Male mice abandon their homicidal tendencies to become doting parents and accomplished homemakers when a gene is removed from the region of the brain that detects pheromones, new research shows. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Most animals have sex-specific behavior, and male mice are no exception. They make male-specific grunts, they attempt to mate with nearby females and, worst of all, they commit infanticide.
New data presented November 18 by neuroscientist Catherine Dulac showed that removing a gene called Trpc2 from male mice made them act like females. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.INFO The protein this gene encodes is crucial in the brain for animals to sense pheromones.
Last year, Dulac and colleagues showed the opposite: Females who lack the Trpc2 gene act like males. Irrefutable video evidence showed a female mutant mouse carousing in a cage full of either female or male mice persistently (if unsuccessfully) attempted to sow her wild oats, the team reported in Nature.
“I have to say, the first time I saw these results I just couldn’t really understand what was going on,” Dulac says of the discovery. That observation led the researchers to propose that females had the right connections of neurons in their brains to act like males, and all it took was the right switch — in this case, the lack of Trpc2 — to turn on the male behavior circuit.
In the new research, the scientists tested a mutant male’s maternal instincts by putting him in a cage with a litter of pups. Normally, the male mouse would kill the unfamiliar pups. But while observers waited for the carnage to ensue, the mutant male set about building a nest, then gently picked up each helpless pup and moved it to the new home.
His display of unexpected female behavior showed that in mice, the basis for both male and female behavior probably exists in each animal’s brain, Dulac says. It’s just a matter of activating the right collection of neurons. — Laura Sanders
Creativity may have genetic roots
A study comparing performing artists to people with little or no experience in the arts found that many of the artists inherited variants of two genes involved in novelty-seeking, attention, memory and problem solving. The variants appeared in only one of the non-artists.
These particular genes may influence the development of creative achievement in at least some individuals, across a variety of fields, proposes a team led by Kevin Dunbar and Laura Petitto, both of the University of Toronto.
Variants of the two genes were found in 15 of 58 professional dancers, musicians and actors — about one-quarter of them— versus only one of 36 comparison individuals. The genes, called DRD4 and COMT, influence transmission of dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain.
“Combinations of genetic variants, rather than specific genetic variants, may be linked to pursuing and achieving expertise in creative activities,” Petitto says.
Brain imaging studies of the same participants indicate that, relative to the comparison group, performing artists display much more activity in a frontal brain region critical for remembering and manipulating different pieces of information at once. This disparity may partly result from intense, long-term practice of creative endeavors by performing artists, in addition to any genetic advantage, Petitto says.
The Toronto researchers plan to look for additional gene variants linked to creative expertise. They also hope to include acclaimed creative virtuosos in their experiments. — Bruce Bower
Babies care for mom
Mothers spend years caring for their young and, it turns out, may get some benefits in return. New findings from University of Richmond researchers show that babies contribute to the long-term cognitive health of their moms.
Previous studies have shown that the hormonal fluctuations that occur during pregnancy, birth and lactation work to remodel the female brain, increasing the size of neurons in some regions and producing structural changes in others.
In recent work with rats, psychologist Craig Kinsley and his students found that the brains of aged females who had given birth possessed fewer deposits of amyloid precursor protein, or APP, a harbinger of Alzheimer’s disease, than did age-matched rats who had not given birth. His group then looked at the cognitive effects of motherhood in rats that were bred to express high levels of APP as they matured. Half of the females were allowed to mate and raise pups, the other half remained virgins.
Behavioral studies showed that the moms performed better at memory and spatial tasks, such as catching prey, than the non-moms. When checking the levels of APP in the brains of the aged females, scientists found that the mother rats had an 11-fold decrease in the amount of protein in their brains.
The new study also showed that the brains of mom rats had higher numbers of estrogen receptors, which are thought to provide some protective benefits in the aging female brain, Kinsley said.
“People often focus on the time and care that mothers give to their young, but this suggests that babies are, in turn, contributing to the long-term welfare of the mother,” he says. — Susan Gaidos
A blinking minute
Humans blink 13,500 times a day on average, but not necessarily randomly, new data from rats suggest.
People blink far more than what is required to maintain moist, healthy eyes. “Spontaneous blinking is not just to maintain a tear film on the cornea. There’s something more there,” says neuroscientist Kyle Horn of Stony Brook University in New York.
Horn found that, in rats, the time increments between blinks vary widely. A rat could blink several times in quick succession and then wait a long period of time before the next blink. But closer analyses of the data showed that an overall pattern of blinks was repeated every 10 minutes.
“Something purely random is not that easy to generate,” says Horn. He and his group think that a relatively simple brain system may control blinking. By mapping the pattern of blinking, the researchers hope to figure out what that system is.
Horn’s team also tested whether factors other than time could make blinking non-random. They found that rats blink more frequently right before and after they groom themselves.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
lines 5.lin.001 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
As a percentage of family income, money spent by U.S. women with breast cancer is much greater for low-income patients than for those who are well off, according to research presented December 12 in Texas at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Public health researcher Lisa Lines of the consulting firm Boston Health Economics in Waltham, Mass., and her colleagues analyzed expenditures made by 806 breast cancer patients from 1996 to 2005. Out-of-pocket costs included insurance premiums, payments to meet deductibles, co-pays and any other payments made to meet medical or drug costs associated with treatment.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.biz
The average annual out-of-pocket expenditure was about $2,300 per breast cancer patient, about half of which was spent on prescription drugs.
“Breast cancer is actually not the most expensive cancer for out-of-pocket expenditures,” Lines says. This and other data suggest that breast cancer costs patients more than colon or prostate cancer, but less than lung cancer, she says.
But breast cancer has a large proportion of people with a “high burden,” she says. The researchers classified patients as having a high burden when their out-of-pocket costs for coping with the cancer exceeded 10 percent of the family’s income. Roughly 70 percent of low-income breast cancer patients fell into the high-burden category in this analysis, compared with about 15 percent of middle-income and less than 5 percent of high-income breast cancer patients — apparently the result of better insurance, she says.
Cancer patients in general are disproportionately affected by a high out-of-pocket burden. That’s because many cancers have come to be treated more like a chronic disease than they used to be and are treated on an outpatient basis, Lines says. In the past, most cancer patients were treated in hospitals, where major medical insurance covered much of the cost. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Public health researcher Lisa Lines of the consulting firm Boston Health Economics in Waltham, Mass., and her colleagues analyzed expenditures made by 806 breast cancer patients from 1996 to 2005. Out-of-pocket costs included insurance premiums, payments to meet deductibles, co-pays and any other payments made to meet medical or drug costs associated with treatment.http://Louis-J-Sheehan.biz
The average annual out-of-pocket expenditure was about $2,300 per breast cancer patient, about half of which was spent on prescription drugs.
“Breast cancer is actually not the most expensive cancer for out-of-pocket expenditures,” Lines says. This and other data suggest that breast cancer costs patients more than colon or prostate cancer, but less than lung cancer, she says.
But breast cancer has a large proportion of people with a “high burden,” she says. The researchers classified patients as having a high burden when their out-of-pocket costs for coping with the cancer exceeded 10 percent of the family’s income. Roughly 70 percent of low-income breast cancer patients fell into the high-burden category in this analysis, compared with about 15 percent of middle-income and less than 5 percent of high-income breast cancer patients — apparently the result of better insurance, she says.
Cancer patients in general are disproportionately affected by a high out-of-pocket burden. That’s because many cancers have come to be treated more like a chronic disease than they used to be and are treated on an outpatient basis, Lines says. In the past, most cancer patients were treated in hospitals, where major medical insurance covered much of the cost. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Saturday, April 11, 2009
flu 1.flu.1 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Getting plenty of vitamin D — more than diet can offer — appears to provide potent protection against colds, flu and even pneumonia, a new study reports. Although the amount of protection varies by season, the trend is solid: As the amount of vitamin D circulating in blood climbs, risk of upper respiratory tract infections falls. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
Though that’s not too surprising (SN: 11/11/06, p. 312), the researchers found one unexpected trend: “In people with preexisting lung disease, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — or COPD, low levels of vitamin D act like an effect modifier,” says Adit Ginde, an emergency room physician at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine in Aurora who led the study. The findings appear in the Feb. 23 Archives of Internal Medicine. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
In people with lung disease, he says, low levels of the sunshine vitamin “magnify many-fold” the apparent vulnerability to infection seen in people with healthy lungs. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
“It’s well-documented that at the turn of the century, kids with rickets [due to vitamin D deficiency] had much higher risk of upper respiratory tract infections,” notes Michael Holick of Boston University. “And treating them with vitamin D lowered that risk. We also know that your immune function is carefully regulated by vitamin D.” For instance, he notes, vitamin D controls the activity of the immune cells that are responsible for destroying infectious germs.
“It’s nice to see that it’s now being documented” with nonanecdotal data, Holick says.
Ginde and his colleagues correlated vitamin D levels of nearly 19,000 adults participating in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey with their recent health. NHANES periodically samples a random cross section of the U.S. population; people are selected to be representative of the nation as a whole.
Although no minimum vitamin D level ideal for health has been established, there is a general consensus that people ought to have at least 30 nanograms per milliliter of blood — sometimes described as about 80 nanomoles per liter (SN: 10/16/04, p. 248). In this NHANES data set, only about 45 percent of the population had that minimum. So the researchers separated the NHANES participants into three groups: those with 30 or more ng/ml, those with gross deficiency (less than 10 ng/ml of vitamin D) and those in between.
In every season, people in the lowest vitamin D group were about 36 percent more likely to be suffering a respiratory infection than those in the highest group. Infection risks for people in the middle group fell between those rates.
But low levels of vitamin D more than doubled the risk of respiratory infection for people with COPD — and boosted it almost sixfold in people with asthma — compared with participants who had normal lung function and were in the highest vitamin D group.
Also disturbing, Ginde points out that the NHANES data he analyzed had been collected about 15 years ago, when almost twice as many people as today had vitamin D levels above 30 ng/ml.
Though the body can make plenty of vitamin D as a result of sun exposure, people are spending less time outdoors and covering up when they do go out, so natural vitamin D production has been falling. Ginde and his colleagues plan to supplement high-risk populations during winter months with high doses of vitamin D to see if those people have reduced infection rates compared with untreated people. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
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Comments 6
* Wow. I wonder ... when I first started using light boxes for winter blues my winter colds just quit happening. I'd always had four or five each winter, the usual starting with a sore throat. I built a _lot_ of light boxes (four to eight 4' fluorescent tubes, at the time, with electronic ballasts. They're a lot smaller now.
Since I started using them for many hours, really to extend my "daytime" for the dark half of the year -- going on fifteen years -- I get maybe one cold.
I'd figured maybe it was using the lights, or maybe I had gotten old enough to have met all the possible cold viruses. Maybe ....
Hank Roberts Hank Roberts
Mar. 2, 2009 at 7:21pm
* The link to the UCSD/GrassrootsHealth series can be found on http://www.grassrootshealth.net/
Leo Baggerly
Leo Baggerly Leo Baggerly
Mar. 1, 2009 at 8:56am
* http://tinyurl.com/auy649
Sorry, here is the link to the University of California You Tube series of Vitamin D presentations. Do watch them to the end as there is a Q&A session that also has useful information.
Edward Hutchinson Edward Hutchinson
Feb. 24, 2009 at 4:23pm
* Generally speaking every 1000iu/daily D3 raises status 10ng/mL or 25nmol/l.
The ideal vitamin d status associated with least disease incidence is 60ng/mL ~ 150nmol/l.
For those of us living above latitude 50n with current status around 30nmol/l around 5000iu may be needed to reach optimum.
Grassrootshealth.org do a chart presenting Garlands data "Disease Incidence Prevention by Serum 25(OH)D Level"
They have also put a nice series of 30minutes lectures by Garland, Trump, Heaney and Gorham on various aspects of Vitamin d in relation to cancer incidence, prevention and treatment. There will be another on Diabetes soon.
Edward Hutchinson Edward Hutchinson Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Feb. 24, 2009 at 4:16pm
* The recommended daily intake, now usually referred to as "dietary reference intakes," is 200 international units (5 micrograms) per day through age 50, then 400 IU from age 51 to 70, and 600 IU for people 70 and older. I use the IU values because that's how vitamin D is usually reported on product labels. Ginde is currently talking about administering somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 IU per day throughout the winter months. In other words: 25 to 75 micrograms per day.
Janet Raloff Janet Raloff
Feb. 24, 2009 at 3:43pm
* It would be useful to know what the "high dose" that Ginde will be using for high-risk populations and how it compares to the 5 - 15 mcg (based on age) that NIH shows as Adequate Intakes (AIs) for Vitamin D (http://dietary-supplements.info.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind.asp).
Though that’s not too surprising (SN: 11/11/06, p. 312), the researchers found one unexpected trend: “In people with preexisting lung disease, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — or COPD, low levels of vitamin D act like an effect modifier,” says Adit Ginde, an emergency room physician at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine in Aurora who led the study. The findings appear in the Feb. 23 Archives of Internal Medicine. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
In people with lung disease, he says, low levels of the sunshine vitamin “magnify many-fold” the apparent vulnerability to infection seen in people with healthy lungs. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
“It’s well-documented that at the turn of the century, kids with rickets [due to vitamin D deficiency] had much higher risk of upper respiratory tract infections,” notes Michael Holick of Boston University. “And treating them with vitamin D lowered that risk. We also know that your immune function is carefully regulated by vitamin D.” For instance, he notes, vitamin D controls the activity of the immune cells that are responsible for destroying infectious germs.
“It’s nice to see that it’s now being documented” with nonanecdotal data, Holick says.
Ginde and his colleagues correlated vitamin D levels of nearly 19,000 adults participating in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey with their recent health. NHANES periodically samples a random cross section of the U.S. population; people are selected to be representative of the nation as a whole.
Although no minimum vitamin D level ideal for health has been established, there is a general consensus that people ought to have at least 30 nanograms per milliliter of blood — sometimes described as about 80 nanomoles per liter (SN: 10/16/04, p. 248). In this NHANES data set, only about 45 percent of the population had that minimum. So the researchers separated the NHANES participants into three groups: those with 30 or more ng/ml, those with gross deficiency (less than 10 ng/ml of vitamin D) and those in between.
In every season, people in the lowest vitamin D group were about 36 percent more likely to be suffering a respiratory infection than those in the highest group. Infection risks for people in the middle group fell between those rates.
But low levels of vitamin D more than doubled the risk of respiratory infection for people with COPD — and boosted it almost sixfold in people with asthma — compared with participants who had normal lung function and were in the highest vitamin D group.
Also disturbing, Ginde points out that the NHANES data he analyzed had been collected about 15 years ago, when almost twice as many people as today had vitamin D levels above 30 ng/ml.
Though the body can make plenty of vitamin D as a result of sun exposure, people are spending less time outdoors and covering up when they do go out, so natural vitamin D production has been falling. Ginde and his colleagues plan to supplement high-risk populations during winter months with high doses of vitamin D to see if those people have reduced infection rates compared with untreated people. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.US
* |
* Comment
Found in: Body & Brain
Share & Save
* slashdot slashdot
* digg digg
* facebook facebook
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* del.icio.us del.icio.us
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* technorati technorati
Comments 6
* Wow. I wonder ... when I first started using light boxes for winter blues my winter colds just quit happening. I'd always had four or five each winter, the usual starting with a sore throat. I built a _lot_ of light boxes (four to eight 4' fluorescent tubes, at the time, with electronic ballasts. They're a lot smaller now.
Since I started using them for many hours, really to extend my "daytime" for the dark half of the year -- going on fifteen years -- I get maybe one cold.
I'd figured maybe it was using the lights, or maybe I had gotten old enough to have met all the possible cold viruses. Maybe ....
Hank Roberts Hank Roberts
Mar. 2, 2009 at 7:21pm
* The link to the UCSD/GrassrootsHealth series can be found on http://www.grassrootshealth.net/
Leo Baggerly
Leo Baggerly Leo Baggerly
Mar. 1, 2009 at 8:56am
* http://tinyurl.com/auy649
Sorry, here is the link to the University of California You Tube series of Vitamin D presentations. Do watch them to the end as there is a Q&A session that also has useful information.
Edward Hutchinson Edward Hutchinson
Feb. 24, 2009 at 4:23pm
* Generally speaking every 1000iu/daily D3 raises status 10ng/mL or 25nmol/l.
The ideal vitamin d status associated with least disease incidence is 60ng/mL ~ 150nmol/l.
For those of us living above latitude 50n with current status around 30nmol/l around 5000iu may be needed to reach optimum.
Grassrootshealth.org do a chart presenting Garlands data "Disease Incidence Prevention by Serum 25(OH)D Level"
They have also put a nice series of 30minutes lectures by Garland, Trump, Heaney and Gorham on various aspects of Vitamin d in relation to cancer incidence, prevention and treatment. There will be another on Diabetes soon.
Edward Hutchinson Edward Hutchinson Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Feb. 24, 2009 at 4:16pm
* The recommended daily intake, now usually referred to as "dietary reference intakes," is 200 international units (5 micrograms) per day through age 50, then 400 IU from age 51 to 70, and 600 IU for people 70 and older. I use the IU values because that's how vitamin D is usually reported on product labels. Ginde is currently talking about administering somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 IU per day throughout the winter months. In other words: 25 to 75 micrograms per day.
Janet Raloff Janet Raloff
Feb. 24, 2009 at 3:43pm
* It would be useful to know what the "high dose" that Ginde will be using for high-risk populations and how it compares to the 5 - 15 mcg (based on age) that NIH shows as Adequate Intakes (AIs) for Vitamin D (http://dietary-supplements.info.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind.asp).
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