Month: August 2013

How a wandering mind can become a happy mind

http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/a-wandering-mind-is-an-un_1.jpg

How a wandering mind can become a happy mind

Mind wandering can be a sign of mental wellbeing, provided that your off-task musings are interesting and useful even if not related to the task at hand, a new study has suggested.

Michael S. Franklin and his colleagues used a detailed experimental protocol to show that the negative effect of mind wandering on mood only holds for run-of-the-mill musings: in contrast, creative musings are a sign of mental wellbeing.

In this recent study, 105 student volunteers were equipped with a personal digital assistant, which asked them at random moments – approximately 50 times over one week – how positive or negative they felt, whether they were mind wandering, and if any musings they had were interesting, useful, or novel.
The volunteers reported that they were mind wandering 26 percent of the time, and they felt in general less positive when doing so. However, interesting and useful musings were selectively associated with strongly positive mood.

Franklin and colleagues conclude that when people are encouraged to shift their musings to engaging topics, a wandering mind can become a happy mind.

Source: The new study has been published in Frontiers in Psychology.

 

Scientists grow “mini human brains” from stem cells

http://www.globalpost.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/gp3_small_article/brain_fibers.jpg

with human stem cells and created a culture in the lab that allowed them to grow into so-called “cerebral organoids” – or mini brains

Scientists have grown the first mini human brains in a laboratory and say their success could lead to new levels of understanding about the way brains develop and what goes wrong in disorders like schizophrenia and autism.
Researchers based in Austria started with human stem cells and created a culture in the lab that allowed them to grow into so-called “cerebral organoids” – or mini brains – that consisted of several distinct brain regions.

It is the first time that scientists have managed to replicate the development of brain tissue in three dimensions.

Using the organoids, the scientists were then able to produce a biological model of how a rare brain condition called microcephaly develops – suggesting the same technique could in future be used to model disorders like autism or schizophrenia that affect millions of people around the world.

“This study offers the promise of a major new tool for understanding the causes of major developmental disorders of the brain … as well as testing possible treatments,” said Paul Matthews, a professor of clinical neuroscience at Imperial College London, who was not involved in the research but was impressed with its results.
Zameel Cader, a consultant neurologist at Britain`s John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, described the work as “fascinating and exciting”. He said it extended the possibility of stem cell technologies for understanding brain development and disease mechanisms – and for discovering new drugs.
Although it starts as relatively simple tissue, the human brain swiftly develops into the most complex known natural structure, and scientists are largely in the dark about how that happens.

This makes it extremely difficult for researchers to gain an understanding of what might be going wrong in – and therefore how to treat – many common disorders of the brain such as depression, schizophrenia and autism.

GROWING STEM CELLS

To create their brain tissue, Juergen Knoblich and Madeline Lancaster at Austria`s Institute of Molecular Biotechnology and fellow researchers at Britain`s Edinburgh University Human Genetics Unit began with human stem cells and grew them with a special combination of nutrients designed to capitalize on the cells` innate ability to organize into complex organ structures.
They grew tissue called neuro ectoderm – the layer of cells in the embryo from which all components of the brain and nervous system develop.

Fragments of this tissue were then embedded in a scaffold and put into a spinning bioreactor – a system that circulates oxygen and nutrients to allow them to grow into cerebral organoids.

After a month, the fragments had organized themselves into primitive structures that could be recognized as developing brain regions such as retina, choroid plexus and cerebral cortex, the researchers explained in a telephone briefing.
At two months, the organoids reached a maximum size of around 4 millimeters (0.16 inches), they said. Although they were very small and still a long way from resembling anything like the detailed structure of a fully developed human brain, they did contain firing neurons and distinct types of neural tissue.

“This is one of the cases where size doesn`t really matter,” Knoblich told reporters.

“Our system is not optimized for generation of an entire brain and that was not at all our goal. Our major goal was to analyze the development of human brain (tissue) and generate a model system we can use to transfer knowledge from animal models to a human setting.”
In an early sign of how such mini brains may be useful for studying disease in the future, Knoblich`s team were able to use their organoids to model the development of microcephaly, a rare neurological condition in which patients develop an abnormally small head, and identify what causes it.

Both the research team and other experts acknowledged, however, that the work was a very long way from growing a fully-functioning human brain in a laboratory.
“The human brain is the most complex thing in the known universe and has a frighteningly elaborate number of connections and interactions, both between its numerous subdivisions and the body in general,” said Dean Burnett, lecturer in psychiatry at Cardiff University.

“Saying you can replicate the workings of the brain with some tissue in a dish in the lab is like inventing the first abacus and saying you can use it to run the latest version of Microsoft Windows – there is a connection there, but we`re a long way from that sort of application yet.”

Source: http://zeenews.india.com/news/health/health-news/scientists-grow-mini-human-brains-from-stem-cells_23619.html

New technology makes breast cancer surgery more precise

FDA approved MarginProbe in December 2012, and UC Irvine Medical Centre is the first hospital in the US to employ the system

Any breast cancer surgeon who regularly performs lumpectomies confronts the question “Did I get it all?” Thirty to 60 per cent of the time in the US, the answer is “no,” requiring the patient to undergo a second surgery to remove the remaining tumor.

Surgeons at UC Irvine Medical Centre are the first in the country to use a device that reduces by half the need to re operate and cut out breast cancer cells missed during an initial lumpectomy. The Margin Probe System lets the surgeon immediately assess whether cancer cells remain on the margins of excised tissue. Currently, patients have to wait days for a pathologist to determine this.

“All of my patients know someone who has had to go back into surgery because their doctor didn’t get the entire tumor out,” said UC Irvine Health surgical oncologist Dr Alice Police. “The ability to check tissue in the operating room is a game changer in surgery for early-stage breast cancer.”

The goal in a lumpectomy is to completely remove the cancer while preserving as much normal breast tissue as possible. If a pathologist finds cancer cells on the edges of the tissue taken out, surgeons must assume the lumpectomy didn’t get the entire tumor.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved MarginProbe in December 2012, and UC Irvine Medical Centre is the first hospital in the US to employ the system, according to manufacturer Dune Medical Devices.

Dr Police, assistant professor of surgery at UC Irvine and medical director of Pacific Breast Care in Costa Mesa, and Dr Karen Lane, associate professor of surgery and clinical director of the UC Irvine Health Breast Health Centre in Orange, began operating with MarginProbe in early March.

They had participated in an FDA trial that included more than 660 women across the US. In the prospective, multicentre, randomized, double-arm study, surgeons applied the device to breast tissue removed during in-progress initial lumpectomies and, if indicated, shaved additional tissue on the spot. This was found to reduce by 56 per cent the need for repeat surgeries.

“It will save you a lot of anxiety,” said Jane Madigan, a Costa Mesa resident who underwent the procedure with Dr Police as part of the MarginProbe trial. “You will come out of that surgery knowing you are cancer-free.”

The system comprises a sterile handheld probe and a portable console. When the probe tip touches an excised lumpectomy specimen, radio-frequency signals are transmitted into the tissue and reflected back to the console, where they are analyzed using a specialized algorithm to determine tissue status.

Source: http://www.indiamedicaltimes.com/2013/06/06/new-technology-makes-breast-cancer-surgery-more-precise/

 

Boy dies of bubonic plague in Kyrgyzstan

Bubonic plague, known as the Black Death affects the boy in Kyrgyzstan

A 15-year-old herder has died in Kyrgyzstan of bubonic plague – the first case in the country in 30 years – officials say.

The teenager appears to have been bitten by an infected flea. The authorities have sought to calm fears of an epidemic and have quarantined more than 100 people.

Bubonic plague, known as the Black Death when it killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages, is now rare.

Africa accounted for more than 90% of cases worldwide – especially Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Dr Bertherat said that bubonic plague in Central Asia was usually transmitted by fleas attached to small wild mammals, which meant that only those who lived in rural areas and worked outside for long hours were in danger of being affected.

“Because bubonic plague is such a rare event, local medical staff are not prepared to diagnose the disease and treat it appropriately,” he said, “which means the first patient usually dies without even a diagnostic.

Deadly bacterium

The teenager, named as Temir Issakunov, came from a mountain village in the north-east of the country, close to the border with Kazakhstan.

We suspect that the patient was infected with the plague through the bite of a flea,” health ministry official Tolo Isakov said.

The BBC’s Rayhan Demytrie says that doctors failed to correctly diagnose his illness until tests were made after his death last week.

Teams have been sent to the area to get rid of rodents, which host the fleas that can carry the deadly bacterium. Reports suggest that the infected flea could have come from a marmot – a type of mountain squirrel sometimes hunted for food.

Kyrgyz authorities say that the availability of antibiotics means that there is no danger of an epidemic. More than 2,000 people are being tested for bubonic plague in the Issik-Kul region. Checkpoints have been set up and travel and livestock transport restricted.

Neighboring Kazakhstan is reported to have tightened border controls to prevent the disease entering its territory.

There are three human plagues caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis of which bubonic plague is the most common.

The other two conditions are linked to bacteria in the blood – septicaemia – and bacteria in the respiratory system – pneumonia, which can be transmitted between humans by respiratory droplets.

During the last 20 years, at least three countries experienced outbreaks of human plague after dormant periods of about 30-50 years, experts say.

These areas were India in 1994 and 2002, Indonesia in 1997 and Algeria in 2003.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23843656

Why stress makes it harder to control emotions

the first study to document how even mild stress can undercut therapies designed to keep our emotions in check,” said Elizabeth Phelps

Even mild stress can thwart therapeutic measures to control emotions, a team of neuroscientists at New York University has found. Their findings, which appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, point to the limits of clinical techniques while also shedding new light on the barriers that must be overcome in addressing afflictions such as fear or anxiety.

We have long suspected that stress can impair our ability to control our emotions, but this is the first study to document how even mild stress can undercut therapies designed to keep our emotions in check,” said Elizabeth Phelps, a professor in NYU’s Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science and the study’s senior author. “In other words, what you learn in the clinic may not be as relevant in the real world when you’re stressed.”

In addressing patients’ emotional maladies, therapists sometimes use cognitive restructuring techniques.  Encouraging patients to alter their thoughts or approach to a situation to change their emotional response. These might include focusing on the positive or non-threatening aspects of an event or stimulus that might normally produce fear.

But do these techniques hold up in the real world when accompanied by the stress of everyday life? This is the question the researchers sought to answer.

To do so, they designed a two-day experiment in which the study’s participants employed techniques like those used in clinics as a way to combat their fears.

On the first day, the researchers created a fear among the study’s participants using a commonly employed “fear conditioning” technique. Specifically, the participants viewed pictures of snakes or spiders. Some of the pictures were occasionally accompanied by a mild shock to the wrist, while others were not. Participants developed fear responses to the pictures paired with shock as measured by physiological arousal and self-report.

After the fear conditioning procedure, the participants were taught cognitive strategies — akin to those prescribed by therapists and collectively titled cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) — in order to learn to diminish the fears brought on by the experiment.

On the next day, the participants were put into two groups: “the stress group” and “the control group.” In the stress group, participants’ hands were submerged in icy water for three minutes — a standard method for creating a mild stress response in psychological studies. In the control group, subjects’ hands were submerged in mildly warm water. To determine that the participants in the stress group were, in fact, stressed, the researchers gauged each participant’s levels of salivary cortisol, which the human body is known to produce in response to stress. Those in the stress group showed a significant increase in cortisol following the stress manipulation, whereas there was no change in the control group.

After a short delay, the researchers then tested the participants’ fear response to the same pictures of snakes or spiders in order to determine if stress undermined the utilization of the cognitive techniques taught the previous day.

As expected, the control group showed diminished fear response to the images, suggesting they were able to employ the cognitive training from the previous day. However, even though the stress group received identical training, they showed no reduction in fear, indicating they were unable to use these cognitive techniques to reduce fear on the second day.

“The use of cognitive techniques to control fear has previously been shown to rely on regions of the prefrontal cortex that are known to be functionally impaired by mild stress,” Phelps observed. “These findings are consistent with the suggestion that the effect of mild stress on the prefrontal cortex may result in a diminished ability to use previously learned techniques to control fear.”

“Our results suggest that even mild stress, such as that encountered in daily life, may impair the ability to use cognitive techniques known to control fear and anxiety,” added Candace Raio, a doctoral student in NYU’s Department of Psychology and the study’s lead author. “However, with practice or after longer intervals of cognitive training, these strategies may become more habitual and less sensitive to the effects of stress.”

 

Conspiracy Theories May Put Children’s Health at Risk

A belief in Conspiracy Theories May Put Children’s Health at Risk

A belief in conspiracy theories may influence parents’ intentions to have their children vaccinated against diseases such as measles. That is the conclusion of research being presented 28 August 2013, by Daniel Jolley and Karen Douglas at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society’s Social Psychology Section in Exeter.

Jolley and Douglas asked a sample of 89 parents about their views on anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and then asked participants to indicate their intention to have a fictional child vaccinated. They found that stronger belief in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories was associated with less intention to have the child vaccinated.

In a second study of 188 participants, Jolley and Douglas exposed participants to information concerning anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. It was found that reading this material reduced participants’ intention to have a fictional child vaccinated, relative to participants who were given refuting information, or those in a control condition.

Daniel Jolley said: “The recent outbreak of measles in the UK illustrates the importance of vaccination. Our studies demonstrate that anti-vaccine conspiracy theories may present a barrier to vaccine uptake.”

Dr Douglas added: “Our findings point to the potentially detrimental consequences of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. It is easy to treat belief in conspiracy theories lightly, but our studies show that wariness about conspiracy theories may be warranted.”

 

Staying active ‘more important for pregnant women’

more active during pregnancy is not only important for limiting weight gain, but it also impacts the future health of the baby.

A new research has claimed that staying active throughout the day is more beneficial to limit excess weight gain for pregnant women.

Christina Campbell, an associate professor of food science and human nutrition at Iowa State University, said that they able to show that pregnant women spend 75 percent of the time they are awake in sedentary behaviors.

She said that many of these women met physical activity guidelines. But just because a women met the guidelines, doesn`t necessarily mean that they were a non-sedentary person.

Getting women to be more active during pregnancy is not only important for limiting weight gain, but it also impacts the future health of the baby.

Campbell said that if a woman gains too much, it predisposes the baby to childhood obesity and also raises the risk for maternal complications like hypertension, pre-eclampsia and postpartum obesity.

That is why it is important to help women manage their weight through diet and exercise.

Campbell said that the problem is most intervention programs are centered on physical activity guidelines of 30 minutes of exercise a day.

 

 

 

Bharat Biotech launches fourth generation typhoid vaccine

new vaccine brings hope to millions by protecting them against typhoid caused by salmonella typhi

Bharat Biotech, a city-based vaccine manufacturer, today announced the launch of Typbar-TCV, the world`s first clinically proven typhoid conjugate vaccine for six months old infants and adults.

Bharat Biotech CMD Krishna M Ella said the new vaccine brings hope to millions by protecting them against typhoid caused by salmonella typhi, a highly virulent and invasive enteric bacterium.

Ella said that this is a fourth generation vaccine against typhoid disease which has been proven to provide long term protection to adults and infants. Typhoid vaccines fall short in two major counts, namely long-term protection and protection of children below two years of age.

“We hope this vaccine will reach millions of people and help reduce the burden of this devastating disease in infants and children,” Ella told reporters at a press conference here, adding that his company had commenced commercial production of Typbar-TCV in pre-filled syringes at its vaccine production facility in Genome Valley.

“The pricing of the vaccine has not yet been decided. There will be two price structures. One for public institutions and the other one will be for private organizations. Pricing will be fixed by next week,” he said.
The plant has the capacity to produce 10 million doses each year, which is expandable to 50 million doses per year in future. Bharat Biotech is the largest producer and supplier of typhoid vaccine in the world, having distributed over 50 million doses globally, he claimed.

Quoting World Health Organization reports, Director-General of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) Christian Loucq said that typhoid fever kills between 250,000 to 600,000, besides causing 20 million illnesses per year, affecting mostly school children.

“The World Health Organization reports that 90 per cent of typhoid deaths occur in Asia and persists mainly in children under five years of age. In India, typhoid fever is observed throughout the year and a greater number of cases coincide with the rainy season,” Loucq said.

While typhoid fever can be cured by antibiotics, resistance to anti-microbials is widespread along with poor diagnostics, he said, adding that hence prevention of typhoid fever is better than curing it.

Source:

http://zeenews.india.com/news/health/health-news/bharat-biotech-launches-fourth-generation-typhoid-vaccine_23585.html

Babies can remember words heard before birth

Babies can remember words heard before birth. It is a so-called `pseudoword

Researchers said an unborn child does indeed hear everything, including people`s voices, which allows them to begin learning words and remembering them once they`re born.

“We believe this shows how well the brain at this age adapts to sounds. It is a sign of very early language learning, or adaptation to the sounds they heard,” said study co-author Minna Huotilainen, from the University of Helsinki`s Finnish Center of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research.

“A newborn baby is not an empty canvas, but has already learned how his or her mother and other family members speak,” said Huotilainen.

Researchers tested the memory of Finnish foetuses by exposing them to a single word – “tatata” – that means nothing in the Finnish language, `Health Day News` reported.

“It is a so-called `pseudoword` that is important for research. It has three syllables, and we chose such a long word to make it challenging for the small brains to find the changes and give them something difficult to learn. Such a word could exist in Finnish. It follows all the rules of the Finnish language,” Huotilainen said.

From the 29th week of pregnancy until birth, about half of the 33 pregnant women in the study listened to recordings of the word repeated hundreds of times.

Sometimes the recordings presented the word with a different middle syllable (“to”) or pronounced differently.

Researchers used scans to test the activity in the brains of all the babies when they heard the word after their birth. Those who had heard it before “showed an enhanced reaction to this specific word,” Huotilainen said.

“They were able to process the word better, and also they were able to detect changes in the word better,” Huotilainen said.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ali Hussain – a 14 year old with 110 year old body

The fourteen year old boy from Bihar suffers from the rare disorder which causes rapid ageing

A boy born with the appearance and physical maladies of an old man – the story sounds familiar. After all most of us have seen `The curious case of Benjamin Button`, a film in 2008 which is loosely based on F Scott Fitzgerald`s 1922 short story of the same name, said to be one of the earliest literary pieces to have highlighted progeria, an extremely rare genetic disease characterized by rapid ageing.
The condition was highlighted by R Balakrishnan in the 2009 Bollywood film `Paa` with Amitabh Bachchan as the lead protagonist diagnosed with the disorder.

Kids born with this rare genetic disorder have dramatically tougher lives.

Ali Hussain Khan`s story is no different. The fourteen year old teenager from Bihar suffers from the rare disorder which causes rapid ageing and is known to affect just 80 people worldwide.

Ali, whose body ages eight times faster than normal, has seen five of his siblings die from the same genetic condition.

Ali’s parents Nabi Hussain Khan, 50, and Razia, 46, are first cousins and have had eight children in total. Only two of the girls out of eight were born healthy.

Progeria or Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome is an extremely rare genetic disease wherein symptoms resembling aspects of ageing are manifested at a very early age. The disorder has a very low incident rate, occurring in an estimated 1 per 8 million live births. Children born with the rare disorder live only till their mid teens and early twenties.

Children with progeria usually develop the first symptoms during their first few months, characterized by changes in skin, abnormal growth and loss of hair. There has been no significant breakthrough in the treatment of this disease or reversing the symptoms of aging.

Source: http://zeenews.india.com/news/health/diseases/the-curious-case-of-ali-hussain-a-14-year-old-with-110-year-old-body_23587.html