health
grrlscientist | November 20, 2007tags: mouse party, drugs, drug mechanisms, illegal drugs, video game, educational tool
Now that the school year has started again, I think it is worthwhile to repeat an earlier blog entry where I linked to a really interesting interactive game, called Mouse Party. This interactive game is a great educational tool, teaching you how various legal and illegal drugs work in the brain.
Have you ever wondered how various drugs work in the brain to produce the symptoms they do? Well, this wonderful interactive website, Mouse Party, shows you the molecular details of how heroin, exstacy, alcohol,…
sb admin | November 16, 2007
Anti-drug ad parody that's also an anti-drug ad itself. This is Your Brain on Heroin: Any Questions?.
gregladen | November 12, 2007Things to notice in this video:
The scientific sounding languge.
The cool 3D graphics
The guy bloating up because he has not eaten his SKRMs yet. Then he eats the SKRMs and gets better.
sb admin | November 12, 2007There's a revolutionary mental health claim in a hot new article - Therapeutic Efficacy of Cash in the Treatment of Anxiety and Depressive Disorders: Two Case Studies (e-pub ahead of print).
The first case report involves a man who was laid off and lost his pension; after treatment with various SSRIs and sedatives with numerous side effects, the patient came into the office free of depressive symptoms. He claimed to have won the lottery, which fMRI brain scans [shown here] confirmed with evidence of a complete remission. In the second case, a single mother of four found her anxiety and…
gregladen | November 9, 2007A child with Melanoma, a mother tossed in jail, radio talk show hosts, ranting bloggers. It's a good story.
From the Natural Solutions Foundation Web Site:
There is a developing story from California that involves a mother with a 17 year old child who HAD melanoma. The mother, chose to go against her allopathic (conventional) doctor's orders (to have surgery and chemotherapy) - and instead try advanced natural medicine first - since she understood that supporting the body's ability to heal is more effective than destroying it as chemotherapy does.
Not surprisingly this approach worked! This…
gregladen | November 8, 2007Lots of people are talking about this latest paper on HIV. It is an "open access" paper in the PNAS, and you can get it here.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that can cause AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). It is a member of a larger group of viruses (the Smian immunodeficiency viruses) which are generally thought to be of African origin. There are two types of HIV (HIV-1, and HIV-2), with HIV-1 being the more virulent and, in human populations, most widespread.
There are several theories as to the origin of HIV. When I was in Zaire in the mid 1980s, people in…
gregladen | November 8, 2007You roll your head, hoping to loosen the knots in your neck, and shut your eyes. After rubbing them you settle back into staring, hunched inches away from the computer screen. Despite the brief reprise your vision remains cloudy, causing the words on the monitor to blur. At this point, you need to know: With each further click on the keyboard, video watched on YouTube, and e-mail sent--are you damaging your vision?
The answer? It depends. Go here to find out.
Thanks, Scott, for the tip.
sciencetolife | November 6, 2007A team of researchers from the St Vincent's Campus in Sydney have identified a protein called MIC-1 that appears to control the extreme weight loss common in late stage cancer (sometimes called cancer anorexia), which often speeds death.
MIC-1, which also goes by the name GDF-15, PLAB, PDF or NAG-1, is a transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) superfamily protein.
Researchers found that treatment of normal and obese mice with MIC-1 resulted in less eating and significant weight loss. MIC-1 has many effects on the body but researchers believe that its effect on suppressing appetite may…
sciencetolife | October 23, 2007 Here are some of the interesting things discussed on this week's episode.
1. New concerns about kids and cough medications
On Friday, an FDA advisory panel recommended parents and caregivers not give over-the- counter cough and cold medications to any children under the age of 6. This decision came a week after many drug manufacturers voluntarily withdrew more than a dozen of these products for infants and babies under the age of 2. The FDA advisory panel also voted to standardize dosing on product labels, as well as on such devices as cups, spoons, or syringes, which sometimes come with…
omnibrain | September 28, 2007Ok... maybe not for real reals but there are some brain eating amoebas taking over the world. Ok maybe they're not taking over the world but they really (for real this time!) have killed a few people.
According to the AP:
A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.
Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.
Panic!!! Don't swim in lakes! You…
omnibrain | September 19, 2007I think you are. It seems that many fewer people are washing their hands after using the toilet than only a couple years ago. Not only that... people lie about it. Yes you reader - I'm calling you out! I'll bet you don't wash your grimy little hands.
Here's some of the details about this very clearly influential and well done study:
In an observational study sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and The Soap and Detergent Association (SDA), slightly over three-quarters of men and women (77%) washed their hands in public restrooms - a six percent decline from a similar…
sciencetolife | August 25, 2007
Is depression overdiagnosed in today's society?
Yes, says Professor Gordon Parker in the August 18 2007 issue of the British Medical Journal.
Rates of diagnosis of depression have risen steeply in recent years. Parker, a scientia professor from the School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, believes this is because current criteria for diagnosis are medicalising emotions (like sadness) rather than true clinical depression.
Reasons for the overdiagnosis include lack of a reliable and valid diagnostic model and marketing of treatments beyond their true utility in a climate of…
sciencetolife | August 21, 2007This CNN Health article provides some useful recommendations on how to lower one's risk of miscarriage. I have summarized them below.
1. Do a little detective work
When you're planning to get pregnant, your first move should be a careful pre-pregnancy checkup to reveal potential risk factors like diabetes-related problems
2. Stop the stress
We've all heard that being stressed isn't a good thing if you're trying to get pregnant. That's also true of trying to stay pregnant.
3. Do some chromosome testing
After a miscarriage, a chromosome analysis of fetal tissue can provide some useful…
sciencetolife | August 9, 2007The first report that gene therapy could enhance muscle in a mouse model was published in 2004.
Since then, it has become of increasing concern that some unscrupulous athletes may consider gene therapy as a viable alternative to steroid injection (a term called gene doping) in the quest to enhance their athletic ability.
Gene doping, as defined by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), is "the non-therapeutic use of cells, genes, genetic elements, or of the modulation of gene expression, having the capacity to improve athletic performance."
In the wake of recent Tour de France drug…
sciencetolife | August 6, 2007I was recently sent this news and thought some readers may be interested.
MedHelp, an online health community that connects people with physicians and medical experts, has just added the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) to its repertoire.
The website has liaisons with over a dozen medical organizations and one of its main goals is to connect people with medical professionals for expert advice to compliment doctor's visits.
So, in addition to the many other specialists available, members and visitors can now have their eye care questions answered by AAO specialists.
I briefly…
sciencetolife | August 3, 2007A large-scale genomics study has uncovered new genetic variations associated with multiple sclerosis (MS).
The findings confirm the link between MS and the autoimmune system and help researchers to better understand the mechanism of this complex disease.
Does this mean we are closer to a cure?
At the moment the new information can tell researchers more about the disease mechanism and how it works. MS is a very complex disease influenced by extrinsic (environmental) and intrinsic (genetic) factors. These findings can help guide scientists in the direction to finding better treatments.
Read…
sciencetolife | July 23, 2007
Caution for bungee jumping enthusiasts!
The July "Images in Clinical Medicine" section of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) presents a 25-year-old patient who went bungee jumping and developed a hemorrhage in the left eye. The image was contributed by Atul K. Jain, M.D. and Michael Gaynon, M.D. of Stanford University.
Here is an explanation taken directly from NEJM:
A 25-year-old woman with no clinically significant medical history and with normal coagulation and hematologic studies went bungee jumping from a vertical height of 150 ft (45.7 m). Immediately afterward, she…
sciencetolife | June 29, 2007
Here's a mix of recent science stories I found interesting.
Unraveling the puzzle of pain
"Today's pain medications are not always providing as much relief as we would like. We hope these early findings will lead to new drugs, and give some hope to people with chronic nerve pain, or pain from inflammation," says Dr. Gerald Zamponi. Read more about his research on pain pathways in the brain here.
Giant microwave turns plastic back to oil
US company Global Resource Corporation is taking plastics recycling to another level - turning them back into the oil they were made from, and gas. Read…
sciencetolife | June 22, 2007
Contrary to earlier reports that estrogen replacement therapy increased the risk of heart attack and stroke, researchers are now saying that it may actually be beneficial for some women.
Here's a little back-story (taken from this LA Times article).
Long-term use of hormone replacement therapy was popularized in 1966 by Dr. Robert A. Wilson's book "Feminine Forever," which touted the treatment as a panacea for menopausal ills. Subsequent animal and small human studies suggested the hormones could help ward off heart attacks and increase bone density. By the end of the century, an…
sciencetolife | June 13, 2007 A consortium of UK researchers has identified genetic markers associated with common diseases like diabetes and coronary disease. The researchers identified small variations in the human genome that appear to be associated with a predisposition to certain diseases.
According to the authors, who published in the June issue of Nature, this research is important because the identification of variants, genes and pathways involved in particular diseases offers a potential route to new therapies, improved diagnosis and better disease prevention.
What they did:
The scientists extracted DNA from…