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Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in collaboration with colleagues in Virginia, Hawaii, and Japan, have found that low LDL cholesterol levels were present in a group of men of Japanese ancestry long before they were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The study was a follow-up to a 2006 study by the researchers that found that people with low levels of LDL cholesterol were more likely to have Parkinson's disease than people with high LDL levels. The earlier study, though, could not answer the question of whether low LDL levels were present in study participants before they were diagnosed with Parkinson’s, or if they developed low LDL levels after being diagnosed. The researchers noted most men in the study were not on cholesterol-lowering drugs. They said this suggests that the association between low LDL levels and Parkinson’s exists independently from statin use. They study, published online by the journal Movement Disorders, shows an association between low cholesterol and the risk of Parkinson’s disease, but it did not establish cause and effect.

 

ALS: LEAKY BLOOD VESSELS EXPOSE NERVE CELLS TO TOXIC ASSUALT IN LOU GEHRIG’S DISEASE
Leaky blood vessels that lose their ability to protect the spinal cord from toxins may play a role in the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, according to researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center. The study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, marks the first time that scientists have witnessed molecular changes occurring long before key nerve cells start dying. The unexpected finding opens up a new front in studies of ALS, a disease in which motor neurons in the spinal cord die off for unknown reasons, resulting in dramatically weakened muscles. Patients lose their strength, their ability to move or swallow, and eventually lose their ability even to breathe. Most patients live only a few years after diagnosis. While it’s unlikely the new findings will help ALS patients immediately, the results open up a new and unexpected way to think about the disease. The researchers are currently testing in the laboratory a compound that may help seal up leaky vessels and protect the neurons targeted by ALS.

 

Rare mutations in three genes contribute to blood pressure variation in the general population, according to Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers. The scientists had previously shown that mutations in the three “salt handling” genes cause several rare diseases that are characterized by low blood pressure. The findings, reported in the journal Nature Genetics, are important because they yield new evidence about why some people seem to be less susceptible to developing high blood pressure, a condition that affects a billion people worldwide and contributes significantly to heart and kidney disease and stroke. The researchers found that people who carry the mutations have a 60 percent reduction in their risk of developing hypertension and have significantly lower blood pressure than those who do not have the mutations. They said the mutations approximate effects achieved with drugs used to lower blood pressure. The work suggests drugs could be developed to mimic the effect of the mutation by inhibiting a single gene or several genes.

OBESITY: LESS SLEEP AND MORE TV LEADS TO OVERWEIGHT INFANTS AND TODDLERS
Infants and toddlers who sleep less than 12 hours a day are twice as likely to become overweight by age 3 than children who sleep longer, researchers at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention report. In addition, high levels of television viewing combined with less sleep elevates the risk, so that children who sleep less than 12 hours and who view two or more hours of television per day have a 16 percent chance of becoming overweight by age 3. The study, published in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, found that the combination of low levels of sleep and high levels of television viewing appeared to be synergistic and was associated with markedly higher BMI scores and increased odds of becoming overweight. The results, the researchers said, support efforts to reduce television viewing and to promote adequate sleep in efforts to prevent and reduce unhealthy childhood weight gain.

MUSCLE BUILDING: IBUPROFEN OR ACETAMINOPHEN IN WEIGHTLIFTING TRAINING BUILDS MUSCLE MASS AND STRENGTH
Taking daily recommended dosages of ibuprofen and acetaminophen caused a substantially greater increase than a placebo in the amount of quadriceps muscle mass and muscle strength gained during three months of regular weightlifting, researchers at the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University report. In a study presented at Experimental Biology 2008 in San Diego, the researchers said the chronic consumption of ibuprofen or acetaminophen during resistance training appears to induce intramuscular changes that enhance the metabolic response to resistance exercise, allowing the body to add substantially more new protein to muscle. The finding surprised researchers because an earlier study they preformed that looked at changes in a 24-hour period found that ibuprofen and acetaminophen had a negative impact by blocking the enzyme cyclooxygenase, or COX.

 

REGENERATIVE MEDICINE: FETAL CELLS TO TREAT PARKINSON’S MAY NOT FUNCTION LONG-TERM
Neurons grafted into the brain of a patient with Parkinson’s disease fourteen years ago have developed Lewy body pathology, the defining pathology for the disease, according to research at Rush University Medical Center, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York, and the University of South Florida, Tampa. The study, published in Nature Medicine, raises questions about the value of cell replacement strategy for Parkinson’s disease. The researcher said it is not clear whether the same fate would befall stem cell grafts, but the study does suggest that grafted cells can be affected by the disease process. Patients with Parkinson’s disease received fetal cell transplants to reverse the loss in the brain of dopamine. The article described a woman with a 22-year history of Parkinson’s disease who underwent transplantation in 1993. After transplantation she experienced improvements in disease symptoms and required substantially lower doses of medications to treat Parkinson’s. But by 2004, she experienced progressive worsening of Parkinson’s disease symptoms. She died in 2007. She had the longest survival after transplantation that had been reported to date among the study’s participants.

 

A specific type of yoga can help improve stability and balance in women over age 65, which could help to prevent falls, according to the preliminary finding of a study from Temple University’s Gait Study Center. Researchers at the School of Podiatric Medicine and the College of Health Professions examined the gait and postural stability of 24 elderly females who were enrolled in an Iyengar yoga program designed for people over 65. They found that at the end of the nine-week program, participants had a faster stride, an increased flexibility in the lower extremities, an improved single-leg stance, and increased confidence in walking and balance. Falls are the leading cause of non-fatal injuries and hospital admissions for trauma among people over 65; nearly one-third of older adults suffer from some type of fall each year. The findings, presented at the Gait and Clinical Movement Analysis Society’s Annual Meeting, suggest that improving balance and stability through yoga could help reduce the risk of falling, as these are two areas that are often deficient when a fall occurs.

 

EXERCISE: INACTIVE KIDS HAVE SIX-FOLD RISK IN HEART DISEASE BY TEEN YEARS
Young children who lead inactive lifestyles are up to six times more likely to be at serious risk of heart disease, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The findings, published in the open access journal Dynamic Medicine, looked at a group while in grade school, and then again seven years later when they were in their teens. Researchers wanted to know more about the early onset of metabolic syndrome, a clustering of medical disorders that raise the risk of heart disease and diabetes, such as glucose intolerance, hypertension, elevated triglycerides, low HDL (so-called “good”) cholesterol, and obesity. Previous studies have found that somewhere from 4 percent to 9 percent of adolescents have the condition. The study looked at data from almost 400 children between the ages of seven and 10 from across North Carolina. Adolescents with the syndrome were six times more likely to have had low aerobic fitness as children and five times more likely to have low levels of physical activity at the time they joined the study.

 

New research in monkeys suggests the feasibility of treating cocaine addiction with a “replacement” drug that mimics the effects of cocaine, but has less potential for abuse, researchers from Wake Forest University reported at the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics in San Diego. The approach is similar to the way nicotine and heroin addictions are treated. The researchers said treating monkeys with amphetamine significantly reduced their self-administration of cocaine for up to a month. The quest to develop a treatment for cocaine addiction has been ongoing for decades with little success. There is no FDA-approved treatment for cocaine addiction.

 

ALZHEIMER’S: DEPRESSION INCREASES RISK OF AD
People who have had depression are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than people who have never had depression, according to a study published in the journal Neurology. The study, conducted by researchers at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, involved 486 people age 60 to 90 who had no dementia. Of those, 134 people had experienced at least one episode of depression that prompted them to seek medical advice. The participants were followed for an average of six years. During that time 33 people developed Alzheimer’s disease. People who had experienced depression were 2.5 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than people who had never had depression. The risk was even higher for those whose depression occurred before the age of 60; they were nearly four times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than those with no depression. It is not known whether depression contributes to the development of Alzheimer’s disease or whether another unknown factor causes both depression and dementia, the researchers said.

 

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS: CAFFEINE PREVENTS MS-LIKE DISEASE IN MICE
Mice given the caffeine equivalent to a human drinking six to eight cups of coffee a day were protected from developing experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, the animal model for the human disease multiple sclerosis, according to researchers at Cornell University. Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that occurs when the body’s immune system attacks and damages nerves in the brain and spinal cord. Caffeine is a well-known adenosine receptor blocker, and the researchers believe results show the importance of this molecule in permitting the infiltration of immune cells into the central nervous system of patients with MS. Adenosine is widely present in the body and plays an important role in many biochemical processes, such as energy transfer and the promotion of sleep and suppression of arousal. In a presentation at Experimental Biology 2008, the researchers said the results could eventually lead to the development of adenosine-based therapies to treat MS.

 

PAIN: BIOLOGICAL LINK FOUND WITH FATIGUE
A study from researchers at the University of Iowa finds a biological link between pain and fatigue that they said helps explain why more women than men are diagnosed with chronic pain and fatigue conditions like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. The study, published in the American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, indicates that muscle pain and fatigue are not independent conditions and may share a common pathway that is disrupted in chronic muscle pain conditions. To probe the link between pain and fatigue, and the influence of sex, the researchers compared exercise-induced muscle fatigue in male and female mice with and without ASIC3 – an acid-activated ion channel protein that the team has shown to be involved in musculoskeletal pain. Male mice with ASIC3 were less fatigued by the task than female mice. However, male mice without the ASIC3 protein showed levels of fatigue that were similar to the female mice and were greater than for the normal males. In addition, when female mice with ASIC3 were given testosterone, their muscles became as resistant to fatigue as the normal male mice. In contrast, the muscle strength of female mice without the protein was not boosted by testosterone.

 

BRAIN DEVELOPMENT: MRI SHOWS FETAL EXPOSURE TO DRUGS, ALCOHOL, AND TOBACCO HAS EFFECTS INTO ADOLESCENCE
A study from researchers at Children’s and Boston Medical Center suggests that prenatal exposure to cocaine, alcohol, marijuana or tobacco (alone or in combination) may have effects on brain structure that persist into early adolescence. The findings, published in the journal Pediatrics, are significant since more than an estimated 1 million babies born annually in the United States have been exposed to at least one of these agents in utero, the researchers said. The researchers used volumetric MRI imaging to study the brain structure of 35 young adolescents prenatally exposed to cocaine, marijuana, alcohol, or tobacco. The researchers found that reductions in cortical gray matter and total brain volumes were associated with prenatal exposure to cocaine, alcohol, or cigarettes. Although volume reductions were associated with each of these three prenatal exposures, they were not associated with any one of these substances alone. The researchers also found that the effects were found to be additive—the more substances a child was exposed to in utero, the greater the reduction in brain volume.

 

EXERCISE: WORKOUTS DURING PREGNANCY LEAD TO HEALTHIER HEART IN NOT ONLY MOTHERS, BUT FETUSES
It’s not only the mothers who benefit from exercise during pregnancy, but their fetuses do as well, according to a study from researchers at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences and Children’s Mercy Hospital/UMKC School of Medicine. For the study, fetal recordings were obtained from 24 weeks to term. In a presentation at the Experimental Biology 2008 scientific conference, the researchers reported that fetuses that had been exposed to maternal exercise had significantly lower heart rates than the non-exposed fetuses, regardless of the fetal activity or the gestational age.

 

ESTROGEN: STUDY FINDS ADVERSE EFFECTS OF REPLACEMENT THERAPY IS RELATED TO DOSE
A study in mice that examined the adverse effects of estrogen replacement therapy, or ERT, found that moderate and high doses of ERT increased problems in the kidney and heart, according to researchers at the Hypertension and Vascular Research Division of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The results suggest that ERT dosage may be an important determinant in a woman’s overall health. The researchers presented their findings during the Experimental Biology 2008 scientific conference. They found that moderate and high doses of ERT increased the plasma estrogen levels in the mice more than four-fold. This was associated with fluid retention in the uterus, amounts of protein in the urine, and dilated kidneys. Moderate and high doses of estrogen also increased atrial natriuretic peptide, a cardiac hormone that is increased as a marker of severity of heart failure. This did not occur at low level dosing.

 

PANDEMIC: ONE IN SEVEN CASES OF BIRD FLU COULD BE PREVENTED BY CLOSING SCHOOLS.
One in seven cases of bird flu could be prevented by closing schools in event of a pandemic, according to researchers from the MRC Center for Outbreak Analysis and Modeling at Imperial College London. In a study published in the journal Nature, the researchers said that school closure is the non-pharmaceutical policy option that health organizations and governments most often consider to control the spread of a flu pandemic, but there had previously been little evidence of its potential effectiveness. The researchers used computer modeling to explore how school closure would affect the spread of a theoretical pandemic H5N1 avian flu virus which had mutated to pass between humans. They found school closures would also slow and flatten the pandemic, reducing the numbers becoming ill in the worst week of the outbreak by up to 40 percent.

 

BIOFUEL: ENZYME IN COW STOMACH KEY TO TURNING CORN INTO FUEL
An enzyme from a microbe that lives inside a cow’s stomach is the key to turning corn plants into fuel, according to Michigan State University scientists. The enzyme that allows a cow to digest grasses and other plant fibers can be used to turn other plant fibers into simple sugars. These simple sugars can be used to produce ethanol to power cars and trucks. The MSU researchers found a way to grow corn plants that contain the enzyme. They have inserted a gene from a bacterium that lives in a cow’s stomach into a corn plant. Now, the sugars locked up in the plant’s leaves and stalk can be converted into usable sugar without expensive synthetic chemicals, they said. In a presentation at the 235th national American Chemical Society meeting in New Orleans, the researchers said this new discovery will allow the entire corn plant to be used—so more fuel can be produced with less cost. Traditionally the commercial biofuel industry has been able to use only the kernels of corn plants to make ethanol, the researchers said.

 

MEDICAL ERRORS: PATIENT SAFETY INCIDENTS COST U.S. $8.8 BILLION, AS MANY AS 238,337 PREVENTABLE DEATHS 2004-2006
Patient safety incidents cost the federal Medicare program $8.8 billion and resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths from 2004 through 2006, according to HealthGrades' fifth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study. The healthcare ratings organization’s analysis of 41 million Medicare patient records found that approximately 3 percent of all Medicare admissions evaluated during the three years studied, or 1.1 million patient safety incidents, resulted in at least one medical error. Patients treated at top-performing hospitals had, on average, a 43 percent lower chance of experiencing one or more medical errors compared to the poorest-performing hospitals. Since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is scheduled to stop reimbursing hospitals for the treatment of eight major preventable errors as of October 1, the financial implications for hospitals are substantial, HealthGrades noted.

 

PERSONAL FINANCE: HEALTH SHOCKS TAKE A TOLL ON WEALTH LATER IN LIFE
A study from researchers at Ohio State University finds that the later in life a serious illness occurs, the more damage it does to a person’s finances. The study found that when seniors develop a new and serious health problem—experiencing what the researchers call a “health shock”—early in retirement, they lose a substantial portion of their savings immediately. But if they experience the health shock later in life, they will lose even more. The study, published in the Journal of Population Economics, is the first to gather a long-term perspective on how chronic illness diminishes seniors’ wealth over time. It compared the long-term financial repercussions of preexisting chronic health problems with those caused by the sudden onset of a new health problem late in life. In 1998, study participants who had recently experienced a health shock lost an average of 5.5 percent of their overall wealth as a result. But when they were two years older, the average loss for a health shock was 8.7 percent of wealth. When they were four years older (in 2002), it was 9.5 percent—40 percent more than when the participants were first studied in 1998. The researchers said that even average Americans need to give serious thought to the healthcare system, and plan for their retirement with healthcare costs in mind.