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Older Fathers And Autistic Children
Typically typically typically autism is characterized by social and language abnormalities and repetitive patterns of behavior, as per background information in the article. Autism and related conditions, known collectively as autism spectrum disorders, have become increasingly common, affecting 50 in every 10,000 children as compared with five in 10,000 two decades ago. This increase is partially due to higher levels of awareness and changes in diagnosis processes, but could also reflect an increase in occurence rate of autism, as per the authors. Older parental age has previously been associated with abnormalities in the brain development of children; however, few studies have effectively examined the effect of mothers' and particularly fathers' ages on autism.
Abraham Reichenberg, Ph.D., of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, and Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, and his colleagues reviewed this association in children born during the 1980s in Israel. All men and three-fourths of the women born in these years were assessed by the draft board at age 17, during which time any psychiatric disorders were recorded. Dr. Reichenberg and his colleagues obtained draft board information and the age of the father for 318,506 individuals; age of the mother was available for 132,271 of those.........
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Alcohol During Pregnancy
Exposure to maternal drinking during early childhood has been associated with difficulties in thinking, learning and memory, as well as mental and behavioral problems. However, few studies have examined the link between drinking during pregnancy and a child's later risk for alcohol dependence and other disorders, according to background information in the article. Animal studies have provided extensive evidence of a link between exposure to alcohol before birth and early acceptance of alcohol. "Similar results replicated in human studies would carry considerable implications for public health intervention," the authors write. "First, such studies would suggest that even small quantities of alcohol exposure, if consumed in a single session, may cause in utero neurodevelopmental changes that in turn may lead to the early onset of alcohol disorder in youth. Second, they would provide support for the role of a biological origin of alcohol disorders".
Rosa Alati, Ph.D., from The University of Queensland, Herston, Australia, and colleagues explored whether maternal exposure to alcohol during pregnancy increased a child's risk of developing alcohol disorders in 2,138 participants who were followed from birth to age 21. A group of 7,223 mothers was originally interviewed at their first prenatal doctor visit, between 1981 and 1984 in Brisbane, Australia. The mothers and children were assessed at birth and again 6 months and 5, 14, and 21 years later. Before pregnancy, in early (first 18 weeks) and late (last three months) pregnancy, and when their children were age 5 and 14, the mothers were asked how often they drank alcohol and the number of drinks consumed on any one occasion. Children were evaluated for alcohol disorders at age 21.........
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Soldiers' wives are tough
These women may have their dissatisfactions, but the work-life tensions of military life are outweighed by the financial security provided by the Army. So say researchers Professor Christopher Dandeker and Claire French from the King's Centre of Military Health Research, based jointly in the Institute of Psychiatry and the Department of War Studies at King's College, London.
Their study included analysis of face-to-face interviews with 50 Army wives around the start of their husbands' six-month deployment to Iraq in 2004, and again after it ended, along with data from parallel research into the health and well-being of the soldiers. They found the wives, who were based in Germany, much more tolerant than the servicemen of the pressures that the military places on them.
More than 80 per cent of wives were proud of their husband's career, but half did not like them being in the armed forces. When the deployment ended, however, 88 per cent wanted their husbands to stay in the Army because of salary and pension. Fifty-one per cent of wives thought their marriage was affected in a negative way by their husband's career, and 47 per cent saw this tension as emotional conflict, especially family stress caused by long absences and husbands missing important family occasions.........
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Nutritional Value Of Rabbit Food
A new UCLA/Louisiana State University study of dietary data on more than 17,500 men and women finds consumption of salad and raw vegetables correlates with higher concentrations of folic acid, vitamins C and E, lycopene and alpha and beta carotene in the bloodstream.
Reported in the September edition of the peer-evaluated Journal of the American Dietetic Association, the study also suggests that each serving of salad consumed correlates with a 165 percent higher likelihood of meeting recommended dietary allowances (RDA) for vitamin C in women and 119 percent greater likelihood in men.
The study is the first to examine the relationship between normal salad consumption and nutrient levels in the bloodstream, and also the first to examine the dietary adequacy of salad consumption using the latest nutritional guidelines of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences.
The findings blunt concerns about the human body's ability to absorb nutrients from raw vegetables, as well as concern that the structure and characteristics of some plants undercut nutritional value.
"The consistently higher levels of certain nutrients in the bloodstream of salad-eaters suggest these important components of a healthy diet are being well-absorbed from salad," said Lenore Arab, visiting professor of epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health and co-author of the study with L. Joseph Su, assistant professor at the LSU School of Public Health.........
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Drazner To Lead Heart Failure Program
Dr. Drazner, associate professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern, has been a key member of the heart transplant team for nine years, specializing in treating patients with congestive heart failure and caring for patients before and after transplantation. He also has been instrumental in achieving UT Southwestern's tremendous survival rates for heart-transplant patients, which consistently rank in the top 10 in the nation and are the best in Texas.
Dr. Drazner succeeds Dr. Clyde Yancy, who served as medical director since 1993. The Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation program is a key component of UT Southwestern's Heart, Lung and Vascular Center, a collaborative effort between UT Southwestern faculty and community physicians who unite to bring their clinical and surgical expertise to patients needing cardiac, pulmonary or vascular care.
"Dr. Drazner is a talented, compassionate and highly skilled clinician," said Dr. John Warner, assistant professor of internal medicine, director of the Heart, Lung and Vascular Center. "He has been an integral part of our team for almost a decade now and we are extremely pleased that he has accepted this position. We look forward to his leadership".........
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Vaccine For Malaria In Making
Plasmodium falciparium
Plasmodium falciparium is the name of by far the most virulent of the four malaria parasites that infect man. It is particularly dangerous in that it also infects the placenta of pregnant women, with fatal consequences for both her and the foetus. This, combined with the often feeble medical resources of malaria-stricken countries, can lead to such serous complications that the mother dies during delivery.
"For some reason, women in their first pregnancy lose the semi-immunity that is normally found in adults," explains Niloofar Rasti, a KI graduate student who has been working with the study. "The placenta seems to be an anatomically favourable environment for a subpopulation of the parasites".
The research group from Karolinska Institutet, under the leadership of Professor Mats Wahlgren, has been working with colleagues from KI's partner university in Uganda to study in detail how the parasite infects the placenta. Their results, which are published in the American scientific journal PNAS, can enable the development of vaccines and therapies to combat severe malarial infections.........
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More Research Needed To Combat Killer Diseases
The report (The New Landscape of Neglected Disease Drug Development) by Mary Moran and his colleagues at the Pharmaceutical Research and Development Policy Group, The George Institute, argues that drugs for neglected diseases are increasingly being developed partly due to the use of public-private partnership (PPPs) mechanisms that spread the financial and organisational risk of product development. Anne-Laure Ropars, from the George Institute will be discussing the rise of drug development for neglected diseases and the role of PPPs at a major international conference, organised by the ESRC Innogen Centre to be held in London on 5-6 September 2006.
Steven Matlin, Executive Director of the Global Forum for Health Research, also speaking at the conference, does not think that the increases in development of health products for neglected diseases (drugs, vaccines and diagnostics) is simply due to the rise of PPPs. Matlin also stresses the rise of a group of 'innovating developing countries' (IDCs) including Brazil, China, India and South Africa. He argues that these countries have "growing national capacity for high-quality manufacturing to convert the inventions into health products for both domestic and international markets".........
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Reducing contrast material can lower costs
"When interpreting CT images acquired using the established protocol in our clinical practice, it was noted that in some examinations of elderly patients, contrast enhancement of the pancreatic parenchyma was too intense," said Shigeki Itoh, MD, lead author of the study. "Therefore, we speculated that it might be possible to reduce the dose and rate of contrast material injection without adversely affecting the degree of contrast enhancement in elderly patients," said Dr. Itoh.
The study included 112 patients, ranging from 23-80 years old who had known or suspected pancreatobiliary disease who were split into three groups (60 years old or younger with a contrast injection of 0.08 milliliters/kg/sec, 60 years old or older with a contrast injection of 0.08 milliliters/kg/sec, and 60 years old or older with a contrast injection of 0.07 milliliters/kg/sec).........
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Stem Cell Growth In The Brain
The research study focused on two compounds--LTB4 and LXA4. Both play a role in inflammation and are regulators of proliferation of several cell types. When stem cells isolated from the brains of mouse embryos were exposed to LTB4 they proliferated and differentiated, giving rise to additional stem cells and to differentiated neurons with limited or absent capacity to divide. When exposed to LXA4, these cells experienced decreased growth and apoptosis.
"This study opens doors to new therapeutic approaches for a wide range neurological disorders and injuries that were once considered incurable," said Gerald Weissmann, MD, Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal.
The study also provided so insight into the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved when LTB4 stimulates neuronal stem cells. As per the study, cells generated as the result of LTB4 exposure had high levels of LTB4 receptors, whereas the level of LTB4 receptors was considerably lower in similar cells not generated by LTB4 stimulation. The researchers were further able to show that LTB4 up-regulated several molecules involved in cell cycling and growth, such as cyclins and epidermal growth factor receptor, and decreased those such as caspase 8 which play a role in apoptosis. LXA4 had the opposite effects.........
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Memory Molecule
Furthermore, erasing the memory from the brain does not prevent the ability to re-learn the memory, much as a cleaned computer disc may be re-used. This finding may some day have applications in treating chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, and memory loss, among other conditions.
The SUNY Downstate scientists published in the August 25 issue of Science that an enzyme molecule called "protein kinase M zeta" preserves long-term memories through persistent strengthening of synaptic connections between neurons. This is analogous to the mechanism storing information as 0's and 1's in a computer's hard disc. By inhibiting the enzyme, researchers were able to erase a memory that had been stored for one day, or even one month. This function in memory storage is specific to protein kinase M zeta, because inhibiting related molecules did not disrupt memory.
These findings may be useful for the therapy of disorders characterized by the pathological over-strengthening of synaptic connections, such as neuropathic pain, phantom limb syndrome, dystonia, and post-traumatic stress. On the other hand, the identification of the core molecular mechanism for memory storage may focus effort on the development of specific therapeutic agents that enhance memory persistence and prevent memory loss. Earlier this year, SUNY Downstate researchers reported that PKMzeta was bound up in the tangles of Alzheimer's disease, thus perhaps blocking its function in memory storage.........
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