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Americans Gaining More Weight than They Say

By Guest PostAugust 7, 2012General, Healthali mokdad, american adults, americans, behavioral risk factor, black, catherine wetmore, chronic condition, diabetes, health impact, heart disease, hispanic, native american, obesity, physical activity, smokers, united states, university of washington, weight

Despite the increasing awareness of the problem of obesity in the United States, most Americans don’t know whether they are gaining or losing weight, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, also known at IHME, at the University of Washington.

Obesity increased in the U.S. between 2008 and 2009, but in response to the questions about year-to-year changes in weight that were included in the most widespread public health survey in the country, on average, people said that they lost weight. Men did a worse job estimating their own weight changes than women. And older adults were less attuned to their weight changes than young adults. The findings are being published in the article “In denial: misperceptions of weight change among adults in the United States” in the August edition of Preventive Medicine. (more…)

UCLA Study Looks at Why Heart Attacks Cause so Much More Damage in Late Pregnancy

By Guest PostJuly 8, 2012Healthandrea iorga, blood flow, cholesterol level, diabetes, drug therapy, dysfunction, heart attack, heart disease, heart function, hua cai, ji youn youn, jingyuan li, late pregnancy, mansoureh eghbali, mitochondria, reperfusion injury, risk, risk factor, soban umar, ucla, yibin wang

Heart attacks during pregnancy are uncommon, but the prevalence of heart disease in pregnant mothers has increased over the past decade as more women delay pregnancy until they are older. These women, who are generally less physically active than their younger peers, tend to have higher cholesterol levels and are at greater risk of heart disease and diabetes.

While research has shown that the heart typically functions better during pregnancy due to a rise in cardiac pumping capacity to meet increased demands, a new UCLA study in rats and mice demonstrates that heart attacks occurring in the last trimester or late months of pregnancy result in worse heart function and more damaged heart tissue than heart attacks among non-pregnant females.

The research is published in the July edition of the peer-reviewed journal Basic Research in Cardiology. (more…)

Neurons that Control Overeating also Drive Appetite for Cocaine

By Guest PostJune 25, 2012Scienceappetite, behavior, body, brain, brain function, cocaine, cognitive behavior, diabetes, diphtheria toxin, drug addiction, Environment, function, hypothalamus, jeremy bober, jozelia g ferreira, marcelo o dietrich, metabolic disorder, neurons, obesity, overeating, tamas l horvath, transgenic mice

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have zeroed in on a set of neurons in the part of the brain that controls hunger, and found that these neurons are not only associated with overeating, but also linked to non-food associated behaviors, like novelty-seeking and drug addiction.

Published in the June 24 online issue of Nature Neuroscience, the study was led by Marcelo O. Dietrich, postdoctoral associate, and Tamas L. Horvath, the Jean and David W. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Research and chair of comparative medicine at Yale School of Medicine.

In attempts to develop treatments for metabolic disorders such as obesity and diabetes, researchers have paid increasing attention to the brain’s reward circuits located in the midbrain, with the notion that in these patients, food may become a type of “drug of abuse” similar to cocaine. Dietrich notes, however, that this study flips the common wisdom on its head. (more…)

Molecular Spectroscopy Tracks Living Mammalian Cells in Real Time as They Differentiate

By Guest PostMay 2, 2012Scienceals, alzheimer's disease, amino acid residues, apoptosis, bacteria, berkeley lab, carbohydrates, cell change, cell death, children, diabetes, fibroblasts, fluorescent dyes, fourier transform infrared, ftir, function, hans bechtel, hoi ying, hyperspectromicroscopy, ir, kevin loutherback, liang chen, lipids, macular degeneration, michael martin, mitochondrial diseases, pc12, phosphorylation, phosphorylation process, power plant, protein, rafael gomez sjoberg, retina, san diego, serine, spectromicroscopy, threonine, tyrosine, ultraviolet, university of california, zhao hao

Berkeley Lab scientists demonstrate the promise of synchrotron infrared spectroscopy of living cells for medical applications

Knowing how a living cell works means knowing how the chemistry inside the cell changes as the functions of the cell change. Protein phosphorylation, for example, controls everything from cell proliferation to differentiation to metabolism to signaling, and even programmed cell death (apoptosis), in cells from bacteria to humans. It’s a chemical process that has long been intensively studied, not least in hopes of treating or eliminating a wide range of diseases. But until now the close-up view – watching phosphorylation work at the molecular level as individual cells change over time – has been impossible without damaging the cells or interfering with the very processes that are being examined.

“To look into phosphorylation, researchers have labeled specific phosphorylated proteins with antibodies that carry fluorescent dyes,” says Hoi-Ying Holman of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “That gives you a great image, but you have to know exactly what to label before you can even begin.” (more…)

Photoreceptor Transplant Restores Vision in Mice

By Guest PostApril 19, 2012Scienceblindness, brain, central nervous system, cones, degenerate retina, degenerative eye diseases, degenerative eye disorders, diabetes, embryonic stem cells, institute of ophthalmology, macular degeneration, mice, photoreceptor transplantation, photoreceptors, rachael pearson, retinitis pigmentosa, rob buckle, robin ali, rods, stem cell therapies, transplanting photoreceptors, ucl, vision, visual information, visually impaired

Scientists from the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology have shown for the first time that transplanting light-sensitive photoreceptors into the eyes of visually impaired mice can restore their vision.

The research, published in Nature, suggests that transplanting photoreceptors – light-sensitive nerve cells that line the back of the eye – could form the basis of a new treatment to restore sight in people with degenerative eye diseases. (more…)

Heart Failure Patients with Diabetes May Benefit From Higher Glucose Levels

By Guest PostApril 12, 2012Healthblood glucose, diabetes, diabetes patients, heart failure, heart failure patients, risk of death, survival rates

Lowering glucose levels for people with diabetes is normally critical to improving health outcomes. But for diabetes patients with heart failure, that might not always be the case, say UCLA researchers. (more…)

Tiny Reader Makes Fast, Cheap DNA Sequencing Feasible

By Guest PostMarch 29, 2012Scienceaddiction, adenine, andrew laszlo, cancer, cytosine, diabetes, dna molecule, dna sequencing, elizabeth manrao, enzyme, guanine, ian derrington, jens gundlach, kyle langford, matthew hopper, millisecond, molecular motor, mycobacterium, nanopore, nanoscale sensor, nathaniel gillgren, nucleotide, protein, thymine

Researchers have devised a nanoscale sensor to electronically read the sequence of a single DNA molecule, a technique that is fast and inexpensive and could make DNA sequencing widely available.

The technique could lead to affordable personalized medicine, potentially revealing predispositions for afflictions such as cancer, diabetes or addiction. (more…)

Insulin, Nutrition Prevent Blood Stem Cell Differentiation in The Fruit Fly

By Guest PostMarch 14, 2012Scienceamino acids, blood stem cells, brain, chemical markers, chronic inflammation, confocal microscope, diabetes, drosophila, fruit fly, human pancreas, insulin, ji won shim, mammalian blood, metabolic dysfunction, metabolic stresses, myeloid cell accumulation, nutrition, stem cell, stemness, utpal banerjee

UCLA stem cell researchers have shown that insulin and nutrition prevent blood stem cells from differentiating into mature blood cells in Drosophila, the common fruit fly, a finding that has implications for studying inflammatory response and blood development in response to dietary changes in humans.

Keeping blood stem cells, or progenitor cells, from differentiating into blood cells is important as blood stem cells are needed to create the blood supply for the adult fruit fly. (more…)

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