(Press-News.org) Men's susceptibility to serious health conditions may be influenced by low exposure to testosterone in the womb, new research suggests.
A study has revealed how men's testosterone levels may be determined before they are born.
Understanding why some men have less of the hormone than others is important because testosterone is crucial for life-long health. Low levels of the hormone have been linked to obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
Researchers have shown that the cells responsible for producing testosterone in adults – known as Leydig cells – are derived from a specific population of stem cells found in the testes.
The team found evidence of these stem cells in the developing testes of babies, rats, mice and marmosets in the womb.
Leydig cells do not develop until puberty but the team showed that their function is impaired if their stem cell forefathers are exposed to reduced levels of testosterone in the womb.
The study is the first to provide evidence of how events in the womb could influence male health in later life. It was led by scientists from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Edinburgh.
Professor Richard Sharpe said: "There is increasing evidence that a mother's diet, lifestyle and exposure to drugs and chemicals can have a significant impact on testosterone levels in the womb. We need a better grasp of these factors so that we can give reliable advice to pregnant women to protect the health of her unborn child."
INFORMATION:The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS).
Male health linked to testosterone exposure in womb, study finds
2014-04-22
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
FASEB releases updated NIH state factsheets
2014-04-22
The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) has released updated factsheets for fiscal year (FY) 2013 highlighting how funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) benefits each of the 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico. "FASEB is pleased to make these factsheets available to help citizens and policymakers understand the significance of NIH to their state," said FASEB President, Margaret K. Offermann, MD, PhD. NIH is the nation's leading source for biomedical research funding, investing $29.2 billion in FY 2013 in medical research, 80 percent ...
Report recommends insurers use prescription monitoring data to reduce opioid abuse, deaths
2014-04-22
WALTHAM, Mass. – The Prescription Drug Monitoring Program Center of Excellence at Brandeis University has issued a ground-breaking report recommending that medical insurers use prescription monitoring data to reduce the overdoses, deaths and health care costs associated with abuse of opioids and other prescription drugs.
"At a time when the misuse and abuse of prescription opioids has reached epidemic levels, it's important that third party payers be able to use states' prescription monitoring data to make sure these drugs are prescribed appropriately," said Peter Kreiner, ...
RNA shows potential as boiling-resistant anionic polymer material for nanoarchitectures
2014-04-22
A team of nanotechnology researchers at the University of Kentucky has discovered new methods to build heat resistant nanostructures and arrays using RNA.
The research, led by Peixuan Guo, professor and William Farish Endowed Chair in Nanobiotechnology at the UK College of Pharmacy and Markey Cancer Center, is reported in an article titled "RNA as a Boiling-Resistant Anionic Polymer Material To Build Robust Structures with Defined Shape and Stoichiometry," coauthored by Emil F. Khisamutdinov and Daniel L. Jasinski.
The article, which will appear in a forthcoming edition ...
EORTC and SIOG update expert opinion on management of elderly patients with NSCLC
2014-04-22
Half of all patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer are 70 years of age or older, yet despite this high percentage, these elderly patients are not well represented in clinical trials. Therefore, the paucity of clinical data has made it difficult to reach evidence based clinical recommendations.
In 2010, the EORTC Cancer in the Elderly Task Force and Lung Cancer Group along with the International Society for Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) wrote an expert opinion on managing treatment for elderly patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and now, in an article ...
US medical innovation needs smarter incentives to cut health spending, study finds
2014-04-22
To help rein in massive health care spending, a new RAND study concludes that U.S. policy makers should urgently find ways to incentivize pharmaceutical companies and device makers to develop products that produce more value.
Instead of examining existing medical technologies and their use, a new study suggests the study identifies options to affect what drugs and medical devices get created in the first place. The aim is to help reduce health care spending with as little loss of health as possible and to ensure that costlier advances have large enough health benefits ...
NREL unlocking secrets of new solar material
2014-04-22
A new solar material that has the same crystal structure as a mineral first found in the Ural Mountains in 1839 is shooting up the efficiency charts faster than almost anything researchers have seen before—and it is generating optimism that a less expensive way of using sunlight to generate electricity may be in our planet's future.
Researchers at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are analyzing the new material, perovskite, using the lab's unique testing capabilities and broad spectrum of expertise to uncover the secrets and potential ...
Commonly available blood-pressure medication prevents epilepsy after severe brain injury
2014-04-22
Between 10 and 20 percent of all cases of epilepsy result from severe head injury, but a new drug promises to prevent post-traumatic seizures and may forestall further brain damage caused by seizures in those who already have epilepsy.
A team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, Ben-Gurion University in Israel and Charité-University Medicine in Germany reports in the current issue of the journal Annals of Neurology that a commonly used hypertension drug prevents a majority of cases of post-traumatic epilepsy in a rodent model of the disease. If ...
Short-term environmental enrichment exposure induces maturity of newborn neurons
2014-04-22
Many studies have shown that exposure to environmental enrichment can induce neurogenesis of the hippocampal region, thus improving learning and memory. Previous studies have demonstrated that doublecortin-positive immature neurons exist predominantly in the superficial layer of the cerebral cortex of adult mammals such as guinea pigs, and these neurons exhibit very weak properties of self-proliferation during adulthood under physiological conditions. Whether environmental enrichment has an impact on the proliferation and maturation of these immature neurons in the prefrontal ...
Like a hall of mirrors, nanostructures trap photons inside ultrathin solar cells
2014-04-22
In the quest to make sun power more competitive, researchers are designing ultrathin solar cells that cut material costs. At the same time they're keeping these thin cells efficient by sculpting their surfaces with photovoltaic nanostructures that behave like a molecular hall of mirrors.
"We want to make sure light spends more quality time inside a solar cell," said Mark Brongersma, a professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford and co-author of a review article in Nature Materials.
Brongersma and two Stanford colleagues -- associate professor of materials ...
Grasp of SQUIDs dynamics facilitates eavesdropping
2014-04-22
Theoretical physicists are currently exploring the dynamics of a very unusual kind of device called a SQUID. This Superconducting Quantum Interference Device is a highly sensitive magnetometer used to measure extremely subtle magnetic fields. It is made of two thin regions of insulating material that separate two superconductors – referred to as Josephson junctions – placed in parallel into a ring of superconducting material. In a study published in EPJ B, US scientists have focused on finding an analytical approximation to the theoretical equations that govern the dynamics ...