Just A Theory

In all the excitement of the new year, I forgot to explain my Just A Theory schedule for 2010. I’ve decided to post twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the usual Weekly Roundup on a Sunday. Of course, there might be the occasional post outside that schedule, but its what I’m aiming for. Remember that you can always subscribe to the RSS feed and get notified each time a post goes up.

Fart FAQ

Everybody does it, even though sometimes we don’t want to admit it, so why not learn some facts about farts with this handy infographic?

Hold your nose and click for a larger image.

Wii tech good enough for physio

A video game accessory designed to help you get fit could also be used to rehabilitate stroke victims, says a physiotherapist. Ross Clark of the University of Melbourne found the accuracy of a Wii balance board compared well to lab-grade “force platforms”, which normally cost more then £11,000.

Both pieces of equipment are designed to measure pressure from a person’s foot. The force platform aids physiotherapists in reteaching a stroke patient how to stand, and Clark found that a balance board could act as a suitable replacement, despite retailing for under £100.

Its not the first report of scientists using Wii controllers as cheap sensors in their work – see this Wired story, complete with a picture of a Wiimote in a lab stand.

I’ll be taking a break from Just A Theory from now until the start of next year. Now that I’m working full time I’m finding it a little harder to keep up with blogging, so I think it’ll be good to have some time off and recharge my batteries. Over Christmas I’ll be thinking about ways to improve the blog for 2010, so let me know if you have any suggestions. Enjoy the rest of 2009!

Drinking advice, straight from the source

With December 25th inching ever closer you’ve probably already been to a number of booze-fuelled Christmas parties, but have you thought about the long-term risks of drinking alcohol?

If you’re anything like me, probably not, but I did read this interview on the University of Oxford science blog with one of their scientists, Naomi Allen. She talks about the risks and benefits of drinking alcohol, and suggests middle-age women who are most at risk of breast cancer should probably hold back on the booze.

It’s good to hear the risks laid out in a clear and non-headline grabbing manner, but the interview is also an interesting example of institutional journalism. This piece could easily appear in a magazine or Sunday supplement, but Oxford have chosen to cut out the middle-man and publish themselves. We’re seeing more and more of this type of work crop up, as the media continues their struggle to reinvent themselves in a Web 2.0 world.

Micro-gallery

Who says bacteria can’t be beautiful? New Scientist have a gallery of Petri dish art created by microbiologists. My personal favourite, for obvious reasons, is this little guy:

It's-a-me!

People restricted to watching half their usual amount of television burned more calories in a three-week period, according to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers at the University of Vermont found that while cutting back on television didn’t affect the amount of food people ate, it did mean they were more active and burnt an average of just under 120 extra calories a day.

America’s rising obesity crisis has lead to many public health initiatives designed to get the nation eating well and exercising. The researchers suggest that smaller changes in behaviour, like watching less television, could actually have more of an effect on weight loss.

There’s certainly a lot to cut back on. The average US adult watches 5 hours of television a day, making it the most time consuming activity behind sleep and work. Watching TV has previously been associated with risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, and it burns less calories than other low energy activities such as reading or talking on the phone.

To investigate the effects of cutting back on television, the researchers monitored the viewing habits of 36 adults with a BMI between 25 and 50. Each participant reported watching at least three hours of TV per day.

With a baseline set, 20 participants were random selected to have their viewing hours cut in half. A device attached to the television would switch it off once the week’s viewing limit had been reached, and not allow it to be switched back on until the timer reset a week later. Needless to say, the monitors were securely locked away to deter tampering! The other 16 participants served as a control group, continuing to watch the same amount of television.

The results showed a slight reduction in food intake for the 20 participants who had watched less TV, but this was not statistically significant. They did however significantly increase their energy expenditure, burning an average of 119 extra calories a day.

That might not sound like much, but it adds up. Over the course of a year, burning 119 calories a day would result in a weight loss of over five and a half kilograms. It seems that while watching TV won’t turn your eyes square, it does contribute to making your body round.

Otten, J., Jones, K., Littenberg, B., & Harvey-Berino, J. (2009). Effects of Television Viewing Reduction on Energy Intake and Expenditure in Overweight and Obese Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial Archives of Internal Medicine, 169 (22), 2109-2115 DOI: 10.1001/archinternmed.2009.430

Of course, that wasn’t the actual headline the papers ran with:

All men watch porn, scientists find – Daily Telegraph
Porn-loving men ruin sex study – The Sun
Pornography study that was doomed to fail after scientists couldn’t find a single man who hadn’t viewed X-rated material – Daily Mail

The story comes from this press release detailing the launch of a new study by the University of Montreal in to the effects of porn on men. Quite why you press release the launch of a study rather than its results I’m not sure, but the papers seem to have latched on to this part:

“We started our research seeking men in their twenties who had never consumed pornography. We couldn’t find any,” says Simon Louis Lajeunesse, a postdoctoral student and professor at the School of Social Work.

It turns out that Lajeunesse has so far asked 20 male students about their sexual habits, and found that they all watch porn – so I guess that definitely means all men do. From this tiny sample, Lajeunesse also determined that single men watch porn an average three times a week, for 40 minutes at a time.

Lajeunesse’s research actually seems to have a decent aim in mind – finding out whether porn can harm healthy sexuality – but the idea that you can drawn any general conclusions from the habits of 20 men is laughable. I don’t know what the University of Montreal press office were hoping to achieve with their press release, but if it was anything more than “tee hee hee, porn”, they’ve not really succeeded.

Today the Daily Mail and the Telegraph both reported that spending time on Sodoku and other puzzles will help you lose weight. That’s right – you can simply think yourself thin, because giving your brain a workout apparantly burns 1.5 calories a minute, or 90 an hour.

Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Lose weight without even having to really do anything? Fantastic…until you realise that shifting just a single pound of fat requires burning 3500 calories more than you normally do. At five and a half weeks per pound, you’re not going to slipping in to some skinny new clothes any time soon.

Surely this advice comes from a well-respected brain expert though? It seems to have been announced by one Tim Forrester, who is billed as a “researcher” and “mental agility expert” by the newspapers. He also happens to run cannyminds.com, a “a brand new internet retailer specialising in Brain Training, Educational and Skills Improvement products.”

Well that’s handy – Forrester can sell you the very same puzzles that his “research” suggests will help you lose weight! And not a conflict of interest in sight.

It’s not clear how Forrester made this incredible discovery, but a bit of Googling shows up an article from Popular Science, published in 2006. The “1.5 calories a minute” figure seems to be ascribed to Harry Chugani of the Children´s Hospital of Michigan, but it’s not clear when or where he said it. The article also says our brain requires 0.1 calories a minute simply to survive, a phrase that Forrester quotes nearly verbatim.

Thinking hard is obviously going to require some extra calories, but I have no idea how many. The figures in these articles don’t seem to be backed up by any research, and they seem fairly unlikely – walking burns around 5 calories a minute, and requires far more activity than simply thinking.

Really, it doesn’t take too many calories to recognise that these articles are nothing more than poorly researched adverts for some guy’s website. That’s bad enough, but they could also have a potentially damaging effect on someone’s health if they decide to reach for the crossword instead of the cross trainer. There are no quick fixes to losing weight, and the “Sudoku diet”, like many, is complete nonsense.

Large Hadron Collider taken down by bread

Earlier this week the Large Hadron Collider suffered yet another setback, when it was dive-bombed by a bird carrying a piece of baguette. You just can’t make it up.

The rogue bit of bread caused a short circuit in part of the LHC’s above-ground electronics, leading to an automatic shutdown of the giant ring’s cooling system. Thankfully the LHC was only knocked offline for a few days this time, and systems are now running normally. Lets just hope the scientists at Geneva have invested in a couple of scarecrows.

Eating fast makes you fat – now we know why

It’s often said that eating too fast will lead to putting on weight, because your brain doesn’t have enough time to catch up with your full stomach. Now, new research has found a possible physiological explanation for why this might happen.

Dr Alexander Kokkinos of the Laiko General Hospital in Athens found that eating too quickly can slow the release of two hormones from the gut, PYY and GLP-1. Volunteers were given 300ml of ice cream to eat at different rates, and those who ate the slowest had the highest hormone concentration.

X-rays top the charts

Back in June I reported on a Science Museum survey to pick the most influential scientific infection in their collection. The results are in, and it seem X-rays take the top spot, followed by penicillin and the DNA double helix.

It’s a bit of an odd choice, I think. In my original post, I went for the Pilot ACE Computer, because it was the first multi-tasking computer. It seems others disagreed though, because it came in at a lowly seventh place. Still, X-rays over penicillin? I’ve taken antibiotics far more than I’ve been X-rayed, as have most people I would’ve thought. Strange.

It has long been known that sleep deprivation affects your ability to remember things long term. Yet until now the exact mechanism causing these misplaced memories has been unclear.

The problem had been that the relationship between sleep deprivation and the brain is multi-faceted; it was hard to see the wood from the cerebral trees. But in a paper published in this week’s Nature, an international team of scientists report findings that suggest the culprit has been revealed.

In their study the researchers took mice that had been deprived of sleep for five hours and examined the hippocampus, the section of the brain known to play a fundamental role in long term memory.

They found that the sleep-deprived rodents had a higher level of an enzyme called PDE4 than those left to sleep normally. In order to make sure that these increased levels of PDE4 were indeed behind the long-term memory loss they tested whether the mice could recall a fear stimulus.

In mice that were treated with a drug that inhibits PDE4 production they found the effect was nullified and the sleepy mice could remember just as well as those rodents that had been well rested. Whereas the mice left with increased levels of PDE4 struggled when tested.

This research might have implications for those suffering with serious sleep deprivation such as new parents. However, further research is necessary to experiment with Rolipram, the drug used in the study, and its effectiveness combating memory problems in humans suffering with sleep deprivation.

Vecsey, C., Baillie, G., Jaganath, D., Havekes, R., Daniels, A., Wimmer, M., Huang, T., Brown, K., Li, X., Descalzi, G., Kim, S., Chen, T., Shang, Y., Zhuo, M., Houslay, M., & Abel, T. (2009). Sleep deprivation impairs cAMP signalling in the hippocampus Nature, 461 (7267), 1122-1125 DOI: 10.1038/nature08488

Apologies for my lack of posting this week, I’m once again hepped up on Lemsip as I battle against a cold. My fellow bloggers have done a great job at picking up the slack, but I still have a collection of interesting links from the past week. Here we go:

• 50 years of space exploration in graphic form. Click for bigger.
• Neuroskeptic takes a critical look at the placebo effect
• Scientist make mice play Quake to study the neurological activity of moving animals.
• Fermat’s Last Theorem, the comic.
• A “spider pill” that could crawl around inside you? I’d run screaming, even if it could cure my cold!

Autotune the cosmos

Autotune is a piece of software designed to tidy up slightly out of tune singers, but people have discovered it can also be used to turn almost anything in to a song. Results vary, but this Autotuned version of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos is actually really good:

Ig Nobel 2009

This year’s Ig Nobel awards, which celebrate “improbable research” in science, were announced earlier this week. Amongst the winners were a team who investigated whether it is better to be hit over the head by a full botle of beer or an empty one, and the creators of a bra which can convert in to two protective face masks.

The best seat in the house

Above is Bruce McCandless II, around 100 meters away from the space shuttle Challenger. He’s the furthest out in space that anyone has ever been, and he’s got quite a view.

Probiotic yoghurt drinks full of “good bacteria” have become a popular choice for those looking to stay healthy, but now EU scientists have dismissed the manufacturers claims. The announcement could result in tighter laws on the benefits food companies are permitted to advertise.

The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) examined and rejected 180 health claims for probiotic ingredients. Ten were dismissed outright, and the other 170 were said to be unproven due to lack of evidence. These claims do not include the two biggest probiotic companies, Actimal and Yakult. They withdrew their claims from the analysis, to be resubmitted at a later date.

EFSA’s review follows an EU law in 2006 which made it a requirement for all medical-sounding marketing claims to be verified scientifically. No products or marketing will have to change straight away, but the European Commission will eventually create new legislation to be voted on by member states.

Chair of the EFSA science panel Albert Flynn stressed the importance of giving consumers accurate information about the products they buy:

“It’s been an issue for some time that general health claims are made about these products using the family name for the active ingredient and not saying which member of the family is in the pot.

“We expect the claims that will come now from the companies will be much more specific.”

The last few weeks have seen some interesting developments regarding animal research, catch up on the lastest news with Understanding Animal Research:

Lack of sleep linked to Alzheimer’s

Studies using mice suggest that lack of sleep could increase the development of toxic plaques in the brain, accelerating the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

To read more on this story, please follow the link.

White blood cells found to set the pace of wound repair

After more than fifty experiments in mice, scientists have mapped out how a set of white blood cells (lymphocytes) set the pace of recovery after serious lung injury.

To read more on this story, please follow the link.

Gene therapy for colour blindness

A team of scientists have restored colour vision to two colour blind squirrel monkeys using gene therapy.

To read more on this story, please follow the link.

Also….

Last week two prominent scientists in America published an article about the need for change in the communication of issues surrounding animal research.

The article, We Must Face The Threats, tackles the difficult topic of animal rights extremists, and the effect they are having on the scientific community.

Animal research is always a difficult topic to discuss. Trying to present a balanced argument can be as difficult as trying to avoid a mine in a field of landmines. However, I believe that in this case, the authors of the paper, Dario Ringach and David Jentsch have managed to keep to the facts, rather than reverting to ‘mud slinging’ and ‘calling names’.

Ringach and Jentsch also describe how the public are often influenced by groups other than scientists when it comes to the topic of science. This is a problem for science across the whole of the field, not exclusively animal research

The article describes how the entertainment industry contributes to the “misperception of science, producing movies that increasingly portray humans and technology as the source of evil”. Only last night I was watching Spaced – the episode where a dog was snatched by an ‘insane’ scientist who was conducting animal research in an illegal lab – hardly how animal testing happens in this country…!

Ringach and Jentsch also voice their frustrations (which I share), at celebrities wearing AIDS or cancer ribbons one day, and then supporting PETA’s (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) fundraising events, or featuring in their advertising campaigns the next. Many of you will have heard about the recent scandal with Naomi Campbell, who posed naked in the 90s as part of PETAs I’d Rather go Naked than Wear Fur campaign, but recently became the face of an advertising campaign for a luxury New York furrier, Dennis Basso. Cases like this make me wonder the reasons why celebrities support PETA – are they fully informed of all of their policies?

However, Ringach and Jentsch do well to steer clear of these questions (better than me anyway), and do not waste their time repeating what others have done before them – pointing out the countless problems with the animal-rights views. Instead, their overall message is that these issues only cause a problem because the message is being presented with little opposing force from the scientific community.

They are therefore calling for the “scientific community to make a concerted effort in condemning animal-rights extremism and in reaching out to the public to explain our work, its importance, and out commitment to the strictest ethical guidelines of animal research”.

They also emphasize the need to “acknowledge an increasing divide on how animal experimentation is perceived by the broad public.” They believe that “we should open a discourse on the topic, explaining the key role animal research plays in our work and what our society stands to lose if we were to stop it.”

To all those scientists who are sceptical of openness about their role in animal research, it should be pointed out that Ringach and Jentsch, along with their families, have suffered at the hands of extremists, therefore their conclusions come from first hand experience.

They are also out there, putting these ideas into practice. Ringach and Jentsch are members of a US organisiaion called Speaking of Research. Speaking of Research can be compared to the UK’s Pro-test, indeed Tom Holder spokesperson for Pro-test, has been in the US for the past few years getting this fledgling organization onto it’s feet. Drawing on the success in the UK, where animal rights extremism has decreased over recent years, the group aims to support and campaign on behalf of scientists against the extremists.

I believe that this paper not only makes solid points in regards to animal research, but also to the scientific community at large. Yes there are some who are already trying to stem the tide of pseudo-scinece (Ben Goldacre’s column and Sense about Science are just two examples), but they are just a drop in the ocean, and it is the scientists who must take action together, whatever their field of research. As Ringach and Jentsch conclude:

“We must prove that ’scientific community’ means something more than the mere fact that we publish in the same journals and attend the same conferences. We must stand together to defend those colleagues under attack and defend the research we believe to be ethical and critical for our understanding of the brain in health and disease. The public is ready to listen.”

“Can this man cure cancer with his bare hands?” ask the Daily Mail. Well, no. But you probably guessed that already.

The man in question is Adrian Pengelly, a self-styled healer, energy worker, teacher, and psychic. Apparently he’s recently had a bit of bother from the BBC consumer programme Watchdog – presumably because people think he is lying to them and stealing their money.

Pengelly claims to have “magic hands” that can cure cancer. The lack of an apparent mechanism proof for his restorative powers doesn’t bother Pengelly; his power is in the “thousands of people saying they were healed” after his “treatment”. “I don’t care about scientific evidence,” he says. Until later in the article, that is:

“Some said I had a gift from God. But I just wanted to understand the science.

“I thought: “What is there? There’s only energy – electricity in different forms – and it floats.” I can feel energy come with one hand and draw it with another.

“Somehow the energy I was generating was stimulating the body’s immune system.”

That’s funny. Isn’t floaty electricity what “causes” the health problems of those poor electro-hypersensitive people? If only there was some way for us to tell what effect electricity has on the human body, some sort of method that could be applied scientifically. Nah, it’ll never work.

You can tell I’m in a pretty snarky mood this evening. But what else can you say about a man who claims to be able to heal from a distance, without knowing who he is healing?

“It may seem hard to believe that a healer can effect an improvement when he is hundreds or thousands of miles away from a patient, but time and time again the results have been seen to work…

“Adrian does not need to know the name, address, or any details of the person who needs healing. It seems to work regardless of this information.”

Wow, so something that has absolutely no effect can still have no effect at a distance! What a marvellous age we live in.

I probably don’t need even need to say it, but it’s clear that Pengelly offers nothing more than a placebo effect for those he treats – and he’s not even very good at it. In the Mail article, he claims to be able to cure 65% of cancer sufferers. I’d expect a little better from magic, especially at £30 a session!

Yes folks, it’s that time of week again….here’s the latest from Understanding Animal Research:

How Broccoli protects arteries

Researchers have discovered one reason why broccoli and other green leafy vegetables are definitely good for you. Using mice, they discovered that a chemical found in these green vegetables – sulforaphane – could protect arteries from clogging, so reducing the chance of heart attacks.

Previous research has shown that certain areas of the arteries are more prone to the build up of fatty plaques. The mouse study showed that, in these areas, a protein called Nrf2 is inactive.

To read more on this story, please follow the link.

Stem cell link to prostate cancer

A new study identifies a stem cell that may cause some types of prostate cancer, at least in mice. Called CARNs (castrion-resistant Nkx2.1-expressing cells), they are responsible for creating luminal cells, which secrete chemicals into the prostate.

When they inactivated certain tumour suppressor genes in the CARN cells of mice, the team saw out-of-control growth of the luminal cells, which can lead to the formation of a tumour. The study also found that, surprisingly, the cells did not rely on male sex hormones such as androgens to thrive.

To read more on this story, please follow the link.

What happens to fat left over from a liposuction procedure? Brad Pitt might choose to turn it in to soap, but scientists at Stanford University have figured out a surprising alternative: stem cells. Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are highly sought after because of their ability to transform in to many other types of cells within the human body. Finding a reliable source for these stem cells has provided difficult but Michael Longaker, one of the paper’s authors, believes fat could be the perfect solution.

Longaker calls liposuction leftovers “liquid gold“, because certain cells within the fat can be readily converted to usable stem cells. What’s more, it can be done much quicker and easier than current methods. Most stem cells are derived from skin tissue, but this can take at least 4 weeks until the stem cells are ready for use. There is also a risk of cross-species contamination, because “feeder cells” taken from mice must often be used to help the human cells grow.

The new method, detailed online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, can start producing stem cells on the same day as the fat is extraced. What’s more, it doesn’t require the use of feeder cells to get going.

Liposuction is most often used as a form of cosmetic surgery, but this development could see us all undergoing a minor form of the treatment. Removing small amounts of fat from a patient’s own body would allow for the creation of stem cells used in their treatment. For example, a person with heart disease could have fat extracted and turned into heart cells, allowing doctors to test out drugs without putting the patient at risk.

Sun, N., Panetta, N., Gupta, D., Wilson, K., Lee, A., Jia, F., Hu, S., Cherry, A., Robbins, R., Longaker, M., & Wu, J. (2009). Feeder-free derivation of induced pluripotent stem cells from adult human adipose stem cells Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0908450106

The dissertation-ing indeed continues, bring on Friday is all I can say… but in the meantime i’m still writing for UAR. Highlights this week:

Leishmania parasites feed immune cells

Researchers using mice have shown how the leishmaniasis parasite, transmitted by sand flies, establishes infection. Leishmaniasis is a disfiguring and potentially fatal parasitic infection that affect some 350 million people worldwide.

Contrary to previous research, they found that it is not the sand flies’ saliva that helps the parasite establish an infection, but a secreted gel called PSG. It is produced by the Leishmania parasite, and forms a plug which blocks the gut. This forces the sand fly to regurgitate to dislodge the plug and feed properly, which simultaneously deposits the parasite and some of the gel into the human body.

To read further, please click here.

Diesel fumes grow new blood vessels?

New findings indicate that the link between diesel exhaust fumes and cancer lies in the ability of particles within the exhaust fumes to cause the growth of new blood vessels, which can aid tumour development.

The team reported a six-fold increase in the formation of new blood vessels in the implanted tissues and aortas of mice exposed to the diesel fumes. In the mice with reduced blood supply, they saw a four-fold increase in new vessels to the hind limbs. The formation of new blood vessels is strongly associated with tumor growth; tumours grow rapidly, consuming large quantities of oxygen and nutrients.

To read further, please click here.

Key protein in obesity related diseases

It is well known that obesity can lead to health problems such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and it is thought that this is due to low-grade inflammation.

Scientists believe they may have found the protein which causes this inflammation using mice. The protein, called angiopoietin-like protein 2 (Angptl2), is a fat-derived protein. The team showed that the levels of Angptl2 are raised in the fatty tissue of GM mice, especially in tissue with a low oxygen supply.

To read further, please click here.

Another week and another bunch of research headlines from Understanding Animal Research:

How do you mend a broken heart?

A team of scientists have developed a patch which could help the heart to heal after damage. Heart attacks often cause irreversible damage to the heart muscle, leaving survivors more prone to further attacks or heart failure.

In a recent study, scientists took immature heart cells from newborn rats, and placed them onto a biodegradable ’scaffold’. They then exposed the patch to chemicals which encouraged the cells to grow, before transplanting it into the abdomens of rats.

To read more about this story please click here.

Monkeys with two mums may eradicate mitochondrial disorders

Scientists have produced four infant monkeys using a technique which could stop women with genetic diseases passing them on to their children. Faulty DNA contained within cell structures called mitochondria was replaced by healthy mitcochondrial DNA (mDNA) from a donor egg, so genetic faults were not passed from mother to baby.

To read more about this story please click here.

Low-carb diets could be more damaging than you’d think

A team studying the effect of diet on the cardiovascular system in mice have shown that a diet low in carbohydrates could lead to artery damage.

Three groups of mice each received a different diet: a standard mouse type, a western diet (high in fat) and a low-carb, high-protein version. After 12 weeks, one sixth more of the mice eating the low-carb diet had developed atherosclerosis compared with the standard diet.

To read more about this story please click here.

This week’s updates from UAR headquarters:

New target for stopping colon cancer

A team of scientists studying mice have found a target that could lead to an effective way to kill colon cancer cells.

Past treatments for many types of cancer target the epidermal growth factor (EGFR). This belongs to a group of proteins that signal cells to reproduce; if the cells can no-longer reproduce, then the cancer cannot spread.

However, the drugs designed to target the receptor have shown very little effect against colon cancer,so the search is on for new targets. The new study identified the ERBB3 receptor (a close relation to EGFR) as a candidate.

To read the rest of this story please see the Understanding Animal Research site.

‘Magnetic’ stem cells target damaged blood vessels

Scientists have harnessed the power of magnetism to guide stem cells towards damaged tissue in rats. The team coated stem cells with iron nanoparticles.

This allowed them to be moved by an external magnet around the body, to the site of injury. It also allowed their path to be tracked using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanners.

They used endothelial progenitor stem cells, which circulate in the blood and are involved in the healing of blood vessels. They become endothelial cells, the cells that line the blood vessels.

To read the rest of this story please see the Understanding Animal Research site.

This weeks updates from UAR headquarters:

Buzz surrounds cancer treatment

A group of scientists has harnessed the power of bee venom and used it to kill tumour cells in mice. By arming small particles dubbed nanobees with the bee venom melittin, they successfully delivered the toxin directly to tumours.

To read the rest of this story please see the Understanding Animal Research site.

How infection can lead to psychiatric problems

Scientists using mice have discovered how early exposure to a common type of bacterium can lead to psychiatric disorders. PANDAS (Paediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infection not the furry black and white kind!) causes problems such as obsessive-compulsive behaviour, ticks and Tourette syndrome.

In this study researchers showed how a specific strain of streptococcus bacteria – GABHS – can cause PANDAS symptoms in mice.

To read the rest of this story please see the Understanding Animal Research site.

Delaying motor neuron disease

By blocking the production of a faulty protein in mice, researchers have delayed the onset of motor neurone disease, improved mobility, and extended life-span. Motor neurone diseases affect the cells that control movement.

To read the rest of this story please see the Understanding Animal Research site.

Are a generation of children growing up with text messaging at risk of turning their brains to mush? The Daily Mail seems to think so.

“Predictive text messaging changes the way children’s brains work and makes them more likely to make mistakes generally, a study has found.”

The study in question was recently published by the journal Bioelectromagnetics, and did indeed look at mobile phone use and cognitive function in children. What Michael Abramson and colleagues did not find, however, was a causal link, despite what the Mail might think. Remember folks, correlation does not imply causation.

Researchers tested the mental abilities of 317 Australian 12 and 13-year-olds, and recorded their mobile phone usage. Results show children who had more calls and text messages were less accurate in memory tests, but completed them faster. The paper goes on to suggest that text messaging could be responsible, as predictive text “train[s] the user to favour speed over accuracy.” A quote from Abramson in the Mail article backs this up:

“We suspect that using mobile phones a lot, particularly tools like predictive text, is behind this.

“Their brains are still developing so if there are effects then potentially they could impact down the line, especially given that the exposure is now almost universal.

“The use of mobile phones is changing the way children learn and pushing them to become more impulsive in the way they behave.”

In a word: bollocks. The data gathered simply does not back this up. It may be completely true, but it’s not a statement that can be drawn from the evidence available in his paper. Makes a nice sound bite, though.

This line of argument is further undermined because the same correlation was seen with phone calls, not just texts, implying the underlying mechanism might be the same. Perhaps children who use their phones more often are just naturally more easily distracted, thus pay less attention? There is no way to tell from this study.

That doesn’t stop Baroness Susan “Facebook makes you fat” Greenfield weighing in, with her usual attacks on anything invented in the past couple of decades. In addition to suggesting “Generation Text” will cause the downfall of humanity, she has a go at Twitter:

When I was a child, if I wanted to tell someone about my day, I spoke to them face-to-face, I wrote them a letter or I walked to the phone box down the road.

Communication was far from instant and, although we were not aware of it at the time, it influenced what information we deemed worthwhile sharing.

Today, we can ‘tweet’ to the universe such inanities as: ‘I’ve just put my socks on.’ A friend can respond – ‘Congratulations!’ – within seconds.

A Twitter search for “I’ve just put my socks on” does admittedly turn up a single result, but this is just one of the thousands of message sent every day. Despite this common criticism of banality, I don’t think most people actually use Twitter in this way. No one cares what you had for breakfast, so tweeting about it probably results in a quick exodus of followers. Of course, I have no evidence to confirm this other than my own anecdotal experience, but at least I admit as much!

I agree with Greenfield that new technologies must be evaluated for potential harm. Where we differ is my requirement for causal links and solid evidence, rather than conclusions pulled out of thin air.

Glaucoma reversed in rats and humans

Researchers have reversed the symptoms of glaucoma in rats using medicated eye drops. Further tests on a small number of human patients also showed promising results. Glaucoma is caused by increased intraocular pressure (pressure inside the eye). This gradually causes damage to the optic nerve, which eventually leads to blindness. Researchers used rats suffering from glaucoma to test eye drops containing nerve growth factor (NGF).

To read the rest of this story please visit the Understanding Animal Research website.

Rodent teeth grown from stem cells

Mice have grown new teeth from stem cells implanted into the jawbone. Stem cell technology has been used before to produce tissues, but in a limited way. This is the first time a study has shown that a few cells can go on to produce a fully functioning organ. The team began by removing the upper molars from five-week-old mice. They developed a seed-like bioengineered tooth tissue containing stem cells and the genetic instructions necessary to form a tooth, and transplanted the tissue into the jawbones of mice. The implanted cells developed into fully formed teeth with an identical structure to normal teeth.

To read the rest of this story please visit the Understanding Animal Research website.

Heart stimulated to heal itself

Scientists have shown for the first time that it is possible to stimulate the heart to heal itself without the use of stem cell technology. Heart muscle cells are undifferentiated in a fetus, so are able to multiply and grow to create new heart muscle tissue. However, as the fetus develops, these cells become differentiated and, it was previously thought, no longer produce new tissue. This has consequences in adults when damage occurs to the muscle, for example in heart attacks and in congenital heart defects.

To read the rest of this story please visit the Understanding Animal Research website.

A week on the Guardian’s Technology desk means I haven’t been keeping up with all the science news as much as I normally would. Don’t worry though, I’ve still got some good stuff in this week’s roundup.

Run Forrest.exe, Run!

Toyota have created a robot that can run. Not an easy task, as the machine must keep its balance whilst moving at fast speed, but the result looks promising:

Will we eventually have millions of these little guys running about the place, I wonder?

LaTeX tech

Bit of a geeky one this. LaTeX is a language used by scientists and other people to create documents containing lots of equations. I’ve used it in the past, and whilst it produces nice results, it can be tricky to use because of all the commands you have to learn. Remembering the codes for mathematical symbols can be especially difficult. Detexify allows you to draw the symbol you want with your mouse, and it will give you the code. Even if you have no use for LaTeX, it’s fun to have a play and watch the symbol recognition in action. Try drawing a smiley face!

Kill or cure?

Kill or cure? is a website that seeks to “make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it.” Where else can you learn that ketchup prevents cancer, but toothpaste causes it?

Kids vs climate change, round 2

A while back Sam wrote a post laying out the environmental reasons not to have children. It inspired quite a debate between some commenters, and now his position has been backed up by new research. Statisticians at Oregon State University found that in the US, having one less child will have an almost 20 times larger impact on the environment than things like changing the car you drive, or recycling.

Researchers have used mice to pinpoint what goes wrong in aneuploidy. Aneuploidy describes genetic disorders affecting chromosomes, usually resulting in an extra chromosome. Such disorders include Down syndrome and Edwards syndrome, and often cause pregnancy loss.

The researchers were looking at mutations of a particular gene in mice, to determine its role in colon cancer development. However, during the study they noticed that the mice carrying one copy of a mutation in the Bub1 gene had fewer offspring.

Further studies found that this effect was confined to female mice. If a mother’s egg had a mutation in one of the copies of Bub1 then she was more likely to have fewer offspring that survived until birth. They also found that the mutation was more harmful the older the mice were, which is the same for aneuploidy in humans.

Bub-1 works as a checkpoint in cell division, controlling the spindles which pull the chromosomes apart during cell division. It is likely that the mutation disrupts this process, resulting in extra chromosomes in the egg cells. Further tests will study the mutation in more detail to see if this is the case, and whether the mutation is present in humans.

For more information on animal testing, and this story, see the Understanding Animal Research site.

Using mice, scientists have pinpointed the molecule which is responsible for making allergic reactions more severe.

The team studied patients who had experienced anaphylaxis (a severe allergic reaction) during surgery. They found that these patients had very high levels of the hormone IL-33. Further studies using mice showed that this hormone significantly increases inflammation.

Inflammation is triggered during anaphylactic shock. This reaction is often so severe that constricts the airway, leading to breathing difficulties and even death. By blocking the IL-33 hormone in mice the researchers were able to reduce the inflammation to non threatening levels.

The next stage is to study the hormone in more detail to better understand why it causes such severe inflammation. In the future, IL-33 inhibitors could change the way we treat anaphylaxis and could save many lives.

For more information on animal testing, and this story, see the Understanding Animal Research site.

Hong Kong was badly shaken by the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) in 2003. 1,755 people were infected in the city, and 299 died.

The effect that Sars had on public attitudes to hygiene was profound. The restaurant business took months to recover as customers opted to stay at home. When they did return they found that restaurants had begun providing designated serving chopsticks, often a different colour to the others, so that people did not contaminate communal dishes with chopsticks that had been in their mouths.

It became common to see signs in lifts proclaiming that they were disinfected every hour. To be on the safe side, many citizens started pressing buttons with their keys.

Thermal imaging was introduced for monitoring incoming passengers at the international airport, one of the world’s busiest. It’s not uncommon to see people wearing surgical masks, even when the world isn’t gripped by a pandemic.

It is this heightened awareness of basic hygiene in the city that doctors are crediting with the remarkable finding that swine flu is spreading in Hong Kong at half the global rate. The secondary attack rate, a measure of the frequency of new cases of a disease among the contacts of known cases, is estimated at around 29 per cent globally (compared with 5-15 per cent for seasonal flu). According to a study by the University of Hong Kong, the secondary attack rate there is just 14 per cent. This despite the fact that Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

Hong Kong’s example shows the importance of providing good information on simple measures that can be taken to curb the spread of swine flu. Of course we don’t want to panic anyone unduly. But warning the public of the dangers and informing people about how to minimise their risk of catching flu can make a real difference. Articles like Simon Jenkins’s in the Guardian yesterday are particularly unhelpful. A study published in the BMJ found that believing the outbreak had been exaggerated was associated with a lower likelihood of making the recommended changes in behaviour. Interestingly, people from ethnic minority groups were much more likely to follow advice about how to avoid swine flu.

“Many people might indeed die of flu,” Jenkins writes, “but they might also die of a nuclear attack, an asteroid strike or a dozen other diseases and accidents now receiving lower priority.” Yes, what a scandal it is that resources are being diverted from the NHS Asteroid Strike Service to fight a highly infectious and potentially lethal disease. True, the vast majority of swine flu cases will get better in a few days. But for a virus so infectious, the mortality rate doesn’t have to be high to mean many deaths and an overwhelmed health service. Unqualified columnists should refrain from disputing professional medical advice: misinformation about health can kill.

This week has seen a once in a lifetime event. As the spectacle unfolded those who were lucky enough to witness it were turning to those around them whispering of how, in years to come, they would tell the story that they were here. As this epic event reached its climax the spectators spontaneously rose in religious fervour and burst into rapturous applause.

I am not, however, talking about the Moon gliding across the Sun and entrenching those huddled on the ancient banks of the Ganges into more than 6 minutes of mid-day darkness. Rather I refer to the unforgettable events that unfolded on Monday morning in North West London.

After four days of epic Ashes cricket, England had negotiated themselves into a position to achieve the unthinkable; victory over that most ultimate of enemies, at the home of cricket, for the first time in 75 years. However, a massive stand between two typically resilient Aussie batsmen on Sunday night had given the visitors the faintest sniff of victory and seriously threatened the finger nails of England supporters.

In times of need there was nothing else for it; give Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff the ball. No matter that his knee is as crocked as Gordon Brown’s smile and about as stable as the flagging economies of the world, for this was Freddie’s hour. Retiring at the end of this series due to the knee problems that have plagued him throughout his career, he stood defiant against the Aussie onslaught, determined to lay into them one last time.

From the outset of that final morning, he pounded down the hallowed turf of Lord’s, slamming his arthritic knee into the ground and hurling that red cherry at 90mph straight at the Aussie batsmen. During an unforgettable 10 over spell, he broke a bat, hit Clarke on the helmet, and provided us with that most joyous of sights, scattered Aussie stumps. By the end of the game he had achieved his first (and sadly last) 5 wicket haul at Lord’s, becoming only the 6th player in over 125 years to have achieved that feat as well as notching up a hundred runs on the ground.

Now that you have indulged my boyish excitement, for there is nothing I enjoy more than watching the Aussie’s squirm, it’s about time I brought in the science. Despite the sheer defiant grit and determination of a cocky Lancashire lad, he had a little help from a very unlikely source; the intestines of horses.

After years of serving England and Lancashire his right knee might as well belong to an octogenarian. In order to play he has to have constant injections in the joint to reduce the inflammation that bowling so intensely summons. The England medical team inject him with Ostenil, which is effectively a lubricating liquid, made by purifying bacteria that is originally found in horse entrails.

Ostenil is a safer alternative to steroids, which normally pose a risk of more permanent damage to the muscles and ligaments they are trying to protect. Ostenil is basically a form of Hyaluronic Acid, you know that stuff beauty adverts are always trying to palm off on us. However, scientists make this stuff in the lab, based on the original bacteria from horse gut. Results of studies show that Ostenil is just as effective as steroids and pain levels are kept low for two days after the jab; perfect for Freddie to skittle the Aussies and put England into a 1-0 lead in the Ashes.

If England win the series and that little urn returns to English hands, no doubt it will be down to King Freddie, his buggered knee, and those horse gut injections that allow him his final swansong as a Test cricketer.

Travelating in slow motion

The moving walkways used in airports actually slow you down, according to scientists in America. Research has found that people reduce their speed when stepping on to a travelator, making the human conveyor belts only marginally faster than walking. This is only true on an empty walkway however, as any congestion will drop your speed to less than a normal walking pace.

Manoj Srinivasan of Princeton University created a mathematical model to investigate the problem. Publishing in the journal Chaos, he found that the conflict between what your eyes see and your legs feel is responsible for the reduction in speed.

Visual cues tell the brain you are travelling faster than your legs are walking, so in order to conserve energy you slow down. This means that using an empty travelator will only save you about 11 seconds for every 100-metre stretch, compared to walking on regular ground.

But as any regular fliers know, airport travelators are rarely empty. Another study by Seth Young of Ohio State University found that delays due to other travellers getting in the way occur so often that you are better off avoiding the walkway all together. “Moving walkways are the only form of transportation that actually slow people down,” said Young, speaking to New Scientist.

Wii-ly good for you

Active video games like Wii Sports can be a good alternative to moderate exercise for children, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics.

While not a replacement for more intensive sporting activities, scientists at the University of Oklahoma found they were comparably to a moderate walk. Children aged 10-13 were monitored as they watched television, played the Wii and walked on a treadmill. Both gaming and walking increased the number of calories burned by two to three times. As such, the researchers suggest encouraging kids to play active games instead of more passive ones.

Facebook for scientists

UK researchers have created myExperiment, a social networking site for scientists. Intended to challenge traditional models of academic publishing, it allows scientists to share “Research Objects”.

Rather than just publishing a paper, myExperiment lets users share data, files, and other information required to understand and reuse research. The site also allows the usual social networking interactions, such as messaging and groups.

How can you tell that a cell is a stem cell? It’s really quite difficult. You can only really know by seeing whether they can regenerate tissue after being implanted into another animal. Either that or by showing that a single cell in culture can generate a line of genetically identical cells that then develop into a range of mature cell types.

In practice, scientists tend to infer that a cell is a stem cell if it tests positive for particular protein markers that are thought to be indicative of a specific type of cell. But according to new research, some of these tests are not very reliable.

Endothelial progenitor cells, or EPCs for short, are a type of stem cell that gives rise to the endothelial cells that line the walls of our blood vessels. They originate in the bone marrow and circulate in the bloodstream. Many scientists hope that EPCs can be used in new therapies to repair heart tissue, and they have already been used in clinical trials, but with limited success. A paper published in the journal Blood this week suggested that this could be because the EPCs they used were not EPCs at all.

Marianna Prokopi and colleagues at the British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence at King’s College London discovered that the normal methods used to isolate EPCs in fact produce samples that are contaminated with platelets, a constituent of the blood. This is a problem because the protein markers used to identify EPCs are abundant in platelets. Platelets themselves are pretty difficult to confuse with other types of cell since they’re small and don’t have a nucleus. But it seems that proteins can be transferred from platelets into other cells.

Platelets readily disintegrate into “microparticles”, which get swallowed up by the bone marrow mononuclear cells that researchers are hoping to grow into EPCs. Thus the mononuclear cells acquire proteins from the platelets that make them look like EPCs.

Team leader Dr Manuel Mayr said: “Our results suggest that cells used in some clinical trials may have been masquerading as EPCs, but were actually a different type of cell. We need to develop new ways of purifying EPCs and new markers to identify them that are unique to these cells. This will help us understand the properties of the cells themselves and whether EPCs are actually able to contribute to the repair of heart tissue before they are tested in trials on people. Otherwise, we cannot be certain whether potential benefits or side effects are due to stem cells or contaminating platelets.”

Scientists have produced an artificial hormone that causes rapid weight loss in mice. Previous studies have suggested that single treatments for obesity cannot reduce weight by more than 5-10%. While surgery remains the closest thing we have to a cure, this is very invasive. So many studies are looking at ways of using hormones to reduce weight.

Researchers combined the sequences of two hormones (glucagon and glucagon-like peptide-1) to produce a synthetic molecule that activates multiple receptors. The two hormones are similar in structure, but have different functions. Their potential is the subject of current obesity research after scientists showed they can increase the use of calories by the body.

After just a week on the new hormone, the mice lost a quarter of their weight and their fat mass reduced by over a third. Follow-up tests after a month showed even greater loss – reductions of nearly a third and over two thirds respectively.

The technique of activating multiple receptors in a single treatment could prove to be a more potent treatment, opening up a whole new way of thinking about the way we treat of obesity.

For more information on animal research and this story, please see the Understanding Animal Research site.

Over the next few weeks I will be doing some work at the Guardian, mostly on their science blog. Whilst I hope to still have some original Just A Theory content, I’ll also be linking to my posts over there. Here is the first, on yet another study into calorie restriction as a means of holding back the years:

The idea that severely reducing your calorie intake will help you live longer may not be as straightforward as reports last week suggested. Eating a radically restricted diet may weaken the immune system and actually shorten life.

While eating less has been shown to slow the ageing process in a variety of animals, these tests are normally conducted in artificial conditions with little or no exposure to potentially life-shortening diseases. Hence the apparent contradiction.

Research into slowing the ageing process through dieting began as early as 1934 when researchers at Cornell University discovered that rats given a restricted diet could live nearly twice as long as normal. Calorie restriction as a route to longer life has now been confirmed in fruit flies, roundworms, and most recently monkeys, but all of these studies kept the animals in unnaturally clean surroundings.

Read the rest at the Guardian.

Scientists at Newcastle University claim to have created human sperm from embryonic stem cells for the first time. Professor Karim Nayernia who led the team says their research could be used to study male infertility, but the tabloids drew slightly different conclusions.

‘Ethical storm flares as British scientists create artificial sperm from human stem cells‘ and ‘Are we on the brink of a society without any need for men?‘ – Daily Mail

‘The end of men? Scientists create sperm in the lab out of stem cells‘ – The Mirror

‘Chaps doomed as lab grows sperm‘ – The Sun

I can’t access the paper thus only have the press release to go on, but even without an in-depth look at the science I can safely say that these headlines are a bit alarmist.

Theoretically, these artificial sperm could be used to fertilise an egg and produce a viable embryo, though such a procedure is currently banned in the UK by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008. Laws do change however, and Professor Nayernia and his team have already used the technique to impregnate mice, though the resulting offspring died soon after birth due to abnormalities.

It’s still a huge leap to go from creating sperm to eliminating men all together. For one thing, surely half of all babies born through this method would be male? Even if this weren’t the case, the researchers were not able to produce viable sperm from female stem cells. It seems that men will need to stick around, if only for their Y chromosome.

Ultimately I think that the furthest this research will go is to generate artificial sperm from the stem cells of men who can’t produce their own. We’re not even close to that yet though, and many media reports mention rival scientists questioning whether the team at Newcastle have even created sperm at all. Dr Allan Pacey of the University of Sheffield and Secretary of the British Fertility Society told the Guardian:

“As a sperm biologist of 20 years’ experience, I am unconvinced from the data presented in this paper that the cells … produced by Professor Nayernia’s group can be accurately called ’spermatozoa’”

Whilst it is important that we have a debate about the implications of this research and create legislation reflecting the realities of science, I don’t think these headlines can be taken seriously. A dose of common sense will tell you that the majority of couples will choose to conceive in the same way as they have always done, men included, and this new technique will just be another addition to the IVF toolkit.

With all the World Conference of Science Journalists fun, there’s obviously been a lot of news this week that I’ve had to ignore. Rather than letting it slip away without comment, I thought I’d once again abuse the Weekly Roundup category for the next few days. A bit longer than my usual Roundup format today, because I’m basically cramming two blog posts in to one:

Electro-hypersensitivity: because when you make up a medical condition, it becomes real

Maybe it’s just because I own more electronic doo-dads than anyone really needs, but when ever I see people complaining that electricity/wifi makes them ill, I get annoyed. The Daily Mail published just such an account, from Sarah Dacre, who suffered from unexplained headaches and digestive problems for seven years.

Her medical problems increased over the years, and it wasn’t until 2006 when she was diagnosed with electro-hypersensitivity (EHS) by a “specialist [she] found on the internet” that she was able to over them. She moved to a country house in Kent, and was miraculously cured.

It’s a good thing that, unlike the rest of the country, Kent isn’t bathed in radio waves. And doesn’t have mobile phone masts. Or electricity. Hmm.

There is no scientific evidence to show the existence of EHS. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. A meta-analysis of studies looking at the phenomenon found that those who claimed to suffer from the condition could not tell if the electromagnetic field they were being subjected to was real or not. I don’t know what caused Sarah Dacre’s medical problems, but this ain’t it.

Vegetarianism as a way of avoiding cancer? I’d rather eat a burger

Vegetarians ‘avoid more cancers’ says the BBC headline. A study published in the British Journal of Cancer looked at cancer rates in over 60,000 Brits, and found that those who were strictly veggie or only ate fish were at a much reduced relative risk of developing cancer.

Ah, cancer and relative risk – we’ve been here before. I’m not going to do a full look at the stats, but let’s take bladder cancer as an example. The research showed that compared to meat eaters, vegetarians have a relative risk of 0.47 for developing bladder cancer. In other words, cutting out meat more than halves your chance of developing the disease.

Halves it from what though? As always, I refer you to the excellent Cancer Research UK for some numbers. For every 100,000 people in the UK, each year 16.9 will develop bladder cancer. That means roughly 10,000 people each year over the entire population. If we all stopped eating meat – and only if we all did – around 5,000 a year would avoid the disease.

Maybe I’m just too attached to eating meat, but changing the eating habits of an entire country in order to effect such a small change doesn’t really seem worth it. Though, us all cutting out meat would effect other cancer rates as well, so it’s not just 5,000 who are being spared. Should we change our diet of the back of this study then? Lead author Professor Tim Key doesn’t think so:

“At the moment these findings are not strong enough to ask for particularly large changes in the diets of people following an average balanced diet.”

Now, don’t make the mistake of thinking I just ignore all health advice. Some risk factors are worth changing your habits for. Every year, around 35,000 people die as a result of lung cancer. Almost 90% of these are a result of smoking. Saving 31,500 lives a year by banning smoking seems a pretty obvious thing to do.

Smoking is also the major preventable risk factor for bladder cancer, which leads to about 5,000 deaths a year. Yes, roughly half of these could potentially be avoided if we all went veggie, but eradicating smoking seems like a much more effective, less costly and less disruptive way to cut cancer rates.

To look at it another way, you don’t see anyone suggesting we ban cars, which would save around 3,000 lives a year. It’s a fair comparison I think, since given the choice between a life of salads and cars, or sausages and trains, I know which I’d go for!

Last week I had a cold. It was one of those ones you get after you haven’t slept properly for a few nights (and in my case, because I’d been pushing myself to work hard for once).  I felt terrible, but being British, a man, and generally lazy I made no effort to go to the doctor. And, of course, I had no Lemsips, Beechams or any kind of medicine at all in my flat.

Why am I telling you this? Well, it’s because my Chinese flatmate Will gave me some medicine. When he first offered me some I half expected a herbal remedy. But no, he produced a packet of tablets which consisted of two types: white tablets for the day time and black tablets for the night time.

I’m the kind of person who always reads the label on medicines. Not because I understand the technical jargon you find on them, I just find it reassuring to pretend I’m capable of deciding what the tablets might do to me. In this case though my knowledge of the Chinese language (i.e. none) prevented me from undergoing this ritual.

As a result I was apprehensive about taking the tablets. Which I found worrying in itself, because I completely trust my flatmate and know he wouldn’t give me anything dangerous. So why was I afraid, and what was I even afraid of? What’s more, I was more apprehensive about taking the black tablets than the white tablets. I thinks it’s probably because I’ve never taken (or even seen) a black tablet before.

In the end I just took both the tablets anyway, after realising that a) I was being irrational, and b) I felt so crappy that I was prepared to try anything. But because I couldn’t read the ingredients I wasn’t really convinced they would work, and instead thought ‘at the very least the placebo effect might kick in and make me feel better.’

When I told Colin this story we both got a bit unsure of whether the placebo effect can take place if you’ve already considered that the thing you are taking might work as a placebo. I’ve had a similar thought before about headache tablets. If I have a headache and take two headache tablets I always start to feel better about 20 minutes later (the only exception being when I’m hung-over).  But, I always ponder, is this simply because I assume they will work, stop worrying about my headache and get on with things. Or is it because the paracetemol, caffeine and so on in headache tablets actually works on me. I imagine it’s mainly the latter, but live in fear that if I ever lose my confidence in headache tablets that they will no longer work on me.

In the case of the Chinese flu tablets, I did feel better the next day. It might be because of the stuff in them, or it might be because of some placebo effect. Or it might be that I had a good nights sleep for once. But I still decided to not take any more, and left it up to time and nature to get me better.

So what is the point of this rambling parable? Well, I feel like I learned a few things. First, being able to read labels makes me feel much happier about taking medicine. Second, black tablets are slightly intimidating. Third,I don’t care if its a placebo effect thats getting me better as long as I feel better. Finally, I should buy medicine before I get sick.

Blocking the action of a gene called Sirtuin-1 reduced the symptoms of type 2 diabetes in rats, scientists have found.

People with Type 2 diabetes suffer from high blood glucose concentrations due to insulin resistance and increased glucose production. To create a similar condition in rats, the researchers put a group of rats on a four-week diet of high-fat, fructose-rich meals.

Sirtuin-1 is a gene responsible for regulating glucose production in the liver. The researchers therefore then blocked Sirtuin-1 in the ‘diabetic’ rats by injecting them with a fragment of genetic information. This fragment – called an antisense oligonucleotide – interrupts and blocks gene expression and can be targeted to specific genes.

After Sirtuin-1 inhibition, the rats were more sensitive and responsive to insulin. The rate of glucose production fell back to normal levels, resulting in a decrease in the blood plasma. Thus the scientists believe the Sirtuin-1 gene is a cause of type 2 diabetes symptoms.

The results of this study are consistent with a recent mouse study which showed that decreased expression of Sirtuin-1 led to better insulin sensitivity. The next step is to develop inhibitors targeted to Sirtuin-1 in the liver, these will be tested in rats before moving on to primates and human clinical trials if successful.

For more information on animal research and this story, please see the Understanding Animal Research site.

Using fish, scientists have discovered a signalling pathway that could be used to treat skin cancers (melanomas). The pathway, PI3K (phosphoinositide 3-kinase) had a major effect on the progression of cancerous melanomas in zebrafish. Zebrafish are ideal for studying skin cancer as the melanomas are similar to those seen in humans, and the fish themselves are easy to observe because of their light-coloured, almost transparent skin.

Signalling pathways regulate cell division, migration and death. The pathways form a complex network to relay these various commands to cells. But when the signalling molecules mutate, the result is often excess cell division which can lead to cancer.

The team looked at two major pathways called Ras and PI3K. They found fish often developed melanomas which progressed rapidly if molecules in these pathways were mutated. The discovery that PI3K was directly involved indicates that it could be a suitable target for melanoma therapy.

The mutant zebrafish also passed on the mutations to their offspring. In this they were strikingly similar to the human inherited syndrome FAMM (familial atypical mole and melanoma).

This study highlights a potential target for therapy, but also gives scientists new insights into the mechanisms of melanomas, revealing other possible targets. But further research into these models will be needed so scientists can see whether they’re as promising as this initial study indicates.

For more information on animal research and this story, please see the Understanding Animal Research site.

Sun in common-sense shocker

Sometimes I worry about being too negative on Just A Theory. With all the examples of media failings I write about, it’s easy to let the good ones slip past unnoticed. As such, I thought I’d congratulate The Sun’s Dr Keith for his recent article on misused medical terms. He informs us that we probably don’t have the flu (it’s a cold), there is no such thing as a nervous breakdown, and most of us are rarely “shocked”, in a medical sense.

New hope for Copenhagen

Later this year thousands of people will descend on Copenhagen to try and come up with a new global agreement on climate change. The United Nations, in conjunction with the International Advertising Association, have launched a campaign to re-brand the conference as Hopenhagen. The idea is to move from “coping” with climate change to a “hope” that action can be taken. A silly bit of marketing? Perhaps. But if it gets people talking, it’s probably a good idea.

Check this out. It’s awesome

“But what is it?” I hear you cry. Created by Japanese artist Sachiko Kodama, the strange substance in this art work is a ferrofluid. These odd liquids combine tiny magnetic particles with water or oil, and a surfactant, which prevents the particles sticking together. Ferrofluids react in the presence of a magnetic field, creating the wonderful structures in the video above.

Whilst they do have their practical uses, like forming a liquid seal in computer hard drives or marking areas of the body in an MRI scan, I think you’ll agree that just looking cool is good enough.

It’s quite likely that a number of people reading this went out for a drink last night. After all, it was Friday and that’s what people do. I went to a rather enjoyable end-of-term party, and of course had a few beers. Alcohol consumption is such a normal component of our society that when you’re knocking a few back it’s difficult to remember it can actually be very harmful.

A series of papers published in The Lancet this week brings the message home. The first reports that 3.8%, or roughly one in 25, of all deaths worldwide are caused in some way by alcohol. This is about half the number caused by tobacco. Alcohol also contributes to 5% of years spent with disease or disability. Because of this, the authors recommend that the consumption of alcohol for certain health benefits should not be encouraged, as the harm far outweighs the gain.

These figures hide the details however. Due to gender differences in alcohol consumption, one in 16 men die from alcohol related causes, compared to just one in 90 women. This is changing as the number of women drinking increase.

Although these statistics are worldwide, alcohol consumption is not the same across the globe. The average adult drinks around 12 units per week, but in Europe this nearly doubles to around 23 units per week. The UK Government recommend a maximum of 14 units for women and 21 for men per week.

Whilst consumption may be high for Europe, it is in Russia where alcohol use takes the worst toll. A study of over 48,000 Russian deaths found that alcohol was responsible for more than half in those aged 15 to 54. Perhaps unsurprising, in a nation where some industrial workers drink one bottle of vodka per day.

It’s not just the health costs of alcohol that are high. In a paper calling for action on alcohol, the authors estimate that high- and middle-income countries spend more than 1% of GDP on economic costs related to alcohol. You may remember 1% of global GDP as the figure proposed by the Stern report for tackling climate change.

In the same paper, the authors question why alcohol is not higher on the global health agenda compared to tobacco and illegal drugs, considering the harm it can cause. They blame well-organised alcohol lobbyists for blocking action to curb consumption, saying that this must be combated.

This series makes for difficult reading. As a non-smoker, I celebrated when the UK ban came in and allowed me to go to the pub without smelling like a chimney. Discussions of implementing a minimum cost for alcohol however, as these reports suggest, set me protesting. Perhaps more expensive alcohol would be small price to pay however, considering the health benefits to be gained.

Rehm, J., Mathers, C., Popova, S., Thavorncharoensap, M., Teerawattananon, Y., & Patra, J. (2009). Global burden of disease and injury and economic cost attributable to alcohol use and alcohol-use disorders The Lancet, 373 (9682), 2223-2233 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)60746-7

Zaridze, D., Brennan, P., Boreham, J., Boroda, A., Karpov, R., Lazarev, A., Konobeevskaya, I., Igitov, V., Terechova, T., & Boffetta, P. (2009). Alcohol and cause-specific mortality in Russia: a retrospective case–control study of 48 557 adult deaths The Lancet, 373 (9682), 2201-2214 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61034-5

Casswell, S., & Thamarangsi, T. (2009). Reducing harm from alcohol: call to action The Lancet, 373 (9682), 2247-2257 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)60745-5

A Canadian study published in the journal Obesity has found that overweight people are 17% more likely to live longer than those of normal weight. In response, the Daily Mail instructed their readers to fatten up, but I would advise against it.

The study looked at data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey, which monitors the health of participants every two years. Using over 11,000 patient records, the researchers were able to track changes in Body Mass Index (BMI) and their relationship with mortality.

BMI is a commonly-used statistic for assessing a person’s body weight. It is calculated by a formula incorporating both height and weight. Normal BMI is considered to be between 18.5 and 25, whilst 25 to 30 is overweight. Outside of this range are underweight and obese.

Unsurprisingly being underweight or obese was found to be bad news when it comes to living longer, although for younger participants aged 25-59 being underweight was not a concern. Whilst we might expect these results, the conclusion that being in the overweight category gives you a slight lifespan advantage requires deeper investigation.

The problem could lie with the way BMI is measured. For the average person BMI is a useful indicator of healthy body weight, but because it doesn’t actually measure total body fat it can be problematic. For particularly athletic or muscular people the formula doesn’t work, because muscle weighs more than fat. Thus, those in the overweight category could actually be fit and healthy with large amounts of muscle tissue – exactly the kind of people we would expect to live longer.

The authors of the study caution against inferring causality as the Daily Mail has done. Getting fatter won’t necessarily help you live longer, and as the researchers point out there is a difference between a long life and a healthy one. Being overweight has been clearly linked with heart disease and diabetes amongst other conditions, so anyone following the Mail’s advice would be putting themselves at risk of developing these afflictions.

There is also the problem of continuous weight gain. Once you start putting it on, it can be hard to stop. The Healthy Survey data shows that a quarter of Canadians who were overweight in 1994/5 had become obese by 2002/3, and obesity will certainly up your chances of an early death.

Even the Mail must realise this, but I guess the sub-editor who wrote the headline didn’t read to the bottom of the article. They report the words of Dr David Haslam, chairman of the National Obesity Forum: “This study shouldn’t be used as an excuse to put on weight.”

Orpana, H., Berthelot, J., Kaplan, M., Feeny, D., McFarland, B., & Ross, N. (2009). BMI and Mortality: Results From a National Longitudinal Study of Canadian Adults Obesity DOI: 10.1038/oby.2009.191

Training to be a doctor is difficult, and not just for the medical students. For prospective physicians to have real life experience they must examine real patients, but this can be awkward for more intimate procedures such as breast exams.

Up until now the solution has been for students to practice on lifeless prosthetics, but a new initiative by the University of Florida, along with three other universities, uses a combination of prosthetics and computer technology to better simulate the experience.

A mannequin allows students to conduct the physical exam, whilst a computer representation of the patient, named Amanda Jones, responds on the screen above. This “mixed reality human” lets medical students converse with their virtual patient whilst conducting an exam.

A mixed reality breast exam in progress.

Students can talk to Amanda in realtime thanks to computer speech and voice recognition software. This allows them to discover her medical history and respond to questions or concerns during the exam.

Feedback is also provided by sensors within the prosthetic breast that send data to the computer simulation, providing a colour representation of the pressure students are applying.

Different situations can be programmed in to the system, such as whether a breast abnormality is present or not, and dialogue lines can also be changed to prevent an unscripted experience. Benjamin Lok, an assistant professor of computer and information sciences and engineering at the University of Florida, says this communication practice is key.

“Studies have shown that communication skills are actually a better predictor of outcome than medical skills,” Lok said. With the virtual patient, “all of a sudden, students have to not only practice their technique, but they also have to work on their empathy.”

Although the mixed reality system is not intended to replace real exams, it does help students get more experience when volunteers are scarce. Thanks to the success of the breast exam system, researchers are now looking in to simulation other intimate procedures. Lok and team are now building a virtual prostrate exam for students to practice on.

Scientists using mice have developed a new way to deliver gene therapies. By using hollow particles to deliver a gene into cells, they successfully reversed haemophilia symptoms.

Gene therapy can be used to treat diseases caused by a mutated or missing gene. The technique involves delivering a correct copy of the gene. However, current methods haven’t worked too well in patients;often the gene binds at the wrong place in the DNA or doesn’t integrate itself into the cell. The new technique using very small nanoparticles to deliver the genes aimed to overcome these problems. The team also used a genetic element known as Sleeping Beauty to help integrate the genes into the cells’ DNA.

Haemophilia is a blood disorder caused by a lack of a protein called Factor VIII (FVIII). FVIII helps blood clot after injury; so lack of the protein means blood cannot clot effectively. The team loaded the nanoparticles with the gene that produces the FVIII protein (along with the Sleeping Beauty element), and covered the particle with chemicals to seek out and selectively bind to specialised liver cells. They then injected the particles into mice and monitored the effect on blood clotting time and levels of the FVIII protein.

At five and 50 weeks the clotting times of the treated mice were about the same as in normal mice, and much longer than in the untreated group. At 50 weeks the levels of Factor VIII in the blood of mice given the nanoparticles were also the same as in normal mice.

Using nanoparticles with the Sleeping Beauty genetic element seems to work well, and could represent a viable way to deliver gene therapies for various diseases.

More information is available on the Understanding Animal Research website.

Researchers have created a GM mouse that develops Parkinson’s disease. This mouse will allow them to study progression of the disease and test new treatments without extensive use of monkeys.

Parkinson’s disease is caused by a mutation on chromosome 12. There are a number of different mutations known to cause the disease, however the team looked at just one – LRRK2. Because the genes responsible for causing Parkinson’s are very long, traditional genetic techniques are unsuitable. So the researchers used a technique called BAC (bacterial artificial chromosome) which uses sections of bacterial DNA to introduce the gene into the mouse DNA.

The mice produced using this technique showed all the signs of Parkinson’s seen in humans. This includes slowed movement and brain cell degeneration. At 10-12 months the transgenic mice were largely immobile with severe defects in their muscle function. However, treatment with levodopa (used to treat Parkinson’s in humans) reversed these defects.

This suggests that LRRK2 is being expressed in the mice in the same way as in humans, so the mice offer the first model of Parkinson’s disease based on a known genetic mutation, replicating features of the human disease.

This is interesting research showing just how important our ability to genetically modify organisms can be. The method of using BAC was actually nicked from the Human Genome project where it was used to determine the sequencing of genes – this is the first time it has been used in this context.

If further tests show the model to be as useful as this study suggests, it could lead to significant improvements in our understanding of Parkinson’s disease. Scientists will then be able to think of more tailor made treatments for patients.

More information is available on the Understanding Animal Research website.

New Scientist this week reported the findings of an Australian study, which shows that the figure most men find attractive corresponds to the average UK size 14.

Looking at outline sketches of  different female torsos,  a 100 students from New South Wales were asked which they were most attracted to. Their preference for the fuller figure surprised researchers. Previous research  showed  that a 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio is most attractive irrespective of the woman’s size.

This is brilliant. I can eat as many ice creams as I like this summer, and I will only become more rather than less attractive. My stomach flab will start to roll; my thighs will wobble in places where they don’t normally have any jelly. But, apparently, none of that will matter to the boys.

Or will it. Put that body in skinny jeans and white t-shirt and it might not have scored so highly. Put it in a leopard print bikini, a tight short skirt or a strapless dress and it would probably do even worse.

Fashion is not, on the whole, created for the fuller figure. Whilst the naked silhouette of a size 14 might be more attractive, the same body but dressed often suffers from unflattering and uncomfortable lines.

So I can only roll my eyes when The Daily Mail report on this study is accompanied by pictures of curvier celebrities. There is a giant leap between what is most attractive in line drawing and what looks better in skin tight leather.

And mankind, or at least one of them, is inclined to agree. I find myself making the same point as Tom Sykes – Daily Mail journalist and resident irritant. Instead of arguing about why we don’t see size fourteen on the catwalk, he goes for the Playboy angle. Size fourteen girls aren’t the fantasy. The fantasy is the Playboy centrefold because that’s what sells.

I don’t really agree with that: couldn’t the fantasy be constructed by the magazines rather than the other way round? Isn’t a young boy who buys Playboy being influenced by those images of glamour more than the images are pandering to his tastes?

Perhaps. But that’s not the point here.

What is interesting is that both Tom and myself  looked to ways to belittle the research. Before someone showed me his comments, I had already written that it was “a 100 students from New South Wales” that were surveyed and that only line drawings were used. He went a little further:

What it actually shows is that the 100 male students surveyed at the University of New South Wales are pathetic wimps, desperate for a quiet life and terrified of offending anyone.

But the sentiment is the same. The research’s results didn’t fit with the way we see things. And so we tried to find holes in it.

I can’t imagine Ronaldo making me his next trophy. But his and Paris Hilton’s romp in LA last week was no surprise. That’s how the world works. At least, that’s how the world I live in works.  And it’s a little painful to realise that even I am willing to dismiss science if it doesn’t fit.

It’s common knowledge that drinking lots of milk will give you healthy teeth and bones, but for once this piece of health advice actually has a scientific basis. Calcium, abundant in milk, is very important in building up bone strength, particularly in young adults whose bones are not fully developed. A study published in the July/August issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior suggests that, in the US at least, young people just aren’t getting enough.

Using data from another study designed to examine what teens eat and why, researchers at the University of Minnesota analysed the calcium intake of 1,500 young adults, 45% of which were male. The study initially quizzed participants with an average age of 16, with a follow up around five years later.

They found that the majority of teens actually reduced their calcium intake as they grew up. Age 16, more than 72% of girls and 55% of boys had calcium intakes lower than the recommended level of 1.3 grams per day. Later in life these figures fall slightly, but so does the recommended level of calcium. In young adulthood, 68% of girls and 53% of boys fail to get 1 gram per day.

The study suggests that children who are given milk at mealtimes and are encouraged to have positive attitudes towards health and nutrition are more likely to have a higher calcium intake later in life. Time spent watching television was associated with a lower intake however, as was lactose intolerance – unsurprisingly.

Dr. Nicole I. Larson of the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota and colleagues suggest that encouraging more families to serve milk at mealtimes will combat the fall in calcium intake. As always, it boils down to simple health advice: drink more milk.

Place your hand over your heart. Now move it to your stomach. How about your thyroid? Ok, that last one is a little trickier, but I’d be shocked to meet anyone who couldn’t do the first two. Well, it’s time to be shocked.

A study published in the journal BMC Family Practice has found an appalling lack of public knowledge of human anatomy. The research, carried out by psychologists at King’s College London, aimed to discovery whether public understanding of anatomy had improved since a similar study in the 70s. It hasn’t.

Clue: It isn't D.

They gave over 700 people multiple choice questions like the example above. Most were patients currently undergoing treatment for one of six types of conditions; the researchers were interested to see whether a patient with respiratory problems would be able to identify the location of the lungs, for example. The rest of the sample (133 participants) were members of the public.

In the test above, 44% of the public failed to find the true location of the heart. For cardiac patients the results were even worse, with just over half seemingly unaware of the placement of their troublesome organ.

As the researchers rightly point out, this knowledge gap poses a significant problem for doctors trying to inform patients about their illness. They point to previous studies which show that many people do not know the difference between pairs of medical terms, like heart attack and myocardial infarction, or fracture and broken bone.

I’m not too worried about that kind of knowledge – I couldn’t tell you the difference between those terms, because I’m not a doctor. What I simply can’t fathom is how it is possible for anyone to not know where their heart is. We feel it beat every second of every day. After heavy exercise, the intensity of our heartbeat is so loud that you can hear it. Other organs fair even worse: 72.9% could not correctly place the lungs. What do these people think is going on in their body?

We can take comfort reading that, as you might expect, the study found levels of knowledge increased amongst more educated participants. There was also a slight decrease in knowledge for older participants, suggesting that education is slowly improving. Perhaps public understanding of anatomy is getting better then, but this research shows that a lot more work needs to be done.

John Weinma, Gibran Yusuf, Robert Berks, Sam Rayner, & Keith Petrie (2009). How accurate is patients’ anatomical knowledge: a cross-sectional, questionnaire study of six patient groups and a general public sample. BMC Family Practice, 10 (1) DOI: 10.1186/1471-2296-10-43

New department for science

With all the political turmoil of the past week it may have slipped you by that the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) is no more. As part of Gordon Brown’s reshuffle, it will merge with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) to become the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS).

What this means for science is unclear, though the government pledge that DBIS will “continue to invest in the UK’s world class science base and develop strategies for commercialising more of that science.” Lord Drayson, Minister for Science and Innovation in DIUS and now DBIS, stated that “The science ring-fence is safe and sound and the innovation agenda will further benefit from this move.”

Tetley: not everyone’s cup of tea

Tea makers Tetley have been banned from broadcasting an advert for green tea after the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled against misleading health claims.

The advert shows a woman about to go for a run before discovering it is raining. Instead, she makes a cup of tea, with a voice-over stating “For an easy way to help look after yourself pick up Tetley Green Tea. It’s full of antioxidants.”

Whilst the ASA dismissed four viewer complaints that Tetley were trying to equate green tea with exercise, they did decide the company were trying to claim health benefits beyond mere hydration, and banned the advert.

Whilst it’s nice to see advertisers being taken to task, I do wish the ASA would show some consistency. Why is this not allowed, when Miracle Gro can advertise their organic compost as “100% chemical free”?

Tomorrow’s World, today

The classic BBC science magazine programme Tomorrow’s World is being reinvented as Bang Goes The Theory, “a new series that looks at how science shapes the world around us.”

Terrible, terrible name aside, I’m cautiously optimistic about this new programme. The presenters all seem to have backgrounds in science and science communication, and there is even on PhD, Dr Yan Wong. The editing of the trailer (linked above) makes it look like they are trying a little too hard to be stylish, but I will reserve judgement until the first episode is broadcast. Unfortunately I can’t tell you when that is, as the BBC continue their aversion to actually telling you when their programmes start – “late July” is the best we’ve got.

This week saw the launch of a new pill called Ateronon which, according to the press release, ‘is expected to revolutionise approaches to heart health’. Ateronon, we are told, ‘is the first formula proven to halt the oxidation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, recognized as the key process of atherosclerotic build-up’. The active ingredient is lycopene, a pigment that occurs naturally in tomatoes. Lycopene isn’t very absorbable, but Nestle discovered that it can be made more absorbable by combining it with whey protein to make ‘lactolycopene’.

The new pill has been developed under license from Nestle by Cambridge Theranostics Ltd. The promotional material talks a lot about the legendary Mediterranean diet, which has been linked to a lower risk of heart disease. Because it’s made entirely from naturally occurring ingredients, it’s being treated as a food supplement and not a drug, meaning much less rigorous testing. Ateronon will be available over the counter from next month.

Does it work? Presumably they’ve published some research showing that it does. I put ‘ateronon’ into PubMed.

Your search for ateronon retrieved no results. However, a search for ‘afternoon’ retrieved the following [5500] items.

I decided to leave trawling through those results to find out whether the afternoon can prevent heart disease for another day. I tried ‘lactolycopene’ instead. Two results, one of which was relevant: a 2002 paper, looking at 33 people, which found that you get a similar amount of lycopene from the lactolycopene supplement as you get from tomato paste.

Evidence that lactolycopene could prevent heart attacks and strokes remained elusive, so I tried getting hold of Cambridge Theranostics. I didn’t get an answer, so I tried their PR company, and someone helpfully sent me some documents. One was an ‘expert report’ by Prof Alf A. Lindberg, dated 2006. It describes a pilot phase I study of 18 people with angina. After two months of taking lactolycopene, lipoprotein oxidation (a biochemical process linked with atherosclerosis) was blocked in all 18 patients. Seventeen of them showed clinical improvements, as measured by a questionnaire.

Another document they sent me described two studies by Dovgalevsky and Petyaev which involved giving lactolycopene to coronary heart disease patients. One had 12 subjects, the other 10. In both studies, lipoprotein oxidation was blocked in patients given lactolycopene. The patients also experienced ‘improvements in the clinical status as assessed by a validated clinical questionnaire’.

So the evidence for Ateronon’s efficacy is three small studies in which taking lactolycopene led to reduced lipoprotein oxidation and clinical improvements measured by a questionnaire. None of the studies tested more than 18 people. None of the studies tested healthy people. None of the studies tested whether lactolycopene can prevent heart attacks, strokes, or any actual disease. None of the studies has been published in a peer-review journal. Perhaps most criminally, none of the studies compared lactolycopene with another drug or a placebo.

Maybe lactolycopene can prevent atherosclerosis. In fact I very much hope it does. But at the moment, the claims being made for Ateronon have not come close to being proven.

“Nice jeans.” She pauses and gives the semi nude male on the bus stop poster a proper look. Then she spots the slogan at his feet: “MAYbe you’ve got Chlamydia.” She quickly stop looking and hurries on, hoping all those people waiting for the bus don’t think she has Chlamydia.  

Those behind the MAYbe screening programme this month in West London should be congratulated on a very effective ad campaign. Prompted by high rates of the infection in the capital, the MAYbe campaign hopes to increase awareness and encourage more Londoners to get tested for Chlamydia.

It might seem like Chlamydia is just a public health issue; we know how it works, how to treat it and now we just need to stop it spreading. But this week a group of UK scientists published research showing how these bacteria can still surprise us.

In Sweden in 2006, a new variant of Chlamydia appeared: one that was invisible to the tests used at the time. The new study reveals why this happens.

A single bacterium grew without part of the DNA code normally found in the plasmid – floating DNA, not part of the bacteria’s chromosomes. This bit of code was exactly what Swedish labs used to test whether an infection is Chlamydia or not.

“It turns out that this piece of the DNA is not essential to the Chlamydia. Therefore, an accidental deletion of the DNA won’t kill the bacterium, but it will stop it being identified,” explained Helena Seth-Smith, co-author of the study and researcher at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge.

She said that they had never seen this kind of mutation before. Most cell mutations occur because of interaction between bacteria. But Chlamydia grows inside human cells. And so, bacteria have little chance to interact with one and other. 

The new type of mutation is a warning for tests on other bacterial infections. If the bacterium of another disease undergoes a similar test, “it’s possible that another chance deletion could make that bacterium invisible.” 

The researchers also identified what they think are the essential parts of the Chlamydia DNA. These make more reliable targets for diagnostic tests because if they mutate the bacterium is unlikely to survive anyway. Seth-Smith is hopeful that future tests will be better designed as a result.

This new research shows just how much we can still learn about diseases we thought we already understood. And it shows how useful these lessons can be for keeping the diseases under control.

Of course, public awareness drives are necessary. And maybe screening campaigns will help London lose its label as the UK’s ‘Chlamydia capital’. But the lesson from this study is that Chlamydia is not just a public health issue. Posters featuring designer jeans still need to be backed up by detailed genetic research.

A recent survey suggests that the UK public doesn’t trust scientists to tell them what causes or cures cancer. A YouGov poll of 2,400 people on behalf of the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) found more than half thought scientists constantly changed their minds about cancer. Over a quarter also said that advice was constantly changing, and the best approach was to ignore it.

Is it any wonder that the public feel this way? Since starting Just A Theory I have written about many media reported cures or causes of cancer: oral sex, shampoo, Facebook, cannabis, beer and the Large Hadron Collider. These are just the few stories that I’ve actually picked up on. With so much conflicting media advice, how is anyone meant to make informed decisions? Most of the causes/cures barely change your absolute risk of cancer anyway, so perhaps ignore all advice completely really is the best option.

Not so, say the WCRF. Their advice has stayed the same for over a decade: eat balanced diet, exercise, and maintain a healthy weight. All fairly bog-standard, boring advice, but the WCRF say that around a third of the most common cancers could be avoided by following it. Richard Evans, head of communications for WCRF, explains:

“It is a cause for concern if people are not listening to cancer prevention advice because they have the impression that scientists are always changing their minds.

“The fact is that WCRF and other cancer charities agree on the best ways of reducing cancer risk and this advice has stayed broadly the same for quite a long time.

“A decade ago, we were recommending that people eat a plant-based diet, be physically active and maintain a healthy weight and this is still the case today.”

Yet, the Daily Mail continues its ongoing mission to divide all the inanimate objects in the world into those that cause or cure cancer, and other newspapers do the same. If media advice on cancer is leading people to ignore the WCRF recommendations and thus leaving them more susceptible to cancer, maybe you could argue that actually the media “causes” cancer. Hmm.

Let me begin by saying that sneering at the Daily Mail is not big and it’s not clever. But 2.2 million people read it every day, and it has a lot to say about how they should look after themselves, so it’s only reasonable that its coverage of stories relating to health should be subjected to scrutiny. Here are a few of the questionable articles I found this week.

Monday: Neuroimaging as a crystal ball

I know she looks like a crystal ball reader, but actually Mail hack Wendy Leigh is the one who’s having her fate revealed in this scene. The silly-looking headgear is part of the setup for a procedure called brain electrical activity mapping, or Beam: ‘the latest health trend’ in America.

The theory behind it is that measuring the electrical activity of the brain reveals its ‘true’ age, speed and ability, pointing to the likelihood of certain conditions.

Wendy learns that her acetylcholine levels are high, meaning that she has a low risk of Parkinson’s and dementia. Using imaging technology to predict neurological conditions early is an appealing idea, but are we really able to do this already? I found reliable answers surprisingly hard to come by on the internet, but it doesn’t look like there’s good evidence for quantitative electroencephalography, as it is more properly called, having high predictive value for this kind of use. The article admits as much towards the end:

Dr Richard Henson, of the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, says while recording brain waves is a well-established technique, it’s unlikely the results could provide meaningful information about what the brain’s neurotransmitters are up to.

Still, Wendy reports that after three weeks, she’s sleeping better and her sugar cravings have lessened, so let’s keep an open mind about it.

Tuesday: Fat = Fit

Overweight heart attack victims should stay fat as they are more likely to live longer, say researchers.

Given the massive health risks associated with being overweight, that’s a pretty dangerous piece of advice. Are there good grounds for it? The story is based on a review in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. I couldn’t access the article myself, but according to NHS Choices, the authors actually said that although a paradox exists, the data still support “purposeful weight reduction in the prevention and treatment of CV [cardiovascular] diseases”.

Wednesday: Forget dieting, have a biryani

If you did decide to reject the Mail’s advice and lose weight, how to go about it? I’m not going to have to eat salad for dinner am I? Not according to this article: ‘Why eating a curry could STOP you from putting on weight‘. It seems that curcumin, a compound found in turmeric, suppresses the growth of fat tissue. Mice fed on a high fat diet gained less weight if their food was supplemented with curcumin. They still gained weight though. Will takeaway curries become the latest fad diet. Since curries (combined with the associated naan, rice, poppadoms, chutney etc) are quite high in calories, I suspect a salad might still be a better option.

Thursday: Hang on, forget the biryani, go to bed

You wait ages for a more appealing weight loss strategy than eating less and exercising, and two come along at once. This time: ‘Why sleeping more could help you lose weight‘.

Researchers in the US analysed the sleep activity and energy expenditure of 14 volunteer nurses at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC.

14? That’s your sample size? And all doing the same job in the same place? Alright then, what did you find?

Those identified as ’short sleepers’ had an average body mass index (BMI) of 28.3 – classed as overweight – compared with 24.5 – classed as normal – for ‘long sleepers.’

Oh, for crying out loud! Surely we don’t have to go over the whole correlation/causation thing again? Maybe fat people don’t sleep well because they sink into the mattress too much, or because they can’t stop thinking about cake.

Friday: Swigging from plastic bottles will make you strangely self-conscious about your thighs

Drink from plastic bottles can raise the body’s levels of a controversial ‘gender-bending’ chemical by more than two thirds, according to tests.

Experts have been concerned about the possible health effects of bisphenol A (BPA) – an everyday chemical used in many plastic food and drink containers and tins as well as clear baby bottles – which is officially classified as toxic in some countries.

A study found that participants who drank for a week from polycarbonate bottles showed a 69 per cent increase in their urine of BPA, which mimics the female sex hormone oestrogen.

Gosh, this all sounds very scary. Maybe our increasing tendency to drink from plastic bottles is what caused the whole ‘metrosexual’ thing.

Once again, NHS Choices provides a pretty thorough discussion of the limitations of this study. Most significantly, there’s no evidence to suggest that the levels of BPA seen in the participants have any significant effects on physiology.

I promise to write about some good science next week. If I kept doing this, I’d probably tear my hair out.

Despite the tobacco industry’s many decades spent telling us that cigarettes are perfectly fine, nowadays everyone understands that smoking is harmful. Research using cells from mice has found an interesting twist however: cigarette smoke may help prevent allergies.

Scientists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands extracted mast cells from mice and treated them with a cigarette smoke-infused solution. Mast cells play a key role in the inflammatory process and the body’s response to allergens.

The cigarette smoke prevented the release of proteins associated with allergic reaction, without interfering with the mast cells’ other functions. The researchers are confident that the same effect would be observed in human cells, but caution against taken up smoking to cure allergies.

Perhaps we’ll actually be seeing more people give up smoking, thanks to another study published in the June issue of Prevention Science. Researchers investigating the effect of smoking bans on employment in bars and restaurants found that so-called “clean indoor air” policies did not harm people’s jobs.

Scientists at Ohio State University and the University of Minnesota looked at eight cities in Minnesota with smoking bans, and two with no such laws. Some of the bans prohibit all workplaces, whilst others exempt bars.

They found that over a 45-month period, there was little change in the levels of employment in bars and restaurants. This puts quite a dent in smoking ban opponents, who often claim that such businesses would be aversely effected by anti-smoking laws. Lead author Elizabeth Klein is assistant professor of health behaviour and health promotion at Ohio State University, and hopes that her study will be of use in future policy decisions:

“In the end we can say there isn’t a significant economic effect by type of clean indoor air policy, which should give us more support for maintaining the most beneficial public health policies,

“The public health benefit clearly comes from a comprehensive policy where all employees are protected from exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.”

Whilst we are all more focussed on swine flu these days, the threat of avian influenza or “bird flu” is still present. New research from Imperial College and the University of North Carolina suggests we may not have to worry however, because our noses are just too cold.

It sounds strange, but the 32° Celsius of the human nose is not a high enough temperature for avian influenza viruses to survive, according to the study published in PLoS Pathogens. The viruses normally infect the guts of birds, typically a warmer 40° Celsius, so the researchers suspect that our lower temperature protects us. The avian influenza viruses normally enter the human body through the nose, so are unlikely to infect people and cause illness.

There is also the possibility that a human influenza virus could mutate by adapting proteins from an avian influenza virus. The study shows that a virus of this form would also struggle to take hold at 32° Celsius, just like the regular avian influenza virus, so we would be safe unless the virus mutated further.

Thankfully, no one had to catch the flu to conduct this research. Cells from the human airway were grown in the lab and then infected with a selection of human and avian viruses. Whilst the human varieties thrived at both 37° Celsius, our core body temperature, and at 32° Celsius, the avian viruses could only grow well at 37° Celsius.

Professor Wendy Barclay, one of the authors of the study from the Division of Investigative Science at Imperial College said:

“It would be impossible to develop vaccines against all 16 subtypes of avian flu, so we need to prioritise. By studying a range of different viruses in systems like this one we can look for warnings that they are already beginning to make the kinds of genetic changes in nature that mean they could be poised to jump into humans; animal viruses that spread well at low temperatures in these cultures could be more likely to cause the next pandemic than those which are restricted.”

A team at Yale University have used incredibly small plastic particles to smuggle therapies into cells. Their paper, published this week in Nature Materials, has possible implications for the treatment of HIV.

Small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules have proved effective at stopping the HIV virus from reproducing in animal models. They can inactivate genes in the cells that HIV infects, so the virus is unable to enter these cells and spread. Lead author Kim Woodrow explains how the aim of this study was to produce a way of delivering these particles using nano sized plastic beads that was “safe and effective, and much easier than getting an injection of vaccine”.

To investigate whether the nanotechnology approach would work, they used an siRNA which inactivates the production of a green fluorescent protein. They then packaged the siRNAs into the plastic nanoparticles, and administered them into the vaginas of mice engineered to produce these fluorescent proteins. This gave them an easy way to track how well the delivery system worked, by simply checking the level and location of fluorescence.

The nanoparticles successfully penetrated the cells below the surface of the vaginal wall, spread through the reproductive system, and remained effective for up to 14 days. Crucially, the mice did not show signs of irritation, where as mice given the treatment by a traditional method did.

The results indicate that this method of delivery could be used to produce a topical cream containing the siRNA’s to prevent the HIV virus spreading from the source. However, the team have yet to test this method against an actual virus. Senior author E. Mark Salzman is hopeful though, and is planning ahead. He said “our next step in research will be to test this approach directly in disease models – for example in the HIV model mice.”

We complain about it all the time. Journalists take a small study with some preliminary findings and write it up as the story of a century. The sensationalising of science news is certainly a problem in the media, but a new study suggests perhaps we are too quick to blame the journos.

A paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine examines the content of 200 randomly selected press releases from 20 academic medical centres in the US. The analysis by lead authors Drs Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz shows that press officers are just as bad when it comes to exaggeration.

The press releases split in to 113 that focused on human research with the remaining 87 covering animal or laboratory research. On the human side, 40% reported on studies limited by factors like small sample sizes. Of the same group, 42% failed to provide caveats explaining the limits of the research.

Things get worse for the animal and laboratory studies press releases. Despite the majority claiming the relevance of the research to human health, 90% failed to mention potential difficulties in extrapolating the results to people.

In total, 29% of releases were rated by the authors as exaggerating the importance of research. Animal research was more likely to be exaggerated than human. It’s not just the press officers grandstanding however. Most press releases contain quotes from the scientists involved, and 26% of these were found to overstate research importance.

The authors admit that their findings would be stronger if backed up by an analysis of the press coverage resulting from these releases, but say the study is still important because press releases are known to be influential. A previous study suggests that as many as one third of news stories rely mostly or completely on a press release.

S. Woloshin, L. M. Schwartz, S. L. Casella, A. T. Kennedy, & R. J. Larson (2009). Press Releases by Academic Medical Centers: Not So Academic? Annals of Internal Medicine, 613-618

Men prone to exaggerating their suffering when struck down with a cold often jokingly refer to “man flu” – the implication being that the illness is much more severe than anything their unsympathetic wives and girlfriends might catch. Perhaps men are owed an apology however, as a Canadian study has shown that male immune systems may not be as strong as women’s.

Scientists at McGill University discovered that the female sex hormone oestrogen can stop an enzyme from interfering with the body’s defences against bacteria and viruses. The enzyme Caspase-12 stops the natural inflammatory process which works to fight off infections, so the researchers used mice to find out how it works.

By implanting the human gene for Caspase-12 in to mice they discovered that the males became more prone to infection. The females however retained the natural resistance of mice without the Caspase-12 gene. Lead researcher Dr Maya Saleh and her colleagues concluded that oestrogen in the female mice were responsible for the difference.

“These results demonstrate that women have a more powerful inflammatory response than men,” she said. The team are confident that their research will also apply to humans, because they used a human gene.

They suggest that women could have evolved a better immune system because their health is key to being able to reproduce, a view shared by Dr Lesley Knapp, of the University of Cambridge:

“Women are well known to be able to respond more robustly to infections, and to recover more quickly than men.

“In evolutionary terms it only takes one male to reproduce with lots of females, but females are much more important in terms of producing offspring.”

The research could lead to new immune system aids through genetic manipulation. But then how would men complain when they got the sniffles?