Consumers who switched from polycarbonate-plastic water bottles to metal ones in hopes of avoiding the risk that bisphenol A will leach into their beverages aren’t necessarily any better off, a new study finds. Some metal water bottles leach even more BPA — an estrogen-mimicking pollutant — than do ones made from the now-pariah plastic. Read the full story.
Archive for Physiology
Metal Water Bottles May Leach BPA
Alzheimer’s Has a Genetic Component
The high-risk version of a gene associated with Alzheimer’s disease hinders the brain’s ability to clear out a troublesome protein, a new study finds. Researchers have known that people who carry the e4 version of the gene APOE are at higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease and more likely to have cell-killing plaques in their brains than people who have the e3 or e2 versions. But it hasn’t been clear whether people with the e4 version made more of the plaque protein — called amyloid-beta — or if the stuff just stuck around in their brains longer. Read the full story.
Gene Therapy May Offer Hope for Genetic Diseases
A new type of gene therapy allows scientists to fix DNA defects directly. That’s a potentially revolutionary improvement on present gene therapy techniques, which introduce working genes to cells — but not into the genetic library itself. Working with newborn mice, researchers led by Katherine High at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia found that molecular editors called zinc finger nucleases can correct a genetic mutation that leads to the blood-clotting disorder hemophilia. Fixing a mistake in the gene for blood coagulation factor IX allowed the animals to make about 3 percent to 7 percent of normal levels of the protein, High and her colleagues report online June 26 in Nature. Even such modest increases are therapeutically meaningful, High says. People who make about 5 percent of normal levels of the clotting factor have mild cases of hemophilia. Read the full story.
Global Diabetes Rates Climb
Diabetes incidence has been climbing precipitously in the developed world along with rises in obesity rates and dietary and other lifestyle changes. But a massive new study finds that the rest of the global population has not been immune to these changes. Globally, the rate of diabetes has more than doubled in the past three decades. Read the full story.
City Living Increases Mood Disorders
Cities can be stressful places, and are a far cry from the sparsely populated landscapes in which our prehistoric ancestors evolved. All of that noise, traffic, pollution and crowding has a well-documented impact on our mental health. People who live in cities are more likely to have mood or anxiety disorder (21 percent and 39 percent, respectively) and are twice as likely to have schizophrenia. With more than half of the world’s population currently living in urban areas—and about 70 percent projected to be city dwellers by 2050—figuring out how to curb the mental toll of city life could become a major public policy issue. Read the full story.
Snakes Give Clue to Human Biology
Snakes have been around for some 150 million years, but their ancient physiology might hold some important clues to developing new drugs. Aside from their sleek exteriors, snakes’ internal physiology is perhaps even more intriguing. “It’s a really fun model for studying the extremes of adaptation,” Todd Castoe, a researcher at the University of Colorado (CU) School of Medicine’s biochemistry and molecular genetics department, said June 20 at the Evolution 2011 annual conference in Norman, Okla. In addition to the wow-factor of deciphering the snakes’ interesting innards, the strange systems could help us better understand our own biology. Read the full story.
Heart Muscle Can Be Healed
Given the right biochemical motivation, stem cells in a thin layer of cells lining the outside of the heart muscle can replace a small number of the cells damaged by a heart attack, an international group of scientists reports online June 8 in Nature. Read the full story.
Some Autism Cases May Have Genetic Component
Some cases of autism reveal a rare genetic deletion. The deletion seems to explain (in part) why autism is more prevalent in males than females. Read the full story.
Stomach Bacterium May Cause Brain Disease
A bacterium that lives in the stomachs of about half the people in the world, may help trigger Parkinson’s disease, researchers reported May 22 at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. Parkinson’s disease is a neurological disorder that kills dopamine-producing cells in some parts of the brain. People with the disease have trouble controlling their movements. About 60,000 new cases of the disease are diagnosed each year in the United States. Read the full story.
Third Grade Changes in the Human Brain
Recent third-grade graduates use their brains in an entirely different way when solving math problems, a study in an upcoming NeuroImage finds. Third-graders showed heightened activity in a brain region important for working memory, which keeps relevant info handy. Earlier studies of older children found that this region, the left prefrontal cortex, was less active with age while doing math, so the new results may reflect an age-specific approach to math. Read more about the research by clicking here.