May 2019

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14 May 2019 HEALTH www.theasianindependent.co.uk Drugs show promise in stroke, dementia prevention London : Two drugs, in use for treating heart disease and angina, have shown promise in an early trial in preventing stroke and dementia caused by damage to small blood vessels in the brain. The drugs — cilostazol and isosorbide mononitrate — were tested in a group of patients in Britain. The results published in the journal EclinicalMedicine showed that patients tolerated the drugs, with no serious sideeffects, even when they were given in full doses or in combination with other medicines. “The results of this trial show promise for treating a common cause of stroke and the most common cause of vascular dementia, since currently there Cyclone Fani likely to turn ‘very severe’ Visakhapatnam : Cyclone Fani, currently over the southeast Bay of Bengal and the adjoining East Equatorial Indian Ocean, is likely to intensify into a “very severe cyclonic storm” on Monday, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Sunday. Fani is centred about 750 km eastsoutheast of Trincomalee (Sri Lanka), 1,080 km southeast of Chennai and 1,260 km south-southeast of Machilipatnam (Andhra Pradesh). “It is very likely to intensify into a ‘Severe Cyclonic Storm’ during the next 12 hours and into a ‘Very Severe Cyclonic Storm’ during the subsequent 24 hours. It is very likely to move north-westwards till April 30 and thereafter recurve north-eastwards gradually,” the IMD said in a bulletin. The Met officials said the cyclone may come 200 to 300 km close to the Andhra coast before changing its course to head towards the coasts of Odisha and Bangladesh. Under the impact of the cyclone, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh are likely to receive heavy rains on April 30 and May 1. The Met office has forecast thunderstorm with heavy rain and gusty winds with the speed of 40-50 kmph at isolated places in all coastal Andhra districts. Authorities has issued warnings at the Visakhapatnam, Machilipatnam, Krishnapatnam and Nizampatnam ports. are no effective treatments. Further trials are underway,” said lead researcher Joanna Wardlaw, Professor at University of Edinburgh in Britain. Damage to small blood vessels in brain is responsible for around a quarter of strokes. It is also a common cause of memory problems and dementia. At present, the only way to reduce risk of the disease is by controlling blood pressure and cholesterol, stopping smoking and managing symptoms of diabetes. For the study, researchers recruited 57 patients who had experienced stroke caused by damaged small blood vessels, known as a lacunar stroke. They took the two medicines either individually or in combination for up to nine weeks, in addition to usual treatments aimed at MELBOURNE : Indulging in high-calorie ‘comfort’ foods when you are stressed can lead to more weight gain than usual, scientists say. Researchers from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia discovered a molecular pathway in the brain, controlled by insulin, which drives the additional weight gain. Using an animal model, the team showed that a high-calorie diet when combined with stress resulted in more weight gain than the same diet caused in a stress-free environment. “This study indicates that we have to be much more conscious about what we’re eating when we’re stressed, to avoid a faster development of obesity,” said Herbert Herzog, who led the study. Some individuals eat less when they’re stressed, but most will increase their food intake—and crucially, the intake of calorie-dense food high in sugar and fat. To understand what controls this ‘stress eating’, the team investigated different areas of the brain in mice. While food intake is mainly controlled by a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, another part of the brain—the amygdala—processes emotional responses, including anxiety. “Our study showed that when stressed over an extended period and high calorie food was available, mice became obese more quickly than those that consumed the same high fat food in a stress-free environment,” said Kenny Chi Kin Ip, lead author of the study published in the journal Cell Metabolism. At the centre of this weight gain, the scientists discovered, was a molecule called NPY, which the brain preventing further strokes. They completed health questionnaires and had regular blood pressure checks, blood tests and brain scans. The findings suggest the drugs are safe for use in stroke patients, taken alone or in combination, at least in the short term. There were also signs that the treatment helped improve blood vessel function in the arms and brain, and may improve thinking skills, but researchers stressed further studies to test this. Experts believe the findings pave the way for larger studies to check if the treatment can prevent brain damage and reduce risk of stroke and vascular dementia. A larger study, called LACI- 2, is underway, said a statement from University of Edinburgh. Comfort food leads to more weight gain during stress Sydney, Eating too much high-calorie food is anyway bad for health but under stress, sugary and high-fat diet can lead to more weight gain than in normal situations, says a study. During an experiment on mice, the team discovered that a high-calorie diet when combined with stress resulted in more weight gain than the same diet caused in a stress-free environment. “This study indicates that we have to be much more conscious about what we’re eating when we’re stressed, to avoid a faster development of obesity,” said Professor Herbert Herzog said, Head of the Eating Disorders laboratory at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in New South Wales (NSW). According to the findings published in the journal-Cell Metabolism, some individuals eat less when they are stressed but most will increase their food intake — and crucially, produces naturally in response to stress to stimulate eating in humans as well as mice. “We discovered that when we switched off the production of NPY in the amygdala weight gain was reduced. Without NPY, the weight gain on a high-fat diet with stress was the same as weight gain in the stress-free environment,” said Ip. “This shows a clear link between stress, obesity and NPY,” he said. To understand what might control the NPY boost under stress, the scientists analysed the nerve cells that produced NPY in the amygdala and found they had receptors, or ‘docking stations’, for the intake of calorie-dense food high in sugar and fat. insulin—one of the hormones which control our food intake. Under normal conditions, the body produces insulin just after a meal, which helps cells absorb glucose from the blood and sends a ‘stop eating’ signal to the hypothalamus feeding centre of the brain. In the study, the scientists discovered that chronic stress alone raised the blood insulin levels only slightly, but in combination with a high-calorie diet, the insulin levels were 10 times higher than mice that were stress-free and received a normal diet. The study showed that these prolonged, high levels of insulin in the amygdala caused the nerve cells to become desensitised to insulin, which stopped them from detecting insulin altogether. In turn, these desensitised nerve cells boosted their NPY levels, which both promoted eating and reduced the bodies’ normal response to burn energy through heat, the study showed. “Our findings revealed a vicious cycle, where chronic, high insulin levels driven by stress and a high-calorie diet promoted more and more eating,” said Herzog. “This really reinforced the idea that while it’s bad to eat junk food, eating high-calorie foods under stress is a double whammy that drives obesity,” he added. Eating comfort food in stress will add extra kilos To understand what controls this ‘stress eating’, the researchers investigated different areas of the brain in mice. While food intake is mainly controlled by a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, another part of the brain — the amygdala — processes emotional responses, including anxiety. The scientists discovered that chronic stress alone raised the blood insulin levels only slightly but in combination with a high-calorie diet, the insulin levels were 10 times higher than mice that were stressfree and received a normal diet. “We were surprised that insulin had such a significant impact on the amygdala,” said Professor Herzog. “It’s becoming more and more clear that insulin doesn’t only impact peripheral regions of the body but that it regulates functions in the brain. We’re hoping to explore these effects further in future,” Herzog added.
www.theasianindependent.co.uk Smartphone game can help detect Alzheimer's risk London : A specially designed smartphone game can detect people at the risk of developing Alzheimer's, say researchers. The game called Sea Hero Quest, downloaded and played by over 4.3 million people worldwide, h e l p e d researchers from the University of East Anglia (UEA) better understand dementia by seeing how the brain works in relation to spatial navigation. The game has been developed by Deutsche Telekom in partnership with Alzheimer's Research UK, University College London (UCL) and the University of East Anglia. "Dementia will affect 135 million people worldwide by 2050. We need to identify people to reduce their risk of developing dementia," said Lead researcher Professor Michael Hornberger from UEA's Norwich Medical School. As players made their way through mazes of islands and icebergs, the research team translated every 0.5 seconds of gameplay into scientific data. The team studied how people who are genetically pre-disposed to Alzheimer's play the game compared with those who are not. The results, published in the journal PNAS, showed people genetically at risk of developing Alzheimer's can be distinguished from those who are not on specific levels of the Sea Hero Quest game. The findings are particularly important because a standard memory and thinking test cannot distinguish between the risk and non-risk groups. "Our findings show we can reliably detect such subtle navigation changes in at-geneticrisk of Alzheimer's compared with healthy people without any symptoms or complaints," said Hornberger. The team studied gaming data taken from 27,108 UK players, aged 50-75 years and the most vulnerable age-group to develop Alzheimer's in the next decade. They compared this benchmark data with a smaller lab-based group of 60 people who underwent genetic testing. NEW YORK : A personal encounter with the “ultimate reality” or God—spontaneous or under the influence of a psychedelic drug—can bring positive changes in psychological health even decades after the initial experience, says an interesting study. In a survey of thousands of people who reported having experienced personal encounters with God, researchers from Johns Hopkins University report that more than twothirds of self-identified atheists shed that label after their encounter, regardless of whether it was spontaneous or while taking a psychedelic. The findings, described in a paper in the journal PLOS ONE, add to evidence that such deeply meaningful experiences may have healing properties. “Experiences that people describe as encounters with God or a representative of God have been reported for thousands of years, and they likely form the basis of many of the world’s religions,” said lead researcher Roland Griffiths, professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Johns Hopkins’ School of Medicine. “Although modern Western medicine doesn’t typically consider ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ experiences as one of the tools in the arsenal against sickness, our findings suggest that these encounters often lead to improvements in mental health,” he argued. People over the millennia have HEALTH London : If you are finding it hard to deal with the pressure at the workplace, there is more reason to worry. New research has found that work stress and impaired sleep are linked to a threefold higher risk of cardiovascular death in employees with hypertension. "Sleep should be a time for recreation, unwinding, and restoring energy levels. If you have stress at work, sleep helps you recover," said study author Karl-Heinz Ladwig, Professor at Technical University of Munich, Germany. "Unfortunately poor sleep and job stress often go hand in hand, and when combined with hypertension the effect is even more toxic," Ladwig said. The study included around 2,000 hypertensive workers aged 25-65, without cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Compared to those with no work reported having deeply moving religious experiences either spontaneously or while under the influence of psychedelic substances such as psilocybin-containing mushrooms or the stress and good sleep, people with both risk factors had a three times greater likelihood of death from cardiovascular disease, showed the findings published in the European Journal of Preventive Amazonian brew ayahuasca. The researchers say a majority of respondents attributed lasting positive changes in their psychological health—life satisfaction, purpose and May 2019 Encounter with ‘God’ may bring long-lasting health 15 Asthma-causing toxins found in e-cigarettes New York, Expecting mothers, take note. As smoking during pregnancy is linked with negative health outcomes, a team of researchers has found that smoking cessation during pregnancy may reduce the risk of pre-term birth. The findings, published in the JAMA Network Open journal, showed that the probability of pre-term birth decreased with earlier smoking cessation in pregnancy — up to a 20 per cent relative decrease if cessation occurred at the beginning of pregnancy. “Of concern, though, given the substantial benefits of smoking cessation during pregnancy is that the proportion of pre-pregnancy smokers who quit smoking during pregnancy has remained essentially stagnant since 2011,” said lead author Samir Soneji from The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in the US. For the study, the researchers conducted a crosssectional study of more than 25 million pregnant women who gave birth to live neonates during a six-year period — measuring their smoking frequency Cardiology. People with work stress alone had a 1.6- fold higher risk while those with only poor sleep had a 1.8-times higher risk, the study said. In the study, work stress was defined as jobs with high demand and low control -- for example when an employer wants results but denies authority to make decisions. "If you have high demands but also high control, in other words you can make decisions, this may even be positive for health," said Ladwig. "But being entrapped in a pressured situation that you have no power to change is harmful," Ladwig added. Quit smoking to lower risk of premature birth three months prior to pregnancy and for each trimester during pregnancy. The negative health impacts of cigarette smoking during pregnancy, including low birth weight, delayed intrauterine development, preterm birth, infant mortality, and long-term developmental delays, are well known. But the good news is that the proportion of women who start their pregnancy as smokers has been declining in recent years, the researchers said. meaning—even decades after their initial experience. For the new study, the scientists used data from 4,285 people worldwide who responded to online advertisements to complete one of two 50- minute online surveys about God encounter experiences. The surveys asked participants to recall their single most memorable encounter experience with the “God of their understanding,” a “higher power,” “ultimate reality” or “an aspect or representative of God, such as an angel.” They also asked how respondents felt about their experience and whether and how it changed their lives. Of those who reported using a psychedelic, 1,184 took psilocybin (“magic mushrooms”), 1,251 said they took LSD, 435 said they took ayahuasca (a plant-based brew originating with indigenous cultures in Latin America), and 606 said they took DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine), also a naturally occurring substance found in certain plants and animals. About 75 per cent of the respondents in both the non-drug and psychedelics groups rated their “God encounter” experience as among the most meaningful and spiritually significant in their lifetime.
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May 2019

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