JCI early table of contents for July 15, 2013
2013-07-15
(Press-News.org) An "obesity-risk" allele alters hunger-stimulating hormone production
Individuals carrying the "obesity-risk" allele of the fat mass and obesity associated gene, FTO, are prone to obesity and obesity related eating behaviors such as increased food consumption, preference for high fat foods and lack of satiation after eating. How this particular gene regulates obesity prone behaviors is not fully understood. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Rachel Batterham and colleagues at University College London identify a link between FTO and the hunger-stimulating hormone, ghrelin. Subjects homozygous for the "obesity-risk" allele of FTO had higher concentrations of circulating ghrelin after eating, which correlated with an absence of satiation. They demonstrate that FTO directly demethylates ghrelin mRNA, altering its production. These studies offer new insight into why individuals that carry the "obesity-risk" allele of the FTO gene are prone to obesity.
TITLE: A link between FTO, ghrelin and impaired brain food-cue responsivity
AUTHOR CONTACT: Rachel Batterham
University College London, London, UNK, GBR
Phone: +447989380466; E-mail: r.batterham@ucl.ac.uk
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/44403?key=aa10477f9753d525a366
Adult brown fat levels increased with cold acclimation
Brown adipose tissue or brown fat is abundant in newborns, providing them with body heat, and naturally decreases with age. Recent studies have shown that adults with detectable levels of brown fat have lowered rates of obesity and higher resting metabolic rates. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Anouk van der Lans and colleagues at Maastrricht University and Takeshi Yoneshiro and colleagues at Hokkaido University investigate therapies for increasing brown fat activity in adults. Both groups show that a regimen of daily exposure to cold temperatures increased both brown adipose tissue and metabolic rates. Subjects that were exposed to daily cold for 6 weeks also showed a reduction in body fat mass. These findings indicate that brown fat activity in adults can be increased and that cold acclimation and capsinoid ingestion maybe valuable strategies in the fight against obesity.
TITLE: Recruited Brown Adipose Tissue as an Anti-Obesity Agent in Humans
AUTHOR CONTACT: Takeshi Yoneshiro
Hokkaido University, Sapporo, , JPN
Phone: +81-01-706-5895; Fax: ; E-mail: yoneshiro@med.hokudai.ac.jp
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/67803?key=f98119ab90b7fc7a93e0
ACCOMPANYING ARTICLE
TITLE: Cold acclimation recruits human brown fat and increases nonshivering thermogenesis
AUTHOR CONTACT: Anouk van der Lans
Maastricht University Medical Center & Nutrition and Toxicology Research In, Maastricht, , NLD
Phone: 0031(0)433384259; E-mail: a.vanderlans@maastrichtuniversity.nl
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/68993?key=0928642dcf1342f4f1e6
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
TITLE: Medullary thymic epithelial cell depletion leads to autoimmune hepatitis
AUTHOR CONTACT: Konstantina Alexandropoulos
Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA
Phone: 212-659-8610; E-mail:k.alexandropoulos@mssm.edu
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/65414?key=39d914fcb351429d0d0c
TITLE: FK506 activates BMPR2, rescues endothelial dysfunction, and reverses pulmonary hypertension
AUTHOR CONTACT: Marlene Rabinovitch
Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA
Phone: 650-723-8239; Fax: 650-723-6700; E-mail: marlener@stanford.edu
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/65592?key=e6a7147e2831380e7ea5
TITLE: FoxOs attenuate bone formation by suppressing Wnt signaling
AUTHOR CONTACT: Maria Almeida
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA
Phone: 501-686-7856; E-mail: schullermaria@uams.edu
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/68049?key=aa55ba0f91e55abd0f4d
TITLE: Atrial natriuretic peptide is negatively regulated by microRNA-425
AUTHOR CONTACT: Pankaj Arora
Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Phone: 6176437551; E-mail: ionparora@partners.org
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/67383?key=84d4452ad3c4bf9cc164
TITLE: Cerebrovascular degradation of TRKB by MMP9 in the diabetic brain
AUTHOR CONTACT: Eng Lo
Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, USA
Phone: 617-726-4043; E-mail:Lo@helix.mgh.harvard.edu
View this article at: http://www.jci.org/articles/view/65767?key=3894fbd523e6672186f5
INFORMATION:
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2013-07-15
Individuals carrying the "obesity-risk" allele of the fat mass and obesity associated gene, FTO, are prone to obesity and obesity related eating behaviors such as increased food consumption, preference for high fat foods and lack of satiation after eating. How this particular gene regulates obesity prone behaviors is not fully understood.
In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Rachel Batterham and colleagues at University College London identify a link between FTO and the hunger-stimulating hormone, ghrelin. Subjects homozygous for the "obesity-risk" ...
2013-07-15
The use of a 1:1:1 blood transfusion protocol in patients with severe trauma is feasible in hospitals, although it is associated with higher waste of plasma, according to a randomized trial published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
Previous retrospective studies suggested that a 1:1:1 transfusion strategy or fixed-ratio transfusion could reduce the number of deaths from hemorrhage; therefore, the strategy has been widely adopted in trauma centres around the world and for nontrauma patients. It uses an equal ratio of red blood cells, plasma and platelets ...
2013-07-15
How does a doctor tackle the delicate issue of end-of-life care planning with a patient?
With an aging population and people living longer with chronic illness, it is increasingly important for patients and family members to decide how they and their loved ones would like to spend their final days. And for physicians in both hospital and primary care settings, it is crucial that they know how to address this issue with sensitivity.
A new "conversation guide" in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) aims to guide physicians through these sensitive discussions with ...
2013-07-15
Hamilton, ON (July 15, 2013) - How does a doctor tackle the delicate issue of end-of-life care planning with a patient?
With an aging population and people living longer with chronic illness, it is increasingly important for patients and family members to decide how they and their loved ones would like to spend their final days. And for physicians in both hospital and primary care settings, it is crucial that they know how to address this issue with sensitivity.
A new "conversation guide" in Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) aims to guide physicians through ...
2013-07-15
PHILADELPHIA — Scientists at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have generated a data set of cancer-specific genetic variations and are making these data available to the research community, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
This will help cancer researchers better understand drug response and resistance to cancer treatments.
"To date, this is the largest database worldwide, containing 6 billion data points that connect drugs with genomic variants for the whole human genome across cell lines ...
2013-07-15
A team of scientists, led by researchers at The Wistar Institute, has determined that it might be possible to stimulate the immune system against multiple strains of influenza virus by sequentially vaccinating individuals with distinct influenza strains isolated over the last century.
Their results also suggest that world health experts might need to re-evaluate standard tests used for surveillance of novel influenza strains. Their findings are published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, available online now.
According to the Wistar researchers, their analysis ...
2013-07-15
VIDEO:
Scientists at MIT and Oxford University have shown that the motility of phytoplankton also helps them determine their fate in ocean turbulence.
Click here for more information.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Tiny ocean plants, or phytoplankton, were long thought to be passive drifters in the sea — unable to defy even the weakest currents, or travel by their own volition. In recent decades, research has shown that many species of these unicellular microorganisms can swim, and do ...
2013-07-15
As a consequence of the Affordable Care Act, between 500,000 and 900,000 Americans may choose to stop working. That possibility is predicted in a new analysis of an analogous situation in reverse: the abrupt end of Tennessee's Medicaid expansion in 2005. That year, Tennessee dropped 170,000 of its citizens from Medicaid. It was the largest Medicaid disenrollment in the history of the program.
Economists from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business ...
2013-07-15
Researchers have uncovered a previously unknown role for the acetylcholine-activated inward-rectifying potassium current (IKACh) in cardiac pacemaker activity and heart rate regulation, according to a study in The Journal of General Physiology.
The heart rate increases in response to fear or exercise, when the body's sympathetic nervous system activates the "fight or flight" stress response. After sympathetic stimulation, the heart rate is brought back to normal by the parasympathetic nervous system, which regulates the body at rest. Parasympathetic regulation of the ...
2013-07-15
The number of tick-borne illnesses reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is on the rise. Lyme disease leads the pack, with some 35,000 cases reported annually. In the Northeast, the black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) that spread Lyme disease also infect people with other maladies, among them anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and – as a new paper in the journal Parasites and Vectors reports – Powassan encephalitis.
Powassan encephalitis is caused by Powassan virus and its variant, deer tick virus. The virus is spread to people by infected ticks, and ...
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[Press-News.org] JCI early table of contents for July 15, 2013
