Monday, June 29, 2009

Swine flu 'shows drug resistance'


Experts have reported the first case of swine flu that is resistant to tamiflu - the main drug being used to fight the pandemic.

Roche Holding AG confirmed a patient with H1N1 influenza in Denmark showed resistance to the antiviral drug.

David Reddy, company executive, said it was not unexpected given that common seasonal flu could do the same.

The news comes as a nine-year-old girl has become the third to die in the UK with swine flu.

Read More . . .

White House Releases Landmark Climate Change Report

The White House releases a new report representing a consensus of 13 agencies developed over a year and half, entitled Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. June 16, 2009. (Public Domain)



For more on this topic go to Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States.

New Ovarian Transplant Technique Successful

A new, two-step method of ovarian transplant has had excellent results, giving women a greater ability to conceive after cancer treatment or when older, doctors announced Monday.

The technique successfully and quickly restored ovarian function enabling two patients to become pregnant.

Scientists have performed ovarian transplants in women with cancer before, since chemotherapy often leaves them infertile. The ovaries are removed before the toxic treatment begins in order to re-implant them later.

Read More . . .

Labels: , , , ,

High levels of cycling training damage triathletes' sperm

Stress puts double whammy on reproductive system, fertility


University of California, Berkeley, researchers have found what they think is a critical and, until now, missing piece of the puzzle about how stress causes sexual dysfunction and infertility.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Scientists warn of emerging form of unregulated whaling in Asia


It’s tough being a whale these days.

The International Whaling Commission has just wrapped up its annual meeting in Portugal with a whaling ban still intact, but with fissures deepening between the save-the-whales crowd and countries such as Japan, which wants to see commercial whaling reinstated, at least on a limited basis.

It’s enough to prompt the commission’s new chairman to suggest that the 53-year-old organization may need to rethink its purpose. Cristian Maquieira, the new chairman, told the Associated Press:

“We have to re-establish a consensus on what the IWC is and should do, and there are at least two contradictory perceptions to answer that question.”

And along comes a new study suggesting that Japan’s fishing operations are taking far more minke whales a year as by-catch than the Japanese government is officially reporting. Based on DNA samples taken from commercially sold whale meat, a team from Oregon State University and the University of California at Irvine estimate that by-catch takes in 150 whales a year on average — about the same number the Japanese government officially acknowledges taking in its own scientific whaling program.

Read More . . .

Nanotechnology Combats Fatal Brain Infections

IBN’s Minute Antibacterial Particles Destroy Drug-Resistant Germs

Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), Singapore - Doctors may get a new arsenal for meningitis treatment and the war on drug-resistant bacteria and fungal infections with IBN’s novel peptide nanoparticles. The stable bioengineered nanoparticles devised at IBN effectively seek out and destroy bacteria and fungal cells that could cause fatal infections. Studies just published in the world’s leading nanoscience journal Nature Nanotechnology, that has an Impact Factor of 14.917, (DOI:10.1038/NNANO.2009.153) show IBN’s nanoparticles to be highly therapeutic.1

Using nanotechnology, the IBN team has produced an effective treatment for brain infections. Major brain infections such as meningitis and encephalitis are a leading cause of death, hearing loss, learning disability and brain damage in patients. The brain membrane is impenetrable to most conventional antibiotics because the molecular structure of most drugs is too big to enter the membrane. IBN’s peptide nanoparticles, on the other hand, contain a membrane-penetrating component that enables them to pass through the blood brain barrier to the infected areas of the brain that require treatment. The ability of IBN’s peptide nanoparticles to traverse the blood brain barrier offers a superior alternative to existing treatments for brain infections.

Read More . . .

Labels: , , ,

Real-time Control Of Wheelchair With Brain Waves

Real-time Control Of Wheelchair With Brain Waves

ScienceDaily (2009-06-29) -- Japan's BSI-TOYOTA Collaboration Center has successfully developed a system that controls a wheelchair using brain waves in as little as 125 milliseconds.

Labels: , ,

Mayo Clinic Proceedings Reviews Deep Brain Stimulation to Treat Psychiatric Diseases

Monday, June 22, 2009

Schizophrenia May Be Predicted From Analysis of White Matter

Alterations in brain's white matter key to schizophrenia, UCLA study shows White matter 'integrity' may be predictive of functional outcome



Source: UCLA Newsroom

By Mark Wheeler| 6/19/2009 11:01:25 AM

Schizophrenia, a chronic and debilitating disorder marked in part by auditory hallucinations and paranoia, can strike in late adolescence or early adulthood at a time when people are ready to stand on their own two feet as fully independent adults.

Now scientists at UCLA think they are beginning to understand one important piece of this puzzle. In the first study of its kind, the researchers used a novel form of brain imaging to discover that white matter in the brains of adolescents at risk of developing schizophrenia does not develop at the same rate as healthy people. Further, the extent of these alterations can be used to predict how badly patients will or will not deteriorate functionally over time.

Reporting in the online edition of the journal Biological Psychiatry, lead author Katherine Karlsgodt, a postdoctoral fellow in UCLA's Department of Psychology, and senior authors Tyrone Cannon and Carrie Bearden, professors at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, focused on the brain's white matter — which forms the major connections between different brain regions — because it is known that white matter is disrupted in people who already have schizophrenia.

"We found that healthy subjects showed a normal and expected increase in measures indexing white matter integrity in the temporal lobe as they age," said Karlsgodt, "but young people at high-risk for psychosis showed no such increase — that is, they fail to show the normal developmental pattern."

While there is growing evidence that schizophrenics show changes in white matter, and there is increasing evidence that white matter connectivity may be highly relevant to the development of psychosis, there is very little known about how these changes arise, said Karlsgodt. Historically, looking at white matter has been hard to do. But in recent years, she said, researchers have begun to use a relatively new technique, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) that uses the movement of water molecules along white matter tracts to map out the brain's pathways. In the last few years, these techniques have been applied to research schizophrenia and other disorders.

The researchers studied a control group of 25 healthy individuals and 36 teens and young adults, aged 12 to 26, at very high risk for developing schizophrenia, and followed them over a two-year period. The adolescents were identified as high risk due to genetic factors (i.e., being close relatives of someone with schizophrenia), or because they showed very early clinical symptoms of the disease. All of the subjects underwent a DTI scan at the start of the trial, along with clinical and functional assessments. Follow-up assessments of clinical and functional outcome were done at different periods over the next two years.

Failing to find a normal increase in white matter integrity over time in the at-risk subjects, said Karlsgodt, "suggests there is a fundamental difference in how typically developing young people and high-risk adolescents develop during this period right before the disease would be expected to manifest. Something may go awry with the developmental process during this period that might contribute to the onset of the disorder."

The other important finding, she said, was that by looking at white matter integrity in the temporal lobe at people's first appointment, "we could predict how well they would be functioning 15 months later at work, school and home.

"This is a very exciting finding, because it means we might be closer to being able to identify people who will need more or different treatments in the future, so that we can get them the help they need."

Research was carried out in the Clinical Neuroscience Lab of Tyrone D. Cannon of UCLA, with additional contribution from co-author Tara A. Niendam of the University of California, Davis. Research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders, and a gift to UCLA by Garen and Shari Staglin. The authors reported no known biomedical financial interests or other potential conflicts of interest.

Karlsgodt, Bearden and Cannon are members of the Center for the Assessment and Prevention of Prodromal States (CAPPS) at the Semel Institute. CAPPS provides clinical, psychosocial and neuropsychological assessments, and psychological and psychiatric treatment. It also conducts other research aimed at early identification and prevention of these at-risk mental states.

The Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior is a world-leading, interdisciplinary research and education institute devoted to the understanding of complex human behavior and the causes and consequences of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Labels: , ,