National Institutes of Health

Brain

Health, India, international, literature, News, United States 2 July 2021

Eating disorder behaviours alter reward response in the brain: Study

National Institutes of Health (NIH) -funded study finds changes can affect food intake control circuitry and cause disorders to progress. New Delhi, 02nd July 2021. Researchers have found that eating disorder behaviours, such as binge-eating, alter the brain’s reward response process and food intake control circuitry, which can reinforce these behaviours. Understanding how eating disorder behaviours and neurobiology interact can shed light on why these disorders often become chronic and could aid in the future development of treatments. The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry, was supported by the National Institutes of Health. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the United states’ medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases “This work is significant because it links biological and behavioural factors that interact to adversely impact eating behaviours,” said Janani Prabhakar, PhD, of the Division of Translational Research at the National Institute of Mental Health, part of NIH. “It deepens our knowledge about the underlying biological causes of behavioural symptom presentation related to eating disorders and will give researchers and clinicians better information about how, when, and with whom to intervene.” Eating disorders : serious mental illnesses Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses that can lead to severe complications, including death. Common eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder. Behaviours associated with eating disorders can vary in type and severity and include actions such as binge-eating, purging, and restricting food intake. In this study, researchers wanted to see how behaviours across the eating disorder spectrum affect reward response in the brain In this study, Guido Frank, M.D., at the University of California San Diego, and colleagues wanted to see how behaviours across the eating disorder spectrum affect reward response in the brain, how changes in reward response alter food intake control circuitry, and if these changes reinforce eating disorder behaviours. The study enrolled 197 women with…

Health news

Health, India, international, News, United States 24 May 2020

Bloody hell! Your Immune System works more, worse the diarrhoea

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that EHEC causes about 95,000 illnesses in the United States each year. Of those, about 5 to 10 per cent become life-threatening and can cause the kidneys to shut down. DALLAS – May 23, 2020 – A type of E. coli bacteria that causes bloody diarrhoea uses an amino acid produced by the body in response to infection to intensify its symptoms, according to a new study from UT Southwestern scientists. The study, to be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to identify the role of the arginine receptor (ArgR) in the progression of enterohemorrhagic E. coli O157:H7 (EHEC) infection. A deeper understanding of this relationship could lead to treatments other than the usual therapy for the illness – hydration. “We found that the bacteria provoke the host’s response and then they use an amino acid that the host makes as part of that response as a signal to increase infectivity,” says Vanessa Sperandio, Ph.D., professor of microbiology at UTSW and senior author of the study. The pathogen uses the host’s initial slight increase in arginine as a signal to inject a mix of virulence proteins into the cells lining the host’s colon, intensifying inflammation, the study found. “Usually when the arginine level increases, it’s a sign your immune system is working to clear the infection,” Sperandio says. “We find that the amino acid levels also rise when the host is being abused by the infection.” Sperandio studies the environment in the gut that is teeming with chemical messages. She is especially interested in EHEC, which can sicken people. Of the many strains of E. coli, most are harmless, including those that routinely live in the human intestinal tract. However, some kinds of E. coli, including EHEC, produce a toxin that can cause stomach cramps, diarrhoea (often bloody), and vomiting. EHEC is transmitted to humans primarily by eating contaminated foods, such as raw or undercooked ground meat products and raw milk, vegetables, and sprouts. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that EHEC…

Corona virus COVID19, Corona virus COVID19 image

Health, India, international, News, United States 18 March 2020

New coronavirus stable for hours on surfaces

SARS-CoV-2 stability similar to original SARS virus. New York, 18th March 2020 : The virus that causes corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is stable for several hours to days in aerosols and on surfaces, according to a new study from National Institutes of Health, CDC, UCLA and Princeton University scientists in The New England Journal of Medicine. The scientists found that severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was detectable in aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel. The results provide key information about the stability of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19 disease, and suggests that people may acquire the virus through the air and after touching contaminated objects. The study information was widely shared during the past two weeks after the researchers placed the contents on a preprint server to quickly share their data with colleagues. The NIH scientists, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Montana facility at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, compared how the environment affects SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV-1, which causes SARS. SARS-CoV-1, like its successor now circulating across the globe, emerged from China and infected more than 8,000 people in 2002 and 2003. SARS-CoV-1 was eradicated by intensive contact tracing and case isolation measures and no cases have been detected since 2004. SARS-CoV-1 is the human coronavirus most closely related to SARS-CoV-2. In the stability study the two viruses behaved similarly, which unfortunately fails to explain why COVID-19 has become a much larger outbreak. The NIH study attempted to mimic virus being deposited from an infected person onto everyday surfaces in a household or hospital setting, such as through coughing or touching objects. The scientists then investigated how long the virus remained infectious on these surfaces. The scientists highlighted additional observations from their study: If the viability of the two coronaviruses is similar, why is SARS-CoV-2 resulting in more cases? Emerging evidence suggests that people infected with SARS-CoV-2 might be spreading virus without recognizing, or prior to recognizing, symptoms. This would make…

Pregnant woman

Health, India, international, News, United States 22 January 2020

Combined prenatal smoking and drinking greatly increases SIDS risk : Study

New Delhi, 22nd January 2020. Children born to mothers who both drank and smoked beyond the first trimester of pregnancy have a 12-fold increased risk for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)  compared to those unexposed or only exposed in the first trimester of pregnancy, according to a new study supported by the National Institutes of Health 0f U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. What is SIDS SIDS is the sudden, unexplained, death of an infant under 1 year of age.  Many studies have shown that the risk of SIDS is increased by maternal smoking during pregnancy. Some studies have also found that prenatal alcohol exposure, particularly from heavy drinking during pregnancy, can increase SIDS risk. Now, the NIH-funded Safe Passage Study provides a look at how SIDS risk is influenced by the timing and amount of prenatal exposure to tobacco and alcohol. A report of the study appears in EclinicalMedicine, an online journal published by The Lancet. Alcohol & tobacco have a synergistic effect on SIDS risk “Ours is the first large-scale prospective study to closely investigate the association between prenatal alcohol and tobacco exposure and the risk of SIDS,” said first author Amy J. Elliott, Ph.D., of the Avera Health Center for Pediatric & Community Research in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  “Our findings suggest that combined exposures to alcohol and tobacco have a synergistic effect on SIDS risk, given that dual exposure was associated with substantially higher risk than either exposure alone.” To conduct the study, a multi-center team of scientists from throughout the U.S. and in South Africa formed the Prenatal Alcohol in SIDS and Stillbirth (PASS) Network. From 2007 until 2015, PASS Network researchers followed the outcomes of nearly 12,000 pregnancies among women from two residential areas in Cape Town, South Africa; and five sites in the U.S., including two American Indian Reservations in South Dakota and North Dakota.  The study sites were selected for their high rates of prenatal alcohol use and SIDS, and to include populations where the ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in SIDS remains understudied. The researchers determined one-year outcomes for about 94%…