Category: Health

{Smelly discharge is an issue that could be embarrassing to discuss, and as a result, many women both young and old, suffer it in silence.}

Vaginal discharge is very important in keeping the female organ in good condition; in the sense that, the fluid made by the glands inside the vagina carries away dead cells and bacteria, thus keeping the vagina clean and healthy, and help fight off infection.

The smell of your discharge may be different if you are pregnant, or your personal hygiene isn’t good enough, or if you have bacterial vaginosis – a bacterial infection.

However, these discharges have treatments and aren’t incurable; yeast infections are usually treated with antifungal medications, bacterial vaginosis is usually treated with antibiotic pills or creams and trichomoniasis has drugs that will remedy its effect.

A healthy vagina smell is usually described as “musky”, while a menstrual cycle discharge might have a slightly “metallic” scent for a few days.

However, if you notice an unusual odour, you can try the following home remedy:

{{1. Good hygiene }}

Clean the outside of your vagina regularly with a mild soap and clean water. Avoid using perfumed soap and body washes or any scented products, as this could upset your body’s natural pH.

{{2. Underwear }}

Try to always wear 100% cotton underwear; they are usually comfortable and breathable. They are even more important if you’re in a hot environment. Excess moisture can upset your body’s natural bacteria levels. And of course, you ought to change your underwear regularly.

{{3. Apple cider vinegar }}

This has antibacterial and antiseptic properties that can be used to fight vaginal odour. They can help fight off the toxins that cause vaginal odour.

You can choose to drink a glass of water with one or two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar daily. You can also mix it with warm water for a bath; doing this regularly can help remedy the smell in a week.

{{4. Yoghurt }}

Yoghurt is rich in lactobacillus which is a known fighter of candida infection – a common cause of vaginal odour. It’ll also help restore the vagina’s normal pH level, and once this is balanced, the odour will be gone in no time.

{{5. Garlic }}

Garlic also has powerful antifungal properties that can deal with vaginal infections and its odour. Eating garlic or placing a little piece in the vagina for about an hour daily can help fight yeast infection and help your body get rid of other bad bacteria that causes that pungent smell.

{{6. Tea tree oil }}

This contains strong antifungal properties and antiseptic that’ll help fight off those smell causing bacteria. Apply a few drops on a cotton pad to your vagina and it can make a huge difference if done daily.

{{7. Fruits and vegetables }}

The importance of fruits and vegetables can never be overemphasised; they contain essential vitamins and minerals that not only promote a healthy body system (including your vagina) but also boosts your immune system against disease-causing bacteria. Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables to stimulate vaginal health.

{{8.Water }}

Water is life, they say and if you want a healthy vagina, you must keep hydrating your system. Water helps lubricate your vagina naturally, which will aid in diminishing vaginal smells.

If the odour is accompanied by unusual symptoms, then you should skip any home treatment and consult your doctor. Strong odours, irritation and itching, as well as unusual discharge could all be signs that you might need to see a doctor.

Source:Elcrema

{Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine have successfully developed a method to grow inner ear tissue from human stem cells — a finding that could lead to new platforms to model disease and new therapies for the treatment of hearing and balance disorders.}

“The inner ear is only one of few organs with which biopsy is not performed and because of this, human inner ear tissues are scarce for research purposes,” said Eri Hashino, PhD, Ruth C. Holton Professor of Otolaryngology at IU School of Medicine. “Dish-grown human inner ear tissues offer unprecedented opportunities to develop and test new therapies for various inner ear disorders.”

The study, published online May 1 in Nature Biotechnology, was led by Karl R. Koehler, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery at IU School of Medicine, and Dr. Hashino in collaboration with Jeffrey Holt, PhD, professor of otology and laryngology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. The research builds on the team’s previous work with a technique called three-dimensional culture, which involves incubating stem cells in a floating ball-shaped aggregate, unlike traditional cell culture in which cells grow in a flat layer on the surface of a culture dish. This allows for more complex interactions between cells, and creates an environment that is closer to what occurs in the body during development, Dr. Koehler said.

By culturing human stem cells in this manner and treating them with specific signaling molecules, the investigators were able to guide cells through key processes involved in the development of the human inner ear. This resulted in what the scientists have termed inner ear “organoids,” or three-dimensional structures containing sensory cells and supporting cells found in the inner ear.

“This is essentially a recipe for how to make human inner ears from stem cells,” said Dr. Koehler, lead author of the study and whose research lab works on modeling human development. “After tweaking our recipe for about a year, we were shocked to discover that we could make multiple inner ear organoids in each pea-sized cell aggregate.”

The researchers used CRISPR gene editing technology to engineer stem cells that produced fluorescently labeled inner ear sensory cells. Targeting the labeled cells for analysis, they revealed that their organoids contained a population of sensory cells that have the same functional signature as cells that detect gravity and motion in the human inner ear.

“We also found neurons, like those that transmit signals from the ear to the brain, forming connections with sensory cells,” Dr. Koehler said. “This is an exciting feature of these organoids because both cell types are critcal for proper hearing and balance.”

Dr. Hashino said these findings are “a real game changer, because up until now, potential drugs or therapies have been tested on animal cells, which often behave differently from human cells.”

The researchers are currently using the human inner ear organoids to study how genes known to cause deafness interrupt normal development of the inner ear and plan to start the first-ever drug screening using human inner ear organoids.

“We hope to discover new drugs capable of helping regenerate the sound-sending hair cells in the inner ear of those who have severe hearing problems,” Dr. Hashino said.

Source:Science Daily

{Every week, there seems to be another story about the health benefits of running. That’s great — but what if you can’t run? For the elderly, obese or otherwise mobility-limited, the rewards of aerobic exercise have long been out of reach.}

Salk Institute scientists, building on earlier work that identified a gene pathway triggered by running, have discovered how to fully activate that pathway in sedentary mice with a chemical compound, mimicking the beneficial effects of exercise, including increased fat burning and stamina. The study, which appears in Cell Metabolism on May 2, 2017, not only deepens our understanding of aerobic endurance, but also offers people with heart conditions, pulmonary disease, type 2 diabetes or other health limitations the hope of achieving those benefits pharmacologically.

“It’s well known that people can improve their aerobic endurance through training,” says senior author Ronald Evans, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and holder of Salk’s March of Dimes Chair in Molecular and Developmental Biology. “The question for us was: how does endurance work? And if we really understand the science, can we replace training with a drug?”

Developing endurance means being able to sustain an aerobic activity for longer periods of time. As people become more fit, their muscles shift from burning carbohydrates (glucose) to burning fat. So researchers assumed that endurance is a function of the body’s increasing ability to burn fat, though details of the process have been murky. Previous work by the Evans lab into a gene called PPAR delta (PPARD) offered intriguing clues: mice genetically engineered to have permanently activated PPARD became long-distance runners who were resistant to weight gain and highly responsive to insulin — all qualities associated with physical fitness. The team found that a chemical compound called GW1516 (GW) similarly activated PPARD, replicating the weight control and insulin responsiveness in normal mice that had been seen in the engineered ones. However, GW did not affect endurance (how long the mice could run) unless coupled with daily exercise, which defeated the purpose of using it to replace exercise.

In the current study, the Salk team gave normal mice a higher dose of GW, for a longer period of time (8 weeks instead of 4). Both the mice that received the compound and mice that did not were typically sedentary, but all were subjected to treadmill tests to see how long they could run until exhausted.

Mice in the control group could run about 160 minutes before exhaustion. Mice on the drug, however, could run about 270 minutes — about 70 percent longer. For both groups, exhaustion set in when blood sugar (glucose) dropped to around 70 mg/dl, suggesting that low glucose levels (hypoglycemia) are responsible for fatigue.

To understand what was happening at the molecular level, the team compared gene expression in a major muscle of mice. They found 975 genes whose expression changed in response to the drug, either becoming suppressed or increased. Genes whose expression increased were ones that regulate breaking down and burning fat. Surprisingly, genes that were suppressed were related to breaking down carbohydrates for energy. This means that the PPARD pathway prevents sugar from being an energy source in muscle during exercise, possibly to preserve sugar for the brain. Activating fat-burning takes longer than burning sugar, which is why the body generally uses glucose unless it has a compelling reason not to — like maintaining brain function during periods of high energy expenditure. Although muscles can burn either sugar or fat, the brain prefers sugar, which explains why runners who “hit the wall” experience both physical and mental fatigue when they use up their supply of glucose.

“This study suggests that burning fat is less a driver of endurance than a compensatory mechanism to conserve glucose,” says Michael Downes, a Salk senior scientist and co-senior author of the paper. “PPARD is suppressing all the points that are involved in sugar metabolism in the muscle so glucose can be redirected to the brain, thereby preserving brain function.”

Interestingly, the muscles of mice that took the exercise drug did not exhibit the kinds of physiological changes that typically accompany aerobic fitness: additional mitochondria, more blood vessels and a shift toward the type of muscle fibers that burn fat rather than sugar. This shows that these changes are not exclusively driving aerobic endurance; it can also be accomplished by chemically activating a genetic pathway. In addition to having increased endurance, mice who were given the drug were also resistant to weight gain and more responsive to insulin than the mice who were not on the drug.

“Exercise activates PPARD, but we’re showing that you can do the same thing without mechanical training. It means you can improve endurance to the equivalent level as someone in training, without all of the physical effort,” says Weiwei Fan, a Salk research associate and the paper’s first author.

Although the lab’s studies have been in mice, pharmaceutical companies are interested in using the research to develop clinical trials for humans. The team can envision a number of therapeutic applications for a prescription drug based on GW, from increasing fat burning in people suffering from obesity or type 2 diabetes to improving patients’ fitness before and after surgery.

Source:Science Daily

{Results from a clinical review published in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association find nearly 1 billion people worldwide may have deficient or insufficient levels of vitamin D due to chronic disease and inadequate sun exposure related to sunscreen use.}

The study also found that 95 percent of African American adults may have vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency. Vitamin D variations among races are attributed to differences in skin pigmentation.

“People are spending less time outside and, when they do go out, they’re typically wearing sunscreen, which essentially nullifies the body’s ability to produce vitamin D,” said Kim Pfotenhauer, DO, assistant professor at Touro University and a researcher on this study. “While we want people to protect themselves against skin cancer, there are healthy, moderate levels of unprotected sun exposure that can be very helpful in boosting vitamin D.”

Dr. Pfotenhauer also said chronic diseases like Type 2 Diabetes and those related to malabsorption, including kidney disease, Crohn’s and celiac disease greatly inhibit the body’s ability to metabolize vitamin D from food sources.

Considered a hormone rather than a vitamin, vitamin D is produced when skin is exposed to sunlight. Vitamin D receptors are found in virtually every cell in the human body. As a result, it plays a wide role in the body’s functions, including cell growth modulation, neuromuscular and immune function and inflammation reduction.

Symptoms for insufficient or deficient vitamin D include muscle weakness and bone fractures. People exhibiting these symptoms or who have chronic diseases known to decrease vitamin D, should have their levels checked and, if found to be low, discuss treatment options. However, universal screening is likely neither necessary nor prudent absent significant symptoms or chronic disease.

Increasing and maintaining healthy vitamin D levels can be as easy as spending 5-30 minutes in midday sun twice per week. The appropriate time depends on a person’s geographic location and skin pigmentation — lighter skin synthesizes more vitamin D than darker skin. It is important to forgo sunscreen during these sessions because SPF 15 or greater decreases vitamin D3 production by 99 percent.

“You don’t need to go sunbathing at the beach to get the benefits,” said Dr. Pfotenhauer. “A simple walk with arms and legs exposed is enough for most people.”

Food sources such as milk, breakfast cereals, and Portobello mushrooms are also fortified with vitamin D. Dr. Pfotenhauer said supplements are a good option, as they are effective and pose few risks, provided they are taken as directed and a physician is consulted beforehand.

Research is ongoing to determine whether vitamin D deficiency has a role in multiple sclerosis, autoimmune disorders, infections, respiratory disease, cardiometabolic disease, cancer, and fracture risk.

“Science has been trying to find a one-to-one correspondence between vitamin D levels and specific diseases,” said Dr. Pfotenhauer. “Given vitamin D’s ubiquitous role in the body, I believe sufficient vitamin D is more about overall health. Our job as osteopathic physicians is to recognize those patients that need to be tested and treat them accordingly.”

Currently, insufficiency is defined as between 21 and 30 ng/ml and deficiency is considered below 20ng/ml by the Endocrine Society.

Source:Science Daily

{Study results point to potential for hundreds more transplants each year}

Ten patients at Penn Medicine have been cured of the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) following lifesaving kidney transplants from deceased donors who were infected with the disease. The findings point to new strategies for increasing the supply of organs for the nation’s more than 97,000 patients who are awaiting kidney transplants — often for as many as five or more years.

In 2016, Penn Medicine launched an innovative clinical trial to test the effect of transplanting kidneys from donors with HCV into patients currently on the kidney transplant waitlist who do not have the virus, and who opt in to receive these otherwise unused organs. Recipients were then treated with an antiviral therapy in an effort to cure the virus. Early data from the study were presented today by David S. Goldberg, MD, MSCE, an assistant professor of Medicine and Epidemiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, at the 2017 American Transplant Congress in Chicago, and were simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“We started this trial in the hopes that, if successful, we could open up an entirely new pool of donor organs, and effectively transplant hundreds, if not thousands, more patients who are awaiting a lifesaving organ,” Goldberg said. “Historically, Hepatitis C-infected kidneys were often discarded, and were thought to be damaged or too ‘high-risk.’ Our pilot data demonstrate the ability to cure the contracted virus following transplantation in this patient population. If future studies are successful, this may be a viable option for patients who may otherwise never see a transplant.”

Goldberg, who co-led the study with Peter Reese, MD, MSCE, an assistant professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Penn and chair of the Ethics Committee for the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS), approached and enrolled participants who relied on dialysis treatments to stand in for their damaged kidneys. Participants were between 40 and 65 years of age and had been waiting for a transplant for at least a year and a half. A three-step process of education and consent was used during pre-enrollment to ensure patients, and their loved ones were provided with a comprehensive understanding of the risks. Once enrolled, and as organs became available, the team performed HCV donor genotyping during the allocation process, selecting only kidneys that were considered “high quality.”

In the first phase of the study, to date, 10 patients have received transplants using the protocol. On average, patients received a transplant 58 days after enrolling in the trial — some in as quickly as 11 days, while others waited for over 100 days. At three days after surgery, patients were tested for HCV, and all 10 tested positive for the disease. Next, the participants were treated with the standard 12-week course of elbasvir/grazoprevir, commonly known as Zepatier, a recently-approved and highly effective oral medication prescribed to eradicate HCV. All 10 patients have been cured of their contracted HCV.

“For so long, HCV was a virus with a very negative stigma associated with it, especially among physicians. So it was interesting to see that patients were quick to jump at the chance to get this transplant, despite the possibility that they could get Hepatitis C permanently,” Reese said. “Going into the study, we knew it was a possibility that some or all of the patients would contract HCV, and that they could have the disease for the rest of their lives if we were unsuccessful. But for these patients, getting off of dialysis and getting back to their normal lives was very much worth the risk.”

Following the early positive results, the research team was granted an extension of their study, which will allow them to transplant and treat an additional 10 patients — 20 patients in total.

The research team is designing a new clinical trial that will study this same approach in patients who are heart transplant recipients, and in the future they hope to examine the efficacy of this approach in liver and lung transplants. Researchers note there is a need for longer and larger trials to continue evaluating the effectiveness of HCV-positive to HCV-negative transplantation followed by antiviral therapy in a broader population.

Source:Science Daily

{A team of scientists from the Birmingham University in England have formulated an equation for the perfect sperm according to Daily Mail.
}

According to the scientists, the equation hold the key to fertility for couples hoping to conceive.

The equation describes how efficient a sperm is when moving towards the egg, taking into account factors such as the length of its tail and the rate at which it oscillates.

The researchers also revealed the equation will help them create a mobile phone app that rates a man’s fertility in seconds, by analysing magnified images of sperm samples.

“This has the potential to transform fertility treatment,” Project leader Dr Dave Smith said as quoted on Daily Mail.

Problems with the sperm is said to be a factor in half of infertility cases. Gauging the quality of a man’s sperm is reportedly challenging but the researchers believe with the equation, the accuracy of identifying the best individual candidate to inject into a woman’s egg can be drastically improved.

Dr Smith also revealed sperm don’t swim in straight lines.

“They basically have to swim through mucus and to do that they snake through it in an S-shape and the equation above describes how efficiently they do that.”

Source:Elcrema

{Report, strong at the broken places, lifts up positive protective factors that help low-income families flourish despite adversity}

Children in low-income families have an increased chance of thriving when their caregiver relationships include certain positive characteristics, according to new research from the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Using data from more than 2,200 low-income families surveyed as part of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, NCCP researchers found that school-age children who reported high levels of parent involvement and supervision were more likely to report behaviors associated with positive emotional development and social growth.

According to Strong at the Broken Places: The Resiliency of Low-Income Parents, an estimated 14 million families with at least one child earned below 200 percent of the poverty threshold in 2015 — a total of 65 percent of low-income families. Research has found that living in poverty can produce environmental stressors that lead to negative behaviors in children, such as inattention, impulsivity, aggression, withdrawal, depression, anxiety, or fearfulness. Furthermore, children living in poor families are significantly more likely to have trouble developing social-emotional competence — the ability to manage emotions, express needs and feelings, deal with conflict, and get along with others.

“Too often, when poor families are discussed, the focus is on deficits,” said Renée Wilson-Simmons, DrPH, NCCP director and a co-author of the report. “And chief among those deficits is what’s seen as parents’ inability to successfully parent their children.” Dr. Wilson-Simmons challenged the deficits focus, adding that despite the multitude of obstacles that low-income parents face, many of them succeed in helping their children flourish. “They raise children who possess the social-emotional competence needed to develop and keep friendships; establish good relationships with parents, teachers, and other adults; and experience a range of achievements that contribute to their self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. These families have something to teach us all about thriving amidst adversity.”

Available online at http://www.nccp.org, Strong at the Broken Places presents findings from the survey responses of 2,210 nine-year-olds who lived in low-income families for three to five years. The report also cites additional research involving low-income families from diverse backgrounds and geographic areas showing certain common attributes among parents who are able to function well when faced with challenges. Those effective protective factors range from exhibiting a positive outlook, establishing family routines, and spending sufficient family time together to having good financial management skills, an adequate support network, and the willingness to seek help.

The major finding presented in the report is that low-income parents who provide their children with warmth and nurturance as well as rules and consequences are helping them develop both socially and emotionally in ways that will serve them well as they move from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood:

Low-income parents who know which friends their children hang out with were twice as likely as parents rated as low in parental supervision to have children who do not to engage in problem behaviors.
Those who attend events important to their children were twice as likely to have children who do not engage in negative behaviors as those who rarely attend important events.
Caregivers who treat their children fairly were twice as likely to have children who did not engage in negative behaviors as those whose children felt that they are treated unfairly “often” or “always.”
Overall, most of the nine-year-olds surveyed rated their caregiver high on all of the factors NCCP researchers used to measure resiliency in low-income families:

68 percent reported that their primary caregiver (most often their mother) had knowledge of what they did during their free time and the friends with whom they spent time
74 percent said their mother “always” or “often” spent enough time with them, and 76 percent said they talked about things that matter “extremely well” or “quite well”
92 percent rated their relationship with their mother as “extremely close” or “quite close”
“The good news is that parents who struggle financially are still finding ways to have the kinds of interactions with their children that help them to develop socially and emotionally, despite the many external stressors competing for their attention,” said co-author Yang Jiang, PhD, who led data analysis. “Since we know that children do better when their families do better, it’s important that advocates and policymakers bolster families’ efforts by supporting policies and programs that help parents develop strong connections with their children.”

To promote family resiliency, NCCP researchers also recommended two-generation approaches that enhance the well-being and life opportunities of both parents and their children. The following policy strategies, outlined in Strong at the Broken Places, help stabilize low-income households so that parents are better able to engage with their children:

Increase parents’ access to health and mental health care, including depression screening and treatment

Invest in training for providers of evidence-based parenting and parent-child programs and expansion of these programs

Strengthen safety net policies (e.g., unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, housing assistance) to reduce extreme adverse circumstances that can overwhelm families and reduce their chances of escaping poverty and ensuring their children’s success

Expand two-generation programs that connect low-income families with early childhood education, job training, and other resources, helping them break the cycle of poverty

Source:Science Daily

{Researchers have found consuming four cans of energy drinks resulted in abnormal changes in blood pressure and heart rhythm within two hours according to Daily Mail.}

The researchers revealed 32 fluid ounces (just under a litre) of a commercially-available energy drink was found to contain about 108g of sugar (roughly 27 teaspoons), and 320mg of caffeine, close to the daily recommended daily limit, along with other substances such as taurine, ginseng and carnitine.

“We decided to study energy drinks’ potential heart health impact because previous research has shown 75 percent of the base’s military personnel have consumed an energy drink,” Dr Emily Fletcher, of the US Air Force Medical Centre in Travis, California, said.

The researchers found energy drinks made the heart pause for an extra 10 milliseconds between beats.

“It’s the pause from the end of the electrical impulse generating the heart to beat to the next impulse,” Dr Fletcher said.

“If this time interval, which is measured in milliseconds, is either too short or too long, it can cause the heart to beat abnormally. The resulting arrhythmia can be life threatening.”

According to Daily Mail, some medications increase this pause by 6 milliseconds and have warnings about the effect on product labels whereas energy drinks seem to have a bigger impact.

The finds of the research were published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Source:Elcrema

{Scientists from the University of Bristol have looked at all 14,500 participants in Children of the 90s and found that if a girl’s maternal grandmother smoked during pregnancy, the girl is 67% more likely to display certain traits linked to autism, such as poor social communication skills and repetitive behaviours.}

The team also found that if the maternal grandmother smoked, this increased by 53% the risk of her grandchildren having a diagnosed autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

These discoveries suggest that if a female is exposed to cigarette smoke while she is still in the womb, it could affect the developing eggs — causing changes that may eventually affect the development of her own children. Further research is now needed to find out what these molecular changes might be, and to see whether the same associations are present in other groups of people.

Unlike the analysis of autistic traits, which was based on over 7,000 participants, the 177 diagnosed with ASD were too few to analyse grandsons and granddaughters separately.

The discovery, published today in Scientific Reports, is part of an ongoing, long-term study of the effects of maternal and paternal grandmother’s smoking in pregnancy on the development of their grandchildren, who are all part of Children of the 90s. By using detailed information collected over many years on multiple factors that may affect children’s health and development, the researchers were able to rule out other potential explanations for their results.

The incidence of ASD has increased in recent years, and while some of this increase is undoubtedly down to improved diagnosis, changes in environment or lifestyle are also likely to play a role. The researchers also stress that many different factors, including genetic variation, are believed to affect an individual’s chances of developing ASD.

Past studies of maternal smoking in pregnancy and ASD in children have been inconclusive. Going back a generation has revealed an intergenerational effect, which interestingly is most clear cut when the mother herself did not smoke in pregnancy.

The reasons for this are not entirely clear but Professor Marcus Pembrey, one of the paper’s authors, says: ‘In terms of mechanisms, there are two broad possibilities. There is DNA damage that is transmitted to the grandchildren or there is some adaptive response to the smoking that leaves the grandchild more vulnerable to ASD. We have no explanation for the sex difference, although we have previously found that grand-maternal smoking is associated with different growth patterns in grandsons and granddaughters.

‘More specifically, we know smoking can damage the DNA of mitochondria — the numerous “power-packs” contained in every cell, and mitochondria are only transmitted to the next generation via the mother’s egg. The initial mitochondrial DNA mutations often have no overt effect in the mother herself, but the impact can increase when transmitted to her own children.’

Professor Jean Golding, another author, added: ‘We already know that protecting a baby from tobacco smoke is one of the best things a woman can do to give her child a healthy start in life. Now we’ve found that not smoking during pregnancy could also give their future grandchildren a better start too. We have started studying the next generation of participants (COCO90s), so eventually we will be able to see if the effect carries down from the great-grandparents to their great-grandchildren too.’

Dr Dheeraj Rai, another author, added: ‘We still do not know why many children develop autism and behaviours linked to it. The associations we observe raise intriguing issues on possible transgenerational influences in autism. Future research will help understand the meaning and mechanisms behind these findings. The National Autistic Society website contains a wealth of information about autism and details on how and where to seek advice.’

Alycia Halladay, PhD, chief science officer at the Autism Science Foundation (USA), said: ‘To date, research into the causes of autism has been limited to studying maternal or paternal exposures during pregnancy. By utilizing a birth cohort in the United Kingdom [Children of the 90s], scientists are able to go back a generation to examine the role of grandparental exposures, presumably through germ line mutations and epigenetic modifications. Hopefully, grandparental exposures will continue to be investigated to better understand this mechanism.’

Source:Science Daily