Health News

In Mouse Model, Delayed Female Sexual Maturity Linked To Longer Lifespan

Date: May-08-2012
An intriguing clue to longevity lurks in the sexual maturation timetable of female mammals, Jackson Laboratory researchers and their collaborators report. Jackson researchers including Research Scientist Rong Yuan, Ph.D., had previously established that mouse strains with lower circulating levels of the hormone IGF1 at age six months live longer than other strains. In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Yuan and colleagues report that females from strains with lower IGF1 levels also reach sexual maturity at a significantly later age. "This suggests a...

Gene Discovered That Leads To Severe Weight Gain With Antipsychotic Treatment

Date: May-08-2012
Antipsychotic Treatment Main Category: Schizophrenia Also Included In: Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness;  Genetics Article Date: 08 May 2012 - 2:00 PDT  email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions    rate article  Current ratings for: 'Gene Discovered That Leads To Severe Weight Gain With Antipsychotic Treatment' Patient / Public: 4.75 (4 votes) Healthcare Prof: Antipsychotic medications are increasingly prescribed in the US, but they can cause serious side effects including rapid weight gain, especially in children. In the first study of its kind, researchers at...

Study Reveals Huge Genetic Diversity In Cells Shed By Tumors

Date: May-08-2012
The cells that slough off from a cancerous tumor into the bloodstream are a genetically diverse bunch, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have found. Some have genes turned on that give them the potential to lodge themselves in new places, helping a cancer spread between organs. Others have completely different patterns of gene expression and might be more benign, or less likely to survive in a new tissue. Some cells may even express genes that could predict their response to a specific therapy. Even within one patient, the tumor cells that make it into circulating blood vary...

Men With Low Testosterone Levels May Be At Increased Risk For Diabetes

Date: May-08-2012
Low levels of testosterone in men could increase their risk of developing diabetes, a study suggests. Scientists have found that low testosterone levels are linked to a resistance to insulin, the hormone that controls blood sugar levels. The study is the first to directly show how low testosterone levels in fat tissue can be instrumental in the onset of Type 2 diabetes. Testosterone is present throughout the body. Low testosterone levels are linked to obesity, a known risk factor for diabetes. It acts on fat cells through molecules known as androgen receptors. These enable the testosterone to...

The Brain May Avoid 'Traffic Jams' Via Multiple Thought Channels

Date: May-08-2012
Brain networks may avoid traffic jams at their busiest intersections by communicating on different frequencies, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the University Medical Center at Hamburg-Eppendorf and the University of Tubingen have learned. "Many neurological and psychiatric conditions are likely to involve problems with signaling in brain networks," says co-author Maurizio Corbetta, MD, the Norman J. Stupp Professor of Neurology at Washington University. "Examining the temporal structure of brain activity from this perspective may be especially helpful in...

Good News And Bad News In Fatty Liver Disease And Diabetes

Date: May-08-2012
A Penn research team, led by Mitchell Lazar, MD, PhD, director of the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, reports in Nature Medicine that mice in which an enzyme called histone deacetylase 3 (HDAC3) was deleted had massively fatty livers, but lower blood sugar, and were thus protected from glucose intolerance and insulin resistance, the hallmark of diabetes. Insulin resistance occurs when the body does a poor job of lowering blood sugars. Typically, patients with obesity and type 2 diabetes have fatty livers, and the...

New Method Offers Automated Way To Record Electrical Activity Inside Neurons In The Living Brain

Date: May-08-2012
Gaining access to the inner workings of a neuron in the living brain offers a wealth of useful information: its patterns of electrical activity, its shape, even a profile of which genes are turned on at a given moment. However, achieving this entry is such a painstaking task that it is considered an art form; it is so difficult to learn that only a small number of labs in the world practice it. But that could soon change: Researchers at MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a way to automate the process of finding and recording information from neurons in the living brain....

Study Proposals Could Reduce Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Costs By Around 25 Percent

Date: May-08-2012
Research carried out at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry (PCMD), University of Exeter, has concluded that it would be a safe and cost-effective strategy to screen people with type 2 diabetes who have not yet developed diabetic retinopathy, for the disease once every two years instead of annually. The research is supported by funding from the National Institute for Health Research Peninsula Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (NIHR PenCLAHRC). It is published on-line in Diabetes Care. Diabetic retinopathy is a common complication of diabetes. It...

Multi-Center Study Reveals That Eye Color May Indicate Risk For Serious Skin Conditions

Date: May-08-2012
Eye color may be an indicator of whether a person is high-risk for certain serious skin conditions. A study, led by the University of Colorado School of Medicine, shows people with blue eyes are less likely to have vitiligo. It then follows, according to scientists, that people with brown eyes may be less likely to have melanoma. Vitiligo is an autoimmune skin disease in which pigment loss results in irregular white patches of skin and hair. Melanoma is the most dangerous kind of skin cancer. The study is published online by the journal Nature Genetics. It looked at almost 3,000 people with...

A New Candidate Pathway For Treating Visceral Obesity

Date: May-08-2012
Brown seems to be the color of choice when it comes to the types of fat cells in our bodies. Brown fat expends energy, while its counterpart, white fat stores it. The danger in white fat cells, along with the increased risk for diabetes and heart disease it poses, seems especially linked to visceral fat. Visceral fat is the build-up of fat around the organs in the belly. So in the battle against obesity, brown fat appears to be our friend and white fat our foe. Now a team of researchers led by Jorge Plutzky, MD, director of The Vascular Disease Prevention Program at Brigham and Women's...