(Press-News.org) Stockholm, 6 September, 2010 - Inflammation is associated with lower intelligence and premature death, according to Swedish scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. "Those with low-grade inflammation performed more poorly on standardised intelligence tests, even after excluding those with signs of current illness. Inflammation also predicted an increased risk of premature death," said lead researcher Dr Hakan Karlsson.
The research, recently published in Brain, Behavior and Immunity (August, 24:868-873), used large population-based registers containing data collected over several decades. Inflammation and intelligence were measured at 18-20 years of age in nearly 50,000 young men, and deaths over the following 35 years were recorded.
"Although we knew that inflammation associated with infection or cardiovascular disease could impair brain function, this is the first time that similar associations have been shown in healthy young people," said Dr Karlsson. "This suggests that even low levels of inflammation can have detrimental consequences for health and brain function," he added.
"Since low-grade inflammation appears to be hazardous, it is also important to determine its causes," affirmed Dr Karlsson. "One interesting possibility is the role of environmental factors during childhood," he added. In the current study, childhood socio-economic status predicted the level of inflammation seen in young adulthood. For example, children of farmers had higher levels of inflammation than those whose fathers were non-manual workers. "It's possible that these boys were exposed to more toxins, allergens or infectious agents in childhood, leading to greater inflammation and its negative effects later in life," he remarked.
"This is an important finding because it is the largest study to date to show that low-grade inflammation in young adulthood is associated with intelligence and mortality," said Dr Michelle Luciano, from the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. "An interesting question now is whether the effects of a less healthy childhood environment on inflammation persist into middle age and beyond," she commented.
###
The research was funded by the Stanley Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA, the Swedish Research Council, and the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research.
About Brain, Behavior and Immunity
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, founded in 1987, is the official journal of the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society (PNIRS; www.pnirs.org). This innovative journal publishes peer-reviewed basic, experimental, and clinical studies dealing with behavioral, neural, endocrine, and immune system interactions in humans and animals. It is an international, interdisciplinary journal devoted to investigation of the physiological systems that integrate behavioral and immunological responses.
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including the Lancet (www.thelancet.com) and Cell (www.cell.com), and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect (www.sciencedirect.com), Scopus (www.scopus.com), Reaxys (www.reaxys.com), MD Consult (www.mdconsult.com) and Nursing Consult (www.nursingconsult.com), which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite (www.scival.com) and MEDai's Pinpoint Review (www.medai.com), which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.
A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier (www.elsevier.com) employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC (www.reedelsevier.com), a world-leading publisher and information provider. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).
END
London, UK (September 6th, 2010) – Discussions about end of life practices in Germany have been almost taboo for over half a century, but now intense debate is underway as professional bodies review their guidelines to physicians caring for the dying. A new study out today in Palliative Medicine, published by SAGE, reveals that German physicians do hasten death in some cases, against current ethical guidelines - sometimes without sufficient patient involvement.
In light of the recent publication of a survey on German physicians attitudes towards end of life practices ...
Jerusalem – September 6, 2010 – A researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, together with Israeli and foreign collaborators, has revealed how physical qualities -- and not only chemical ones – may have an influence in determining how adult stem cells from the bone marrow develop into differentiated ones. This represents an important step in understanding the mechanisms that direct and regulate the specialization of stem cells from their undefined state.
Scientists around the world are involved in studying, describing and even manipulating the development of ...
GRACE
The melting of the ice caps has been charted since 2002 using the measurements produced by the two GRACE satellites. From space they detect small changes in the Earth's gravitational field. These changes are related to the exact distribution of mass on Earth, including ice and water. When ice melts and lands in the sea, this therefore has an effect on the gravitational field.
Gigatonnes
Based on this principle, previous estimates for the Greenland ice cap calculated that the ice was melting at a rate of 230 gigatonnes a year (i.e. 230,000 billion kg). That would ...
Employees who have control over the design and layout of their workspace are not only happier and healthier — they're also up to 32% more productive, according to new research from the University of Exeter in the UK.
Studies by the University's School of Psychology have revealed the potential for remarkable improvements in workers' attitudes to their jobs by allowing them to personalise their offices.
The findings challenge the conventional approach taken by most companies, where managers often create a 'lean' working environment that reflects a standardized corporate ...
Children as young as four weeks old are being fed a poor diet of biscuits, ice-cream and soft drinks, according to new Australian research.
A study published in the journal Nutrition & Dietetics found some month-old babies had been introduced to high fat, salt and sugar foods, despite health authorities recommending exclusive breastfeeding to six months of age.
Researcher Jane Scott and colleagues tracked 587 women from two Perth maternity hospitals through regular phone interviews for 12 months to understand how the new mothers fed their babies.
"Almost one in ...
Financial incentives in primary care cut heart disease deaths and hospital admissions, particularly among people from deprived areas, finds research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Current evidence suggests that linking financial incentives to quality improvement has improved the overall quality of primary care in the UK, but so far there has been little evidence to suggest that better quality primary care actually improves health.
The authors base their findings on 8,345,353 patients registered in 2006/7
with 1531 general practices ...
At least one in 10 athletes sustained an injury and a further one in 14 fell ill during the 2010 Winter Olympics, held in Canada, reveals research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
Relatively little is known about the injury rate during winter Olympics, say the authors, especially as many of the competitive events, such as snowboarding and freestyle skiing, are fairly recent additions.
And the findings, which are based on reports from the lead doctors for each of the national Olympic committees, and daily returns from designated medical centres in ...
A BMJ investigation into the top-selling diabetes drug rosiglitazone (Avandia) raises concerns about its safety and the whole system by which drugs are evaluated, regulated, and promoted around the world.
BMJ Editor in Chief, Dr Fiona Godlee, believes that the drug should not have been licensed and should now be withdrawn. She also calls for more robust regulatory processes and better access to the raw data used to license drugs to allow scrutiny by the scientific community.
The investigation reveals that in July the Commission on Human Medicines advised the MHRA to ...
There may be better ways to engineer the planet's climate to prevent dangerous global warming than mimicking volcanoes, a University of Calgary climate scientist says in two new studies.
"Releasing engineered nano-sized disks, or sulphuric acid in a condensable vapour above the Earth, are two novel approaches. These approaches offer advantages over simply putting sulphur dioxide gas into the atmosphere," says David Keith, a director in the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy and a Schulich School of Engineering professor.
Keith, a global leader ...
PASADENA, Calif.—Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have engineered a fundamentally new approach to killing cancer cells. The process—developed by Niles Pierce, associate professor of applied and computational mathematics and bioengineering at Caltech, and his colleagues—uses small RNA molecules that can be programmed to attack only specific cancer cells; then, by changing shape, those molecules cause the cancer cells to self-destruct.
In conventional chemotherapy treatments for cancer, patients are given drugs that target cell behaviors typical ...
