Researchers at Princeton University conducted research among college students that suggests a link between neuropsychiatric disorders among family members and intellectual pursuits. Students with technical majors (such as science, mathematics or engineering) were more likely than other students to report a sibling with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Conversely, students interested in the humanities were more likely to report a family member with major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, or substance abuse problems. The study was published on January 26, 2012 in the online journal PLoS One.

Image Credit: KellyB

Benjamin C. Campbell and Samuel S. H. Wang, both of the Neuroscience Institute at Princeton, conducted the research.

College students who pursued more technical majors (math/science/engineering) were three times more likely than non-technical majors to have family members who had some form of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Those with an ASD typically have problems with verbal and nonverbal communication, problems adapting to social situations, and express repetitive behaviors.

Students who pursued majors in the humanities, arts and social sciences were two times more likely than non-humanities majors to have a family member who had a bipolar disorder, depression, substance abuse issues, post-traumatic stress disorder, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Both ASD s and emotional disorders are complex and have a variety of genetic and environmental factors that influence their development. Autism often correlates with a systemizing, organized approach that lends itself to more technical and scientific fields, researchers said. Taken to the extreme, this can become dysfunctional.

Similarly, subdued forms of emotional instability lend themselves to more creative interests. Researchers explained that this instability, taken to the extreme, can lead to emotional disorders like depression and bipolar disorder.

Bottom line: Two researchers – Benjamin C. Campbell and Samuel S. H. Wang, both of the Neuroscience Institute at Princeton – suggest a link between neuropsychiatric disorders among family members and intellectual pursuits.

Read the actual study here

Study confirms we do get by with a little help from our friends

Now we know what anxiety looks like

Obesity and chronic liver disease might be infectious, triggered by a family of proteins that alter populations of microbes in the stomach, according to a report by Yale University scientists in the February 1 advance online publication of Nature.

The Yale scientists said that the altered intestinal environment that led to obesity and liver disease was infectious among the community of mice. Richard A. Flavell is Professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study. He said:

When healthy mice were co-housed with mice that had altered gut microbes, the healthy mice also developed a susceptibility for development of liver disease and obesity.

Which of the three gut types are you?

The proteins in question are called inflammasomes. They are responsible for launching the immune system’s inflammatory response. Inflammasomes act as sensors and regulators of the microbial environment of the intestines.

The Yale team found that a deficiency in components of two particular inflammasomes in mice resulted in the development of an altered microbial community associated with increased bacteria. This determined the severity of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and obesity in the mice.

Photo credit: Tobyotter

NAFLD is the result of metabolic syndrome, a collection of disorders that includes obesity and diabetes, and is the leading cause of chronic liver disease in the western world. It is estimated that up to 30 million people suffer from NAFLD in the United States alone. Twenty percent of people with NAFLD develop chronic liver inflammation, placing them at risk for cirrhosis and liver cancer, but the causes have been unclear.

The next step, Flavell said, is extending this research to humans and to identify more precisely the bacteria involved in the progression to liver disease. He said:

We found, in mice, that targeted antibiotic treatment brought the microbial composition back to normal, and thus eased the liver disease. Our hope is that our findings may eventually lead to a treatment for humans.

Bottom line: A report by Yale University scientists in the February 1 advance online publication of Nature suggests that obesity and chronic liver disease might be infectious, triggered by a family of proteins that alter populations of microbes in the stomach.

Mosquito-borne malaria is known to be widespread in tropical and subtropical areas, including much of Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Today (January 23, 2012) a multinational team of researchers is presenting the results of a two-year effort to assemble all available data worldwide on the risk of Plasmodium falciparum malaria, the most deadly form of the disease. Their results include new malaria maps showing the current global pattern of the disease and letting researchers see how malaria has changed over a number of years.

Credit: Malaria Atlas Project, University of Oxford

The researchers are with the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), funded mainly by the Wellcome Trust, and their study is being published in the Malaria Journal.

They used computer modeling and data on climate and human populations to create their maps, which also built on the first-ever Atlas of Malaria-Eliminating Countries 2011published earlier in 2012.

According to Wikipedia:

… there were an estimated 225 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2009. An estimated 655,000 people died from malaria in 2010, a 5% decrease from the 781,000 who died in 2009 according to the World Health Organization’s 2011 World Malaria Report, accounting for 2.23% of deaths worldwide. Ninety percent of malaria-related deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, with the majority of deaths being young children.

This map shows P. falciparum malaria parasite prevalence among children in Africa. In low areas (blue) we might see one or two infected children out of every 100, while in high areas (red) it might be more than 50. The map demonstrates how entrenched the disease remains throughout much of west and central Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. Credit: Malaria Atlas Project, University of Oxford

A press release issued today by the the Malaria Atlas Project said:

Malaria continues to exert an huge burden of illness and death worldwide but, after decades of neglect, the war against the disease has entered an unprecedented era: it is high on the policy agenda, international funding is beginning to translate into real increases in populations protected by bed nets and other key interventions, and a growing body of evidence points towards important reductions in illness and death.

The maps have been made freely available, along with a wide range of other malaria resources via the launch of a new online portal at www.map.ox.ac.uk.

Bottom line: The Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), funded mainly by the Wellcome Trust, has published in the Malaria Journal showing the prevalence of malaria around the globe. It includes a new suite of maps, which are freely available here.

Scientists catch malaria in the act of invading cells

Gene mashup appears to be promising weapon against malaria

British scientists say they have, for the first time, scientifically identified the facial expression of anxiety. They say it’s a look that involves scanning one’s surroundings – looking and listening – for the purpose of assessing risk. Dr. Adam Perkins and his team at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London conducted the research, which was published January 9, 2012 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Is he anxious or afraid or ... ? Edvard Munch's The Scream (1893). Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

For something so pervasive in the world – especially in the year 2012, when some people unaccountably seem anxious about doomsday scenarios – anxiety is not well understood. Perkins said:

No one knows exactly what anxiety is. However many animal studies link it to risk assessment behavior, suggesting anxiety can be explained as a defensive adaptation. We wanted to see if this was also the case in humans.

In other words, animal studies show that anxiety is linked to an environment producing a perceived threat. In animals, anxiety seems to be a way of dealing with the threat, by assessing it in the environment. That coping mechanism would naturally involve a heightened perception of the environment. These researchers wondered if anxious humans also reacted to their environment. They studied three groups.

Group One participants – 8 volunteers – heard the researchers describe specific scenarios that might elicit happiness, sadness, anger, disgust and surprise, as well as scenarios containing ambiguous (and presumably anxiety-provoking) threats. The researchers asked the participants to pose whatever facial expression seemed to fit each scenario. The participants did, and this video is a result:

Can you tell which faces in this video represent anxiety? If so, then you just did what 40 participants in Group Two were asked to do. They were asked to look at photos and videos of Group One’s posed facial expressions, then match the facial expressions back to the original selection of scenarios – and to give an emotion label (happy, sad, anxious, etc.) for each facial expression. The researchers said that Group Two matched facial expressions correctly in 89% of the time. In the case of the facial expression generated in response to the ambiguous threat scenario, they correctly matched it 90% of the time.

The researchers noted that the expression labeled as anxiety consisted of two plausible environmental-scanning behaviors: eye darts and head swivels. They also noted that eye darting and head swiveling was labeled as anxiety, not fear.

Not a photo from the study. What expression is this? Via Psychotherapy Brown Bag

The researchers then presented the emotion labels generated by Group Two to another 18 participants (Group Three), who matched the labels back to photographs of the facial expressions. This back-matching of labels to faces also linked anxiety to the environmental-scanning face rather than fear face.

The researchers concluded, therefore, that anxiety produces a distinct facial expression, which many recognize. Anxiety looks like eye darts and head swivels, both of which, the researchers noted, are behaviors designed to gather information about the environment.

The scientists noted that:

… the anxious facial expression appears to have both functional and social components – its characteristics help assess our surrounding environment, and communicate to others our emotional state.

Dr. Perkins added:

We hope our findings will in due course help doctors more effectively diagnose anxiety in their patients. We also think the findings may also help security personnel identify individuals engaged in wrongdoing by means of their anxious, risk assessing facial expression.

Bottom line: Dr. Adam Perkins and his team at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London have, for the first time, identified the facial expression of anxiety. This expression features darting eyes and a swiveling head, as people presumably try to see and hear better in an environment that might be threatening.

Via MedicalExpress

Science journalist Jennifer Ackerman is the author of the book Ah-choo! The uncommon life of your common cold!. She said that scientists used to think a cold worked just like a flu, which attacks and kills cells inside the body. But that’s not so. She told EarthSky:

Cold viruses aren’t causing our misery by tearing up our cells. They’re caused by the body’s own inflammatory response to the intruders. That’s what causes our nose to run and our throats to swell, but it also summons white blood cells, which will produce antibodies to that particular virus.

Image Credit: James Gathany

Here’s the good news. Ackerman said our body’s inflammatory response to a cold – which, to us, feels like a stuffed up nose – is really a sign that our immune system is working normally. She said that’s why products claiming to boost the immune system might not help when you’re in the grip of a bad cold.

Some of them may contain ingredients that have been shown in lab studies to effect elements of the immune system, But boosting any old part of the immune system is not always a good thing. You can actually end up boosting those very inflammatory agents that cause the symptoms of the cold, thereby aggravating the symptoms.

Ackerman said a number of scientists believe that colds and other illnesses may be integral to building the immune system, especially among children. Some studies have shown that children who are exposed to ‘microbial challenges’ early in life – colds included – suffer less from allergies and asthma later on. Research is ongoing, Ackerman said.

The evidence is all epidemiological and it’s important to understand that this is not necessarily cause and effect. There’s a correlation between kids who are born amidst great microbial challenges, kids who live on farms or who are in day care who have stuffy noses all the time, that they have less risk of later developing allergies and asthma than children who are not in those settings. It’s a correlation, it remains to be determined.

A lot of current cold research concerns prevention, Ackerman said. She said a cold vaccine has been elusive because there are hundreds of different cold viruses out there. She said that what they’d need to do is find something that all these viruses have in common that they can produce a vaccine against.

And even antibacterial hand lotions are mostly ineffective against viruses, she said. The best way to prevent a cold is to keep your hands away from your face. She told us:

It hasn’t happened yet, but one of the dreams of cold scientists is to have a genome-wide study looking at all of the genes that are involved the response to the common cold. A very interesting observation that scientist have made that about ¼ of people who are infected with a cold virus don’t actually come down with symptoms. There’s probably some kind of genetic difference, it would be very interesting to know what that is. It’s possible that they’re not making the normal amount of inflammatory mediators.

An FBI/FDA sting operation, targeting unscrupulous business practices in the emerging stem cell therapy market, resulted in the arrest of three U.S. citizens in the last days of 2011 and early 2012. Francisco Morales, 52, of Brownsville, TX., Alberto Ramon, 48, of Del Rio, TX., and Vincent Dammai, of Florence, S.C., have been arrested and are charged with ‘participating in a scheme to manufacture, distribute, and sell to the public stem cells and stem cell procedures that were not approved by the FDA.’ An outstanding warrant still remains for Lawrence Stowe, 58, of Dallas. The arrests – in what investigators said was a $1.5 million illegal scheme to market and sell stem cell treatments to patients with terminal diseases – marks another step in the emergence of the controversial stem cell therapies market.

Human embryonic stem cells. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The evolution of stem cell treatments has been spurred on by predictions of its usefulness, yet slowed not only by the initial controversy surrounding stem cells, but also by legal ambiguity. A breakthrough came in 1998, when researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, lead by James Thomson, were able to cultivate stem cells for the first time from human embryos grown in the laboratory. These cells have the capability to grow into any cell found in the human body, and their utility is wide. Possible treatments include cancer, spinal injuries, brain damage, heart disease, among others. Stem cells grown into bone marrow are already being used as a treatment of leukemia.

Stem cell research is permitted in the United States, but its funding is restricted at the federal level. These restrictions, which arose over concerns that stem cells were being grown in discarded human embryos, are slowly being eased. Alternative methods are being developed for growing stem cells, most notably extraction from adults by some means.

Despite this gain in recognition and research, stem cell treatment itself remains in an obscure legal position. Treatment is currently practiced on a large and growing number of people in the United States and abroad for a variety of ailments. Treatments stateside are generally offered for arthritis and different types of bone degeneration. Abroad, treatments are widely varied. Testimonies from patients found on treatment centers’ websites herald recoveries from conditions such as paralysis, brain injury, and blindness. The typical treatment consists of stem cells harvested from the adult’s own body being re-injected into the affected part of the body. Rick Perry, recent presidential candidate and governor of Texas, recently had some stem cell work done in Houston during a back operation.

Stem cell treatments have, to date, evaded FDA regulation. Because they are gleaned from the patients’ bodies, they do not constitute a drug, or a certified medical treatment. A common practice among stem cell therapists is to hold offices in the United States, while arranging for the patient to be transported abroad to undergo the treatment. The lack of oversight, as well as very expensive operations being performed, with little scientific investigation done into the effectiveness and possible side effects of these treatments, has naturally lead many to question this burgeoning market.

Those arrested in the FBI/FDA sting, recently arraigned, represent the first criminal action by the offices of the FBI and FDA to reel in the stem cell treatment market.

Their indictment accuses Morales of obtaining placental material through his mid-wife/stem cell treatment clinic in Del Rio, and then later selling it to a company in Arizona, called Global Laboratories. Global Laboratories then allegedly sent the materials to one of those arrested, Vincent Dammai, who is a professor in South Carolina, where, presumably, the stem cells would be cultivated and returned. According to the indictment, Morales and Global Laboratories, in conjunction, would arrange for Morales to perform stem cell treatments to patients in Mexico. This action can be interpreted as criminal, but many companies proudly operate under similar conditions.

It will prove interesting to see whether this action taken by the FBI/FDA will prove to be a first step in further regulation or if companies are able to fight this injunction in court.

Bottom line: An FBI/FDA sting operation, targeting unscrupulous business practices in the emerging stem cell therapy market, resulted in the arrest of three U.S. citizens in the last days of 2011 and early 2012. The arrests – in what investigators said was a $1.5 million illegal scheme to market and sell stem cell treatments to patients with terminal diseases – marks another step in the emergence of the controversial stem cell therapies market.

In summertime, it’s not uncommon to hear of physically fit young people – perhaps practicing on a football field, wearing heavy gear – fatally succumbing to the heat. Now researchers led by Dr. Susan Hamilton at Baylor College of Medicine say the so-called “couch potato pill” – heralded by some in 2008 as a way to build muscle and increase endurance without exercise – might reduce the number of deaths due to overheating.

The journal Nature Medicine published their work online yesterday (January 8, 2012).

Via Things We've Seen

Heat stroke is a form of hyperthermia in which the body temperature is elevated dramatically. Researchers say that even young, physically fit young people might have a gene mutation that makes them particularly sensitive to heat stroke.

The Baylor researchers have tested the “couch potato pill” – abbreviated as AICAR – with regard to heat stroke only in mice. They say it was effective in preventing death in these mice that were genetically engineered to be susceptible to heat stroke. Dr. Hamilton said:

When we gave AICAR to the (heat-sensitive) mice, it was 100 percent effective in preventing heat-induced deaths, even when we gave it no more than 10 minutes before the activity.

Thus, the finding has implications for anyone exposed to heat or with abnormal heat sensitivity, the researchers said.

The most important measures to prevent heat stroke are to avoid becoming dehydrated and to avoid vigorous physical activities in hot and humid weather. While it would make sense to tell people with a genetic predisposition for heat stroke to avoid exercise in the heat, Hamilton said that many youngsters might ignore such advice.

Bottom line: The “couch potato pill,” sometimes called “exercise in a pill” was heralded in 2008 as a way to build muscle and increase endurance without exercise. While those earlier claims have yet to be confirmed, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine say the drug – abbreviated as AICAR – might reduce the number of deaths due to overheating.

Via Baylor College of Medicine

How to ride out a heat wave

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and their partners are looking to the sea for new medicines. For example, they have found a new medicine from the sea that might – when used as a “helper drug” – let formally antibiotic resistant bacteria work to fight bacterial infections again. The drug was discovered during scientific research on corals, sponges and other marine organisms. The scientists hope that the new drug may be useful as a helper drug that could be prescribed along with antibiotics that have lost their effectiveness.

This new medicine works by destroying the shield that anti-biotic resistant bacteria use to defend themselves against antibiotic medicines. The video below explains more.

Scientists are finding new antibiotics from the sea as well. They’ve extracted chemicals from corals and sponges that fight some of the worst infectious bacteria.

That’s good news for us at this time of year, since people get sick more often in the winter, when they tend to stay indoors where they’re more likely to spread germs to one another.

When the illness is caused by a bacterial infection, doctors will often prescribe antibiotic medicines to help people fight off the infection. Unfortunately, some antibiotic medicines have lost their effectiveness over time because bacteria can quickly adapt and become resistant to the drugs.

You can learn more about NOAA’s research on medicines from the sea at the Ocean Today website.

NOAA scientists and partners have discovered a new drug from the sea.

MIT discovery: A drug to cure nearly any virus

Robert Lawrence on antibiotic resistance and livestock

Peter Moeller has discovered a bacteria-fighting sea sponge

About one in every 10 people appears to be more attractive to mosquitoes than everyone else. Why? No one knows exactly why, but genetics are thought to play a role: if your mom or dad was a mosquito magnet, you might be, too. Other factors include your diet, substances on your skin such as perfumes, soaps, cosmetics and deodorants, and how your particular body chemistry manifests on your skin surface. According to a paper published on December 28, 2011 in the online journal PLoS ONE, one answer for a particular mosquito might relate to the abundance and diversity of bacterial communities on your skin. Since this mosquito is key to malaria transmission, the researchers hope to shed light on new ways to prevent malaria.

Anopheles Gambiae mosquitos - which play an important role in spreading malaria - are attracted to individuals with more bacteria, yet less diverse bacteria, on their skin. Image via Wikimedia Commons

These researchers conducted experiments with the Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto mosquito. They found that individuals with a higher abundance but lower diversity of bacteria on their skin were more attractive to this particular mosquito.

The researchers, led by Niels Verhulst of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, speculated that individuals with more diverse bacterial communities on their skin might host some bacteria that emit compounds to interfere with mosquito attraction. So having more diverse bacteria on the skin would make these individuals less attractive to mosquitoes, and therefore at a lower risk to contracting malaria. The researchers said they hope this work will lead to the development of personalized methods for malaria prevention.

By the way, not all mosquitoes bite. Only the female mosquitoes do. It’s been found that the females need human blood to develop fertile eggs.

Bottom line: A particular mosquito – the Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto mosquito – was found in experiments to be attracted to people with more bacteria, but fewer different kinds of bacteria, on their skin. This information might lead to individualized preventative measures for malaria, since this mosquito is key in malaria transmission.

Joel Breman thinks world can eliminate malaria by 2050

What causes the red bump around a mosquito bite?

Good news in the war on germs. Researchers have deciphered a new chemical code that disease-carrying bacteria use to rally themselves. They call it Ax21, a protein made inside the bacterial cell, processed to generate a signal and then secreted outside the bacterium. The knowledge that bacteria use Ax21 to communicate is expected to lead to new methods of controlling bacterial diseases of plants and animals. EarthSky’s Jorge Salazar spoke to plant scientist Pamela Ronald of University of California, Davis, who led the study.

You’ve compared the bacteria using this newly found code to people using the social media service Twitter. What are bacteria tweeting?

Bacteria are tweeting their location and their intent for group action.

The signals that the bacteria secrete are somewhat like hashtags that people will put on their Twitter communications, so that other people who are interested in taking the same action – who have the same target – can congregate together and more efficiently carry out that action. And it allows an action to occur from a group that could not have possibly happen by an individual alone.

Pamela Ronald studies the way bacteria communicate with each other.

So bacteria send out these signals. It’s sort of like enemy communication that allows them to mobilize group action. And when there are enough signals, that means that there are enough bacteria to completely change from benign organisms to being fierce invaders. They will then be able to coordinate attacks on their targets.

What are their targets?

They could be plants, animals and even humans that can become very susceptible to these bacterial infections.

The particular disease that we looked at infects rice crops. It can cause a 50 percent reduction in yield.

The hope is that now that we understand the strategy, with which these bacteria can communicate, we can develop methods to really disrupt their infection process.

How does this research compare to that done by Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffman, who won the Noble Prize in 2011 in medicine and physiology for similar work with immune receptors?

It’s a really exciting time in plant and animal immunology. Most plants are virtually defenseless when these bacteria attack them, using this coordinated communication. The exception are those plants that carry an immune receptor that can intercept the message produced by the invading microbe. This receptor is called XA21. It belongs to a very large class of immune receptors that are found in both plants and animals.

Salmonella bacteria. Image Credit: NIH

The importance of these receptors is reflected by the Noble Prizes received by professors Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffman. They discovered these type of receptors in flies and mice.

We know now that in plants and in higher animals, these immune receptors detect some components of microbes that are highly conserved. And so once the plant or animal detects these, it can then launch an immune response are highly conserved. And so once the plant or animal detects these, it can then launch an immune response.

What’s the most important thing you want people today to know about bacteria that signal each other?