Twelve healthy long-term meditators who had been practicing Transcendental Meditation for 30 years showed a 40-50% lower brain response to pain compared to 12 healthy controls, reported by a latest NeuroReport journal article, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (Vol.17 No.12; 21 August 2006:1359-1363). Further, when the 12 controls then learned and practiced Transcendental Meditation for 5 months, their brain responses to pain also decreased by a comparable 40-50%. neuroreport August issue

Transcendental Meditation could reduce the brain’s response to pain because neuroimaging and autonomic studies indicate that it produces a physiological state capable of modifying various kinds of pain. In time it reduces trait anxiety, improves stress reactivity and decreases distress from acute pain.

According to Orme-Johnson, lead author of this research, “Prior research indicates that Transcendental Meditation creates a more balanced outlook on life and greater equanimity in reacting to stress. This study suggests that this is not just an attitudinal change, but a fundamental change in how the brain functions”.

Pain is part of everyone’s experience and 50 million people worldwide suffer from chronic pain. Transcendental Meditation would have a long term effect in reducing responses in the affective component of the pain matrix. Future research could focus on other areas of the pain matrix and the possible effects of other meditation techniques to relieve pain.

###

Research study supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Facts on Pain
According to the American Academy of Pain Medicine, chronic pain afflicts 50 million people worldwide, and acute pain is the most common reason people seek medical attention. Stress responses to untreated pain adversely impact virtually all systems of the body, especially the cardiovascular, endocrine, respiratory, and immune systems. The cost of treating pain is estimated at $100 billion each year in the U.S. alone.

About Transcendental Meditation
Transcendental Meditation, derived from the ancient Vedic tradition in India, is taught through a standard protocol involving lectures, personal instruction and group meetings, according to background information in the article.

About Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
LWW is a unit of Wolters Kluwer Health, a group of leading information companies offering specialized publications and software in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, science, and related areas. Operating companies include Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Adis International, Ovid Technologies, and Facts and Comparisons

About the Authors
1) David Orme-Johnson, PhD, has been a pioneering researcher on meditation since 1970. He has over 100 publications on meditation in a wide variety of fields, including electroencephalography, psychophysiology, health, intelligence, creativity, drug and prison rehabilitation, higher states of consciousness, collective consciousness, quality of life, and conflict resolution. Dr. Orme-Johnson, now retired and lives in Seagrove Florida, was formerly Chairman of the Psychology Department and Dean of Research at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. David’s vita truthabouttm/truth/Home/AboutDavidOrme-Johnson/index.cfm

2) Zhang-Hee Cho, PhD is the Director of the neuroimaging laboratory at the University of California at Irvine, where the study was conducted. Dr. Cho, a physicist by background, is widely recognized as a leading expert in neuroimaging. He was one of the inventors of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and is a member of the US National Academy of Science. Dr. Cho is currently in Korea setting up an MRI there.

3) Robert Schneider, MD, is Director of the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention, which sponsored the study through an NIH grant. The Institute is one of nine NIH-supported centers in the country for studying natural medicine, and the only one with specialization in minority health. Dr. Schneider has many publications on the effects of the Transcendental Meditation technique on improving cardiovascular health in minority elderly.

Contact: David Orme-Johnson
Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention Continue reading →

The air pollution in Central London and the London borough of Croydon is being forecast daily as part of a pioneering
ESA-backed project.

Around a thousand asthma sufferers and other vulnerable individuals in Croydon should soon receive text message warnings to
their mobile phones before elevated air pollution days, with additional patients in other London boroughs receiving the
service later on.

The YourAir service predicts levels of the pollutants nitrogen dioxide, ozone and airborne particles – exposure to which can
harm people with asthma, lung and heart problems, and in the very highest concentrations can harm otherwise healthy people.

The forecasts include predictions of overall effects on health on an index from one to ten. Unlike previous systems, YourAir
resolves air pollution down to the scale of individual streets – highest levels are often found along routes with heavy
traffic or other pollution sources, so information on street-by-street changes in pollution help vulnerable people make
informed choices about their travel routes.

The prototype service covers Central London and Croydon in South London. Croydon is one of the largest boroughs by area and
the largest by population, with 330 000 residents.

YourAir is being developed by Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants (CERC) as a demonstration service of ESA’s PROMOTE
project, intended to deliver atmospheric information to support informed decision making in this field and improve quality of
life.

PROMOTE is itself part of Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES), a joint initiative between ESA and the
European Union to integrate all available space- and ground-based information sources to develop an independent European
environmental monitoring capacity from planetary to local scales.

“The YourAir service works by combining data from the various sources available,” said Iarla Kilbane-Dawe of CERC. “It
combines regional air quality forecasts provided by PROMOTE with information on local road traffic patterns.

“We also employ information from monitoring stations around the city. Because their coverage is limited they don’t help with
generating forecasts, but serve as a key way of validating our results, which so far have been around 90% accurate. For the
next stage of the project we aim to improve the accuracy further by integrating other data sources, especially satellite
observations and more data on traffic patterns.”

Regional air quality information is important because not all the pollution affecting a city actually originates there.
Depending on the weather, studies show that up to half the air pollution found in some European cities might have come from
elsewhere in the continent – the Ruhr in Germay for instance, or as far away as Italy’s Po Valley.

“With air pollution arising, its distribution drops off steeply away from major roads or other sources because it mixes
vertically as well as horizontally,” Kilbane-Dawe explained. “On most days the air rises, taking the pollution with it – as
high as 800 metres in the winter, or two kilometres in the summer. So within an hour or so of rush hour the concentrated
pollution can waft away.”

Some of the highest pollution levels occur when the meteorological situation means local pollution remains trapped close to
the ground, combined with pollution plumes from elsewhere.

In the case of London this happens most often during the winter – the animation above shows citywide pollution patterns
during the 24 hours of 15 November 2000, when such a high pollution event took place.

“This animation was created by us for the Building Exploratory, an interactive exhibition in the London borough of Hackney,”
Kilbane-Dawe added. “The traffic data used to generate this animation isn’t yet available in real time – the animation
includes detailed data from all 31 London boroughs – but it illustrates well the way pollution can concentrate near major
roads and follows traffic patterns, and it demonstrates what we expect will become a routine type of urban air quality
forecast within a few years.”

A linked project called airTEXT involves sending a text message to the mobile phones of a thousand vulnerable individuals
during the evening before days when air pollution may be moderate or high. The message will also advise on steps they can
take to minimise their pollution exposure and manage their symptoms.

Also backed by PROMOTE, AirTEXT is a partnership between CERC, Croydon Council, the Croydon Primary Care Trust and the South
West London Health Protection Unit.

PROMOTE and GMES

PROMOTE is an ESA project that seeks to develop beneficial operational services for organisations and citizens that will use
atmospheric data to address the concerns of both policymakers and individual citizens.

The four areas in which PROMOTE services are being developed are air quality, stratospheric ozone, UV exposure and climate
change. Partners in the PROMOTE consortium include M?t?o France, the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) and the Max
Planck Institute in Germany.

The project is part of the GMES Services Element (GSE), an initial portfolio of services being developed as part of GMES.
This is a joint initiative of ESA and the European Commission designed to establish a European capacity for the provision and
use of operational information for Global Monitoring of Environment and Security.

Contact: Mariangela D’Acunto
mariangela.dacuntoesa.int
39-069-418-0856
European Space Agency
esa.int Continue reading →

As students return to
school, too often a situation like this occurs: Maria, who just started
kindergarten is excited to ride the school bus until some older students
take her lunch and call her “baby” when she becomes upset. Now she doesn’t
want to ride the bus and complains about going to school.

Unfortunately bullying incidences like this are all too common.
Bullying is when someone repeatedly and on purpose says or does mean or
hurtful things to another person who has difficulty defending himself or
herself.

To help teachers, schools, parents and students combat bullying, the
Hazelden Foundation has just released an updated version of the most
researched and best-known bullying prevention program available today. The
Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP), which is based on more than
thirty- five years of research, has been proven to prevent or reduce
bullying throughout a school system by up to 70 percent. OBPP takes a
comprehensive approach to address the issue on four levels, including the
school, classroom, individual, and community level.

Students who are bullied often become depressed, develop low
self-esteem and develop health problems such as stomachaches and headaches.
They may be afraid to return to school, go to the bathroom, or ride the
school bus. They may have trouble concentrating and their schoolwork may
suffer.

“The negative effects on the bullied students are so devastating and
often quite long-term,” said Dan Olweus, PhD, professor at the Research
Center for Health Promotion at the University of Bergen, Norway, and
creator of OBPP. “It is simply a fundamental human right for a student to
have a safe school environment and to be spared the repeated degradation
and humiliation that comes from being bullied.”

A national study, which included students in grades 6 to 10, found that
17 percent of students reported having been bullied “sometimes” or more
often during the school term. Eight percent of those students reported they
had been bullied at least once a week (Nansel, 2001). These bullying acts
can include a student or group of students physically hitting, shoving and
kicking another student or spreading lies and nasty rumors about another
student.

“Clearly this is a big issue for many communities, if not all, across
the country,” said Kris Van Hoof-Haines, vice president for content
development at Hazelden Publishing. “Schools are looking for a solution to
the problem of bullying that really works over the long-term. OBPP is that
solution.”

“Although the primary responsibility for dealing with bullying should
be with the adults in a school, students need to learn how to stand up for
bullied students and how to get help when bullying happens,” says Carolyn
Latady, family support advocate for Forest Lake Area Schools in Minnesota,
which is implementing OBPP.

“If a bullying student’s hurtful behavior is not stopped and moved in a
more positive social direction, many of them will continue on an antisocial
path involving crime, drug use and destructive personal relationships,”
said Susan P. Limber, PhD, a professor of psychology at Clemson University
in South Carolina and co-author of OBPP.

As school staff and parents prepare for the school year, be aware of
these common characteristics of students who are often targets of bullying
and students who often bully others. Students who are being bullied often
have the following characteristics:

— Are cautious, sensitive, quiet, withdrawn and shy

— Are anxious, insecure, unhappy and have low self-esteem

— Are depressed and engage in suicidal ideation much more often than
their peers

— Often do not have a single good friend and relate better to adults than
to peers

— Are often physically weaker than their peers (if they are boys) and in
particular, weaker than those who bully

These characteristics may also occur as a result of bullying.

Students who bully other students are likely to have several
characteristics that teachers and parents can watch for:

— Have a positive attitude toward violence and the use of violent means

— Have strong needs to dominate and subdue other students and to get
their own way

— Are impulsive and easily angered

— Show little empathy toward students who are bullied

— Are defiant and aggressive toward adults, including teachers and
parents

— Are involved in other antisocial or rule-breaking activities such as
vandalism, delinquency and substance abuse

It is also important to know that some students who bully are actually
highly skilled socially and are good at winning over their teachers and
other adults. For this reason, teachers and other adults need to be
diligent in watching for bullying problems and address them consistently
when they happen.

The full Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, with Teacher Guide,
Schoolwide Guide and Olweus Bullying Questionnaire, is available through
Hazelden Publishing. And now through the end of 2007, the Teacher Guide and
Schoolwide Guide can be purchased at a 20% discount.

About the Hazelden Foundation

Hazelden, a national nonprofit organization founded in 1949, helps
people reclaim their lives from the disease of addiction. Built on decades
of knowledge and experience, Hazelden’s comprehensive approach to addiction
addresses the full range of patient, family, and professional needs,
including treatment and continuing care for youth and adults, research,
higher learning, public education and advocacy, and publishing.

Hazelden Foundation
hazelden Continue reading →

A new computer-based technique could eliminate hours of manual adjustment associated with a popular cancer treatment. In a paper published in Physics in Medicine and Biology, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center describe an approach that has the potential to automatically determine acceptable radiation plans in a matter of minutes, without compromising the quality of treatment.

“Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) has exploded in popularity, but the technique can require hours of manual tuning to determine an effective radiation treatment for a given patient,” said Richard Radke, assistant professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering at Rensselaer. Radke is leading a team of engineers and medical physicists to develop a “machine learning” algorithm that could cut hours from the process.

A subfield of artificial intelligence, machine learning is based on the development of algorithms that allow computers to learn relationships in large datasets from examples. Radke and his coworkers have tested their algorithm on 10 prostate cancer patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. They found that for 70 percent of the cases, the algorithm automatically determined an appropriate radiation therapy plan in about 10 minutes.

“The main goal of radiation therapy is to irradiate a tumor with a very high dose, while avoiding all of the healthy organs,” Radke said. He described early versions of radiation therapy as a “fire hose” approach, applying a uniform stream of particles to overwhelm cancer cells with radiation.

IMRT adds nuance and flexibility to radiation therapy, increasing the likelihood of treating a tumor without endangering surrounding healthy tissue. Each IMRT beam is composed of thousands of tiny “beamlets” that can be individually modulated to deliver the right level of radiation precisely where it is needed.

But the semi-automatic process of developing a treatment plan can be extremely time-consuming — up to about four hours for prostate cancer and up to an entire day for more complicated cancers in the head and neck, according to Radke.

A radiation planner must perform a CT scan, analyze the image to determine the exact locations of the tumor and healthy tissues, and define the radiation levels that each area should receive. Then the planner must give weight to various constraints set by a doctor, such as allowing no more than a certain level of radiation to hit a nearby organ, while assuring that the tumor receives enough to kill the cancerous cells.

This is currently achieved by manually determining the settings of up to 20 different parameters, or “knobs,” deriving the corresponding radiation plan, and then repeating the process if the plan does not meet the clinical constraints. “Our goal is to automate this knob-turning process, saving the planner’s time by removing decisions that don’t require their expert intuition,” said Radke.

The researchers first performed a sensitivity analysis, which showed that many of the parameters could be eliminated completely because they had little effect on the outcome of the treatment. They then showed that an automatic search over the smaller set of sensitive parameters could theoretically lead to clinically acceptable plans.

The procedure was put to the test by developing radiation plans for 10 patients with prostate cancer. In all 10 cases the process took between five and 10 minutes, Radke said. Four cases would have been immediately acceptable in the clinic; three needed only minor “tweaking” by an expert to achieve an acceptable radiation plan; and three would have demanded more attention from a radiation planner.

Radke and his coworkers plan to develop a more robust prototype that can be installed on hospital computers and evaluated in a clinical setting. He hopes to see a clinical prototype in place at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in the next few years. The researchers also plan to test the approach on tumors that are more difficult to treat with radiation therapy, such as head and neck cancers.

In a related project, Radke is collaborating with colleagues at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital to create computer vision algorithms that offer accurate estimates of the locations of tumors. This automatic modeling and segmentation process could help radiation planning at an earlier stage by automatically outlining organs of interest in each image of a CT scan, which is another time-consuming manual step. Learn more about this project here: news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=134.

###

The research is supported by the National Cancer Institute and the Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems (CenSSIS) at Rensselaer, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. Renzhi Lu, a graduate student in electrical engineering at Rensselaer, also contributed to the research.

About Rensselaer

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, founded in 1824, is the nation’s oldest technological university. The university offers bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in engineering, the sciences, information technology, architecture, management, and the humanities and social sciences. Institute programs serve undergraduates, graduate students, and working professionals around the world. Rensselaer faculty are known for pre-eminence in research conducted in a wide range of fields, with particular emphasis in biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology, and the media arts and technology. The Institute is well known for its success in the transfer of technology from the laboratory to the marketplace so that new discoveries and inventions benefit human life, protect the environment, and strengthen economic development.

Contact: Jason Gorss

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Continue reading →

The Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) has approved an investment of almost ??5 million for the development of a groundbreaking new project to support the Northwest’s biohealth sector and the public’s health.

Northwest e-Health will create new information technology and services for developing healthcare from advanced analysis of anonymised health records.

This project brings together the e-Lab technology developed at the University of Manchester with innovations in community-wide healthcare records led by Salford Primary Care Trust and Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust. The Northwest e-Health team represents a world-leading combination of health professionals, computer scientists, software engineers, statisticians, and health scientists providing ‘sense-making’ tools for next-generation healthcare.

The Northwest e-Health e-Lab will enable NHS professionals and researchers to gain new insights into how individual treatments or whole services are working. The e-Lab will use only anonymised patient records and operate in very secure settings, thereby protecting the privacy of individual patients.

The e-Lab infrastructure will enhance the running of the NHS in any local community that joins the consortium, which is anticipated to cover a population of over 2 million by 2013. The following aspects of healthcare will be enhanced: safety monitoring; service planning; running clinical trials; research into the local effectiveness of treatments; and taking public health measures that best fit the local community.

Mark Hughes, Executive Director of Economic Development, said:

“The Northwest is uniquely well placed in terms of computer science and health informatics expertise and is believed to be more than a year ahead of other regions of the UK in this work. This project will create advantages for businesses who need to carry out clinical trials as part of product development by reducing the time and costs involved. It will also help to speed up the time it takes drugs to reach the market, so it will be of significant benefit to the region’s biohealth companies.”

David Dalton, Chief Executive of Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, said:

“We are delighted to have attracted this funding to develop services to enhance patient care in Salford and the Northwest generally. Through working closely with our fellow collaborators we aim to work with and offer healthcare professionals the tools they require to improve the health of local populations.”

The Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) leads the economic development and regeneration of England’s Northwest and is responsible for:

- Supporting business growth and encouraging investment
- Matching skills provision to employer needs
- Creating the conditions for economic growth
- Connecting the region through effective transport and communication infrastructure
- Promoting the region’s outstanding quality of life

Source
Northwest Regional Development Agency Continue reading →

Fourteen and fifteen year olds in Northern Ireland are using cannabis daily a study has found.

Research from Queen’s University Belfast has found that one in ten school children who had reported using cannabis at least once had now become daily users.

Dr Patrick McCrystal, Senior Research Fellow, said: “Whilst the numbers in our study who told us they were using cannabis each day may seem small, these young people are telling us that by the age of 15 they have moved beyond experimental or recreational use of an illegal drug to more sustained usage.”

Those reporting high levels of cannabis use were also more likely to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol regularly as well as use other illegal drugs. Approximately one in six of these users also reported abusing solvents on a weekly basis and nearly one third used ecstasy each week. The frequent cannabis users were responsible for almost all use of ‘hard’ drugs like cocaine.

The Youth Development Study (YDS), being carried out by Queen’s Institute of Child Care Research, is a longitudinal study of adolescent drug use. Some 4,000 teenagers covering 43 schools in Belfast, Ballymena and Downpatrick have taken part each year since they entered secondary education making it one of the largest schools-based surveys of its kind.

The research found that 70 percent of the frequent users were male. Nearly two-thirds of all the users belonged to the lowest socio-economic groups, were more likely to live within a disrupted family with just one parent, have poor levels of communication with parents or guardians, and had low levels of motivation to do well at school.

Dr McCrystal continued: “The findings tell us that the school children who use cannabis each day are placing themselves at an increased risk to drug related social and health problems now and in the future. These young people appear to have moved beyond what we consider traditional teenage lifestyles to one that includes regular use of illegal drugs as well as frequent tobacco and alcohol consumption. They are more likely to spend their evenings away from the family home, have poor levels of communication with their families, and be disaffected with school.”

The study further indicates high levels of delinquency and antisocial behaviour by daily users which may have become part of their ‘lifestyle activities’. Of these teenagers, a quarter reported being in trouble with the police on more than 10 occasions and nearly one-fifth had been summoned to court during the twelve month period prior to the survey.

Dr McCrystal said: “The lifestyle activities of the high level users may provide valuable insights for education and prevention strategies for the future. The opportunity should be taken now to identify as many of these young people as possible and as early as we can. Our research provides examples of the type of information that is now needed to do this and to develop support strategies to meet their needs.

“Also, as we continue with our research into the lifestyles of these young people we may be able to determine more specifically the activities associated with their drug use, and in doing so also more fully understand how drug use is shaped by lifestyle, and conversely, how drug use reshapes lifestyle.”

QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY, BELFAST
Communications Office, Lanyon North
Queen’s University
Northern Ireland
Belfast
qub.ac Continue reading →

A Senate briefing will discuss TB and drug-resistant TB, including multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug resistant (XDR-TB), the impact on global health and the current state of surveillance, diagnosis and treatment around the world. The briefing, Bringing Established Methods to Scale: New Perspectives in the Changing World of TB, is co-hosted by the Global Health Council, American Thoracic Society, Stop TB Partnership and The Lilly MDR-TB Partnership.

Held in Hart Senate Office Building, Room SH-902, at 10:00 am ET on World TB Day, March 24, the briefing marks the midway point for the Global Plan to Stop TB 2006 – 2015, which is a comprehensive assessment of the action and resources needed to implement the Stop TB strategy and make an impact on the global TB burden. Expected achievements are to expand equitable access for all to quality TB diagnosis and treatment; to treat 50 million people; to save 14 million lives; to introduce in 2010 the first new TB drug in 40 years; to detect active TB through diagnostic tests at the point of care allowing rapid, sensitive and inexpensive detection by 2010; and to have a new, safe, effective and affordable vaccine by 2015.(1)

“In order to meet the goals of the Global Plan to Stop TB, we need to mobilize support, including political commitment,” said Dr. Jeffrey L. Sturchio, president & CEO, Global Health Council. “We need to ensure that our response matches the severity of this pandemic.”

The global theme for World TB Day 2010 is “On the Move Against Tuberculosis: Innovate to Accelerate Action.” Panelists at the briefing will address the urgent need to scale up efforts and continue to seek new and innovative ways to stop TB.

Briefing panelists include Dr. Ernesto Jaramillo, Team Leader for MDR-TB for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Stop TB Department, who will address the WHO’s recently released Multidrug and Extensively Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis: 2010 Global Report on Surveillance and Response.

In addition to Dr. Jaramillo, Dr. Rachel Nugent, deputy director for Global Health for the Center for Global Development, will discuss how MDR-TB can inform growing concerns about the larger context of drug resistance in global health.

Dr. Celine Gounder, director for deliverables for the Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS/TB Epidemic (CREATE), will address the combined epidemic of TB and HIV and the effects of community-based research.

“Through The Lilly MDR-TB Partnership, we know effective collaboration is a key component in battling this daunting disease,” said Robert Smith, senior director of corporate responsibility for Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) and president of the Lilly Foundation. “It’s not done through a single act, but through a series of joint initiatives that improve outcomes for some of the world’s most vulnerable patients.”

There were 9.4 million new TB cases in 2008, including 1.4 million cases among people living with HIV. 1.8 million people died from TB in 2008, including 500,000 people with HIV – equal to 4,500 deaths a day. TB is a leading killer of people with HIV.(2) Today’s TB drugs are more than 40 years old and must be taken for at least six to nine months for drug-susceptible tuberculosis.(3) MDR-TB is a form of TB that is difficult and expensive to treat and fails to respond to standard first-line drugs. There were an estimated 500,000 new MDR-TB cases in 2007. Just over 1% of cases were receiving treatment in 2008 known to be based on WHO’s recommended standards. XDR-TB, which occurs when resistance to second-line drugs develops on top of MDR-TB, been found in 57 countries to date.(2)

About The Lilly MDR-TB Partnership

The Lilly MDR-TB Partnership was created to confront multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. Since 2003, the public private initiative, mobilizing 22 partners on five continents, has worked together to share expertise in the quest to contain and conquer one of the world’s oldest diseases.

About Global Health Council

The Global Health Council is the world’s largest membership alliance of public health organizations and professionals dedicated to saving lives by improving health throughout the world. The Council’s members work in 140 countries on six continents.

About American Thoracic Society

The American Thoracic Society (ATS) is a non-profit, international, professional and scientific society for respiratory, critical care and sleep medicine. The ATS is committed globally to the prevention and treatment of respiratory disease through research, education, patient care and advocacy. The long-range goal of the ATS is to decrease morbidity and mortality from respiratory disorders and life threatening acute illnesses in people of all ages. In keeping with these goals, the American Thoracic Society interacts with both national and international organizations which have similar goals.

About Stop TB Partnership

The Stop TB Partnership, hosted by the World Health Organization in Geneva,

Switzerland, consists of more then 900 international organizations, countries, donors from the public and private sectors, and nongovernmental and governmental organizations that are working together to eliminate TB. The Partnership’s Global Plan to Stop TB (2006-2015) sets forth a roadmap for halving TB prevalence and deaths compared with 1990 levels by 2015.

1) “Frequently Asked Questions.” The Global Plan to Stop TB 2006-2015.. 18 Mar. 2010

2) “2009 Update Tuberculosis Facts;” World Health Organization, Stop TB Partnership. 18 Mar. 2010

3) “Mission and History;”. TB Alliance. 18 Mar. 2010

Source: Eli Lilly and Company Continue reading →

“You’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep.” We’ve all heard those words, but have we ever stopped to wonder about the mental health of people who just aren’t able to sleep well? Rachel Manber has, and the Stanford University School of Medicine researcher is trying to identify the best way to treat patients suffering from both depression and insomnia.

Manber, PhD, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, is seeking volunteers for a first-of-its-kind study on the benefits of combining the treatments of medication for depression and psychotherapy for sleep difficulties.

Depression and insomnia, defined as having difficulty initiating and/or maintaining sleep, are very much linked. “Insomnia is certainly a risk factor for depression: studies show that having insomnia increases a person’s risk of developing depression in one to three years,” Manber said.

At the same time, Manber pointed out, depressed patients with sleep problems don’t respond as well to standard depression treatments as other patients. This is a problem because between 60 and 84 percent of patients with major depression also sleep poorly. In addition, if a sleep disorder goes untreated, a patient is at a greater risk for a future relapse of depression.

The multicenter study, which will involve 255 people, aims to determine whether combining antidepressant medications and insomnia therapy will improve the lives of people who experience both conditions simultaneously. Manber plans to enroll 85 patients at Stanford; participants must be between the ages of 18 and 75, suffering from insomnia and depression, and not currently receiving treatment for either disorder.

During the study, participants will receive free evaluations of their sleep, including an at-home, all-night sleep study. Participants will also receive 16 weeks of one of three FDA-approved antidepressant medications (Lexapro, Zoloft or Pristique) and will be randomized into receiving seven sessions of one of two forms of sleep-focused psychotherapies for insomnia.

Interested men and women should contact Rachel Wells at (650) 723-2641 for a free telephone screening.

The study is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and led by the Stanford site. Other centers participating in the study are Duke University and the University of Pittsburgh.

Source
The Stanford University School of Medicine

View drug information on Lexapro; Zoloft. Continue reading →

Babies and children are whizzes at learning a second language, but that ability begins to fade as early as their first birthdays.

Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences are investigating the brain mechanisms that contribute to infants’ prowess at learning languages, with the hope that the findings could boost bilingualism in adults, too.

In a new study, the researchers report that the brains of babies raised in bilingual households show a longer period of being flexible to different languages, especially if they hear a lot of language at home. The researchers also show that the relative amount of each language – English and Spanish – babies were exposed to affected their vocabulary as toddlers.

The study, published online in the Journal of Phonetics, is the first to measure brain activity throughout infancy and relate it to language exposure and speaking ability.

“The bilingual brain is fascinating because it reflects humans’ abilities for flexible thinking – bilingual babies learn that objects and events in the world have two names, and flexibly switch between these labels, giving the brain lots of good exercise,” said Patricia Kuhl, co-author of the study and co-director of the UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.

Kuhl’s previous studies show that between 8 and 10 months of age, monolingual babies become increasingly able to distinguish speech sounds of their native language, while at the same time their ability to distinguish sounds from a foreign language declines. For instance, between 8 and 10 months of age babies exposed to English become better at detecting the difference between “r” and “l” sounds, which are prevalent in the English language. This is the same age when Japanese babies, who are not exposed to as many “r” and “l” sounds, decline in their ability to detect them.

“The infant brain tunes itself to the sounds of the language during this sensitive period in development, and we’re trying to figure out exactly how that happens,” said Kuhl, who’s also a UW professor of speech and hearing sciences. “But almost nothing is known about how bilingual babies do this for two languages. Knowing how experience sculpts the brain will tell us something that goes way beyond language development.”

In the current study, babies from monolingual (English or Spanish) and bilingual (English and Spanish) households wore caps fitted with electrodes to measure brain activity with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, a device that records the flow of energy in the brain. Babies heard background speech sounds in one language, and then a contrasting sound in the other language occurred occasionally.

For example, a sound that is used in both Spanish and English served as the background sound and then a Spanish “da” and an English “ta” each randomly occurred 10 percent of the time as contrasting sounds. If the brain can detect the contrasting sound, there is a signature pattern called the mismatch response that can be detected with the EEG.

Monolingual babies at 6-9 months of age showed the mismatch response for both the Spanish and English contrasting sounds, indicating that they noticed the change in both languages. But at 10-12 months of age, monolingual babies only responded to the English contrasting sound.

Bilingual babies showed a different pattern. At 6-9 months, bilinguals did not show the mismatch response, but at 10-12 months they showed the mismatch for both sounds.

This suggests that the bilingual brain remains flexible to languages for a longer period of time, possibly because bilingual infants are exposed to a greater variety of speech sounds at home.

This difference in development suggests that the bilingual babies “may have a different timetable for neurally committing to a language” compared with monolingual babies, said Adrian Garcia-Sierra, lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.

“When the brain is exposed to two languages rather than only one, the most adaptive response is to stay open longer before showing the perceptual narrowing that monolingual infants typically show at the end of the first year of life,” Garcia-Sierra said.

To see if those brain responses at 10-12 months related to later speaking skills, the researchers followed up with the parents when the babies were about 15 months old to see how many Spanish and English words the children knew. They found that early brain responses to language could predict infants’ word learning ability. That is, the size of the bilingual children’s vocabulary was associated with the strength of their brain responses in discriminating languages at 10-12 months of age.

Early exposure to language also made a difference: Bilingual babies exposed to more English at home, including from their parents, other relatives and family friends, subsequently produced more words in English. The pattern held true for Spanish.

The researchers say the best way for children to learn a second language is through social interactions and daily exposure to the language.

“Learning a second language is like learning a sport,” said Garcia-Sierra, who is raising his two young children as bilingual. “The more you play the better you get.”

Co-authors are Maritza Rivera-Gaxiola, formerly a UW research scientist; Cherie Percaccio, a postdoctoral researcher and Lindsay Klarman, a research technician at the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences; Barbara Conboy, a speech-language pathologist at the University of Redlands; and Harriett Romo, director, and Sophia Ortiz, assistant director, of the Child & Adolescent Policy Research Center at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The National Science Foundation Science of Learning Program grant to the UW’s LIFE Center, a multi-institutional program, funded the study. Continue reading →

Lentigen Corporation, a biotechnology company specializing in the development and manufacture of lentiviral gene delivery technologies, announced that it has received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Small Business Innovation Research grant (SBIR) for a program on “Clinical Vector for TCR Immunotherapy Targeted to Melanoma”. In this program, Lentigen will collaborate with Dr. Michael Nishimura, Professor of Surgery, at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC).

Melanoma is currently the sixth most common cancer in American men and the seventh in American women. The incidence is increasing at a rate of 3-5% per year. Current therapies are unsatisfactory as metastatic melanoma has a five-year survival rate of less than 10%, even after surgery.

The ultimate goal of this program is the development of a novel immunotherapy for melanoma invented by Dr. Nishimura. It is based on activation and targeting of a patient’s immune cells in the laboratory, followed by re- infusion to attack the patient’s melanoma tumor cells. Specifically, the clinical collaboration will evaluate whether using lentiviral-engineered T cells that express a high affinity T cell receptor (TCR) capable of recognizing a melanoma/melanocyte tumor antigen, will result in improved efficacy.

“While adoptive T cell transfer in melanoma patients can lead to objective clinical responses in approximately 50% of treated patients, it is often difficult to obtain the tumor-reactive T cells from all patients. Our approach to genetically modify T cells to express anti-melanoma antigen T cell receptors provides a potentially exciting solution to this problem,” stated Dr. Boro Dropulic, Lentigen’s President and Chief Scientific Officer. “The phase II SBIR grant from the NIH will enable us to test this therapeutic approach in a Phase I clinical trial at MUSC.”

Source: Lentigen Corporation Continue reading →