Health and Disability

Scientists have shown for the first time that a mother's environment around the time of conception could permanently change the function of a gene influencing immunity and cancer risk in her child.

Diet is likely to play a role in this process, according to the study published in Genome Biology.

This is the latest discovery by an international collaboration led by researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit, based in The Gambia, West Africa, and the MRC International Nutrition Group at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine together with a team at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

Previous studies by the scientists showed that a child's DNA can be affected by their mother's diet before pregnancy ¹ but they have now hit upon a gene called VTRNA2-1 as being particularly sensitive to these changes. VTRNA2-1 is a tumour suppressor gene which also affects how the body responds to viral infections.

It is well established that small differences in the DNA that makes up our genes can affect our risk of having a range of diseases. While a child's genes are inherited directly from their parents, how these genes are expressed is controlled through 'epigenetic' modifications to the DNA. The most commonly studied epigenetic modifications are chemical marks (methylation) placed on the DNA of genes that can prevent the message from being read; like sleepers laid across a railway track. Importantly, these marks can be influenced by an individual's environment.

Several neurodegenerative disorders are caused by aggregates of a single protein known as alpha-synuclein. In collaboration with CNRS and the University of Antwerp, KU Leuven neurobiologists have discovered that the shape of these aggregates - 'cylinders' or 'ribbons' - determines whether a patient develops Parkinson's disease or Multiple System Atrophy, respectively.

Typical of neurodegenerative disorders is the disrupted communication between brain cells together with a loss of cells in specific brain regions. For some brain diseases this phenomenon is linked to a protein known as alpha-synuclein. The exact function of this protein remains unclear, but it may play a role in the communication between brain cells. However, in the case of specific diseases, including Parkinson's disease, Multiple System Atrophy (MSA), and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), this protein forms aggregates that cause neurodegeneration.

Fatigue fatigue fatigue, that is what people with brain injury often experience. 

Everything takes effort. The energy for the whole day is often consumed completely withintwo hours. There are many brain injury victims who have insomnia ón top of this all.Another group of brain injury survivors have an increased need for sleep. But the similarityis FATIGUE.

Mental fatigue is different from physical fatigue. 

According to the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM), pain affects more people in the US than diabetes, heart diseaseand cancer combined, with an estimated 100 million Americans experiencing chronic pain.

Chronic pain is also strongly associated with the development of other conditions such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse, with these three seen in more than half of patients with chronic pain. Among illness-related causes of suicide in the US, chronic pain is second only to bipolar disorder.

Catherine Cahill, associate professor of anesthesiology and perioperative care at UCI, and colleagues discovered thatinflammation in the brain caused by chronic pain increased the rate at which specific immune cells grew and became activated.

These cells, known as microglia, set off chemical signals in the brain that inhibited the release of dopamine, crucial to the regulation of areas of the brain associated with reward and pleasure.

Dopamine is one of the most important neurotransmitters, associated not only with the reward system of the brain but with cognitive and motor functions. Some studies have also linked disruption to the dopamine response with psychosis andschizophrenia.

A study published Monday found that 50 hospitals in the U.S. are charging uninsured patients more than 10 times the actual cost of care. Of those 50 hospitals, all but one is owned by for-profit entitites while 20 of the facilities are located in Florida, according to the study published in Health Affairs. Community Health Systems operates 25 of the hospitals on the list while Hospital Corp. of America operates 14 facilities. The most expensive hospital is North Okaloose Medical Center in the Florida Pandhandle, where uninsured consumers are charged 12.6 times the actual cost of patient care. In comparison, a typical U.S. hospital charges 3.4 times the cost of patient care, researchers said.

The five-year trial will investigate whether repeat BCG vaccination can clinically improve type 1 diabetes in adults between 18 and 60 years of age who have small but still detectable levels of insulin secretion from the pancreas. Faustman's research team was the first group to document reversal of advanced type 1 diabetes in mice and subsequently completed a successful phase I human clinical trial of BCG vaccination. She announced the FDA approval to launch the phase II trial during her ADA presentation, "Low Levels of C-Peptide Have Clinical Significance for Established Type 1 Diabetes."

"We have learned a lot since the early studies in mice - not just about how BCG works but also about its potential therapeutic benefits, similar to what are being seen in trials against other autoimmune diseases," says Faustman. "We are so grateful to all of the donors, large and small, who have made this trial possible - especially the Iacocca Foundation, which has believed in us and has been a supporter since our early days. Our goal is to complete enrollment and also to raise the remaining funds needed for the trial by the end of this year."

A generic drug with over 90 years of clinical use and safety data, BCG is currently approved by the FDA for vaccination againsttuberculosis and for the treatment of bladder cancer. The vaccine is known to elevate levels of the immune modulator tumornecrosis factor (TNF), which Faustman's team previously showed can temporarily eliminate in both humans and mice the abnormal white blood cells responsible for autoimmune type 1 diabetes. Increased TNF levels also stimulated production of protective regulatory T cells.

People who received a vaccination for shingles (also known as herpes zoster) but still contracted shingles had a lower risk of developing post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN), a potentially long lasting and painful complication of the condition. The Kaiser Permanente study was published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

This study demonstrates that the shingles vaccine can still be beneficial in reducing the risk of long term pain even among those patients for whom it does not prevent the disease.

Shingles is a painful skin rash that affects one in three adults and is caused by the varicella zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox. The most common complication of shingles is PHN, for which treatment for the pain may be necessary for months to years.