Association Between More Frequent Chocolate Consumption and Lower Body Mass Index

Beatrice Golomb, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues present new findings that may overturn the major objection to regular chocolate consumption: that it makes people fat. The study, showing that adults who eat chocolate on a regular basis are actually thinner that those who don’t.

They found that adults who ate chocolate on more days a week were actually thinner – i.e. had a lower body mass index – than those who ate chocolate less often. The size of the effect was modest but the effect was “significant” –larger than could be explained by chance.  This was despite the fact that those who ate chocolate more often did not eat fewer calories (they ate more), nor did they exercise more. Indeed, no differences in behaviors were identified that might explain the finding as a difference in calories taken in versus calories expended.

Early exposure to germs in the gut has lasting benefits

To the dismay of mothers everywhere, the idea that exposure to microbes can be good for us—by tuning up our immune systems and preventing overreactions like asthma and autoimmune diseases—is catching. Now, a new study of this provocative notion, known as the hygiene hypothesis, suggests that microbes furnish some of their benefits in an unexpected way. Researchers have found that the typical intestinal bacteria in mice rein in a rare type of immune cell, curtailing asthma and colitis in the rodents.

Proposed more than 20 years ago, the hygiene hypothesis posits a downside to modern society's battle against microbes. To function properly, the hypothesis suggests, the immune system needs to tangle with microbes when we are young. Without these early interactions, our immune cells later in life become more likely to promote inflammatory and autoimmune conditions such as allergies, asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis. The hygiene hypothesis offers an explanation for observations such as the lower frequency of asthma and allergies among children who grow up on farms: They presumably encounter more germs, or a greater diversity, than do city kids. “There is a general consensus that microbial exposure protects against the development of a variety of different allergic and autoimmune diseases,” says Anthony Horner, a pediatric immunologist at the University of California, San Diego.

Drug Dosage Was Approved Despite Warning

Four months before a best-selling Alzheimer’s drug was set to lose its patent protection, its makers received approval for a higher dosage that extended their exclusive right to sell the drug.

 “It doesn’t really have much benefit, but does substantially more harm,” said Dr. Steven Woloshin, one of the co-authors of the journal article and a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

The drug, Aricept 23, was approved in July 2010 against the advice of reviewers at the Food and Drug Administration.

They noted that the clinical trial had failed to show that the higher dosage — 23 milligrams versus the previous dosages of 5 and 10 milligrams — met its goals of improving both cognitive and overall functioning in people with moderate to severe Alzheimer’s disease.

Gut Infections Are Growing More Lethal

Gastrointestinal infections are killing more and more people in the United States and have become a particular threat to the elderly, according to new data released last week.

 The bacterium C. difficile is tough to kill and has grown more virulent.

Deaths from the infections more than doubled from 1999 to 2007, to more than 17,000 a year from 7,000 a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Two thirds of the deaths were caused by a bacterium, Clostridium difficile, which people often contract in hospitals and nursing homes, particularly when they have been taking antibiotics. The bacteria have grown increasingly virulent and resistant to treatment in recent years.

But researchers were surprised to discover that the second leading cause of death from this type of illness was the norovirus. It causes a highly contagious infection, sometimes called winter vomiting illness, that can spread rapidly on cruise ships and in prisons, dormitories and hospitals.

 G.I. ‘Snapped’ Under Strain and Alcohol

The American staff sergeant suspected of killing 16 Afghan villagers had been drinking alcohol — a violation of military rules in combat zones — and suffering from the stress related to his fourth combat tour and tensions with his wife about the deployments on the night of the massacre, a senior American official said Thursday.

“When it all comes out, it will be a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues — he just snapped,”

She Said No, Pass Me a Beer

Sex is widely recognized as rewarding across the animal kingdom, but rejection of sexual advances or even deprivation can have negative effects. Behavioral studies indicate that sex can be positive—that is, viewed as a reward—in some learning experiments. Rejection of a sexual advance can also have lasting effects on physiology and behavior. How the success or failure of courtship behaviors are linked to other behaviors has been difficult to address. Shohat-Ophir et al.  assess the connection between the rewarding properties of sex and the effects of sex deprivation in the fly Drosophila melanogaster. The authors discover a neural system defined by a specific neuropeptide that unexpectedly couples courtship rejection or sex deprivation to a rewarding behavior—ethanol consumption.

Relating to Our Birth Control Discussion...

Link to video: Saturday Night Live: Annuale

Red Meat Consumption and Mortality

Conclusions  Red meat consumption is associated with an increased risk of total, CVD, and cancer mortality. Substitution of other healthy protein sources for red meat is associated with a lower mortality risk.

Telegraph

Heart disease drug 'combats racism'

Volunteers given the beta-blocker, used to treat chest pains and lower heart rates, scored lower on a standard psychological test of "implicit" racist attitudes.

They appeared to be less racially prejudiced at a subconscious level than another group treated with a "dummy" placebo pill.

Scientists believe the discovery can be explained by the fact that racism is fundamentally founded on fear.

Propranolol acts both on nerve circuits that govern automatic functions such as heart rate, and the part of the brain involved in fear and emotional responses. The drug is also used to treat anxiety and panic.

Experimental psychologist Dr Sylvia Terbeck, from Oxford University, who led the study published in the journal Psychopharmacology, said: "Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias.

article found by Vicky

Drug Policy as Race Policy: Best Seller Galvanizes the Debate

The book marshals pages of statistics and legal citations to argue that the get-tough approach to crime that began in the Nixon administration and intensified with Ronald Reagan’s declaration of the war on drugs has devastated black America. Today, Professor Alexander writes, nearly one-third of black men are likely to spend time in prison at some point, only to find themselves falling into permanent second-class citizenship after they get out. That is a familiar argument made by many critics of the criminal justice system, but Professor Alexander’s book goes further, asserting that the crackdown was less a response to the actual explosion of violent crime than a deliberate effort to push back the gains of the civil rights movement.

For many African-Americans, the book — which has spent six weeks on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list — gives eloquent and urgent expression to deep feelings that the criminal justice system is stacked against them.

Pay Only for Drugs That Help You

Here’s how this “pay-for-response model” would work: Say a drug company receives approval for a breast cancer drug. Potential patients would be screened to determine whether their cancer was likely to respond to the drug, depending on whether it had, for example, a particular genetic marker. Most of the cancers that do should respond to the drug, but the presence of the genetic marker is still no guarantee. The Food and Drug Administration could help to come up with criteria with which to determine whether a patient is responding to a drug. If the patient’s oncologist and radiologist determine that the patient is benefiting based on those criteria, then the drug company should be paid. For a cancer drug, these criteria could include anything from tumor shrinkage to survival. For other diseases, response-to-therapy criteria are more straightforward. Patients withhepatitis C, for example, who realize a “sustained viral response” in which the virus is essentially gone from the blood, would pay for their therapy. Others would not.

Not only would this save money, but it would also push drug companies to figure out why certain patients don’t respond to treatment and what to do about it, and researchers to aggressively study genetic variation in disease before beginning larger studies. It would also encourage testing with multiple drugs, approved and experimental, to target just the right pathways of disease in each and every population. Biotechnology companies like mine could stand to profit from this change, but the overall gains to the health care system would be far larger.

A Heart Helper May Come at a Price for the Brain

“Thinking and remembering became so laborious that I could not even recall my three-digit telephone extension or computer password at work,” said Mr. Colburn, 62, a sales representative and product developer. “All day, every day, I felt like my brain was mush.”

Statins are the most prescribed drugs in the world, and there is no doubt that for people at high risk of cardiovascular problems, the drugs lower not only cholesterol but also the risk of heart attack and stroke. But for years doctors have been fielding reports from patients that the drugs leave them feeling “fuzzy,” and unable to remember small and big things, like where they left the car, a favorite poem or a recently memorized presentation. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration finally acknowledged what many patients and doctors have believed for a long time: Statin drugs carry a risk of cognitive side effects. The agency also warned users about diabetes risk and muscle pain.

Brain Stem Cell Transplant Potential Parkinson’s Treatment

and

nature.com

The darker side of stem cells

An investigation by Nature has found that patients in Texas are receiving unproven stem-cell treatments. The state and the company involved need to ensure that they follow FDA guidelines.

Stem cells offer the hope that one day they will be able to cure a huge range of disorders. But too many people are promising those cures to patients now, long before there is any evidence that they work. These claims are potentially misleading at best, and at worst could be downright harmful.

NEJM

Placebo-Controlled Trial of Amantadine for Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

Amantadine hydrochloride is one of the most commonly prescribed medications for patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness after traumatic brain injury. Preliminary studies have suggested that amantadine may promote functional recovery.