coffee: there’s still a latte we don’t know

Posted on November 29, 2004 by agnieszka

Coffee is one of the most frequently consumed — and well studied — beverages in the world. But researchers continue to debate its potential dangers and benefits, particularly for those at risk for age-related problems, such as heart disease and osteoporosis.

Around the globe, millions of bleary-eyed people depend on a steaming cup of hot coffee to get them going in the morning. What they might not realize is that their daily dose of java could be doing a lot more than boosting their alertness. Researchers are finding that coffee has a multitude of effects on the body — some good, some bad. Continue reading →

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the aging of AIDS

Posted on September 27, 2004 by agnieszka

Potent drug therapies, and perhaps even the use of Viagra, are rapidly making HIV/AIDS a disease of older adults, bringing new challenges for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.

Most of us are familiar with the major disorders associated with aging, such as heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and osteoporosis. Now, some experts say, we might need to add acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) to the list. Continue reading →

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genetics: man’s best friend is decoded

Posted on July 20, 2004 by agnieszka

After a year of work, researchers announced last week that they have assembled a detailed draft of the dog genome, the genetic coding that makes a dog a dog. The genome has been placed on-line in various public databases, making it available to veterinary and biomedical scientists around the world. A team of researchers led by Kerstin Lindblad-Toh of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Agencourt Bioscience Corp., in Beverly, Mass., successfully decoded the genetic sequence of a female boxer named Tasha. Scientists are interested in the canine genome because many dogs are prone to the same genetic diseases that are seen in humans, including cancer, heart disease, deafness, blindness, and autoimmune disorders. The researchers are currently comparing the human and canine genome sequences for similarities and differences, and plan to publish their analysis in the next few months. Tasha, however, is not the only dog to have her genome decoded: a rough genetic sequence of a male standard poodle named Shadow was reported in the journal Science last year.

This news brief appeared in the Discoveries column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 7/20/2004.
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dermatology: tanning sessions might boost user’s mood

Posted on July 13, 2004 by agnieszka

Frequent tanners may be addicted to the mood-elevating effects of ultraviolet, or UV, light, say researchers from North Carolina’s Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. In the July issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Steven Feldman and colleagues report that exposure to UV light produces a state of relaxation that may lure tanners into coming back for more. In a six-week study, the researchers had 14 volunteers spend tanning sessions divided between two identical-looking tanning beds, the difference being that only one used UV light. After UV exposure, participants reported feeling more relaxed and less tense compared to non-UV exposure. The researchers think that UV light might help release endorphins chemicals that induce euphoria in the body, improving the tanner’s mood. “We believe these relaxing and reinforcing effects contribute to tanning behavior and may help explain why people choose to tan despite the risks,” Feldman stated in a press release.

This news brief appeared in the Discoveries column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 7/13/2004.
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genetics: gene implicated in aging and fertility

Posted on July 13, 2004 by agnieszka

Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered a gene that plays a role in regulating aging and fertility in mice, which may lead to a better understanding of age-related disorders in humans. In the July issue of Nature Genetics, Jan van Deursen and colleagues report that a gene called BubR1 regulates a protein that controls physical aging in mice. The researchers discovered that mice genetically engineered to lack normal amounts of the BubR1 protein aged prematurely, living only a fifth as long as normal mice. BubR1 protein levels in normal mice also declined as they got older, suggesting that a lack of the protein could be responsible for some of the physiological effects of aging. Mice with low amounts of the protein developed cataracts similar to those seen in people over age 65. The mice were also infertile, their reproductive cells having chromosomal abnormalities. For humans, abnormal numbers of chromosomes in sex cells are also a hallmark of reproductive aging, a cause of Down syndrome and stillbirths. “It seems reasonable to assume that this protein may contribute to age-related infertility and certain birth defects in humans,” van Deursen stated in a press release. It is hoped the finding will lead to better treatments of these disorders.

This news brief appeared in the Discoveries column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 7/13/2004.
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better prediction, better care

Posted on July 12, 2004 by agnieszka

Many people with Alzheimer’s disease don’t receive the hospice services they need because these programs are reserved for people with less than 6 months to live. A new prognostic model could make it easier for these patients to get quality end-of-life care.

Despite some small advances in treatment, Alzheimer’s disease remains a terminal illness. As such, its victims would often benefit from the professional end-of-life care that hospices offer. But to be eligible for those services under Medicare, a person must have only a 6-month life expectancy. Unfortunately, predicting the life span of someone with advanced dementia has remained problematic. The arc of the disease is not as clear-cut as in, for example, congestive heart failure, says William Thies, vice president of medical and scientific affairs for the Alzheimer’s Association in Chicago. This difficulty has hampered Alzheimer’s sufferers from gaining access to the palliative care hospices provide. Continue reading →

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evolution: on the origin of leaves

Posted on July 6, 2004 by agnieszka

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere may have played a significant role in the evolution of leaves, report British scientists. Plants need CO2 to live. They absorb the gas through pores called stomata, which also work to cool the plant by releasing water vapor. When plants first evolved hundreds of millions of years ago, atmospheric levels of CO2 were very high, so they didn’t require a lot of stomata to survive. At this time, scientists think, large-leaved land plants couldn’t have existed: with their leaves absorbing large amounts of solar energy and with few stomata to cool them off, they’d be prone to lethal overheating. But as CO2 levels declined more than 300 million years ago, plants needed to increase the number of stomata to compensate. With more stomata, larger leaves could develop because they could be more adequately cooled. In this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition, C.P. Osborne of the University of Sheffield and colleagues decided to test this theory by examining 300 fossilized plants of various species from that period. They found that the first abrupt increase in leaf size was accompanied by an 8-fold rise in stomatal density. They also discovered that the size of the average leaf increased 25-fold between 340 and 380 million years ago, at the time CO2 levels were dropping in the atmosphere, suggesting that high levels of CO2 were a barrier to leaf development.

This news brief appeared in the Discoveries column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 7/06/2004.
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weight control: obese lack spike of hunger hormone

Posted on June 29, 2004 by agnieszka

Researchers studying hormones associated with food intake and metabolism have discovered a hitherto unknown biological feature of obesity. Julio Licinio of the University of California at Los Angeles and colleagues have found that obese people lack a normal nighttime spike of ghrelin, a hormone that promotes hunger. Levels of ghrelin in the blood show regular patterns in a 24-hour cycle — normally increasing before meals, and decreasing after eating. In this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition, the researchers report studying five obese and five lean young men, collecting samples of their blood every seven minutes over 24 hours. They found that the lean men had a surge of ghrelin between midnight and 6 a.m. — when they were sleeping and so didn’t eat. The obese subjects had higher ghrelin levels when they were awake and capable of eating, and had no hormone surge during the night. The authors said they hope their finding might point out new directions for treating obesity.

This news brief appeared in the Discoveries column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 6/29/2004.
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astronomy: a close encounter with a wild comet

Posted on June 22, 2004 by agnieszka

NASA’s Stardust spacecraft has revealed comet Wild 2 to be unlike any other comet known. Researchers describe the strange astronomical object in a series of papers in the June 18 issue of Science. The spacecraft came within less than 150 miles of Wild 2 in January 2004, collecting samples of the particles swirling around its nucleus and taking the most detailed, high-resolution images of a comet ever. Researchers thought the comet would look like “a dirty, black, fluffy snowball,” but instead they saw a body with steep cliffs and deep craters, indicating that Wild-2 has a relatively solid core, able to withstand impacts from other objects in space. Other surprises included finding 20 jets of gas and dust being violently ejected from the comet’s surface, as well as discovering that the dust cloud surrounding the nucleus was made up of distinct, small, dense particle swarms. Wild 2 “may turn out to be typical of other comets, but it is unlike any other type of solar system body,” Donald Brownlee of the University of Washington at Seattle and lead author of one of the Science papers, stated in a press release. The spacecraft is scheduled to return to Earth in 2006, carrying thousands of captured interstellar particles, which researchers hope will help explain how the solar system formed.

This news brief appeared in the Discoveries column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 6/22/2004.
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climate: new ice age may be thousands of years away

Posted on June 15, 2004 by agnieszka

The longest Antarctic ice core yet drilled is revealing Earth’s climate of the past, as well as predicting its future, suggesting that the next ice age is at least 15,000 years away. The ice core, almost 2 miles long, was drilled by a consortium called the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica. Containing snowfall and trapped pockets of air from the last 740,000 years, the core is the oldest continuous record of climate yet obtained. By studying the chemical composition of the trapped snow and air, the researchers can see how Earth’s climate has changed over time. In the June 10 Nature, the team reports that Earth has undergone eight ice ages in the past 740,000 years. Comparing patterns of past climate with current environmental conditions, they conclude that, without human intervention, Earth won’t experience an ice age any time soon. “However, we may have a heat wave if we are unable to control CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere,” stated team member Eric Wolff, of the British Antarctic Survey, in a press release.

This news brief appeared in the Discoveries column of the Boston Globe’s Health/Science section on 6/15/2004.
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