A new national study suggests that preschool-aged children are likely to have a lower risk for obesity if they regularly engage in one or more of three specific household routines: eating dinner as a family, getting adequate sleep and limiting their weekday television viewing time. The study showed that 4-year-olds living in homes with all three routines had an almost 40 percent lower prevalence of obesity than did children living in homes that practiced none of these routines.
N-acetylserotonin, the immediate precursor to melatonin, activates the same growth circuits in the brain as BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor). The results have implications for how some antidepressants function and suggest that the molecules and pathways involved in mood regulation and circadian rhythms are intertwined.
The brains of infants who die of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) produce low levels of serotonin, a brain chemical that conveys messages between cells and plays a vital role in regulating breathing, heart rate, and sleep, researchers report.
In a study of 36 newly diagnosed men with severe obstructive sleep apnea and 31 healthy controls, significant gray matter concentration deficits were found in multiple brain areas of men with OSA, including limbic structures, prefrontal cortices and the cerebellum. These changes in brain structure may be related to problems such as memory impairment and executive dysfunction that are observed in OSA patients.
A new study suggests that healthy older adults without sleep disorders can expect to have a reduced “sleep need” and to be less sleepy during the day than healthy young adults.
The brains of people under anesthesia respond to stimuli as they do in the deepest part of sleep — lending credence to a developing theory of consciousness and suggesting a new method to assess loss of consciousness in conditions such as coma.
Chronic and severely stressful situations, like those connected to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, have been associated with smaller volumes in “stress sensitive” brain regions, such as the cingulate region of the cerebral cortex and the hippocampus, a brain region involved in memory formation.
Cognitive fluctuations, or episodes when train of thought temporarily is lost, are more likely to occur in older persons who are developing Alzheimer’s disease than in their healthy peers, according to scientists. Cognitive fluctuations include excessive daytime sleepiness, staring into space and disorganized or illogical thinking.
A robust new technique for screening drugs’ effects on zebrafish behavior is pointing scientists toward unexpected compounds and pathways that may govern sleep and wakefulness in humans. Among their more intriguing findings: Various anti-inflammatory agents in the immune system, long known to induce sleep during infection, may also shape normal sleep/wake cycles.
Obstructive sleep apnea adversely affects glucose control in patients with type 2 diabetes, according to a new study.
Sleeping is known to help humans stabilize information and tasks learned during the preceding day. Now, researchers have found that sleep has similar effects upon learning in starlings, a discovery that will open up future research into how the brain learns and preserves information. The research fills an important gap between human behavioral findings and animal experiments of how the brain changes after learning and sleep.
Researchers have developed a “smart coating” that helps surgical implants bond more closely with bone and ward off infection.
Researchers have shown for the first time that certain viruses are capable of forming complex biofilm-like assemblies, similar to bacterial biofilms. These extracellular infectious structures may protect viruses from the immune system and enable them to spread efficiently from cell to cell. “Viral biofilms” would appear to be a major mechanism of propagation for certain viruses. They are therefore emerging as new and particularly attractive therapeutic targets.
The complex chain of metabolic events in bacteria that lead to fatal diseases such as tuberculosis may be better understood using mathematical models, according to a new article.
A new study conducted in a multi-country HIV treatment program in sub-Saharan Africa has found that pregnancy rates increase in HIV-infected women after they start antiretroviral therapy.
For the first time, scientists have directly measured the energy associated with the expulsion of viral DNA, a pivotal discovery toward fully understanding the physical mechanisms that control viral infection and designing drugs to interfere with the process.
A new vaccine to prevent the deadly malaria infection has shown promise to protect the most vulnerable patients — young children — against the disease, according to an international team of researchers. The vaccine seems to replicate in children the natural protective immunity that adults develop after years of intense exposure to malaria. A child dies of malaria every 30 seconds, according to the WHO.
Groundbreaking research could lead to the development of more potent drugs or a vaccine for malaria. Scientists have scored a world first in successfully using transcriptional profiling to uncover hitherto unknown gene expression (activity) patterns in malaria.
High-coverage human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccinations among adolescents and young women may result in a rapid reduction of genital warts, cervical cell abnormalities, and diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, researchers report in a new study. Some of these genital abnormalities are precursors of cervical, vulvar and vaginal cancers.
Bacteria that infect chronic wounds can be deadly to maggot “bio-surgeons” used to treat the lesions, show researchers. The findings could lead to more effective treatment of wounds and the development of novel antibiotics.
Researchers have synthesized the entire protein that is responsible for life-threatening malaria in pregnant women and their unborn children. The protein known as VAR2CSA enables malaria parasites to accumulate in the placenta and can therefore potentially be used as the main component in a vaccine to trigger antibodies that protect pregnant women against malaria. The research team is now planning to test the efficacy of the protein-based vaccine on humans.
New research may help more smokers keep their New Year’s resolution by helping them quit smoking. Extended use of a nicotine patch — 24 weeks versus the standard eight weeks recommended by manufacturers — boosts the number of smokers who maintain their cigarette abstinence and helps more of those who backslide into the habit while wearing the patch, according to a new study.
New video footage of a virus infecting cells is challenging what researchers have long believed about how viruses spread, suggesting that scientists may be able to create new drugs to tackle some viruses.
Ancient human teeth are telling secrets that may relate to modern-day health: Some stressful events that occurred early in development are linked to shorter lifespans. “Prehistoric remains are providing strong, physical evidence that people who acquired tooth enamel defects while in the womb or early childhood tended to die earlier, even if they survived to adulthood,” says anthropologist George Armelagos, who recently published the first summary of prehistoric evidence for the Barker hypothesis.
The first head-to-head comparison of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies produced from plants versus the same antibodies produced from mammalian cells has shown that plant-produced antibodies can fight infection equally well. Scientists conducted the comparison as a test of the potential for treating disease in developing nations with the significantly less expensive plant-based production technique.
