Fitter Kids May Make Better Grades: Study

Middle school students who are physically fit are likely to score higher on standardized tests measuring reading and math abilities, a new study has found.And, the average scores went up in correlation with levels of fitness, the findings showed."The more physically fit kids were, the higher their scores," said the study's lead author, Trent Petrie, director of the Center for Sport Psychology at the University of North Texas in Denton."Parents should encourage their kids to be physically active. There are some real cognitive and academic benefits that come from physical fitness," Petrie said.Results of the study are scheduled to be presented Friday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Orlando, Fla.The study included more than 1,200 middle school students from five schools in a suburban area of Texas, with 561 boys and 650 girls.About 57 percent of the children were white, and nearly one-quarter were Mexican American. Nine percent were black and about 2 percent were of Asian descent.The school district provided the researchers with information on the children's race, age, grade level and whether they qualified for the free school lunch program, which was an indicator of the family's socioeconomic status. The schools also provided scores to the tests, which were given between one and four months after the researchers had assessed the children's levels of fitness.Fitness tests were administered during physical education classes to determine the youngsters' heart and lung health (cardiorespiratory fitness), as well as their body mass index (BMI), an indicator of how much body fat a person has. The children also filled out questionnaires that helped the researchers determine factors such as self-esteem and social support.After accounting for factors such as age, sex, family income and self-esteem, the researchers found that for both boys and girls, higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness predicted better scores on both the math and reading tests.For boys, perceived social support also seemed to boost their reading scores, the investigators found.In girls, while being physically fit predicted higher reading scores, so too did a higher BMI -- which indicates more body fat. "We were a little surprised by this finding," Petrie said."It was not as strong an association as the one with physical fitness," he added. The authors suspect it may have something to do with girls this age entering puberty, which may be related to a higher BMI and slightly higher cognitive (brain) development. He said he plans to look for this relationship again in larger studies to see if it was a chance finding, or if the association holds up."While we can't say 100 percent that physical fitness causes better academic performance, we can say that there is a strong and predictive relationship between physical fitness and academic performance," Petrie said."It's hard to tease apart the exact reason for this association," said Becky Hashim, an attending clinical psychologist and assistant professor in the departments of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Montefiore, in New York City."It may be that the children are getting more oxygen. When the heart and lungs are working at a higher capacity, it may allow the brain to work at peak performance. Children who are less fit may be sleepier during school," she noted. "I personally feel that there's probably a strong relationship between the confidence you get from being able to do something physical well and academic performance."Whatever the reason behind this association may be, "there's certainly no harm in pushing physical fitness," Hashim added."Physical fitness may make you feel better, give you more confidence and improve your performance across the board," she said.Petrie agreed. "Physically fit kids are happier, have higher self-esteem, tend to have better relationships, and now we're beginning to see, there also seem to be benefits cognitively and academically. Our study sends a strong warning to policymakers to reconsider the utility of physical education classes for kids," he said.Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

Read more about keeping kids active at the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Study reveals TB patients to be more prone to diabetes than general population

A recent study on more than 800 TB patients in Tamil Nadu (TN) revealed nearly 50 per cent of tuberculosis (TB) patients to either have diabetes or pre-diabetes condition. A two-hour Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) revealed that 25.3 per cent of TB patients had diabetes and another 24.5 per cent had pre-diabetic condition. Out of the 25.3 per cent diabetics, more than nine per cent were newly detected and the rest were already diagnosed with TB.
The study was released today by Dr Vijay Viswanathan, managing director, M V Hospital for diabetes, and professor M Viswanathan of the Diabetes Research Centre, a WHO collaborating centre for research, education and training in diabetes. Published on 26 July 2012, in the prestigious Journal PLoS--One, the study was conducted among 827 TB patients registered under the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme in five select TB units in TN – Jaibeem Nagar and Medavakkam (urban), Budur and Beerakuppam (rural) and Nandivaram (semi-urban) – for Directly Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS) therapy in the first quarter of 2011.
The study revealed that the prevalence of diabetes among TB patients was almost double than that of general population (10.4 per cent). “We, undertook this study to ascertain the prevalence of diabetes among patients with TB. It is very significant that half the number of patients with TB were diagnosed with either diabetes or pre-diabetes. These findings pose a great challenge for TB and diabetes control in the country because diabetes can worsen the clinical course of TB, and TB can worsen glucose control in people with diabetes,” informed, Dr Viswanathan.
This study also revealed that more men than women with TB were likely to develop diabetes. This may be due to factors such as smoking, tobacco use and alcohol consumption. It was also found that nearly half the patients with both diseases had the infectious form of pulmonary TB.
“Diabetic patients have weaker immunity and are more prone to infectious diseases than other people. Moreover, in countries where TB is prevalent, people with diabetes are three times at risk of acquiring the infectious disease. Given that the numbers of those with diabetes in India is increasing steadily and the threat of TB also looms large, it is necessary to detect patients with both the conditions to ensure that proper treatment is given for both diseases. TB patients can also be attributed to other factors, including family history, sedentary lifestyle and ageing. It is, therefore, paramount that all TB patients be screened for diabetes,as early diagnosis can help manage both the diseases,” Dr Viswanathan added.
Source:Pharmabiz

New Method Turns Fat into Muscle

Researchers have identified drug that turns 'bad' white fat cells into 'good' muscle making white cells. 
The discovery was made during research into new drugs to tackle obesity. 
Brown fat cells make people burn off more calories than they store. 
"If we activate brown fat, we can eat more and not gain weight," the Daily Star quoted London's Professor Sir Stephen Bloom as saying. 
But he added that it would make us sweat a lot and we would be hot and thin. 
Prof Domenico Accili, from Columbia University in the US, said the process ''is an appealing and therapeutic approach to staunching the obesity epidemic". 
Scientists are now trying to weed out the drugs' unwanted side effects, which include bone loss, liver problems and hot flushes. 
Source-ANI
 

Gene That Permanently Stops Rapid Cancer Cell Increase Identified

Researchers have discovered a mutant form of the gene, Chk1, that when expressed in cancer cells, permanently stopped their rapid growth and increase and caused cell death without the addition of any chemotherapeutic drugs. 
The study at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine suggests that artificially activating Chk1 alone is sufficient to kill cancer cells. 
"We have identified a new direction for cancer therapy and the new direction is leading us to a reduction in toxicity in cancer therapy, compared with chemotherapy or radiation therapy," said Dr. Zhang, assistant professor, Department of Pharmacology at the School of Medicine, and member of the university's Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. 
"With this discovery, scientists could stop the proliferation of cancer cells, allowing physicians time to fix cells and genetic errors," the researcher stated. 
While studying the basic mechanisms for genome integrity, Dr. Zhang's team unexpectedly discovered an active mutant form of human Chk1, which is also a non-natural form of this gene. This mutation changed the protein conformation of Chk1 from the inactive form into an active form. 
Remarkably, the research team discovered that when expressed in cancer cells, this active mutant form of Chk1 permanently stopped cancer cell proliferation and caused cell death in petri dishes even without the addition of any chemotherapeutic drugs. 
The biggest advantage of this potential strategy is that no toxic chemotherapeutic drug is needed to achieve the same cancer killing effect used with a combination of Chk1 inhibitors and chemotherapeutic drugs.
Source-ANI

 

CHILDHOOD OBESITY MAY AFFECT PUBERTY, CREATE PROBLEMS WITH REPRODUCTION

A dramatic increase in childhood obesity in recent decades may have impacts that go beyond the usual health concerns – it could be disrupting the timing of puberty and ultimately lead to a diminished ability to reproduce, especially in females.A body of research suggests that obesity could be related to growing problems with infertility, scientists said in a recent review, in addition to a host of other physical and psycho-social concerns. The analysis was published in Frontiers in Endocrinology.Human bodies may be scrambling to adjust to a problem that is fairly new. For thousands of years of evolution, poor nutrition or starvation were a greater concern, rather than an overabundance of food.“The issue of so many humans being obese is very recent in evolutionary terms, and since nutritional status is important to reproduction, metabolic syndromes caused by obesity may profoundly affect reproductive capacity,” said Patrick Chappell, an assistant professor of veterinary medicine at Oregon State University and an author of the recent report.“Either extreme of the spectrum, anorexia or obesity, can be associated with reproduction problems,” he said.Researchers are still learning more about the overall impact of obesity on the beginning of puberty and effects on the liver, pancreas and other endocrine glands, Chappell said. While humans show natural variations in pubertal progression, the signals that control this timing are unclear.But in general, puberty appears to be starting earlier in girls. It is being accelerated.This may have several effects, scientists have found. One theory is an impact on kisspeptin, a recently characterized neurohormone necessary for reproduction. Normal secretions of this hormone may be disrupted by endocrine signals from fat that serve to communicate to the brain.Another possible affect on pubertal timing, and reproduction in general, is disruption of circadian clocks, which reflect the natural rhythms of night and day. Disrupted sleep-wake cycles can affect the secretion of hormones such as cortisol, testosterone, and insulin, researchers have found.“Any disruption of circadian clocks throughout the body can cause a number of problems, and major changes in diet and metabolism can affect these cellular clocks,” Chappell said. “Disruption of the clock through diet can even feed into a further disruption of normal metabolism, making the damage worse, as well as affecting sleep and reproduction.”Molecular mechanisms have only started to be uncovered in the past decade, the report said, and the triggers that control pubertal development are still widely debated. For millennia, many mammals made adjustments to reduce fertility during periods of famine. But it now appears that an excess of fat can also be contributing to infertility rates and reproductive diseases.Some studies in humans have found correlations between early puberty and the risk of reproductive cancers, adult-onset diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. Early onset puberty has also been associated with increased rates of depression and anxiety in girls, studies have found, as well as increased delinquent behavior, smoking and early sexual experiences in both girls and boys.Other research has suggested that such problems can persist into adulthood, along with lower quality of life, higher rates of eating disorders, lower academic achievement and higher rates of substance abuse.Additional research is needed to better understand the effect of these processes on metabolism, hormones and other development processes, the survey concluded.

Source:OSU

GMOA declares war on Ayurveda physicians in Lanka

Doctors prescribing western medicine have called for Health Ministry’s intervention to formulate a policy to prevent ayurveda physicians from prescribing western medicines.  Doctors pointed out that ayrurveda physicians needed to prescribe their own medicines and warned that patients who were prescribed both types of medicines could end up with adverse health implications.“It is imperative having such a policy on a national basis to maintain proper health standards,” Secretary, Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) Dr. Nalin Ariyaratne told The Nation.  He further said that ayurveda physicians should also refrain from prescribing drugs used in any other disciplines of medicine such as Unani and Homoeopathy. “There are separate lists of drugs under western medicine and under ayurveda medicine. Hence doctors in one discipline of medicine should not prescribe drugs under another,” he stressed. He said that the GMOA had informed the Sri Lanka Medical Council and other relevant authorities as well on this matter and are awaiting their response.Currently four court cases have been filed by the Ayurveda Practioners’ Association requesting permission to prescribe Western drugs for various illnesses, the Nation learns.  The Health Ministry must intervene and settle the matter once and for all to safeguard health standards,” GMOA sources said. They said the ayurveda system had several strategies for preventing illnesses but still had not been put into place unlike in western medicine.  Source:The Nation (Sri Lanka )

Ayurveda centre opens at Indian mission in Trinidad

The Indian High Commission in Trinidad and Tobago has launched a centre for ayurveda following a growing interest in the Caribbean in the traditional Indian system of medicine.

The centre was inaugurated by Trinidad and Tobago's Minister of Local Government Surujattan Rambachan a few days ago.

The minister also announced that a Chair of Ayurvedic Medicine will be launched soon at the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine.

He said this would be the second such academic programme to be launched at the university, the first being the Chair of Asian Studies.

Rambachan said the steps followed several agreements signed between Trinidad and Tobago's Indian-origin Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh during Persad-Bissessar's historic visit to India in January.

Rambachan said relations between India and Trinidad and Tobago have moved swiftly from mere cultural and religious to that of in-depth economic, trade and investment.

The former minister of foreign affairs also heaped praises on Indian High Commissioner Malay Mishra, calling him "the entrepreneurial high commissioner".

Mishra said Trinidad and Tobago was the second country outside India to have an ayurveda centre after Malaysia.

He said people can visit the centre and access all forms of information, brochures, publications and videos on ayurveda.

Mishra said opening of the centre followed a conference on the subject here last November, and from which, "there were widespread interests and requests", all of which were encouraging.

Anusha Vaideeswaran, an ayurveda practitioner from Mumbai, gave a scholastic overview of the traditional system.

Around 44 percent of Trinidad and Tobago's population has its genesis from India's Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states, who came during 1845 to 1917 to work in the agricultural sector after the freedom of African slaves.

(Paras Ramoutar can be contacted at paras_ramoutar@yahoo.com)

Source:IANS

 

Scientists treat ulcers with 'spray-on skin'

Scientists said Friday they had developed a revolutionary "spray-on skin" treatment for venous leg ulcers -- a common ailment involving a shallow, open and stubborn wound on the ankle or lower leg.Using a spray of skin cells suspended in a mixture of proteins that aid blood clotting, the team treated 228 patients in the United States and Canada and found it greatly improved and accelerated wound closure."The treatment we tested in this study has the potential to vastly improve recovery times and overall recovery from leg ulcers without the need for a skin graft," said researcher Herbert Slade of Healthpoint Biotherapeutics in Texas.The patients also had their wounds bound with compression bandages, the standard treatment.Venous leg ulcers affect about one person in 500 in the UK, but the rate increases sharply with age to one in 50 over the age of 80, said a media statement on the report published in The Lancet medical journal.The ulcers develop when persistently high blood pressure in the veins of the legs damages the skin. They affect mainly people who are unable to move properly like the old and obese, and those with varicose veins.Standard treatment involves compression bandages, infection control and wound dressing, but not all the wounds heal.Skin grafts are sometimes used, but these result in a new wound at the spot where the graft is taken from.In a comment that accompanied the paper, scientist Matthias Augustin of the University Medical Center Hamburg said it was crucial to find new therapies as venous ulcers were common and burdensome to patients."Non-healing ulcers are a substantial economic burden," he wrote. "In Germany, for example, annual total costs of venous leg ulcers amount to about 10,000 euros per patient."Spending more on treatment by including cell therapy would pay off in the long run by improving patient healing, he argued.

Source:AFP

Drug Combo Helps Women With Common Metastatic Breast Cancer Live Longer

A study led by UC Irvine oncologist Dr. Rita Mehta and conducted by the Southwest Oncology Group found postmenopausal women with the most common type of metastatic breast cancer can now live longer with a new treatment option. The findings appear in the Aug. 2 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. 
A combination of the two anti-estrogen drugs anastrozole and fulvestrant extended the median survival time of women with Stage 4 hormone receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer by more than six months compared to those who underwent standard treatment with anastrozole alone. 
Mehta said the results of the Phase 3 trial are particularly exciting because "these patients have not had a new treatment that gave them an overall survival benefit in more than a decade." 
Both drugs are currently used to treat breast cancer, though not in combination. Anastrozole (also known as Arimidex) reduces the production of tumor-promoting estrogen, while fulvestrant (Faslodex) interferes with the receptors that allow estrogen to signal cells to grow and reproduce and also accelerates the degradation of these receptors. 
The researchers think it's these modes of action together that make the combination so effective against hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, a subtype that accounts for more than half of all breast cancers. 
"The next step would be to try the combination in even earlier stages of breast cancer to see whether long-term cures could be increased at those stages," said Mehta, an associate clinical professor of medicine with the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and an oncologist with UC Irvine's Breast Health Center. 
Study results were first presented at the 2011 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in December. The SWOG S0226 trial was conducted by the SWOG clinical trials network, previously known as the Southwest Oncology Group. 
Source-Eurekalert

 

People With Allergies May Have Lower Risk of Brain Tumors

New research adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that there’s a link between allergies and reduced risk of a serious type of cancer that starts in the brain. This study suggests the reduced risk is stronger among women than men, although men with certain allergy profiles also have a lower tumor risk.

The study also strengthens scientists’ belief that something about having allergies or a related factor lowers the risk for this cancer. Because these tumors, called glioma, have the potential to suppress the immune system to allow them to grow, researchers have never been sure whether allergies reduce cancer risk or if, before diagnosis, these tumors interfere with the hypersensitive immune response to allergens.

Scientists conducting this study were able to analyze stored blood samples that were taken from patients decades before they were diagnosed with glioma. Men and women whose blood samples contained allergy-related antibodies had an almost 50 percent lower risk of developing glioma 20 years later compared to people without signs of allergies.“This is our most important finding,” said Judith Schwartzbaum, associate professor ofepidemiology at Ohio State University and lead author of the study. “The longer before glioma diagnosis that the effect of allergies is present, the less likely it is that the tumor is suppressing allergies. Seeing this association so long before tumor diagnosis suggests that antibodies or some aspect of allergy is reducing tumor risk.

“It could be that in allergic people, higher levels of circulating antibodies may stimulate the immune system, and that could lower the risk of glioma,” said Schwartzbaum, also an investigator in Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Absence of allergy is the strongest risk factor identified so far for this brain tumor, and there is still more to understand about how this association works.”Many previous studies of the link between allergies and brain tumor risk have been based on self-reports of allergy history from patients diagnosed with glioma. No previous studies have had access to blood samples collected longer than 20 years before tumor diagnosis.

The current study also suggested that women whose blood samples tested positive for specific allergy antibodies had at least a 50 percent lower risk for the most serious and common type of these tumors, calledglioblastoma. This effect for specific antibodies was not seen in men. However, men who tested positive for both specific antibodies and antibodies of unknown function had a 20 percent lower risk of this tumor than did men who tested negative.

Glioblastomas constitute up to 60 percent of adult tumors starting in the brain in the United States, affecting an estimated 3 in 100,000 people. Patients who undergo surgery, radiation and chemotherapy survive, on average, for about one year, with fewer than a quarter of patients surviving up to two years and fewer than 10 percent surviving up to five years.

The study is published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Schwartzbaum and colleagues were granted access to specimens from the Janus Serum Bank in Norway. The bank contains samples collected from citizens during their annual medical evaluations or from volunteer blood donors for the last 40 years. Norway also has registered all new cases of cancer in the country since 1953, and personal identification numbers enable cross-referencing those cases with previously collected blood samples.

The researchers analyzed stored samples from 594 people who were diagnosed with glioma (including 374 diagnosed with glioblastoma) between 1974 and 2007. They matched these samples for date of blood collection, age and sex with 1,177 samples from people who were not diagnosed with glioma for comparison.

The researchers measured the blood samples for levels of two types of proteins called IgE, or immunoglobulin E. This is a class of antibodies produced by white blood cells that mediate immune responses to allergens. Two classes of IgE participate in the allergic response: allergen-specific IgE, which recognizes specific components of an allergen, and total IgE, which recognizes these components but also includes antibodies with unknown functions.

In each sample, the scientists determined whether the serum contained elevated levels of IgE specific to the most common allergens in Norway as well as total IgE. The specific respiratory allergens included dust mites; tree pollen and plants; cat, dog and horse dander; and mold.

The researchers then conducted a statistical analysis to estimate the association between elevated concentrations of allergen-specific IgE and total IgE and the risk of developing glioma.

Among women, testing positive for elevated levels of allergen-specific IgE was associated with a 54 percent decreased risk of glioblastoma compared to women who tested negative for allergen-specific IgE. The researchers did not see this association in men.

However, the relation between total IgE levels and glioma risk was not different for men and women, statistically speaking. For men and women combined, testing positive for elevated total IgE was linked to a 25 percent decreased risk of glioma compared with testing negative for total IgE.

The analysis for effects on glioblastoma risk alone suggested a similar decreased risk for both men and women combined whose samples tested positive for high levels of IgE, but the findings were considered borderline in terms of statistical significance, meaning the association could also be attributed to chance.

“There is definitely a difference in the effect of allergen-specific IgE between men and women. And even results for total IgE suggest there still may be a difference between the sexes. The reason for this difference is unknown,” Schwartzbaum said.

What the study does provide evidence for, however, is the likelihood that the immune systems of people with respiratory allergies could have a protective effect against this type of brain cancer. The ability to investigate this association over four decades between blood sampling and tumor diagnosis gave the researchers better insight into the relationship between allergies and tumor risk, Schwartzbaum said.

For example, a positive test for elevated concentrations of total IgE was associated with a 46 percent decreased risk for developing a glioma 20 years later compared to samples testing negative for elevated IgE, according to the analysis. That decreased risk was only about 25 percent in samples that tested positive for high levels of total IgE taken two to 15 years prior to diagnosis.

“There may be a trend - the closer the samples get to the time of diagnosis, the less help the IgE is in decreasing the risk for glioma. However, if the tumor were suppressing allergy, we would expect to see a bigger difference in risk near the time of diagnosis,” Schwartzbaum said.

Schwartzbaum plans to further analyze the serum samples for concentration of cytokines, which are chemical messengers that promote or suppress inflammation as part of the immune response, to see if these proteins have a role in the relationship between elevated IgE levels and lowered tumor risk.

Source:

The Ohio State University

MDC Researchers Develop New Approach to Treat Acute Liver Failure

Acute liver failure is a life-threatening disease, characterized by a sudden, massive death of liver cells. Unfortunately, few treatment options exist, especially for advanced-stage liver failure. As a last resort a liver transplant may be the only remaining option. Now the physician Dr. Junfeng An of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch and Dr. Stefan Donath, a specialist in internal medicine and cardiology, also of the MDC and Helios Klinikum Berlin-Buch, have developed a new treatment approach based on a mouse model. In their current study published in(Hepatology, doi:101002/hep.25697; Vol. 56, No. 2, August 2012)*, the liver failure was reversed and the mice recovered completely. The researchers hope to soon be able to test their new approach in clinical trials with patients.

According to an estimate published in a 2011 issue of the “Deutsche Ärzteblatt”, a professional journal for German physicians, between 200 and 500 patients suffer from acute liver failure in Germany each year. Poisoning from mushrooms or drugs is one of the main causes of this serious liver disease. In Southern Europe, Africa and Asia an acute infection with the hepatitis B virus is considered to be the most important cause.

 For their treatment approach the two researchers utilized the recently discovered protein ARC (apoptosis repressor with caspase recruitment domain), which serves as the body’s own survival switch. ARC is expressed in heart and skeletal muscle and in the brain, but not in the liver. In 2006 Dr. Donath showed that apoptosis is the cause for the death of myocardial cells during heart failure, but that ARC stopped the myocardial cells from being destroyed.

 Apoptosis protects the body from diseased or defective cells. In tumor cells apoptosis is deactivated, allowing the cancer cells to proliferate uncontrollably. Cancer researchers are therefore striving to utilize apoptosis to develop a treatment. They are looking for ways to reactivate apoptosis to drive the proliferating cancer cells into programmed suicide. However, in acute liver failure the problem is not too little but rather too much apoptosis. Physicians administer drugs in an attempt to halt the destruction of the cells, but only with modest success.

 Now Dr. Donath and his colleagues have fused ARC to a noninfectious fragment of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), called TAT for short. The researchers used TAT as a shuttle to transfer this survival-switch construct into the liver. Mice with acute liver failure were given an intravenous or intraperitoneal injection with the construct. “Within just a few minutes the fusion protein TAT-ARC reached the liver of the animals and immediately began to take effect. ARC was able to stop the apoptosis of the liver cells, and all of the animals completely recovered,” Dr. Donath said. “ARC is very fast acting, and this is a huge advantage, because in an emergency there is not much time for treatment. And when the massive damage is over, the liver is quite capable of regenerating itself. In addition, ARC reaches other organs via the bloodstream, not only the liver. “Moreover,” he pointed out, “since TAT-ARC only has to be administered for a short time, a cancer risk can be largely excluded.”

 During their studies, the researchers also discovered a new active mechanism of ARC, which apparently is responsible for the protective function of this protein in the liver. It inhibits the activity of a molecule (JNK), which is activated in immune cells of the liver and causes abnormal processes, whereby another molecule (TNF alpha) is released that causes the liver cells to die. ARC thus protects the liver cells from destruction. The researchers hope to soon be able to test their new approach in clinical trials with patients.

 Dr. Donath and the MDC have patented the fusion protein TAT-ARC for the indication of acute liver failure. The research project was funded by the MDC Pre-Go-Bio project, an internal project fund of the MDC that supports the transfer of diagnostic or therapeutic procedures obtained in basic research into clinical applications.

Source:MDC

What you don't know can hurt you

Is it possible for a health care system to redesign its services to better educate patients to deal with their immediate health issues and also become more savvy consumers of medicine in the long run?

The answer is yes, according to a study led by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) that was recently reported by the Institute of Medicine (IOM).

The team's paper describes ten attributes that health care organizations should utilize to make it easier for people to better navigate health information, make sense of services and better manage their own health -- assistance for which there is a profound societal need.

Some 77 millions people in the United States have difficulty understanding even very basic health information, which clouds their ability to follow doctors' recommendations, and millions more simply lack the skills necessary to make clear, informed decisions about their own health care, said senior author Dean Schillinger, MD, a UCSF professor of medicine, chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at SFGH, and director of the Health Communications Program the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations at SFGH.

"Depending on how you define it, nearly half the U.S. population has poor health literacy skills," he said.

"Over the last two decades, we have focused on what patients can do to improve their health literacy," he said. "In this report, we look at the other side of the health literacy coin, and focus on what health care systems can do."

Emerging from an IOM Roundtable that brought together leaders from academia, industry, government agencies, non-profit organizations and patient and consumer interest groups, the new paper examines the programs, practices, attitudes and attributes of organizations that create environments that foster health literacy.

Why Health Literacy is So Important

The importance of enhancing health literacy has been demonstrated by numerous clinical studies over the years, said Schillinger, many of them carried out at UCSF. Health literacy is linked directly to patient wellness. People who are adept at understanding health information tend to make better choices, are better able to self-manage their chronic conditions, and have significantly better outcomes than people who do not.

Adults with low health literacy may find it especially difficult to navigate the healthcare system, and are more likely to have higher rates of serious medication errors, more emergency room visits and hospitalizations, gaps in their preventative care, increased likelihood of dying, and even poorer health outcomes for their children.

A number of health policy organizations have recognized that health literacy not only is important to individuals, but also benefits society because helping patients help themselves is an important pathway to keeping down health care costs. Successful self-management reduces disease complications and can cut down on unnecessary emergency room visits and eliminate other wasteful spending

Organizations that promote proper health literacy tend to do certain things very well. The ten attributes in the report include items such as:

• Making improving health literacy a priority at every level of the organization;
• Measuring health literacy and using those measurements to guide their practices;
• Taking into account the particular needs of the populations they serve;
• Avoiding stigmatizing people who lack health literacy;
• Providing easy access to health information and assistance navigating services;
• Distributing easy-to-understand information across print, audiovisual, and social media channels;
• Taking health literacy into account when discussing medicines or in other high-risk situations by using proven educational techniques, such as the teach-back method;
• Training the healthcare workforce in health communication techniques; and
• Letting patients know what their insurance policies cover and what they are themselves responsible for paying.

Source:University of California - San Francisco 

India Inc finds relief in Ayurveda and naturopathy

Traditional medicinal forms such as Ayurveda, naturopathy, massage, acupuncture and acupressure are finding takers in corporate India, a survey reveals. The study by industry body Assocham reveals that over 72% of corporate employees are switching over to ayurvedic treatments like naturopathy, massage, acupuncture and acupressure due to demanding schedules. Over 200 respondents participated in the survey from across industrial sectors.

"The demand for homeopathy and ayurvedic medicines has increased in the last few years and for ailments such as respiratory diseases, fever, skin diseases, viral infections, asthma and allergic disorders, people are choosing the traditional way of treatment," says Assocham. Respondents also felt that homeopathy and ayurveda are more personalized treatments with greater one-on-one interaction between the patient and the physician. The dependency on Ayurvedic medicine has gradually improved for lifestyle diseases such as migraine, stress, obesity, and asthma.

However in case of medical emergencies, allopathy treatment is preferred with 79% of the people opting for such treatments while only 20% opt for ayurvedic based treatment. According to theWorld Health Organization (WHO), more than one billion people are using herbal medicines, and in India, more than 65% of people in rural areas use such medicinal plants and Ayurveda as part of their primary health care needs requirements.

Source:TNN

Butter Flavouring Ingredient Linked to Key Alzheimer's Process

Artificial butter flavouring ingredient diacetyl (DA) boosts the damaging effects of an abnormal brain protein linked to Alzheimer's disease, say researchers. 
Robert Vince and colleagues Swati More and Ashish Vartak explain that DA has been the focus of much research recently because it is linked to respiratory and other problems in workers at microwave popcorn and food-flavouring factories. 
DA gives microwave popcorn its distinctive buttery taste and aroma. DA also forms naturally in fermented beverages such as beer, and gives some chardonnay wines a buttery taste. 
Vince's team realized that DA has an architecture similar to a substance that makes beta-amyloid proteins clump together in the brain - clumping being a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. 
So they tested whether DA also could clump those proteins. 
DA did increase the level of beta-amyloid clumping. At real-world occupational exposure levels, DA also enhanced beta-amyloid's toxic effects on nerve cells growing in the laboratory. 
Other lab experiments showed that DA easily penetrated the so-called "blood-brain barrier", which keeps many harmful substances from entering the brain. DA also stopped a protective protein called glyoxalase I from safeguarding nerve cells. 
"In light of the chronic exposure of industry workers to DA, this study raises the troubling possibility of long-term neurological toxicity mediated by DA," the researchers said. 
The study has been published in ACS' journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.
Source-ANI
 

Plant-based Supplements Not Entirely Safe

The intake of plant-based supplements especially among athletes is common nowadays. Herbal supplements are often claimed to provide health benefits and at the same time be extremely safe. But they do have their side effects, as demonstrated by a recent study published in theJournal of International Society of Sports Nutrition. 
Among the natural supplements used by athletes, those that contain plant-derived hormones such as ecdysteroids, phytoestrogens and sterols, or substance with hormone modulating properties such as Tribulus terrestris constitute the preferred list. 
The published study was carried out in Italy to evaluate knowledge regarding plant-derived nutritional supplements among physically active people and to evaluate the side effects following intake of these supplements. 
The study was conducted in 740 trained subjects, which included 420 body builders, 70 cyclists, and 250 fitness athletes. These subjects had been training regularly for at least 1 year. 
Among these study participants, 26 declared that they used plant-derived supplements and 23 of them gave their consent for the blood sample collection. 
The study found that the participants knew very little regarding plant-derived nutritional supplements. In fact, 45% of the 740 individuals did not know any of the substances provided in the list. 
Blood tests in the 23 athletes who took plant-derived supplements revealed that 15 athletes (65%) showed alteration in sex hormone levels like estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. However, there were no clinical manifestations of the same. 
Individuals with high estrogen levels reported excessive intake of soy protein. Individuals with abnormal estrogen and high progesterone levels had consumed products containing ecdysteroids. Those with high testosterone levels had consumed high dosages of soy protein, and products containing ecdysteroids and Tribulus terrestris. 
A disadvantage of this study was that it included only a small number of individuals taking plant-based supplements. Further studies are necessary in this field to establish the side effects of these plant-based supplements. 
Reference: 
Paolo Borrione et al. Consumption and biochemical impact of commercially available plant-derived nutritional supplements. An observational pilot-study on recreational athletes. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 2012, 9:28 doi:10.1186/1550-2783-9-28 

 

Health care savings, naturally

Harvard researcher finds the use of traditional, natural medicines offer economic benefits

For millions of people around the world being sick doesn't mean making a trip to the local pharmacy for medicines like Advil and Nyquil. Instead it means turning to the forest to provide a pharmacopeia of medicines to treat everything from tooth aches to chest pains.

But while questions persist about whether such natural remedies are as effective as their pharmacological cousins, one Harvard researcher is examining the phenomenon from a unique perspective, and trying to understand the economic benefits people receive by relying on such traditional cures.

As reported in a paper published this week in PLoS ONE, Christopher Golden, '05, a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment has found that, in the area of northwest Madagascar he studies, people annually receive between $5 and $8 in benefits by using natural medicines.

Though seemingly slight, those benefits add up to between $30 and $45 per household, Golden said, or anywhere from 43 to 63 percent of the median annual income for families in the region.

"We documented people using more than 240 different plant species to treat as many as 82 different illnesses," Golden said. "This data suggests that it can have quite an impact, financially."

It's an impact that may not be limited to Madagascar, or other regions where access to pharmaceuticals is limited.

As part of his analysis, Golden also compared the use of natural remedies with the prices that American consumers might pay if they were purchasing the pharmaceutical equivalent online – where prices are typically lower than on pharmacy shelves. To his surprise, the results showed that the average American could save anywhere from 22 to 63 percent of their annual health care bill, simply by using natural medicines.

"If Americans were relying on traditional medicines as much as people in Madagascar, it could save them a major percentage of their health care expenditures," Golden said.

Golden, however, was quick to emphasize that his study only examined the economics of the natural remedies versus pharmaceuticals, not whether they were equally effective.

"What we're trying to do is account for the economic value the local floral bio-diversity provides to people in this area of Madagascar," Golden said. "We're not assuming there is a medical equivalency – this study is about the perceived efficacy. The people who live in this region often have taken both pharmaceuticals and traditional medicines many times, but there is a perceived efficacy for these traditional medicines."

Measuring that perceived efficacy involved surveying 1,200 households in and around Maroantsetra, a city in the northeast corner of the island nation, to determine which natural medicines they used.

To establish the economic benefit of each natural remedy, Golden asked whether people would prefer to use the natural or pharmaceutical remedy for a given illness. If, for example, 60 percent of those asked said they preferred the traditional medicine, Golden established its value as being 60 percent of the price of its pharmaceutical cousin.

"Certainly, because there's no proof of medical equivalency between these treatments, it could easily be an over-estimation to establish these values," Golden said. "But the bio-diversity in these regions represents a huge pharmacopeia, and there are many hidden benefits to the use of these sorts of traditional medicines. These medicines aren't being improperly prescribed or mismanaged, and because they've been used for millennia, we know they're not producing any type of negative side effects."

The economic benefits offered by natural medicines, however, may not end at those who rely on them to treat day-to-day ailments.

The corner of Madagascar that Golden studied contains nearly one percent of all the global floral biodiversity, meaning the chance that a novel pharmaceutical might be developed based on the traditional medicines used in the area is relatively high. The value of that drug, Golden said, could range from $300 million to as much as $5.7 billion.

"That raises additional issues, about who benefits from the discovery of these drugs," Golden said. "In the case of the Madagascar Periwinkle, which was used to develop the treatment for childhood leukemia, a foreign drug company came, took the plants to a foreign lab and they are now making billions, but not five cents has made its way back to Madagascar."

While the question of their medical efficacy is still to be answered, Golden knows first-hand why people continue to rely on traditional medicines – in at least some cases, they work.

"I have been living here long enough that I've used some of these remedies myself," Golden said. "In one case, some scratches on my leg got infected, and it blew up like a watermelon from my knee to my ankle. My host family went into the forest and came back with what looked like nettles and put them on my leg. It was incredibly itchy, but the swelling went away completely and the pain disappeared. So these treatments really can work."

Source:Harvard University 

Can Herbal Products Provide Sun Protection?

Recent research supports the ability of some herbal agents, taken orally or applied topically, to prevent sunburn and limit the damage caused by excessive exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light. Natural products with proven and promising photoprotective properties are highlighted in an article in Alternative and Complementary Therapies, published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Alternative and Complementary Therapies website.The article “Herbal Sunscreens and Ultraviolet Protectants” specifically identifies golden serpent fern (Phlebodium aureum or Polypodium leucatomos) and Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng) as herbal products that, when taken orally, may reduce the local and systemic negative effects of UV light exposure, including photoaging, increased risk of skin cancer, and harm done to immune system function. Sufficiently high oral doses or topical application of green tea (Camellia sinensis) may also offer photoprotection.

Source: Vicki Cohn
Courtesy:Alternative and Complementary Therapies is a bimonthly journal that publishes original articles, reviews, and commentaries evaluating alternative therapies and how they can be integrated into clinical practice. Topics include botanical medicine, vitamins and supplements, nutrition and diet, mind-body medicine, acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, ayurveda, indigenous medicine systems, homeopathy, naturopathy, yoga and meditation, manual therapies, energy medicine, and spirituality and health. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Alternative and Complementary Therapies website.

Study shows how elephants produce their deep 'voices'

African elephants are known to be great communicators that converse with extremely low-pitched vocalizations, known as infrasounds, over a distance of miles. These infrasounds occupy a very low frequency range—fewer than 20 Hertz, or cycles, per second—that is generally below the threshold of human hearing.

Now, a new study shows that elephants rely on the same mechanism that produces speech in humans (and the vocalizations of many other mammals) to hit those extremely low notes. Christian Herbst from the University of Vienna, along with colleagues from Germany, Austria and the United States, used the larynx of a recently deceased elephant to recreate some elephant infrasounds in a laboratory.

Their findings are published in the 3 August issue of the journal Science, which is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

"These vocalizations are called infrasounds because their fundamental frequency is below the range of human hearing," explained Herbst during a phone interview. "We only hear the harmonics of such sounds, or multiples of that fundamental frequency. If an elephant's vocal folds were to clap together at 10 Hertz, for example, we would perceive some energy in that sound at 20, 30, 40 Hertz and so on. But these higher overtones are usually weaker in amplitude."Until now, researchers have wondered whether these low, rumbling elephant infrasounds were created by intermittent muscle contractions, as a cat's purr is, or by flow-induced vocal fold vibrations, fueled by air from the lungs, as is a human's voice. But, the natural death of an elephant at a zoo in Berlin gave Herbst and his colleagues a somewhat serendipitous chance to study the mechanism firsthand.

The researchers removed the elephant's larynx and froze it within a few hours of the animal's death. They then took it over to the larynx laboratory in the Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna, where Tecumseh Fitch, a senior author of the Sciencepaper, studied it in depth.

Herbst and the other researchers imitated the elephant's lungs by blowing controlled streams of warm, humid air through the excised larynx while adjusting the elephant vocal folds into a phonatory, or vocal-ready, position. In this way, the scientists were able to coax the vocal folds into a periodic, low-frequency vibration that matched an elephant's infrasound in every detail.

The fact that they were able to duplicate the elephant's infrasounds in a laboratory demonstrates that the animals rely on a myoelastic-aerodynamic, or "flow-driven," mode of speech to communicate in the wild. The elephant's brain would have been required to recurrently tense and relax the vocal muscles if the other mechanism, which produces a cat's purr, was involved, they say.

This flow-induced mechanism demonstrated by the researchers is likely to be employed by a wide range of mammals. From echolocating bats with their incredibly high vocalizations to African elephants and their extremely low-pitched infrasounds, this mode of voice production seems to span four to five orders of magnitude across a wide range of body sizes and sonic frequencies.

The researchers also saw some interesting "nonlinear phenomena" in the way the elephant vocal folds vibrated. These mostly irregular patterns of vibration occur when babies cry or heavy metal singers scream and the physical mechanism that elephants use is again identical to that seen in humans, they say.

"If I scream, it's no longer a periodic vibration," said Herbst. "It becomes chaotic and you can hear a certain degree of roughness. This can also be observed in young elephants, in situations of high excitement."

Herbst says that the findings were only made possible by a collaborative effort between voice scientists and biologists, and that voice science is an essential aspect of our social and economic lives.

Source:American Association for the Advancement of Science 

Studying couples to improve health, better relationships

It is not always best to forgive and forget in marriage, according to new research that looks at the costs of forgiveness. Sometimes expressing anger might be necessary to resolve a relationship problem – with the short-term discomfort of an angry but honest conversation benefiting the health of the relationship in the long-term. The research is part of a larger effort to better understand the contexts in which some relationships succeed and others fail, and also to understand how close relationships affect our health.

A popular research trend in recent years, positive psychology has offered the promise that with forgiveness, optimism, kindness, and positive thinking, people can turn around their relationships even after a serious transgression. But as James McNulty of Florida State University investigated positive psychology and well-being, he began to see a different trend: "I continued to find evidence that thoughts and behaviors presumed to be associated with better well-being lead to worse well-being among some people – usually the people who need the most help achieving well-being."

McNulty therefore set out to examine the potential costs of positive psychology. In a set of recent studies, he found that forgiveness in marriage can have some unintended negative effects. "We all experience a time in a relationship in which a partner transgresses against us in some way. For example, a partner may be financially irresponsible, unfaithful, or unsupportive," says McNulty, who is presenting his research at the APA annual convention this week in Orlando. "When these events occur, we must decide whether we should be angry and hold onto that anger, or forgive." His research shows that a variety of factors can complicate the effectiveness of forgiveness, including a partner's level of agreeableness and the severity and frequency of the transgression.

"Believing a partner is forgiving leads agreeable people to be less likely to offend that partner and disagreeable people to be more likely to offend that partner," he says. Additionally, he says, anger can serve an important role in signaling to a transgressing partner that the offensive behavior is not acceptable. "If the partner can do something to resolve a problem that is likely to otherwise continue and negatively affect the relationship, people may experience long-term benefits by temporarily withholding forgiveness and expressing anger."

"This work suggests people need to be flexible in how they address the problems that will inevitably arise over the course of their relationships," McNulty says. "There is no 'magic bullet,' no single way to think or behave in a relationship. The consequences of each decision we make in our relationships depends on the circumstances that surround that decision."

How attachment affects our health

Psychologists have known for decades that close relationships are critical to a person's health and well-being. However, the exact processes that govern these health effects have not been well understood. Recent studies show that the attachment processes between two individuals in a close relationship dramatically affect health domains ranging from pregnancy and birth defects to cancer and chronic disease.

"We know that having relationships in general and being socially integrated is associated with a reduced risk of mortality," says Paula Pietromonaco of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, who is also presenting at the APA convention. "Our research follows from attachment theory, which suggests that there is one primary person that people turn to for comfort when they are distressed or frightened." In adulthood, that person is often a romantic partner or spouse, she says. "These sorts of relationship partners are especially important when people are faced with a stressful event because they have the potential to comfort and calm the person who is experiencing distress or to hinder that person's efforts to feel better."

In an ongoing longitudinal study of 225 newlywed couples, for example, Pietromonaco's team is finding that the way people feel attached to each other affects cortisol levels in response to stress – and can possibly predict depression or anxiety over time. Funded by the National Cancer Institute, the study has preliminarily shown that among couples that include a wife who is more anxiously attached – who desires a great deal of intimacy and seeks reassurance and support – and a husband who is more "avoidantly attached," cortisol levels spike in anticipation of a conflict discussion followed by a sharp decline in cortisol. "In addition, these same anxious wife/avoidant husband couples appear to have more difficulty in discussing the conflict, and their behavior suggests greater disengagement from the discussion."

These patterns, Pietromonaco says, may signal difficulty with emotion regulation, and it is possible that individuals in these couples will be at greater risk for symptoms of depression and anxiety over time. The researchers are following these couples over the first 3 to 4 years of marriage, and will be examining the extent to which the patterns they see now predict changes in emotional health over the early years of marriage.

Pietromonaco and colleagues also recently conducted a review of studies that examine the effects of two-person relationships on a range of health topics in order to create a better framework for future investigations. For example, they point to several studies that show that greater prenatal social support predicts more optimal fetal growth, higher infant birth weight, and reduced risk of low birth weight. But, they caution that such studies need to be replicated and expanded to take into account both perceived support as well as actual support interactions among both partners.

In general, Pietromonaco says that relationship science studies must look at the expectations, beliefs, and experiences of both partners in predicting emotional and physical health. "Although research on psychology and health has begun to consider these sorts of 'partner effects,' they are often not incorporated into studies designed to intervene to help people cope with chronic diseases such as cancer or diabetes," she says. "As Lynn Martire [Penn State] and her colleagues have noted, many couple intervention studies include both partners but assess psychological adjustment for the patient only. Yet how the patient's caregiver, who is often a spouse, is adjusting and coping may be very important in predicting how patients themselves cope."

Source:Society for Personality and Social Psychology 

New target for treating diabetes and obesity

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a potential target for treating diabetes and obesity.

Studying mice, they found that when the target protein was disabled, the animals became more sensitive to insulin and were less likely to get fat even when they ate a high-fat diet that caused their littermates to become obese.

The findings are published online in the journal Cell Metabolism.

The researchers studied how the body manufactures fat from dietary sources such as carbohydrates. That process requires an enzyme called fatty acid synthase (FAS). Mice engineered so that they don't make FAS in their fat cells can eat a high-fat diet without becoming obese.

"Mice without FAS were significantly more resistant to obesity than their wild-type littermates," says first author Irfan J. Lodhi, PhD. "And it wasn't because they ate less. The mice ate just as much fatty food, but they metabolized more of the fat and released it as heat."

To understand why that happened, Lodhi, a research instructor in medicine, analyzed their fat cells. Mice have two types of fat: white fat and brown fat. White fat stores excess calories and contributes to obesity. Brown fat helps burn calories and protects against obesity.

In mice genetically blocked from making fatty acid synthase in fat cells, Lodhi and his colleagues noticed that the animals' white fat was transformed into tissue that resembled brown fat.

"These cells are 'brite' cells, brown fat found where white fat cells should be," Lodhi says. "They had the genetic signature of brown fat cells and acted like brown fat cells. Because the mice were resistant to obesity, it appears that fatty acid synthase may control a switch between white fat and brown fat. When we removed FAS from the equation, white fat transformed into brite cells that burned more energy."

Determining whether humans also have brown fat has been somewhat controversial throughout the years, but recent studies elsewhere have confirmed that people have it.

"It definitely exists, and perhaps the next strategy we'll use for treating people with diabetes and obesity will be to try to reverse their problems by activating these brown fat cells," says senior investigator Clay F. Semenkovich, MD.

Semenkovich, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine, professor of cell biology and physiology and director of the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Lipid Research, says the new work is exciting because FAS provides a target that may be able to activate brown fat cells to treat obesity and diabetes. But even better, he says it may be possible to target a protein downstream from FAS to lower the risk for potential side effects from the therapy.

That is possible because the scientists learned that the FAS pathway involves a family of proteins known as the PPARs (peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors). PPARs are important in lipid metabolism. One of them, PPAR-alpha, helps burn fat, but the related protein, PPAR-gamma manufactures fat and helps store it.

Lodhi and Semenkovich noticed that in mice without FAS in their fat cells, activity of PPAR-alpha (the fat burner) was increased, while PPAR-gamma (the fat builder) activity decreased.

A protein called PexRAP (Peroxisomal Reductase Activating PPAR-gamma) turned out to be a downstream mediator of the effects of FAS and a key regulator of the PPAR-gamma, fat-storing pathway. When the researchers blocked PexRAP in fat cells in mice, they also interfered with the manufacture and buildup of fat.

"There was decreased fat when we blocked PexRAP," Lodhi says. "Those mice also had improved glucose metabolism, so we think that inhibiting either fatty acid synthase or PexRAP might be good strategies for treating obesity and diabetes."

Several pharmaceutical companies are working on FAS inhibitors. Meanwhile, the discovery that inhibiting PexRAP also makes the animals less obese and less diabetic has convinced the Washington University researchers to continue those studies.

"Because PexRAP is downstream, it theoretically might cause fewer side effects, but nobody knows what role the protein might play in different tissues in the body," Semenkovich says. "We need to conduct more experiments with the goal that we may be able to move into some sort of clinical trials relatively soon. It's very important to find new treatments for obesity and diabetes because these disorders aren't just an inconvenience, both can be lethal."

Source:Washington University School of Medicine