Month: March 2014

Stem cell study sheds new light on disease formation

For the first time, researchers have shown that an essential biological process known as protein synthesis can be studied in adult stem cells.

The ground-breaking findings also demonstrate that the precise amount of protein produced by blood-forming stem cells is crucial to their function.

“This finding not only tells us something new about stem cell regulation but also opens up the ability to study differences in protein synthesis between many kinds of cells in the body,” said Sean Morrison, director of the children’s medical centre research institute at University of Toronto.

The discovery measures protein production, a process known as translation, and shows that protein synthesis is not only fundamental to how stem cells are regulated, but also is critical to their regenerative potential.

Different types of blood cells produce vastly different amounts of protein per hour, and stem cells in particular synthesise much less protein than any other blood-forming cells.

“This result suggests that blood-forming stem cells require a lower rate of protein synthesis as compared to other blood-forming cells,” Morrison added.

Researchers applied the findings to a mouse model with a genetic mutation in a component of the ribosome – the machinery that makes proteins – and the rate of protein production was reduced in stem cells by 30 percent.

The scientists also increased the rate of protein synthesis by deleting the tumour-suppressor gene ‘Pten’ in blood-forming stem cells.

In both instances, stem cell function was noticeably impaired.

Together, these observations demonstrate that blood-forming stem cells require a highly regulated rate of protein synthesis – such that increases or decreases in that rate impair stem cell function.

“Many people think of protein synthesis as a housekeeping function, in that it happens behind the scenes in all cells. The reality is that a lot of housekeeping functions are highly regulated,” explained Robert A J Signer, a post-doctoral research fellow in Morrison’s laboratory.

Many diseases, including degenerative diseases and certain types of cancers, are associated with mutations in the machinery that makes proteins.

Discoveries such as this raise the possibility that changes in protein synthesis are necessary for the development of those diseases, said the study published in the journal Nature.

Source: Times of India

 

How to manage your cholesterol

Excess bad cholesterol can lead to heart disease or stroke, so take into account a few steps to manage your cholesterol levels.

Superfruits: Following recent nutritional studies, several fruits have been labelled ‘superfoods’ due to their ability to combat harmful fats and reduce bad cholesterol. For instance, it was recently revealed that strawberries have the ability to reduce LDL (low-density lipoprotein), the harmful form of cholesterol, by nearly 14 per cent, according to research carried out by Universita Politecnica Delle Marche in Italy.

* Unsaturated fats: Consuming omega-3 essential fatty acids, found in unsaturated fats, will help to lower the levels of bad cholesterol in the blood. Unsaturated fats include oily fish, nuts and seeds, ground flax seeds, olive oil and certain vegetables and fruits such as avocado.

* Fibre: Beans, pulses, vegetables, cereal and whole grain breads all have a high fermentable fibre content and are therefore difficult for the gut to digest so they attach to bad cholesterol and then remove it from the body via waste.

* Red wine: Red wine contains a plant compound called saponin which blocks the body’s absorption of bad cholesterol, LDL. This news is not an excuse to drink large quantities of red wine and I do not recommend adding red wine to your diet purely for health reasons since alcohol consumption can lead to further health complications such as high blood pressure and liver disease.

Source: the hindu

Healthy diet lowers dementia risk later in life

A new study suggests that healthy dietary choices in midlife may prevent dementia in later years.

The results showed that those who ate the healthiest diet at the average age of 50 had an almost 90 percent lower risk of dementia in a 14-year follow-up study than those whose diet was the least healthy.

The study was the first in the world to investigate the relationship between a healthy diet as early as in midlife and the risk of developing dementia later on.

The researchers assessed the link between diet and dementia using a healthy diet index based on the consumption of a variety of foods. Vegetables, berries and fruits, fish and unsaturated fats from milk products and spreads were some of the healthy components, whereas sausages, eggs, sweets, sugary drinks, salty fish and saturated fats from milk products and spreads were indicated as unhealthy.

Previous studies on diet and dementia have mainly focused on the impact of single dietary components.

“But nobody’s diet is based on one single food, and there may be interactions between nutrients, so it makes more sense to look at the entire dietary pattern,” Marjo Eskelinen, MSc, who presented the results in her doctoral thesis in the field of neurology, said.

Higher intake of saturated fats linked to poorer cognitive functions and increased risk of dementia

The doctoral thesis, published at the University of Eastern Finland, was based on the population-based Finnish Cardiovascular Risk Factors, Ageing and Incidence of Dementia (CAIDE) study.

Source: zee news

New York City Investigates Measles Outbreak

New York City health officials said Friday they are investigating an outbreak of measles that’s made at least 16 people sick.

It might be part of a bigger national outbreak linked to the Philippines.

Health officials are quick to declare concern when they see someone with measles, which is one of the most contagious human diseases. Although it was once seen as a normal childhood infection, it’s easily prevented with a vaccine. And it should be, because fully a third of patients develop complications from the virus, including pneumonia, miscarriage and brain inflammation that can put patients into the hospital or even kill them.

About 90 percent of unvaccinated people will get infected if they’re exposed to it.

New York health officials say four infected children were too young to have been vaccinated and that parents had opted not to have two others vaccinated.

Measles was considered eradicated in the U.S. in 2000, but the nation has seen a recent uptick in cases caused by unvaccinated travelers who become infected abroad. Last year, at least 175 cases of measles were reported in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

California has also been reporting an outbreak. As of last month, California health officials have counted 15 cases of measles in six counties.

They declared an alert when an infected college student used the San Francisco area public transit system, and he was later shown to have infected two male relatives.

Measles is a highly contagious virus that spreads when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Most people in the U.S. are either naturally immune to measles from having been infected or have been vaccinated against it.

The CDC said earlier this week they had tracked 54 cases of measles in the U.S. so far this year, including a dozen in people who had recently traveled to the Philippines.

Source: NBC news

Inability to enjoy music recognized as a brain condition

For most people, music is one of life’s great pleasures. But the inability to enjoy it is a real condition that has just been recognized and described by science.

The new condition, known as specific musical anhedonia, is described in a new paper published this week in the journal Current Biology.

People with the condition have no trouble perceiving or identifying music, or even describing the mood the music is supposed to convey, said Robert Zatorre, a McGill University neuroscientist who co-authored the paper.

“They had no trouble saying, ‘Oh, well, this music is meant to be melancholy. This music is meant to be really happy.’ But they don’t experience it,” he told CBC’s Quirks & Quarks in an interview that airs Saturday. “They know that’s what it’s supposed to do for you. But they get no sensation out of it.”

He estimated that the condition affects about two per cent of the population. Many of those who have it said they have tried to mask their dislike of music from others.

“It’s sort of socially odd, right? Everyone wants to fit in and if they went to a party and there was music blaring, they would kind of go along with it and try to pretend that they liked it as much as everyone else did.”

Zatorre had previously done studies that showed music activates the pleasure and reward centres of the brain, just as food and sex do.

Scientists are interested in studying the brain’s reward system because problems with it are implicated in a lot of problems such as eating disorders and drug and gambling addictions.

Zatorre and colleagues in Spain, including Josep Marco-Pallares of the University of Barcelona, began to wonder if music activated the pleasure centre of the brain in everyone, or if there were some people who didn’t respond the same way.

Physiological response

To figure that out, they surveyed around 500 students at the University of Barcelona about their music habits and response to music — for example, did they often have music playing and did they like to share music with their friends?

Groups of students who scored high, average, and low on the questionnaire were tested in the lab for their body’s response to music — changes in heart rate and skin conductance, which indicate emotional or nervous system arousal.

While those who scored average or high on the questionnaire had a strong physiological response to the music, those who scored low “more or less flatlined,” Zatorre recalled, confirming that they did not derive pleasure from music.

The students were given additional questionnaires to make sure they weren’t depressed and were able to experience pleasure from other things.

Then they were tested in another experiment – a slot-machine-like gambling video game in which they would sometimes receive a big payout.

“People who didn’t respond to music nonetheless showed a perfectly normal response to the monetary reward,” Zatorre said.

That’s interesting because previously, researchers had thought the brain’s reward centre was an “all or none” system that was functioning normally, hyperactive, or underactive as a whole.

The new research suggests that the brain’s reward centre may react differently to different kinds of stimuli. That in turn has implications for the way researchers approach problems like drug addiction or eating disorders.

Source: cbc news

Removing playground benches may help parents be more active

Getting adults to be more active on visits to children’s playgrounds could be as simple as removing the temptation to sit, a small new study suggests.

Inspired during his daily lunchtime walks by the sight of parents sitting on playground benches, a U.S. researcher has shown that moving the seating away from the area increased the amount of exercise that parents and caregivers got as they watched their kids.

“For such an easy and inexpensive change, we were able to shift many adults from sitting to standing and that alone promotes health,” said lead author James Roemmich, a supervisory research physiologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

The study, published in the journal Preventive Medicine, focused on a single playground in Grand Forks, where parents tended to congregate at eight picnic tables with benches and watch their children. The researchers observed playground activity by adults and children for a week with the benches present, and for another week after they were taken away, then again for a week when the benches were returned.

When the benches were removed, the adults were as much as 23 times more likely to engage in moderate to vigorous activity, the researchers found.

With benches gone, the parents were “walking around following their child, watching them play, swinging or pushing children on swings, walking around and socializing with other parents, walking through the splash pad to cool off, playing with the kids/lifting kids up to monkey bars and other play equipment,” Roemmich told Reuters Health in an email. “A couple times they brought a Frisbee or football and threw them around with the kids.”

Removing the benches did not affect the amount of time adults were willing to let the children stay and play at the park, the researchers point out in their report.

They also found that removing the benches did not make the children more active.

“That’s because children are already very active when they’re at the playground, running from swings to slides, climbing and jumping,” Roemmich said. “Increasing their activity level is more challenging.”

The one thing that did tend to increase children’s activity level, Roemmich said, was if they arrived at the park with a friend or sibling. That “social facilitation,” he said, upped kids’ activity level because much active play typically requires partners.

Research also suggests that children play more if their parents aren’t hovering too close, Roemmich notes. “I’m not advocating leaving kids at the playground unsupervised, just give them some space,” he said.

The 17-acre park where the study was conducted is across the street from Roemmich’s office, so he passed by it daily.

“I saw a terrific playground there, and I noticed that the parents or adult caregivers were sitting while kids were playing,” he said. “I thought, ‘Wow, what a terrific opportunity for parents not to be sitting.'”

Roemmich said the study is an example of a “micro-environmental” change – a small alteration that can sometimes change behavior. Other micro-environmental changes include painting portions of the playground in bright colors and adding playground equipment – both of which have been shown to increase activity levels in children.

James Sallis, a professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of California, San Diego, said one of the virtues of this study is that “it could really be done in virtually any park or playground.”

Sallis, who was not connected with the study, is director of Active Living Research, an organization that supports research designed to promote physical activity in children and families.

“There’s a lot of applicability,” Sallis said, noting that removing benches is easy and inexpensive. “People are always looking for something you can do that’s cheap.”

“You could argue that it’s just a little bit of activity,” he said. “But that’s how we got to be an inactive society to begin with, with a million tiny little decisions like that. Who decided you needed benches in every playground?”

When asked if parents objected to the removal of the benches during the study, Roemmich said the parks department got “three or four complaint calls” from parents unhappy with the removal of the benches. “But once it was explained that it was a study, they were okay with it,” he said.

Sallis said he wishes the study had gone a step further and looked at whether removing the benches facilitated social activity among the adults.

“People tend to go to their own separate seat,” he said. “But if you’re standing up and wandering around, you may be more likely to have some social interaction – that could be an additional benefit,” he said.

Sallis also suggested that a next step to encourage adult activity might be to put adult exercise equipment on the periphery of the playgrounds.

Source: Fox news

Cosmetic fillers can cause blindness when injected into the forehead

Injecting fillers into the forehead to remove wrinkles could lead to permanent blindness, according to a new report.

Scientists said that injecting fillers around the eye area for facial rejuvenation could cause irreversible damage.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of fat, collagen and other special cosmetic products, but only if they are injected in the middle parts of the face – such as around the mouth
But doctors often use the substances as “off-label” to smooth out wrinkles around the eye and on the forehead, said study author Dr Michelle Carle, an ophthalmologist at Retina Vitreous Associates Medical Group in Los Angeles.

The fillers can then accidentally get into small blood vessels on the face, and find their way into the eye’s artery and block its blood supply, Dr Carle told Live Science.

“While this complication is very rare, it is very significant. A bruise will go away, but vision loss is permanent,” she said.

Dr Carle and her colleagues treated three patients who permanently lost their vision in one or both eyes after undergoing cosmetic procedures, according to the report published in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.

One woman in her mid-40s lost the sight in her right eye after she received an injection of bovine collagen and a dermal filler product called Artefill to remove her forehead creases, the researchers said.

Another patient, a man in his 30s, lost some vision in his left eye following an injection of a gel called hyaluronic acid. The blood supply to parts of his retina had been blocked, according to the report.

And a woman in her 60s experienced severe loss of vision after receiving fat injections around her hairline, the researchers said.

Any injection done in the eye area poses a risk of material entering the intricate web of arteries and blood vessels surrounding the eye. The visual effects of a blockage are devastating and irreversible in otherwise healthy patients, the researchers said.

Complications from these cosmetic procedures are rare, but cases of blindness, stroke and even death have been previously reported, according to the report.

“We recommend that blindness or significant visual loss be added as a risk when discussing these procedures with patients, because these are devastating consequences,” the researchers said.

Source: The Independent

Hair Transplants Not for the Young, Expert Warns

25-year-old Manchester United footballer Wayne Rooney surprised the world when he tweeted a picture of himself (with his new locks) immediately following a hair transplant procedure.

He posted on his Twitter account, “Just to confirm to all my followers, I have had a hair transplant. I was going bald at 25 why not. I’m delighted with the result.”

Rooney underwent Follicular Unit Extraction, also known as FUE, the most advanced hair restoration method available today. Three months later, the results are looking great, but one hair transplant expert warns that it might not last forever.

Dr. Bessam Farjo, one of the world’s leading hair transplant doctors and founder of the Farjo Medical Centre, told BBC News that young men like Rooney should wait until they are around the age of 30 to undergo hair transplant surgery.

And while Rooney’s surgery brought awareness to male pattern baldness and hair restoration, Dr. Farjo thinks it’s sending the wrong message to other guys in their 20’s.

“When a celebrity comes out with it, you only hear the good things. You don’t hear the cautions or the potential complications,” he told BBC.

Although he’s seen interest from more young men since Rooney’s surgery, the complications are apparently so great, that Dr. Farjo doesn’t recommend any hair transplant procedure for patients under 25 years of age.

This might not be good news for the thousands of young men who start to experience hair loss in their late teens and early 20’s, but Dr. Farjo makes a good point.

He explained to BBC that if a patient receives a hair transplant too young, his body still may be going through the hair loss process, and this could mean a very awkward-looking long-term result.

He said, “If you have the surgery too early and you go bald, you don’t have enough hair to keep chasing the hair loss. You can end up with isolated patches of hair. You could end up with hairy temples and a bald forehead, which isn’t pretty, but is also hard to fix.”

Hairy temples and a bald forehead?

Most guys would probably agree that waiting a few years would be completely worth avoiding a mess like that.

The good news is there are other things that can be done to prevent hair loss at a young age. Before diving straight into surgery, Dr. Farjo does everything in his power to preserve a patient’s already existing hair.

He explained, “I ask them questions about their family history, record the hair loss, and monitor it over a period of time. I also offer them medication to see if their hair stops falling out. I am then able to have a much fuller picture of how much hair they will lose.”

Predicting an individual’s total hair loss, he said, is the key to achieving excellent hair transplant surgery results.

Unfortunately, however, there are no age limits or regulations in place to inform or protect younger patients from undergoing hair restoration surgery. Dr. Farjo says some hair transplant clinics are more concerned with making money, rather than the health and happiness of their patients.

As an alternative, he suggests that surgeons work to inform colleagues and patients about the risks associated with age, as a form of self-quality control within the community of hair transplant specialists.

For younger men currently experiencing hair loss, you may want to take advantage of FUE or FUT technology and nip baldness in the bud, but take Dr. Farjo’s advice and wait it out.

Source: Where is my doctor

Florida family falls ill after eating meat laced with LSD

Authorities say a Florida woman who was 9 months pregnant and her family became ill after eating meat tainted with LSD.

Tampa police say doctors induced labor and the woman had a healthy baby boy. The entire family was eventually released from the hospital in good condition.

Tampa police say the family of four ate the tainted meat Monday. The Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office reported Friday that the meat had been contaminated with the hallucinogenic drug.

Police say the bottom round steak was purchased from a Wal-Mart in Tampa. The store has turned over all its meat to police for testing.

Local police, along with county health officials and state and federal agriculture officials, are investigating how the drug got into the meat.

Source: Komo news

Young skin cancer survivors at higher risk of different cancers in the future

Young skin cancer survivors may not be completely in the clear, a recent study shows, with higher incidence of further cancers – including melanoma – developing in the future.

The findings of a newly-published large study mar successful remission of skin cancer survivors, as nonmelanoma survivors were found to be 1.36 times more likely to develop melanoma later in life. For patients under 25, the risk was boosted to 23 times more likely, but just 3.5 higher for survivors aged 25 to 44. The patients who developed nonmelanoma cancers prior to the of 25 bear the heaviest brunt, being 53 times more likely to develop bone cancer, a 26 times higher chance of developing blood cancers, and 20 times more likely to develop brain cancer. They are also faced with a higher risk of contracting any other type of cancer – around 14 times as likely – including breast, colon, liver, prostate, and stomach.

The study was completed by researchers at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and the University of Oxford, England. Observing 502,490 people who had previously had nonmelanoma cancers, as well as 8,787,513 people with no history of skin cancer, the study found that more than 13 percent of people in the first group went on to develop another cancer. In the second group, the number was around nine percent. However, researchers cautioned that the study considered both basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) and squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) together, without differentiating the two – thus unable to determine the precise chance of developing cancer in the future based on the type of cancer patients had in the past. “It might be that one type of NMSC [non-melanoma skin cancer] is more strongly associated with increased risks of subsequent primaries; however, only subtle differences have been noted in studies that do differentiate SCCs and BCCs,” the study read.

Nevertheless, the researchers recommended early screening as the best course of action. “Early detection of cancers through screening of asymptomatic people works best when screening can be targeted at those at greatest risk,” said study author Dr. Rodney Sinclair, M.B.B.S., M.D., the director of dermatology at the Epworth Hospital and professor of medicine at the University of Melbourne. “Our study identifies people who receive a diagnosis of NMSC [non-melanoma skin cancer] at a young age as being at increased risk for cancer and, therefore, as a group who could benefit from screening for internal malignancy.”

Source; Tech Times