Archive for the ‘Recent Studies’ Category

Had a “senior moment” lately? You know, those sudden, momentary lapses when you just can’t seem to remember the most common things. For most of us, we will experience what physicians term normal cognitive aging. Now, Columbia University researchers say that elevated blood glucose levels that occur naturally when we age may contribute to age-related cognitive decline. “This is news even for people without diabetes since blood glucose levels tend to rise as we grow older. Whether through physical exercise, diet or drugs, our research suggests that improving glucose metabolism could help some of us avert the cognitive slide that occurs in many of us as we age,” reported the lead investigator. Although regularly checking your blood sugar level isn’t recommended for non-diabetics, daily exercise is recommended for everyone (especially diabetics) because it contributes to normalization of blood glucose.

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Is it new year resolutions time again? Researchers from Norway report that patients who were scheduled for colonoscopies around the December-January holiday season were one and a half times more likely to keep their appointments. Similarly, patients who were given medical appointments in the weeks immediately subsequent to their birthdays had higher attendance rates. The researchers believe that reminders of aging triggered by annual milestones may be the underlying mechanism for the increased compliance. This certainly sounds logical. Screening programs - and physicians at large - should keep this in mind as a cost-effective way of improving patient compliance.

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New research from San Francisco State University is thought to be the first to show that sighted and blind people use the same facial expressions in response to certain emotional states. By studying both sighted and blind Olympic athletes the researchers found that 85 percent of silver medalists, regardless of visual ability, showed the same “social smile”, where only the mouth smiles - compared with a “real” or Duchenne smile (named after the 19th century French neurologist who discovered that a smile which results from true happiness involves not only the mouth but also the eyes). “Individuals blind from birth could not have learned to control their emotions in this way through visual learning so there must be another mechanism,” said the researchers. This is why they believe that some facial expressions may be intrinsic, not learned.

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The American Chemical Society reports new evidence that humans can make their own salicylic acid (SA), the compound largely responsible for aspirin’s effects on pain, fever, and inflammation. SA is a naturally occurring substance that can be obtained directly from eating fruits and vegetables. Researchers have previously shown that vegetarians have much higher levels of SA in their bodies (sometimes as high as in those who take low doses of aspirin). Now, the same research group claims that new evidence suggest that our bodies can actually manufacture SA from compounds we consume in our diet. Could SA be one of the chemicals responsible for the health benefits of a vegetarian diet? Numerous studies have shown that vegetarians seem to have a lower risk of obesity, coronary heart disease (which can cause heart attacks), high blood pressure, and diabetes.

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New findings from Wake Forest University warn against the potential risk of increased fractures in women who take the diabetic drugs Actos (Takeda Pharmaceuticals) and Avandia (Glaxo Smith Kline), which help to lower blood sugar. Research results showed that the use of these two medications significantly increased the risk of fractures among women (men were not affected) with type 2 diabetes, and was associated with decreased bone mineral density of the lumbar spine and the hip.  In fact, the risk of hip fractures in women nearly doubled.  As of 2006, there were nearly 2 million women in the US taking these drugs.

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Happiness can be infectious, and now researchers from the University of California San Diego say they can document it. By looking at years of data collected from the Framingham Heart Study, researchers looked at self-reported happiness ratings and found out that happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. The study found that you are 15% more likely to be happy if a direct connection is happy, 10% if a friend of a friend is happy, and 6% if it’s a friend of a friend of a friend. Sadness, too, can spread, albeit more slowly.

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Last month physicians in Germany reported that a man co-infected with leukemia and HIV is free of both diseases two years after receiving a bone marrow transplant. The excitement centers around the use of bone marrow from a donor who has natural immunity to the HIV virus. Approximately one in 1,000 Europeans and Americans have an inherited genetic mutation which prevents HIV from attaching itself to our immune cells. This is a very unique case in that a matched donor just happens to be one of those who have immunity to HIV. However, researchers at UC Davis are actively working on a cure by playing on the same idea - by replacing HIV-infected individuals’ immune systems with genetically engineered stem cells that are resistent to the HIV virus.

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Folic acid, or folate, is a vitamin that is currently recommended to pregnant women to reduce the risk of congenital abnormalities in newborns. However, according to an article in the latest Archives of Disease in Childhood, researchers have concerns that folic acid may actually increase the risk of respiratory illness in children. After studying more than 32,000 infants, researchers found that those with mothers who had taken folic acid supplements during the first three months of pregnancy had higher risk of wheezing and other respiratory complaints in the first 18 months. Scientists speculate that folic acid may cause airways to become inflammed. Further studies will be required before any change in recommendations is made. Until then, folic acid remains a recommended supplement during pregnancy.

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New insight into Alzheimer’s disease was reported by researchers at the Karolinska Institute this week. Scientists studying mouse models of the disease showed that when mice were fed with fast food products high in fat, sugar and cholesterol, they developed more “brain tangles” that lead to development of Alzheimer’s. These tangles of protein that develope in the brain are one of the hallmarks of the disease. Even though this is a mouse study, and the results may not necessarily be translated to humans, it’s yet another reason to consume less fast food and processed foods.

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Scientists are debunking the belief that sperm with longer tails (and therefore are capable of producing more propulsion activity) are evolutionarily favored. New thinking suggests that because sperm are so small and relatively slow moving, they operate on very different hydrodynamic terms than we do at human size. Researchers say that it’s not only the size of the tail that matters, but also the size of the sperm’s head, which can produce a significant amount of drag that can slow them down. Therefore, just because a sperm has a large tail does not mean it can swim faster.

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