By Rachael Rettner
LiveScience – April 15, 2010
For those who find it tough to juggle more than a couple things at once, don't despair. The brain is set up to manage two tasks, but not more, a new study suggests.
That's because, when faced with two tasks, a part of the brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex (MFC) divides so that half of the region focuses on one task and the other half on the other task. This division of labor allows a person to keep track of two tasks pretty readily, but if you throw in a third, things get a bit muddled.
"What really the results show is that we can readily divide tasking. We can cook, and at the same time talk on the phone, and switch back and forth between these two activities," said study researcher Etienne Koechlin of the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France. "However, we cannot multitask with more than two tasks."
The results will be published this week in the journal Science.
Multitasking in the brain
The MFC is thought to be part of the brain's "motivational system." Specifically, it helps monitor the value of rewards and drives a person's behavior according to that value. In other words, it's where rewards are represented in the brain.
Scientists knew that a region at the very front of the brain, called the anterior prefrontal cortex (APC), was involved in multitasking. But they weren't sure how the MFC was involved. Are the rewards for the different tasks represented separately? Or summed together?
Koechlin and his colleagues had 32 subjects complete a letter-matching task while they had their brains scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The subjects saw uppercase letters on a screen and had to determine whether those letters were presented in the correct order to spell out a certain word. They were given money if they performed the task with no errors.
The researchers saw that, the higher the monetary reward, the more activity there was in the MFC.
But then they made the task more difficult. In addition to uppercase letters, the subjects were also presented with lowercase letters, and had to switch back and forth between matching the uppercase letters to spell out, say, T-A-B-L-E-T, and lowercase letters to spell out t-a-b-l-e-t.
During this dual task, the MFC divided up the labor. One hemisphere of the brain encoded the reward associated with the uppercase letter task, and so showed activity during that task, while the other region encoded the reward associated with the lowercase task, Koechlin said.
Essentially, the brain behaved "as if each frontal lobe was pursuing its own goal," Koechlin said.
To make things even more complicated, the researchers introduced a third letter-matching task. Here, they saw the subject's accuracy drop considerably. It was as though, once each hemisphere was occupied with managing one task, there was nowhere for the third task to go.
"[The] subjects perform as if they systematically forget one of the three tasks," Koechlin told LiveScience.
Decision-making
The results might also explain why humans seem to have a hard time making decisions between more than two things, Koechlin said.
Previous work has indicated that people like binary choices, or decisions between two things. They have difficulty when decisions involve more than two choices, Koechlin said. When faced with three or more choices, subjects don't appear to evaluate them rationally; they simply start discarding choices until they get back to a binary choice.
This is perhaps because your brain can't keep track of the rewards involved with more than two choices, Koechlin said.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Study Finds Mental Exercise Offers Brain Limited Benefits
By Gautam Naik
The Wall Street Journal – April 21, 2010
Thousands of people world-wide are trying to improve memory, mental fitness and even intelligence levels by performing computer-based brain-training exercises. A large new study casts doubt on whether such programs can deliver what they promise.
The hallmark of a good brain-training program isn't whether it simply improves a person's ability to do the specific mental tasks in the training, but whether it also boosts other cognitive skills. The latest study, published in the journal Nature, found no evidence for such cognitive transfers.
"Our brain-training groups got better at the tests they practiced, and the more they practiced, the better they got. But there was no translation to any improvements in general cognitive function," said study co-author Jessica Grahn, a scientist at the Medical and Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England. The unit has close links to the University of Cambridge.
The brain training and fitness industry is still in its infancy and largely centered on software programs or online offerings. In North America, the market increased to $265 million in 2009 from $225 million a year earlier, according to SharpBrains, a market-research firm in San Francisco. It is forecast to grow to at least $1 billion in five years.
Aging Boomers
Some $95 million of last year's revenue came from consumers who buy commercially available brain-training programs. The rest came from professional users, including schools, insurance companies and retirement communities.
The brain-training field has been boosted by studies suggesting that even adult brains are "plastic," and cognitive ability can be improved with the right mental training. Another spur is an aging population, and the hope that cognitive exercises and lifestyle changes may help to forestall brain maladies such as Alzheimer's disease.
The authors of the Nature study point out that some modest benefits to cognitive abilities have been reported in studies of older people, preschool children and videogame players who outperform nonplayers on some tests of visual attention. But wider empirical support has been lacking, they said.
The six-week online study involved 11,430 healthy participants, all viewers of a BBC television science program. They were first tested for their existing "benchmark" cognitive abilities, and then randomly assigned to one of three groups, each with a different set of tasks.
Boosting Memory
One group took part in online games aimed at improving skills linked to general intelligence, such as reasoning, problem-solving and planning. A second test group did exercises to boost short-term memory, attention and mathematical and visual-spatial skills—functions typically targeted by commercial brain-training programs. A third "control group" was asked to browse the Internet and seek out answers to general knowledge questions.
The conclusion: Those who did the brain-training exercises improved in the specific tasks that they practiced. However, their improvement was generally no greater than the gains made by the control group surfing the Internet. And none of the groups showed evidence of improvement in cognitive skills that weren't specifically used in their tasks.
Some critics said the study's design was flawed. For example, the participants were asked to do brain workouts for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a day, for six weeks. But that may not have been long enough.
"It's not brain training," said Alvaro Fernandez, chief executive officer of SharpBrains. Past studies, he said, indicate that proper cognition transfer "only happens after more than 15 hours of training and where each session lasts at least 30 minutes."
Steven Aldrich, chief executive of Posit Science of San Francisco, which sells brain-training programs, said the "study overreaches in generalizing that since their methods did not work, all methods would not work." Mr. Aldrich added that other randomized, peer-reviewed studies have shown that brain training improves some aspects of brain performance.
The Wall Street Journal – April 21, 2010
Thousands of people world-wide are trying to improve memory, mental fitness and even intelligence levels by performing computer-based brain-training exercises. A large new study casts doubt on whether such programs can deliver what they promise.
The hallmark of a good brain-training program isn't whether it simply improves a person's ability to do the specific mental tasks in the training, but whether it also boosts other cognitive skills. The latest study, published in the journal Nature, found no evidence for such cognitive transfers.
"Our brain-training groups got better at the tests they practiced, and the more they practiced, the better they got. But there was no translation to any improvements in general cognitive function," said study co-author Jessica Grahn, a scientist at the Medical and Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England. The unit has close links to the University of Cambridge.
The brain training and fitness industry is still in its infancy and largely centered on software programs or online offerings. In North America, the market increased to $265 million in 2009 from $225 million a year earlier, according to SharpBrains, a market-research firm in San Francisco. It is forecast to grow to at least $1 billion in five years.
Aging Boomers
Some $95 million of last year's revenue came from consumers who buy commercially available brain-training programs. The rest came from professional users, including schools, insurance companies and retirement communities.
The brain-training field has been boosted by studies suggesting that even adult brains are "plastic," and cognitive ability can be improved with the right mental training. Another spur is an aging population, and the hope that cognitive exercises and lifestyle changes may help to forestall brain maladies such as Alzheimer's disease.
The authors of the Nature study point out that some modest benefits to cognitive abilities have been reported in studies of older people, preschool children and videogame players who outperform nonplayers on some tests of visual attention. But wider empirical support has been lacking, they said.
The six-week online study involved 11,430 healthy participants, all viewers of a BBC television science program. They were first tested for their existing "benchmark" cognitive abilities, and then randomly assigned to one of three groups, each with a different set of tasks.
Boosting Memory
One group took part in online games aimed at improving skills linked to general intelligence, such as reasoning, problem-solving and planning. A second test group did exercises to boost short-term memory, attention and mathematical and visual-spatial skills—functions typically targeted by commercial brain-training programs. A third "control group" was asked to browse the Internet and seek out answers to general knowledge questions.
The conclusion: Those who did the brain-training exercises improved in the specific tasks that they practiced. However, their improvement was generally no greater than the gains made by the control group surfing the Internet. And none of the groups showed evidence of improvement in cognitive skills that weren't specifically used in their tasks.
Some critics said the study's design was flawed. For example, the participants were asked to do brain workouts for at least 10 minutes a day, three times a day, for six weeks. But that may not have been long enough.
"It's not brain training," said Alvaro Fernandez, chief executive officer of SharpBrains. Past studies, he said, indicate that proper cognition transfer "only happens after more than 15 hours of training and where each session lasts at least 30 minutes."
Steven Aldrich, chief executive of Posit Science of San Francisco, which sells brain-training programs, said the "study overreaches in generalizing that since their methods did not work, all methods would not work." Mr. Aldrich added that other randomized, peer-reviewed studies have shown that brain training improves some aspects of brain performance.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Holiday Top Five Tips for Children With Special Needs
Plano, TX (PRWEB) October 25, 2010
Holidays are a busy time of year, full of activity from people to places that can easily over stimulate children, especially those with special needs. A survey by the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found 10.2 million U.S. children in the have special healthcare needs, or 14 percent of all U.S. children. More than one-fifth of U.S. households with children have at least one child with special needs. HOPELights holiday tips are designed to aid the families that love and support special needs children-having guidance on high-sensory events like the upcoming holidays are critical.
According to the Center for Disease Control, Autism Spectrum Disorder dials in at an average of 1 in 110 children, while Down Syndrome occurs 1 in every 800 births. See related data at: www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html and www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/bd/ds.htm. Many other children experience a variety of issues from Mental Retardation to Developmental Delays, Down Syndrome to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety to Fragile X, ADHD and so on.
Even typical needs children go into over-drive. For example, one study (Ahn, Miller, Milberger, McIntosh, 2004) shows that at least 1 in 20 children (with or without any other diagnosis) are affected by SPD, a term that refers to the way the nervous system receives messages from the senses and turns them into appropriate motor and behavioral responses.
"This means millions of children in the United States have some sort of challenge with things like loud noises, environmental or event transitions, crowds, sensitivities to taste or touch just to name a few," said Dawn Grosvenor, founder of HOPELight Media. "Which is why putting special emphasis on how to help children and their families through the holiday hustle and bustle is critical in ensuring they have a positive, healthy and loving interaction with friends and family. Holidays should be cherished and foster positive memories that last a lifetime."
HopeLights Holiday Top Five Tips for Children With Special Needs:
(1) Make a Visual Schedule - Many children are used to routine, structure and consistency, but much of this is lost during the holidays. If your child can see it coming for days, hours and minutes before it happens, transitions from place to place or even events in your own home will be more welcoming to your child.
(2) Identify "Anchor" or Transition Items - Most children have an attachment to a favorite blanket, stuffed animal, toy or other item. Make sure your child has his or her favorites nearby especially if you are traveling. Let them carry a special bag of their favorite goodies. It is a little piece of home and helps them feel grounded and secure.
(3) Establish Warm Up Times and Personal Space Parameters - Holidays bring in visitors or not-so-familiar faces that your child only sees once or twice a year. It is important these visitors give your child time to warm up and re-establish a connection. Great Aunt Betty may not be familiar right away, but she will be rewarded with a warm interaction 20 minutes or so into her visit if Aunt Betty and your child are prepared for the event.
(4) Create and Communicate Code Words - Special needs or not, every child hits a melting point. Too many people, too many presents, skipping or moving a nap time can lead to the uncomfortable fit. As a parent, we can sometimes see these coming or at the very least we can intervene at the beginning. Talk with your family members before everyone gets together and establish a "Code Word" and ask them to help when you say this word or phrase. It can be as simple as "Houston, we have a problem." By establishing code words with friends and relatives, this lets them know when you and your child need a private moment. You will be amazed how well they understand and cooperate without hurt feelings and it takes the pressure off of you.
(5) Set Your Own Expectations in Advance - As parents we sometimes expect too much of ourselves, and put even more expectations on the "perfect" holiday. Remember you are only one person with only one goal, to love your children and ensure they are safe and happy this holiday season. Create your own To-Do lists and schedule plenty of time between events and preparation of visitors so you are not rushing through the holiday, but savoring each moment.
In honor of this holiday season, for every new annual HOPELights Children's Activity Magazine subscription for children with special needs purchased in December 2010, a new subscription will be donated to a child in pediatric hospice for the coming 2011 calendar year. See related announcement at: http://tinyurl.com/25a2wgm.
HOPELights magazine is available in three subscription options starting as low as $6.70 an issue with an annual subscription. To order a subscription for your child or give to a child you know this holiday season, go to www.hopelightmedia.com.
About HopeLight Media
HOPELight Media, LLC was founded by Dawn Grosvenor, mother of a daughter who was diagnosed with autism. HOPELights serves the purpose of developing materials and activities for special needs children that motivate and educate through positive, holistic stimuli. The materials are well suited across the range of special needs and provides support to many levels of Autism, Down syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, MR, Spinal Bifida, Muscular Dystrophy and any child experiencing sensory or cognitive delays.
The HOPELights magazine is the first of its kind targeted specifically to support the sensory needs of "differently-abled" youth. The company strives to support the unique population of parents, families, and children with an uncompromising, sustained effort of inclusion and joy.
For more information, visit www.hopelightmedia.com or email hope@hopelightmedia.com
© 2010 HOPELights Media. All rights reserved.
Holidays are a busy time of year, full of activity from people to places that can easily over stimulate children, especially those with special needs. A survey by the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found 10.2 million U.S. children in the have special healthcare needs, or 14 percent of all U.S. children. More than one-fifth of U.S. households with children have at least one child with special needs. HOPELights holiday tips are designed to aid the families that love and support special needs children-having guidance on high-sensory events like the upcoming holidays are critical.
According to the Center for Disease Control, Autism Spectrum Disorder dials in at an average of 1 in 110 children, while Down Syndrome occurs 1 in every 800 births. See related data at: www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html and www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/bd/ds.htm. Many other children experience a variety of issues from Mental Retardation to Developmental Delays, Down Syndrome to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety to Fragile X, ADHD and so on.
Even typical needs children go into over-drive. For example, one study (Ahn, Miller, Milberger, McIntosh, 2004) shows that at least 1 in 20 children (with or without any other diagnosis) are affected by SPD, a term that refers to the way the nervous system receives messages from the senses and turns them into appropriate motor and behavioral responses.
"This means millions of children in the United States have some sort of challenge with things like loud noises, environmental or event transitions, crowds, sensitivities to taste or touch just to name a few," said Dawn Grosvenor, founder of HOPELight Media. "Which is why putting special emphasis on how to help children and their families through the holiday hustle and bustle is critical in ensuring they have a positive, healthy and loving interaction with friends and family. Holidays should be cherished and foster positive memories that last a lifetime."
HopeLights Holiday Top Five Tips for Children With Special Needs:
(1) Make a Visual Schedule - Many children are used to routine, structure and consistency, but much of this is lost during the holidays. If your child can see it coming for days, hours and minutes before it happens, transitions from place to place or even events in your own home will be more welcoming to your child.
(2) Identify "Anchor" or Transition Items - Most children have an attachment to a favorite blanket, stuffed animal, toy or other item. Make sure your child has his or her favorites nearby especially if you are traveling. Let them carry a special bag of their favorite goodies. It is a little piece of home and helps them feel grounded and secure.
(3) Establish Warm Up Times and Personal Space Parameters - Holidays bring in visitors or not-so-familiar faces that your child only sees once or twice a year. It is important these visitors give your child time to warm up and re-establish a connection. Great Aunt Betty may not be familiar right away, but she will be rewarded with a warm interaction 20 minutes or so into her visit if Aunt Betty and your child are prepared for the event.
(4) Create and Communicate Code Words - Special needs or not, every child hits a melting point. Too many people, too many presents, skipping or moving a nap time can lead to the uncomfortable fit. As a parent, we can sometimes see these coming or at the very least we can intervene at the beginning. Talk with your family members before everyone gets together and establish a "Code Word" and ask them to help when you say this word or phrase. It can be as simple as "Houston, we have a problem." By establishing code words with friends and relatives, this lets them know when you and your child need a private moment. You will be amazed how well they understand and cooperate without hurt feelings and it takes the pressure off of you.
(5) Set Your Own Expectations in Advance - As parents we sometimes expect too much of ourselves, and put even more expectations on the "perfect" holiday. Remember you are only one person with only one goal, to love your children and ensure they are safe and happy this holiday season. Create your own To-Do lists and schedule plenty of time between events and preparation of visitors so you are not rushing through the holiday, but savoring each moment.
In honor of this holiday season, for every new annual HOPELights Children's Activity Magazine subscription for children with special needs purchased in December 2010, a new subscription will be donated to a child in pediatric hospice for the coming 2011 calendar year. See related announcement at: http://tinyurl.com/25a2wgm.
HOPELights magazine is available in three subscription options starting as low as $6.70 an issue with an annual subscription. To order a subscription for your child or give to a child you know this holiday season, go to www.hopelightmedia.com.
About HopeLight Media
HOPELight Media, LLC was founded by Dawn Grosvenor, mother of a daughter who was diagnosed with autism. HOPELights serves the purpose of developing materials and activities for special needs children that motivate and educate through positive, holistic stimuli. The materials are well suited across the range of special needs and provides support to many levels of Autism, Down syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, MR, Spinal Bifida, Muscular Dystrophy and any child experiencing sensory or cognitive delays.
The HOPELights magazine is the first of its kind targeted specifically to support the sensory needs of "differently-abled" youth. The company strives to support the unique population of parents, families, and children with an uncompromising, sustained effort of inclusion and joy.
For more information, visit www.hopelightmedia.com or email hope@hopelightmedia.com
© 2010 HOPELights Media. All rights reserved.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
A Tale of Two Stem Cells
By Andrew Fergusson
Christian News on Christian Today
This last month there have been two developments in stem cell therapies.
One is not ethically controversial, and represents a major gain in efficiency in making effective stem cell treatments available quite soon. It received no coverage in the British media at all.
The other is ethically controversial, is at such an early stage that clinical benefit remains unlikely for at least another decade, but achieved massive coverage. What – and why?
Stem cells are primitive cells with potential to turn into other specific cell types, and obviously it would be great in medicine if we could grow our own tissues to replace those damaged by injury or disease. Stem cells come from two different sources – one controversial, one not.
‘Embryonic stem cells’ (ESCs) are derived from human embryos and have the most potential to turn into other kinds of tissue. That’s no surprise – after all, each and every one of us came from one single cell formed when dad’s sperm and mum’s egg fused at our inception.
But that enormous potential also means that trials to date have not worked – the ESCs are so lively they are uncontrollable and cannot be directed, even in cases forming tumours. And the ethical controversy? Human lives are lost as the embryos yielding ESCs are destroyed in the process.
By contrast, stem cells can be derived from many completely non-controversial sources found in our bodies already. Stem cells from non-embryonic sources are known as ‘adult stem cells’ (ASCs).
And just a couple of years ago, scientists became able to reprogramme back human skin cells into ‘induced pluripotent stem cells’ (iPS) – with the potential to make many different kinds of tissues to treat diseases.
At first, viral vectors had to be used to transfer the genes to reprogramme the skin cells, which is inefficient and has potential safety concerns.
But in the breakthrough that really is a breakthrough, scientists reported creating iPS from skin cells using modified forms of messenger RNA (natural human transmitters). The new technique appears to make producing iPS one hundred times more efficient.
The US National Institutes of Health website logs current clinical trials and lists 3,124 involving ASCs, 304 of them for spinal cord injuries. Here is an imminent therapy with no fundamental ethical concerns, which is already being tested, and which has just become a lot more efficient.
By contrast the other story concerns the first clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. Yes, one ESC trial against over 3,000 ASC trials. After over a decade, the US biotechnology giant Geron, which has invested $170m in ESCs, has finally come up with a potential treatment for spinal cord injured patients.
Yet examining what they have done, it is only a ‘Phase 1’ trial, looking at this stage at safety and tolerability of nerve cell progenitors derived from ESCs, to be injected into the site of the spinal cord damage 7-14 days after injury. Assessing neurological function is only a secondary end point.
Now that is the accepted and proper way of testing a potential new treatment, but it is at such a very early stage that it will be years, if ever, before a treatment for spinal cord injury emerges. Meanwhile, more than 300 ethical trials are already going on for spinal cord injuries…
So why huge news coverage for one, and completely ignoring the other? The British media have been hoodwinked by sections of the science community, some of whom want the freedom to indulge in research without any boundaries.
They want to ignore the destruction of human embryos implicit in ESC work, putting concerns down to religious extremists only, and arguing that embryos are only ‘potential human beings’. They are of course ‘human beings with potential’. The media are also turning a blind eye to the scientific reality here: the unethical just doesn’t work anyway.
Amid all this hype, the British Medical Journal even reported a London professor as saying: ‘This first in man study marks the dawn of the “stem cell age”.’ Dawn? Sunset more likely…
Andrew Fergusson is Head of Communications at Christian Medical Fellowship.
At first, viral vectors had to be used to transfer the genes to reprogramme the skin cells, which is inefficient and has potential safety concerns.
But in the breakthrough that really is a breakthrough, scientists reported creating iPS from skin cells using modified forms of messenger RNA (natural human transmitters). The new technique appears to make producing iPS one hundred times more efficient.
The US National Institutes of Health website logs current clinical trials and lists 3,124 involving ASCs, 304 of them for spinal cord injuries. Here is an imminent therapy with no fundamental ethical concerns, which is already being tested, and which has just become a lot more efficient.
By contrast the other story concerns the first clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. Yes, one ESC trial against over 3,000 ASC trials. After over a decade, the US biotechnology giant Geron, which has invested $170m in ESCs, has finally come up with a potential treatment for spinal cord injured patients.
Yet examining what they have done, it is only a ‘Phase 1’ trial, looking at this stage at safety and tolerability of nerve cell progenitors derived from ESCs, to be injected into the site of the spinal cord damage 7-14 days after injury. Assessing neurological function is only a secondary end point.
Now that is the accepted and proper way of testing a potential new treatment, but it is at such a very early stage that it will be years, if ever, before a treatment for spinal cord injury emerges. Meanwhile, more than 300 ethical trials are already going on for spinal cord injuries…
So why huge news coverage for one, and completely ignoring the other? The British media have been hoodwinked by sections of the science community, some of whom want the freedom to indulge in research without any boundaries.
They want to ignore the destruction of human embryos implicit in ESC work, putting concerns down to religious extremists only, and arguing that embryos are only ‘potential human beings’. They are of course ‘human beings with potential’. The media are also turning a blind eye to the scientific reality here: the unethical just doesn’t work anyway.
Amid all this hype, the British Medical Journal even reported a London professor as saying: ‘This first in man study marks the dawn of the “stem cell age”.’ Dawn? Sunset more likely…
Andrew Fergusson is Head of Communications at Christian Medical Fellowship.
Christian News on Christian Today
This last month there have been two developments in stem cell therapies.
One is not ethically controversial, and represents a major gain in efficiency in making effective stem cell treatments available quite soon. It received no coverage in the British media at all.
The other is ethically controversial, is at such an early stage that clinical benefit remains unlikely for at least another decade, but achieved massive coverage. What – and why?
Stem cells are primitive cells with potential to turn into other specific cell types, and obviously it would be great in medicine if we could grow our own tissues to replace those damaged by injury or disease. Stem cells come from two different sources – one controversial, one not.
‘Embryonic stem cells’ (ESCs) are derived from human embryos and have the most potential to turn into other kinds of tissue. That’s no surprise – after all, each and every one of us came from one single cell formed when dad’s sperm and mum’s egg fused at our inception.
But that enormous potential also means that trials to date have not worked – the ESCs are so lively they are uncontrollable and cannot be directed, even in cases forming tumours. And the ethical controversy? Human lives are lost as the embryos yielding ESCs are destroyed in the process.
By contrast, stem cells can be derived from many completely non-controversial sources found in our bodies already. Stem cells from non-embryonic sources are known as ‘adult stem cells’ (ASCs).
And just a couple of years ago, scientists became able to reprogramme back human skin cells into ‘induced pluripotent stem cells’ (iPS) – with the potential to make many different kinds of tissues to treat diseases.
At first, viral vectors had to be used to transfer the genes to reprogramme the skin cells, which is inefficient and has potential safety concerns.
But in the breakthrough that really is a breakthrough, scientists reported creating iPS from skin cells using modified forms of messenger RNA (natural human transmitters). The new technique appears to make producing iPS one hundred times more efficient.
The US National Institutes of Health website logs current clinical trials and lists 3,124 involving ASCs, 304 of them for spinal cord injuries. Here is an imminent therapy with no fundamental ethical concerns, which is already being tested, and which has just become a lot more efficient.
By contrast the other story concerns the first clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. Yes, one ESC trial against over 3,000 ASC trials. After over a decade, the US biotechnology giant Geron, which has invested $170m in ESCs, has finally come up with a potential treatment for spinal cord injured patients.
Yet examining what they have done, it is only a ‘Phase 1’ trial, looking at this stage at safety and tolerability of nerve cell progenitors derived from ESCs, to be injected into the site of the spinal cord damage 7-14 days after injury. Assessing neurological function is only a secondary end point.
Now that is the accepted and proper way of testing a potential new treatment, but it is at such a very early stage that it will be years, if ever, before a treatment for spinal cord injury emerges. Meanwhile, more than 300 ethical trials are already going on for spinal cord injuries…
So why huge news coverage for one, and completely ignoring the other? The British media have been hoodwinked by sections of the science community, some of whom want the freedom to indulge in research without any boundaries.
They want to ignore the destruction of human embryos implicit in ESC work, putting concerns down to religious extremists only, and arguing that embryos are only ‘potential human beings’. They are of course ‘human beings with potential’. The media are also turning a blind eye to the scientific reality here: the unethical just doesn’t work anyway.
Amid all this hype, the British Medical Journal even reported a London professor as saying: ‘This first in man study marks the dawn of the “stem cell age”.’ Dawn? Sunset more likely…
Andrew Fergusson is Head of Communications at Christian Medical Fellowship.
At first, viral vectors had to be used to transfer the genes to reprogramme the skin cells, which is inefficient and has potential safety concerns.
But in the breakthrough that really is a breakthrough, scientists reported creating iPS from skin cells using modified forms of messenger RNA (natural human transmitters). The new technique appears to make producing iPS one hundred times more efficient.
The US National Institutes of Health website logs current clinical trials and lists 3,124 involving ASCs, 304 of them for spinal cord injuries. Here is an imminent therapy with no fundamental ethical concerns, which is already being tested, and which has just become a lot more efficient.
By contrast the other story concerns the first clinical trial involving embryonic stem cells. Yes, one ESC trial against over 3,000 ASC trials. After over a decade, the US biotechnology giant Geron, which has invested $170m in ESCs, has finally come up with a potential treatment for spinal cord injured patients.
Yet examining what they have done, it is only a ‘Phase 1’ trial, looking at this stage at safety and tolerability of nerve cell progenitors derived from ESCs, to be injected into the site of the spinal cord damage 7-14 days after injury. Assessing neurological function is only a secondary end point.
Now that is the accepted and proper way of testing a potential new treatment, but it is at such a very early stage that it will be years, if ever, before a treatment for spinal cord injury emerges. Meanwhile, more than 300 ethical trials are already going on for spinal cord injuries…
So why huge news coverage for one, and completely ignoring the other? The British media have been hoodwinked by sections of the science community, some of whom want the freedom to indulge in research without any boundaries.
They want to ignore the destruction of human embryos implicit in ESC work, putting concerns down to religious extremists only, and arguing that embryos are only ‘potential human beings’. They are of course ‘human beings with potential’. The media are also turning a blind eye to the scientific reality here: the unethical just doesn’t work anyway.
Amid all this hype, the British Medical Journal even reported a London professor as saying: ‘This first in man study marks the dawn of the “stem cell age”.’ Dawn? Sunset more likely…
Andrew Fergusson is Head of Communications at Christian Medical Fellowship.
CMV in Stem Cell Transplantation: Impact on Mortality - Infectious Diseases
Prophylactic use of ganciclovir against cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and disease has been associated with inconsistent improvement in overall post-transplant survival. Because ganciclovir's beneficial effects are offset by its potential toxicities, CMV treatment strategies have been developed to reduce ganciclovir exposure in hosts with evidence of active CMV replication. The purpose of this observational cohort study was to determine the association of CMV serostatus with mortality in the era of ganciclovir prophylaxis among 1750 consecutive recipients of non-T-cell-depleted stem-cell transplants.
All patients were monitored weekly, from engraftment until day 100 after stem-cell transplant, for CMV reactivation or primary CMV infection, as indicated by blood cultures and pp65 antigenemia assay. CMV disease and neutropenia caused by ganciclovir administration were associated with mortality among CMV-seropositive patients. CMV-seronegative patients who had received allografts from CMV-seropositive donors had a significantly higher risk for death from bacteremia or invasive fungal infection, even after adjustment for duration of neutropenia, than CMV-seronegative patients whose donors were also CMV-seronegative.
Comment: CMV-seropositive status continues to be associated with mortality after allogeneic stem-cell transplantation, despite preemptive ganciclovir therapy. In this study, CMV donor-positive, recipient-negative hosts were at highest risk for death, and ganciclovir recipients in this group showed a trend toward lower mortality compared with nonrecipients. Better diagnostic methods are needed to determine whether, as the authors suggest, seronegative graft recipients who fare poorly may have undetected, subclinical CMV infections.
— Linda M. Mundy, MD
Published in Journal Watch Infectious Diseases February 21, 2002
Citation(s):
Nichols WG et al. High risk of death due to bacterial and fungal infection among cytomegalovirus (CMV)-seronegative recipients of stem cell transplants from seropositive donors: Evidence for indirect effects of primary CMV infection. J Infect Dis 2002 Feb 1; 185:273-82.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Lancet Retracts Study Tying Vaccine to Autism
By Shirley S. Wang
The Wall Street Journal - February 3, 2010
The study that first suggested a link between vaccines and autism and spurred a long-running, acrimonious debate over the safety of vaccines has been retracted by the British medical journal that published it. The withdrawal supports the scientific evidence that vaccinations don't cause autism, but isn't likely to persuade advocacy groups that believe in a link.
A new autism study shows clusters of high autism rates in parts of California. WSJ's health columnist Melinda Beck joins Simon Constable on the News Hub with more.
The 1998 study of 12 children triggered worry among British parents that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine caused autism, and many decided not to immunize their children against measles, according to Richard Horton, editor in chief of the Lancet, which issued the retraction Tuesday. He called the study the "starting pistol," though not the only cause, of the controversy.
Concern about the safety of vaccines, particularly regarding the preservative often used, thimerosal, which contains mercury, spread to the U.S. as well. Research has shown that as many as 2.1% of U.S. children weren't immunized with the MMR vaccine in 2000, up from 0.77% of children in 1995, according to a 2008 study published in Pediatrics.
"This retraction by the Lancet came far too late," said Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a coinventor of a vaccination for babies against a gastrointestinal virus, Rotateq, that is marketed by Merck & Co. "It's very easy to scare people; it's very hard to unscare them."
A widely cited 2004 statistical review of existing studies by nonprofit health-information provider the Institute of Medicine, which traced the vaccine theory back to the Lancet study, concluded there was no causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Some autism activist groups, however, continue to advocate against vaccinations for children, despite the lack of scientific evidence for such a link.
"Certainly the retraction of this paper doesn't mean that MMR doesn't cause autism and it's all a farce," said Wendy Fournier, president of the National Autism Association. It is "possible" that the MMR vaccine causes autism, she said, but "the science is not there in terms of the mechanism." The concern is that measles virus has been found in children's intestines after vaccination, said Ms. Fournier.
"No one is anti-vaccine," she said. "It's a matter of having vaccines be as safe as they can."
A study published in 2008 by researchers from several universities and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined children with gastrointestinal problems who had autism compared with those who didn't have autism. They concluded there wasn't any evidence that the vaccine was responsible for autism.
Ten of the 13 authors of the original paper, all of whom were researchers at the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine in London, partially retracted the paper in 2004. However, the first author, Andrew Wakefield, didn't. Dr. Wakefield, who is now at the Thoughtful House Center for Children in Austin, Texas, didn't immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
"Many consumer groups have spent 10 years waging a campaign against vaccines even in the face of scientific evidence," said Dr. Horton of the Lancet. "We didn't have the evidence back in 2004 to fully retract the paper but we did have enough concern to persuade the authors to partly retract the paper."
The Lancet decided to issue a complete retraction after an independent regulator for doctors in the U.K. concluded last week that the study was flawed. The General Medical Council's report on three of the researchers, including Dr. Wakefield, found evidence that some of their actions were conducted for experimental purposes, not clinical care, and without ethics approval. The report also found that Dr. Wakefield drew blood for research purposes from children at his son's birthday party, paying each child £5 (about $8).
The Lancet's Dr. Horton said the journal was particularly concerned about the ethical treatment of the children in the study, and that the children had been "cherry-picked" by the study's authors rather than just showing up in the hospital, as described in the paper.
The authors "did suggest these children arrived one after another and this syndrome was apparent, which does lead you to think this is something serious," said Dr. Horton.
"I hope this brings closure to this controversy," said Fred Volkmar, an autism researcher and professor of psychiatry at the Yale Child Study Center who wasn't involved in the Lancet study. "My fear, unfortunately, is that this won't totally allay the fear of all parents."
In the 1998 paper, Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues described 12 children with gastrointestinal problems. Eight experienced symptoms that were thought to be related to the MMR vaccine, according to their parents or a doctor, and nine of the 12 children exhibited autistic behaviors.
Dr. Wakefield has been outspoken about his concern about the measles vaccine. He has continually pushed the view that the vaccine caused autism, said Greg Poland, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Mayo Clinic and director of the vaccine research group in Rochester, Minn.
"With the retraction, the hypothesis that he put forward has been debunked," said Dr. Poland.
—Peter Loftus contributed to this article.
Write to Shirley S. Wang at shirley.wang@wsj.com
The Wall Street Journal - February 3, 2010
The study that first suggested a link between vaccines and autism and spurred a long-running, acrimonious debate over the safety of vaccines has been retracted by the British medical journal that published it. The withdrawal supports the scientific evidence that vaccinations don't cause autism, but isn't likely to persuade advocacy groups that believe in a link.
A new autism study shows clusters of high autism rates in parts of California. WSJ's health columnist Melinda Beck joins Simon Constable on the News Hub with more.
The 1998 study of 12 children triggered worry among British parents that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine caused autism, and many decided not to immunize their children against measles, according to Richard Horton, editor in chief of the Lancet, which issued the retraction Tuesday. He called the study the "starting pistol," though not the only cause, of the controversy.
Concern about the safety of vaccines, particularly regarding the preservative often used, thimerosal, which contains mercury, spread to the U.S. as well. Research has shown that as many as 2.1% of U.S. children weren't immunized with the MMR vaccine in 2000, up from 0.77% of children in 1995, according to a 2008 study published in Pediatrics.
"This retraction by the Lancet came far too late," said Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a coinventor of a vaccination for babies against a gastrointestinal virus, Rotateq, that is marketed by Merck & Co. "It's very easy to scare people; it's very hard to unscare them."
A widely cited 2004 statistical review of existing studies by nonprofit health-information provider the Institute of Medicine, which traced the vaccine theory back to the Lancet study, concluded there was no causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Some autism activist groups, however, continue to advocate against vaccinations for children, despite the lack of scientific evidence for such a link.
"Certainly the retraction of this paper doesn't mean that MMR doesn't cause autism and it's all a farce," said Wendy Fournier, president of the National Autism Association. It is "possible" that the MMR vaccine causes autism, she said, but "the science is not there in terms of the mechanism." The concern is that measles virus has been found in children's intestines after vaccination, said Ms. Fournier.
"No one is anti-vaccine," she said. "It's a matter of having vaccines be as safe as they can."
A study published in 2008 by researchers from several universities and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined children with gastrointestinal problems who had autism compared with those who didn't have autism. They concluded there wasn't any evidence that the vaccine was responsible for autism.
Ten of the 13 authors of the original paper, all of whom were researchers at the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine in London, partially retracted the paper in 2004. However, the first author, Andrew Wakefield, didn't. Dr. Wakefield, who is now at the Thoughtful House Center for Children in Austin, Texas, didn't immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
"Many consumer groups have spent 10 years waging a campaign against vaccines even in the face of scientific evidence," said Dr. Horton of the Lancet. "We didn't have the evidence back in 2004 to fully retract the paper but we did have enough concern to persuade the authors to partly retract the paper."
The Lancet decided to issue a complete retraction after an independent regulator for doctors in the U.K. concluded last week that the study was flawed. The General Medical Council's report on three of the researchers, including Dr. Wakefield, found evidence that some of their actions were conducted for experimental purposes, not clinical care, and without ethics approval. The report also found that Dr. Wakefield drew blood for research purposes from children at his son's birthday party, paying each child £5 (about $8).
The Lancet's Dr. Horton said the journal was particularly concerned about the ethical treatment of the children in the study, and that the children had been "cherry-picked" by the study's authors rather than just showing up in the hospital, as described in the paper.
The authors "did suggest these children arrived one after another and this syndrome was apparent, which does lead you to think this is something serious," said Dr. Horton.
"I hope this brings closure to this controversy," said Fred Volkmar, an autism researcher and professor of psychiatry at the Yale Child Study Center who wasn't involved in the Lancet study. "My fear, unfortunately, is that this won't totally allay the fear of all parents."
In the 1998 paper, Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues described 12 children with gastrointestinal problems. Eight experienced symptoms that were thought to be related to the MMR vaccine, according to their parents or a doctor, and nine of the 12 children exhibited autistic behaviors.
Dr. Wakefield has been outspoken about his concern about the measles vaccine. He has continually pushed the view that the vaccine caused autism, said Greg Poland, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Mayo Clinic and director of the vaccine research group in Rochester, Minn.
"With the retraction, the hypothesis that he put forward has been debunked," said Dr. Poland.
—Peter Loftus contributed to this article.
Write to Shirley S. Wang at shirley.wang@wsj.com
CMV Poses Great Risk to Babies
By Juneau Empire
More children have disabilities due to congenital CMV (cytomegalovirus) than other well-known infections and syndromes including Down Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Spina Bifida and Pediatric HIV/AIDS. In a recent survey of women in the United States, only 22 percent had heard of CMV, compared with 97 percent who had heard of Down Syndrome and 98 percent who had heard of HIV/AIDS.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CMV is the most common congenital (present at birth) viral infection in the United States. One in 150 children is born infected with congenital CMV. Each year, 30,000 children are born with congenital CMV causing 400 deaths and leaving 8,000 children with permanent disabilities such as deafness, blindness, cerebral palsy, mental and physical disabilities and seizures.
In the United States, about 50 percent to 60 percent of women are at risk for contracting CMV infection during pregnancy. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the CDC recommend that OB/GYNs counsel women on basic prevention measures to guard against CMV infection. But according to a 2007 survey, only 44 percent of OB/GYNs reported counseling their patients about preventing CMV. This could be due to the perceived rarity of congenital CMV cases, the OB/GYN's possible limited knowledge of the virus, the lack of congenital CMV diagnoses within their practice or just a simple oversight.
CMV is a very common virus in young children and it is estimated that up to 70 percent of healthy children between the ages of 1 and 3 may have CMV. CMV can be transmitted to pregnant women via bodily fluids including saliva, urine, tears, blood or mucus. To prevent CMV, practice frequent handwashing with soap and water after contact with diapers or oral secretions, especially with a child who is in daycare or interacting with other young children on a regular basis. Other basic prevention measures to guard against CMV include not kissing young children on the mouth and not sharing food, towels or utensils with them.
Stop CMV understands how difficult it may be to adjust one's daily routine while pregnant, especially for mothers and those women who work as child care providers, daycare workers, nurses, teachers and therapists.
However, it is important for these messages to be communicated to pregnant women and those planning future pregnancies in order to inform and empower them to take a more active role in their personal hygiene and health care decisions.
Karen Gillis
Anchorage
Representative for Alaska for Stop CMV
More children have disabilities due to congenital CMV (cytomegalovirus) than other well-known infections and syndromes including Down Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Spina Bifida and Pediatric HIV/AIDS. In a recent survey of women in the United States, only 22 percent had heard of CMV, compared with 97 percent who had heard of Down Syndrome and 98 percent who had heard of HIV/AIDS.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CMV is the most common congenital (present at birth) viral infection in the United States. One in 150 children is born infected with congenital CMV. Each year, 30,000 children are born with congenital CMV causing 400 deaths and leaving 8,000 children with permanent disabilities such as deafness, blindness, cerebral palsy, mental and physical disabilities and seizures.
In the United States, about 50 percent to 60 percent of women are at risk for contracting CMV infection during pregnancy. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the CDC recommend that OB/GYNs counsel women on basic prevention measures to guard against CMV infection. But according to a 2007 survey, only 44 percent of OB/GYNs reported counseling their patients about preventing CMV. This could be due to the perceived rarity of congenital CMV cases, the OB/GYN's possible limited knowledge of the virus, the lack of congenital CMV diagnoses within their practice or just a simple oversight.
CMV is a very common virus in young children and it is estimated that up to 70 percent of healthy children between the ages of 1 and 3 may have CMV. CMV can be transmitted to pregnant women via bodily fluids including saliva, urine, tears, blood or mucus. To prevent CMV, practice frequent handwashing with soap and water after contact with diapers or oral secretions, especially with a child who is in daycare or interacting with other young children on a regular basis. Other basic prevention measures to guard against CMV include not kissing young children on the mouth and not sharing food, towels or utensils with them.
Stop CMV understands how difficult it may be to adjust one's daily routine while pregnant, especially for mothers and those women who work as child care providers, daycare workers, nurses, teachers and therapists.
However, it is important for these messages to be communicated to pregnant women and those planning future pregnancies in order to inform and empower them to take a more active role in their personal hygiene and health care decisions.
Karen Gillis
Anchorage
Representative for Alaska for Stop CMV
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Can Down Syndrome Be Treated?
Dana Foundation
By Jim Schnabel
July 22, 2010
Down syndrome (DS) causes such a complex set of abnormalities in the developing nervous system that the resulting mental disabilities of people with DS have been considered untreatable. But researchers have created strains of mice that mimic DS’s genetic abnormalities, and have begun to show that existing drugs can successfully treat specific kinds of cognitive deficit in these mice. A study published on June 30 in the Journal of Neuroscience, for example, indicates that Prozac (fluoxetine), delivered to these mice shortly after birth, reverses a key brain abnormality and enables the mice to perform a standard memory test as well as normal mice.
“Based on all our data we think that fluoxetine is a good candidate for clinical trials,” says Renata Bartesaghi of the University of Bologna, senior author of the study.
“I think the field is wide open now and really ripe for major discoveries,” says Alberto Costa of the University of Colorado–Denver Medical School, whose lab has shown similar results for the cognitive-boosting drug memantine, and is now conducting a clinical trial of the drug in young people with DS.
Restoring neurogenesis
In humans, DS typically begins with a mistake in the formation of an egg cell that leaves it—and any embryo resulting from the fertilization of that egg—with an extra copy of chromosome 21. A segment of the mouse chromosome 16 is very similar to human chromosome 21, so mice engineered to have an extra copy of this segment—known as Ts65Dn mice—are considered a potentially useful model of the human disease, despite the obviously incomplete similarity between mice and humans.
In Ts65Dn mice as well as in humans with DS, researchers previously have noted a relative lack of neurogenesis, or production of new neurons, which is crucial for normal brain development. Some antidepressant drugs such as fluoxetine are known to promote neurogenesis, so Bartesaghi and her colleagues dosed their Ts65Dn mice with fluoexetine from day 3 to day 15 after birth, and then compared them to a group of untreated Ts65Dn mice.
The treated mice seemed vastly improved. They showed normal or even higher-than-normal levels of neurogenesis at day 15 and day 45, whereas untreated Ts65Dn mice showed much lower than normal levels. The treated Ts65Dn mice also regained a normal number of cells in a part of a crucial memory region, the hippocampus, where neurogenesis is particularly intense and persists into adulthood in humans. In a test of the memory of a specific place—a memory strongly dependent on the hippocampus—the treated Ts65Dn mice also performed as well as genetically normal mice. By contrast, the untreated Ts65Dn mice scored poorly on all measures.
The study appears to confirm and extend a study published in 2006 by a group of researchers including Costa, who found similar improvements in neurogenesis for fluoxetine-treated Ts65Dn mice—but adult mice, not newborns. “It’s always nice to see some of your own findings being replicated,” says Costa. “And on top of that they did experiments we hadn’t done.”
Costa abandoned fluoxetine as a candidate because despite their recovery of neurogenesis, his treated Ts65Dn mice failed to show improvement on a key memory test then commonly used – a variant of what is known as the Morris water maze. The behavioral improvements in newborn Ts65Dn mice reported by Bartesaghi’s group make him more optimistic about the drug, however. “I find their results interesting and impressive,” he says. “I definitely would include fluoxetine as a candidate for clinical trials in the future.”
The Bartesaghi group emphasizes treatment at the start of life, not in adulthood, in order to correct abnormalities in brain development at the earliest possible stage. But early treatment poses a special challenge in humans: Neurogenesis in most parts of the brain, including the cortex, which mediates higher, distinctively “human” functions, is largely completed during the fetal stage of life.
Bartesaghi says that her group therefore has begun treatment on Ts65Dn mice when they are still in the womb, to see if the growth of the cortex, which is much reduced in people with DS, can be somewhat restored. “From our preliminary data it appears that prenatal treatment is extremely effective and does not have aversive effects on the pups,” she says.
High hopes and caveats
In 2008, Costa’s group reported that memantine, a drug currently approved for treating symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, restored the performance of grown Ts65Dn mice on a memory test similar to the one used by Bartesaghi’s group. Memantine has the effect of moderately reducing the activity of NMDA receptors on brain cells – activity that appears to be abnormally high in Ts65Dn mice. But Costa doesn’t yet know precisely how memantine’s effects on NMDA receptors translates into cognitive improvements in the mice. Memantine does appear to be a relatively safe drug, however, and Costa recently was able to begin enrolling 40 adolescents and young adults with DS in an initial 16-week clinical trial, which he expects to conclude late this year or early in 2011. More than 400,000 people in the United States have DS, according to the National Down Syndrome Society.
Even though his DS subjects are nearly full-grown, Costa hopes that the study will show some hints of cognitive improvement. But he doesn’t expect a miracle. “Nothing’s going to happen in the four months of our trial that will change daily living skills for those individuals,” he says. “Those take a long time even in a normally developing person.” Much larger and longer trials would be necessary to prove memantine’s efficacy in any case, Costa adds.
Frances Wiseman, a DS researcher at University College, London, also cautions that, so far, these mouse tests have been done with relatively narrow measures of cognitive performance. In the case of fluoxetine, she says, “it would be sensible to repeat the treatment with a wider range of behavioral tests, and perhaps in another mouse model of Down syndrome, before embarking on a clinical trial.”
Both she and Costa note that although fluoxetine is now routinely prescribed for children as an antidepressant, an apparently above-normal incidence of suicidal ideation in young users has made its use in this age group somewhat controversial. Wiseman points out too that in at least one case reported in the early 1990s, fluoxetine was associated with seizures in a patient with DS.
Lithium, another mood-stabilizing drug that has the effect of promoting neurogenesis, is also being tested in adults with DS in a clinical trial at King’s College, London. Bartesaghi and her colleagues reported earlier this year on a successful test of lithium in Ts65Dn mice. But Bartesaghi doesn’t think lithium is a good candidate for use in children or infants with DS, because it is considered too toxic in that age group; in her lab, newborn Ts65Dn mice given the drug had a high mortality rate.
“One has to be aware of all the caveats,” says Costa. “But on the whole I’m now very optimistic about the prospects for treating Down syndrome, otherwise I wouldn’t have started a clinical trial. The field has long been neglected, but it’s now definitely getting interesting.”
By Jim Schnabel
July 22, 2010
Down syndrome (DS) causes such a complex set of abnormalities in the developing nervous system that the resulting mental disabilities of people with DS have been considered untreatable. But researchers have created strains of mice that mimic DS’s genetic abnormalities, and have begun to show that existing drugs can successfully treat specific kinds of cognitive deficit in these mice. A study published on June 30 in the Journal of Neuroscience, for example, indicates that Prozac (fluoxetine), delivered to these mice shortly after birth, reverses a key brain abnormality and enables the mice to perform a standard memory test as well as normal mice.
“Based on all our data we think that fluoxetine is a good candidate for clinical trials,” says Renata Bartesaghi of the University of Bologna, senior author of the study.
“I think the field is wide open now and really ripe for major discoveries,” says Alberto Costa of the University of Colorado–Denver Medical School, whose lab has shown similar results for the cognitive-boosting drug memantine, and is now conducting a clinical trial of the drug in young people with DS.
Restoring neurogenesis
In humans, DS typically begins with a mistake in the formation of an egg cell that leaves it—and any embryo resulting from the fertilization of that egg—with an extra copy of chromosome 21. A segment of the mouse chromosome 16 is very similar to human chromosome 21, so mice engineered to have an extra copy of this segment—known as Ts65Dn mice—are considered a potentially useful model of the human disease, despite the obviously incomplete similarity between mice and humans.
In Ts65Dn mice as well as in humans with DS, researchers previously have noted a relative lack of neurogenesis, or production of new neurons, which is crucial for normal brain development. Some antidepressant drugs such as fluoxetine are known to promote neurogenesis, so Bartesaghi and her colleagues dosed their Ts65Dn mice with fluoexetine from day 3 to day 15 after birth, and then compared them to a group of untreated Ts65Dn mice.
The treated mice seemed vastly improved. They showed normal or even higher-than-normal levels of neurogenesis at day 15 and day 45, whereas untreated Ts65Dn mice showed much lower than normal levels. The treated Ts65Dn mice also regained a normal number of cells in a part of a crucial memory region, the hippocampus, where neurogenesis is particularly intense and persists into adulthood in humans. In a test of the memory of a specific place—a memory strongly dependent on the hippocampus—the treated Ts65Dn mice also performed as well as genetically normal mice. By contrast, the untreated Ts65Dn mice scored poorly on all measures.
The study appears to confirm and extend a study published in 2006 by a group of researchers including Costa, who found similar improvements in neurogenesis for fluoxetine-treated Ts65Dn mice—but adult mice, not newborns. “It’s always nice to see some of your own findings being replicated,” says Costa. “And on top of that they did experiments we hadn’t done.”
Costa abandoned fluoxetine as a candidate because despite their recovery of neurogenesis, his treated Ts65Dn mice failed to show improvement on a key memory test then commonly used – a variant of what is known as the Morris water maze. The behavioral improvements in newborn Ts65Dn mice reported by Bartesaghi’s group make him more optimistic about the drug, however. “I find their results interesting and impressive,” he says. “I definitely would include fluoxetine as a candidate for clinical trials in the future.”
The Bartesaghi group emphasizes treatment at the start of life, not in adulthood, in order to correct abnormalities in brain development at the earliest possible stage. But early treatment poses a special challenge in humans: Neurogenesis in most parts of the brain, including the cortex, which mediates higher, distinctively “human” functions, is largely completed during the fetal stage of life.
Bartesaghi says that her group therefore has begun treatment on Ts65Dn mice when they are still in the womb, to see if the growth of the cortex, which is much reduced in people with DS, can be somewhat restored. “From our preliminary data it appears that prenatal treatment is extremely effective and does not have aversive effects on the pups,” she says.
High hopes and caveats
In 2008, Costa’s group reported that memantine, a drug currently approved for treating symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, restored the performance of grown Ts65Dn mice on a memory test similar to the one used by Bartesaghi’s group. Memantine has the effect of moderately reducing the activity of NMDA receptors on brain cells – activity that appears to be abnormally high in Ts65Dn mice. But Costa doesn’t yet know precisely how memantine’s effects on NMDA receptors translates into cognitive improvements in the mice. Memantine does appear to be a relatively safe drug, however, and Costa recently was able to begin enrolling 40 adolescents and young adults with DS in an initial 16-week clinical trial, which he expects to conclude late this year or early in 2011. More than 400,000 people in the United States have DS, according to the National Down Syndrome Society.
Even though his DS subjects are nearly full-grown, Costa hopes that the study will show some hints of cognitive improvement. But he doesn’t expect a miracle. “Nothing’s going to happen in the four months of our trial that will change daily living skills for those individuals,” he says. “Those take a long time even in a normally developing person.” Much larger and longer trials would be necessary to prove memantine’s efficacy in any case, Costa adds.
Frances Wiseman, a DS researcher at University College, London, also cautions that, so far, these mouse tests have been done with relatively narrow measures of cognitive performance. In the case of fluoxetine, she says, “it would be sensible to repeat the treatment with a wider range of behavioral tests, and perhaps in another mouse model of Down syndrome, before embarking on a clinical trial.”
Both she and Costa note that although fluoxetine is now routinely prescribed for children as an antidepressant, an apparently above-normal incidence of suicidal ideation in young users has made its use in this age group somewhat controversial. Wiseman points out too that in at least one case reported in the early 1990s, fluoxetine was associated with seizures in a patient with DS.
Lithium, another mood-stabilizing drug that has the effect of promoting neurogenesis, is also being tested in adults with DS in a clinical trial at King’s College, London. Bartesaghi and her colleagues reported earlier this year on a successful test of lithium in Ts65Dn mice. But Bartesaghi doesn’t think lithium is a good candidate for use in children or infants with DS, because it is considered too toxic in that age group; in her lab, newborn Ts65Dn mice given the drug had a high mortality rate.
“One has to be aware of all the caveats,” says Costa. “But on the whole I’m now very optimistic about the prospects for treating Down syndrome, otherwise I wouldn’t have started a clinical trial. The field has long been neglected, but it’s now definitely getting interesting.”
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Josh Groban - To Where You Are
To Where You Are
Popularized by Josh Groban
Music by Richard Marx
Lyrics by Linda Thompson
Who can say for certain
Maybe you're still here
I feel you all around me
Your memories so clear
Deep in the stillness
I can hear you speak
You're still an inspiration
Can it be (?)
That you are mine
Forever love
And you are watching over me from up above
Fly me up to where you are
Beyond the distant star
I wish upon tonight
To see you smile
If only for awhile to know you're there
A breath away's not far
To where you are
Are you gently sleeping
Here inside my dream
And isn't faith believing
All power can't be seen
As my heart holds you
Just one beat away
I cherish all you gave me everyday
'Cause you are mine
Forever love
Watching me from up above
And I believe
That angels breathe
And that love will live on and never leave
Fly me up
To where you are
Beyond the distant star
I wish upon tonight
To see you smile
If only for awhile
To know you're there
A breath away's not far
To where you are
I know you're there
A breath away's not far
To where you are
Friday, October 15, 2010
WHAT IS ABR?
Please visit the site: http://www.blyum.com
ABR stands for Advanced BioMechanical Rehabilitation.
ABR is a unique biomechanically based rehabilitation approach for children and young adults with brain injury that brings predictable recovery of musculoskeletal structure and motor functions.
ABR is the method of structural correction of musculoskeletal deformities. It is a hands-on method performed by the parents who learn the ABR technique and receive individual prescription of applications from the ABR professional staff.
• ABR is a method that re-builds even the most severely distorted musculoskeletal structure
• ABR redefines "rehabilitation" – ABR improves musculoskeletal structure so significantly that normal motor functions recover spontaneously, making special training and management for "motor disabled" unnecessary.
We use no pharmaceuticals, no electrical instruments and no surgeries - ABR is a hands-on method of manual applications to the child's body, based purely on biomechanical principles.
ABR biomechanical reconstruction of the musculoskeletal system follows the path of normal motor development - starting from the neck and trunk and later descending to the periphery (arms and legs).
ABR provides planned progress of the musculoskeletal structure and function through predictable stages. Results are predicted in numbers of hours of exercises done and changes in the alignment, mobility, size, tone and strength of the child's body – specifically in the chest, abdomen and the pelvis.
ABR is more than just a new rehabilitation method; ABR is a comprehensive philosophy of the child's recovery. The cornerstones of the ABR philosophy are fundamental biomechanical principles of the human body's growth and development. Respectively ABR takes bio-electrical and bio-chemical factors into account only through their biomechanical manifestations.
This biomechanical approach allows us to have exact guidance for every single movement. Every single ABR application to a child's body is precisely calculated and adjusted for each individual patient.
ABR opens a new dimension in the treatment of the mildest to the most severe motor dysfunctions in the sense that it gradually brings changes to the mechanical and electrical structure of the muscles, thus allowing spontaneous developments of motor function.
ABR emphasises 3 essential concepts in describing the functional role of smooth muscles or internal myofascia with respect to the body's biomechanical structure:
• Hydraulic (or hydraulic/pneumatic) skeleton. This concept highlights the structural roll of the smooth muscles - in comparison to the classical definition of the «hard», bony skeleton as being that which carries the sole responsibility for the body's structure. Smooth muscles and other structures of internal myofascia are the membranes that maintain the shape of the body, with an effect similar to the whitish-coloured membranes within a grapefruit. These tissues envelop and ensheath the major bodily cavities (cranial, thoracic, abdominal etc.), enwrap each of the bodies individual organs (lungs, liver, stomach etc.) and sustain the smallest compartments within each of the bodies system. It is the hydraulic quality of the smooth muscles that administers inner strength and form. The term 'hydraulic skeleton' is used most frequently by ABR for convenience.
* A normal "hydraulic skeleton" provides normal alignment of the bony skeleton and normality of skeletal muscles - allowing normal motor function.
* Am abnormal, weakened "hydraulic skeleton" results in the collapse of the musculoskeletal system and impossibility of motor function.
• Visceral skeleton (visceral core) is the name used for the observation and discovery that the structures comprising the hydraulic skeleton serve as the body's core and define the mechanical foundation of the internal organs for the body's structure.
• Hydraulic/pneumatic capacity characterizes the "strength" and volume of the hydraulic/ pneumatic skeleton and the quality of «hydraulic support» that it gives to the musculoskeletal system.
The term pneumatic capacity summarizes several main characteristics:
• The level of pressure necessary for the development of sufficient internal volumes.
• The size of internal volumes.
• The level of strength of the myofascial membranes that is necessary to achieve the normal internal pressure/volume ratio. This is in turn required to sustain the challenges of gravity and of the external atmospheric pressure.
The objective of ABR is to restore proper tone to the smooth muscles/internal myofascia, which in a cascade effect restores proportions and alignment of the skeleton. During this process, the muscle tone is normalized and the arms and legs develop increasing muscle mass, normal range of mobility, and finally: sufficient strength - so that the children can develop their movements in normal spontaneous ways. All other approaches address the skeletal muscles directly. Nevertheless, such a direct approach proves to give limited results. ABR sees the direct approaches as the ones addressing the "tip of the iceberg". The underwater part is the smooth muscles.
What are the smooth muscles?
The smooth muscles are the ones that make up the internal organs, such as the liver, lungs, kidneys, intestines, etc.
Why address the smooth muscles?
ABR considers the smooth muscles as the "primary victims" of the brain injury. As their tone significantly drops, following brain injury, the secondary victims are the structures of musculoskeletal system, which distort as a result causing cerebral palsy as the disorder of posture and movement.
The total surface of the lining of internal organs is enormous in comparison to their respective volumes. For example the total active surface of the lungs is about 900 sq. feet (80 sq.m.) in relation to a volume that is approximately 3 litres. This huge surface is necessary for efficient metabolism. On the other hand, it seals the internal hydraulic volume that composes the walls that hold the shape of the bodily cavities.
ABR recognizes the importance of the strength of this lining made of smooth muscles (internal myofascia) for the proper development of a human body and, particularly of the musculoskeletal system, which is supported by this internal "hydraulic skeleton".
ABR considers the smooth muscles to be the primary victims of a brain injury. As their tone drops following a brain injury, the secondary victims are the structure of the musculo-skeletal system, which in turn collapses - changing the normal alignment of muscles and bones and shifting the distances between points of muscular attachments. Such shift of attachments in turn causes the skeletal muscles imbalance: i.e. spasticity and contractures. Finally, such muscular imbalance makes normal movements impossible. The resulting pathological diagnosis is cerebral palsy, as a disorder of posture and muscle control.
This is why ABR proposes a unique technique to administer kinetic input directly to smooth muscles.
ABR is the first and the only approach that recognizes the fundamental role of smooth muscles in the development of the musculoskeletal system.
Unfortunately, in traditional medicinal practice the internal organs are looked upon only from the viewpoint of chemical metabolism, while, on the other hand, the biomechanical approach does not normally focus on anything other than the classical skeleton comprised of «muscles and bones».
Strengthening of the smooth muscles induces gradual growth of internal pneumatic capacity, which in a cascade effect restores:
• volume, shape and strength of the neck and trunk,
• normal alignment of the joints of the limbs, eliminating spasticity and contractures,
• normal volume and then strength of weakened skeletal muscles,
• normal alignment of the shoulder girdle and arms as well as pelvis and legs - allowing normal "insertion" of arms and legs and thus making proper movements possible.
Moreover, restoration of muscular skeletal structure re-establishes normal metabolism (flow of blood and oxygen supply) of 'defective', atrophied muscles and, in addition, normal electrical ascending activity to the brain, opening wide the "back door" to function.
ABR targets the core structures of human body: the smooth muscles of internal organs. To be precise we target the entire complex of internal myofascia (mucosa, smooth muscles, serosa etc. and their sublevels).
• that are directly related to the quality of the general metabolism - regulating proper breathing, swallowing, digestion, evacuation, etc. and being responsible for the general health of a child.
• that we call the hydraulic skeleton of the human body - providing essential "hydraulic support" to the superficial structures of a "classically" defined musculoskeletal system (muscles, ligaments, bones etc.). ABR states that this "hydraulic skeleton" defines the proportions and the alignment of the bony skeleton and the quality of the skeletal muscles.
Normalization of the musculoskeletal system must come first.
• Nervous activity flowing from the muscular skeletal system «ascending» to the brain plays a vital role in the development of normal signals emanating from the central nervous system «descending» to the musculoskeletal system.
• When the musculoskeletal structure is profoundly distorted, any training is narrowed down to quite a limited scope: "trying to put poor structure to some better functional use".
• Without normalization of the musculoskeletal structure, any functional progress of a brain-injured person would always remain significantly limited and largely unpredictable.
Bio-electrical plasticity of the brain
ABR shows evidence that irreversibility of initial structural brain damage does not make motor function recovery intrinsically hopeless. The brain damage is not a critical obstacle for successful biomechanical reconstruction, as long as the musculoskeletal system is addressed in an effective biomechanical manner. There is no critical need to «repair» the brain before initiating the restoration of the biomechanical system.
The brain damage is not a critical obstacle for successful bio-mechanical reconstruction as long as the musculoskeletal system is addressed in a bio-mechanical proper way. There is no critical need to "repair" the brain first.
ABR approach makes restoring the mechanical structure of the musculoskeletal system its first and primary goal. Why? We support the following concept:
Mechanical transformation of the musculoskeletal elements (muscles, joints, etc.) by ABR automatically changes the parameters of their electrical charge. This respectively, changes the electrical activity of these elements (for instance, the skeletal muscles) and then translates into a transformation of the ascending signals sent to the brain, which in turn creates an adequate base for forthcoming descending signals to the muscles.
ABR states that even an injured brain still has enough reserves to rearrange its electrical connections in order to integrate biomechanical structural improvements of the musculoskeletal system, provided that the structural improvements are significant enough.
ABR in a nutshell
Everyone believes that a CP child has poor functions because his/her brain is too damaged to be able to control normal movements. Respectively CP children are considered incurable because the brain damage is irreversible.
ABR has a different philosophy. We believe that even the badly injured brain has enough electrical plasticity to allow control of normal motor functions, however, for this plasticity to become activated, a child's musculoskeletal structure has to be improved to a sufficient level - to the so-called plasticity threshold.
Existing treatment methods fail to achieve recovery of motor functions. This failure is then blamed on the brain damage.
We believe that the answer lies differently. Existing treatment methods fail, not because of insufficient «reserves» of the damaged brain, but because they fail to provide sufficient structural improvements to the musculoskeletal system. As a result, the injured brain has "too little of a good musculoskeletal structure to work with" and cannot utilize its remaining plasticity (reserves) for control of motor functions.
Musculoskeletal structure reconstruction must come first!
ABR approach makes restoring the mechanical structure of the musculoskeletal system its first and primary goal.
• full range of movements (ex.? the head being able to move unrestrictedly in all directions)
• proper alignment (ex.: legs in respect to the pelvis; arms in respect to the shoulders, etc.)
• muscular mechanical response (proper muscular balance)
In turn, «quality of mechanical performance» requires «bio-mechanical capacity» of the musculoskeletal system, which implies:
• Proper volume, tone and strength of the skeletal muscles
• Proper volume, mobility and alignment of the joints
• Equilibrium of strength and length between reciprocal muscular groups (ex: biceps, triceps)
• Adequate proportions between size and strength of centre (head, neck, trunk) and periphery (arms and legs)
• Cascade of muscular interactions (centre to periphery)
ABR re-establishes - unit-by-unit - proper skeletal and muscular structure to permit proper unrestricted performance of movement.
ABR stands for Advanced BioMechanical Rehabilitation.
ABR is a unique biomechanically based rehabilitation approach for children and young adults with brain injury that brings predictable recovery of musculoskeletal structure and motor functions.
ABR is the method of structural correction of musculoskeletal deformities. It is a hands-on method performed by the parents who learn the ABR technique and receive individual prescription of applications from the ABR professional staff.
• ABR is a method that re-builds even the most severely distorted musculoskeletal structure
• ABR redefines "rehabilitation" – ABR improves musculoskeletal structure so significantly that normal motor functions recover spontaneously, making special training and management for "motor disabled" unnecessary.
We use no pharmaceuticals, no electrical instruments and no surgeries - ABR is a hands-on method of manual applications to the child's body, based purely on biomechanical principles.
ABR biomechanical reconstruction of the musculoskeletal system follows the path of normal motor development - starting from the neck and trunk and later descending to the periphery (arms and legs).
ABR provides planned progress of the musculoskeletal structure and function through predictable stages. Results are predicted in numbers of hours of exercises done and changes in the alignment, mobility, size, tone and strength of the child's body – specifically in the chest, abdomen and the pelvis.
ABR is more than just a new rehabilitation method; ABR is a comprehensive philosophy of the child's recovery. The cornerstones of the ABR philosophy are fundamental biomechanical principles of the human body's growth and development. Respectively ABR takes bio-electrical and bio-chemical factors into account only through their biomechanical manifestations.
This biomechanical approach allows us to have exact guidance for every single movement. Every single ABR application to a child's body is precisely calculated and adjusted for each individual patient.
ABR opens a new dimension in the treatment of the mildest to the most severe motor dysfunctions in the sense that it gradually brings changes to the mechanical and electrical structure of the muscles, thus allowing spontaneous developments of motor function.
ABR emphasises 3 essential concepts in describing the functional role of smooth muscles or internal myofascia with respect to the body's biomechanical structure:
• Hydraulic (or hydraulic/pneumatic) skeleton. This concept highlights the structural roll of the smooth muscles - in comparison to the classical definition of the «hard», bony skeleton as being that which carries the sole responsibility for the body's structure. Smooth muscles and other structures of internal myofascia are the membranes that maintain the shape of the body, with an effect similar to the whitish-coloured membranes within a grapefruit. These tissues envelop and ensheath the major bodily cavities (cranial, thoracic, abdominal etc.), enwrap each of the bodies individual organs (lungs, liver, stomach etc.) and sustain the smallest compartments within each of the bodies system. It is the hydraulic quality of the smooth muscles that administers inner strength and form. The term 'hydraulic skeleton' is used most frequently by ABR for convenience.
* A normal "hydraulic skeleton" provides normal alignment of the bony skeleton and normality of skeletal muscles - allowing normal motor function.
* Am abnormal, weakened "hydraulic skeleton" results in the collapse of the musculoskeletal system and impossibility of motor function.
• Visceral skeleton (visceral core) is the name used for the observation and discovery that the structures comprising the hydraulic skeleton serve as the body's core and define the mechanical foundation of the internal organs for the body's structure.
• Hydraulic/pneumatic capacity characterizes the "strength" and volume of the hydraulic/ pneumatic skeleton and the quality of «hydraulic support» that it gives to the musculoskeletal system.
The term pneumatic capacity summarizes several main characteristics:
• The level of pressure necessary for the development of sufficient internal volumes.
• The size of internal volumes.
• The level of strength of the myofascial membranes that is necessary to achieve the normal internal pressure/volume ratio. This is in turn required to sustain the challenges of gravity and of the external atmospheric pressure.
The objective of ABR is to restore proper tone to the smooth muscles/internal myofascia, which in a cascade effect restores proportions and alignment of the skeleton. During this process, the muscle tone is normalized and the arms and legs develop increasing muscle mass, normal range of mobility, and finally: sufficient strength - so that the children can develop their movements in normal spontaneous ways. All other approaches address the skeletal muscles directly. Nevertheless, such a direct approach proves to give limited results. ABR sees the direct approaches as the ones addressing the "tip of the iceberg". The underwater part is the smooth muscles.
What are the smooth muscles?
The smooth muscles are the ones that make up the internal organs, such as the liver, lungs, kidneys, intestines, etc.
Why address the smooth muscles?
ABR considers the smooth muscles as the "primary victims" of the brain injury. As their tone significantly drops, following brain injury, the secondary victims are the structures of musculoskeletal system, which distort as a result causing cerebral palsy as the disorder of posture and movement.
The total surface of the lining of internal organs is enormous in comparison to their respective volumes. For example the total active surface of the lungs is about 900 sq. feet (80 sq.m.) in relation to a volume that is approximately 3 litres. This huge surface is necessary for efficient metabolism. On the other hand, it seals the internal hydraulic volume that composes the walls that hold the shape of the bodily cavities.
ABR recognizes the importance of the strength of this lining made of smooth muscles (internal myofascia) for the proper development of a human body and, particularly of the musculoskeletal system, which is supported by this internal "hydraulic skeleton".
ABR considers the smooth muscles to be the primary victims of a brain injury. As their tone drops following a brain injury, the secondary victims are the structure of the musculo-skeletal system, which in turn collapses - changing the normal alignment of muscles and bones and shifting the distances between points of muscular attachments. Such shift of attachments in turn causes the skeletal muscles imbalance: i.e. spasticity and contractures. Finally, such muscular imbalance makes normal movements impossible. The resulting pathological diagnosis is cerebral palsy, as a disorder of posture and muscle control.
This is why ABR proposes a unique technique to administer kinetic input directly to smooth muscles.
ABR is the first and the only approach that recognizes the fundamental role of smooth muscles in the development of the musculoskeletal system.
Unfortunately, in traditional medicinal practice the internal organs are looked upon only from the viewpoint of chemical metabolism, while, on the other hand, the biomechanical approach does not normally focus on anything other than the classical skeleton comprised of «muscles and bones».
Strengthening of the smooth muscles induces gradual growth of internal pneumatic capacity, which in a cascade effect restores:
• volume, shape and strength of the neck and trunk,
• normal alignment of the joints of the limbs, eliminating spasticity and contractures,
• normal volume and then strength of weakened skeletal muscles,
• normal alignment of the shoulder girdle and arms as well as pelvis and legs - allowing normal "insertion" of arms and legs and thus making proper movements possible.
Moreover, restoration of muscular skeletal structure re-establishes normal metabolism (flow of blood and oxygen supply) of 'defective', atrophied muscles and, in addition, normal electrical ascending activity to the brain, opening wide the "back door" to function.
ABR targets the core structures of human body: the smooth muscles of internal organs. To be precise we target the entire complex of internal myofascia (mucosa, smooth muscles, serosa etc. and their sublevels).
• that are directly related to the quality of the general metabolism - regulating proper breathing, swallowing, digestion, evacuation, etc. and being responsible for the general health of a child.
• that we call the hydraulic skeleton of the human body - providing essential "hydraulic support" to the superficial structures of a "classically" defined musculoskeletal system (muscles, ligaments, bones etc.). ABR states that this "hydraulic skeleton" defines the proportions and the alignment of the bony skeleton and the quality of the skeletal muscles.
Normalization of the musculoskeletal system must come first.
• Nervous activity flowing from the muscular skeletal system «ascending» to the brain plays a vital role in the development of normal signals emanating from the central nervous system «descending» to the musculoskeletal system.
• When the musculoskeletal structure is profoundly distorted, any training is narrowed down to quite a limited scope: "trying to put poor structure to some better functional use".
• Without normalization of the musculoskeletal structure, any functional progress of a brain-injured person would always remain significantly limited and largely unpredictable.
Bio-electrical plasticity of the brain
ABR shows evidence that irreversibility of initial structural brain damage does not make motor function recovery intrinsically hopeless. The brain damage is not a critical obstacle for successful biomechanical reconstruction, as long as the musculoskeletal system is addressed in an effective biomechanical manner. There is no critical need to «repair» the brain before initiating the restoration of the biomechanical system.
The brain damage is not a critical obstacle for successful bio-mechanical reconstruction as long as the musculoskeletal system is addressed in a bio-mechanical proper way. There is no critical need to "repair" the brain first.
ABR approach makes restoring the mechanical structure of the musculoskeletal system its first and primary goal. Why? We support the following concept:
Mechanical transformation of the musculoskeletal elements (muscles, joints, etc.) by ABR automatically changes the parameters of their electrical charge. This respectively, changes the electrical activity of these elements (for instance, the skeletal muscles) and then translates into a transformation of the ascending signals sent to the brain, which in turn creates an adequate base for forthcoming descending signals to the muscles.
ABR states that even an injured brain still has enough reserves to rearrange its electrical connections in order to integrate biomechanical structural improvements of the musculoskeletal system, provided that the structural improvements are significant enough.
ABR in a nutshell
Everyone believes that a CP child has poor functions because his/her brain is too damaged to be able to control normal movements. Respectively CP children are considered incurable because the brain damage is irreversible.
ABR has a different philosophy. We believe that even the badly injured brain has enough electrical plasticity to allow control of normal motor functions, however, for this plasticity to become activated, a child's musculoskeletal structure has to be improved to a sufficient level - to the so-called plasticity threshold.
Existing treatment methods fail to achieve recovery of motor functions. This failure is then blamed on the brain damage.
We believe that the answer lies differently. Existing treatment methods fail, not because of insufficient «reserves» of the damaged brain, but because they fail to provide sufficient structural improvements to the musculoskeletal system. As a result, the injured brain has "too little of a good musculoskeletal structure to work with" and cannot utilize its remaining plasticity (reserves) for control of motor functions.
Musculoskeletal structure reconstruction must come first!
ABR approach makes restoring the mechanical structure of the musculoskeletal system its first and primary goal.
• full range of movements (ex.? the head being able to move unrestrictedly in all directions)
• proper alignment (ex.: legs in respect to the pelvis; arms in respect to the shoulders, etc.)
• muscular mechanical response (proper muscular balance)
In turn, «quality of mechanical performance» requires «bio-mechanical capacity» of the musculoskeletal system, which implies:
• Proper volume, tone and strength of the skeletal muscles
• Proper volume, mobility and alignment of the joints
• Equilibrium of strength and length between reciprocal muscular groups (ex: biceps, triceps)
• Adequate proportions between size and strength of centre (head, neck, trunk) and periphery (arms and legs)
• Cascade of muscular interactions (centre to periphery)
ABR re-establishes - unit-by-unit - proper skeletal and muscular structure to permit proper unrestricted performance of movement.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Melodies Can Help Heal Disharmonies in Speech
by David Cameron
A lesion on the elderly man’s left frontal lobe, damage from a massive stroke, has robbed him of the ability to speak. The clinician sitting opposite him asks him to repeat a simple phrase: “Happy birthday to you.” The man struggles, but only manages, “En oh en oh en oh.”
The clinician then asks him to sing the phrase. Holding his left hand, moving it rhythmically, she initiates the song. After a few attempts, she’s silent, and he sings it as clearly as anyone carrying a cake with lit candles. The clinician then asks him, again, to speak the phrase. Without a hitch, he repeats, “Happy birthday to you.”
In less than two minutes, an extraordinary feat has occurred. Yet for researchers like Gottfried Schlaug, HMS associate professor of neurology and director of the Music, Neuroimaging and Stroke Recovery Laboratories at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), such events aren’t new. Medical literature going back a century describes stroke victims who have regained aspects of speech through melodic intonation therapy. “The difference,” Schlaug says, “is that now we have the neuroimaging tools to investigate what occurs in the brains of people who relearn language through song.”
These tools reveal substantial overlap between areas of the brain that process music and language. Damage to the left hemisphere significantly impairs speech. And although the right hemisphere has some capacity for language, it responds best to clearly structured information, such as melodies. Layering language over melodies engages the right hemisphere’s latent language capacity.
Schlaug speculates that when people cycle between singing and speaking, the melodic contour and continuous voicing enable the right hemisphere to vocalize words and phrases, creating a kind of language-smuggling Trojan horse. By moving the elderly man’s left hand, the clinician helps him connect sounds to actions, sketching auditory motor maps into the right side. If a patient rehearses this entire process long enough, the brain’s right side eventually compensates for the impaired left—and even changes structure. “Ultimately,” Schlaug says, “we trick the right hemisphere into learning how to speak.”
Neurologists once embraced the theory that the right hemisphere of the brain housed a person’s creativity, while the left hemisphere processed information such as math. Musicians, then, should be highly right brain lateralized. In the early 1990s, Schlaug tested that theory. Using MRI technology to scan the brains of both musicians and nonmusicians, he and his colleagues discovered that the brains’ morphologies revealed the opposite. Musicians, on average, were more left brained; those with perfect pitch were the most left brained of all.
Schlaug has since focused on the planum temporale, which is part of the auditory cortex. The planum temporale has a more pronounced leftward asymmetry in musicians with perfect pitch than in musicians without perfect pitch and in nonmusicians.
“Professional musicians practice their skills many hours a day, for many years,” says Schlaug. “We think of musicians as auditory-motor athletes whose long-term training has an effect on brain function and structure.”
These findings launched Schlaug onto a trajectory of collaborations with researchers such as Psyche Loui, an HMS instructor in neurology at BIDMC and a violinist with perfect pitch, and David Alsop, a musician who is also an HMS associate professor of radiology at BIDMC.
As Schlaug, Loui, Alsop, and colleagues use the latest imaging technologies to study the brains of musicians and nonmusicians, the unanswered questions mount. How, for example, does music affect brain adaptation, reorganization, and even plasticity? The team is also in the last phases of a longitudinal study on the neurobiological effects on children of learning to play an instrument.
And finally, what about professional musicians? Schlaug suspects they are not born with the natural advantage of an auditory-motor system that enables them to play a musical instrument. Instead, given the plasticity of the brain, particularly at a young age, their continued musical practice likely leads to brain changes that can be detected by modern imaging techniques. For many of us this is good news. “Unless you’re tone-deaf,” Loui says, “you probably have some unconscious musical abilities even if you can’t sing in tune.”
A lesion on the elderly man’s left frontal lobe, damage from a massive stroke, has robbed him of the ability to speak. The clinician sitting opposite him asks him to repeat a simple phrase: “Happy birthday to you.” The man struggles, but only manages, “En oh en oh en oh.”
The clinician then asks him to sing the phrase. Holding his left hand, moving it rhythmically, she initiates the song. After a few attempts, she’s silent, and he sings it as clearly as anyone carrying a cake with lit candles. The clinician then asks him, again, to speak the phrase. Without a hitch, he repeats, “Happy birthday to you.”
In less than two minutes, an extraordinary feat has occurred. Yet for researchers like Gottfried Schlaug, HMS associate professor of neurology and director of the Music, Neuroimaging and Stroke Recovery Laboratories at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), such events aren’t new. Medical literature going back a century describes stroke victims who have regained aspects of speech through melodic intonation therapy. “The difference,” Schlaug says, “is that now we have the neuroimaging tools to investigate what occurs in the brains of people who relearn language through song.”
These tools reveal substantial overlap between areas of the brain that process music and language. Damage to the left hemisphere significantly impairs speech. And although the right hemisphere has some capacity for language, it responds best to clearly structured information, such as melodies. Layering language over melodies engages the right hemisphere’s latent language capacity.
Schlaug speculates that when people cycle between singing and speaking, the melodic contour and continuous voicing enable the right hemisphere to vocalize words and phrases, creating a kind of language-smuggling Trojan horse. By moving the elderly man’s left hand, the clinician helps him connect sounds to actions, sketching auditory motor maps into the right side. If a patient rehearses this entire process long enough, the brain’s right side eventually compensates for the impaired left—and even changes structure. “Ultimately,” Schlaug says, “we trick the right hemisphere into learning how to speak.”
Neurologists once embraced the theory that the right hemisphere of the brain housed a person’s creativity, while the left hemisphere processed information such as math. Musicians, then, should be highly right brain lateralized. In the early 1990s, Schlaug tested that theory. Using MRI technology to scan the brains of both musicians and nonmusicians, he and his colleagues discovered that the brains’ morphologies revealed the opposite. Musicians, on average, were more left brained; those with perfect pitch were the most left brained of all.
Schlaug has since focused on the planum temporale, which is part of the auditory cortex. The planum temporale has a more pronounced leftward asymmetry in musicians with perfect pitch than in musicians without perfect pitch and in nonmusicians.
“Professional musicians practice their skills many hours a day, for many years,” says Schlaug. “We think of musicians as auditory-motor athletes whose long-term training has an effect on brain function and structure.”
These findings launched Schlaug onto a trajectory of collaborations with researchers such as Psyche Loui, an HMS instructor in neurology at BIDMC and a violinist with perfect pitch, and David Alsop, a musician who is also an HMS associate professor of radiology at BIDMC.
As Schlaug, Loui, Alsop, and colleagues use the latest imaging technologies to study the brains of musicians and nonmusicians, the unanswered questions mount. How, for example, does music affect brain adaptation, reorganization, and even plasticity? The team is also in the last phases of a longitudinal study on the neurobiological effects on children of learning to play an instrument.
And finally, what about professional musicians? Schlaug suspects they are not born with the natural advantage of an auditory-motor system that enables them to play a musical instrument. Instead, given the plasticity of the brain, particularly at a young age, their continued musical practice likely leads to brain changes that can be detected by modern imaging techniques. For many of us this is good news. “Unless you’re tone-deaf,” Loui says, “you probably have some unconscious musical abilities even if you can’t sing in tune.”
Friday, October 8, 2010
Siblings of Autistic Children May Share Some Symptoms
Survey finds surprising number of girls affected but not diagnosed
By Bruce Bower, Science News
Autism seems to play a genetically inspired hide-and-seek game in some families. Undiagnosed siblings in families that include two or more children with autism often grapple with language delays, social difficulties and other mild symptoms of the disorder, a new study suggests.
Genes prompt autism symptoms of varying intensity among members of these families, including in some kids who don’t qualify as having an autism spectrum disorder, say psychiatrist John Constantino of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and his colleagues. Researchers have generally limited their search for DNA peculiarities to children diagnosed with autism or related disorders (SN: 7/3/10, p.12), a strategy that overlooks those with mild autism signs, Constantino’s group asserts in a paper published online October 1 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
“Subtle aspects of the autistic syndrome have not been accounted for in most studies of its intergenerational transmission,” Constantino says.
By including individuals with mild autism symptoms in DNA studies, researchers could enlarge their sample sizes and amplify the statistical power of studies to find genetic effects, remarks psychiatrist Joseph Piven of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“Given Constantino’s data, it is clearly wrong to label all nonautistic individuals as unaffected by an underlying genetic liability for the condition,” Piven says.
Approximately one in five siblings of children with autism who don’t meet criteria for the disorder display mild or “subclinical” autism traits, Constantino’s team estimates. These traits consist of language delays, the use of odd or repeated phrases and other unusual speech qualities and difficulties interacting with others. Most such children come from families with at least two other youngsters who have an autism spectrum disorder.
Four times as many boys as girls meet psychiatric criteria for autism. But the inclusion of mild autism traits narrows that ratio to three boys for every two girls.
Males and females inherit the same autism-related genes, but in females those genes frequently interact with other genetic factors or with environmental influences to reduce the severity of symptoms, Constantino theorizes.
Subclinical autistic traits deserve close scrutiny for possible detrimental effects on children, Constantino adds. Kids with undiagnosed autism-related social deficits may find it hard to make friends and could experience a worsening of other conditions such as learning disabilities and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Subclinical traits may have benefits as well, he adds. Disinterest in social activities and a focus on details might boost math, science and computer skills.
Constantino’s team assessed signs of autism in 2,920 children from 1,235 families participating in a national online research registry. Each family in the registry includes at least one child with an autism spectrum disorder and at least one biological sibling. Data came from questionnaires completed by parents.
Their responses indicated that 134 families, or 11 percent, had more than one child diagnosed with autism. About one in four families, including nearly all of those with multiple autism cases, also contained siblings with mild symptoms.
Among mildly affected boys and girls, 20 percent had received a diagnosis of language delay or speech problems early in life, double the prevalence in the general population.
Constantino emphasizes that, for three in four families, one child had an autism spectrum disorder and the rest showed no signs of autism. He suspects that autism-related genes work in an all-or-nothing fashion in these families.
Clinicians should measure the intensity of autism symptoms over time in individual children and determine points at which interventions become necessary, much as they use growth charts to ascertain childhood obesity, he recommends.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Autistic Student Numbers on Rise
by Zack Harold
Daily Mail staff
Charleston Daily Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The number of West Virginia students diagnosed as autistic has more than tripled in nine years, and the superintendent of the county with the highest number told state school board members his county is paying as much as $200,000 per child in severe cases.
Manny Arvon, superintendent of Berkeley County Schools, spoke with board members about his county's unusually high number of autistic students in a meeting Wednesday.
He said when he first took the superintendent job there in 1997, the county had 11 autistic students. This year the county has about 161.
Arvon said his county has 30 teachers at 29 locations working with autistic students, but 15 of those teachers aren't autism-certified. He said 23 of the county's 42 autism aides have specialized training for the job.
His school system spends an average of more than $19,000 per autistic student every year to provide them with the services they need. Countywide, that amounts to more than $3 million, and those costs are likely to increase as Berkeley is averaging 15 more autistic students every year.
Arvon said some of the county's most severely autistic students are sent to a day program across the state line in Virginia. That costs the school system $100,000 plus transportation per child. If the child lives at the program, the school system pays $200,000.
Berkeley County Schools spends just under $1,800 per student in regular classrooms, Arvon said.
Pat Homberg, executive director of the education department's Office of Special Programs, told the board that 1,230 West Virginia students were currently diagnosed with autism. In the 2001-2002 school year, just 389 students were diagnosed.
She said some people have suggested the increase is due to better detection efforts.
"But that really doesn't account for this huge number of students who have been diagnosed," she said.
Homberg also provided board members with a county-by-county breakdown of autistic student enrollments as of Dec. 1, 2009.
Berkeley County led the state last year with 130 students, followed by Kanawha, the state's largest school system, with 83. Putnam County School had 45, and Cabell had 69.
State Superintendent Steve Paine pointed out that 1,230 students amount to about 0.5 percent of all West Virginia public school students.
Homberg said one in every 110 children has autism and one in 70 boys are diagnosed. The national Centers for Disease Control is investigating genetic and environmental causes, "but there has not been a particular cause that has been identified," Homberg said.
Autistic children have much different needs than other students, Homberg said. Their low frustration tolerance demands predictable and structured schedules.
Some students remain in general education classes, sometimes with a special education teacher present, but others are taught in separate classes. Homberg said teaching strategies must be tailored to individual students, as each autistic child's abilities are different.
Board member Lowell Johnson asked if schools were hiring enough certified personnel to meet autistic students' needs or if they were having a difficult time finding certified employees.
"If I were a parent who had an autistic child, I would certainly want the best possible teacher in the classroom working with the child," he said.
Homberg said certified teachers are difficult to find.
Berkeley County's Arvon said, "Just because you're spending money doesn't mean you're spending it right. I think it starts with trying to attract certified people."
He said his county's biggest challenge is recruiting and retaining certified personnel for autistic students. If the county continues to hire untrained personnel, he said, "You're going to hire more."
When the county gets qualified teachers, the school system naturally gives those educators the most difficult cases.
"They leave; we burn them out," Arvon said.
"You have to deal with the behavior before you can get to the instruction," he said. Thus, some schools place an aide with every student. "And that's not the answer."
Arvon said he would like to work with the state Department of Education to start a pilot program to better serve autistic students.
Board President Priscilla Haden asked Homberg to create a list of suggestions for ways the department might improve autistic education.
After Homberg's presentation, Jeannie Elkins, chairwoman of the West Virginia Developmental Disabilities Council, showed board members a brief video about her autistic son, Alan.
She said Alan, now 26, was terrified when he enrolled in a preschool program at age 4. Fearing the same uneasy transition when he moved to kindergarten, Alan's preschool teacher started sending him to a kindergarten program for one hour every day to ready him for the switch.
His step-up time paid off two years later, when Alan made a seamless transition into a fulltime kindergarten class.
"It gave him self confidence, and I saw a completely different young child," Elkins said in the video's narration.
Seeing the success of that transition, an itinerant teacher started prepping Alan for the switch to Sherman Junior High in third grade. His aide, Carol, remained with Alan until graduation. His mother credited her as "the key to his success."
Alan made a smooth transition there and eventually to Sherman High School, where he graduated in 2003.
While in his junior year of high school, Alan joined the "building bridges" program, leaving school at noon each day to work in Boone Memorial Hospital's laundry facilities.
Jeannie said her son enjoyed the work so much, "he called it his field trip." She said Alan, now a "delightful, happy young man," recently marked his seventh year at the hospital with stellar reviews from his supervisors and coworkers.
"We often do not have success stories and this is one," Haden said after Elkins' presentation.
Board member Delores Cook, who invited Elkins to appear at the meeting, said she agreed.
"When I asked Mrs. Haden if we could have this presentation, I feel many times we come here and we hear bad stories. I felt like there are many good programs that are happening here in West Virginia, in the Department of Education," she said.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
New Discovery Targets Cytomegalovirus (CMV)
MONMOUTH JUNCTION, N.J., Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Tamir Biotechnology, Inc. (Pink Sheets: ACEL) (formerly Alfacell Corporation) announced today that scientists supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) reported test results confirming two of our lead compounds outperformed market leader Roche's drug Ganciclovir in cell culture and plaque reduction assay (the gold standard) for Cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease. Additionally, antiviral activity was also apparent against other human herpesviruses, namely, HSV-1 (cold sores), HSV-2 (genital herpes), and Varicella-Zoster Virus (VZV) (chicken-pox and shingles).
To determine the effectiveness of a drug, NIAID uses a Selectivity Index (SI) as criteria to determine the potency of a drug. The SI measures CC50 (amount of drug required to kill 50% of uninfected cells) and EC50 (amount of drug needed to cause 50% inhibition of viral replication). CC50 divided by EC50=SI. The in vitro results, which were performed in cell culture and in plaque reduction assay (the gold standard) showed significant and potent antiviral effect in a head- to- head comparison against Ganciclovir, which is marketed by Roche and generated revenues of $546 million in 2008. (For test results click the following link) http://www.tamirbio.com/Comparing_Onconase_and_P31_to_Ganciclovir_against_Human_Cytomegalovirus.html
Within the last several months, we have reported significant results for our compounds against Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever, SARS, and now CMV. We are on the cusp of building an impressive drug portfolio that will be targeting viruses where there is currently an unmet need. Besides the fact that our drugs have shown significant antiviral activity against the viruses mentioned above, equally impressive is the fact that very low concentrations of our drugs were needed in order to show this significant antiviral activity.
In the case of CMV, where toxicity is of primary concern for current approved drugs, this has not been the case in the studies performed with our drugs. Moreover, Onconase®, our lead candidate, has been in clinical studies for other indications and has proven to be well tolerated in over 1,000 patients treated to date. NIAID will now be conducting animal studies for Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever, SARS, and CMV. Our goal is to enter into clinical trials for these viruses in the near future. "These are very exciting times for our shareholders, primary care physicians, and for those patients suffering from these diseases who for so long, have been waiting for drugs that are safe and effective," stated Tamir Chief Executive Officer Charles Muniz.
About Cytomegalovirus (CMV)
CMV is a member of the herpesvirus family. This family of viruses also causes chicken pox, shingles, mononucleosis (mono), genital herpes, and cold sores. In the United States, between 50% and 85% of the population will become infected with CMV by the time they reach age forty. Once a person is infected, the virus will remain alive, but dormant in their body for life. In most cases, CMV does not cause disease. However, CMV can cause severe and occasionally life-threatening disease in people with weakened immune systems.
Who's at Risk
Patients with weakened immune systems and patients receiving drugs to suppress their immune system, such as:
- Solid Organ Transplant Recipients
- Bone Marrow Transplant Recipients
- Cancer Patients
- Patients with HIV/AIDS (CMV Retinitis)
- Babies Infected With CMV Before Birth (Congenital CMV)
How Is CMV Spread
CMV is spread from person to person through close contact with body fluids, such as urine, blood, saliva, semen, vaginal fluids, and breast milk.
Signs and Symptoms
Active infection can cause prolonged high fever, pneumonia, blindness, diarrhea, liver infection, kidney damage, chills, fatigue, headache, enlarged spleen, and encephalitis.
Treatment
Currently, Ganciclovir is the drug of choice for CMV disease. Other approved drugs include Cidofovir and Foscarnet. These drugs are used judiciously and handled as a cytotoxic drug in the clinical setting. None of the currently approved drugs for CMV have proven to be well tolerated. Ganciclovir is commonly associated with a range of serious hematological adverse effects. It is also considered a potential human carcinogen.
CMV Market
In 2008, the market for CMV drugs was $600 million with Ganciclovir controlling over 90% of the market. Leading industry observers estimate that sales for CMV disease would top one billion dollars in sales if there were a drug available that was both safe and effective. Many patients currently taking drugs approved for CMV disease will require a kidney transplant due to the serious toxicities associated with these drugs.
About NIAID
NIAID is a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) our Nation's Medical Research Agency. NIH is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. NIAID supports basic and applied research to prevent, diagnose, and treat infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, influenza, tuberculosis, malaria, and illness from potential agents of bioterrorism.
About Tamir Biotechnology, Inc.
Tamir Biotechnology, Inc. (formerly Alfacell Corporation) is the first company to advance a biopharmaceutical product candidate that works in a manner similar to RNA interference (RNAi) through late-stage clinical trials. The product candidate, ONCONASE®, is an RNase that overcomes the challenges of targeting RNA for therapeutic purposes while enabling the development of a new class of targeted therapies for cancer, viruses, and other life-threatening diseases. For more information, visit www.tamirbio.com.
Safe Harbor: This press release includes statements that may constitute "forward-looking" statements, usually containing the words "believe," "estimate," "project," "expect" or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Factors that would cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, uncertainty whether the clinical trial results will allow the company to complete submission of a New Drug Application and if a New Drug Application submission is completed, uncertainty whether FDA will file or approve such application, uncertainties involved in transitioning from concept to product, uncertainties involving the ability of the company to finance research and development activities, potential challenges to or violations of patents, uncertainties regarding the outcome of clinical trials or differences of opinion in interpreting the results of clinical trials, the company's ability to secure necessary approvals from regulatory agencies, dependence upon third-party vendors, and other risks discussed in the company's periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By making these forward-looking statements, the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release.
| CONTACT: | Tamir Biotechnology, Inc. | |
| Charles Muniz, President, CEO and CFO | ||
| 732-823-1003 X 203 | ||
SOURCE Tamir Biotechnology, Inc.
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