Culture

Researchers in the Academic Unit of Neurology at Trinity College Dublin have identified characteristic changes in the patterns of electrical brain wave activity in motor neurone disease (MND). This ground breaking observation will help to develop treatments for the disease that affects over 350 people in Ireland.

Their findings, published in the recent issue of the journal Human Brain Mapping reveals how MND affects the neural communication in different brain networks. You can read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24740

Motor neurone disease (MND), also known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), is a devastating condition which causes progressive paralysis, increasing physical disability and ultimately death within an average of two to three years. One person is diagnosed every 3 days with the condition in Ireland.

Using electroencephalography (EEG), the team at Trinity College has been able to capture second to second changes in electrical signalling, and have identified specific groups (or networks) of nerves that behave abnormally in MND. This is the first time researchers have used EEG in this way in MND. The work shows that this inexpensive technology can give information about abnormal brain activity that rivals functional MRI, and at a fraction of the cost.

The team has been able to identify and study in detail more than six different brain networks associated with MND.

Lead author of the study, Stefan Dukic, who is pursuing his PhD jointly between Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) and University Medical Centre Utrecht (The Netherlands) said: "The human brain works by electrical signalling between billions of neurons in different networks. This electrical signalling between neurons allows us to perform every-day tasks such as movement, sensing and thinking. In MND, we have for the first time found specific and reproducible changes in electrical brain signalling using electroencephalography (EEG) recordings"

"The new findings have identified previously unrecognised abnormalities in the brain networking. This advances our understanding of the specific brain networks that become dysfunctional as the disease progresses."

The Fr Tony Coote Assistant Professor in Neural Signalling, and senior author of the study, Dr Bahman Nasseroleslami said: "The emerging technologies such as advanced signal analysis and electrical source imaging of the brain are changing our understanding of MND and related diseases. We can now use EEG, which is inexpensive compared to MRI, to probe brain networks instantaneously and identify important changes that reflect the impact of the disease on the patients."

Head of the Academic Unit of Neurology at Trinity, Professor Orla Hardiman, a world expert in MND said: "In MND research, these findings are a major leap from the current state-of-the-art approach to studying the disease. The work of Dukic and Nasseroleslami has shown how we can now begin to carefully quantify changes in specific parts of brain networks. This will have major implications on how we classify the sub-types of the disease. It can also help to tell us what patient groups may respond to new therapies."

The cutting edge work undertaken at Trinity College Dublin moves the field one step closer to the quest for better treatments.

"There is an urgent need for new treatments that can slow disease progression, and the development of new biomarkers that can help to identify patient subgroups is a very important unmet need," added Professor Hardiman.

A ground-breaking device to help patients with dizziness problems has moved a step forward following a successful research study.

Researchers from UEA and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH) have published the results of the biggest collection of continuous eye movement data after testing the effectiveness of a wearable diagnostic headset.

The Continuous Ambulatory Vestibular Assessment (CAVA) aims to speed up the diagnosis of the most common causes of dizziness.

A study into the accuracy, reliability and safety of the novel new device, published in the journal Scientific Reports, found the technology to be 99 per cent accurate at detecting eye flicker (nystagmus).

In the trial, the CAVA device was worn by 17 participants, who did not have dizziness problems, for up to 30 days and captured 9,000 hours of eye and head movement data, totalling 405 days of data.

The CAVA device has been designed to be lightweight, durable and can be worn day and night to monitor head and eye movements to help evaluate dizziness attacks outside of a hospital setting.

Prof Stephen Cox and Dr Jacob Newman, from UEA's School of Computing Sciences, developed algorithms to identify seconds of nystagmus from weeks of data recorded by the device.

Principal Investigator John Phillips, who is a Consultant Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon at NNUH, said the first phase of trialling the device had involved inducing eye flicker on healthy patients.

"Following years of development, I'm delighted that this project was successful in identifying short periods of visually induced nystagmus with a high degree of accuracy," he said.

"The success of this trial has proven the potential of this to fulfil a clinical need and establishing a new field of medicine, vestibular telemetry. These results have provided a good foundation from which to conduct a further study intended to evaluate the system's diagnostic accuracy among patients with dizziness problems."

Dr Jacob Newman, from UEA's School of Computing Sciences, said: "We are very pleased that our algorithms have been able to detect such small incidences of nystagmus within such a large dataset, this bodes well for future work that considers nystagmus in individuals experiencing dizziness."

The study was funded by the Medical Research Council.

Materials with controlled porosity have found diverse applications in separation, catalysis, energy storage, sensors and actuators, tissue engineering and drug delivery. Multiple methods have been developed to fabricate well-defined porous materials with the pore sizes ranging from nanometers to millimeters. For example, the introduction of sacrificial templates can impart porosity to the materials encapsulating them after the removal of embedded materials. Alternatively, procedures involving phase separation, direct templating and chemical reaction have demonstrated fabrication of hierarchical porous structures. These methods inherently require multiple steps, and are limited in the attainable complexity of the fabricated structures.

Recent advances in digital fabrication, represented by 3D printing, has enabled fabrication of porous 3D structures consisting of polymeric materials with porosity, yet limited by materials applicable to the process. For example, solvent-casting 3D printing (SC3DP)--direct 3D printing of polymer inks with in situ evaporation of solvents--has allowed fabrication of 3D porous structures with stringent requirement of rheological properties of the printing ink (e.g. high viscosity and high vapor pressure).

Researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design's (SUTD) Soft Fluidics Lab developed a novel 3D printing method to fabricate 3D porous models in one step, which was termed immersion precipitation 3D printing (ip3DP). In the newly developed approach, inks containing polymers were directly printed in a bath of a non-solvent, and the printed ink solidified rapidly via immersion precipitation. Spontaneous solidification via immersion precipitation generated porosity at micro-to-nano scales. The porosity of the 3D printed objects is easily controlled by the concentrations of polymers and additives, and the types of solvents. A wider selection of solvents permitted a wider range of thermoplastics to be printed. To highlight this capability, fabrications of centimeter-scale models in 13 polymers dissolved in six solvents was demonstrated.

"This work is the first demonstration of three-dimensionally controlled immersion precipitation based on digitally controlled depositions of materials," said lead author of the paper Dr Rahul Karyappa.

The principal investigator, Assistant Professor Michinao Hashimoto stated that "the wide selection of printable materials, and ability to tailor their morphologies and properties, make ip3DP a novel approach for 3D printing to fabricate functional structures."

A Rutgers-led team of surgeons developed a groundbreaking procedure based on a century-old plastic surgery technique, to save the life of a patient who suffered complications following the removal of a cancerous tumor inside his skull.

The patient had a quarter-sized hole in his skull base, which separates the brain from the nasal cavity - an unfortunately common problem in patients who undergo surgery in that part of the skull. The hole caused air to build up inside the patient's cranial cavity, cerebrospinal fluid to leak into the nose, and meningitis, according to a new report in the journal World Neurosurgery.

The Rutgers-led solution took a paramedian forehead flap - an age-old procedure in which a section of skin and muscle is cut away from the forehead and rotated downward, traditionally to reconstruct part of the nose. But for this patient, they used an endoscope to insert the flap of forehead tissue inside the patient's head through an incision above his nose, then attached it to the skull base where it successfully closed the hole.

"Removal of tumors from this part of the skull, the anterior skull base, is very risky and often results in openings between the brain and the nasal cavity. Saving this patient required something that, to the best of our knowledge, had never been done before," said Amishav Bresler, a resident of otolaryngology at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. "We developed a solution that can help other patients who experience this common and very serious problem, and for whom other treatments have failed."

The surgeons initially removed a large cancerous tumor arising from the nasal cavity and invading into the brain, and sealed the hole in the skull base with tissue from the front of the head, which is the standard technique. But three years later, dead tissue caused by radiation therapy made the hole reopen. Multiple repair attempts using traditional methods that take tissue from the patient's body failed due to the hole's size and previous exposure to radiation. Other traditional methods could not be attempted due to conditions resulting from the patient's radiation therapy.

The multi-disciplinary Rutgers-led skull base team considered using a paramedian forehead flap because it uses strong and versatile tissue that could be inserted into the needed area with an endoscope. The report concludes that this method can help other patients with similar complications, for whom all other solutions have failed.

"Using a team approach, we had to think outside the box and come up with a creative and effective solution to save this patient's life. That's one of the benefits when working as a skull base team," said James K. Liu, professor of neurosurgery and skull base surgeon at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

Following the procedure, the patient has done well with no recurrence of the cerebrospinal fluid leak, according to the report.

In order to sustain fast growth, cancer cells need to take up nutrients at a faster rate than healthy cells. The human glutamine transporter ASCT2 allows the amino acid glutamine to enter cells and is upregulated in many types of cancer cells, which need more glutamine. It is a potential target for new anti-cancer drugs. Researchers at the University of Groningen have now elucidated a structure of the human ASCT2 that provides unprecedented insight in the workings of this protein, and may help the development of drugs. The results were published in Nature Communications on July 31, 2019.

This work allowed the researchers to solve a long-lasting riddle. It was known that these transporters work like an elevator, where the substrate glutamine is engulfed by the protein, and then carried over a long distance through the cell membrane from the outside to the inside of the cell. While it was known how the substrate enters the elevator on the outside, it remained enigmatic what happens on the inside. This study now shows for the first time how the transported glutamine is released into the cytoplasm of the cell. The release mechanism is surprisingly similar to its catch mechanism on the outside of the cell. The same gate - a.k.a. elevator door - is used on either side of the membrane. "Hence, we have named the transport mechanism a 'one-gate elevator', which sets it apart from the more commonly observed mechanisms that use two different gates for entry and release", Dr. Dirk Slotboom says.

Dr. Cristina Paulino: "This observation is of great fundamental interest, but also has potential implications for drug design. A prominent consequence of the one-gate elevator mechanism is that large protein movements take place in the cell membrane during transport." Therefore, lipids (the molecules of which the cell membrane is built) are likely to affect the workings of the protein. Indeed, the authors find many lipid-like molecules associated with the protein, where they occupy cavities on the surface. As these cavities have to be vacated for the elevator to move, small molecules that bind tightly to these sites might have drug-like properties.

Future studies will focus on the hunt for, and characterization of such molecules, which may lead to the development of new anti-cancer drugs in the nearby future.

A team of researchers led by members of the University of Colorado School of Medicine at the Anschutz Medical Campus found that choline, an essential micronutrient, can prevent fetal brain developmental problems that can occur when mothers use marijuana while pregnant.

The findings are critical because marijuana use can negatively impact fetal brain development and early childhood behavior, such as increased impulsivity and memory dysfunction.

The study was published today in Psychological Medicine.

"In Colorado, it's common for women to use marijuana before they know they're pregnant and some continue to use as a natural remedy for morning sickness, depression and anxiety," said Camille Hoffman, MD, MSCS, associate professor of maternal fetal medicine, University of Colorado School of Medicine. "In this study, we found that maternal marijuana use begins to negatively impact the fetal brain at an earlier stage in pregnancy than we expected. However, we also found that eating choline-rich foods or taking choline as a supplement may protect the child from potential harm."

Fifteen percent of 201 mothers in the study used marijuana both before and beyond 10 weeks gestation. Infants of mothers who continued to use marijuana beyond 10 weeks had decreased cerebral nervous system (brain) inhibition at one month of age. Decreased brain inhibition this early in development can relate to problems in attention and social function. Later in life, this can translate into a predisposition to conditions like substance abuse, depression and psychosis.

In addition, infants exposed to prenatal marijuana beyond 10 weeks gestation had lower "regulation" scores at 3 months of age. This can cause decreased reading readiness at age 4, decreased conscientiousness and organization as well as increased distractibility as far out as age 9. These adverse effects in the infant were not seen if women had higher gestational choline in the early second trimester.

Overall, results showed maternal choline levels correlated with the children's improved duration of attention, cuddliness and bonding with parents.

"We already know that prenatal vitamins improve fetal and child development, but currently most prenatal vitamins do not include adequate amounts of the nutrient choline despite the overwhelming evidence of its benefits in protecting a baby's brain health. We hope that this research is a step towards more OB-GYNs, midwives and other prenatal care providers encouraging pregnant women to include choline in their prenatal supplement regimen," Hoffman adds.

This study is the first to detect central nervous system effects of marijuana in human newborns and it identifies a vulnerable gestational period for the impact of marijuana on fetal brain development that is earlier than anticipated - as early as the end of the first trimester. Usually reporting in studies are retrospective and don't look at the effects of marijuana ingestion at different trimesters.

Marijuana use was assessed during pregnancy from women who later brought their newborns for study. Mothers were informed about choline and other prenatal nutrients and advised to avoid alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and other drug use. Maternal serum choline was measured at 16 weeks' gestation.

More than a tenth of adults age 65 and older currently binge drink, putting them at risk for a range of health problems, according to a study by researchers at NYU School of Medicine and the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research (CDUHR) at NYU College of Global Public Health.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, also finds certain factors--including using cannabis and being male--are associated with an increase in binge drinking.

Binge drinking is a risky behavior, particularly for older adults due to aging-related physical changes (for instance, an increased risk of falling) and the likelihood of having chronic health issues. Despite the potential for harm, little research has focused on binge drinking among older adults.

"Binge drinking, even episodically or infrequently, may negatively affect other health conditions by exacerbating disease, interacting with prescribed medications, and complicating disease management," said Benjamin Han, MD, MPH, the study's lead author and an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine's Division of Geriatric Medicine and Palliative Care, and the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Health.

In this study, Han and his colleagues used the most recent national data to determine the current prevalence and factors that may increase the risk of binge drinking among adults. The researchers examined data from 10,927 U.S. adults age 65 and older who participated in the National Survey on Drug Use and Health between 2015 and 2017. They looked at the prevalence of current (past-month) binge alcohol use, defined by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) as five drinks or more on the same occasion for men and four drinks or more for women. They also compared demographic and health factors of past-month binge drinkers with people who drank within the past month, but below the binge drinking threshold.

The authors estimate that more than one in 10 (10.6 percent) older adults have binge drank in the past month--an increase compared to earlier studies. In the decade leading up to the data used in this study (2005-2014), binge drinking among adults 65 and older was between 7.7 and 9 percent.

Binge drinkers were more likely to be male, current tobacco and/or cannabis users, African American, and have less than a high school education. They were also more likely to visit the emergency room in the past year. Similar to previous studies, the study did not find associations between binge drinking and other mental health disorders.

"The association of binge drinking with cannabis use has important health implications. Using both may lead to higher impairment effects. This is particularly important as cannabis use is becoming more prevalent among older adults, and older adults may not be aware of the possible dangers of using cannabis with alcohol," said CDUHR researcher Joseph Palamar, PhD, MPH, the study's senior author and an associate professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Health.

The researchers also examined chronic disease profiles of older binge drinkers, and noted that binge drinkers had a lower prevalence of two or more chronic diseases compared to non-binge drinkers. The most common chronic disease among binge drinkers was hypertension (41.4 percent), followed by cardiovascular disease (23.1 percent) and diabetes (17.7 percent).

"Binge drinkers were less likely to have most chronic diseases compared to alcohol users who did not binge drink. This may be because some people stop or decrease their drinking when they have an illness or alcohol-related disease," said Han, who is also a CDUHR researcher. "Clinicians must be aware that some older adults with chronic disease still engage in binge drinking behaviors, which can worsen their health issues. This may explain why binge drinkers were more likely to report visits to the emergency room."

The researchers note that while the study uses the NIAAA's recommended threshold for binge drinking, the same organization also suggests lower drinking limits for adults over 65: no more than three drinks a day. Since the current analysis used the higher cutoff for binge drinking, the study may underestimate the prevalence of binge drinking among older adults.

"Our results underscore the importance of educating, screening, and intervening to prevent alcohol-related harms in older adults, who may not be aware of their heightened risk for injuries and how alcohol can exacerbate chronic diseases," said Han.

SOLOMONS, MD (July 30, 2019)--Scientists from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science are predicting that warmer winters in the Chesapeake Bay will likely lead to longer and more productive seasons for Maryland's favorite summer crustacean, the blue crab.

Researchers examined data on increasing temperatures in the Chesapeake Bay and predictions for continued warming. They found that winters will be up to 50% shorter by 2100, and overwinter survival of the blue crab will increase by at least 20% compared to current conditions.

"Blue crabs are a climate change winner in the bay. As the bay gets warmer they will do better because they are a more tropical species," said study co-author and Professor Tom Miller of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. "We always hear about those species that are going to struggle or move. Blue crab are going to do better."

The blue crab is found along the Atlantic Coast from New England to Argentina. Maryland's blue crabs spend their winters dormant in the muddy sediment at the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay, emerging only when water temperatures near 50° F. In recent years, this dormancy period has been becoming shorter, and trends indicate it will become shorter still--and could potentially become nonexistent.

"Water temperatures are warming and the crabs are cold blooded so their metabolic rate is directly related to warmer temperature. Warmer water means they grow faster," said Hillary Lane Glandon, who conducted this research as a graduate student at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and is now a post-doctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington.

Scientists predict that the shortening of winter combined with increases in average wintertime temperatures will cause a significant increase in juvenile blue crab winter survival so that the population behavior comes to resemble that currently observed in the Sounds of North Carolina and further south.

"In 100 years, we would expect winter for crabs in Solomons to look more like winter currently looks in southern North Carolina," said Glandon. "No winter for the crabs."

While this may sound great, don't stock up on your mallets and Old Bay yet.

Crabbing is prohibited December through March in the lower Chesapeake Bay, which has helped in maintaining the population at sustainable levels. However, an increase in wintertime crab activity may encourage a lengthening of crabbing season similar to states such as North Carolina and Louisiana, where crabs are active year-round.

"People will be able to fish for them almost year-round. However, this challenges the traditional pattern in which waterman fish for striped bass in the spring and crabs in the summer and oysters in the winter--that traditional seasonal rotation of the harvest. It's a cultural challenge," said Miller.

Climate change not only signals warming temperatures but also increased variability in temperatures, further complicating wintertime management of the species. A particularly cold winter could devastate a year-round fishery.

"If crabs start moving and feeding year-round, they represent an added predation pressures on the bay's ecosystem, and we don't know how the ecosystem will respond," said Miller.

Predicting change

The researchers used computer-modeled projections of future temperature from the World Climate Research Programme's Coupled Model Intercomparison Project to explore how changes in water temperature may impact the overwintering behavior and winter survival of blue crab in the Chesapeake Bay in the next 100 years.

In order to create a model that was directly relevant to the Chesapeake Bay near Solomons, Maryland, they were able to access a long-term (1938-2016) dataset of daily water and air temperature measurements collected right in their backyard in the Patuxent River. From the pier at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, water temperatures have been taken by hand at noon from 1938-2012 and by automatic instrumentation from 2012 to 2016. Average daily temperatures have increased 3.2?F since 1938.

"The data from right off our pier is a unique data set because it is so long. We couldn't do this work without someone taking measurements every day off the pier. This highlights the value of long-term monitoring and efforts we make to do that," said University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science paleoclimatologist Hali Kilbourne, who looks deep into the past to predict future climate changes. "This study is a good example of the pay-off for all the effort that goes into climate data."

Humans burning fossil fuels have caused an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the 1800s. Due to the greenhouse effect, this increase has and will continue to cause an increase in atmospheric and ocean temperatures, which are projected to warm from current temperatures by 4.7-8.6°F by the year 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked.

"Our analysis of historical and future predicted temperatures indicates that water temperatures will continue to rise in the Chesapeake Bay through the year 2100. This increase in
water temperature will occur equally in all seasons of the year, and will therefore effect blue crab wintertime behavior and survival," said Glandon.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Loneliness and social anxiety is a bad combination for single people who use dating apps on their phones, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that people who fit that profile were more likely than others to say they've experienced negative outcomes because of their dating app use.

"It's not just that they're using their phone a lot," said Kathryn Coduto, lead author of the study and doctoral student in communication at The Ohio State University.

"We had participants who said they were missing school or work, or getting in trouble in classes or at work because they kept checking the dating apps on their phones."

Coduto said it is a problem she has seen firsthand.

"I've seen people who use dating apps compulsively. They take their phones out when they're at dinner with friends or when they're in groups. They really can't stop swiping," she said.

The study was published recently online in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and will appear in a future print edition.

Participants were 269 undergraduate students with experience using one or more dating apps. All answered questions designed to measure their loneliness and social anxiety (for example, they were asked if they were constantly nervous around other people).

Compulsive use was measured by asking participants how much they agreed with statements like "I am unable to reduce the amount of time I spend on dating apps."

Participants also reported negative outcomes from using dating apps, such as missing class or work or getting in trouble because they were on their phones.

Results showed, not surprisingly, that socially anxious participants preferred to meet and talk to potential dating partners online rather than in person. They tended to agree with statements like "I am more confident socializing on dating apps than offline."

But that alone didn't lead them to compulsively use dating apps, Coduto said.

"If they were also lonely, that's what made the problem significant," she said.

"That combination led to compulsive use and then negative outcomes."

Coduto said people need to be aware of their dating app use and consider whether they have a problem. If they have trouble setting limits for themselves, they can use apps that restrict dating app use to certain times of day or to a set amount of time each day.

"Especially if you're lonely, be careful in your choices. Regulate and be selective in your use," she said.

Ketamine has gotten a bad rap as an opioid when there's plenty of evidence suggesting it isn't one, Johns Hopkins experts say. They believe this reputation may hamper patients from getting necessary treatment for the kinds of depression that don't respond to typical antidepressants. In a new paper, the researchers clarify the mechanism behind ketamine's mechanism of action in hopes of restoring the therapy's standing among health care professionals and the public.

In March of this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved ketamine as a nasal spray to treat depression.

"A study done late last year delivered a black eye to ketamine, and as a result of the coverage, there was a wholesale acceptance by both potential patients and physicians that ketamine is an opioid," says Adam Kaplin, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "This is most worrisome if people continue to think this way, particularly in the wake of the opioid epidemic; clinicians won't refer patients for a treatment, despite that it has been shown to be incredibly effective for many patients with treatment-resistant depression."

The researchers published their viewpoint and explanation of the alternative mechanism as a Letter to the Editor in the May 1 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Naltrexone -- the drug used to reverse accidental opioid overdoses -- binds to opioid receptors on the surface of brain cells and prevents opioids like morphine or heroin from sticking to them and acting on the brain, preventing the high.

In late 2018, researchers at Stanford University and Palo Alto University showed that naltrexone also blocks the antidepressant effects of ketamine, which led them to propose that ketamine must also bind to the same opioid receptors and thus concluded that ketamine must be an opioid. Kaplin says that there's plenty of contrary evidence demonstrating that ketamine sticks to an entirely different receptor on brain cells: the NMDA receptors -- involved in learning and memory -- instead of the opioid receptors.

He, proposes how this works:

Normally, NMDA receptors get turned on when the chemical messenger glutamate binds to them. Turning on the NMDA receptors turns off a master control switch in the cell called mTOR, which ultimately results in learning a behavior or forming a new memory. Ketamine can also bind to the NMDA receptors, but it has the opposite effect of glutamate, in that it turns these receptors off. Turning off the NMDA receptors turns on the master control switch mTOR, which is required for ketamine's antidepressant properties.

Separately, says Kaplin, opioid receptors are normally turned on at low-levels all the time, even without opioids to turn them on all the way. This low activity of the opioid receptors normally suppresses the level of another chemical messenger called cyclic AMP (cAMP). When the overdose drug naltrexone is administered, it sticks to the opioid receptors, turning them completely off, which releases the brakes on cAMP. This increase in cAMP is what then interferes with the master switch mTOR, shutting it down. When ketamine is taken, it turns on the master switch mTOR to enable antidepressant effects, but if naltrexone is given on top of that, naltrexone obstructs and shuts off the mTOR again. It is through cAMP that naltrexone overrides and extinguishes the antidepressant effects of ketamine.

These NMDA receptors are found together with the opioid receptors on brain cells, and Kaplin says it's no surprise that their components can meddle with one another, like interference picked up on a phone call or on the radio. "This interference and cross-talk does not mean that ketamine is an opioid, and to wrongly label it as such could eventually keep patients from essential antidepressant medications that could make a huge difference in their quality of life," says Kaplin.

The FDA specified that ketamine is to be administered under the watch of physicians in small doses and in a health care setting to minimize any chance of abuse. The drug works much faster than other traditional antidepressants on the market, sometimes even after one or two uses.

Kaplin and his team are in the process of setting up their own ketamine clinic at Johns Hopkins, which they anticipate will be opening within the next year.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 30, 2019--Latino children are likely to enter elementary schools this year with fewer white peers than a generation ago, judging by data reported in a new study published today in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. However, as racial segregation has intensified, low-income students of all racial groups are likely to learn beside more middle-class pupils than before.

In 1998, on average, the nation's Latino children attended elementary schools in which nearly 40 percent of their schoolmates were white. By 2010, that percentage fell to just 30 percent nationwide, according to the study by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Maryland; and the University of California, Irvine. Overall, Latino children today make up more than one quarter of the 35.5 million students attending elementary schools.

Yet the researchers also found that low-income children, regardless of their race or ethnicity, increasingly attend schools with middle-class peers, a development that benefits black and Asian-heritage students as well as Latinos.

"Set amidst high levels of racial segregation, the widening economic integration of students offers an unexpected surprise," said study coauthor Bruce Fuller, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

The scholars tracked the racial composition of school enrollments across the nation's more than 53,000 elementary schools between 1998 and 2015, then verified findings from nationally representative samples of more than 7,200 kindergartners drawn in 1998 and 2010. The study released today details trends among elementary school students between 1998 and 2010. The authors recently supplemented those findings with national maps and local data through 2015 that detail wide between-district variation in Latino segregation for California, New York state, the Upper Midwest, and the Washington, D.C. area.

The odds that a randomly chosen poor child would attend school with a middle-class schoolmate climbed between 1998 and 2010, from about 40 percent to 50 percent. That is, about one half of all schoolmates a low-income pupil sees at school are now from a middle-class background.

"Prior research has found that the top 5 percent of income earners are moving farther from the rest of us," said Fuller. "Our study does not address that, but finds increased integration between low- and middle-income elementary school students."

The past half-century of research generally finds that students from low-income backgrounds benefit when learning beside middle-class peers.

Still, Latino children suffer from severe isolation in large urban school districts, the study shows. In 2010, in the nation's 10 poorest districts, Latino elementary students attended, on average, schools that were just 5 percent white--down from 7 percent white in 1998.

"It's essential that we consider hard evidence as the nation debates questions of fairness, segregation, and immigration," said study coauthor Claudia Galindo, a sociologist at the University of Maryland. "Our findings show increasing racial separation for Latino children, while many parts of the country are better integrating poor and middle-class youngsters, a sign that we can make progress."

The report also found that the educational attainment of Latino parents is climbing rapidly, despite the worsening racial isolation of their children. This contributes to low-income children's wider integration with middle-class peers. The share of Latino mothers born in the U.S. completing some college or more rose from 44 to 58 percent over the period studied, despite a decline in family income during the Great Recession.

"Gains in education and upward mobility for many Latino parents help to explain the more diverse economic mix of low- and middle-income children in the same schools," said study coauthor Yoonjeon Kim, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. Latino family incomes rebounded from the recession, rising 9.6 percent (to $50,486), on average, from the onset of the downturn (2008) to 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The children of immigrant Latino parents remain in the most racially isolated schools, the study says. Households with a foreign-born mother reported average earnings of just $37,704 in 2010, and low levels of parental education. Their children attended the most racially and economically isolated schools, where two-thirds of their classmates came from impoverished families.

"Children of immigrant parents remain in starkly isolated schools," Galindo said. "This stands in vivid contrast to the slowly improving picture for many native-born Latinos."

Children of native-born Latina mothers in 2010 attended schools where, on average, 10 percent of their classmates came from non-English-speaking homes. This compares with children of immigrant mothers, who attended schools in which 78 percent of their peers came from non-English-speaking families.

Immigrant families often remain in traditional urban enclaves, where schools are mostly isolated from white families, or move to new destinations in the Midwest or South, where school officials may be ill-prepared to welcome and serve low-income Latino families, the researchers said.

This study arrives as states and the courts continue to back away from assertive efforts to desegregate public schools. At the same time, "rising educational attainment among young Latinos parents contribute to a quickening pace of at least economic integration in many schools," Galindo said.

The researchers note that city leaders across the country are revisiting strategies for integrating schools. Los Angeles is expanding magnet schools and dual-language immersion programs. Chicago now experiments with merging schools that experience declining enrollment, blending diverse student populations. New York City is struggling over how to integrate its public schools, including competitive-admissions high schools.

"These mixed signs of progress and backsliding on the integration of Latino children may inform the presidential campaign as Democratic candidates sharply debate how to fairly distribute the benefits of public schooling," said Fuller.

Hartford, CT - Men's health may be compromised by weight stigma, finds the latest research from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut.

Weight stigma is pervasive against people with obesity, and can contribute to both physical and emotional health problems for those targeted. As many as 40% of men report experiencing weight stigma, but when it comes to how this stigma affects their health, men have received less attention in research compared to women.

"It's often assumed that conversations about weight loss, poor body image, and dieting are more salient for women. Men are frequently overlooked, but that does not necessarily mean that men are less affected by weight stigma or less likely to internalize negative biases," says Mary Himmelstein, lead author of the study.

The research, published in the journal Obesity, involved two groups of men: 1,249 men from a diverse national survey panel, and 504 men from an online data collection service. Both groups of men completed identical surveys about their experiences of weight-based stigma, how much they internalized these experiences (e.g., blamed themselves), as well as their psychological wellbeing and health behaviors.

Key findings include:

Both experienced and internalized weight stigma were associated with more depressive symptoms and more dieting behaviors.

Men who experienced weight stigma had increased odds of engaging in binge eating.

Men who internalized weight stigma had lower self-rated health.

These findings suggest the need for increased attention to men not only in research on links between weight stigma and health, but also among health professionals treating men for various health conditions, in which weight stigma may play a contributing role. In particular, it may be useful for health care providers to ask men about weight stigma to help identify those who may be vulnerable to depression or disordered eating behaviors, which are underdiagnosed in men.

"Our study shows that weight stigma is not a gendered issue. It can affect men's health in the same damaging ways in which we already know that it harms women's health, and neglecting these issues in men, either in research or clinical practice, may put them at a serious disadvantage in treatment," says Himmelstein. "Opportunities for supportive interventions should be available for men, women, and non-binary individuals alike to help them cope with weight stigma in less harmful ways."

Some 5,400 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer in Finland every year. Although in most cases prostate cancer can be cured, approximately 900 men every year die of it. Treatment recommendations for prostate cancer are largely based on the cancer's stage (TNM classification), the cancer's aggressiveness determined from a prostate biopsy (the Gleason score), and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) obtained from a blood test, as well as the risk categorisation determined on the basis of these.

The treatment options for a local, low-risk prostate cancer are established and the prognosis is good. On the other hand, the prognosis for a higher-risk, locally spread or metastasised cancer is poorer, and there is no consensus on the treatments due to a lack of sufficient research data.

In connection to the surgical removal of the prostate, the cancer may be found to have extended to the surface of the removed prostate or to have already spread through the capsule surrounding the prostate. In such cases, the risk of recurrence is higher than in situations in which the cancer cells are confined within the prostate.

The Finnish FinnProstataX study investigated whether radiotherapy administered after the removal of the prostate benefited patients whose cancer had spread to the surface of the prostate or beyond the capsule that surrounds the prostate. At the moment, treatment practices in these situations vary.

The randomised study carried out in 2004-2012 included 250 patients. Of these 250 patients, 126 received adjuvant radiotherapy after the removal of the prostate, while the treatment of 124 patients consisted of the mere removal of the prostate.

Over the roughly nine-year follow-up, only two patients - one from each group - died of prostate cancer. Based on PSA measurements, 82 per cent of the members of the adjuvant treatment group were disease-free at the end of the follow-up period; the equivalent percentage in the control group was 61. An increase in the PSA value usually precedes the recurrence of prostate cancer, and in the study, the patients with a maximum PSA of 0.4?g/l were determined to be disease-free.

No metastases were detected in 98 per cent of those in the adjuvant treatment group and 96 per cent of those in the control group during the follow-up period.

"Tolerance for the adjuvant treatment was good, and it prolonged the disease-free period measured from the PSA compared to the mere surgical removal of the prostate. Even so, the adjuvant treatment did not extend patients' survival," says professor Akseli Hemminki, summing up the results of the study.

"Prostate cancer may generate metastases and, in the worst case, result in death more than 10 years after the recurrence of the disease, detected from a PSA increase. Given that the patients in this study were monitored for less than 10 years on average, it's only natural that the treatment we studied did not have a significant impact on survival. In even longer follow-up, a difference in PSA increases could also lead to a difference in mortality," says the article's lead author, Greetta Hackman (Lic.Med.).

Hackman stresses that when making treatment decisions, it is important to discuss the available options openly with the patient.

"More treatment also means more side effects. However, at the same time, we can likely influence the disease's prognosis in a situation in which the cancerous tissue already extends to the prostate's surface or has penetrated through the prostate's capsule, but has not yet metastasised."

The parties involved in the study, published in the respected journal European Urology, were the universities of Helsinki and Tampere and the university hospitals of Helsinki and Tampere; the university hospitals of Oulu, Kuopio and Turku; the central hospitals of Päijät-Häme, Mikkeli and Joensuu; Docrates Cancer Center and the Finnish Cancer Registry.

"This study is a great example of cooperation between Finnish hospitals and universities to perform an important research-driven academic clinical trial. There are not many studies of this kind these days," says Hemminki.

A group of Japanese researchers mainly from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT) and Hokkaido University drastically enhanced and sped up the way to skeletally diverse indole alkaloids, composed of the medicinally-relevant scaffolds. By leveraging computational and synthetic approaches, this group has successfully developed a concise and versatile synthetic process generating the densely-functionalized multicyclic complex scaffolds, which would facilitate the development of both medicine and agrochemicals.

This synthetic approach employing zinc (II) reagent in place of Hg(II) or gold-based reagents are also environmentally friendly as well as much cheaper than those that were used to-date.

The research was published in Chemical Science on May 1st, 2019.

Plants and fungi that contain indole alkaloids have a long history of use in traditional medicine. In efforts to synthesize the complex alkaloids, chemists usually develop a customized synthetic strategy for efficient construction of the single targeted scaffold. In contrast, this synthetic approach allowed concise and divergent synthesis of skeletally diverse alkaloidal scaffolds employing a common multipotent intermediate upon activation of alkyne moiety with zinc (II) reagent.

"We have successfully achieved programmable synthesis of the four distinct alkaloidal skeletons by implementing divergent annulations. The four kinds of annulation modes were demonstrated to be controlled in a programmable manner by appropriate choices of the substituents in the vicinity of the reaction centers, optimization of solvents and reaction conditions." says Hiroki Oguri, PhD, corresponding author and Professor at the Department of Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, TUAT, Japan.

By integrating computational and experimental investigation methods, the researchers were able to not only gain insight into the reaction mechanism proposing unique transition states, but also to showcase a useful synthetic strategy for the concise and divergent access to the medicinally-relevant alkaloidal structures.

"These experimental findings underscore that Zn(OTf)2-mediated activation of alkynes provide relatively unexplored but versatile synthetic methodologies for the direct and flexible synthesis of alkaloidal scaffolds reminiscent of natural products," Oguri adds.

The researchers plan to implement their methods to create compounds other than just indole alkaloids, and they envision that their method could offer both rational and unexpected guidelines for designing other similar reactions. Integration of synthetic strategies for generating structural variations with a systematic computational approach for identifying unforeseen reaction pathways could provide a new route for advancing the combinatorial chemical synthesis of functional molecules. They also expect that this method will generate lead candidates for the development of next-generation pharmaceuticals and pesticides.

New cases of tick-borne Lyme disease in the UK may be three times higher than previous estimates suggest, and might top 8000 in 2019, based on these figures, concludes research published in the online journal BMJ Open.

Lyme disease is a bacterial (Borrelia) infection passed on through the bite of an infected tick. It has become the most common tick-borne infection in many parts of Europe and the USA.

Early signs may include a rash around the area of the bite (erythema migrans), with flu-like and/or neurological symptoms,* but symptoms can vary or not be apparent. Without prompt antibiotic treatment, however, permanent joint and/or nerve damage is a risk.

Higher incidence rates of Lyme disease in neighbouring countries have prompted fears that current estimates of the annual number of new cases in the UK (2000 to 3000), which are based on laboratory data for England and Wales, might be too low.

To explore this further, a team of researchers drew on anonymised medical information submitted by family doctors to the nationally representative Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) between 2001 and 2012.

This database covers around 8.4 million people from 658 general practices, equivalent to around 8% of the UK population.

The researchers categorised diagnoses of Lyme disease as those that had been diagnosed clinically (1702;42%), or suspected and treated (1913;47%), or considered possible and treated (468;11%).

One in five of those treated were in their 40s, with similar proportions in their 50s (just over 18%) and 60s (just over 17%). And around half the cases were among women and girls (53%). Half the cases occurred in the summer.

Scotland had the highest number of Lyme disease cases, with more than one in four (1104; 27%), possibly because of its wetter climate and popularity as a hiking destination, suggest the researchers.

It was closely followed by South Central (735;18%) and South West England (636;15.6%). But all regions/countries of the UK were affected.

The annual total number of cases recorded in the CPRD increased from 60 in 2001 to 595 in 2012, giving rise to a UK estimate of 7738 cases in 2012.

The estimated annual incidence rate in 2012 was 12.1 cases per 100,000 of the population. But the average estimate between 2010 and 2012 varied widely, ranging from 6/100,000 of the population in Wales to 37.3/100,000 in Scotland.

The figure for 2012 is around three times higher than previous estimates have suggested, and if these trends continue, the number of new UK cases could top 8000 in 2019, say the researchers.

To stave off infection risk, it is advisable to: avoid dense vegetation, particularly wooded or grassy areas in moist and humid environments; use insect repellent on skin and clothing; tuck trousers into socks; and search the body for ticks after hiking in high risk areas, they write.

This study is observational, and the data on which it is based have their limitations.

Nevertheless, the findings point to the need for further preventive measures, say the researchers, who conclude that: "Greater awareness of the risks may also lead to more rapid diagnosis and treatment which is important to prevent long term morbidity."