Health and Medicine – Page 39

Possible childhood depression asthma link

According to a report published today in the International Journal of Obesity, childhood depression is linked to adult onset of asthma and obesity. Gregor Hasler and colleagues analysed data on 4,547 subjects at six times over a 25 year period from 1978. The study reveals for the first time an additional link to depression alongside the other conditions.

The authors investigated how many of the people suffered from childhood depression and compared this with those who later became obese or developed asthma. Using data from a prospective community study collected over a 20-year period they were able to explore the role played by symptoms of depression in associations between asthma and body weight. The study concludes that depressive symptoms during childhood are associated with adult obesity and asthma. The research should not only help improve our understanding of the pathology of obesity and asthma but hints that the neurobiology of depression is different at the time of childhood and adolescence when compared to adulthood.

As ever with this kind of research, the team covers its collective back with a caveat arguing that “further research into the mechanisms and psychosocial factors is required.” That also means they’ve got something to include in their next grant application, of course.

Bird Flu Symptoms

As Britain braces itself for the arrival of avian influenza from Continental Europe, I thought it would be timely to remind Sciencebase readers of a bird flu FAQ I wrote towards the end of last year to try and separate the facts from the fiction regarding H5N1 and the threat of a global bird flu pandemic.

UPDATE: From Google.org – Each week, millions of users around the world search for online health information. As you might expect, there are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer. You can explore all of these phenomena using Google Trends. But can search query trends provide an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena?

By tracking search trends related to flu, Google now reckons it can predict the spread of the disease.

Venture Capitalizing on Avian Flu Risk

According to the latest issue of FierceBiotech, just received in the Sciencebase office, venture capitalists are hoping to invest in bird flu. Apparently, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (they always have such long company names don’t they?) is starting a US$200 million life sciences fund to focus on new therapies against avian influenza ahead of a putative global pandemic. FierceBiotech reports that biopharma and university groups are to be steered towards this area of research with BioCryst Pharmaceuticals of Birmingham, first up for funding to help it develop its antiviral Peramivir.

Loud Music Makes Ecstasy Worse

Ecstasy pills

People taking ecstasy at noisy nightclubs could be doing themselves more harm than those who imbibe 3,4 -methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or ecstasy) at quieter locations.

Research published on February 16, in the journal BMC Neuroscience, shows that brain activity in MDMA-taking rats due to the drug lasts up to five days if the animals are listening to loud music, says a press release from BMC, when they ingest the drug. The drug’s effects wear off within a day when no music is played.

Actually, Michelangelo Iannone from the Institute of Neurological Science, Italy, and colleagues from University Magna Graecia in Catanzaro, Italy, do not report this at all. That’s just what the press release claims. In fact, the rats were exposed to white noise, random acoustic stimulation at 95 db. The press release explains that white noise is sound at a stable frequency that is used in many types of electronic music. Well, it is, usually to simulate the rythmic, “hissy”, bursts of the hi-hat cymbals in a drumkit, but it’s not usually a continuous sound.

Anyway, Iannone’s results show that low-dose MDMA did not modify the brain activity of the rats compared with saline, as long as no music was played. However, the total spectrum of the rats given a low dose of MDMA significantly decreased once loud music was played. The spectrum of rats in the control group was not modified by loud music. High-dose MDMA induced a reduction in brain activity, compared with both saline and low-dose MDMA. This reduction was enhanced once the loud music was turned on and lasted for up to five days after administration of the drug. In rats that had been given a high dose of MDMA but had not been exposed to music, brain activity returned to normal one day after administration of the drug.

Muscle and Musculature

I wrote a report for the UK’s Royal Society some time ago that continues to get a lot of visitors. The original report covers the mechanism of muscle contraction. Oddly though, most readers don’t bother reading parts 2 and 3 of this three-part report. Now, that’s either because they simply didn’t like my writing style or were bored by the article, but I like to think it is neither of those things and that visitors to that page are looking for something else.

What could that something else be? Well, it’s either pictures of people with muscles, or methods for making your own, I’m pretty sure. With that in mind, I searched the web for a decent publication that my readers could download and found this little gem. The book is called “Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle” and as the name may suggest it provides a program of top methods to help you shape up. As a regular gym goer, former squash player, cyclist and swimmer, I thought I knew most of what anyone needs to know about how to stay in shape, but BtFFtM’s author (unlike so many others) practices what he preaches and can back up his book with an impeccable track record, and I reckon anyone can find remove for improvement whatever their fitness level.

I’m only going to leave this link in my blog for a week or so, so if you’re one of the dozens of people looking to shape up those muscles who hit my muscle science pages, then grab the ebook while it’s live.

Download – Burn the fat feed the muscle

Save her heart this Valentines

The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) is asking lovers across the Continent to send an e-card to their sweetheart to show support for women’s heart health this Valentine’s Day.

55% of women across Europe die of cardiovascular disease (CVD), it affects more women than cancer or any other ailment, yet most women are unaware that CVD poses such a big threat to their health nor realise that risk increases with age.

Visit the ESC website today and send an ecard to the woman in your life that shows you really care.

Simple changes in lifestyle – such as quitting smoking, exercising and eating more fruits and vegetables – can reduce the risk of heart disease. The ecards are in the Woman at Heart section of the website.

ADHD Black Box

According to a report from free email newsletter FierceBiotech, a federal advisory panel has told the US Food & Drug Adminstration (FDA) that it should apply its toughest warning label on drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), such as Ritalin. According to Fierce, the recommendation comes as a surprise to the FDA, which usually follows its advisory panels’ advice but is not legally required to do so. At issue are reports that these drugs may have an increased link to heart disease risk.

You can subscribe for free to FierceBiotech for daily updates of bio and pharma news, by filling in a simple form on the Sciencebase site

Taking the Bite Out of the Flu

According to a report on Alternet, homeopathy was more effective than a vaccine during the 1918 flu epidemic: (Flu). The one issue that isn’t addressed in the claim that, “Homeopathy may be more effective than flu shots” is that during the deadly flu outbreak of 1918, those patients who could have afforded to be treated with homeopathy would have been the idle rich who would like have retired to their country homes because of the Great War anyway and would not only have had a better diet, but a reduced risk of exposure.

Check out their coverage there are dozens of comments from posters pointing out dozens of other flaws in their argument.

For a relatively rational perspective on homeopathy, read my article – Homeopathy – all in the mind?

Combat Breakthrough in Cancer Fight

The first entirely new approach to DNA recognition since the year of my birth has been developed by Mike Hannon and colleagues at the University of Birmingham and Miquel Coll at the Spanish Research Council in Barcelona. The team has discovered a new route through which drug molecules can attach themselves to DNA. The researchers say this is a crucial step forward in drug discovery, the first in four decades.

The scientists have developed a synthetic agent that targets and binds to the centre of a three-way junction in DNA. Such junctions are formed where three double-helical regions join together and are particularly exciting as they have been found to be present in diseases, such as some Huntington’s disease and myotonic dystrophy, in viruses and are present during cancerous cell replication.

The Birmingham team created a nanosize synthetic drug shaped like a twisted cylinder. Together with colleagues in the UK, Spain and Norway they previously demonstrated its unprecedented effect on DNA. Now, structures revealed by the Barcelona team show that it binds to DNA in an entirely novel way – fixing itself to the centre of a 3-way junction. The resulting complex is held electrostatically. The researchers explain that the drug fits like a round peg in a round hole.

According to Hannon, “This is a significant step in drug design for DNA recognition and it is an absolutely crucial step forward for medical science researchers worldwide who are working on new drug targets for cancer and other diseases. This discovery will revolutionise the way that we think about how to design molecules to interact with DNA. It will send chemical drug research off on a new tangent. By targeting specific structures in the DNA scientists may finally start to achieve control over the way our genetic information is processed and apply that to fight disease.”

Let’s just hope that quote from Birmingham University’s press release on this research bears fruit, I’d hate to think that a discovery that’s waited my whole life to be made will be anything less than a breakthrough of unprecedented scale.

The work appears in the February 8 issue of Angewandte Chemie.

Cannabinoids and Osteoporosis

A new approach to the debilitating bone loss disease, osteoporosis, could be on the horizon thanks to research by Andreas Zimmer and Meliha Karsak from the Bonn-based Life & Brain Center in Germany and collaborators in Israel, the UK, and the USA.

The researchers have discovered a regulatory mechanism involved in bone loss linked to a chemical receptor in our bodies with a previously unknown function, which could lead to a new treatment.

Read the complete story in the latest issue of Reactive Reports, chemistry webzine.