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US: Potential Reversal Of Autism ?

Richard Owl Mirror
Gather
Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:06 UTC
Scientific researchers can spend years in the lab on obscure topics, like how a sea slug remembers or how a fruit fly sees color. But every now and then, a basic scientist makes a discovery that changes human lives.

Mark Bear, who directs the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, is one of those basic scientists. He's discovered a system in the brain that could change the lives of thousands of people with the genetic disorder known as Fragile X Syndrome.
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People

UK: Autistic women: a life more ordinary


UK Telegraph
Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:33 UTC
Why do women make up only one in four of those diagnosed as autistic? Could it be that they are simply better at pretending not to be? Charlotte Moore meets a group of women for whom 'normal' is an alien language that they battle to learn

Autistic women
©Unknown
Lauren, Selina, Cara and Kelly (left to right) are all women on the autistic spectrum

I am in Godalming, Surrey, sitting with a group of pleasant, personable women who have come together, as they do each month for an all-women's night, to share news, views and experiences. You'd imagine that the room would be alive with a babble of voices, but it's not. The gossipy, reciprocal flow of normal female conversation is absent, and so far not one of them has asked me, a stranger, a single question about myself or what I am doing here. The stilted atmosphere would strike outsiders as disconcertingly weird, but these women are oblivious to the awkwardness. They are autistic, and for them this is normality.
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Heart

US: Healing power of the horse helps man with autism

Robert M. Cook
Foster's Daily Democrat
Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:11 UTC
Dover, New Hampshire - Chris Makhoul was terrified when he first came to Winning Ways Stable in June and saw Cowboy, a miniature 42-year-old Shetland pony.

Makhoul and Cowboy
©John Huff/Staff photographer
Chris Makhoul gets close to Cowboy at Winning Ways Stable Inc. in Dover recently. Makhoul works with and rides several of the horses there as part of a therapeutic program to help people with developmental disabilities.

The 22-year-old Fremont man, who suffers from Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism, couldn't even bring himself to pat Cowboy. But Ginny Ann, his life coach, knew Makhoul would benefit from contact with animals.

As a volunteer who worked for the University of New Hampshire's therapeutic riding program since 2001, which has a stable in Durham, Ann said she's seen many people who suffer from developmental disabilities improve from riding horses.
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Light Saber

US: Autism bill introduced to Nevada state senate


KVBC News
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:38 UTC
Democrats in the Nevada state senate are behind a bill that will help families cover the costs that come with Autism.

A bill introduced Wednesday would require health insurance providers to cover Autism. It could be passed in the next legislative session.

This is good news for parents such as Carol Reitz, who lives in Northern Nevada. She spends $25,000 per year on Autism care for her son.
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Pills

Selective Publications of Trial Reports on FDA-Approved Drugs Favor New Ones


The Washington Post
Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:55 UTC
More than half of all supporting clinical trials for U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs remain unpublished five years after permission has been given to sell the drugs in the United States, say University of California, San Francisco researchers.

They combed the medical literature to determine the publication status of all 909 clinical trials that supported the 90 new drug applications approved by the FDA between 1998 and 2000.

They found that 76 percent of pivotal trials -- such as large Phase II and Phase III trials designed to determine the overall risks and benefits of a drug -- had been published in medical journals, usually within three years of FDA approval of the drug. However, only 43 percent of all supporting trials submitted to the FDA had been published.
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Health

New Virus Is Culprit, Not Bystander, In Deadly Skin Cancer


Science Daily
Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:03 UTC
University of Pittsburgh scientists are uncovering more evidence that a virus they recently discovered is the cause of Merkel cell carcinoma, an aggressive and deadly form of skin cancer.

The findings, published recently in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, put to rest the possibility that MCV infects tumors that already have formed. If that were the case, the virus would be a passenger rather than the driver of the disease.

Experiments in human tumors reveal that the cancer develops in two steps: during infection, the Merkel cell polyomavirus, or MCV, integrates into host cell DNA and produces viral proteins that promote cancer formation. Tumors occur when a mutation removes part of a viral protein needed for the virus to reproduce and infect other healthy cells, explained senior investigator, Patrick Moore, M.D., M.P.H, professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the School of Medicine and director of the Molecular Virology Program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. The virus then can spread only as the cancer cells themselves multiply.
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Health

American Kids Most Medicated


Science Daily
Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:30 UTC
American children are approximately three times more likely to be prescribed psychotropic medication than children in Europe. A new study claims that the differences may be accounted for by regulatory practices and cultural beliefs about the role of medication in emotional and behavioural problems.

Julie Zito led a team of researchers from the USA, Germany and the Netherlands who investigated prescription levels in the three countries. She said, "Antidepressant and stimulant prevalence were three or more times greater in the US than in the Netherlands and Germany, while antipsychotic prevalence was 1.5 to 2.2 times greater".

The use of antidepressants, like Prozac, and stimulants, like Ritalin, in children has been the subject of a great deal of controversy and this study quantifies the differences in practice between the US and Western Europe. The authors claim that the differences may be partly due to different diagnostic classification systems, "The US trend of increasing bipolar diagnosis in children and adolescents does not reflect European practice".
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Health

Wine ingredient protects against radiation: report


Reuters
Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:18 UTC
Washington - A natural antioxidant commonly found in red wine and fruit may protect against radiation exposure, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.

Tests in mice showed that resveratrol, when altered using a compound called acetyl, could prevent some of the damage caused by radiation, the researchers told the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology meeting in Boston.

Drugs made that way might be used in a large-scale radiological or nuclear emergency, said Dr. Joel Greenberger, a radiation oncologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

"Currently there are no drugs on the market that protect against or counteract radiation exposure," he added. "Our goal is to develop treatments for the general population that are effective and non-toxic," Greenberger said in a statement.
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Health

Calorie-free Natural Sweetener Stevia Moves One Step Closer To Use In U. S.


Science Daily
Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:12 UTC
Researchers in Georgia are reporting an advance toward the possible use of a new natural non-caloric sweetener in soft drinks and other food products in the United States. Stevia, which is 300 times more potent than sugar but calorie-free, is already used in some countries as a food and beverage additive to help fight obesity and diabetes.

Indra Prakash, John F. Clos, and Grant E. DuBois note that so-called stevia sweeteners, derived from a South American plant, have been popular for years as a food and beverage additive in Latin America and Asia. But several factors have prevented its use as a sweetener in Europe and the United States. Those include concerns about safety and hints that exposure to sunlight degrades one of the key components of stevia.
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Health

Step Back To Move Forward Emotionally, Study Suggests


Science Daily
Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:07 UTC
When you're upset or depressed, should you analyze your feelings to figure out what's wrong? Or should you just forget about it and move on?

New research suggests a solution to these questions and to a related psychological paradox: Pocessing emotions is supposed to facilitate coping, but attempts to understand painful feelings often backfire and perpetuate or strengthen negative moods and emotions.*

The solution is not denial or distraction. According to University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross, the best way to move ahead emotionally is to analyze one's feelings from a psychologically distanced perspective.

With University of California, Berkeley, colleague Ozlem Ayduk, Kross has conducted a series of studies that provide the first experimental evidence of the benefits of analyzing depressive feelings from a psychologically distanced perspective.

"We aren't very good at trying to analyze our feelings to make ourselves feel better," said Kross, a faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and an assistant professor of psychology. "It's an invaluable human ability to think about what we do, but reviewing our mistakes over and over, re-experiencing the same negative emotions we felt the first time around, tends to keep us stuck in negativity. It can be very helpful to take a sort of mental time-out, to sit back and try to review the situation from a distance."
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