Daily non-political popular news in brief.

Healthy planet, places and people at risk

10-29-2007 · EurekAlert!

Australians face increasingly large-scalehealth risks from our expanding impact on the natural environment, ranging fromincreases in weather extremes and dengue fever to obesity, diabetes and mental health.

Keywords: healthy, planet, places, people, risk, place

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Academy releases emergency preparedness tools to enable millions more people to shelter in place
09-13-2007 · EurekAlert!
Although the nation has invested billions of dollars preparing to respond to emergencies, current plans leave millions of Americans at risk because they do not account for critical problems people face when they actually try to protect themselves. To fix this fundamental flaw, the New York Academy of Medicine is today releasing a report and tools -- available online -- that will enable households, work places, schools and early childhood/youth programs, and governments to anticipate and address problems they would face in emergencies.
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Schizophrenia candidate genes affect even healthy individuals
09-27-2007 · EurekAlert!
While many people who possess these 'risk alleles' do not end up with schizophrenia, this does not mean they are unaffected by the presence of the risk allele. In the largest study of its kind to date, scheduled for publication in the Oct. 1 issue of Biological Psychiatry, researchers sought to examine the impact of a few particular genes, known to be associated with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, on a healthy population.
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Toxoplasma infection increases risk of schizophrenia, study suggests
01-16-2008 · EurekAlert!
Findings from what is believed to be the largest comparison of blood samples collected from healthy individuals and people with schizophrenia suggest that infection with the common Toxoplasma gondii parasite, carried by cats and farm animals, may increase the risk of schizophrenia.
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Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor
01-30-2008 · EurekAlert!
New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6,000-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye color of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.
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Advance in understanding of blood pressure gene could lead to new treatments
02-04-2007 · EurekAlert!
Research by scientists at UCL (University College London) has clearly demonstrated for the first time the structure and function of a gene crucial to the regulation of blood pressure. The discovery could be important in the search for new treatments for illnesses such as heart disease, the UK's biggest killer. In a paper published online today in Nature Medicine, the team, led by Professor Patrick Vallance and Dr James Leiper, UCL Department of Medicine, reveal the role of the human gene dimethylarginine dimethylaminohydrolase (DDAH), showing that loss of DDAH activity disrupts nitric oxide (NO) production. NO is critical in the regulation of blood pressure, nervous system functions and the immune system. The role of DDAH is to break down modified amino acids (Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) and monomethyl arginine (L-NMMA)) that are produced by the body and have been shown to inhibit NO synthase. These molecules accumulate in various disease states including diabetes, renal failure and pulmonary and systemic hypertension, and their concentration in plasma (the fluid component of blood) is strongly predicative of cardiovascular disease and death. In a healthy human body, the majority of ADMA is eliminated through active metabolism by DDAH. Scientists have hypothesised that if DDAH function is impaired, NO production is reduced, and that this could be an important feature of increased cardiovascular risk. To examine this pathway in more detail, the researchers deleted the DDAH gene in mice. These mice went on to develop hypertension, or high blood pressure. They also designed specific inhibitors (small molecules) which bind to the active site of human DDAH. These small molecule inhibitors also induced hypertension in mice, confirming the importance of DDAH in the regulation of blood pressure. Dr Leiper, UCL Medicine, said: “These genetic and chemical approaches to disrupt DDAH showed remarkably consistent results, and provide compelling evidence that loss of DDAH function increases the concentration of ADMA and thereby disrupts vascular NO signalling. “There has been considerable scientific interest in this pathway and the role of ADMA as a novel risk factor, but so far there's been little evidence to support the idea that it's a cause of disease, rather than just a marker. Genes and their pathways are crucial to our understanding of cardiovascular disease and a better understanding of DDAH-1 could lead to important new treatments. “It could help us to establish if genetic variation predisposes certain people to these diseases, or whether environmental factors exert some of their effects through modulation of DDAH activity. “Our research also shows that this pathway could be harnessed therapeutically to limit production of NO in certain situations where too much nitric oxide is a bad thing; for example, hypotension and septic shock. These are some of the biggest problems in intensive care medicine and there is a huge unmet need for drug treatments.” The study, which was carried out at UCL's Rayne Institute, was funded by grants from the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation, said: "The unexpected finding in the 1980s that a simple gas, nitric oxide (NO), is made by cells in the blood vessel wall and is a powerful control of blood vessel relaxation led to the award of the Nobel Prize in 1998 to its discoverers. "More recently, there has been increasing evidence that impairment of NO production is likely to be an important factor in the development of heart and circulatory disease, but the mechanisms responsible are not fully understood. "This study suggests for the first time that the loss of the activity of the enzyme DDAH-1 leads to reduced NO production and may cause heart and circulatory disease. These findings are likely to be important in the search for new ways to optimise the health of our blood vessels." ### Notes for Editors 1. For more information, please contact Ruth Metcalfe in the UCL Media Relations Office on tel: +44 (0)20 7679 9739, mobile: +44 (0)7990 675 947, out of hours: +44 (0)7917 271 364, e-mail: r.metcalfe@ucl.ac.uk2. 'Disruption of methylarginine metabolism impairs vascular homeostasis' is published in the February issue of the journal Nature Medicine. Advance online publication is embargoed to 18.00 GMT (13.00 US Eastern) Sunday 4 February 2007. Journalists can obtain copies of the paper by contacting the UCL Media Relations Office.3. The study was funded by the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. About UCL Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. In the government's most recent Research Assessment Exercise, 59 UCL departments achieved top ratings of 5* and 5, indicating research quality of international excellence. UCL is the fourth-ranked UK university in the 2006 league table of the top 500 world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UCL alumni include Mahatma Gandhi (Laws 1889, Indian political and spiritual leader); Jonathan Dimbleby (Philosophy 1969, writer and television presenter); Junichiro Koizumi (Economics 1969, Prime Minister of Japan); Lord Woolf (Laws 1954, Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales); Alexander Graham Bell (Phonetics 1860s, inventor of the telephone), and members of the band Coldplay.
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It's not too late to change -- lowering cardiac risk later in life
06-28-2007 · EurekAlert!
Can adopting a healthier lifestyle later in life help -- or is it too late? In a study published in the July 2007 issue of the American Journal of Medicine, researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston found that people 45 to 64 years of age who added healthy lifestyle behaviors could substantially reduce their risk for cardiovascular disease and reduce their death rate.
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Blood protein offers clues to heart attack in seemingly healthy people
07-02-2007 · EurekAlert!
We've all wondered how a seemingly healthy person can actually be at high risk for heart disease or a heart attack. Now researchers have uncovered a new clue to this mystery. The culprit: myeloperoxidase, a protein secreted by white blood cells that both signals inflammation and releases a bleach-like substance that damages the cardiovascular system.
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Obesity boosts gullet cancer risk 6-fold
10-10-2007 · EurekAlert!
Obese people are six times as likely to develop gullet (esophageal) cancer as people of "healthy" weight, shows research published ahead of print in the journal Gut.Rates of esophageal cancer have been rising rapidly, and in some countries, they have risen faster than those of every other major cancer, say the authors.
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Why quitting may be good for you
09-26-2007 · EurekAlert!
Are there times when it is better to simply give up? To test this in the laboratory, psychologists developed a psychological instrument that can distinguish between people who when faced with a difficult goal either persist or let go of it. The psychologists studied these two personality types to see how healthy and well adjusted they are. Those who persisted are at higher risk for inflammation, which has been linked to diabetes and heart disease.
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MIT's assistive robot adapts to people, new places
04-11-2007 · EurekAlert!
In the futuristic cartoon series "The Jetsons," a robotic maid named Rosie whizzed around the Jetsons' home doing household chores -- cleaning, cooking dinner and washing dishes. Such a vision of robotic housekeeping is likely decades away from becoming reality. But at MIT, researchers are working on a very early version of such intelligent, robotic helpers -- a humanoid called Domo who grasp objects and place them on shelves or counters.
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