Category Archives: Health

Natural Compound Mitigates Effects of Methamphetamine Abuse, University of Missouri Researchers Find

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Studies have shown that resveratrol, a natural compound found in colored vegetables, fruits and especially grapes, may minimize the impact of Parkinson’s disease, stroke and Alzheimer’s disease in those who maintain healthy diets or who regularly take resveratrol supplements. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found that resveratrol may also block the effects of the highly addictive drug, methamphetamine.

Dennis Miller, associate professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the College of Arts & Science and an investigator with the Bond Life Sciences Center, and researchers in the Center for Translational Neuroscience at MU, study therapies for drug addiction and neurodegenerative disorders. Their research targets treatments for methamphetamine abuse and has focused on the role of the neurotransmitter dopamine in drug addiction.  Dopamine levels in the brain surge after methamphetamine use; this increase is associated with the motivation to continue using the drug, despite its adverse consequences. However, with repeated methamphetamine use, dopamine neurons may degenerate causing neurological and behavioral impairments, similar to those observed in people with Parkinson’s disease. (more…)

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UCLA doctors test stem-cell therapy to improve blood flow in angina patients

Clinical trial evaluates treatment for patients who haven’t responded to other FDA–approved procedures

Marty Greenfield lives with crushing pain every day due to angina, a condition that is caused by an inadequate supply of blood to the heart. He has suffered a heart attack, and a coronary bypass procedure and angioplasty have provided little relief. His doctor referred him to UCLA to be considered for a heart transplant.

Dr. Jonathan Tobis, a UCLA clinical professor of cardiology, performed an angiogram and angioplasty on Greenfield, 64, but found that the patient was not a candidate for a heart transplant because his heart muscle function was still good. (more…)

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Society for Neuroscience 2013: How sleep aids visual task learning

At the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego Nov. 10, 2013, Brown University scientists presented research showing what happens in the brain during sleep to lock in learning of a visually oriented “Where’s Waldo”-like task.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — As any indignant teacher would scold, students must be awake to learn. But what science is showing with increasing sophistication is how the brain uses sleep for learning as well. At the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego Nov. 10, 2013, Brown University researchers discussed new research describing the neural mechanism by which the sleeping brain locks in learning of a visual task. (more…)

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Cause of genetic disorder found in “dark matter” of DNA

For the first time, scientists have used new technology which analyses the whole genome to find the cause of a genetic disease in what was previously referred to as “junk DNA”.

Pancreatic agenesis results in babies being born without a pancreas, leaving them with a lifetime of diabetes and problems digesting food. 

In a breakthrough for genetic research, teams led by the University of Exeter Medical School and Imperial College London found that the condition is most commonly caused by mutations in a newly identified gene regulatory element in a remote part of the genome, which can now be explored thanks to advances in genetic sequencing. (more…)

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Personal reflection triggers increased brain activity during depressive episode

Research by the Universities of Liverpool and Manchester has found that people experiencing depressive episodes display increased brain activity when they think about themselves.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain imaging technologies, scientists found that people experiencing a depressive episode process information about themselves in the brain differently to people who are not depressed.

Researchers scanned the brains of people in major depressive episodes and those that weren’t whilst they chose positive, negative and neutral adjectives to describe either themselves or the British Queen –  a figure significantly removed from their daily lives but one that all participants were familiar with. (more…)

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Experimental drug shows encouraging results in treating most common form of lung cancer

An experimental cancer drug that has shown promise in the treatment of melanoma has also shown early potential as an effective treatment for patients with non-small cell lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death among men and women worldwide.

Dr. Edward Garon, director of thoracic oncology at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, presented the preliminary results of a Phase 1B study of the new drug, called MK-3475, on Oct. 29 at the World Conference on Lung Cancer in Sydney, Australia. (more…)

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