June 6, 2007, 9:20 PM CT

Loss of Stem Cells Correlates with Premature Aging

Scientists at the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute of the University of Pennsylvania have observed that deleting a gene important in embryo development leads to premature aging and loss of stem cell reservoirs in adult mice. This gene, ATR, is essential for the body's response to damaged DNA, and mutations in proteins in the DNA damage response underlie certain types of cancer and other disorders in humans. This work appears in the inaugural issue of Cell Stem Cell.

"The reason these mice age prematurely is that we're exhausting their ability to renew tissues," says Eric J. Brown, PhD, Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology. "These findings may be helpful to the aging and oncology fields since premature aging syndromes and a number of cancers involve the loss of DNA repair genes".

When the scientists deleted ATR in the tissues of adult mice, they noticed that the mice showed signs of premature aging, such as hair graying, hair loss, and osteoporosis, within three to four months.

To be able to renew itself, most tissues have a reservoir of specific adult stem cells. These stem cells don't divide as frequently as other cell types since they need to maintain the integrity of their DNA, and multiple divisions lead to natural breaks in DNA. But when these stem cells are needed, their progeny can rapidly divide and are able to replenish the tissue with new cells......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

June 1, 2007, 9:35 PM CT

Agent slows aging in mice

Aspirin didnt pan out. Neither did two other potential anti-aging agents. But a synthetic derivative of a pungent desert shrub is now a front- runner in ongoing animal experiments to find out if certain chemicals, known to inhibit inflammation, cancer and other destructive processes, can boost the odds of living longer.

Today at the annual meeting of the American Aging Association, University of Michigan scientist Richard A. Miller reports early results from a mouse study his lab and two others are conducting for the National Institute on Aging. The study, now in its fourth year, will test as a number of as two dozen possible anti-aging agents in animals in the next five years. The other centers are the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, Texas, and the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.

The researchers were surprised to find so quickly that one agent showed promise: NDGA, a compound derived from creosote bushes. These common North American desert shrubs have been traditionally used by Native Americans as healing remedies.

The preliminary results, would be published in August in the journal Aging Cell, show that male mice fed a normal diet and NDGA so far have survived in significantly greater numbers than mice on a normal diet. Researchers measured the difference at a point called median lifespan, when half the control mice had died of natural causes linked to aging......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 31, 2007, 11:52 PM CT

Cellular message movement captured on video

Researchers have captured on video the intracellular version of a postal delivery service. Reporting in the journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (BBRC), bioengineering scientists at UC San Diego published videos of a key message-carrying protein called paxillin moving abruptly from hubs of communication and transportation activity on the cell surface toward the nucleus. Paxillin was labeled with a red fluorescence marker to make it stand out in live cells.

Its amazing to us. We thought the cell was so simple, said Shu Chien, the senior author of the BBRC paper and a professor of bioengineering at UCSDs Jacobs School of Engineering. But its really very complex and Im not sure were covering much as yet. We certainly dont know all the interactions among these molecules that bring the cell into action.

Examining living cells through a microscope, Chien and the papers co-author, associate project scientist Ying-Li Hu, filmed red-fluorescence-tagged paxillin molecules traveling from cells outer membrane along green-fluorescence-labeled traces of cytoskeleton. Even without video evidence, researchers have confirmed over the past 10 years that higher organisms use paxillin as a transmitter of locomotion and gene-expression signals from several classes of growth-factor receptors to the nucleus......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 31, 2007, 11:50 PM CT

World first medical treatment for pulmonary haemosiderosis

Scientists at Queen Mary University London and the University of Leicester and have today (Friday June 1) announced a potential breakthrough in the therapy of a rare but devastating medical condition that can affect children and young people.

In a world first, the clinicians and researchers from the two universities have already treated one patient with promising results. Their preliminary data are published as a letter in the New England Journal (NEJM).

This is the first time research into a condition known as idiopathic pulmonary haemosiderosis has investigated the role of oxidative stress and it is also the first time therapy has been carried out based on the research.

Queen Mary University London and the University of Leicester have combined world-class expertise in Child Health, Pulmonary Disease and Oxidative Stress research, plus access to patients with this rare disease. This combination of factors is unique to this collaboration.

Jonathan Grigg, Professor of Paediatric Respiratory and Environmental Medicine at Queen Mary University London, said: Idiopathic pulmonary haemosiderosis is a rare disease, the cause of which is unknown.

Affected patients have episodes of bleeding in the lungs, which often need hospital admissions, and in some cases it can be life threatening. This is normally combated by the use of continuous oral steroids (which can have major side effects)......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 25, 2007, 7:27 PM CT

Binge drinking leads to neurocognitive deficits

Scientists know that alcoholics tend to have poorer neurocognitive functioning, including decision making, than non-alcoholics do. Less is known, however, about alcohols effects on decision-making capabilities among people who drink heavily but are not considered alcoholics. A new study has observed that binge drinking can lead to poor decision making among college students, independent of impulsivity.

Results are reported in the recent issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research

"Alcoholics tend to exhibit poorer decision making such as preferring short-term rewards, when these are coupled to long-term losses, instead of choosing options which go together with long-term rewards," said Anna E. Goudriaan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam and corresponding author for the study.

These choices tend to reflect more serious problems with executive functioning, added Jenny Larkins, a graduate student in clinical psychology at the University of Missouri. "Executive functioning involves skills such as planning for the future, abstract reasoning, inhibiting or delaying responses, initiating behavior, doing two things at once, and shifting between two activities in a flexible way," she said.

"There are not a lot of studies that focus on the effects of heavy alcohol use in people who are not addicted to alcohol," said Goudriaan. "However, it seemed logical that heavy alcohol would impact their decision making, and we targeted young adults since they tend to drink the most, and binge drink the most. We specifically targeted binge drinking, since some animal studies suggest that it is deleterious for brain functioning"......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 25, 2007, 7:23 PM CT

How plague-causing bacteria disarm host defense

Effector proteins are the bad guys that help bacterial pathogens do their job of infecting the host by crippling the body's immune system. In essence, they knock down the front door of resistance and disarm the cell's alarm system.

Now, scientists at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have identified a novel molecular target for an effector protein called YpkA, one of several effectors of the bacteria Yersinia the pathogen responsible for the Middle Ages' "Black Death" and a virulent form of food poisoning today. Their study will be published online in the May 25 issue of Molecular Cell.

YpkA targets a host protein called Gaq, the messenger that transmits extracellular signals ("we are under attack!") into the host cell, so that it can mount a defense.

"The alarm signal sent by Gaq is intercepted by YpkA, which sets up a roadblock along several cellular pathways that Gq uses to deliver the alarm," said lead author Lorena Navarro, Ph.D., post-doctoral researcher in the lab of the study's principle investigator, Jack E. Dixon, Ph.D., professor of Pharmacology and Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the UCSD School of Medicine.

Identifying this new target is the first step to developing effective strategies for preventing disease, including means to fight antibiotic-resistant strains of Yersinia that could be used in biological warfare, as per Navarro......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 25, 2007, 7:16 PM CT

Drinking 4 or more cups of coffee a day may help prevent gout

Coffee is a habit for more than 50 percent of Americans, who drink, on average, 2 cups per day. This widely consumed beverage is regularly investigated and debated for its impact on health conditions from breast cancer to heart disease. Among its complex effects on the body, coffee or its components have been associated with lower insulin and uric acid levels on a short-term basis or cross-sectionally. These and other mechanisms suggest that coffee consumption may affect the risk of gout, the most prevalent inflammatory arthritis in adult males.

To examine how coffee consumption might aggravate or protect against this common and excruciatingly painful condition, scientists at the Arthritis Research Centre of Canada, University of British Columbia in Canada, Brigham and Womens Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard School of Public Health in Boston conducted a prospective study on 45,869 men over age 40 with no history of gout at baseline. Over 12 years of follow-up, Hyon K. Choi, MD, DrPH, and his associates reviewed the relationship between the intake of coffee and the occurence rate of gout in this high risk population. Their findings, featured in the June 2007 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/arthritis), provide compelling evidence that drinking 4 or more cups of coffee a day dramatically reduces the risk of gout for men......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

Fri, 25 May 2007 03:17:42 GMT

Gay men likelier to gamble addictively, study suggests

Gay and bisexual men may be unusually prone to compulsive gambling, a small study has found, adding to growing evidence linking homosexuality to various impulse-control disorders and other mental illnesses.

The findings require confirmation by future studies, researchers say, but for now they underscore concerns that gay people might require special attention and treatments for a range of mental disorders. The results could also fuel a debate over whether these conditions stem from homosexuality itself, or rather from the stress created by anti-gay discrimination.

"Gay and bisexual male pathologic gamblers may require more intensive or specialized treatment" than other ones, wrote the authors of the study, which appeared in the November-December issue of the research journal Comprehensive Psychiatry.

These therapies may also "need to address a wide range of impulsive behaviors," added the researchers, Jon Grant of the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, Minn., and Marc Potenza of Yale University Medical School in New Haven, Conn.

Compulsive or pathological gambling is habitual, excessive gambling with severe personal, social or legal consequences. A brain disease, it seems similar to disorders such as alcoholism and drug addiction, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

These illnesses tend to involve problems with a brain region associated with behaviors such as eating and sex, sometimes called the "pleasure center," and strongly reliant on a chemical messenger called dopamine. Pathological gamblers, who are predominantly men, often say they're looking for "action" or excitement.

Grant and Potenza studied 105 men who had sought treatment for pathological gambling and had responded to ads or referrals to participate in the research. Twenty-two of these men-21 percent-identified themselves as gay or bisexual, they found. That's four to seven higher than most middling estimates of the percentage of gays populationwide.

The gays and bisexuals also tended to be more severely addicted, the researchers found; these patients were also likelier to suffer additional impulse-control or substance-abuse conditions, and to be single.

Limitations of the study, the scientists said, are the small size and its inclusion of only treatment-seeking men, who might be unrepresentative of the wider population.

The findings are part of a growing trend, though.

There's a "growing concern that homosexually active individuals are at increased risk for psychiatric morbidity," or illness, wrote researchers in the June 2001 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. "Several surveys have found elevated rates of some anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and substance use disorders among homosexuals."

The reasons are unclear, wrote the authors, with Harvard Medical School in Boston and other institutions. One possibility, they added, is that gays and lesbians are more frequent victims of early-life abuse.

A second, they continued, is that "lesbians and gay men simply lead riskier lives."

Yet another explanation, for which they cited considerably more evidence, was that "stigmatization and exposure to discriminatory behavior lead to higher rates of mental disorders. This hypothesis is consistent with the finding that lesbians and gay men experience discrimination in multiple domains of life" and that such discrimination is tied to psychologic distress. Other disadvantaged groups also face higher-than-average risk for psychological problems, they wrote.

The latter two explanations in particular are linked to deeply, even bitterly opposed world views. The idea that unhealthy risk-taking is inherent in homosexuality tends to satisfy opponents of gay rights, who tend to view same-sex orientation as abnormal. The notion that psychiatric disorders flow from stigmatization is more pleasing to gay-rights supporters, who view discrimination, not homosexuality, as the problem.

The question of what explains the statistics on gays and impulse-control disorders is "the big one," wrote Grant in an email. "I don't think there's either an easy answer or, based on our limited scientific knowledge currently, an answer that doesn't have some sort of sociopolitical overtones. I think of this research as a very small piece of the bigger puzzle." Posted by: JoslynV      Read more     Source

Thu, 24 May 2007 05:05:00 GMT

Supporting the nurses

Affable Iain Dale who, with the exception of his appalling taste in ties, can do little wrong in the world of blogging, is supporting Noreena Hertz who has spent the last 2-3 months touring football clubs trying to get as many players as possible to give a day's pay to the May Day for Nurses campaign.

I hate it.

Not the kindness and generosity behind the scheme, but the need for the scheme to exist at all.
There is a nursing shortage looming: over 100,000 nurses will retire within the next 10 years, yet the government is cutting the numbers of new recruits. This despite the fact that our population is ageing and we will need more, not less, nurses in the future. By 2011 we will already be 14,000 nurses short. This will risk patients' lives. Wards with the lowest nurse-to-patient ratios see one in four more deaths than wards with the highest ratios.

Student nurses have a very raw deal. They are on average 29 years old (forget your image of a 20 year-old Bacardi drinking nightclub-going girl) and over half have either children or long-term sick or disabled relatives that they care for in addition to studying. A quarter are having to quit their studies, mainly because of financial pressure.

Nurses are seriously undervalued. It is absurd that in Birmingham some of the men who paint white lines in the middle of the road earn two and a half times more than some nurses. Even compared to other professional public sector workers, nurses fare the worst. A mid-career nurse will earn over a third less than a secondary school teacher at the same stage in his or her career.

Over a quarter of nurses are forced to take two or more additional jobs just to be able to continue nursing. We should not continue to exploit the kindness of nurses by forcing them to work several jobs just so that they can look after us when we are at our lowest ebb. (Mayday for Nurses) Why do we not just pay them properly?

Madness. Utter madness. What are we doing? Posted by: Dr John Crippen      Read more     Source

Thu, 24 May 2007 04:53:46 GMT

The AIDS Pandemic in Africa

Amidst the famine, water shortages, and other huge socio-economical problems in Africa, there is yet another monster rampaging through the continent. Countless thousands have died. Thousands of whole human beings, living people, with hearts, dreams, families and friends. The death rate is one of such epic scale that I don't even think the abortion rate can compare.

Children are being orphaned. HIV positive people are being excommunicated, beaten, or worse. AIDS is running rampant through Africa and causing a major sociological divide amongst their own people, but it is all too easy for the rest of the world to ignore it.

When I talk to people at home about the pandemic, I get the sense that they feel a dying African is somehow different from a dying Canadian, American or German - that Africans have lower expectations or place less value on their lives. - source: NPR article on a book

There are 28 million living people with AIDS or HIV in Africa. Living. 28 million. How many will die in the next week, month, or year? How many have already died? How many brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters? How many friends, co-workers, teachers, fire fighters, nurses, inventors and great philosphers have been lost to this disease?

The disease itself is only part of the problem - the fact that it kills and is so easily spread has created the other problem. No matter the stage of the disease, if you have it, you are effectively already dead - to the community, at least.

Grandmothers are restricted from seeing their grandchildren. Children can't go to school, no matter how much they want to. Nurses and other professionals flat out lose their job. And beating or even killing people living with the disease is somehow socially acceptable to those without the disease.

What can you do about it?

First, educate yourself on what's going on. Stephanie Nolan'NPR article would be a good place to start.
I can't tell every story. I decided to tell twenty-eight - one for each million people infected in Africa. Their stories explain how the disease works, how it spreads and how it kills. They explain how AIDS is horribly, inextricably tied to conflict and to famine and to the collapse of states. They explain how treatment works, when people can get it and how the people who can't get it fight to stay alive with virtually no help and no support. Posted by: Miche      Read more     Source