A new University of Wisconsin-Madison imaging study shows the brains of people with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) have weaker connections between a brain structure that controls emotional response and the amygdala, which suggests the brain's "panic button" may stay on due to lack of regulation.

Anxiety disorders are the most common class of mental disorders and GAD, which is characterized by excessive, uncontrollable worry, affects nearly 6 percent of the population.

Lead author Dr. Jack Nitschke, associate professor of psychiatry in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, says the findings support the theory that reduced communications between parts of the brain explains the intense anxiety felt by people with GAD.

In this case, two types of scans showed the amygdala, which alerts us to threat in our surroundings and initiates the "fight-or-flight" response, seems to have weaker "white matter" connections to the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the center of emotional regulation.

The researchers did two types of imaging -- diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) -- on the brains of 49 GAD patients and 39 healthy volunteers. Compared with the healthy volunteers, the imaging showed the brains of people with GAD had reduced connections between the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala via the uncinate fasciculus, a primary "white matter" tract that connects these brain regions. This reduced connectivity was not found in other white matter tracts elsewhere in their brains.

Fanconi anemia is a recessive genetic disorder affecting 1 in 350,000 babies, which leaves cells unable to repair damaged DNA. This lack of repair puts Fanconi anemia patients at high risk for developing a variety of cancers, especially leukemias and head and neck cancer.

Cruelly, the condition also nixes the use of an entire class of cancer drugs, namely drugs like mitomycin C, by encouraging DNA to crosslink together like sticky strands of bread dough -- generally, healthy cells can repair a few crosslinks whereas cancer cells cannot and so are killed. However, Fanconi anemia patients are unable to repair the damage done to healthy or cancerous cells done by these drugs and so treatment with mitomycin C is frequently fatal.

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study funded by the Fanconi Anemia Research Fund explored the effectiveness of a novel agent in preventing cancer in this population -- namely, resveratrol as found in red wine. The results of this study will be presented at the 24th annual Fanconi Anemia Research Fund Scientific Symposium, September 27-30 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Denver, Colo.

In fact, the findings may go far past Fanconi anemia.

The rate of pregnancy-associated cancer is increasing and is only partially explained by the rise in older mothers suggests new research published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

A large Australian study looked at 781,907 women who gave birth in New South Wales (NSW) between 1994 and 2008 which corresponds to 1,309,501 maternities. Women with pregnancy-associated cancer, where the initial diagnosis of cancer is made during pregnancy or within 12 months of delivery, are compared to women without cancer.

A total of 1,798 pregnancy-associated cancers were identified from the total number of maternities corresponding to an overall incidence rate of 137.3 per 100,000 maternities. The research found that between 1994 and 2008 the incidence rate of pregnancy-associated cancer increased from 112.3 to 191.5 per 100,000 maternities.

During this period maternal age also increased. The percentage of women aged 35 years and over increased from 13.2% to 23.6% in New South Wales.

Despite this the research found that only 14% of the increase was explained by increasing maternal age. The research looked at independent risk factors for pregnancy-associated cancer including older maternal age, Australian-born, socio-economic status, multiparity, multiple pregnancy and prior diagnosis of cancer.

In about half of all prostate tumours, there are two genetic areas that are fused with one another. When this is not the case, the exact way cancer cells originate in prostate tumours was not clear until now.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, in cooperation with a team of international researchers, were able to show that the genesis of this fusion-negative prostate cancer has epigenetic causes: methyl groups are distributed differently over the DNA in the cancer cells than in healthy cells. Thanks to this knowledge, physicians may be able to achieve greater specificity in treating prostate tumours in future. In addition, the aberrant DNA methylations can be used as a potential biomarker for identifying prostate cancer.

About half of all cases of prostate cancer originate through fusion of two genetic areas. As a result, the ERG gene is activated in these fusion-positive cells and prostate cells propagate, leading to tumourigenesis. Fusion-positive prostate cancer can be treated with PARP1 inhibitors that turn off the repair system of the tumour cells.

However, it has not been clear how prostate tumours without a fused ERG gene acquire their tumourigenic potential. Now, a team of Max Planck scientists headed by Michal-Ruth Schweiger from the Department of Vertebrate Genomics have investigated the global DNA methylation pattern -- i.e. at which locations the DNA possesses methyl groups -- in fusion-negative tumours. They have discovered that, compared to fusion-positive tumours, the fusion-negative tumours display more aberrant DNA methylations, which are most likely causative for the malignant transformation of prostate cells.

Children exposed in the womb to the widely used pesticide additive piperonyl butoxide (PBO) have heightened risk of noninfectious cough at ages 5 and 6, according to researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at the Mailman School of Public Health and of Columbia University Medical Center.

The findings, which appear in the August 31 online edition of the journal Environment International, support the premise that the children's respiratory system is susceptible to damage from toxic exposures during the prenatal period. A common symptom, childhood cough can disrupt normal daytime activities and interrupt sleep for both child and parent.

Piperonyl butoxide (PBO) is an organic compound used to bolster the effects of pyrethroid pesticides. Pyrethroids are the most commonly used pesticides for both professional pest control and non-professional residential use, according to a 2011 study by Mailman School researchers. Exposure to one pyrethroid, a variation of permethrin, was linked with increased risk for cough by age 5 in a 2009 study by Rachel Miller, MD. In the current study, Dr. Miller and colleagues sought to build on these findings by exploring the effects of subsequent exposure during childhood, looking specifically at the effects of PBO exposure.

Researchers looked at 224 mother-child pairs enrolled in the CCCEH birth cohort study of environmental exposures, examining measures of PBO and pyrethroid in personal air monitors worn by the mothers during pregnancy. Air samples also were collected from the home over the course of two weeks when children were between 5 and 6 years old. Questionnaires were used to evaluate respiratory outcomes.

Rheumatoid arthritis alone is painful and disabling, but it also puts patients at higher risk of death. The greater susceptibility to infections that accompanies the autoimmune disorder is one reason. Assessing the danger of infection a particular patient faces so it can be addressed can prove challenging for physicians. A Mayo Clinic study finds that a risk score can be developed to predict a patient's chances of having serious infections. The score uses information about how rheumatoid arthritis is affecting a patient, plus factors including age, corticosteroid use and the presence of other illnesses.

The findings are published online in the American College of Rheumatology journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.

Using the National Institutes of Health-funded Rochester Epidemiology Project, researchers studied medical records of 584 rheumatoid arthritis patients diagnosed between 1955 and 1994 and followed up on until January 2000. Of those, 252, or nearly half, had more than one serious infection requiring hospitalization and/or intravenous antibiotic; those 252 collectively racked up 646 infections.

The Mayo team developed an infection risk score based on those and other rheumatoid arthritis patients they studied. Factors in the calculation include age; previous serious infections; corticosteroid use; a low white blood cell count; elevated results in a blood test used to detect signs of inflammation, called an erythrocyte sedimentation rate; signs of rheumatoid arthritis outside joints; and the presence of other serious conditions such as heart disease, heart failure, diabetes, lung disease, vascular disease and alcoholism. They confirmed the usefulness of the risk score in a second group of patients with rheumatoid arthritis from the same population.

Experts say more research is needed into a disease spread by cats after figures show an estimated 350,000 people a year in the UK become infected with toxoplasmosis.

Although only a minority of people - between one and two in every 10 - has symptoms, advisers say extra measures to control the disease may be needed.

The disease is spread by direct contact with cats or eating contaminated food.

The Food Standards Agency has released an official report.

Cat owners are assured that the risks can be managed with good basic hygiene and common sense.

The latest study to demonize foods free of GMO ingredients and mercury-containing high-fructose corn syrup ultimately once again fails to accurately address key aspects of the conventional verses organic debate and even falls short of properly addressing the limited scope of concerns it does attempt to analyze.

You can see even from the comments on many of the mainstream reports that readers quickly saw through the eroneous 'organic is the same as conventional' headlines and began highlighting the many inaccuracies of the research.

As I outline in the video, the study completely fails to account for key factors such as the presence of GMOs, artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose, mercury (such as that admittedly contained in high-fructose corn syrup), BPA, and much more. It also does not even properly address the two topics it seeks to address concerning the presence antibiotics and chemical residue.

The researchers fail first of all to reveal the difference between the organic food and conventional food pesticides, and then go on to state that organic food actually does have lower pesticide levels.

Two recent studies - one from Oregon State University and another from the University of Maryland's School of Medicine - have determined that lower blood levels of the "sunshine vitamin" - vitamin D (serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D)) - equates to earlier death and greater incidence of frailty later in life.

The most recent study, led by Dr. Ellen Smit, an assistant professor at Oregon State, analyzed 4,731 adults over the age of 60 years old. The study followed the adults for twelve years using data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The researchers measured the adults' levels of frailty, gauged by low body mass, exhaustion, general weakness, slower walking and reduced physical activity.

The randomized study's methodology, intended to represent the general U.S. elderly population, also followed death rates and correlated them with serum vitamin D levels.

A comparison of fetal-loss reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) during three consecutive influenza seasons shows there was a synergistic toxicity causing spontaneous abortions (SAB) and stiillbirths (SB) following the Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommendations of pandemic and influenza vaccines administered to pregnant women.

An overwhelming majority of pregnant women who visit the doctor's office are now refusing the flu vaccine over fears it will harm their fetus and their fears are now scientifically justified. More than 90% of all expecting mothers will now say no to the flu vaccine due to fear of miscarriage and delivery of toxic byproducts to their unborn child.

In 2011, Dr. Alessandro Bertoucci who analyzed the practices of 256 physicians treating more than 600,000 patients, reported that a staggering 91% of pregnant women are declining influenza vaccines due to fears of miscarriage and suspected toxins in the vaccine itself.

A study published last year in the Human and Experimental Toxicology journal found a direct statistical correlation between higher vaccine doses and infant mortality rates. It was a confirmation that many anti-vaccine advocates have long awaited and further establishes and adds to preliminary evidence that vaccinations are toxic poisons having no place in the human body.

The study, Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: Is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?, was conducted by Gary S. Goldman and Neil Z. Miller who has been studying the dangers of vaccines for 25 years.

The infant mortality rate (IMR) is one of the most important indicators of the socio-economic well-being and public health conditions of a country. The US childhood immunization schedule specifies 26 vaccine doses for infants aged less than 1 year--the most in the world--yet 33 nations have lower IMRs. Australia and Canada are a close 2nd and 3rd respectively with 24 vaccine doses.

Some countries have IMRs that are less than half the US rate: Singapore, Sweden, and Japan are examples. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), "The relative position of the United States in comparison to countries with the lowest infant mortality rates appears to be worsening."