Deadly Hybrid Flu Possible
February 22, 2010
HealthDay News
Research in mice suggests the avian flu virus and the ordinary seasonal flu virus could combine to create a new deadly kind of flu, researchers say.
A single bit of genetic material from the seasonal virus converted the avian flu — officially known as H5N1 — into a very dangerous form, the scientists report in a study published in the Feb. 22-26 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Some hybrids between H5N1 virus and seasonal influenza viruses were more pathogenic than the original H5N1 viruses. That is worrisome,” study senior author Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a news release.
Avian flu, also known as bird flu, has killed 262 people, according to the World Health Organization, but it hasn’t become very infectious between people.
The researchers warn that swine flu — H1N1 — could also play a role in viral combinations.
“With the new pandemic H1N1 virus, people sort of forgot about H5N1 avian influenza. But the reality is that H5N1 avian virus is still out there,” Kawaoka said. “Our data suggests that it is possible there may be reassortment between H5N1 and pandemic H1N1 that can create a more pathogenic H5N1 virus.”
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Does the Government Have the DNA of Your Baby?
February 4th, 2010
CNN
By Elizabeth Cohen
When Annie Brown’s daughter, Isabel, was a month old, her pediatrician asked Brown and her husband to sit down because he had some bad news to tell them: Isabel carried a gene that put her at risk for cystic fibrosis.
While grateful to have the information — Isabel received further testing and she doesn’t have the disease — the Mankato, Minnesota, couple wondered how the doctor knew about Isabel’s genes in the first place. After all, they’d never consented to genetic testing.
It’s simple, the pediatrician answered: Newborn babies in the United States are routinely screened for a panel of genetic diseases. Since the testing is mandated by the government, it’s often done without the parents’ consent, according to Brad Therrell, director of the National Newborn Screening & Genetics Resource Center.
In many states, such as Florida, where Isabel was born, babies’ DNA is stored indefinitely, according to the resource center.
Many parents don’t realize their baby’s DNA is being stored in a government lab, but sometimes when they find out, as the Browns did, they take action. Parents in Texas, and Minnesota have filed lawsuits, and these parents’ concerns are sparking a new debate about whether it’s appropriate for a baby’s genetic blueprint to be in the government’s possession.
“We were appalled when we found out,” says Brown, who’s a registered nurse. “Why do they need to store my baby’s DNA indefinitely? Something on there could affect her ability to get a job later on, or get health insurance.”
According to the state of Minnesota’s Web site, samples are kept so that tests can be repeated, if necessary, and in case the DNA is ever need to help parents identify a missing or deceased child. The samples are also used for medical research.
Art Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, says he understands why states don’t first ask permission to screen babies for genetic diseases. “It’s paternalistic, but the state has an overriding interest in protecting these babies,” he says.
However, he added that storage of DNA for long periods of time is a different matter.
“I don’t see any reason to do that kind of storage,” Caplan says. “If it’s anonymous, then I don’t care. I don’t have an issue with that. But if you keep names attached to those samples, that makes me nervous.”
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Study Shows Why it is So Scary to Lose Money
February 8th, 2010
reuters.com
The study of two women with brain lesions that made them unafraid to lose on a gamble showed the amygdala, the brain’s fear center, activates at the very thought of losing money.
The finding, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers insight into economic behavior and suggests that humans evolved to be cautious about the prospects of losing food or other valued possessions.
Benedetto De Martinoa of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and University College of London and colleagues were studying why people will turn down gambles that are likely to lead to gain.
“Laboratory and field evidence suggests that people often avoid risks with losses even when they might earn a substantially larger gain, a behavioral preference termed ‘loss aversion’,” they wrote.
“For instance, people will avoid gambles in which they are equally likely to either lose $10 or win $15, even though the expected value of the gamble is positive ($2.50).”
They studied two women with a rare genetic condition called Urbach-Wiethe disease, which damages the amygdala, the almond-shaped center in the brain that controls fear and certain other acute emotions.
The researchers compared the women’s responses to 12 people with undamaged brains. They noted this kind of study usually involves only a few people as it is not possible or ethical to deliberately damage a person’s brain to see what happens.
The volunteers were asked to make gambles in which there was an equal probability they would win $20 or lose $5 (a risk most people will take) — or would win or lose $20 (one most people will reject).
The two patients with damaged amygdalas fearlessly risked a $50 pot.
“We think this shows that the amygdala is critical for triggering a sense of caution toward making gambles in which you might lose,” Colin Camerera of University College London, who worked in the study, said in a statement.
“A fully functioning amygdala appears to make us more cautious,” added his colleague Ralph Adolphs. “We already know that the amygdala is involved in processing fear, and it also appears to make us ‘afraid’ to risk losing money.”
The study could also help researchers understand why some people are more willing to take risks than others. Perhaps genetic differences in the DNA activated in the amygdala explain it, the researchers said.
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Missing DNA Tied to Obesity
February 3rd, 2010
HealthDay Reporter
By Randy Dotinga
Adding more evidence to theories linking DNA to weight, European scientists report that a genetic variation seems to virtually guarantee that a person will become obese.
The genetic variation in question robs people of about 30 genes and appears to be found in seven of every 1,000 severely obese people, the researchers report. The same variation also may be linked to mental retardation and learning disabilities.
“Obesity is definitively a genetic trait, and it is very likely that additional small chromosomal abnormalities exist that may dramatically increase the risk of obesity and may also be linked to brain developmental problems,” said Dr. Philippe Froguel, co-author of a study published in the Feb. 4 issue of the journal Nature and head of genomic medicine at Imperial College London.
In the new study, researchers examined the genes of teens and adults who had learning difficulties and developmental delays. Thirty-one people were missing the genes in question, and all were obese.
The researchers then looked at the genomes of 16,053 people who were either of normal weight or obese. Nineteen people had the same genetic deletion, and all were severely obese.
“We feel that this is a major advance — the first paper to convincingly demonstrate that a relatively rare genetic variant can also be an important cause of common obesity,” said study co-author Alexandra Blakemore, a senior lecturer at Imperial College London.
“Although the percentage of severely obese people with this (variation) is just under one person, that adds up to an awful lot of people in total,” Blakemore said. “The effect on carriers is very strong.”
But what are the missing genes doing to the body to make people become obese? That remains to be determined.
“The mechanism by which this genetic defect unveils itself may give us insight into how other conditions lead to obesity. There may be an enzyme or a protein that is involved in the development of obesity,” said Dr. Stuart Weiss, an assistant clinical professor at NYU Langone Medical Center, who is familiar with the study findings.
Finding the cause “will allow us to investigate medications and therapies” that could turn something in the body on or off, he said.
Not all obese people can get skinnier by eating less and exercising more, Weiss said. “The bottom line is that they may be able to eat less, but their bodies may be so efficient that they can extract calories from food much more effectively and may not be burning energy as efficiently as others,” he said.
This fact leads to unhappy news for some obese people, he said. “If you’re eating just one pea and you’re gaining weight, you’ll have to cut the pea in half.”
Still, the future could bring genetic tests for patients that could allow doctors to tailor treatments to their particular bodies, he added.
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BPA Effects Getting Closer Looks
November 13, 2009
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
The Endocrine Society has issued an official statement expressing concern over the health effects of the common industrial chemical bisphenol A (BPA).
BPA is widely used to make plastics products hard and transparent, such as in water or baby bottles, and is also used to line cans of food or infant formula. Research has shown that the chemical can leach from these materials into food, however, and a number of tests have found high levels of BPA in the bodies of both adults and children.
This is an issue of particular concern because BPA is a known endocrine disruptor, disrupting the operation of vertebrate hormonal systems.
Although the FDA insists that BPA is safe, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences issued a report last year expressing concern over the chemical’s effects on the development of the brain and prostate gland.
In new research presented to the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting, scientists found that BPA can induce an uneven heart beat in female mice
“These effects are specific on the female heart. The male heart does not respond in this way and we understand why,” researcher Scott Belcher said.
BPA mimics the effects of the female sex hormone estrogen in the body.
Another study found that BPA can induce changes at the genetic level by binding to DNA and changing its function.
“We exposed some mice to bisphenol A and then we looked at their offspring,” researcher Hugh Taylor said. “We found that even when a they had a brief exposure during pregnancy … mice exposed to these chemicals as a fetus carried these changes throughout their lives.”
A third study raised concerns that BPA exposure may be even more widespread than previously believed. Researcher Frederick Vom Saal and colleagues from the University of Missouri found that monkeys are able to quickly clear BPA from their bodies, suggesting that humans with high blood levels are being repeatedly exposed to the chemical.
“We are really concerned that there is a very large amount of bisphenol A that must be coming from [unknown] sources,” Vom Saal said.
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