Knowledge Update

​London, Dec 17 (IANS) Researchers have identified a molecule that impairs the lungs' ability to repair damages on their own after developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that makes it makes it hard for sufferers to breathe.

The first indication of COPD is usually a chronic cough. As the disease progresses, the airways narrow and often pulmonary emphysema develops. This indicates irreversible expansion and damage to the alveoli, or air sacks. 

"The body is no longer able to repair the destroyed structures," explained Melanie Konigshoff from Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen -- German Research Centre for Environmental Health.

"In our current work we have been able to show that COPD results in a change in the messengers that lung cells use to communicate with one another," Konigshoff added.

In the study published Journal of Experimental Medicine, the researchers blamed the increased production of the molecule Wnt5a for this problem.

"Our working hypothesis was that the relationship between different Wnt messengers is no longer balanced in COPD," the study's first author Hoeke Baarsma from Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen.

"In both the pre-clinical model and the tissue samples from patients, we found that in COPD tissue particularly the non-canonical Wnt5a molecule is increased and occurs in a modified form," Baarsma added.

Stimuli that typically cause a reaction in COPD, such as cigarette smoke, additionally lead to increased production of Wnt5a and consequently to impaired lung regeneration, the researchers said.

The findings could lead to new therapeutic approaches to treat the disease.

​Tokyo, Dec 17 (IANS) Japanese scientists have in a breakthrough developed a new technique that can manipulate people's brain activity to boosts their self-confidence, a finding that opens the potential treatments for conditions such as post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD) and phobias.

The new technique called 'Decoded Neurofeedback' identifies brain activity linked to confidence and then amplifies it to a high confidence state.

For patients with PTSD and Alzheimer's disease self confidence is an important aspect, which is often complicated by patients thinking negatively of their own capacities. 

In the study, using this technique, participants' brains were scanned to monitor and detect the occurrence of specific complex patterns of activity corresponding to high confidence states, while they performed a simple perceptual task. 

Whenever the pattern of high confidence was detected, participants received a small monetary reward.

This experiment allowed researchers to directly boost one's own confidence unconsciously, i.e. participants were unaware that such manipulation took place. 

Importantly, the effect could be reversed, as confidence could also be decreased.

"By continuously pairing the occurrence of the highly confident state with a reward - a small amount of money - in real-time, we were able to do just that: when participants had to rate their confidence in the perceptual task at the end of the training, their were consistently more confident," Aurelio Cortese from the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kyoto, Japan. 

The study was published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

London, Dec 17 (IANS) In a finding that could put an end to the use of medication in the treatment of social anxiety disorder, researchers have shown that structured talk therapy or cognitive alone has the potential to cure social phobia.

In treating patients with social anxiety disorder, cognitive therapy on its own has a much better effect over the long term than just drugs or a combination of the two, said the study.

"This is the most effective treatment ever for this patient group. Treatment of mental illness often isn't as effective as treating a bone fracture, but here we've shown that treatment of psychiatric disorders can be equally effective," said lead researcher Hans Nordahl, Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Social anxiety is not a diagnosis, but a symptom that a lot of people struggle with. For example, talking or being funny on command in front of a large audience can trigger this symptom.

Until now, a combination of cognitive therapy and medication was thought to be the most effective treatment for these patients. 

In this study involving over 100 patients -- published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics -- nearly 85 per cent of the study participants significantly improved or became completely healthy using only cognitive therapy.

"A lot of doctors and hospitals combine medications - like the famous "happy pill" - with talk therapy when they treat this patient group. It works well in patients with depressive disorders, but it actually has the opposite effect in individuals with social anxiety disorders. Not many health care professionals are aware of this," Nordahl noted.

"Happy pills," like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), may have strong physical side effects. 

The researchers noted that when patients have been on medications for some time and want to reduce them, the bodily feelings associated with social phobia, like shivering, flushing and dizziness in social situations tend to return. 

Patients often end up in a state of acute social anxiety again.

"The medication camouflages a very important patient discovery: that by learning effective techniques, they have the ability to handle their anxiety themselves," Nordahl said.

​New York, Dec 17 (IANS) Antiretroviral drugs have been life-changing therapies for HIV patients, but they can have significant side effects including neuronal degeneration, which can be manifested as forgetfulness, confusion and behavioural and motor changes, says a study.

Certain protease inhibitors, among the most effective HIV drugs, lead to the production of the peptide beta amyloid, often associated with Alzheimer's disease, the study found.

"Protease inhibitors are very effective antiviral therapies, but they do have inherent toxicities," said senior author on the study Kelly Jordan-Sciutto, Professor at University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine in the US.

The drugs prompt an increase in levels of the enzyme that cleaves the amyloid precursor protein, APP, to produce beta amyloid, which is responsible for the damage to neurons.

Notably, inhibiting that enzyme, called BACE1, protected human and rodent brain cells from harm, suggesting that targetting this mechanism with a new drug could minimise damage to neurons in patients on antiretroviral therapies.

"Our findings may cause us to rethink how we're using these drugs and even consider developing an adjunctive therapy to reduce some of these negative effects," Jordan-Sciutto noted.

To determine whether and how neuronal damage arises from drug treatment and to ascertain the enzyme BACE1's role, the team investigated the effects of protease inhibitors in two animal models, then probed the mechanism of action in cells in culture.

The findings appeared in the American Journal of Pathology.

​New York, Dec 16 (IANS) Brains of children who are clinically depressed react less robustly to success and rewards as compared to other children who are not depressed.

The study showed that when a child, as young as four years old, does not seem to be excited by rewards, such as toys and gifts, it may be a sign that the child is depressed or prone to depression.

Decreased ability to enjoy activities and play, remain persistently sad, irritable or less motivated, who feel excessively guilty about wrongdoing and those who experience changes in sleep and appetite also may be at risk.

"The pleasure we derive from rewards -- such as toys and gifts -- motivates us to succeed and seek more rewards. Dampening the process early in development is a serious concern because it may carry over to how a person will approach rewarding tasks later in life," said Joan L. Luby, Director of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, US.

For the research, the team involved 84 children aged between three and seven, who played a computer game that involved choosing between two doors shown on the screen.

The electrical activity in their brains were measured using an electroencephalogram machine (EEG).

While the brains of clinically depressed children responded similarly to those of non-depressed children when points were lost, the response when the correct door was chosen was blunted.

The EEG results showed that their brains did not react as robustly from the pleasurable event of choosing the correct door on the screen.

"The study may show us how the brain processes emotions in young children with depression," Luby said.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

New York, Dec 16 (IANS) Eating good-tasting food such as chocolate chip cookies, potato chips and sweetened condensed milk may not drive long-term overeating and cause obesity, a study has found.

The research using a mouse model suggests desirable taste in and of itself does not lead to weight gain.

"Most people think that good-tasting food causes obesity but that is not the case. Good taste determines what we choose to eat, but not how much we eat over the long-term," said Michael Tordoff, psychologist at Monell Chemical Senses Center -- a non-profit scientific institute in Pennsylvania, US.

To assess the role of taste in driving overeating and weight gain, three groups of mice received one of the three diets for six weeks: One group was fed plain chow, one group was fed chow with added sucralose and one group was fed chow with added mineral oil. 

At the end of this period, the groups fed the sweet or oily chow were no heavier or fatter than were the animals fed the plain chow.

Additional tests revealed that even after six weeks, the animals still highly preferred the taste-enhanced diets, demonstrating the persistent strong appeal of both sweet and oily tastes.

"Even though we gave mice delicious diets over a prolonged period, they did not gain excess weight. People say that 'if a food is good-tasting it must be bad for you', but our findings suggest this is not the case. It should be possible to create foods that are both healthy and good-tasting," Tordoff said.

The findings are published online in the journal Physiology & Behavior.

​London, Dec 16 (IANS) Imagine your child controlling toys with his/her brain while you get busy with home chores. According to researchers from the University of Warwick in Britain, next generation toys controlled with the power of thoughts can become must have gifts in the near future.

Led by Professor Christopher James, the team has developed a technology which allows electronic devices to be activated using electrical impulses from brain waves, by connecting our thoughts to computerised systems.

The research connects the human mind with electronic devices and sensors in headsets receive brain waves and feed them into electrical circuits.

As a result, remote-controlled cars and toy robots could be activated with kids' levels of concentration like thinking of his/her favourite colour or stroking your dog.

Instead of a hand-held controller, the headset is used to create a brain-computer interface. This activity is then processed by a computer, amplified and fed into the electrical circuit of the electronic toy.

"While brain-computer interfaces already exist, their functionality has been quite limited. New research is making the headsets now read cleaner and stronger signals than ever before - this means stronger links to the toy, game or action thus making it a very immersive experience," James explained in a university statement.

The exciting bit is what comes next -- how long before we start unlocking the front door or answering the phone through brain-computer interfaces, the researchers noted.

​New York, Dec 16 (IANS) Researchers have identified that a blood serum test for two specific antibodies of human papillomavirus may act as a potential biomarker to predict the relapse of a type of throat cancer.

Oropharyngeal cancer -- which occurs in the throat, tonsils and back of the tongue -- is frequently linked to the human papilloma virus -- an infection that causes warts in various parts of the body.

Although HPV-related cancers are generally more responsive to treatment, for nearly 15 to 20 per cent of patients, the treatment won't work and their cancer is likely to relapse.

The study found that the patients whose HPV-fueled oropharyngeal cancer recurred had higher levels of antibodies for two proteins -- E6 and E7.

The presence of these antibodies in blood serum can be a reliable indicator of five-year head and neck cancer survival, the researchers said.

"If we can monitor someone through blood markers, then instead of a patient coming for a clinic visit every two to three months, they could get blood drawn near home. If there's evidence of high E7, we can tell the patient to come in for more evaluation," said Matthew E. Spector, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan in the US.

For the study, the team examined blood serum samples of 52 patients with advanced oropharyngeal cancer, of which 22 developed recurrence and 30 did not. 

The analysis revealed that recurrent patients had significantly higher E6 and E7 serum antibody levels than the non-recurrent patients over the follow-up period.

Patients who recurred had a lower clearance of E7 antibody than patients who remained disease free.

The study was published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

US researchers have successfully reversed the hallmarks of ageing in mice using a technique called cellular reprogramming.

​Toronto, Dec 16 (IANS) With the help of a new method, researchers can detect roughly 10 black holes per year -- doubling the number currently known within two years -- and unlock their history in a little more than a decade.

"Within the next 10 years, there will be sufficient accumulated data on enough black holes that researchers can statistically analyse their properties as a population," said Avery Broderick, Professor at University of Waterloo.

"This information will allow us to study stellar mass black holes at various stages that often extend billions of years," added Broderick.

The researchers came up with the method that has implications for the emerging field of gravitational wave astronomy and the way in which we search for black holes and other dark objects in space. 

"We do not yet know how rare these events are and how many black holes are generally distributed across the galaxy," said Broderick, adding that "for the first time, we will be placing all the amazing dynamical physics that Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) sees into a larger astronomical context."

The study, published in The Astrophysical Journal, proposes a bolder approach to detect and study black holes not as single entities but in large numbers as a system by combining two standard astrophysical tools in use today -- microlensing and radio wave interferometry.

Although very little is known about the inner workings of black holes, the integral part they play in the lifecycle of stars and regulate the growth of galaxies is known. 

Earlier this year, LIGO presented the first direct proof of the existence of black holes when it detected gravitational waves from the collision of two black holes merging into one.

When a dark object, such as a black hole, passes between us and another light source, gravitational microlensing occurs. 

The researchers proposed using radio waves to take multiple snapshots of the microlensing event in real time.

"When you look at the same event using a radio telescope -- interferometry -- you can actually resolve more than one image. That is what gives us the power to extract all kinds of parameters, like the object's mass, distance and velocity," noted Mansour Karami, doctoral student University of Waterloo.