Health News - Friday, March 23, 2007
When you bite into an apple, you pretty much know what you're getting. The same can't be said for many packaged foods, which often contain ingredients that have been "genetically modified."
Corn and soybeans, along with cotton and canola, are among the most common genetically modified (GM) crops in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an estimated 61 percent of the corn and 89 percent of the soybeans planted in 2006 were biotech varieties. While the bulk of GM crops are destined to become animal feed, some of the bounty ends up in kitchens, restaurants and vending machines. Continue reading
Scientists may have pinpointed the area in the brain where morality and emotions clash in dicey situations. The area is the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), according to a new study in the journal Nature released this week. Conducted by researchers at the University of Southern California, Harvard University, Caltech and the University of Iowa, the study shows that emotion plays an important role in scenarios that pose a moral dilemma.
"If certain emotions are blocked, we make decisions that -- right or wrong -- seem unnaturally cold," they wrote. Michael Koenigs of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and colleagues studied six people who suffered VMPC damage as adults. For comparison, they also looked at 12 healthy adults with no brain damage and 12 adults with brain damage that didn't affect the VMPC or other emotion-related areas. Continue reading
Cell phone use does not appear to be associated with an increased risk of glioma -- the most common type of brain tumor, according to a new study. The story may be different, however, for intense use of cell phones over many years.
"Public concern has been expressed about the possible adverse health effects of mobile telephones, mainly related to (brain) tumors," Dr. Anna Lahkola, of the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, Helsinki, and colleagues explain in the International Journal of Cancer. The researchers examined the relationship between mobile phone use and risk of glioma by studying 1,521 glioma patients and 3,301 controls. The vast majority of both groups reported using cell phones. Overall, 92 percent of glioma patients and 94 percent of controls reported ever using a mobile phone. Continue reading
An enzyme viruses use to punch holes in bacteria works to prevent ear infections in mice and might offer a safe way to prevent them in children, too, U.S. researchers said on Friday. They said their surprisingly easy experiment might also be the first step toward preventing some deadly complications of influenza and other viral infections.
"This was an idea we had and it worked out right away. It was like magic," said Dr. Jonathan McCullers of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Years of testing must be done to make sure the treatment is safe, but it was 100 percent effective in mice, McCullers and colleagues report in Friday's issue of the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens. As many as 80 percent of children in the United States have at least one ear infection in early childhood -- a condition known as acute otitis media. Continue reading
Chinese surgeons are reporting long-term success with the first use of transplanted spinal discs to relieve back pain. Spinal discs from human donors were transplanted five years ago into five patients with chronic back pain caused by disc degeneration, physicians at the University of Hong Kong and the Naval General Hospital in Bejing said.
As reported in the March 24 issue of The Lancet, the five-year follow-up found an improvement in symptoms, no signs of immune rejection and only mild degeneration of the transplanted discs. "Very creative," was how Dr. Barth Green, chairman of neurological surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, described the breakthrough technique. "But I think five patients are way too few to see whether this is going to be the answer for the long run," he added. Continue reading
Using experimental gene therapy in mice, University of Florida researchers turned off a gene that plays a major role in retinitis pigmentosa, a leading cause of inherited blindness. This therapy involves injecting the eye with genetic material called interfering RNA, which disables the targeted gene, called rhodopsin, the researchers said. Normally, this gene is essential for healthy eyesight. But mutated versions of the gene can cause retinitis pigmentosa.
Mutated forms of rhodopsin produce a toxic protein in the retina that kills cells that receive light. Symptoms usually appear between the ages of 10 and 30, and most people are blind by age 40. Retinitis pigmentosa affects about 1.5 million people worldwide. The UF team engineered the interfering RNA into a virus and injected it into the retinas of more than a dozen normal mice. The treatment reduced the amount of rhodopsin by about 60 percent, the study said. Continue reading