Study shows that urinary mercury is not correlated with autism
2012-02-16
(Press-News.org) A recent study finds no statistically significant correlation between urinary mercury levels and autism, according to a Feb. 15 report in the open access journal PLoS ONE.
There has been some concern that mercury may play a role in autism development. To investigate one aspect of this link, Barry Wright of North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust led a team of researchers in a study of 56 children with autism spectrum disorders, and mainstream, special school and sibling controls. The team found that the group with autism did not have elevated or reduced levels of urinary mercury relative to the control groups. These results indicate that mercury excretion rates are unlikely to have a clear causal link to autism spectrum disorders, the authors write.
INFORMATION:
Citation: Wright B, Pearce H, Allgar V, Miles J, Whitton C, et al. (2012) A Comparison of Urinary Mercury between Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Control Children. PLoS ONE 7(2): e29547. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029547
Financial Disclosure: This research was funded by Sir Samuel Scott of Yews Trust, The London Law Trust and The York Innovation Research Fund from the York and Selby Research and Development Committee, Selby and York Primary Care Trust. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interest Statement: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2012-02-16
Organic farms produce strawberries with fewer malformations and a higher proportion of fully pollinated berries relative to conventional forms, according to a Feb. 15 report in the open access journal PLoS ONE.
The study, led by Georg Andersson of Lund University in Sweden, investigated the effect of organic farming compared to conventional. They found that the pollination success increased greatly with organic farming, and speculate that this effect may be due to an increase in insect pollinator abundance and/or diversity. They also determined that this effect was apparent ...
2012-02-16
BOSTON, MA—Mutations in TTN—the largest gene in the human genome—cause idiopathic (unknown cause) dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), a common form of heart failure, according to a study by Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) researchers. The TTN gene encodes a protein that functions as a scaffold for assembly of contractile proteins in muscle cells and also regulates the production of force in cardiac muscle cells.
Because of its enormous size, the TTN gene was, until recently, too difficult to sequence and analyze in large numbers of patients. But with the development of ...
2012-02-16
A medication commonly used to help people stop smoking may have an unanticipated positive side effect for an entirely different vice: drinking alcohol. A new study by University of Chicago researchers finds that varenicline, sold as Chantix, increases the negative effects of alcohol and therefore could hold promise as a treatment for alcoholism.
A group of heavy-to-moderate social drinkers given a single dose varenicline three hours before an alcoholic beverage reported increased dysphoria and reduced "liking," even when researchers controlled for the effects of nausea ...
2012-02-16
A team led by a University of British Columbia professor has developed a new class of drugs that completely suppress absence seizures – a brief, sudden loss of consciousness – in rats, and which are now being tested in humans.
Absence seizures, also known as "petit mal seizures," are a symptom of epilepsy, most commonly experienced by children. During such episodes, the person looks awake but dazed. The seizures, arising from a flurry of high-frequency signals put out by the neurons of the thalamus, can be dangerous if they occur while a person is swimming or driving, ...
2012-02-16
The ability to change vocal sounds (vocal plasticity) and develop an accent is potentially far more widespread in mammals than previously believed, according to new research on goats from Queen Mary, University of London.
Vocal plasticity is the ability of an individual to modify the sound of their voice according to their social environment. Humans benefit from an extreme form of vocal plasticity which allows us to produce a wide range of sounds and accents, but in most other mammals (except, for example, bats and whales) vocalisations were thought to be genetically ...
2012-02-16
The study of more than 11,000 pregnant women, in partnership with Mars Petcare, showed that those who owned dogs were approximately 50% more likely to achieve the recommended 30 minutes of exercise a day through high levels of brisk walking than those without dogs. Scientists suggest that as it is a low-risk exercise, walking a dog could form part of a broader strategy to improve the health of pregnant women.
Previous studies have shown that maternal obesity and large weight gain during pregnancy has adverse outcomes for mother and child. Studies show, for example, that ...
2012-02-16
CINCINNATI -- As part of the first national, randomized clinical trial to study two methods of drug delivery for seizing patients, researchers have shown that using an auto-injector, similar to an EpiPen, to deliver anticonvulsant medication stops prolonged seizures more quickly and effectively than drug delivery through an IV line.
The research, which will be published in the Feb. 16 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, was conducted as part of the Rapid Anticonvulsant Medication Prior to Arrival Trial (RAMPART), which included University of Cincinnati (UC) ...
2012-02-16
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, the leading multi-technological applied research organisation in Northern Europe, has developed an optical accessory that turns an ordinary camera phone into a high-resolution microscope. The device is accurate to one hundredth of a millimetre. Among those who will benefit from the device are the printing industry, consumers, the security business, and even health care professionals. A new Finnish enterprise called KeepLoop Oy and VTT are already exploring the commercial potential of the invention. The first industrial applications ...
2012-02-16
BOSTON, MA (February 15, 2012) — For decades, researchers have sought a genetic explanation for idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), a weakening and enlargement of the heart that puts an estimated 1.6 million Americans at risk of heart failure each year. Because idiopathic DCM occurs as a familial disorder, researchers have long searched for genetic causes, but for most patients the etiology for their heart disease remained unknown.
Now, new work from the lab of Christine Seidman, a Howard Hughes Investigator and the Thomas W. Smith Professor of Medicine and Genetics ...
2012-02-16
When a person is experiencing a prolonged convulsive seizure, quick medical intervention is critical. With every passing minute, the seizure becomes harder to stop, and can place the patient at risk of brain damage and death. This is why paramedics are trained to administer anticonvulsive medications as soon as possible -- traditionally giving them intravenously before arriving at the hospital.
Now a major clinical trial has shown that an even faster method that involves injecting the drugs into the thigh muscle using an autoinjector (similar to a pre-loaded syringe) ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Study shows that urinary mercury is not correlated with autism
