February 14, 2011, 6:55 AM CT

Obesity and knee arthritis

More than 14 million visits were made to physicians' offices in 2008 by patients with knee problems. Five new studies presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) look at the effect that obesity has on knee arthritis and a patient's ability to recover from knee surgery.



Does Obesity Cause Irreparable Damage To Knees Despite Weight Loss? (Embargo: February 15)

One newly released study observed that while weight loss via bariatric surgery may improve knee pain in obese patients with knee osteoarthritis, there appears to be permanent damage to the knee from being morbidly obese.

The investigation included 10 morbidly obese patients with knee osteoarthritis who were reviewed before and after bariatric surgery. Patients lost an average of 51 pounds in one year. One year after surgery, knee pain and function improved significantly.

"For a long time people felt there was nothing they could do to mitigate the debilitating effects of knee arthritis, but now we know that surgically-assisted weight loss is a way that folks can help themselves," says Michael S. Sridhar, MD, co-investigator and resident at Emory University. "However, there is probably some element of irreparable damage from being morbidly obese that may constrain the improvement in knee pain despite significant weight loss. Looking at the actual joint surfaces with advanced imaging to assess damage is the exciting next step in studying the evolution of knee arthritis in the obese population."........ Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

February 8, 2011, 6:44 AM CT

Late nights can lead to higher risk of strokes

New research from Warwick Medical School published recently in the European Heart Journal shows that prolonged sleep deprivation and disrupted sleep patterns can have long-term, serious health implications. Leading academics from the University have linked lack of sleep to strokes, heart attacks and cardiovascular disorders which often result in early death.

Professor Francesco Cappuccio from the University of Warwick Medical School, explained: "If you sleep less than six hours per night and have disturbed sleep you stand a 48 per cent greater chance of developing or dying from heart disease and a 15 per cent greater chance of developing or dying of a stroke.

"The trend for late nights and early mornings is actually a ticking time bomb for our health so you need to act now to reduce your risk of developing these life-threatening conditions".

Professor Cappuccio and co-author Dr Michelle Miller, from the University of Warwick, conducted the research programme which followed up evidence from seven to 25 years from more than 470,000 participants from eight countries including Japan, USA, Sweden and UK.

Professor Cappuccio explained: "There is an expectation in today's society to fit more into our lives. The whole work/life balance struggle is causing too a number of of us to trade in precious sleeping time to ensure we complete all the jobs we believe are expected of us"......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source

February 8, 2011, 6:42 AM CT

Speedy generic approval may not benefit consumers

Faster approval times for generic drugs will get them into consumers' hands quicker, but may not make the price any better, a pricing and marketing researcher has found.

A mathematical model created by Andrew Ching shows that fewer firms enter the marketplace because the chances of getting there first and commanding the best profits are dramatically smaller when drug approval times are shorter. Ching is an associate professor of marketing at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.

Using the drug clonidine, Prof. Ching's model showed the number of firms in the marketplace dropped by 25 percent, from 12 to nine, under a shortened approval time scenario.

"Potentially, for the consumer, the price may not drop as much as you'd hope," said Prof. Ching.

Under the current situation it takes companies an average of more than 20 months to get U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for generic versions of established drugs. That makes approval times uncertain and companies often must go through several rounds of review. Companies also pay several million dollars when they apply for FDA approval. Given these as well as other development costs, firms making it to the marketplace last sometimes experience losses.

The FDA in recent years has talked about reducing its approval times in order to benefit consumers, and has proposed strategies for how it could do so, including spending more money in order to bring on extra staff to do the reviews......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

February 8, 2011, 6:36 AM CT

Language May Play Important Role in Learning

New research conducted with deaf people in Nicaragua shows that language may play an important role in learning the meanings of numbers.

Field studies by University of Chicago psychology expert Susan Goldin-Meadow and a team of scientists found deaf people in Nicaragua, who had not learned formal sign language, do not have a complete understanding of numbers greater than three.

Scientists surmised the lack of large number comprehension was because the deaf Nicaraguans were not being taught numbers or number words.  Instead they learned to communicate using self-developed gestures called "homesigns," a language developed in the absence of formal education and exposure to formal sign language.

"The research doesn't determine which aspects of language are doing the work, but it does suggest that language is an important player in number acquisition," said Betty Tuller, a program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, which funded the research.

"The finding may help narrow down the range of experiences that play a role in learning number concepts," she said.

Research results are published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in a paper titled, "Number Without a Language Model."......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

February 7, 2011, 4:13 PM CT

Choices determine success for women scientists

It's an incendiary topic in academia � the pervasive belief that women are underrepresented in science, math and engineering fields because they face sex discrimination in the interviewing, hiring, and grant and manuscript review processes.

In a study, "Understanding Current Causes of Women's Underrepresentation in Science" published Feb. 7 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cornell University social researchers say it's just not true.

It's not discrimination in these areas, but rather differences in resources attributable to career and family-related choices that set women back in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, say Stephen J. Ceci, professor of developmental psychology, and Wendy M. Williams, professor of human development and director of the Cornell Institute for Women in Science, both in Cornell's College of Human Ecology.

The "substantial resources" universities expend to sponsor gender-sensitivity training and interviewing workshops would be better spent on addressing the real causes of women's underrepresentation, Ceci and Williams say, through creative problem-solving and policy changes that respond to differing "biological and social realities" of the sexes.

The scientists analyzed the scientific literature in which women and men competed for publications, grants or jobs in these fields. They found no systematic evidence of sex discrimination in interviewing, hiring, reviewing or funding when men and women with similar resources � such as teaching loads and research support � were compared......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

February 7, 2011, 3:54 PM CT

Women Are More Attracted To Men Whose Feelings Are Unclear

Are you still looking for a date for Valentine's Day? Here's some dating advice straight from the laboratory: It turns out there appears to be something to "playing hard to get." A study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that a woman is more attracted to a man when she is uncertain about how much he likes her.

On the one hand, a lot of psychological research has observed that person A commonly likes person B about as much as they think person B likes them. "If we want to know how much Sarah likes Bob, a good predictor is how much she thinks Bob likes her," write the authors of the paper, Erin R. Whitchurch and Timothy D. Wilson of the University of Virginia and Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University. "But what if Sarah is not sure how much Bob likes her?" This might lead Sarah to spend a lot of time thinking about Bob, wondering how he feels, and she might find him more attractive the more she dwells on him.

Forty-seven female undergraduates at the University of Virginia took part in the study. Each student, who believed that the experiment was designed to study whether Facebook could work as an online dating site, was told that male students from two other universities had viewed her profile and those of 15 to 20 other females. Then the women were shown four men's Facebook profiles that they thought were real, but were actually fictitious. Some of the women were told they'd seen the four men who liked them the most; others were told these were four men who rated them about average. A third group were told the men could be either the ones who liked them most or the ones who liked them about average-so those women didn't know about the level of the men's interest in them......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

February 7, 2011, 8:07 AM CT

Pivotal discoveries in age-related macular degeneration

A team of researchers, led by University of Kentucky ophthalmologist Dr. Jayakrishna Ambati, has discovered a molecular mechanism implicated in geographic atrophy, the major cause of untreatable blindness in the industrialized world.

Their article, "DICER1 Deficit Induces Alu RNA Toxicity in Age-Related Macular Degeneration," was published online by the journal Nature on Feb. 6 (DOI: 10.1038/nature09830).

Concurrent with this discovery, Ambati's laboratory developed two promising therapies for the prevention of the condition. This study also elaborates, for the first time, a disease-causing role for a large section of the human genome once regarded as non-coding "junk DNA".

Geographic atrophy, a condition causing the death of cells in the retina, occurs in the later stages of the "dry type" of macular degeneration, a disease affecting some 10 million older Americans and causing blindness in over 1 million. There is currently no effective therapy for geographic atrophy, as its cause is unknown.

Ambati's team discovered that an accumulation of a toxic type of RNA, called Alu RNA, causes retinal cells to die in patients with geographic atrophy. In a healthy eye, a "Dicer" enzyme degrades the Alu RNA particles.

"We discovered that in patients with geographic atrophy, there is a dramatic reduction of the Dicer enzyme in the retina," said Ambati, professor and vice chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and the Dr. E. Vernon and Eloise C. Smith Endowed Chair in Macular Degeneration Research at the UK College of Medicine. "When the levels of Dicer decline, the control system is short-circuited and too much Alu RNA accumulates. This leads to death of the retina."........ Posted by: Mike      Read more         Source

February 7, 2011, 8:04 AM CT

Rural underage binge drinkers put their health at risk

Binge drinking is often considered to be a problem of towns and cities but new research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Public Health shows that binge drinking in rural areas is more of a problem than previously thought.

Dr Carolin Donath, from the Psychiatric University Clinic Erlangen, looked at the drinking patterns of over 44,000 15 and 16 year olds in Gera number of and observed that more than 93% of the young people from the countryside and over 86% of those from urban areas had tried alcohol. Of the adolescents who had drunk alcohol in the last month, 78% from rural areas and 74% from cities admitted to binge drinking (5 or more drinks at one time).

Dr Carolin Donath says that, "Whilst there is awareness of the problems of binge drinking in towns and cities, this study demonstrates that both drinking and binge drinking are as much of a problem for rural teenagers".

Binge drinking in school children has social ramifications as well as increasing health risks. Not only does alcohol abuse affect school work, and hence job prospects, but being drunk increases the likelihood of accidents among traffic and of unsafe sexual behaviour. This pattern of drinking also causes long term damage to the brain resulting in permanent brain damage, including memory problems and cognitive defects, and increasing risk of heart disease and cancer......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

February 7, 2011, 8:03 AM CT

Chocolate is an antioxidant

It is widely known that fruit contains antioxidants which appears to be beneficial to health. New research reported in the open access journal Chemistry Central Journal demonstrates that chocolate is a rich source of antioxidants and contains more polyphenols and flavanols than fruit juice.

When scientists at the Hershey Center for Health & Nutrition� compared the antioxidant activity in cocoa powder and fruit powders they observed that, gram per gram, there was more antioxidant capacity, and a greater total flavanol content, in the cocoa powder.

Similarly when they compared the amount of antioxidants, per serving, of dark chocolate, cocoa, hot chocolate mix and fruit juices they observed that both dark chocolate and cocoa had a greater antioxidant capacity and a greater total flavanol, and polyphenol, content than the fruit juices. However hot chocolate, due to processing (alkalization) of the chocolate, contained little of any.

Dr Debra Miller, the senior author of the paper, says that, "Cacao seeds are a "Super Fruit" providing nutritive value beyond that of their macronutrient composition". Which is great news for chocolate lovers......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

February 7, 2011, 8:00 AM CT

Nnerves glow in surgery

Accidental damage to thin or buried nerves during surgery can have severe consequences, from chronic pain to permanent paralysis. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine may have found a remedy: injectable fluorescent peptides that cause hard-to-see peripheral nerves to glow, alerting surgeons to their location even before the nerves are encountered.

The findings appear in the Feb. 6 advance online edition of the journal Nature Biotechnology

Nerve preservation is important in almost every kind of surgery, but it can be challenging, said Quyen T. Nguyen, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Head and Neck Surgery and the study's corresponding author. "For example, if the nerves are invaded by a tumor. Or, if surgery is mandatory in the setting of trauma or infection, the affected nerves might not look as they normally would, or their location appears to be distorted".

Nguyen and his colleagues at the Moores Cancer Center developed and injected a systemic, fluorescently labeled peptide (a protein fragment consisting of amino acids) into mice. The peptide preferentially binds to peripheral nerve tissue, creating a distinct contrast (up to tenfold) from adjacent non-nerve tissues. The effect occurs within two hours and lasts for six to eight hours, with no observable effect upon the activity of the fluorescent nerves or behavior of the animals......... Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source