February 15, 2007, 4:35 AM CT

Googling brain proteins with 3-D goggles

The Allen Brain Atlas, a genome-wide map of the mouse brain on the Internet, has been hailed as Google of the brain. The atlas now has a companion or the brains working molecules, a sort of pop-up book of the proteins, or proteome map, that those genes express.

The protein map is the first to apply quantitative proteomics to imaging, said Richard D. Smith, Battelle Fellow at the Department of Energys Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who led the mapping effort with Desmond Smith of UCLAs David Geffen School of Medicine.

Proteins are the lead actors, the most important part of the picture, PNNLs Smith said. They are the molecules that do the work of the cells.

Fine-tuning such proteome maps will enable comparisons of healthy brains with others whose protein portraits look different. Contrasts in location and abundance of proteins may display the earliest detectable stages of Alzheimers, Parkinsons and other neurological diseases. They hope such diseases might be curbed if caught and treated early enough.

The National Institutes of Health-funded study, performed at DOEs Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory on PNNLs campus, is published in the advance online edition of Genome Research and featured in current Nature online Neuroscience Gateway (http://www.brainatlas.org). PNNL staff researchers Vladislav A. Petyuk, Wei-Jun Qian and UCLAs Mark Chin are co-lead authors......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

February 13, 2007, 9:45 PM CT

Human stem cell transplants mature into neurons

Human nerve stem cells transplanted into rats' damaged spinal cords have survived, grown and in some cases connected with the rats' own spinal cord cells in a Johns Hopkins laboratory, overturning the long-held notion that spinal cords won't allow nerve repair.

A report on the experiments will be published online this week at PLoS Medicine and.

"establishes a new doctrine for regenerative neuroscience," says Vassilis Koliatsos, M.D., associate professor of neuropathology at Johns Hopkins. "The spinal cord, a part of the nervous system that is thought of as incapable of repairing itself, can support the development of transplanted cells," he added.

"We don't yet know whether the connections we've seen can transmit nerve signals to the degree that a rat could be made to walk again," says Koliatsos, "We're still in the proof of concept stage, but we're making progress and we're encouraged".

In their experiments, the researchers gave anesthetized rats a range of spinal cord injuries to lesion or kill motor neurons or performed sham surgeries. They varied experimental conditions to see if the presence or absence of spinal cord lesions had an effect on the survival and maturation of human stem cell grafts. Two weeks after lesion or sham surgery, they injected human neural stem cells into the left side of each rat's spinal cord......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

February 12, 2007, 9:50 PM CT

Walkable Communities Make Elders Healthier

Some of a neighborhood's features -- the length of its blocks, how a number of grocery stores or restaurants are nearby -- may be more than selling points for real estate agents. A new study suggests such factors may work to beat back obesity in older people by increasing a neighborhood's "walkability."

The findings by University of Washington and Group Health Cooperative scientists involved more than 900 elderly Group Health members living in Seattle and King County. The results could have broad implications for public health and planning officials throughout the United States, where obesity has been called an epidemic and as baby boomers start to retire.

"The area around someone's home is an opportunity to walk if the habitat is right," said Dr. Ethan Berke, lead researcher of the study reported in the recent issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

Scientists compared the study participants' self-reported walking behavior with geographic information relating to the location of their residences, as well as some 200 directly observable neighborhood attributes, including parks, streets and foot-and-bike trails, land slope and traffic. Scientists concluded that the chief factors contributing to an area's walkability were higher residential density and clusters of destinations such as grocery stores, restaurants and other services......... Posted by: Rose      Read more         Source

February 8, 2007, 8:55 PM CT

Robot help users regain limb function

A robotic exoskeleton controlled by the wearer's own nervous system could help users regain limb function, which is encouraging news for people with partial nervous system impairment, say University of Michigan researchers.

The ankle exoskeleton developed at U-M was worn by healthy subjects to measure how the device affected ankle function. The U-M team has no plans to build a commercial exoskeleton, but their results suggest promising applications for rehabilitation and physical treatment, and a similar approach could be used by other groups who do build such technology.

"This could benefit stroke patients or patients with incomplete injuries of the spinal cord," said Daniel Ferris, associate professor in movement science at U-M. "For patients that can walk slowly, a brace like this may help them walk faster and more effectively".

Ferris and former U-M doctoral student Keith Gordon, who is now a post-doctoral fellow at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, showed that the wearer of the U-M ankle exoskeleton could learn how to walk with the exoskeleton in about 30 minutes. Additionally, the wearer's nervous system retained the ability to control the exoskeleton three days later.

Electrical signals sent by the brain to our muscles tell them how to move. In people with spinal injuries or some neurological disorders, those electrical signals don't arrive full strength and are uncoordinated. In addition, patients are less able to keep track of exactly where and how their muscles move, which makes re-learning movement difficult.........

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February 7, 2007, 9:15 PM CT

Artificial Cells To Fight Disease

Carnegie Mellon University's Philip LeDuc predicts the use of artificially created cells could be a potential new therapeutic approach for treating diseases in an ever-changing world.

LeDuc, an assistant professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering, penned an article for the January edition of Nature Nanotechnology Journal about the efficacy of using man-made cells to treat diseases without injecting drugs.

This idea was developed by a team of scientists from disciplines including biology, chemistry and engineering during an exciting conference organized by the National Academies and the Keck Foundation for developing new disease-fighting approaches for the future.

"Our proposal is to use naturally available molecules to create pseudo-cell factories where we create a super artificial cell capable of targeting and treating whatever is ailing the body. The human cell is like a bustling metropolis, and we aim to tap the energy and diversity of the processes in a human cell to help the body essentially heal itself," LeDuc said.

Because the cell is an amazingly efficient system already, LeDuc and his team of scientists plan to use its microscopic package of tightly organized parts to improve medical therapy in diseases that exist in the body.........

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February 5, 2007, 9:17 PM CT

Re-wiring the amputated limb

Surgeons have managed to give an amputee not only a prosthetic arm that moves as directed by her thoughts, but also the feeling of touch - albeit in the wrong part of her body.

When Claudia Mitchell presses an area on her chest, where surgeons re-wired the nerves that used to run to her hand, it feels to her as if her fingers are being touched.

The technique opens the door to additional technologies that could one day relay signals from the prosthesis back to the 'fingers' on the chest, allowing an amputee to get sensory information such as touch and temperature from their artificial limb.

Mitchell's success story was revealed in a press conference last year, but now the details have been published: they are reported this week in the Lancet.1.........

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January 31, 2007, 8:42 PM CT

Oral Wounds Heal Slower In Women

Wounds in the mouth heal more slowly in women and elderly adults, a new study at the University of Illinois at Chicago reveals.

"While wounds to the skin heal more quickly in women than in men, our study suggested the opposite is true for healing of wounds inside the mouth," said Dr. Phillip Marucha, head of periodontics at the UIC College of Dentistry.

"We discovered that, regardless of age, men's mouth wounds heal faster than women's".

Older women were at the highest risk for delayed healing, their wounds closing half as slowly as younger men, Marucha said. The findings of the study, he said, could have important implications for surgical practices.

"There are an increasing number of surgical procedures being performed in older populations," Marucha said. "A greater emphasis needs to be placed on accelerating the healing process. Discovering the reasons behind these age and sex differences will help us improve therapy, and postsurgical recovery times may be reduced".

The study consisted of creating a small, standardized circular wound, half the diameter of a pencil, between the first and second molar of 212 male and female volunteers aged 18 to 35 years and 50 to 88 years. The wounds were videographed at the same time for seven consecutive days to assess closure.........

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January 30, 2007, 4:28 AM CT

How To Make The Most Of Health Dollars?

Like a one-size-fits-all shirt that doesn't fit anyone very well, American health insurance plans charge every person the same out of pocket cost for medical services - regardless of their effect on a person's health.

So, whether your visit to the doctor is for life-threatening cancer, or just the common cold or a sprained ankle, you'll pay the same co-pay or deductible. These cash costs set by your employer and your insurance plan are designed to keep you from using "too much" health care.

But what if those out-of-pocket costs are high enough to keep your co-worker from taking a medicine that could greatly reduce her risk of having a heart attack, or to keep her from refilling a prescription that could prevent her child's asthma attacks?.

American employers - and citizens - could get a lot more value out of their health insurance by abandoning the old-fashioned system of charging everyone the same, says a team of University of Michigan and Harvard University scientists in a new paper published online today in the journal Health Affairs.

Instead, companies should tailor their plans so that people who can get the most benefit out of a particular drug or screening test will actually pay the least for it. By doing so, companies might not only get more for their money, they might even save money in the long run by helping their employees prevent expensive health crises.........

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January 24, 2007, 5:50 PM CT

If Mom Smoked During Pregnancy

Quitting smoking may be more difficult for individuals whose mothers smoked during pregnancy, according to animal research conducted by Duke University Medical Center researchers.

Prenatal exposure to nicotine is known to alter areas of the brain critical to learning, memory and reward. Scientists at the Duke Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research have discovered that these alterations may program the brain for relapse to nicotine addiction. Rodents exposed to nicotine before birth self administer more of the drug after periods of abstinence than those that had not been exposed.

The study suggests that pregnant women should quit smoking to avoid exposing their unborn children to nicotine, and that they should do so without the use of nicotine products such as patches or gums that also present a risk to the baby, the researchers said.

"Smoking during pregnancy can harm the baby in ways that extend far beyond preterm delivery or low birth weight," said lead study investigator Edward Levin, Ph.D., a professor of biological psychiatry. "It causes changes in the brain development of the baby that can last a lifetime".

Results of the study appear this week in the online issue of the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior. The work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and Philip Morris USA.........

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January 15, 2007, 10:01 PM CT

Help For The Alcoholic

Question: If an alcoholic is unwilling to get help, what can you do about it?.

Alcoholics don't respond very well to advice, suggestions, or threats. One would imagine that under these circumstances an alcoholic is doomed to oblivion. You must realize the alcoholic is desperate to get more and more alcohol, and he or she may lie, cheat and steal in order to do so.

Very simply, an alcoholic is a person whose life is controlled by alcohol. They are sick.

Question: If the alcoholic is sick why doesn't he or she just go to the hospital?.

Because in the early stages of alcoholism, the alcoholic does not appear sick, in pain, or visibly abnormal. Alcoholics do not comprehend that they are about to become a very sick person, and neither do the people around them.

By the time an alcoholic is in the late stage, he or she is often irrational, deluded, and unable to understand what has happened. The alcoholic is simply not aware of what is going on in his or her body and is in a complete state of denial.

Being an alcoholic is not a curse. The alcoholic is a sick person and should be treated as one. Alcoholics are born with a hereditary, genetic predisposition to addiction having to do with brain chemistry. Alcoholics need to ingest alcohol before the addiction takes hold. Alcoholism is a progressive disease, and without therapy it only gets worse.........

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