January 18, 2010, 8:10 AM CT

Newly identified genes influence insulin and glucose regulation

An international research consortium has found 13 new genetic variants that influence blood glucose regulation, insulin resistance, and the function of insulin-secreting beta cells in populations of European descent. Five of the newly discovered variants increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, the most common form of diabetes.

The results of two studies, conducted by the Meta-Analyses of Glucose and Insulin Related Traits Consortium (MAGIC), provide important clues about the role of beta cells in the development of type 2 diabetes. The studies, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, appear online Jan. 17, 2010, in Nature Genetics

"The findings from these ambitious, large-scale studies represent an enormous achievement in international cooperation involving hundreds of scientists and a number of thousands of individuals who contributed genetic samples for the study. The results give us exciting new directions for future research in the biology of type 2 diabetes, which poses a major and growing public health problem worldwide," said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., an author of both papers.

In one paper, the MAGIC researchers set out to find genes that influence metabolic traits, including fasting glucose and insulin levels and measures of beta cell function and insulin resistance. About 2.5 million genetic variants were analyzed in 21 genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that had enrolled 46,186 individuals who did not have diabetes and had been tested for measures of glucose and insulin regulation. GWAS look for common genetic associations by scanning the DNA of thousands of individuals. The huge numbers of genetic samples boosts the chances of finding subtle associations of genetic variants with specific diseases or traits. The most common variation is a change in a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), or single base pair change, in one of the building blocks of DNA......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

January 15, 2010, 7:44 AM CT

Calcium And Vitamin D In Preventing Fractures

Taking both calcium and vitamin D supplements on a daily basis reduces the risk of bone fractures, regardless of whether a person is young or old, male or female, or has had fractures in the past, a large study of nearly 70,000 patients from throughout the United States and Europe has found.

The study included data published in 2006 from clinical trials conducted at UC Davis in Sacramento as part of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI). It appears online in this week's edition of the British Medical Journal.

"What is important about this very large study is that goes a long way toward resolving conflicting evidence about the role of vitamin D, either alone or in combination with calcium, in reducing fractures," said John Robbins, professor of internal medicine at UC Davis and a co-author of the journal article. "Our WHI research in Sacramento included more than 1,000 healthy, postmenopausal women and concluded that taking calcium and vitamin D together helped them preserve bone health and prevent fractures. This latest analysis, because it incorporates so a number of more people, really confirms our earlier conclusions".

Led by scientists at Copenhagen University in Denmark, Robbins and an international team of colleagues analyzed the results of seven large clinical trials from around the world to assess the effectiveness of vitamin D alone or with calcium in reducing fractures among people averaging 70 years or older. The scientists could not identify any significant effects for people who only take vitamin D supplements......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

January 14, 2010, 8:21 AM CT

Toward a less expensive version Tamiflu

Researchers have developed an alternative method for producing the active ingredient in Tamiflu, the mainstay for fighting H1N1 and other forms of influenza. The new process could expand availability of the drug by reducing its cost, which now retails for as about $8 per dose. Their study is in ACS' Organic Letters, a bi-weekly journal.

Anqi Chen, Christina Chai and his colleagues note that the global pandemic of H1N1 has resulted in millions of infected cases worldwide and nearly 10,000 deaths to date. Tamiflu, also known as oseltamivir phosphate, remains the most widely used antiviral drug for the prevention and therapy of H1N1 infections as well as bird flu and seasonal influenzas. But growing demand for the drug has put pressure on the supply of shikimic acid, the raw material now used in making the drug. "As a result, chemists worldwide including ourselves have explored the possibility of using other alternative raw materials for the synthesis of the drug" said Chen and Chai, who led the research.

The researchers describe a new process for making the drug that does not use shikimic acid. They observed that D-ribose, a naturally-occurring sugar produced by fermentation in large scales, potentially provides an inexpensive and abundant source of starting material for making the drug. D-ribose costs only about one-sixth as much as shikimic acid. In lab studies, the researchers demonstrated the potential use of D-ribose as an alternative source for the synthesis of Tamiflu......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

January 14, 2010, 8:15 AM CT

African-Americans bear disproportionate burden of smoking costs

African Americans comprise six percent of the California adult population, yet they account for over eight percent of the state's smoking-attributable health care expenditures and 13 percent of smoking-attributable mortality costs, as per a new analysis by UCSF researchers.

In order to provide an objective picture of the disproportionate economic burden of tobacco use for African American Californians, the UCSF team assessed data from 2002, including health care costs correlation to smoking and productivity losses from smoking-caused mortality. Study findings appear in the January 2010 issue of the "American Journal of Public Health".

"California has one of the most comprehensive tobacco control programs in the world, and smoking prevalence in the state has been declining steadily as a result. However, not all Californians have benefited equally from these efforts," said main author Wendy Max, PhD, professor-in-residence of health economics and co-director of the UCSF Institute for Health & Aging, School of Nursing. "Hopefully these data can be used to strengthen tobacco control programs and smoking cessation efforts throughout African American communities".

Scientists analyzed smoking-attributable costs for diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease, for which incidence is identified in the 2004 US Surgeon General Report as causally correlation to cigarette smoking. They focused on expenditures for ambulatory care, prescription drugs, inpatient care, and home health care. The team also assessed smoking-attributable mortality for Californians aged 35 years and older using three measures: deaths, years of potential life lost, and productivity losses......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

January 12, 2010, 8:50 AM CT

Insight into curbing health-care costs

Analyzing physicians' practice patterns may hold valuable clues about how to curb the nation's rising health care costs, as per a research studyby scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

As per a Johns Hopkins study reported in the January edition of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the practice patterns of physicians participating in a workers' compensation system had a profound impact on the ultimate cost of claims.

After analyzing five years of claim data from the Louisiana Workers' Compensation Corp., or LWCC, from 1998 to 2002, the scientists observed that a small group of physicians, only 3.7 percent, accounted for more than 72 percent of the workers' compensation costs. These were termed cost-intensive providers, or CIPs.

"Across the board, we've observed that most physicians practice prudently," says Edward J. Bernacki, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's Division of Occupational Medicine and principal investigator of the study. "But there are physicians who engage in cost-intensive practices. As we continue to debate the nation's health care system, it makes sense to analyze how practice patterns drive costs before instituting sweeping reform".

In 2003, Hopkins scientists began working with the LWCC a private, nonprofit, mutual insurance company to provide quality and cost control......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

January 11, 2010, 8:02 AM CT

Finding toxins in drinking water

A strip of paper infused with carbon nanotubes can quickly and inexpensively detect a toxin produced by algae in drinking water.

Engineers at the University of Michigan led the development of the new biosensor.

The paper strips perform 28 times faster than the complicated method most usually used today to detect microcystin-LR, a chemical compound produced by cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae. Cyanobacteria is usually found on nutrient-rich waters.

Microcystin-LR (MC-LR), even in very small quantities, is suspected to cause liver damage and possibly liver cancer. The substance and others like it are among the leading causes of biological water pollution. It is thought to bea culprit of mass poisonings going back to early human history, said Nicholas Kotov, a professor in the departments of Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering who led the project.

Water therapy plants-even in developed countries-can't always remove MC-LR completely, nor can they test for it often enough, Kotov said. The biosensor he and colleagues developed provides a quick, cheap, portable and sensitive test that could allow water therapy plants and individuals to verify the safety of water on a more regular basis.

"The safety of drinking water is a vital issue in a number of developing countries and in a number of parts of the United States," Kotov said. "We've developed a simple and inexpensive technology to detect multiple toxins"......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

January 6, 2010, 4:20 PM CT

Silencing brain cells with yellow and blue light

Neuroresearchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a powerful new class of tools to reversibly shut down brain activity using different colors of light. When targeted to specific neurons, they could potentially lead to new therapys for abnormal brain activity linked to disorders including chronic pain, epilepsy, brain injury and Parkinson's disease.

Such disorders could best be treated by silencing, rather than stimulating abnormal brain activity. These new tools, or 'super silencers,' exert exquisite control over the timing in which overactive neural circuits are shut down --an effect that is not possible with existing drugs or other conventional therapies.

The National Science Foundation's division of mathematical sciences supports the research through a grant to the Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative, which is comprised of four research groups in the Boston area focused on questions in neuroscience. The collaborative brings together scientists with expertise ranging from experimental design to mathematical modeling. The research paper, "High-Performance Genetically-Targetable Optical Neural Silencing by Light-Driven Proton Pumps," appears in the Jan. 7 issue of the journal Nature

"Silencing different sets of neurons with different colors of light allows us to understand how they work together to implement brain functions," explains Ed Boyden, senior author of the study. "Using these new tools, we can look at two neural pathways and study how they compute together," he says......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

January 6, 2010, 8:13 AM CT

How circumcision decreases risk of HIV

Circumcision, which substantially lowers HIV risk in men, also dramatically changes the bacterial communities of the penis, as per a research studyled by researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and Johns Hopkins University and published Jan. 6 in the scientific journal PLoS ONE

And these bacterial changes may also be linked to earlier observations that women whose male partners are circumcised are less likely to develop bacterial vaginosis, an imbalance between good and harmful bacteria.

The study The Effects of Circumcision on the Penis Microbiome could lead to new non-surgical HIV preventative strategies for the estimated 70 percent of men worldwide (more than 2 billion) who, because of religious or cultural beliefs, or logistic or financial barriers, are not likely to become circumcised.

"It has important public-health ramifications," said Dr. Lance B. Price, Director of TGen's Center for Metagenomics and Human Health and co-main author of the scientific paper, which describes the world's first molecular evaluation of the bacterial diversity of the male reproductive organ.

This newly released study is part of a larger effort by the U.S. National Institutes of Health to study and describe the "human microbiome" the microbes that exist collectively on and in the human body. Other projects are focused on microbiomes involving the skin, nose, mouth, digestive and female genitourinary tract. Jointly, the goal of these projects is to define the various roles of microbes in human health and disease......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

January 5, 2010, 8:59 AM CT

A silly pat on the head

Doing something unusual, like knocking on wood or patting yourself on the head, while taking a daily dose of medicine appears to be an effective strategy to help seniors remember whether they've already taken their daily medications, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

We've all heard warnings that some medications appears to be habit-forming, but research also shows that "getting into the habit" of taking a daily medicine in a routine and precise fashion can be a befuddling challenge for some elderly adults, a number of of whom tend to err on the side of over-medication, taking a dangerous second dose when in doubt about the first.

"In extended medication-taking situations, the habitual nature of the task may make it difficult for elderly adults to remember whether or not they took the medicine on a particular day, particularly if pill boxes are not used," explains Mark McDaniel, Ph.D., main author of the study and a professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.

"To remedy this potential problem, elderly adults could be instructed to take their medicine while placing one hand on their head or in some other unusual or silly way, like crossing their arms," he suggests. "Our results indicate that elderly adults can use these sorts of more complex motor tasks to effectively reduce repetition errors in habitual prospective memory tasks, such as taking a daily medication."........ Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

January 5, 2010, 8:55 AM CT

Kitchen spoon measurements can be dangerous

A newly released study reported in the Jan. 5 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine illustrates the dangers of using kitchen spoons to measure liquid medicine.

Former cold and flu sufferers were asked to pour one teaspoon of nighttime flu medicine into kitchen spoons of differing sizes. Depending upon the size of the spoon, the 195 former patients poured an average of eight percent too little or 12 percent too much medicine.

"When pouring into a medium-size tablespoon, participants under-dosed. But when using a larger spoon, they poured too much medicine," said Dr. Brian Wansink, Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, who led the study.

"Twelve percent more may not sound like a lot, but this goes on every four to eight hours, for up to four days," Wansink explained. "So it really adds upto the point of ineffectiveness or even danger".

Visual illusions and spatial relationships are familiar topics in Wansink's work in food and eating behavior. In his book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, he shows how smaller plates can unknowingly decrease how much people eat, and how taller glasses can decrease the amount of alcohol poured by even expert bartenders.

"Simply put, we cannot always trust our ability to estimate amounts," said the study's co-author, Dr. Koert van Ittersum, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Georgia Tech. "In some cases it may not be important, but when it comes to the health of you or your child, it is vital to make an accurate measurement."........ Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source