October 31, 2008, 5:10 AM CT

Therapeutic potential of stem cells

Adult stem cells resemble couch potatoes if they hang out and divide in a dish for too long. They get fat and lose key surface proteins, which interferes with their movement and reduces their therapeutic potential. Now, via a simple chemical procedure, scientists have found a way to get these cells off the couch and over to their therapeutic target.

To do this, they simply added a molecule called SLeX to the surface of the cells. The procedure took just 45 minutes and restored an important biological function.

"Delivery remains one of the biggest hurdles to stem cell treatment," explains senior author Jeffrey Karp, an instructor at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. "The blood stream offers a natural delivery vehicle, but stem cells don't move through blood vessels normally after being expanded in culture. Our procedure promises to overcome this obstacle".

These findings will be published online in the journal Bioconjugate Chemistry on Oct. 31.

In order for cells injected into the blood stream to be therapeutically useful, they need to take initiative to reach target tissues. But instead, cultured stem cells go with the flow. They move through the body quickly, carried by the current, which means they seldom contact the sides of blood vessels. Thus, they have fewer opportunities to escape into the surrounding tissue by squeezing between cells of the vessel wall. Adult stem cells must escape before they can colonize surrounding tissue and rebuild damaged structures......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

October 27, 2008, 10:33 PM CT

Stress may make you itch

Berlin, Gera number of Current research suggests that stress may activate immune cells in your skin, resulting in inflammatory skin disease. The related report by Joachim et al., "Stress-induced Neurogenic Inflammation in Murine Skin Skews Dendritic Cells towards Maturation and Migration: Key role of ICAM-1/LFA-1 interactions," appears in the recent issue of The American Journal of Pathology

Skin provides the first level of defense to infection, serving not only as a physical barrier, but also as a site for white blood cells to attack invading bacteria and viruses. The immune cells in skin can over-react, however, resulting in inflammatory skin diseases such as atopic dermatitis and psoriasis.

Stress can trigger an outbreak in patients suffering from inflammatory skin conditions. This cross talk between stress perception, which involves the brain, and the skin is mediated the through the "brain-skin connection". Yet, little is know about the means by which stress aggravates skin diseases.

Scientists lead by Dr. Petra Arck of Charit, University of Medicine Berlin and McMaster University in Canada, hypothesized that stress could exacerbate skin disease by increasing the number of immune cells in the skin. To test this hypothesis, they exposed mice to sound stress. Dr. Arck's group observed that this stress challenge resulted in higher numbers of mature white blood cells in the skin. Furthermore, blocking the function of two proteins that attract immune cells to the skin, LFA-1 and ICAM-1, prevented the stress-induced increase in white blood cells in the skin......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

October 27, 2008, 5:38 AM CT

High dose of flu vaccine boosts immune response in elderly

Giving people age 65 and older a dose four times larger than the standard flu vaccine boosts the amount of antibodies in their blood to levels considered protective against the flu, more so than the standard flu vaccine does. The findings from a study of nearly 4,000 people were presented Oct. 26 at a national meeting on infectious diseases.

The higher dose of vaccine generally resulted in approximately 30 percent to 80 percent more antibodies against flu, long considered a good measure of protection.

Ann Falsey, M.D., associate professor of medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and an infectious diseases specialist at Rochester General Hospital, presented the results at the 48th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC)/Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) 46th annual meeting. The study was funded by sanofi pasteur, the vaccines division of sanofi-aventis Group, which makes Fluzone Influenza Virus Vaccine, a licensed flu vaccine used widely in the United States and elsewhere.

The immune system generally weakens as we get older, not only leaving people more vulnerable to infection but also reducing their ability to respond to vaccination. While some studies have questioned the effectiveness of the flu vaccine in elderly adults, the nation's leading public health experts stress that it's a worthwhile, even life-saving, measure. About 90 percent of the estimated 36,000 people who die from flu-related causes in the United States each year are 65 and older......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

October 23, 2008, 5:34 AM CT

Gene find sheds light on motor neuron diseases like ALS

Researchers have identified a gene in mice that plays a central role in the proper development of one of the nerve cells that goes bad in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and some other diseases that affect our motor neurons.

The study is the result of a collaboration by researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center who normally focus on the eye, working together with a developmental neuroscientist at Harvard who focuses on the cerebral cortex. The work appears in the Oct. 23 issue of the journal Neuron

The work centers on corticospinal neurons, crucial nerve cells that connect the brain to the spinal cord. These neurons degenerate in patients with ALS, and their injury can play a central role in spinal cord injury as well. These are the longest nerves in the central nervous system nerves sometimes several feet long that run from the brain to the spinal cord. As the ends of the nerves degenerate, patients lose the ability to control their muscles.

The team led by Lin Gan, Ph.D., of Rochester and Jeffrey D. Macklis, M.D., D.HST, of Harvard showed that a protein known as Bhlhb5 is central to how the brain's progenitor cells ultimately become corticospinal motor neurons, one type of neuron that deteriorates in ALS. The same group of neurons also degenerates in patients with a rare neurological disease known as hereditary spastic paraplegia......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

October 23, 2008, 5:33 AM CT

UK teen suicide rates on the decline

Suicide rates in those aged 10-19 in the UK declined by 28% in the seven year period from 1997-2003, shows a study published recently in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry The study, carried out by scientists at the University of Manchester, showed that the decline was especially marked in young males, where rates declined by 35%.

Despite the decline, however, suicide remains more common among young males than young females. For every one adolescent female (aged 15-19 years) who commits suicide in the UK, there are three adolescent males, the study revealed.

The research, which was carried out as part of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness, showed that there were 1,722 adolescent and juvenile deaths by suicide in the UK between 1997 and 2003, which represents 4% of all suicides in that time period. The majority of young people were aged 15-19 (93% of the sample), and overall, the most common methods of suicide were hanging, followed by self-poisoning.

"Between 1997 and 2003, we observed that suicide rates fell significantly, eventhough we can only speculate on what factors may have contributed to the decline," said Dr Kirsten Windfuhr, from the Centre for Suicide Prevention at the University of Manchester. "Eventhough changes to antidepressant prescribing may have been one factor contributing to changing suicide rates, it is likely that a combination of factors, both clinical and socio-economic, will have contributed to the decrease in suicide rates. Suicide is a rare event, and is, thankfully, rarer still among children and adolescents. However, it is still one of the leading causes of death among young people and continued monitoring of recent suicide trends is important."........ Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

October 21, 2008, 9:16 PM CT

RSV may hide in the lungs, lead to asthma

DALLAS Oct. 21, 2008 Conventional wisdom has been that respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) a common virus that causes infection in the lungs comes and goes in children without any long lasting impact.

A study conducted in mice by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers, however, suggests that RSV may hide in the lungs even after other symptoms abate, ultimately resurfacing to cause recurrent wheezing and chronic airway disease.

"This research suggests that there's a potential new mechanism for asthma correlation to viral infections in children that could be linked to RSV," said Dr. Asuncion Mejias, assistant professor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern and senior author of a study available online and in the Nov. 15 issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases "These findings could aid in the development of preventive and therapeutic interventions for children with recurrent wheezing due to a virus such as RSV."

RSV is the leading cause of viral respiratory infections and hospitalizations in infants and children worldwide. Half of all babies develop an RSV infection within the first year of life and practically all have had at least one RSV infection by age 3, said Dr. Octavio Ramilo, professor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern and co-author of study. About 3 percent to 10 percent of infants with RSV infections develop severe bronchitis and require hospitalization......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

October 21, 2008, 9:11 PM CT

Depression, health care services and heart attacks

Depression symptoms are linked to significantly higher use of healthcare services following a heart attack, as per a new study released recently by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). With approximately 70,000 Canadians experiencing a heart attack each year, this new data may help thousands of people get the care they need and reduce hospital visits.

"While we know that the use of health services is higher for people with depression symptoms, and depression is common for people who have had a heart attack, this is one of the first studies to quantify the relationship between depression symptoms, cardiac illness severity and their effect on health service consumption," explains Dr. Paul Kurdyak, head of CAMH's Centralized Assessment, Triage and Support research program and principal investigator for this research.

Data from almost 2000 heart attack patients showed that depression symptoms alone resulted in an increase in health service consumption with a:.

• Nine per cent increase in heart-related hospitalizations,.
• 24 per cent increase in total re-hospitalization days, and.
• 43 per cent increase in non-heart related hospitalizations visits following discharge after a heart attack.

Surprisingly, the data also showed that depression caused the greatest increase in health service use in those patients with lower cardiac illness severity, and therefore, the least need for those services. "What we're seeing is people who are clearly in distress seeking help from our healthcare system, but it may not include the right kind of help to address their distress," says Dr. Kurdyak......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

October 20, 2008, 5:51 AM CT

Scientists identify role of fatty acids in Alzheimer's disease

Researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease (GIND) and the University of California have observed that complete or partial removal of an enzyme that regulates fatty acid levels improves cognitive deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Their findings, which will be published in today's issue of Nature Neuroscience, identified specific fatty acids that may contribute to the disease as well as a novel therapeutic strategy.

AD causes a progressive loss of cognitive functions and results in death. Over 5 million Americans are living with this condition. Eventhough there are therapys to ease the symptoms, these therapys are not very effective and scientists have yet to discover a cure.

"Several different proteins have been implicated in Alzheimer's disease," said Lennart Mucke, M.D., GIND director and senior author of the study, "but we wanted to know more about the potential involvement of lipids and fatty acids".

Fatty acids are rapidly taken up by the brain and incorporated into phospholipids, a class of fats that form the membrane or barrier that shields the content of cells from the external environment. The researchers used a large scale profiling approach ("lipidomics") to compare a number of different fatty acids in the brains of normal mice with those in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease that develops memory deficits and a number of pathological alterations seen in the human condition......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

October 16, 2008, 10:48 PM CT

Unnecessary regulation harming clinical research

Increasing bureaucracy is the biggest single threat to clinical research in the UK and urgent action needs to be taken, argue experts on bmj.com today.

European legislation introduced in 2001 was intended to simplify and harmonise the regulation of trials across the European Union. But it has led to long delays in approval, is "poorly coordinated, lacks inconsistency at all levels, and at times is completely illogical", write Professors Morris Brown and Paul Stewart.

Because of the increasingly complicated and time-consuming approval process, the UK has fallen from being one of the most attractive places for the pharmaceutical industry to undertake clinical trials to one of the least attractive, warn the authors.

Main concerns of the authors include the lengthy application processpaperwork can take up to 40 hours to complete, the inconsistencies and delays in the review process, and the lack of clarity about what requires ethical approval.

As per the authors, another key problem is the ineffectiveness of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) approval processthe application is difficult to complete, cannot be submitted online and is sometimes lost by the MHRA.

The MHRA was set up to investigate new medicinal products, but its extended responsibility to approve all clinical trials in the UK has been counterproductive, say the authors......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

October 16, 2008, 10:44 PM CT

Hurricane Ike triggers Mental Health Research

Dartmouth scientists with the National Center for Disaster Mental Health Research are preparing to visit the Galveston, Texas area on their first field mission in early November to study the impact of Hurricane Ike, which hit in late September.

The NCDMHR, established last year with funding from the National Institutes of Health, aims to study long-term recovery from disasters, focusing on mental health. Hurricane Ike is the first opportunity to deploy the research teams, who will be on the ground in Galveston starting in early November.

The NCDMHR is a six-member consortium, including researchers from Dartmouth Medical School, the University of Michigan, the Medical University of South Carolina, Yale University, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

"We basically want to know what promotes or interferes with resilience to disaster-related stress," said Fran Norris, a research professor of psychiatry and of community and family medicine at Dartmouth Medical School and the Center's director. "We've developed three studies that address a variety of factors, all aimed at understanding how best to help people cope with mental health issues in the wake of a disaster".

As per Norris, field research on the early phase of disaster recovery is scarce, mainly due to the fact that funding comes too late to adequately study the effectiveness of early intervention. With the NCDMHR, funding is already in place, with the NIH releasing money as it's needed. In this case, with Hurricane Ike, the money will be spent on collecting data in the Galveston area starting in about a month......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source