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Health News
Washington February 3:
Researchers led by one of Indian origin have uncovered many genes influenced by the male and female sex hormones testosterone and estrogen that, in turn, govern quite a few particular type of male and female behaviours in mice.
Hormones shape our bodies, make us fertile, excite our most basic urges, and as scientists have known for years, they govern the behaviours that separate men from women. A team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) selectively turned many of these genes off one by one and found they could manipulate individual behaviours in the mice, like their sex drive, desire to pick fights, or willingness to spend extra time caring for their young.
“It’s as if you can deconstruct a social behavior into genetic components,” said Nirao Shah, MD, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Anatomy at UCSF who led the research. “Each gene regulates a few components of a behavior without affecting other aspects of male and female behavior. In addition to illuminating the role of genes in male and female behaviour, Shah said, the results also have greater implications: If male and female behaviours can be broken down into individual component parts, what other complex behaviours could similarly be deconstructed?
Identifying how genetic differences in our brains account for the differences in our behaviour may also be a starting point for understanding how to better address human mental illness and neurodegenerative conditions in which such gender differences exist. For example, autism is four times more common in males than in females. “Some of the genes we have identified in our study have indeed been implicated in various human disorders that are found in sex-skewed ratios,” said Shah.
“We won’t immediately find all the answers to these disorders based on this research alone, but in the future, it might indeed help to identify more informed ways of treating such conditions,” Shah added. The study has been recently published in the journal Cell.
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Source :
Punjab Mail Online
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News Date :
February 3
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Washington February 3:
A brief 10-minute massage helps reduce inflammation in muscle, a new study has found. According to Justin Crane from McMaster University, as a non-drug therapy, massage holds the potential to help not just bone-weary athletes but those with inflammation-related chronic conditions like arthritis or muscular dystrophy.
While massage is well accepted as a therapy for relieving muscle tension and pain, the researchers delved deeper to find it also triggers biochemical sensors that can send inflammation-reducing signals to muscle cells. In addition, massage signals muscle to build more mitochondria, the power centres of cells that play an important role in healing. “The main thing, and what is novel about our study, is that no one has ever looked inside the muscle to see what is happening with massage, no one looked at the biochemical effects or what might be going on in the muscle itself,” Crane said.
“We have shown the muscle senses that it is being stretched and this appears to reduce the cells’ inflammatory response. “As a consequence, massage may be beneficial for recovery from injury,” he said. For their study, the researchers followed 11 men in their twenties. On their first visit, the men’s exercise capacity was assessed. Two weeks later, the men cycled on a bicycle for more than 70 minutes, to a point of exhaustion when they couldn````t cycle any more. They then rested for 10 minutes.
While resting, a massage therapist lightly applied massage oil to both legs, and then performed massage for 10 minutes on one leg using a variety of techniques commonly used in rehabilitation. Muscle biopsies were done on both legs and repeated 2.5 hours later, after which the researchers found reduced inflammation in the massaged leg. Crane admits being surprised that just 10 minutes of massage had such a profound effect. “I didn’t think that little bit of massage could produce that remarkable of a change, especially since the exercise was so robust. Seventy minutes of exercise compared to 10 of massage, it is clearly potent," Crane said.
The results hint that massage therapy blunts muscle pain by the same biological mechanisms as most pain medications and could be an effective alternative. “Given that mitochondrial dysfunction is associated with muscle atrophy and other processes such as insulin resistance, any therapy that can improve mitochondrial function may be beneficial,”Mark Tarnopolsky, professor of medicine for the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, who oversaw the study, said. The study has been published in Science Translational Medicine.
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Source :
Punjab Mail Online
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News Date :
February 3
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London February 1:
Olympic organisers have some travel advice for the millions of people who work and live in London: Be patient. Have a beer. Work from home.
Rejecting suggestions of possible transport chaos during the July 27-August 12 games, they unveiled a 8.8 million-pound campaign yesterday to persuade city residents to change their travel patterns to ease the strain on public transport.
Even as London Mayor Boris Johnson tried to focus attention on the positive, transport officials had to bat back demands by the Rail, Maritime and Transport union for more money. Union officials say subway staff are not being offered enough to compensate them for working more hours and erratic schedules during the Summer Olympics.
The fresh union demands came just moments before London transport officials unveiled posters, signs and banners to make travelers aware of how to handle transport issues during the games. Johnson directed his remarks at what he called 'Olympo-skeptics'. "They predict that tumbleweed will be going down Shaftesbury Avenue," Johnson said, referring to a main London thoroughfare. "They are completely wrong and mistaken and missing a huge opportunity to profit."
London transport officials have been at pains in recent weeks to downplay concerns about whether the city's aging transportation system can handle the extra traffic from tourists, spectators and others expected to use the network. Officials point to a 6.5 billion-pound investment in the transport system. They say train journeys are faster and note that many more trains will run and that some will even have air conditioning during the games.
If office workers do things as simple as stopping and having a beer on their way home, it will spread out the rush-hour demands, they assert. No recommendations -- alcoholic or otherwise -- were made for the morning commute. Businesses have been asked to consider whether London workers could telecommute or have more flexible working hours. The trouble is that even on regular days London struggles with constraints on the Tube, an aging system that handles 12 million trips a day.
The Olympics is estimated to add 3 million trips on busy days. Keeping the system running smoothly is predicated on the notion that locals will rearrange their schedules, change travel patterns and adjust their lives to accommodate. Even Johnson acknowledged that travelers on the Jubilee line -- one of the key arteries for the games -- would not be "short of company."
London wants all of its spectators to arrive by public transport or foot and bike. Ticket holders to Olympic events will receive day passes for the subway as part of their package. A special train known as the 'Javelin' will take spectators directly from central London's St Pancras train station to the Olympic Park in the East London neighborhood of Stratford. The 'Get Ahead of the Games' campaign that kicked off Monday marks the biggest effort yet to directly reach the public. Featuring cartoonlike posters and directional signs in hot pink and maroon, the campaign tries to let people know about upcoming disruptions and gives suggestions on how to address them.
The campaign, funded as part of the 9.3 billion pounds devoted to staging the Olympics, will run in national newspapers, rail stations and radio stations across the country as well as around Olympic venues. Souring the big launch was the rail union's announcement that subway train drivers considered a one-time payment of around 500 pounds inadequate. "All we are calling for is a fair deal for all the staff involved in delivering the colossal transport challenge that we will be facing this summer and the negotiations to achieve that are ongoing," Union chief Bob Crow said in a statement.
Crow said the union was ready for more talks. Peter Hendy, the Transport for London commissioner, called the union announcement 'a tactic' and maintained that everyone at the transit agency is proud of helping out at the games. Hendy refused to say how much he was prepared to pay to compensate the transport workers, but the pressure comes at a time when Olympic organizers are straining to stay within budget.
The National Audit Office, Britain's spending watchdog, has reported that only 500 million pounds remains unspent for dealing with future Olympics-related costs. Hendy insisted the money to cover compensation for transport workers would be available once a deal was struck.
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Source :
Punjab Mail Online
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News Date :
February 1
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Washington January 31:
High levels of alcohol consumption can increase risk of colon cancer in people with a positive family history of such cancer, researchers have warned.
A study based on more than 87,000 women and 47,000 men in the Nurses`` Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, looks at whether there is a link between colon cancer and alcohol, and if so at what level of consumption, and the importance of a family history of the disease. A total of 1,801 cases of colon cancer were diagnosed during follow-up from 1980 onwards.
The results revealed that subjects with a family history, whose average alcohol intake was 30 or more grams per day (about 2 ½ typical drinks by US standards or 4 UK units), had an increase in their risk of colon cancer. Those at greatest risk also ate the most red meat, smoked the most, and had the lowest intake of folate (suggesting they ate fewer green vegetables and cereals.
Hence, these people have the unhealthiest lifestyles in general of the populations studied. There was not a significant association between alcohol consumption and colon cancer among subjects without a positive family history in this study. Forum reviewers were concerned that the pattern of drinking (regularly or binge drinking) was not assessed, and that there was not a consistent increase in risk of cancer with greater alcohol intake found.
Further, adequate folate intake was found to lower risk, with the highest risk for subjects with a positive family history of colon cancer, low levels of folate, and in the highest category of alcohol consumption, indicating the importance of other lifestyle facts such as a healthy diet. The present study provides some support for an association between higher levels of alcohol intake and the risk of colon cancer among subjects with a positive family history of such cancer.
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Source :
Punjab Mail Online
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News Date :
January 31
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Washington January 31:
If you think sperm production comes cheaply to males, think again. Contrary to traditional view, it`s quite pricey, says a new study.
An international team has shown that the production of sperm is more biologically taxing than previously thought, and expending energy on it has significant health implications, the `PLoS ONE` journal reported. In their study, the researchers investigated the trade-off between sperm quality and immunity in the Australian cricket, Teleogryllus oceanicus, to prove that the production of quality sperm is expensive and males are strategic about investing energy in the biological process.
"It is typically thought that females must invest heavily into reproduction, whereas males can freely produce millions of high-quality, tiny sperm on demand, with few costs. "Here we show that the costs are in fact large, and these costs dictate how much effort a male will devote into any given sexual encounter," Damian Dowling of Monash University, who led the study, said.
In the study, the crickets were housed either with sexually immature females, sexually mature females incapable of reproduction, or sexually mature females capable of reproduction. Sperm quality was measured twice and immune function once during the experiment. Dr Dowling said the male crickets were more likely to produce high quality sperm when housed with sexually mature females with whom they could mate, indicating a strategic investment of energy.
The team also found production of quality sperm appeared to have a negative effect on the crickets` immune systems. "Males that invested heavily in their sperm paid the price of being more likely to succumb to a bacterial infection. We are talking about how increased investment into the quality of the ejaculate corresponds with general reductions in immune function," Dr Dowling said.
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Source :
Punjab Mail Online
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News Date :
January 31
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Washington January 31:
Drinking just two glasses of alcohol a week can raise miscarriage risk in early pregnancy by 66 percent, a new study has revealed.
Despite some studies showing that light drinking during pregnancy is fine, the new research, which included over 90,000 women, offer the strongest evidence yet that playing it safe might be the best strategy for women who are gestating. “You should never give a recommendation based on a single study,” said lead author Anne-Marie Nybo Anderson, an epidemiologist at the University of Copenhagen.
“But if I was to give a recommendation to my daughter, I would say that if you plan a pregnancy and if you want to be careful and do everything you can in order to not harm your future baby, then I think you should stop drinking when you start trying to become pregnant, and then after the first four months you can be a little more relaxed.”
Undoubtedly heavy or binge drinking during pregnancy is dangerous to a developing foetus but research on the effects of low levels of alcohol consumption has offered contradictory results, with conclusions depending on the way studies are designed and even the country where studies are done, the Discovery News reported.
For the new study, Nybo Andersen and colleagues took advantage of a natural experiment in Denmark. For quite a few years in the late 1990s, the country’s national health board relaxed its recommendations for pregnant women, suggesting that they usually avoid alcohol but if they decided to drink, they should not have more than a drink a day and they should not drink every single day. The new guidelines turned moderate drinking during pregnancy into standard and permissible behaviour for Danish women.
Having a glass of wine with a baby on board was no longer associated with depression or other negative health habits. It became just a normal thing to do, and many women indulged - before the health board reversed its guidelines and became stringent again after a few years. During that period of societal permissiveness, a national program enrolled more than 100,000 pregnant women to participate in a Birth Cohort study.
The participants were asked several questions about their lifestyles, health behaviours and pregnancies through digital telephone interviews. They also revealed how much alcohol they had drunk before and how much they drank after getting pregnant. Mothers entered the study when they were six weeks pregnant, and follow-up interviews recorded the eventual outcomes of their births. Overall, about 55 percent of the Danish women continued drinking alcohol while pregnant during the study period. Only 2 percent averaged more than four drinks a week, and majority of them drank far more moderately.
However, according to the study, it only took two drinks a week to increase the risk of miscarriage during the first 16 weeks by 66 percent. Women who drank between half a drink and one and a half drinks each week showed a 19 percent increased risk in pregnancy loss, but only at the start of the second trimester. After the first four months, light drinking did not seem to make a difference in rates of miscarriage or stillbirth. “I was pretty sure that alcohol intake at such low amounts in pregnancy would not have dramatic effects,” Andersen said.
“But what we found was that there was quite a high risk for miscarriage with moderate alcohol intake, and there was a stronger risk the earlier in pregnancy we looked,” Andersen added. The study has been reported in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
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Source :
Punjab Mail Online
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News Date :
January 31
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London January 30:
Can`t conceive? Bask in the sun, for a study says it can boost fertility in both men and women.
Researchers at Medical University of Graz in Austria say sunlight boosts fertility in both men and women by increasing their levels of vitamin D which is also key to balancing sex hormones in females and improving sperm count in males. In women, vitamin D helps boost levels of the female sex hormones progesterone and oestrogen by 13 per cent and 21 per cent respectively, regulating menstrual cycles and making conception more likely, say the researchers.
While in men, vitamin D is essential for the healthy development of each sperm`s nucleus, according to the findings which mean that some couples may be undergoing unnecessary and costly fertility treatment when spending time in the sun could be the answer, the `Daily Mail` reported. Exposure to sunlight also increases levels of the male sex hormone testosterone, improving a man`s libido, according to the study which is a review of several researches.
However, lead author Dr Elisabeth Lerchbaum said that while sunshine appears to improve fertility, it is important couples don`t overdo it because of the risk of skin cancer
from over-exposure. "People could either spend more time outside in the sun -- or they could take vitamin D supplements, which are a safe and cheap way to increase levels," she was quoted as saying by the British newspaper.
The findings, published in the `European Journal of Endocrinology`, also claim that the link between sunshine and fertility has also been found in animal studies carried out
earlier.
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Source :
Punjab Mail Online
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News Date :
January 30
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Washington January 30:
Having a couple to double date with can improve the happiness of one’s own relationship, a new study has suggested.
For the study, researchers from the University of Maryland interviewed 123 couples, 122 individuals in relationships, but who were questioned alone and 58 divorced individuals. On an average, couples had about five “couple friends” they spent time with. When asked how important these friendships were, 40 per cent of respondents said they were “very important” and 39 per cent said “somewhat important”.
The researchers found that when couples indicated they agreed on how to divvy up their time between others and themselves, they were more likely to also say they had a happy marriage or relationship. For different people, these “couple” relationships had different meanings. “Couples are looking for different things in their couple friendships -- we found there are ‘fun-sharing’ and ‘emotion-sharing’ couples,” Geoffery Greif, the study leader, said.
Many couple friendships seemed to start out as a one-partner friendship that blossomed into a foursome. For some, though, finding couple friends was difficult with lives busy with work and family. “Sometimes couples go to Craigslist— our sampling of Craigslist websites in different cities did turn up groups like book clubs for couples, environmental groups, hikers, cooking, wine clubs, etc,” Greif said.
“At the same time, we quote a couple at the beginning of the first chapter who advertised for friends in a small town and got responses from couples that wanted to swing. They removed their ad,” he said. The researchers concluded that healthy couple friendships make a marriage more fulfilling and exciting for several reasons -- by increasing partners’ attraction to each other, providing a greater understanding of the opposite sex, and allowing partners to observe ways that other couples interact and negotiate differences.
“With a great couple friendship, you get to see your partner at her/his best. “He or she is having fun, interacting in a loving and supportive way with another couple as well as with the partner,” he added. The study has been published as part of the book ‘Two Plus Two: Couples and Their Couple Friendships’ by Greif and Kathleen Holtz Deal.
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Source :
Punjab Mail Online
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News Date :
January 30
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New York January 30:
Kids born by Cesarean section are no more likely to become obese than if they are born vaginally, a new study concludes.
Past research from Brazil had found a link between excessive poundage and C-sections, leading some scientists to suggest that not being exposed to bacteria from the birth canal could make babies fatter. But according to the latest findings, that doesn`t appear to be the case. "We thought from the beginning that probably what happened with the previous study is that they didn`t adjust for all of the confounders," said Fernando Barros of the Catholic University of Pelotas. "If a mother gives birth by C-section, she`s different than a mother who has a vaginal birth."
For the new research, Barros and his colleagues used data on three groups of several thousand people born in Southern Brazil in 1982, 1993 or 2004. Researchers contacted the kids at different ages until the oldest had turned 23. Those born by C-section were more likely to be heavy, with obesity rates between nine and 16 percent, compared to rates of seven to 10 percent among kids born vaginally.
However, that difference vanished once the researchers accounted for factors that could have influenced the results such as family income, birth weight, schooling and the mother`s weight, height, age and smoking habits. "When you factor in all of these other factors, the relationship between obesity and Cesarean sections disappears," said Barros, whose findings are published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The earlier Brazilian study left out many of those factors, including maternal height and weight, Barros` team writes in its report. "The most simple explanation would be that more obese women require more Cesarean sections than lean women… and it`s really not the C-section itself," said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Clinic at Children`s Hospital Boston, who wasn`t involved in the study.
The new research is of particular interest in Brazil, because in 2009 more than half of the babies there were born by C-section. In the US, the number has been on the rise for years and is now over 30 percent. Some believe that C-section babies are different because they are not exposed to bacteria in the birth canal like babies born vaginally. The theory is part of the hygiene hypothesis, which suggests a person`s immune system develops differently when they`re not exposed to beneficial bacteria early in life.
"We`re not saying this hypothesis is not interesting. It is. We`re just saying, right now, without data, we cannot confirm the finding," said Barros. He cautioned that people in his study had only been followed until early adulthood, so he cannot say if there is a potential association later in life. Ludwig told Reuters Health that things like a pregnant woman`s diet and smoking habits and whether or not she has diabetes might influence a developing fetus.
Both Ludwig and Barros said women should avoid medically unnecessary C-sections, even if they don`t raise the chances of having obese kids, because they carry other risks.
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Source :
Punjab Mail Online
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News Date :
January 30
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