High-flying pilots at increased risk of brain lesions

Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 20 Aug 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
High-flying pilots at increased risk of brain lesions

A new study suggests that pilots who fly at high altitudes may be at an increased risk for brain lesions. The study is published in the August 20, 2013, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

For the study, 102 U-2 United States Air Force pilots and 91 non-pilots between the ages of 26 and 50 underwent MRI brain scans. The scans measured the amount of white matter hyperintensities, or tiny brain lesions associated with memory decline in other neurological diseases. The groups were matched for age, education and health factors.

"Pilots who fly at altitudes above 18,000 feet are at risk for decompression sickness, a condition where gas or atmospheric pressure reaches lower levels than those within body tissues and forms bubbles," said study author Stephen McGuire, MD, with the University of Texas in San Antonio, the US Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. "The risk for decompression sickness among Air Force pilots has tripled from 2006, probably due to more frequent and longer periods of exposure for pilots. To date however, we have been unable to demonstrate any permanent clinical neurocognitive or memory decline."

Symptoms affecting the brain that sometimes accompany decompression sickness include slowed thought processes, confusion, unresponsiveness and permanent memory loss.

The study found that pilots had nearly four times the volume and three times the number of brain lesions as non-pilots. The results were the same whether or not the pilots had a history of symptoms of decompression sickness.

The research also found that while the lesions in non-pilots were mainly found in the frontal white matter, as occurs in normal aging, lesions in the pilots were evenly distributed throughout the brain.

"These results may be valuable in assessing risk for occupations that include high-altitude mountain climbing, deep sea diving and high-altitude flying," McGuire said.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
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The study was supported by the United States Air Force Surgeon General.

To learn more about cognition, please visit http://www.aan.com/patients.

Study: http://neurology.org/lookup/doi/10.1212/WNL.0b013e3182a1ab12

American Academy of Neurology

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African-American women who experience racism at increased risk for adult-onset asthma

Main Category: Respiratory / Asthma
Also Included In: Women's Health / Gynecology;  Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 19 Aug 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
African-American women who experience racism at increased risk for adult-onset asthma

According to a new study from the Slone Epidemiology Center (SEC) at Boston University, African-American women who reported more frequent experiences of racism had a greater likelihood of adult-onset asthma compared to women who reported less frequent experiences.

The study, which currently appears on-line in the journal Chest, was led by Patricia Coogan, DSc, senior epidemiologist at SEC and research professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health.

This study followed 38,142 African-American women, all of whom are participants in the Black Women's Health Study (BWHS), between 1997 and 2011. They completed health questionnaires every two years. In 1997 and 2009 they provided information on their experiences of "everyday" racism, like poor service in stores or restaurants, and "lifetime" racism, which was discrimination encountered on the job, in housing and by police.

The results indicate that as experiences of everyday and lifetime racism increased, the incidence of adult-onset asthma also rose, up to a 45 percent increase in women in the highest compared to the lowest category of the racism measures. Furthermore, the incidence of asthma was increased even more in women who were in the highest category of everyday racism in both 1997 and 2009, and who may have had more consistent experiences of racism over time.

"This is the first prospective study to show an association between experiences of racism and adult-onset asthma," said Coogan. "Racism is a significant stressor in the lives of African American women, and our results contribute to a growing body of evidence indicating that experiences of racism can have adverse effects on health." The hypothesized mechanism linking experiences of racism to asthma incidence is stress and its physiological consequences, particularly effects on the immune system and the airways. "Given the high prevalence of both asthma and of experiences of racism in African Americans, the association is of public health importance," she added.

BWHS is the largest follow-up study of the health of African American women in the United States. Led by researchers at the Slone Epidemiology Center, the BWHS has followed 59,000 African-American women through biennial questionnaires since 1995 and has led to a better understanding of numerous health conditions that disproportionately affect African-American women.

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Experiences of Racism and the Incidence of Adult-Onset Asthma in the Black Women’s Health Study, Chest. 2013. doi:10.1378/chest.13-0665

Boston University Medical Center Funding for this study was provided by the National Institutes of Health's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (grant award #HL107314) and the National Cancer Institute (grant award #CA058420).

Boston University Medical Center

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School suspension an increased risk for children exposed to lead

Main Category: Public Health
Also Included In: Pediatrics / Children's Health;  Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 17 Aug 2013 - 0:00 PDT Current ratings for:
School suspension an increased risk for children exposed to lead

Children who are exposed to lead are nearly three times more likely to be suspended from school by the 4th grade than children who are not exposed, according to a new University of Wisconsin-Madison study funded jointly by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Wisconsin Partnership Program Education and Research Committee.

"Students who are suspended from school are at greater risk of dropping out, twice as likely to use tobacco, and more likely to engage in violent behavior later in life," says first author Michael Amato, a doctoral candidate in psychology and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison. "Our study found that children exposed to lead were more than twice as likely to be suspended in the 4th grade, which means that lead may be more responsible for school discipline problems than many people realize."

Nationally, African-American students are three times more likely to be suspended than white students. The same discipline gap was found in the Wisconsin study, but 23 percent of the disparity was explained by differences in rates of lead exposure. Many previous studies have documented disparities in school discipline, but few have specified the underlying factors.

"We knew that lead exposure decreases children's abilities to control their attention and behavior, but we were still surprised that exposed children were so much more likely to be suspended," said Sheryl Magzamen, a public health researcher who also worked on the UW-Madison study. Magzamen is now an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma.

Researchers cross-referenced medical data of nearly 4,000 children exposed to lead with 4th grade disciplinary records in the Milwaukee school district. They found that children who had been exposed to lead were nearly three times more likely to be suspended in the fourth grade than children who had not been exposed, even after controlling for income, race/ethnicity, and gender.

Experiments on non-human animals prove that lead exposure causes decreased attention and decreased control over behavior when subjects are startled or touched. The study team reasoned that if exposed children were affected the same way, they would be more likely to engage in disruptive classroom behaviors that could result in suspension. The results of the study supported that hypothesis.

"Children exposed to lead don't get a fair start and it affects them for their whole lives," adds study coauthor Colleen Moore, a UW-Madison psychology professor emerita affiliated with the Nelson Institute.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, African-American children are more than twice as likely as whites to have elevated lead levels. The reason, say the researchers, is that African-American children are more likely to live in lower-income neighborhoods and rental housing where lead remains in the buildings and soil, a common situation in major American cities.

Moore notes that in the city of Milwaukee, lead abatement orders are currently active in more than 100 residential properties. "It would be great to see more landlords get on board to make their housing lead-safe," she said. "Future generations depend on it."

"Everyone agrees there is a big problem with disparities in education," says Amato. "This study shows that lead is a part of the problem. There is only one way to reduce lead's harmful effects, and that is to remove it from the environments where children live and play."

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The study will be published in the September 2013 issue of Environmental Research.

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Saliva from heavy cell phone users shows increased risk factors for cancer

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
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Article Date: 31 Jul 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Saliva from heavy cell phone users shows increased risk factors for cancer

Scientists have long been worried about the possible harmful effects of regular cellular phone use, but so far no study has managed to produce clear results. Currently, cell phones are classified as carcinogenic category 2b - potentially carcinogenic to humans - by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). A new Tel Aviv University study, though, may bring bad news.

To further explore the relationship between cancer rates and cell phone use, Dr. Yaniv Hamzany of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery Department at the Rabin Medical Center, looked for clues in the saliva of cell phone users. Since the cell phone is placed close to the salivary gland when in use, he and his fellow researchers, including departmental colleagues Profs. Raphael Feinmesser, Thomas Shpitzer and Dr. Gideon Bahar and Prof. Rafi Nagler and Dr. Moshe Gavish of the Technion in Haifa, hypothesized that salivary content could reveal whether there was a connection to developing cancer.

Comparing heavy mobile phone users to non-users, they found that the saliva of heavy users showed indications of higher oxidative stress - a process that damages all aspects of a human cell, including DNA - through the development of toxic peroxide and free radicals. More importantly, it is considered a major risk factor for cancer.

The findings have been reported in the journal Antioxidants and Redox Signaling.

Putting stress on tissues and glands

For the study, the researchers examined the saliva content of 20 heavy-user patients, defined as speaking on their phones for a minimum of eight hours a month. Most participants speak much more, Dr. Hamzany says, as much as 30 to 40 hours a month. Their salivary content was compared to that of a control group, which consisted of deaf patients who either do not use a cell phone, or use the device exclusively for sending text messages and other non-verbal functions.

Compared to the control group, the heavy cell phone users had a significant increase in all salivary oxidative stress measurements studied.

"This suggests that there is considerable oxidative stress on the tissue and glands which are close to the cell phone when in use," he says. The damage caused by oxidative stress is linked to cellular and genetic mutations which cause the development of tumors.

Making the connection

This field of research reflects longstanding concerns about the impact of cell phone use, specifically the effects of radiofrequency non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation on human tissue located close to the ear, say the researchers. And although these results don't uncover a conclusive "cause and effect" relationship between cellular phone use and cancer, they add to the building evidence that cell phone use may be harmful in the long term, and point to a new direction for further research.

One potential avenue of future research would be to analyze a person's saliva prior to exposure to a cell phone, and then again after several intense minutes of exposure. This will allow researchers to see if there is an immediate response, such as a rise in molecules that indicate oxidative stress, Dr. Hamzany says.

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Yaniv Hamzany, Raphael Feinmesser, Thomas Shpitzer, Aviram Mizrachi, Ohad Hilly, Roy Hod, Gideon Bahar, Irina Otradnov, Moshe Gavish, and Rafael M. Nagler. Is Human Saliva an Indicator of the Adverse Health Effects of Using Mobile Phones? Antioxidants & Redox Signaling. February 20, 2013, 18(6): 622-627. doi:10.1089/ars.2012.4751

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Susceptibility to deadly fungal infection increased by methamphetamine

Main Category: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses
Also Included In: Neurology / Neuroscience;  Alcohol / Addiction / Illegal Drugs;  Respiratory / Asthma
Article Date: 31 Jul 2013 - 2:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Susceptibility to deadly fungal infection increased by methamphetamine

Methamphetamine use can make a person more susceptible to the lung infection cryptococcosis, according to a study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

Researchers found that injected methamphetamine (METH) significantly enhanced colonization of the lungs by Cryptococcus neoformans and accelerated progression of the disease and the time to death in mouse models. C. neoformans is usually harmless to healthy individuals, but METH causes chinks in the blood-brain barrier that can permit the fungus to invade the central nervous system, where it causes a deadly brain infection.

"The highest uptake of the drug is in the lungs," says corresponding author Luis Martinez of Long Island University-Post, in Brookville, New York and of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx. "This may render the individual susceptible to infection. We wanted to know how METH would alter C. neoformans infection."

Thirteen million people in the US have abused METH in their lifetimes, and regular METH users numbered approximately 353,000 in 2010, the most recent year for which data are available. A central nervous system stimulant that adversely impacts immunological responses, recent studies show that injected METH accumulates in various sites in the body, but the lungs seem to accumulate the highest concentrations, says Martinez, which could well impact how the lung responds to invading pathogens.

To study the impact this accumulation might have on pulmonary infection, Martinez and his colleagues injected mice with doses of METH over the course of three weeks, then exposed those mice to the C. neoformans fungus. In humans, C. neoformans initially infects the lungs but often crosses the blood-brain barrier to infect the central nervous system and cause meningitis. In their experiments, METH significantly accelerated the speed with which the infected mice died, so that nine days after infection, 100% of METH treated mice were dead, compared to 50% of the control mice.

Using fluorescent microscopy to examine lung tissue in METH-treated and control mice, the researchers found that METH enhanced the interaction of C. neoformans with epithelial cells in the lining of the lung. Seven days after exposure to the fungus, the lungs of METH-treated mice showed large numbers of fungi surrounded by vast amounts of gooey polysaccharide in a biofilm-like arrangement. METH-treated mice also displayed low numbers of inflammatory cells early during infection and breathed faster than controls, a sign of respiratory distress.

Martinez says this greater ability to cause disease in the lung may be due in part to simple electrical attraction. Their analysis shows that METH imparts a greater negative charge on the surface of the fungal cells, possibly lending them a greater attraction to the surface of the lung and an enhanced ability to form a biofilm that can protect its members from attack by the immune system. The fungus also releases more of its capsular polysaccharide in METH-treated mice, which can help the organism colonize and persist in the lung.

"When the organism senses the drug, it basically modifies the polysaccharide in the capsule. This might be an explanation for the pathogenicity of the organism in the presence of the drug, but it also tells you how the organism senses the environment and that it will modify the way that it causes disease," Martinez says.

But the fungus doesn't stop in the lungs. "The drug stimulates colonization and biofilm formation in the lungs of these animals," says Martinez. "And this will follow to dissemination to the central nervous system by the fungus."

C. neoformans in the lung moved on to the bloodstream and then into the central nervous system. The brains of METH-treated mice had higher numbers of C. neoformans cells, greater quantities of the fungus' polysaccharide, and larger lesions than control mice, indicating that METH has a detrimental effect on the blood-brain barrier, permitting the pathogen to cross more easily from the bloodstream to infect the central nervous system.

"METH-induced alterations to the molecules responsible to maintain the integrity of the blood-brain barrier provide an explanation for the susceptibility of METH abuser to brain infection by HIV and other pathogens," write the authors.

Martinez and his colleagues plan to follow up on the work by investigating how aspects of the immune system might be involved in changes the drug causes to the blood-brain barrier.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
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Patel D, Desai GM, Frases S, Cordero RJB, DeLeon-Rodriguez CM, Eugenin EA, Nosanchuk JD, Martinez LR. 2013. Methamphetamine Enhances Cryptococcus neoformans Pulmonary Infection and Dissemination to the Brain, mBio 4(4):e00400-13. doi:10.1128/mBio.00400-13.

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