Category: Health

{Exercise improves your short-term memory.}

That is the conclusion of research being presented at the annual conference of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Sport and Exercise Psychology in Cardiff by Dr David Marchant from Edge Hill University, Lancashire.

In two experiments, healthy and active participants were given lists of words to learn and recall either after or before exercise, or before or after a period of rest. Exercise consisted of 30 minutes of moderate intensity cycling.

The results showed that, when recalling the words immediately after learning, exercising before learning produced the best results than rest. When asked to wait 30 minutes between learning and recall, exercising before or after learning was better than resting, but the best recall was when participants exercised after learning the words.

Dr Marchant says: “Our research suggests that an acute bout of aerobic exercise improves your short-term memory. Exercise before learning benefited immediate recall. But when people had to wait to recall the words, they performed best when they exercised after learning the lists. This improved memory didn’t come at the expense of making more mistakes during remembering.

“Our findings are consistent with the idea that physical arousal improves memory, and those who need to learn information may benefit from taking part in exercise.”

{Researchers have identified the signals and exact timing during embryonic development that dictate the fate of skin cells to be sweaty or hairy. Unlike other mammals that must pant or seek shade when overheated, humans are able to self-cool by sweating. This rather unique ability is what allows humans tolerate extreme temperatures and run marathons, for example.}

But the underlying mechanisms that differentiate “sweaty” or “hairy” cells remain largely unknown.

To gain insights, Catherine Lu et al. exploited the fact that mice have skin cells that only support hair follicle (HF) generation on their dorsal back, whereas the skin cells on their feet only support the generation of sweat glands (SwG). Based on differences in RNA expression between these two cell subtypes, the team found that mesenchymal-derived bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) were significantly enriched in the foot skin cells, compared to the hairy cells found on the backs of mice. In particular, Bmp5 was found to play a role in differentiating skin cell fates.

For example, blocking Bmp5 reduced the number of sweat glands that developed in the foot skin of mice. Lu et al. identified a number of additional mechanisms behind this differentiation, such as Wnt and FGF proteins. In samples of human scalp skin, they found increased expression of BMP and FGF genes at week 17 compared to week 15, which is coincident with the shift from hair to sweat-bud formation in humans.

These findings pave the way for future skin regeneration therapies, the authors say. Yung Chi Lai and Cheng-Ming Chuong discuss the advancement in a related Perspective.

{A disabling parasitic disease which causes elephantiasis, and threatens around one billion people globally — Lymphatic filariasis — could be eliminated more quickly, thanks to research by the University of Warwick.}

Dr Deirdre Hollingsworth, who leads the Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) Modelling Consortium, led an international team that has discovered that if a recently proposed combination of three particular drugs is used together, the disease can be prevented or treated rapidly, in a maximum amount of people, using fewer rounds of drugs.

Lymphatic filariasis is a neglected tropical disease, which causes serious damage to the lymphatic system. It is caused by parasitic worms, and is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes.

Many people with the disease develop elephantiasis or lymphoedema, causing pain and profound disfigurement — such as large swelling of the arms, legs or genitals — and leading to permanent disability. These patients are not only physically disabled, but suffer mental, social and financial losses contributing to stigma and poverty.

A large proportion of the billion people living with the threat of transmission are in India, Indonesia and Myanmar where the triple drug combination could be used.

Currently, people with Lymphatic filariasis require multiple rounds of treatment — but if the drugs ivermectin, diethylcarbamazine, and albendazole are used together recent clinical studies have shown that the drugs are more effective at killing the worms. The new modelling work shows that this meant that the number of rounds of mass drug administration needed to treat the disease may fall from many rounds to only two or three.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has targeted the disease for elimination as a public health problem by the by the year 2020. The drug companies Merck, GlaxoSmithKline and Eisai have pledged to donate drugs to help eradicate the disease globally.

Initial studies show the triple drug regimen is far more effective at clearing the parasite from its human host and that is has a good safety profile. However, experts note that campaigns can run into trouble when they go on for too long because populations can lose interest in taking the drug when the disease is not very common. At this stage the researchers can’t predict how fast this new regimen will speed up elimination, and if so, in which countries.

Mathematical models were used simulate a mass drug administration campaign in different settings. As there are many unknowns about the transmission of the disease and how a population responds to intervention, three independently-developed models were used to estimate the impact of the new regimen. The models were developed at the University of Warwick, Erasmus Medical Centre, and Notre Dame Universities. All three models were in agreement in the effectiveness of the regimen in reducing the prevalence of disease. The researchers noted that more effective treatment with fewer drugs rounds is crucial in poorer countries where transmission is high but resources are low.

Dr Hollingsworth, who is based at the University of Warwick’s Mathematics Institute and School of Life Sciences, comments: “This more effective treatment has the potential to revolutionise the control of this disease, but it will require that in over a few rounds of treatment the programs are able to treat almost the whole population, even the most inaccessible.

Dr Mike Irvine, University of British Columbia in Canada, is the first author of the paper, said: “Our results show that this regimen could potentially overcome important issues plagued by elimination campaigns, by making elimination as a public health problem achievable in a few years.”

Dr Wilma Stolk, from Erasmus Medical Centre, added: “We use very different approaches, but our models all have the same message. This new drug regimen can reduce the number of rounds, but it still depends on the programs being well-run. Even with the best possible regimen elimination is difficult to achieve if many people repeatedly don’t participate in mass drug administration.”

Professor Edwin Michael, from Notre Dame University said: “This study demonstrates the power of using multiple models, an important trend in complex systems modelling and use of models for policy making. It allows us to be sure that our insights are robust.”

{The Ministry of Health has revealed that malaria is increasing overtime and has prompted it to embark on various programs against the disease starting from most affected districts including Huye.}

Realizing the severity of rising malaria cases, the cabinet meeting of 11th November 2016 came up with a resolution that citizens from the first and second Ubudehe category will be receiving free Malaria treatment.

The Minister of Health, Dr. Diane Gashumba who was yesterday in Rusatira sector, Huye district to follow up the implementation anti-malaria strategies launched on 16th November 2016 reminded Huye district doctors to take some time to visit citizens in villages to tip them on preventing diseases.

“ We have met to remind you that doctors have to join community health volunteers to visit patients in their villages other than waiting for patients at hospital as a bid to fighting against Malaria, “she said.

Gashumba explained that the program was launched because malaria may increase more in December, January, and February believed to be the apogee for malaria rise.

The rise of malaria within these months is highlighted by the head of malaria department at Rwanda Biomedical Center ( RBC ) Dr Mbituyumuremyi Aimable.

He explained that malaria increases over these periods because of climate change to the extent that from January to December 2016, a total of 97,000 people were diagnosed of the epidemic in Huye district.

“ Malaria rises the most at the beginning of sunny period, It was realized that Huye district was the most affected because statistics indicated that 97,000 people fell sick of Malaria from January to November 2016,”he said.

Nine people died of malaria within one month in Huye district.

Ngoma and Bugesera districts from Eastern Province also recorded most cases of malaria linked to high temperatures.

Information from Ministry of Health indicates that 5,900,000 people fell sick of Malaria in the past four years.

{After a traumatic brain injury (TBI), people also experience major sleep problems, including changes in their sleep-wake cycle. A new study shows that recovering from these two conditions occurs in parallel. The study is published in the December 21, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.}

“These results suggest that monitoring a person’s sleep-wake cycle may be a useful tool for assessing their recovery after TBI,” said study author Nadia Gosselin, PhD, of the University of Montréal in Québec, Canada. “We found that when someone sustained a brain injury and had not recovered a certain level of consciousness to keep them awake and aware of their surroundings, they were not able to generate a good sleep-wake cycle. But as they recovered, their quality of sleep improved.”

A good sleep-wake cycle was defined as being alert and active during the day and getting uninterrupted sleep at night.

The study involved 30 people, ages 17 to 58, who had been hospitalized for moderate to severe TBI. Most of the patients were in a coma when they were admitted to the hospital and all initially received care in an intensive care unit. The injuries were caused by motor vehicle accidents for 20 people, falls for seven people, recreational or sports injuries for two people and a blow to the head for one person. They were hospitalized for an average of 45 days with monitoring for the study beginning an average of 21 days into a person’s stay.

Each person was monitored daily for an average of 11 days for level of consciousness and thinking abilities using the Rancho Los Amigos scale, which ranges from 1 to 8. Each person also wore an activity monitor on their wrist so researchers could measure their sleep.

Researchers found that consciousness and thinking abilities improved hand-in-hand with measures of quality of sleep, showing a linear relationship.

One measure, the daytime activity ratio, shows percentage of activity that occurs during the day. Immediately after the injury, activity occurs throughout the day and night. The study showed that participants reached an acceptable sleep-wake cycle, with a daytime activity ratio of at least 80 percent, at the same point when they emerged from a minimally conscious state.

The participants still had inadequate sleep-wake cycles at a score of 5 on the Rancho Los Amigos scale, where people are confused and give inappropriate responses to stimuli but are able to follow simple commands. Sleep-wake cycles reached adequate levels at the same time that people reached a score of 6 on the Rancho Los Amigos scale, which is when people can give appropriate responses while still depending on outside input for direction. At that level, they can remember relearned tasks, but cannot remember new tasks.

The results were the same when researchers adjusted for the amount of time that had passed since the injury and the amount of medications they had received while they were in the ICU.

“It’s possible that there are common underlying brain mechanisms involved in both recovery from TBI and improvement in sleep,” said Gosselin. “Still, more study needs to be done and future research may want to examine how hospital lighting and noise also affect quality of sleep for those with TBI.”

{Sounds, such as music and noise, are capable of reliably affecting individuals’ moods and emotions, possibly by regulating brain dopamine, a neurotransmitter strongly involved in emotional behavior and mood regulation.}

However, the relationship of sound environments with mood and emotions is highly variable across individuals. A putative source of variability is genetic background.

In this regard, a new imaging genetics study directed by Professor Elvira Brattico from Aarhus University and conducted in two Italian hospitals in collaboration with the University of Helsinki (Finland) has provided the first evidence that the effects of music and noise on affective behavior and brain physiology are associated with genetically determined dopamine functionality.

In particular, this study, published in the journal Neuroscience, revealed that a functional variation in dopamine D2 receptor gene (DRD2 rs1076560) modulates the impact of music as opposed to noise on mood states and emotion-related prefrontal and striatal brain activity, evidencing a differential susceptibility for the affect-modulatory effects of music and noise on the GG and GT genotypes.

In more details, results showed mood improvement after music exposure in GG subjects and mood deterioration after noise exposure in GT subjects. Moreover, the music as opposed to noise environment decreased the striatal activity of GT subjects as well as the prefrontal activity of GG subjects while processing emotional faces.

These results are novel in identifying a biological source of variability in the impact of sound environments on emotional responses. The first author of the study, Tiziana Quarto, Ph.D. student at University of Helsinki under supervision of Prof. Brattico, further comments:

“Our approach allowed the observation of the link between genes and phenotypes via a true biological path that goes from functional genetic variations (for which the effects on molecular function is known) to brain physiology subtending behavior. The use of this approach is especially important when the investigated behavior is complex and very variable across subjects, because this means that many biological factors are involved.”

“This study represents the first use of the imaging genetics approach in the field of music and sounds in general. We are really excited about our results because they suggest that even a non-pharmacological intervention such as music, might regulate mood and emotional responses at both the behavioral and neuronal level,” says Professor Elvira Brattico.

“More importantly, these findings encourage the search for personalized music-based interventions for the treatment of brain disorders associated with aberrant dopaminergic neurotransmission as well as abnormal mood and emotion-related brain activity.”

{A study directed by researchers from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and IMIM is the first to reveal how pregnancy causes long-lasting alterations in brain structure, probably related to improving the mother’s ability to protect and interact with the child. The research was published in Nature Neuroscience.}

Pregnancy involves radical hormone surges and biological adaptations, but the effects on the brain are still unknown. In this study a team of researchers compared the structure of the brain of women before and after their first pregnancy. This is the first research to show that pregnancy involves long-lasting changes — at least for two years postpartum — in the morphology of a woman’s brain.

Using magnetic resonance imaging, the scientists have been able to show that the brains of women who have undergone a first pregnancy present significant reductions in grey matter in regions associated with social cognition.

The researchers believe that such changes correspond to an adaptive process of functional specialization towards motherhood. “These changes may reflect, at least in part, a mechanism of synaptic pruning, which also takes place in adolescence, where weak synapses are eliminated giving way to more efficient and specialized neural networks,” says Elseline Hoekzema, co-lead author of the article. According to Erika Barba, the other co-lead author, “these changes concern brain areas associated with functions necessary to manage the challenges of motherhood.”

In fact, researchers found that the areas with grey matter reductions overlapped with brain regions activated during a functional neuroimaging session in which the mothers of the study watched images of their own babies.

In order to conduct the study, researchers compared magnetic resonance images of 25 first-time mothers before and after their pregnancy, of 19 male partners, and of a control group formed by 20 women who were not and had never been pregnant and 17 male partners. They gathered information about the participants during five years and four months.

The results of the research directed by Òscar Vilarroya and Susanna Carmona demonstrated a symmetrical reduction in the volume of grey matter in the medial frontal and posterior cortex line, as well as in specific sections of, mainly, prefrontal and temporal cortex in pregnant women. “These areas correspond to a great extent with a network associated with processes involved in social cognition and self-focused processing,” indicates Susanna Carmona.

The analyses of the study determine with great reliability whether any woman from the study had been pregnant depending on the changes in the brain structure. They were even able to predict the mother’s attachment to her baby in the postpartum period based on these brain changes.

The study took into account variations in both women who had undergone fertility treatments and women who had become pregnant naturally, and the reductions in grey matter were practically identical in both groups.

Researchers did not observe any changes in memory or other cognitive functions during the pregnancies and therefore believe that the loss of grey matter does not imply any cognitive deficits, but rather: “The findings point to an adaptive process related to the benefits of better detecting the needs of the child, such as identifying the newborn’s emotional state. Moreover, they provide primary clues regarding the neural basis of motherhood, perinatal mental health and brain plasticity in general,” says Oscar Vilarroya.

{Adds to evidence that decline in sense of smell occurs alongside cognitive decline.}

Tests that measure the sense of smell may soon become common in neurologists’ offices. Scientists have been finding increasing evidence that the sense of smell declines sharply in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and now a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease confirms that administering a simple “sniff test” can enhance the accuracy of diagnosing this dreaded disease.

The sniff test also appears to be useful for diagnosing a pre-dementia condition called mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which often progresses to Alzheimer’s dementia within a few years.

Neurologists have been eager to find new ways to identify people who are at high risk of Alzheimer’s dementia but do not yet show any symptoms. There is a widespread consensus that Alzheimer’s medications now under development may not work after dementia has set in.

“There’s the exciting possibility here that a decline in the sense of smell can be used to identify people at risk years before they develop dementia,” said principal investigator David R. Roalf, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of Psychiatry at Penn.

Roalf and his colleagues used a simple, commercially available test known as the Sniffin’ Sticks Odor Identification Test, in which subjects must try to identify 16 different odors. They administered the sniff test, and a standard cognitive test (the Montreal Cognitive Assessment), to 728 elderly people.

The subjects had already been evaluated by doctors at Penn with an array of neurological methods, and according to expert consensus had been placed in one of three categories: “healthy older adult,” “mild cognitive impairment,” or “Alzheimer’s dementia.” Roalf and his team used the results from the cognitive test alone, or combined with the sniff test, to see how well they identified subjects in each category.

As researchers report, the sniff test added significantly to diagnostic accuracy when combined with the cognitive test.

For example, the cognitive test alone correctly classified only 75 percent of people with MCI, but that figure rose to 87 percent when the sniff test results were added. Combining the two tests also enabled more accurate identification of healthy older adults and those with Alzheimer’s dementia. The combination even boosted accuracy in assigning people to milder or more advanced categories of MCI.

“These results suggest that a simple odor identification test can be a useful supplementary tool for clinically categorizing MCI and Alzheimer’s, and even for identifying people who are at the highest risk of worsening,” Roalf said.

Prompted by prior studies that have linked a weakening sense of smell to Alzheimer’s, doctors in a few larger dementia clinics already have begun to use smell tests in their assessments of elderly patients. Part of the reason the practice has not yet become common is that the tests that seem most useful take too long to administer. Roalf and colleagues are now trying to develop a briefer test that works as well as the longer ones.

“We’re hoping to shorten the Sniffin’ Sticks test, which normally takes 5 to 8 minutes, down to 3 minutes or so, and validate that shorter test’s usefulness in diagnosing MCI and dementia — we think that will encourage more neurology clinics to do this type of screening,” Roalf said.

Roalf and his laboratory also plan to investigate whether protein markers of Alzheimer’s, which are present in the olfactory region of the brain before dementia occurs, can be detected in nasal fluid to provide an even earlier warning of the disease process.

Studies suggest that a high proportion of older adults who have cognitive impairment are not identified as such, in part due to lack of adequate screening.