functions, Dutch researchers have suggested. Scientists have known nanoparticles reach the brain when inhaled, but this is the first time they have been shown to affect how we process information. Researchers sought to replicate the environment experienced by those who work in a garage or by the roadside. Their findings were published in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology. A team at Zuyd University in the Netherlands persuaded 10 volunteers to spend an hour in a room filled either with clean air or exhaust from a diesel engine. They were wired up to an electroencephalograph (EEG), a device that records the electrical signals of the brain. They were monitored during the period of exposure and for an hour after they left the room. After about 30 minutes, the brains of those in the exhaust rooms displayed a stress response on the EEG, which is indicative of a change in the way information is being processed in the brain cortex. This effect continued after they were no longer in the room. "We can only speculate what these effects may mean for the chronic exposure to air pollution encountered in busy cities where the levels of such soot particles can be very high," said lead researcher Paul Borm. "It is conceivable that the long-term effects of exposure to traffic nanoparticles may interfere with normal brain function and information processing. Further studies are necessary to explore this effect." The fact that the brain responds when confronted with a new smell is not entirely surprising, says Ken Donaldson, professor of respiratory toxicology at the University of Edinburgh. "And it may not necessarily be negative, but such physiological changes do warrant investigation because there could indeed be a long-term effect. It's a very interesting, and potentially important, study." (C)BBC

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 11401 - Posted: 03.11.2008

By DAVID KOHN SIOLIM, India — At the faded one-story medical clinic in this fishing and farming village, people with depression and anxiety typically got little or no attention. Busy doctors and nurses focused on physical ailments — children with diarrhea, laborers with injuries, old people with heart trouble. Patients, fearful of the stigma connected to mental illness, were reluctant to bring up emotional problems. Last year, two new workers arrived. Their sole task was to identify and treat patients suffering depression and anxiety. The workers found themselves busy. Almost every day, several new patients appeared. Depressed and anxious people now make up “a sizable crowd” at the clinic, said the doctor in charge, Anil Umraskar. The patients talk about all sorts of troubles. “Financial difficulties are there,” said one of the new counselors, Medha Upadhye, 29. “Interpersonal conflicts are there. Unemployment. Alcoholism is a major problem.” The clinic is at the forefront of a program that has the potential to transform mental health treatment in the developing world. Instead of doctors, the program trains laypeople to identify and treat depression and anxiety and sends them to six community health clinics in Goa, in western India. Depression and anxiety have long been seen as Western afflictions, diseases of the affluent. But new studies find that they are just as common in poor countries, with rates up to 20 percent in a given year. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 11400 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY What you are about to read is not an endorsement of any particular diet as a therapy for multiple sclerosis. Nor is it a suggestion to forgo established medical treatments. But so long as it is part of a medically approved treatment program, the diet described here is unlikely to hurt, except perhaps to make meal planning a challenge. And on the testimony of those who have followed it, the plan may be worth trying, despite the lack of scientific evidence to support it. The diet has not been subjected to a placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial, the gold standard for determining the value of any therapy. But Ann D. Sawyer and Judith E. Bachrach, co-authors of “The MS Recovery Diet,” say this should not dissuade people struggling with the debilitating symptoms of the degenerative disease. The diet they outline extends one developed decades ago by Dr. Roy L. Swank, an emeritus professor of neurology at Oregon Health Science University. It severely restricts saturated fat and increases essential fatty acids like fish and vegetable oils, measures endorsed by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society as part of a healthy diet. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 11399 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Jennifer Viegas -- "Hack hack hack pyow hack hack" might not mean much to human ears, but to a putty-nosed monkey it means, "I'm adult male X; I have just seen an eagle; I will now move away," according to a new study showing that primates can combine individual calls to express different meanings. While such syntax-like behavior has been described in other species, such as whales and dolphins, the new findings are the first to clearly demonstrate the skill in a non-human primate. "What our research shows is that individual calls do not carry any specific meanings, but different call sequences do," co-author Klaus Zuberbuhler told Discovery News. "So, for example, a series of hacks almost certainly indicates the presence of a crowned eagle, whereas a series of hacks preceded by 1 to 2 pyows reliably indicates that the caller is about to start traveling away," added Zuberbuhler, who is a researcher in the School of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. For the study, published in this week's Current Biology, Zuberbuhler and colleague Kate Arnold focused on alarm calls emitted by free-ranging male putty-noses at Gashaka Gumti National Park, Nigeria. These monkeys live in groups with one male, six to nine females and their offspring. © 2008 Discovery Communications

Keyword: Language; Evolution
Link ID: 11398 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists from three western Canadian universities are using a microchip as they try to encourage nerves cells to reconnect the brain, spinal cord, and the body. If they succeed, the research could mean "a new life for people with brain or spinal cord injuries," said Naweed Syed, research director at the University of Calgary's Hotchkiss Brain Institute, in a release Thursday. Using a microchip to encourage nerve cells to reconnect could help people with brain or spinal cord injuries, said Naweed Syed, research director of the University of Calgary's Hotchkiss Brain Institute. (University of Calgary/Ken Bendiktsen) The chip could also help people with degenerative diseases, said University of Saskatchewan neuroscientist Valerie Verge. The team is close to knowing how to use computer chips to facilitate the regeneration process, she said. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research gave the team, the Western Canada Regeneration Initiative, a $2.25-million grant Thursday to boost their research. Brain surgeons, electrical engineers, neurologists, and neuroscience researchers from the universities of Calgary, Alberta and Saskatchewan are working on the project. © CBC 2008

Keyword: Regeneration; Robotics
Link ID: 11397 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza and Justin Pritchard A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows. To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe. But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health. In the course of a five-month inquiry, the AP discovered that drugs have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas — from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville, Ky. Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public “doesn’t know how to interpret the information” and might be unduly alarmed. © 2008 MicrosoftMSN

Keyword: Depression; Epilepsy
Link ID: 11396 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BENEDICT CAREY SO far no one is demanding that asterisks be attached to Nobels, Pulitzers or Lasker awards. Government agents have not been raiding anthropology departments, riffling book bags, testing professors’ urine. And if there are illicit trainers on campuses, shady tutors with wraparound sunglasses and ties to basement labs in Italy, no one has exposed them. Yet an era of doping may be looming in academia, and it has ignited a debate about policy and ethics that in some ways echoes the national controversy over performance enhancement accusations against elite athletes like Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens. In a recent commentary in the journal Nature, two Cambridge University researchers reported that about a dozen of their colleagues had admitted to regular use of prescription drugs like Adderall, a stimulant, and Provigil, which promotes wakefulness, to improve their academic performance. The former is approved to treat attention deficit disorder, the latter narcolepsy, and both are considered more effective, and more widely available, than the drugs circulating in dorms a generation ago. Letters flooded the journal, and an online debate immediately bubbled up. The journal has been conducting its own, more rigorous survey, and so far at least 20 respondents have said that they used the drugs for nonmedical purposes, according to Philip Campbell, the journal’s editor in chief. The debate has also caught fire on the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education, where academics and students are sniping at one another. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Intelligence
Link ID: 11395 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Larry Greenemeier As Kevin Warwick gently squeezed his hand into a fist one day in 2002, a robotic hand came to life 3,400 miles away and mimicked the gesture. The University of Reading cybernetics professor had successfully wired the nerves of his forearm to a computer in New York City's Columbia University and networked them to a robotic system back in his Reading, England, lab. "My body was effectively extended over the Internet," Warwick says. It's a far cry from his vision of transforming humanity into a race of half-machine cyborgs able to commune with the digital world—there is no spoon, Neo—but such an evolution is necessary, says 54-year-old Warwick. Those who don't avail themselves of subcutaneous microchips and other implanted technology, he predicts, will be at a serious disadvantage in tomorrow's world, because they won't be able to communicate with the "superintelligent machines" sure to be occupying the highest rungs of society, as he explains in a 2003 documentary, Building Gods, which is circulating online. Something of a self-promoter, Warwick, or "Captain Cyborg" as a U.K. newspaper once dubbed him, has appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and other shows on the TV talk circuit to tout his work. In his 2004 book, I, Cyborg, he describes his research as "the extraordinary story of my adventure as the first human entering into a cyber world." © 1996-2008 Scientific American Inc

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 11394 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By David Ropeik It’s that time of year, when crocuses bloom, the lawn starts to need mowing, and most Americans lose an hour’s sleep setting their clocks ahead. (Remember? Spring forward, fall back.) So here are answers to your questions about the time switch — and about sleep. Most Americans move their clocks ahead for daylight-saving time in the wee hours of the second Sunday in March. The day of the big switch used to be the first Sunday of April, but Congress put a new rule into effect last year as an energy-saving measure. What's the rationale behind the switchover? As the year progresses toward the June solstice, the Northern Hemisphere gets longer periods of sunlight. Timekeepers came up with daylight-saving time — or summer time, as it’s known in other parts of the world — to shift some of that extra sun time from the early morning (when timekeepers need their shut-eye) to the evening (when they play softball). The idea is that having the extra evening sunlight will cut down on the demand for lighting, and hence cut down on electricity consumption — and that few people will miss having it a little darker at, say, 6 o'clock in the morning. At least that's how the theory goes. © 2008 Microsoft

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Sleep
Link ID: 11393 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Sandra G. Boodman Whenever doctors told Ruben Galiano that his wife, Olga, had multiple sclerosis, he tried not to look as though he didn't believe them. To the former hotel cook, her symptoms resembled those he had seen in stroke patients. And the MS medication she had been taking hadn't done a thing. But the real reason Galiano clung to his skepticism was emotional. "If she had MS it would mean she wouldn't be cured," he said. That was a possibility Galiano could not entertain about his wife of nearly 40 years. Olga Galiano's problem surfaced about five years ago, shortly after the couple moved back to their homeland, Guatemala. They had spent their entire adult lives in the Washington area, where their children were born and raised, but Olga Galiano's mother was seriously ill and needed their help. Soon after they settled in Guatemala City, Olga Galiano got very sick. She collapsed on the floor and in the space of a week developed double vision and an uncontrollable tremor in her head and hands. She also lost her sense of balance, and her speech became badly slurred. The first doctor who examined her ruled out a stroke, then diagnosed Parkinson's disease, which he soon changed to MS, an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system. A second doctor concurred with the MS diagnosis. A third physician told them he had no idea what was wrong and recommended a witch doctor. © 2008 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis
Link ID: 11392 - Posted: 06.24.2010