The omega-3 fatty acids in fish may lower stroke risk through their positive effects on blood pressure and cholesterol, wrote Susanna Larsson and Nicola Orsini of Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet in the journal Stroke.

Their analysis was based on 15 studies conducted in the United States, Europe, Japan and China, each of which asked people how frequently they ate fish, then followed them for between four and 30 years to see who suffered a stroke.

“I think overall, fish does provide a beneficial package of nutrients, in particular the omega-3s, that could explain this lower risk,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, a Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist whose research was included in the analysis.

“A lot of the evidence comes together suggesting that about two to three servings per week is enough to get the benefit.”

Vitamin D, selenium, and certain types of proteins in fish may also have stroke-related benefits, he added. Data for the analysis came from close to 400,000 people aged 30 to 103. Over anywhere from a few years to a few decades, about 9,400 people had a stroke. Eating three extra servings of fish each week was linked to a 6% drop in stroke risk, which translates to one fewer stroke among a hundred people eating extra fish over a lifetime. The people in each study who ate the most fish were 12% less likely to have a stroke than those that ate the least.

Mozaffarian’s report separated the effects of different kinds of fish and found that people who ate more fried fish and fish sandwiches, not surprisingly, didn’t get any stroke benefit. But the research can’t prove that adding more non-fried fish to your diet will keep you from having a stroke, Mozaffarian told Reuters Health. People “could have healthier diets in other ways, people could exercise more, people could have better education that could lead them to see their doctors more,” he added, all of which could decrease their risk of strokes.

Still, most studies have tried to take those other health and nutrition factors into account to isolate the effects of fish as much as possible – and they suggest a cause-and-effect relationship, he said. It’s likely that people who start out eating no fish or very little probably have the most to gain by putting it on their plate more often.

“You get a lot of bang for your buck when you go from low intake to moderate, a few servings per week,” Mozaffarian said. After that, the benefit from each extra serving probably goes down. Fatty fish such as salmon and herring are especially high in omega-3s, The American Heart Association recommends at least two servings of fatty fish in particular each week. – Reuters

Another chemical used as an industrial metal degreasing agent, trichloroethylene (TCE) also boosted heart risks, said the research to be presented at the Paediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Denver Colorado.

“Congenital heart disease (which occurs when the heart is malformed before birth) is a major cause of childhood death and life-long health problems,” said D. Gail McCarver, lead author of the study and pediatrics professor at Wisconsin’s Medical College.

Previous studies suggested it could be caused by chemicals in the environment. Researches collected stool samples from 135 newborn babies with the heart condition and 432 infants without it.

A full 82% of all the infants showed exposure to at lesat one of the 17 solvents measured in the study. While infants who showed exposure to ethyl benzene had four times the risk of CHD. Black infants exposed to TCE showed an eight-fold risk for the heart condition, and white infants with the traces in their stool had a two-fold higher risk, said the finding.

“This is the first report that exposure to ethyl benzene was associated with CHD,” McCarver said. Some residents of the US Gulf Coast have expressed concern about their health in the aftermath of the BP oil spill last year, though no studies have been completed yet to determine the effects of exposure to the spilled oil.

Other sources of ethyl benzene include vehicle exhaust, petrol pump vapours and cigratte smoke.
Source: AFP

The controversial test measures vital structures on the tips of a person’s chromosomes, called telomeres, which scientists believe are one of the most important and accurate indicators of the speed at which a
person is aging.

Scientists behind the A500 test said it will be possible to tell whether a person’s “biological age”, as measured by the length of their telomeres, is older or younger than their actual chronological age, as measured by the years since birth. Although the scientists do not yet believe they can narrow down the prediction to calculate the exact number of months and years a person has yet to live, several studies have indicated that individuals with shorter than normal telomeres are likely to die younger than those with longer telomeres.

Medical researchers believe that telomere testing will become widespread within the next five or ten years, but there are already some scientists who question its value and whether there should be stronger ethical controls over its wider use. In addition to concerns about how people will react to a test for how “old” they really are, some scientists are worried that telomere testing may be hijacked by unscrupulous organizations trying to peddle unproven anti-aging remedies and other fake elixirs of life.

The results of the tests might also be of interest to companies offering life-insurance policies or medical cover that depend on a person’s lifetime risk of falling seriously ill or dying prematurely. However, there is a growing body of respectable scientific opinion that says testing the length of a person’s telomeres could provide vital insights into the risk of dying prematurely from a range of age-related disorders, from cardiovascular disease to Alzheimer’s and cancer.

“We know that people who are born with shorter telomeres than normal also have a shorter lifespan,” Maria Blasco of the Spanish National Cancer Research Center in Madrid, who is the inventor of the new commercial telomere test said. “But we don’t know whether longer telomeres are going to give you a longer lifespan. That’s not really known in humans,” she added. “What is new about this test is that it is very precise. We can detect very small differences in telomere length and it is a simple and fast technique where many samples can be analyzed at the same time. Most importantly, we are able to determine the presence of dangerous telomeres – those that are very short.”

Blasco’s company, Life Length, is in talks with medical diagnostic companies across Europe, including the UK, to market the test and collect blood samples for analysis in Spain. A deal with a company operating in Britain is likely within a year, she said. “We need to have a clinical company to send us the blood (samples). We are in contact with several groups in the UK who are interested,” Blasco said.

Life Length is anticipating hundreds of requests from people wanting to have their telomeres tested and is expecting demand from thousands more once the company is able to bring down the cost of the test as public demand increases. Although Life Length is not the only company selling telomere tests, it is the only one gearing up for over-the-counter sales to the public and the only company with an accurate enough test to be of practical use, Prof Jerry Shay of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas said.

“This test devised by Blasco is so accurate that it is likely to provide more useful information than some other tests out there right now,” said Shay, who is a scientific consultant for Life Length. “What’s important in aging is the shortest telomeres. What makes cells stop growing is the shortest telomeres, not the average telomere length, which is what other tests look at. “Everyone talks about the chronological age, but there is also a biological age and telomere length is actually a pretty good representation of your biological age. Telomeres are important – there is no question of that,” he said.

Asked why the general public would be interested in taking a telomere test, Shay said: “I think people are just basically curious about their own mortality. If you ask people what they worry about, most people would say they are worried about dying.” He added: “People might say ‘If I know I’m going to die in 10 years I’ll spend all my money now’, or ‘If I’m going to live for 40 more years I’ll be more conservative in my lifestyle’. The worrying thing is that if this information ever got to a point where it is believable, insurance companies would start requiring it in terms of insuring people.

“If you smoke or you’re obese, your insurance rates are higher, and if you have short telomeres your insurance rates might be higher too.” Telomere research is considered to be one of the most exciting areas in biomedical science and last year the Nobel Prize in medicine was shared between three scientists who have pioneered the field. Interestingly, one of the Nobel laureates, Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California San Francisco, is an nthusiastic proponent of telomere testing while another prize-winner, Carol Greider of Harvard Medical School, is more sceptical of its benefits.

“Do I think it’s useful to have a bunch of companies offering to measure telomere length so people can find out how old they are? No,” Greider recently told the journal Science. Blasco, a former post-doctoral student in Greider’s laboratory, is more certain of the benefits: “It will be useful for you to know your biological age and maybe to change your lifestyle habits if you find you have short telomeres.” – The Independent

Researchers led by Professor Karim Nayernia at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI) developed a new technique that allows the creation of human sperm in the laboratory.

They stressed that the sperm, developed from stem cells with XY chromosomes (male), will not be used for fertility treatment, as this is prohibited by British law and in any case is not their main interest. “This is an important development as it will allow researchers to study in detail how sperm forms and lead to a better understanding of infertility in men,” said
Nayernia.

“It could help us develop new ways to help couples suffering infertility so they can have a child which is genetically their own.” He said more investigation was needed to decide whether the in-vitro derived (IVD) sperm, could be used as a fertility treatment. – AFP

The brain region – known as the anterior cingulated cortex (ACC) – actually raises the alarm about dangers that fail to penetrate the conscience mind.

The ACC is located near the top of the frontal lobes and along the walls that divide the left and right brains.

Scientist used a computer program that required healthy young people to respond to activity on the monitor, and measured their brain activity at 2.5 second intervals with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The experiments showed that “our brains are better at picking up subtle warning signs than we previously thought.

In the past, we found activity in the ACC when people had to make a difficult decision … or after they made a mistake. But now the region can “actually learn to recognize when you might make a mistake … it learns to warn us in advance when our behavior might lead to negative outcome.

The ACC is closely associated with some serious mental problems, including schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, the same neurotransmitter involved in drug addiction and Parkinson’s disease – dopamine – also appears ‘to play a key role in training the ACC to recognize when to send the early warning signal.

A study was conducted at Addenbrooke’ Hospital in Cambridge, UK, to determine the frequency of fish consumption among 22,000 middle-aged and older men and women, of whom 517 had diabetes.

The researchers discovered that diabetics who consumed an average of less than one serving of fish per week had four times the risk of microalbuminuria compared to those who had about two servings.

Microalbuminuria is the leakage of alumin into the urine by the kidneys.

In type 1 diabetes, this condition indicates renal failure. It also points to ischaemic heart disease among type 2 diabetes patients.

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Data from 8525 HIV positive and more than two million non-HIV patients were collected from two hospitals in the United States. Incidentlally, this study is among the first to indicate a high risk of bone fractures among HIV positie individuals.

Previous studies only pointed to a decrease in bone density among this group.

The scientists believe their breakthrough may offer a whole new range of treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s and diabetes and for spinal cord injuries involving use of men’s own stem cells to replace damaged or diseased cells in their own bodies.

The researchers from the Universities of Tuebingen and Cologne in Germany, and King’s College London, say routine biopsies of men’s testicles could provide a new source of stem cells which could be as good as embryonic stem cells for researching and developing treatments for a range of diseases, but without the ethical and legal problems of embryonic stem cells.

Writing in the online edition of Nature, Professor Thomas Skutella, who leads an experimental embryology group at Tuebingen University, says, “Thegeneration of human adult germline stem cells from testicular biopsies may provide simple and non-controversial access to individual cell-based therapy without the ethical and immunological problems associated with human embryonic stem cells.”

Stem cells are the new hope for treatment development because they carry the potential of personalised therapy – using a person’s own cells to create stem cells that can then repair and replace damaged tissue, such as in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and cancers.

This way the big problem of immune system rejection is overcome because the implants have the same DNA as the host. The drawback, however, is that using stem cells from male testes,the treatment would only work on men. Stem cells from embryos have the potential to become any cell in the body, after all, a whole person grows from a single fertilised egg.

But getting stem cells from embryos is fraught with ethical problems since it involves the destruction of embryos. In Germany, stem cell research involving embryos is prohibited by federal law.
For years, scientists in Germany have been working to find legal alternative ways to make stem cells with the same ability to become any cell in the body as the embryonic stem cell. – dpa

“This gene is central to HIV biology,” Dr. Warner Greene of the Gladstone Institutes at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a telephone interview.

So far, efforts to make a vaccine against HIV have failed.

In humans, HIV devotes one of its 9 genes to disabling Apobec3 proteins, which may help explain why people with HIV rarely make antibodies against the virus, he said.

HIV is a retrovirus, which means it copies bits of its own genetic code into the DNA of the host.

“If we could prevent HIV from destroying this key pivotal host factor, we might allow HIV-infected patients to develop neutralizing antibodies like they do in mice,” he said.

“It’s a translation from mice to men. That’s the challenge now,” said Greene, whose study appears in the journal Science.

Green’s lab and others have been hunting for the gene in mice that allows them to fight off the Friend virus, a retrovirus similar to HIV.

Working with a team at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the researchers conducted a series of experiments in which they genetically engineered mice to lack the Apobec3 gene. “Sure enough, when we knocked out the Apobec3 gene, they lost their ability to recover from Friend virus infection,” Greene said.

He said the discovery of Apobec3′s role in retroviral immunity is exciting because genes in this region are active in people who resist HIV infection, suggesting they are making effective antibodies against the virus.

“Blocking this degradation of Apobec3 is probably the most promising new drug target in HIV biology,” Greene said.

Antibodies are key to warding off viral infections, and most vaccines against viral diseases stimulate the body to make antibodies against the target virus.

Greene said efforts at developing an HIV vaccine have largely focused on building up a kind of immune cell called a T-cell to attack the virus.

“Those types of approaches are not proving adequate. We are desperately seeking better approaches to creating neutralizing antibodies,” he said, adding, “Maybe this will help us.”

The AIDS virus infects an estimated 33 million people globally and has killed about 25 million since the pandemic started in the 1980s.

There is no cure but drugs can suppress the virus and allow patients to lead a near-normal life. Without treatment, the virus destroys the immune system, leaving patients susceptible to infections and cancer.

Be patient with his memory
The hippocampus, where initial memories are formed, occupies a smaller percent of the male brain than the female brain. If on your first date he can’t remember where you work, even though you told him all about it when you met, just remember that size matters … hippocampus size, that is. Don’t take it personally. (Oh, and don’t be surprised when, months down the line, he has no clue you’ve just changed your hair.)

Don’t expect him to get hints
Have a crush on him? You may have to put it out there, because men aren’t as skilled at women at reading subtle emotional cues. As Dr. Larry Cahill of the University of California at Irvine puts it, “We have been assuming that the ways in which emotions are organized in the brain are essentially similar in men and women,” but they aren’t. Parts of the limbic cortex, which is involved in emotional responses, are smaller in men than in women. Additionally, scientists at McMaster University have found that guys have a smaller density of neurons in areas of the temporal lobe that deal with language processing. That’s why it’s probably a good idea to tell him straight-up how you’re feeling (“I’m kind of hurt that you forgot I hate sushi”). Expecting him to infer from your hints could leave both of you scratching your heads.

Don’t take conversation lulls personally
Fact is, guys in general just aren’t as verbally adept as women are. Large parts of the cortex – the brain’s outer layer that does a big part of recognizing and using subtle language cues – are thinner in men than they are in women. A study led by Dr. Godfrey Pearlson of Johns Hopkins University has shown that two areas in the frontal and temporal lobes that play an important role in language processing are significantly smaller in men. Using MRIs, the Johns Hopkins scientists measured gray matter volumes in several brain regions in 17 females and 43 males. Women had 23 percent more volume than men in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and 13 percent more volume than men in the superior temporal cortex. “Women,” explains Dr. Cahill, “excel in being able to come up with appropriate words, given cues.” Men – not so much. Don’t expect him to chatter with you on dates with the skill of a girlfriend, and don’t assume he’s not interested in you if he occasionally lets the conversation lapse. Think of it this way: He’s simply basking in moments of quiet companionship.

Appreciate his naturally upbeat nature
Does he seem to be “up” most of the time? It’s not your imagination: Male brains produce 52 percent more serotonin (the chemical that influences mood) than female brains, according to a study done at McGill University. And studies show that fewer men than women suffer from depression. Guys may also have an easier time rolling with life’s big stresses. If he tells you he recently lost his golden lab or suffered a job loss and doesn’t get all teary, it doesn’t mean he’s heartless; rather, he has healthy stores of serotonin.

Don’t expect his take on your relationship history to match yours
He may be incapable of seeing your shared past the way you do. Brain images have started to show that men and women use their brains in vastly different ways. For example, women use the left part of the amygdala – the part of the brain that creates emotional reactions to events – to put memories in order by emotional strength, meaning that something emotionally important to them (like a great first date a couple of months ago) will be ordered in front of what they ate for breakfast yesterday. Men, however, use the right part of the amygdala to put memories in order. Traditionally, the right hemisphere of the brain is associated with the central action of an event, while the left hemisphere is associated with finer details. Translation: You’ll both remember your first date, but he might not remember the color of your sweater or the light rain that was falling that night. It doesn’t mean he was checked out; it just means he’s a guy.

Remember his brain is his largest sex organ
In males of several species including humans, the preoptic area of the hypothalamus is greater in volume, in cross-sectional area and in the number of cells. In men, this area is more than two times larger than in women, and it contains twice as many cells. And what, say you, does this have to do with the horizontal mambo? Plenty. This area of the hypothalamus is in charge of mating behavior.

This small structure connects to the pituitary gland, which releases sex hormones. So if your bf wants to get intimate all the time and you feel like Ms. Low Desire, remember: You’re just experiencing normal, brain-based differences.
Laura Schaefer is the author of Man with Farm Seeks Woman with Tractor: The Best and Worst Personal Ads of All Time. For the other side of this story, read The Female Brain, Explained.

Article courtesy of Happen magazine, www.happenmag.com.