ClicksandWrites

More insight into cataracts found

Posted on March 24, 2008

More insight into cataracts found
22 Mar 2008, 1203 hrs IST,ANI

WASHINGTON: A research team, led by an Indian scientist, has shed important light on cataracts, the leading cause of vision loss and blindness in older people, by finding that tiny pieces of a perfectly normal protein turned toxic during the aging process.

A cataract is caused due to deterioration in the highly ordered assembly of crystallin proteins in the eye lens. Usually, the ordered structure keeps lenses clear and able to efficiently transmit light.

However, crystallins slowly break down during aging, causing the lens to become opaque and scatter light instead. Besides age, other risk factors such as diabetes, ultraviolet radiation, or drugs like corticosteroids can also contribute to cataracts.

Like cataracts themselves, the exact mechanisms governing their formation are still a mystery, but K Krishna Sharma and colleagues from the University of Missouri School of Medicine, Columbia found that tiny bits of crystallin contribute to this process to a great extent.

The team compared a range of human donor lenses and found that aged and cataract lenses accumulated about four times as many short (~10-20 amino acids) crystallin fragments compared to young lenses.

These fragments could readily bind full-length crystallins, which disrupted their natural shape and organization and caused them to become insoluble, the researchers discovered.

Ironically, these tiny fragments are a by-product of the eye’s efforts to stay healthy; when a crystallin becomes damaged, other proteins chew it up to remove it; but occasionally the process is incomplete, leaving tiny pieces that can cause greater damage.

Writing eases stress of cancer

Posted on March 24, 2008

Writing eases stress of cancer
23 Mar 2008, 1245 hrs IST,PTI

NEW YORK: The simple act of writing down their deepest feelings can help cancer patients improve their quality of life, according to a new study.

A team of researchers in the United States has found that cancer patients who express their fears through writing can experience changes in thoughts about their illness, The Oncologist journal reported.

According to lead researcher Nancy Morgan of Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Centre, “Previous research have suggested that expressive writing may enhance physical and psychological well-being.

“But most of those studies involved three to five writing sessions that were conducted in a controlled setting. Here, we found that just one writing session in a busy cancer clinic where the patients are frequently interrupted can still have a positive impact on patients.”

Morgan and her colleagues came to the conclusion after a research on a group of over 70 patients waiting in a clinic at a cancer centre in Washington from July to November 2006.

It included a pre-writing survey, just 20 minutes of expressive writing, a post-writing survey, and an optional follow-up survey that was completed by telephone three weeks later.

Snake and spider phobias unlocked

Posted on March 24, 2008

Snake and spider phobias unlocked
24 Mar 2008, 1156 hrs IST,PTI

NEW YORK: A large number of people count snakes and spiders among their fears. Now, a new study claims to have unlocked the psychology of the common phobias.

Researchers have found that contrary to assumptions that humans possess an evolutionary predisposition to fear the creepy creatures, it is the exposure to negative information about snakes and spiders, which causes phobias.
“Previous research shows we react differently to snakes and spiders than to other stimuli, such as flowers or mushrooms, or even other dangerous animals… or cars and guns, which are also much more dangerous.

“(In the past, this) has been explained by saying that people are predisposed by evolution to fear certain things, such as snakes and spiders, that would have been dangerous to our ancestors.

“(However), people tend to be exposed to a lot of negative information regarding snakes and spiders, and we argue this makes them more likely to be associated with phobia,” said Dr Helena Purkis of University of Queensland.

In their study, the researchers compared the responses to stimuli of participants with no particular experience with snakes and spiders, to that of snake and spider experts.

“Previous research has argued that snakes and spiders attract preferential attention and that during this early processing a negative response is generated… as an implicit and indexed subconscious (action).

“We showed that although everyone preferentially attends to snakes or spiders in the environment as they are potentially dangerous, only inexperienced participants display a negative response,” Dr Purkis said.

Vitamin B does the ‘fatherly’ trick

Posted on March 21, 2008

Vitamin B does the ‘fatherly’ trick
Press Trust Of India London, March 21, 2008

Men are more likely to father healthy children if they eat a diet rich in vitamin B, a new study has revealed. A team of international researchers has found that regular consumption of green vegetables, fruits and lentils – all containing folic acid – can protect men against producing abnormal sperm and kids with genetic abnormalities.

According to lead researcher Prof Brenda Eskenazi of the University of California, while the importance of maternal diet on reproduction was well known, the study suggested that paternal diet might also be important.

“In previous studies, we and others have shown that paternal reentrant intake may contribute to successful conceptions by improving the quality of the sperm.

“This study is the first to suggest that paternal diet may play a role after conception in the development of healthy offspring,” the ‘BBC News’ portal quoted Prof Eskenazi as saying. The team came to the conclusion after they analysed sperm samples from 89 healthy, non-smoking men, and quizzed them about their intake of zinc, folate, vitamin C, vitamin E and beta carotene.

In their study, the researchers found that men who consumed the most folate — between 722 and 1150 micrograms a day — had 20 to 30 per cent lower levels of several types of aneuploidy than men with low folate intake. It is estimated that up to four per cent of sperm in a healthy man carry either too many or too few chromosomes — a condition known as aneuploidy which is linked to failure to conceive, miscarriages, and children born with conditions like Down’s syndrome, Turner’s syndrome and Klinefelter’s syndrome.

If the findings were confirmed, the current recommended daily folate intake for men of 400 micrograms might have to be revised upwards for men trying for a baby in order to reduce the risk of chromosomal abnormalities in their children, Prof Eskenazi said. The results of the study have been published in the Human Reproduction journal.