Scientists synthesise novel low-calorie fats

Scientists have developed novel low-calorie fats based on edible oils like sunflower that provide 5.2 K cals/g as against 9 K cals/g by the vegetable oils; they have shown promising health benefits in studies conducted in rats and rabbits. Ethyl behenic acid was incorporated into refined sunflower and soybean oils after about 25 per cent of fatty acids was removed. The fats have shown to lower serum, liver cholesterol and triglycerides in rats and reduce fat accumulation in arteries in rabbits. 

Source: Dr. R.B.N. Prasad, Head of Centre for Lipid Research, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad.

Mapping the human brain without distortions

To study the fine structure of the brain including its connections between neurons and the synapses, scientists generally use electron microscopes. However, the brain tissue must first be fixed to prepare it for this high magnification imaging method. This process causes the brain to shrink and as a result, microscope images can be distorted showing neurons to be much closer than they actually are.

Researchers now solved the problem by using a technique that rapidly freezes the brain, preserving its true structure. The innovative method called "cryofixation" to prevent brain shrinkage during the preparation for electron microscopy. The method uses jets of liquid nitrogen to "snap-freeze" brain tissue down to -90 degrees celsius within milliseconds. The brain tissue here was mouse cerebral cortex. "The high-pressure 'cryofixation' is a very attractive method for brain imaging.

Source: Graham Knott, Natalya Korogod and Carl Petersen,  Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne

Hippocampus of brain stores the time and place of memories

For the first time, scientists have seen evidence of where the brain records the time and place of real-life memories. The left anterior of the hippocampus aren't the totality of the memories, but just the broad picture of where and when it occurred and also it helped to "fine-tune" the time and place. "What we're picking up here is not the whole memory, but the basic gist the where and when of the experience," said Per Sederberg, senior author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State."This could be viewed as the memory hub, where we have these general, large-scale representations of our experiences."

Ref: Dylan M. Nielson, 2015, PNAS

DOI:10.1073/pnas.1507104112

FDA nod for lung cancer screening device with a low dose CT

Detection of small lung nodules are critical in identifying lung cancer at its earliest stages when it is the most treatable and curable. Low dose CT lung cancer screening will inevitably save lives through earlier diagnosis and treatment for patients.

Source: GE Healthcare, 2015

Sleep calculator

Scientists have discovered how an animal's biological clock wakes it up in the morning and puts it to sleep at night. Brain circadian neurons that govern the daily sleep-wake cycle's timing. High sodium channel activity in these neurons during the day turn the cells on and ultimately awaken an animal, and high potassium channel activity at night turn them off, allowing the animal to sleep.

Ref: Matthieu Flourakis et al., 2015, Cell.

What your DNA says about you?

Source: Positive Bioscience

Diabetic women at 34 percent higher risk of heart attack than men

Diabetic women are at a 34 per cent higher risk of heart attack and other related complications than diabetic men as they age. With respect to acute heart attack (acute myocardial infarction or AMI), diabetic women are more disadvantaged compared to diabetic men, with a gender driven “risk window” for women which mostly opens around menopausal age (45 years onwards). Authors pooled data from all Tuscan hospitals over the period 2005 to 2012 and a dataset containing the registry of all known diabetic patients from Tuscany. The effect of diabetes was separately measured in men and in women across this entire eight year period. After adjustments for several factors, the hazard ratio was found to be significantly higher in women than in men hospitalised for acute heart attack 2.63 times increased risk for women compared to 1.96 times for men giving a relative increased risk of 34 percent in women.

Source: Giuseppe Seghieri, 2015, Regional Health Agency, Florence, Italy.

Short sleepers are four times more likely to catch a cold

This is the first study to use sleep measures to connect people's natural sleep habits and their risk of getting sick. Scientists found that people who sleep six hours a night or less are four times more likely to catch a cold when exposed to the virus, compared to those who sleep more than seven hours a night. Sleep is important for our health, with poor sleep linked to chronic illnesses, disease susceptibility and even premature death. Short sleep was more important than any other factor in predicting subjects likelihood of catching cold, it didn't matter how old people were, their stress levels, their race. It didn't matter if they were a smoker. With all those things taken into account, statistically sleep still carried the day. 

Ref: Aric A. Prather, 2015, SLEEP.

DOI: 10.5665/sleep.4968

Growing up on a farm provides protection against asthma and allergies

Researchers have successfully established a causal relationship between exposure to farm dust and endotoxin give protection against asthma and allergies. the mechanism behind this: farm dust makes the mucous membrane inside the respiratory tracts react less severely to allergens such as house dust mite. This effect is created by the A20 protein, which the body produces upon contact with farm dust. When we inactivate the A20 protein in the mucous membrane of the lungs, farm dust is no longer able to reduce an allergic or asthmatic reaction. The results showed that people suffering from allergies and asthma have a deficiency in the protective protein A20. This breakthrough discovery is a major step forward towards the development of an asthma vaccine.

Source: VIB (the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology)

Ref: M. J. Schuijs et al., 2015, Science

DOI: 10.1126/science.aac6623

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World running out of snakebite antidote

The treatment is called Fav-Afrique. It's the only anti-venom approved to neutralize the bites of 10 deadly African snakes, like spitting cobras, carpet vipers and black mambas. Fav-Afrique has been produced by just one company, Sanofi Pasteur in France. The company stopped production last year because it was priced out of the anti-venom market. Across the world, about 100,000 people die of snakebites each year, Doctors Without Borders says. Even more have limbs amputated or disfigured because of bites. To put that into perspective, Ebola has killed about 11,000 people in West Africa.

Source: Dr Gabriel Alcoba, 2015,The snakebite medical adviser for Doctors.

People with acne skin are protected against aging

Dermatologists have long noted that the skin of acne sufferers appears to age more slowly than the skin of those with no history of acne. Signs of aging such as wrinkles and skin thinning often appear much later in people who have experienced acne in their lifetime. It has been suggested that this is due to increased oil production but there are likely to be other factors involved. Previous studies have shown that white blood cell telomere length can be predictive of biological aging and is linked with telomere length in other cells in the body.

Telomeres are repetitive nucleotide sequences found at the end of chromosomes which protect them from deteriorating during the process of replication. Telomeres gradually break down and shrink as cells age, eventually leading to cell death which is a normal part of human growth and aging. Researchers suggest that the cause could be linked to the length of telomeres which appears to be different in acne sufferers and means their cells may be protected against aging. Longer telomeres are likely to be one factor explaining the protection against premature skin aging in individuals who previously suffered from acne. Another important pathway, related to the p53 gene (a protector of the genome), is also relevant when we looked at gene expression in the skin of acne.

Ref: S. Ribero et al.,  (2016) Acne and telomere length. A new spectrum between senescence and apoptosis pathways. Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

DOI: 10.1016/j.jid.2016.09.014

Tooth enamel originated in skin and colonized teeth later

When did the enamel that covers our teeth evolve? And where in the body did this tissue first appear? In a new study, researchers combined data from two very different research fields - paleontology and genomics  to arrive at a clear but unexpected answer to this question: enamel originated in the skin and colonized the teeth much later.

A research group found that in most of the fossil bony fishes along with few archaic living ones such as the gar (Lepisosteus) from North America, the scales are made up with an enamel-like tissue called “ganoine”. They found that it contains genes for two of our three enamel matrix proteins: the first to be identified from a ray-finned bony fish. Furthermore, these genes are expressed in the skin, strongly suggesting that ganoine is a form of enamel. The hardest substance produced by the body is this enamel and this is made mostly of the mineral apatite (calcium phosphate) deposited on a substrate of three unique enamel matrix proteins.

Ref: Qingming Qu, Tatjana Haitina, Min Zhu, Per Erik Ahlberg. New genomic and fossil data illuminate the origin of enamel. Nature, 2015.

DOI: 10.1038/nature15259

Smoking and alcohol use are linked to premature aging

Cigarette smoking and heavy alcohol use cause epigenetic changes to DNA that reflect accelerated biological aging in distinct, measurable ways. Patterns of DNA methylation, a molecular modification to DNA that affects when and how strongly a gene is expressed. Methylation patterns change in predictable ways as people age, as well as in response to environmental exposures, such as cigarette smoke and alcohol. Dr. Philibert's laboratory identified two specific locations in the genome, base pairs cg05575921 on the AHRR gene and cg23193759 on chromosome 10, at which methylation levels were highly associated with smoking and alcohol consumption, respectively. They estimated each person's biological age using a previously validated epigenetic "clock" based on methylation levels at 71 locations in the genome, as measured by the widely used Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip. Then, they calculated the difference between biological age and chronological age, and assessed the relationship between tobacco and alcohol use and premature aging. Interestingly, moderate alcohol use about one to two drinks per day was correlated with the healthiest aging, while very low and high consumption were linked to accelerated aging.

Source: American Society of Human Genetics

Male and female brain differences negligible

Meta-analysis of structural MRI volumes that found no significant difference in hippocampal size between men and women. Meta-analysis is a statistical technique that allows researchers to combine the findings from many independent studies into a comprehensive review. Hippocampi are located on both sides of the brain, under the cerebral cortex. The team's findings challenge the common claim that a disproportionately larger hippocampus explains females' tendency toward greater emotional expressiveness, stronger interpersonal skills, and better verbal memory."Many people believe there is such a thing as a 'male brain' and a 'female brain,'" Dr. Eliot said. "But when you look beyond the popularized studies at collections of all the data you often find that the differences are minimal."

Meta-analyses by other investigators have also disproved other purported sex differences in the brain, Dr. Eliot noted. There is no difference in the size of the corpus callosum, white matter that allows the two sides of the brain to communicate, nor do men and women differ in the way their left and right hemispheres process language.

Ref: Anh Tan, Wenli Ma, Amit Vira, Dhruv Marwha, Lise Eliot. The human hippocampus is not sexually-dimorphic: Meta-analysis of structural MRI volumes. NeuroImage, 2016; 124: 350

DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.08.050

Habitual consumption of spicy foods associated with a lower risk of death

This is an observational study so no definitive conclusions can be drawn but the research leads to update diatry food recommondations. Fresh chilli is richer in capsaicin, vitamin C, and other nutrients. Fresh and dried chilli peppers were the most commonly used spices, it reduces risk of death from cancer, ischaemic heart disease, and diabetes.

Ref: Jun Lv et al., 2015, BMJ.

Growing up on a farm provides protection against asthma and allergies

Researchers have successfully established a causal relationship between exposure to farm dust and endotoxin give protection against asthma and allergies. the mechanism behind this: farm dust makes the mucous membrane inside the respiratory tracts react less severely to allergens such as house dust mite. This effect is created by the A20 protein, which the body produces upon contact with farm dust. When we inactivate the A20 protein in the mucous membrane of the lungs, farm dust is no longer able to reduce an allergic or asthmatic reaction. The results showed that people suffering from allergies and asthma have a deficiency in the protective protein A20. This breakthrough discovery is a major step forward towards the development of an asthma vaccine.

Source: VIB (the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology)

Ref: M. J. Schuijs et al., 2015, Science

DOI: 10.1126/science.aac6623

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