April 2, 2008, 10:12 PM CT

Studies' message to women: Keep your cool

Whether you are running for president or looking for a clerical job, you cannot afford to get angry if you are a woman, Yale University psychology expert Victoria Brescoll has found.

Brescoll and Eric Uhlmann at Northwestern University recently completed three separate studies to explore a phenomenon that may be all-too-familiar to women like New York Senator Hillary Clinton: People accept and even reward men who get angry but view women who lose their temper as less competent.

The studies, reported in the recent issue of Psychological Science, provide women with recommendations for navigating emotional hazards of the workplace. Brescoll says it pays to stay emotionally neutral and, if you can't, at least explain what ticked you off in the first place.

Clinton's presidential campaign has put a spotlight on the question of whether anger hurts a female candidate. The answer, as per the studies, appears to be an unequivocal yes - unless the anger deals with therapy of a family member.

"An angry woman loses status, no matter what her position,'' said Brescoll, who worked in Clinton's office as a Congressional Fellow in 2004 while she was preparing her doctoral thesis on gender bias. She noticed over the years that women pay a clear price for showing anger and men don't......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

April 2, 2008, 10:10 PM CT

Do we need alcohol prevention programs for 'tweens?'

The article examined a large study of six grade students across a metropolitan area, to see which factors distinguished young alcohol users from nonusers, including even their stated intentions regarding future alcohol use. Understanding that early alcohol use can affect development during a crucial time in life and can cause significant problems later, the scientists explored some current teen alcohol abuse prevention programs, concluding that even earlier intervention is imperative. The study looked at both positive and negative influences affecting early drinking, including such things as:

• Parental influences, including communication, monitoring, and expectations

• Peer influences, peers actual alcohol use and kids perceptions of peer use

• The environment, access to alcohol, owning and wearing alcohol-related items

• Kids involvement in sports, religious and other extra-curricular activities

• Use of other substances, including tobacco and marijuana

Early users of alcohol are already at very high risk and earlier intervention is critical to alter risk factors while students are in their tweens, write the authors. Eventhough some research has been done in the primary prevention of developmental problems with tweens, the data suggests that a specific focus on particular alcohol-related risk factors is also needed to affect those at highest risk for teen alcohol use......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

April 2, 2008, 10:08 PM CT

Study finds that discrimination varies by gender and race

Men are more likely to tolerate discrimination than women, however both sexes tend to accept prejudice against poorly educated immigrants and Arab-American airplane travelers, as per a research studyby the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics.

In a survey of more than 3,300 people, scientists at USC Gould School of Law and USC College observed that both men and women are less willing to tolerate discrimination against the genetically disadvantaged. The study, would be published in June in Political Research Quarterly, also found tolerance levels between the sexes vary depending on whether or not their response is anonymous: men tend to understate, and women to overstate, their tolerance for discrimination when speaking to a live interviewer, as opposed to answering questions over the Internet.

Edward J. McCaffery, a USC law professor, who co-authored the study, said that an individual who sees nothing wrong with certain kinds of biases will often find others objectionable.

A number of political struggles of our time, in the United States as elsewhere, amount to clashes over the appropriate boundary between permissible and impermissible forms of discrimination, McCaffery said. We have observed that, while discrimination in its traditional forms based on race and gender may be receding somewhat, discrimination in other domains, as based on appearance, persists. Here we observed that people are more willing to accept discrimination against poorly educated immigrants, for example, than so-called genetic discrimination. Men are more willing to accept discrimination, but both men and women converge when we did a telephone survey and there was a live interviewer women became more, and men less, openly tolerant of discrimination......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

April 2, 2008, 9:59 PM CT

Nano-sized technology has super-sized effect on tumors

Anyone facing chemotherapy would welcome an advance promising to dramatically reduce their dose of these often harsh drugs. Using nanotechnology, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have taken a step closer to that goal.

The scientists focused a powerful drug directly on tumors in rabbits using drug-coated nanoparticles. They observed that a drug dose 1,000 times lower than used previously for this purpose markedly slowed tumor growth.

"A number of chemotherapeutic drugs have unwanted side effects, and we've shown that our nanoparticle technology has the potential to increase drug effectiveness and decrease drug dose to alleviate harmful side effects," says lead author Patrick M. Winter, Ph.D., research assistant professor of medicine and biomedical engineering.

The nanoparticles are extremely tiny beads of an inert, oily compound that can be coated with a wide variety of active substances. In an article published online in The FASEB Journal, the scientists describe a significant reduction of tumor growth in rabbits that were treated with nanoparticles coated with a fungal toxin called fumagillin. Human clinical trials have shown that fumagillin can be an effective cancer therapy in combination with other anticancer drugs......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

April 1, 2008, 9:10 PM CT

The future of children's health

Can diseases such as Alzheimers, obesity and diabetes be prevented before birth? As per Jonathan D. Gitlin, M.D., the Helene B. Roberson Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Genetics at the Washington University School of Medicine, researching whether diseases that strike adults are already genetically encoded in individuals while still in the womb, may enable physicians to one day address and prevent diseases in infancy.

In a talk entitled Child Health Research in the 21st Century: Obstacles and Opportunities, Dr. Gitlin, who is also scientific director of the Childrens Discovery Institute, will address why, despite substantial investments in both the academic and private sectors, the health status of our nation remains dismal especially the health and wellness of our children.

Childrens health has been pushed aside, states Dr. Gitlin. The amount of money currently dedicated to research that could identify key factors leading to diseases both in childhood and later in their adult lives is very small in comparison to the funding for adult onset diseases such as heart disease or cancer. Dr. Gitlin says researchers need to redirect their thinking to find a way to identify and ultimately offset diseases in children that may affect them during the later part of life, such as obesity, depression or even drug and alcohol addiction......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

April 1, 2008, 9:02 PM CT

Novel biomarkers for cancer

Biotechnology companies are focusing on the development of novel biomarkers to overcome the limitations of current diagnostic tests for cancer, reports Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN). To effectively move cancer treatment forward, a much stronger and targeted emphasis on diagnosis will be required, as per an article in the April 1 issue of GEN (http://www.genengnews.com/articles/chitem.aspx?aid=2428).

"Therapeutic protocols can involve hundreds of thousands of dollars per cancer patient," notes John Sterling, Editor-in-Chief of GEN (www.genengnews). "Coming up with effective and validated biomarkers that detect cancer while still in its early stages seems like an extremely worthwhile effort on which to spend R&D funds now to cut down on costs of therapy in the future".

A team led by Edouard Nice, Ph.D., at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, is one example of a group hard at work trying to develop early detection tools for malignancies. Dr. Nice and colleagues are using multidimensional high-performance liquid chromatography to trace enrich low-level components such as growth factors in tumor material previous to analysis by mass spectrometry.

At Wayne State University School of Medicine, a research program run by Michael Tainsky, Ph.D., harnesses antibodies in patients' serum for the detection of cancer-specific epitopes using peptides selected for IgG binding from phage-display cDNA libraries......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

April 1, 2008, 8:48 PM CT

Hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer

Millions of post-menopausal women use hormone replacement treatment (HRT) as a method to reduce symptoms linked to menopause. In a recent University of Missouri study, scientists observed that one of the hormones used in HRT, a synthetic progestin, could be a major factor in promoting breast cancer. At the same time, the scientists have compelling evidence that using an antibody that prevents new blood vessel formation in tumors, or a small molecular drug, known as PRIMA, with similar properties as the antibody may be effective in treating or preventing the negative effects of progestin.

As per a research findings reported in the journal, Cancer Research, MU scientist Salman Hyder and his research team observed that exposing tumor cells to progestin caused an increase in a growth factor that is involved in the formation of new blood vessels in tumors. Increasing the blood supply allows the tumors to expand as the availability of nourishment increases. However, when they used an antibody that inhibits the growth factor, the tumor shrank. Hyders team found similar results using PRIMA, which re-activated a protein known as p53. When p53 was activated within tumor cells, the number of breast cancer cells reduced significantly.

As women age, a number of develop tiny lesions in their breasts, said Hyder, professor of biomedical sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine and the Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center. The majority of the time, these lesions never expand. We think this might be due to a specific protein, p53, that, under normal circumstances, prevents tumor cells from living. We found in our study that when the protein is active, it reduces the number of breast cancer cells in the body by inhibiting the growth factor that supplies blood vessels to the tumor. However, when the cells of these lesions are exposed to progestin in a body that does not have an active p53 protein, we observed that the cells might start expanding and turn into tumors......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

April 1, 2008, 8:34 PM CT

Bacteria in the digestive system and obesity

Obesity is more than a cosmetic concern because it increases a persons risk for developing high blood pressure, diabetes and a number of other serious health problems. Its well understood that consuming more calories than you expend through exercise and daily activities causes weight gain. But with about one in every three American adults now considered obese, scientists are attempting to identify additional factors that affect a persons tendency to gain and retain excess weight. In the recent issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, scientists from Mayo Clinic Arizona and Arizona State University examine the role that bacteria in the human gastrointestinal tract play in regulating weight and the development of obesity.

Known as gut microbiota, the trillions of bacteria that populate the human gastrointestinal tract perform a variety of chores. These friendly microbes help extract calories from what we eat, help store these calories for later use, and provide energy and nutrients for the production of new bacteria to continue this work.

As per John DiBaise, M.D., a Mayo Clinic Arizona gastroenterologist and lead author of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings article, several animal studies suggest that gut microbiota are involved in regulating weight and that modifying these bacteria could one day be a therapy option for obesity......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

April 1, 2008, 8:31 PM CT

Smokers With Lung Disease Need More

OHSU Smoking Cessation Center scientists outline key steps for developing and implementing clinic-based systems to provide smoking cessation therapy tailored to smokers with respiratory disorders.

Smokers with lung disease require more than brief smoking cessation interventions to successfully quit, scientists in the Oregon Health & Science University Smoking Cessation Center report.

Their recommendations will be published Tuesday, April 1, in the online edition of Pulmonary and Critical Care Update, a publication of the American College of Physicians.

Eventhough effective therapys for smoking cessation exist, and research has shown that patients who receive smoking cessation therapy are twice as likely to quit -- limited insurance coverage, poor adherence to practice guidelines, lack of physician training in smoking cessation, time constraints and inadequate clinic systems to easily identify and treat smokers have limited the availability and quality of smoking cessation therapy.

"Most clinicians who treat their patients for smoking cessation provide only brief interventions, often just three short steps: asking about tobacco at every visit, advising all smokers to quit and referring them to other resources, such as quit lines for assistance and follow-up," said David Gonzales, Ph.D., lead author and co-director of the OHSU Smoking Cessation Center in the OHSU School of Medicine. "When we evaluated the data, we observed that brief intervention is often insufficient for the more dependent, high-risk patients with pulmonary disease"......... Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source

March 31, 2008, 9:37 PM CT

Angina drug potentially useful against heart rhythm disorders

A recently approved angina drug may also represent a powerful new therapy for a rare hereditary syndrome that places teens at risk for sudden cardiac death, as per research presented to today at the 57th Annual Scientific Sessions of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) in Chicago.

Cardiac arrhythmias are electrical malfunctions that throw the heart out of rhythm, causing a number of of the 330,000 sudden cardiac deaths each year in the United States. Most fatal arrhythmias occur in aging patients when scar tissue left by a heart attack interferes with the heart's electrical system. As a number of as 1,000 deaths each year, however, are caused by Long QT Syndrome (LQTS), which occurs mostly in teens with otherwise healthy hearts. While rare, LQTS is yielding insights into the much more common post-heart attack arrhythmias, scientists said.

The QT interval is part of the hearts electrical signature as recorded by an electrocardiogram (ECG). The QT represents the time it takes for the hearts lower chambers to reset electrically after each heartbeat. QTc is QT corrected for heart rate, a more accurate measure. In LQTS patients, QTc reset time is prolonged, which makes the heart more susceptible to fatal arrhythmias. The condition may go unnoticed until sports, strong emotions or even loud noises knock the heart out of rhythm, causing loss of pulse and consciousness (syncope). Sudden death will then occur if the heart is not restarted with a defibrillator. Given the current state of awareness, some families have lost a second child before realizing all the children have the syndrome......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source