July 8, 2008, 8:58 PM CT

Protein marker for schizophrenia risk

A protein found in immune cells may be a reliable marker for schizophrenia risk, report scientists in a new proteomics study appearing in the recent issue of Molecular and Cellular proteomics.

Schizophrenia is a severe and complex psychiatric illness that affects about 1% of the population. Diagnosis currently relies on subjective clinical interviews and the assessment of ambiguous symptoms, which frequently leads to delayed diagnosis and therapy. As such, biomarkers that would indicate schizophrenia risk or onset would be extremely useful.

Sabine Bahn and his colleagues sought to find such a "protein fingerprint" in the blood (due to its accessibility). They compared protein profiles of schizophrenia patients and controls using mass spectrometry and identified two peaks highlighting a significant change. These were identified as alpha defensins, proteins responsible for killing microbes and viruses in the innate immune response.

Bahn and his colleagues confirmed their findings by examining alpha defensin levels in the blood of 21 twin pairs discordant for schizophrenia (where one sibling manifests the disease while the other does not). In these twin sets, both siblings had significantly elevated alpha defensins as compared with a group of control twins. Changes were also found in patients who were investigated soon after diagnosis, which means that higher levels of alpha defensins were not caused by medicine or progression of the disease......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

July 7, 2008, 10:11 PM CT

Recommends increased adolescent immunization

Vaccinating infants and toddlers is an almost universal practice in the United States. Vaccines to prevent flu are a regular part of medical care for senior citizens and at-risk patients. But, as per a research studyreported in the August 2008 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the US healthcare system is not very effective in getting vaccines to the adolescent population.

In response to a request from the Assistant Secretary for Health, the Adolescent Working Group of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) conducted an assessment of the current state of adolescent immunizations and identified issues that will require national attention in the coming months and years if current and future recommended adolescent immunizations will be used to their potential.

There are three new vaccines available and recommended for adolescents that prevent a total of five diseases that can have a range of devastating health consequences. Individual vaccines protect against meningococcal meningitis and human papillomavirus and a combined vaccine protects against tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis. All three vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective.

The authors cite six topics with unique applications to adolescent immunization. There are venues for vaccine administration, consent for immunizations, communication, financing, surveillance, and the potential for school mandates......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

July 7, 2008, 9:15 PM CT

Relationship violence among college students

Violence between partners, friends and acquaintances appears prevalent both during and before college, as per results of a survey of students at three urban college campuses reported in the recent issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

The transition from living at home to attending college may increase adolescents' vulnerability to relationship violence, as per background information in the article. Factors linked to this risk include less parental monitoring and support, isolation in an unknown environment and a strong desire for peer acceptance that can change behaviors toward others.

Christine M. Forke, M.S.N., C.R.N.P., of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and his colleagues anonymously surveyed 910 undergraduates age 17 to 22 (57.1 percent female) in 67 randomly chosen college classes. The students answered demographic questions about sex, age, race and length of time in school and reported whether and when they had experienced physical, emotional or sexual violence in a relationship.

The scientists observed that:

• 407 (44.7 percent) of participants experienced relationship violence either before or during college, including 383 (42.l percent) who were victims of such violence and 156 (17.1 percent) of participants who reported perpetrating violence.........
  
  
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July 7, 2008, 9:10 PM CT

Early-life nutrition and adult intellectual functioning

Adults who had improved nutrition in early childhood may score better on intellectual tests, regardless of the number of years they attended school, as per a report in the recent issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

"Schooling is a key component of the development of literacy, reading comprehension and cognitive functioning, and thus of human capital," the authors write as background information in the article. Research also suggests that poor nutrition in early life is linked to poor performance on cognitive (thinking, learning and memory) tests in adulthood. "Therefore, both nutrition and early-childhood intellectual enrichment are likely to be important determinants of intellectual functioning in adulthood".

Between 1969 and 1977, Guatemalan children in four villages participated in a trial of nutritional supplementation. Through the trial, some were exposed to atolea protein-rich enhanced nutritional supplementwhile others were exposed to fresco, a sugar-sweetened beverage. Aryeh D. Stein, M.P.H., Ph.D., of the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, and his colleagues analyzed data from intellectual testing and interviews conducted between 2002 and 2004, when 1,448 surviving participants (68.4 percent) were an average of 32 years old......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

July 3, 2008, 9:05 PM CT

Brain noise is a good thing

Toronto, Canada Canadian researchers have shown that a noisy brain is a healthy brain.

"Brain noise" is a term that has been used by neuroresearchers to describe random brain activity that is not important to mental function. Intuitive notions of brain-behaviour relationships would suggest that this brain noise quiets down as children mature into adults and become more efficient and consistent in their cognitive processing.

But new research from the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, reported in the July 4, 2008 issue of the Public Library of Science - Computational Biology, overturns this notion.

"What we discovered is that brain maturation not only leads to more stable and accurate behaviour in the performance of a memory task, but correlates with increased brain signal variability," said lead author, Dr. Randy McIntosh, a senior scientist with the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest. "This doesn't mean the brain is working less efficiently. It's showing greater functional variability, which is indicative of enhanced neural complexity".

In the study, 79 participants representing two main age groups children (eight to 15) and young adults (20 to 33 years of age) completed a series of face memory tasks to measure their ability to recall faces with accuracy. EEG recordings were collected to measure their brain signal activity while performing the task. EEG electroencephalography is a powerful brain imaging tool that allows for precise measurement of the timing of brain activity in response to external stimuli......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:11:08 GMT

When Children Begin to Simulate Other Minds

of the world that represented Maxi''s experience - they weren''t capable of a theory of mind.

From about 4 to 5-years-old the situation changed dramatically. Suddenly the children tended to point to the cupboard where Maxi thought the chocolate was, rather than where they knew it was. However in some variations of the experiment children up to 5-years-old still had problems understanding someone else''s false belief.

Finally, at 6-years-old, the children did consistently understand that another person can hold a false belief about the world.

End of innocenceThis experiment suggested that at about 4 to 6-years old a range of remarkable skills start to emerge in young children that are vital for their successful functioning in society. They begin to understand that others can hold false beliefs, they themselves can lie, and that others can lie to them.

From one perspective it is a sad end to innocence, but from another it is a necessary base for a skill required for social success. At around 4-years-old children are starting to understand that we don''t live out there in the world, we actually create a model of the world in our heads, a model that can easily be wrong.

Criticisms and alternative explanationsLike many child psychology studies, this experiment has sparked much debate about what its results mean. Here are some of the alternative explanations addressed by the experimenters:

• Were the kids concentrating? Yes, they correctly answered questions that showed they were concentrating.
• Had the younger children forgotten the story? No, they were given a memory test which they passed.
• Were the younger children just pointing at where the chocolate was without thinking about the question? In another experiment children were specifically told to stop and think - this didn''t help the younger children.

While this experiment has been criticised, and other methods have been developed for examining theory of mind in children, tasks like this one are still in use around the world to this day, helping to uncover how and when we first develop the ability to understand other people''s thoughts.

» Read other top 10 child psychology studies on the emergence of infant memory, self-concept, self-concept, attachment and self-concept.

[Image credit: self-concept]

References

Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1983). self-concept Cognition, 13(1), 103-28.Labels: Child Psychology Posted by: Jerry      Read more     Source

July 1, 2008, 9:55 PM CT

Making more bone and less fat

A small protein may have a big role in helping you make more bone and less fat, scientists say.

"The pathways are parallel, and the idea is if you can somehow disrupt the fat production pathway, you will get more bone," says Dr. Xingming Shi, bone biologist at the Medical College of Georgia Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics.

He's found the short-acting protein GILZ appears to make this desirable shift and wants to better understand how it does it with the long-term goal of targeted therapies for osteoporosis, obesity and maybe more.

"Osteoporosis and obesity are two major public health problems, but people have no idea whether they have a connection," says Dr. Shi. Bone and fat do have a common source: both are derived from mesynchymal stem cells. Bone loss and fat gain also tend to happen with age and with use of the powerful, anti-inflammatory steroid hormones glucocorticoids. "When you age, your bone marrow microenvironment changes; the balance between the bone and fat pathway is broken," says Dr. Shi, a faculty member in the MCG Schools of Medicine and Graduate Studies. "You have more fat cells accumulate".

"The bones of elderly people or those who take glucocorticoids are yellow inside instead of red," he says. And it gets worse: in a classic vicious cycle, the more fat, the more cytokines that stimulate production of bone-destroying osteoclasts and inhibit bone-forming osteoblasts. He recently showed that even the stem cells change with age: their numbers and their ability to differentiate decrease......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

July 1, 2008, 9:36 PM CT

HIV death rate has decreased

In industrialized countries, persons infected sexually with HIV now appear to experience mortality rates similar to those of the general population in the first 5 years following infection, though a higher risk of death remains as the duration of HIV infection lengthens, as per a research studyin the July 2 issue of JAMA

Many studies have reported the dramatic decreases in mortality among individuals infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) since the widespread introduction of highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) in industrialized countries. "It is important to provide up-to-date and robust estimates of expected mortality as anti-HIV drugs and strategies continue to improve. Such estimates help policy makers and those planning health care to monitor the effectiveness of therapys at a population level and provide an indicator of the ongoing and likely future impact of HIV disease on health care needs," the authors write.

Krishnan Bhaskaran, M.Sc., of the Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit, London, and his colleagues reviewed changes in the excess mortality of HIV-infected individuals compared with expected mortality in the general uninfected population, adjusting for duration of HIV infection. Mortality following HIV seroconversion (development of antibodies in blood serum as a result of infection) in a large multinational collaboration of HIV seroconverter cohorts (CASCADE) was compared with expected mortality, calculated by applying general population death rates matched on demographic factors. A model was created, adjusted for duration of infection, to assess changes over calendar time in the excess mortality among HIV-infected individuals. Data pooled in September 2007 were analyzed in March 2008, covering years at risk 1981-2006......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

July 1, 2008, 9:34 PM CT

Newborns in ICUs often undergo painful procedures

An examination of newborn intensive care finds that newborns undergo numerous procedures that are linked to pain and stress, and that a number of of these procedures are performed without medicine or treatment to relieve pain, as per a research studyin the July 2 issue of JAMA

"Repeated invasive procedures occur routinely in neonates [a baby, from birth to four weeks] who require intensive care, causing pain at a time when it is developmentally unexpected. Neonates are more sensitive to pain than older infants, children, and adults, and this hypersensitivity is exacerbated in preterm neonates. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that repeated and prolonged pain exposure alters their subsequent pain processing, long-term development, and behavior. It is essential, therefore, to prevent or treat pain in neonates," the authors write. "Effective strategies to improve pain management in neonates require a better understanding of the epidemiology and management of procedural pain."

Ricardo Carbajal, M.D., Ph.D., of the Hpital d'enfants Armand Trousseau, Paris, and his colleagues collected data on neonatal pain, based on direct bedside observations in intensive care units (ICUs) in the Paris region. The study, conducted between September 2005 and January 2006, included data on all painful and stressful procedures and corresponding analgesic (a medicine used to relieve pain) treatment from the first 14 days of admission collected within a 6-week period from 430 neonates admitted to tertiary care centers. The average gestational age was 33 weeks, and the average intensive care unit stay was 8.4 days......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

June 23, 2008, 7:05 PM CT

Fish-based fatty acids in preventing asthma

Asthma and allergic reactions have observed that a molecule produced by the body from omega-3 fatty acids helps resolve and prevent respiratory distress in laboratory mice. The research, supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, was led by a research team at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Resolvin E1 (RvE1) is a metabolic product of an omega-3 fatty acid found in cold-water fish such as salmon, mackerel and anchovies. It is made by the body in response to the onset of inflammation. This study identified RvE1 as having a key role in both dampening the development of airway inflammation and promoting its resolution in mice, in part by dampening innate immune signals that trigger inflammation. Other studies have indicated that increased levels of omega-3 fatty acids are linked to lower asthma prevalence in people, but the mechanisms to support that observation are poorly understood. This study provides researchers an opportunity to focus on the role of RvE1 as a potential therapeutic candidate......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source