October 26, 2006, 5:19 AM CT

Moderate Drinking May Boost Memory

In the long run, a drink or two a day may be good for the brain.

Scientists observed that moderate amounts of alcohol - amounts equivalent to a couple of drinks a day for a human - improved the memories of laboratory rats.

Such a finding may have implications for serious neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, said Matthew During, the study's senior author and a professor of molecular virology, immunology and cancer genetics at Ohio State University.

"There is some evidence suggesting that mild to moderate alcohol consumption can protect against diseases like Alzheimer's in humans," said During. "But it's not apparent how this happens".

He and his colleague, Margaret Kalev-Zylinska, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, uncovered a neuronal mechanism that may help explain the link between alcohol and improved memory.

"We saw a noticeable change on the surface of certain neurons in rats that were given alcohol," During said. "This change may have something to do with the positive effects of alcohol on memory".

The scientists presented their findings at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in Atlanta.

During and Kalev-Zylinska designed a special liquid diet for the rats. One formulation included a low dose of alcohol, comparable to two or three drinks a day for a human, while the other diet included a much higher dose of alcohol, comparable to six or seven drinks a day for a human. A third group of rats was given a liquid diet without alcohol. All animals were given their respective diets daily for about four weeks.........

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October 26, 2006, 5:14 AM CT

3-D monitor vision test for children

A new random-dot stereotest using a 3D display and infrared oculography has been found to objectively assess stereopsis in children older than three years according to an article published in the November 2006 issue of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (IOVS).

The study involved 56 children, 38 with various visual impairments and 18 with normal vision. Study participants were seated on their mother's lap or alone with their heads stabilized by a chin and front rest. Unlike a number of other tests, this new 3D monitor stereotest does not require disassociating glasses that children often find cumbersome. The random dot stimulus was presented on an autostereoscopic display which allows viewing of full-color 3D images. The stimulus recognition was objectively assessed using infrared photo-oculography. The overall accuracy of the test was found to be 95 percent.

If applicable to preverbal children, the new test may permit study of the development of stereovision under natural conditions since no glasses are necessary to see the stimuli. The new test may be useful for the objective measurement of the sensory outcome following the treatment of ophthalmic disorders in the pediatric age group. It is also a potential substitute for the Lang I and II Test and the Radom-dot E Test, which require verbal capabilities from the subject tested.........

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October 26, 2006, 5:08 AM CT

Insight Into Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

New research into Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is leading to a better understanding of its underlying neurobiology, risk factors and long-term implications. The findings are published in a recent issue of Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences and were revealed at a conference jointly sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Researchers are studying a number of previously unexplored topics, including an examination of trauma within hours of the event, the thought processes that keep sufferers focused on the trauma and possibilities for prevention and therapy. New and promising research is engaged with mapping the neural circuitry involved in response to danger and with investigations of the complex genetics of individual risk.

Although the NIMH was created 60 years ago partly in response to an increased awareness of the psychological consequences of war, little PTSD research had been done before the Vietnam War. Since that time, PTSD has been found in veterans dating back to World War II. Although PTSD appears at a high rate among veterans, the condition is also seen in the civilian population: the events of 9/11 have increased the urgency of finding answers.

A study of the general population found that PTSD affects 5% of men and 10% of women. Studies also show a greater likelihood of PTSD development in the children of trauma survivors, including data on babies born to women who were pregnant and escaped from the World Trade Center on September 11 suggesting in utero and other developmental effects.........

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October 26, 2006, 4:43 AM CT

Exercise Protects From Colds

A moderate exercise program may reduce the occurence rate of colds. A study reported in the recent issue of The American Journal of Medicine, led by scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, observed that otherwise sedentary women who engaged in moderate exercise had fewer colds over a one year period than a control group.

Subjects in a group of 115 overweight and obese, sedentary, postmenopausal women were randomly assigned to either a moderate exercise program (45 minutes per day, five days per week and comprised of mostly brisk walking) or to a once-weekly 45 minute stretching session. Both the exercisers and the stretchers filled out questionnaires every 3 months on the number of episodes of allergies, upper respiratory tract infections (colds and flu) and other infections. Subjects were taught how to distinguish various forms of infections and were followed for one year.

Over 12 months, the risk of colds decreased modestly in exercisers and increased modestly in stretchers. In the final three months of the study, the risk of colds in stretchers was more than 3-fold higher than that of exercisers. More stretchers than exercisers had at least one cold during the 12-month study period (48.4% vs 30.2%), and among women reporting at least one cold, stretchers tended to report colds more frequently than exercisers.........

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October 24, 2006, 5:55 PM CT

Predicting Risk for Recurrent Stroke

People who have just suffered their first ischemic stroke, a blood clot in the brain, often have elevated inflammatory biomarkers in their blood that indicate their likelihood of having another stroke or an increased risk of dying, as per Columbia University Medical Center scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

Reported in the Oct. 23 Archives of Internal Medicine, results of the new study indicate that these inflammatory markers are linked to long-term prognosis after a first stroke, and may help guide clinical care for people who have suffered a first stroke.

A biomarker called lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2), which has been FDA-approved to predict the risk of first stroke, was found to be a strong predictor of recurrent stroke risk. Scientists also observed that elevated levels of another biomarker called high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), a test usually used to predict risk of heart disease, was linked to more severe strokes and an increased risk of mortality.

"A better understanding of biomarkers for stroke risk may lead to the use of prophylactic therapys to reduce risk of people suffering debilitating strokes," said lead author Mitchell S. V. Elkind, M.D., M.S., associate professor of Neurology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and neurologist at NewYork-Presbyterian. "For example, statins appear to lower these biomarker levels, so our next step may be to study the clinical benefit of prescribing statins to reduce the risk of stroke in people with elevated biomarkers, and also to treat people who have suffered a stroke so that they do not have another serious event".........

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October 22, 2006, 10:59 PM CT

Excalia Combination Therapy To Treat Obesity

OREXIGEN^TM Therapeutics, Inc., a privately held clinical-stage neuroscience company developing novel strategic approaches to the treatment of obesity, today announced that Excalia^TM, a combination of two centrally-acting medications intended to provide and sustain clinically important weight loss, demonstrated significant weight loss in a six month, double-blind, phase IIa clinical study. The magnitude of weight reduction exceeded that seen with placebo. The findings showed that patients completing the blinded 24-week phase lost on average 9.2% of their weight from baseline using Excalia compared to an average of 0.4% weight loss from baseline for patients using placebo. The study results further demonstrate that weight loss continued through an additional 24 week open-label period achieving an average weight loss of 12% from baseline by 48 weeks. These top line phase IIa data for Excalia were presented at the annual meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NAASO) in Boston.

"Excalia is designed to achieve an aggressive weight loss trajectory and then to delay the typical weight loss 'plateau' by offsetting one of the body's natural compensatory pathways. These phase II data suggest a level of efficacy that exceeded our expectations in relation to existing approaches," said Gary Tollefson, M.D., Ph.D., OREXIGEN president and CEO. "Excalia is designed to act on a specific reciprocally paired group of hypothalamic neurons that we believe will yield a clinically meaningful weight loss trajectory among significantly overweight individuals. We believe that these positive data support our theoretical approach".........

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October 22, 2006, 8:13 PM CT

Heart Surgery For Atrial Fibrillation Simplified

Heart surgeons at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have helped usher in a new era in the surgical therapy of atrial fibrillation. Using radiofrequency devices - rather than a scalpel - they've greatly shortened the surgery and made it significantly easier to perform.

"Because of the devices, the procedure - called the Cox-Maze procedure - has gone from an operation that hardly anyone was doing to one that 80 to 90 percent of U.S. heart surgeons are now performing," says Ralph J. Damiano Jr., M.D., the John Shoenberg Professor of Surgery and chief of cardiac surgery at the School of Medicine and a cardiac surgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Adults older than 40 have a 25 percent risk of eventually developing atrial fibrillation in which the upper chambers of the heart twitch rapidly instead of contracting fully and regularly. The condition can lead to stroke or heart failure.

For some patients, medications can control the abnormal heart rhythms and the risk of clotting linked to atrial fibrillation, but they do not cure the disorder. The Cox-Maze procedure has a greater than 90 percent cure rate.

Damiano and colleagues have played a vital role in the development and testing of radiofrequency devices for treating atrial fibrillation. The devices deliver high-energy radiofrequency waves to heart tissue and very quickly create scars or ablations, which replace most of the complex incisions mandatory by the Cox-Maze procedure. The ablations disrupt the atria's abnormal electrical activity and normalize heart rhythm.........

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October 19, 2006, 9:41 PM CT

Reducing Knee Pain And Reliance On Painkillers

Older people with knee pain who receive their main care from physiotherapists and pharmacists are more likely to experience improvements in pain levels and knee function, and are less likely to need NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, eg asprin and ibuprofen), according to a BMJ study.

Researchers from Keele University undertook a study involving over 300 people with knee pain. The participants (aged over 55), were split into three groups.

The first group took part in an 'enhanced pharmacy review' with up to 6 appointments with an experienced community pharmacist to monitor the appropriateness and effectiveness of medication. A second group received up to 6 sessions with a physiotherapist, which included general aerobic exercise and specific muscle strengthening and stretching exercises. A final 'control' group received an information and advice leaflet which was also issued to the other two groups plus a telephone call to reinforce the information in the leaflet and address any specific concerns about putting the advice into practice.

When compared with the control group, those in the physiotherapy group reported a significant improvement in pain levels and in knee function after three months of treatment. Participants in the pharmacy group also reported improvements in pain levels.........

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October 19, 2006, 9:30 PM CT

How Pathogens Spread In Human Body

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have discovered a new, more accurate, method of mapping how bacteria spread within the body, a breakthrough that could lead to more effective therapys and prevention of certain bacterial infections.

Dr. Pietro Mastroeni, Professor Duncan Maskell at the Centre for Veterinary Science, and their teams have pioneered the integration of mathematical models with observational data to predict the spread of individual bacteria within the human body. Their findings are reported in the recent issue of PLoS Biology.

The work analyses the spread and distribution of Salmonella in the body, which is a bacterium that causes typhoid fever and food borne gastroenteritis in humans and animals, with severe medical and veterinary consequences and threats for the food industry. The work is of broad significance as these novel research approaches are applicable to a multitude of pathogenic microorganisms.

These studies indicate that individual bacteria and their progenies cleverly escape from host cells and distribute to new sites of the body, continuously staying one step ahead of the immune response. The type of spread varies between different bacteria, thus posing challenges for the rational therapy or prevention of these infections.........

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October 19, 2006, 8:59 PM CT

Affymetrix 500K Array And Memory Gene

Affymetrix Inc. announced recently that researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, Arizona have used the Affymetrix 500K Array to discover a gene--called Kibra--associated with memory performance in humans. The team's findings may be used to develop new medicines for memory-based diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's by providing scientists with a better understanding of how memory works at the molecular level.

The study entitled, "Common KIBRA alleles are associated with human memory performance," would be published in the Oct. 20, 2006 issue of Science. The research team was led by Dietrich Stephan, Ph.D., director of TGen's Neurogenomics Division. It included colleagues at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, Banner Alzheimer's Institute and Mayo Clinic Scottsdale.

"Using the latest Affymetrix 500K Array, we have shed light on the fundamental biological process of human memory performance," said Dr. Stephan. "We can use this new understanding to develop drugs that will improve memory function".

Until now, researchers did not have access to the high-density technology needed to examine the genetic components associated with memory performance. The team at TGen used Affymetrix Human Mapping 500K Arrays to analyze 500,000 DNA markers simultaneously, providing a genetic blueprint for the memory-study participants. The researchers discovered the Kibra gene by comparing the genetic blueprints of people with good memory vs. poor memory and looking for the genetic variations consistently present in one group, but not the other. They then validated their discovery by replicating the Kibra gene finding in two separate and distinct groups of subjects.........

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