Viagra reverses nerve disease: Study

Anti-impotence drug Viagra drastically reduces symptoms of multiple sclerosis - which affects the brain and spinal nerve cells - in animal models, says a study.
The research by Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) in Spain shows that a practically complete recovery occurs in 50 percent of the animals after eight days of treatment.
Researchers are hopeful of clinical trials with patients, given that the drug is well tolerated and has been used to treat sexual dysfunction in some multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, reports the journal Acta Neuropathologica.
MS is the most common chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system comprising the brain and the spinal cord and one of the main causes of disability among young adults, according to an UAB statement.
The disease can cause a variety of symptoms - changes in sensation, muscle weakness, abnormal muscle spasms, or difficulty moving; difficulties with coordination and balance; problems in speech or swallowing, visual problems, among others.
There is currently no cure for the disease, although some drugs have proven effective in fighting symptoms and preventing it from progressing.
A research team from the UAB Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine, directed by Agustina Garcia, along with another led by Juan Hidalgo, Garcia's counterpart, has studied the effects of a treatment using sildenafil, sold as Viagra, in an animal model of multiple sclerosis.
Researchers demonstrated that a daily treatment with sildenafil after disease onset quickly reduced clinical signs, with a practically complete recovery in 50 percent of the cases after eight days of treatment.
Scientists observed how the drug reduced the infiltration of inflammatory cells into the white matter of the spinal cord, thus reducing damage to the nerve cell's axon and facilitating myelin repair.(IANS)

‘Social distancing’ highly effective in stopping disease spread in pandemics: Study

According to a recently conducted study, social distancing measures during pandemics are highly effective in stopping the disease from spreading further.
Researchers analyzed the impact of the eighteen-day period of mandatory school closure in Mexico during the 2009 influenza pandemic and found that it had resulted in 29 to 37 pc reduction in the transmission rate.
Social distancing interventions can be implemented during unusual infectious disease outbreaks and include school closing, closure of movie theaters and restaurants and the cancellation of large public gatherings.
The study suggests that school closure and other measures could be useful to mitigate future influenza pandemics.
The researchers'' findings highlight variation in pandemic influenza incidence and severity among age groups. It also reveals the importance of school cycles on the transmission dynamics of this disease.
The conclusion emerges from the findings that school closure effectively reduced influenza transmission in spring 2009 in Mexico.
"We believe this study has implications for improving preparedness plans in future pandemics," said Gerardo Chowell, Fogarty investigator and faculty member at Arizona State University, Tempe.

Why aging brains become less resilient to stress

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have explained why the aging brain is less resilient and less capable of learning from life experiences.
The findings provide further insight into the cognitive decline associated with aging and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer''s.
The team evaluated the prefrontal cortex-the part of the brain that controls a wide range of cognitive processes and mediates the highest levels of learning.
Nerve cell circuitry in the prefrontal cortex of young animals is highly plastic and life experiences, particularly those that involve learning, can profoundly alter prefrontal circuitry.
In order to investigate the effects of age on such plasticity, young, middle-aged, and aged rats were subjected to a behavioral stress test known to elicit nerve cell changes in the prefrontal cortex.
The research team then used microscopic techniques to visualize the spines on nerve cells within the prefrontal cortex, which form the synapses that are critically important to the process of learning.
In the young rats, the spines were able to adjust and change, indicating that the brain responded to the experience and initiated a compensatory change.
In the middle-aged rats, and even more so in the aged rats, the spines did not change, demonstrating that age is accompanied by a profound loss in the capacity of prefrontal cortex to "re-wire" in response to life events.
"The prefrontal cortex is constantly ''rewiring'' in response to life experiences. The aged brain has already suffered significant spine loss, and the spines that remain are unable to mount a response to stress or learning, making this part of the brain unable to effectively rewire," said John H. Morrison, who led the study with graduate student Erik B. Bloss.

Why schizophrenia patients may have trouble reading social cues

 Vanderbilt University researchers have found possible evidence on why people with schizophrenia might have difficulty in understanding the actions of other people.
They have discovered that impairments in a brain area involved in perception of social stimuli may be partly responsible for this difficulty.
"Misunderstanding social situations and interactions are core deficits in schizophrenia," said Sohee Park, Gertrude Conaway Professor of Psychology and one of the co-authors on this study.
"Our findings may help explain the origins of some of the delusions involving perception and thoughts experienced by those with schizophrenia," he said.
They found that a particular brain area, the posterior superior temporal sulcus or STS, appears to be implicated in this deficit.
"Using brain imaging together with perceptual testing, we found that a brain area in a neural network involved in perception of social stimuli responds abnormally in individuals with schizophrenia," said Randolph Blake, Centennial Professor of Psychology and co-author of the study.
"We found this brain area fails to distinguish genuine biological motion from highly distorted versions of that motion," he said.
The study's lead author, Jejoong Kim, completed the experiments under the supervision of Park and Blake in Vanderbilt's Department of Psychology.

What's good for women's heart? Baked mackerel!

Postmenopausal women who often consumed baked or broiled fish had a 30 percent lower risk of developing heart failure, as compared to women who seldom ate it. And dark fish like salmon and mackerel are particularly good.
A maximum serving of five or more per week of baked or broiled fish was linked with a lower risk, says a large-scale study.
Previous research has found that fatty acids (omega-3) in fish, EPA, DHA and ALA may lower risk of heart disease by decreasing inflammation, resisting oxidative stress and improving blood pressure, cardiac and blood vessel function, reports the journal Circulation: Heart Failure.
Researchers found that dark fish (salmon, mackerel and bluefish) were associated with a significantly greater risk reduction than either tuna or white fish (sole, snapper and cod).
In a similar analysis, eating fried fish was associated with increased heart failure risk. Even one serving a week was associated with a 48 percent higher heart failure risk.
"Not all fish are equal, and how you prepare it really matters," said senior study author Donald Lloyd-Jones, associate professor in preventive medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago.
"When you fry fish, you not only lose a lot of the benefits, you likely add some things related to the cooking process that are harmful," Lloyd said, according to a Feinberg statement.
Other research has shown that frying increases the trans fatty acid (TFA) content of foods, which is associated with increasing risk for heart disease. In this study, however, the researchers did not find an association between TFA and heart failure risk.
Lloyd-Jones and his team examined self-reported dietary data from 84,493 postmenopausal women in the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study.
They conducted their analysis based on data from 1991 through August 2008. During an average follow-up of 10 years, 1,858 cases of heart failure occurred.(IANS)

Online news websites add to social stigma of obesity

 A study has found that online news websites add to the social stigma of obesity.
A new research on obesity from Yale University has suggested that online news outlets stigmatise obese people by excessive use of their negative images in ill-fitting clothes or eating fast food, just to consolidate their stories about obesity.
The researchers looked at 429 news stories about obesity, along with their accompanying photos, published on five major news websites.
Of the photos depicting overweight or obese people, the study found, 72 percent portrayed them "in a negative, stigmatising manner".
There were six criteria used to determine whether a given image was negative or stigmatising, including being shown without a head (59 percent of overweight/obese people).
Being shown from the side or rear angle (40 percent), only showing the abdomen or lower body (52 percent), and being shown without clothes or bare midriff (12 percent).
Other criteria were poorly fitting clothes (6 percent), being shown eating or drinking (8 percent), and being engaged in a sedentary activity (5 percent).
While the researchers did not investigate whether photos accompanying news stories about thin people were treated the same way, another research by Benjamin Radford, deputy editor of the science magazine `Skeptical Inquirer', found that approximately 80 percent of the photos of thin people should also be considered negative or stigmatising.
According to him, the images of thin people are used in the same degrading manner as those of obese individuals.
"Obese people are highly stigmatised in our society in important domains of living, including education, employment, and health care," Discovery News quoted the study as noting.

Diabetics have three to five times higher risk of developing tuberculosis

A recent study has found that diabetics have a three to five times higher risk of developing tuberculosis (TB) than those without the disease.
Researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) analyzed 233 patients with TB living in Texas and Mexico along the border to confirm the findings.
"With the increase in diabetes patients in TB-endemic areas, our findings highlight the re-emerging impact of diabetes mellitus, known as type 2, on TB control in regions of the world where both diseases are prevalent," said Blanca Restrepo, associate professor of epidemiology at The University of Texas School of Public Health.
The research suggested that diabetes depresses the immune response, which in turn facilitates infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis and/or progression to symptomatic disease.
"This research confirms results from several other studies showing an increased risk of TB in people with diabetes and means that it is important that clinicians actively seek to diagnose diabetes in people with TB, and vice versa," said Knut Lonnroth, medical officer in the Stop TB Department at the World Health Organization.
According to Restrepo, a combined diagnosis of TB and diabetes is becoming more evident in the Hispanic population, but this may also be the case in American Indians and African-Americans.