Contact: Marguerite Beck marbeck@wakehealth.edu 336-716-2415 Wake Forest School of Medicine Ralph Hingson, Sc.D., M.P.H. rhingson@mail.nih.gov 301-443-1274 National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research When campuses and their surrounding communities can join forces to stop alcohol abuse U.S. college students typically drink more than their non-college peers and are slow to 'mature out' of their harmful drinking patterns. A new study examines a combined community-level and campus-level approach ...

Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research Disinhibition/drinking differences between African-American and European-American youth African American adolescents drink less than European American adolescents. A new study examines racial differences in disinhibition. Results indicate that European American youth have higher levels of sensation seeking while African American youth have higher levels of impulsivity. Compared to European American adolescents, African American adolescents are more likely to abstain from alcohol, drink less frequently, and engage in ...

Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research Alcoholism and HIV infection have different effects on visuomotor procedural memory processes Visuomotor procedural memory processes include driving a car, riding a bike, and using a computer mouse. This study examined the separate and combined injurious effects of chronic alcoholism and HIV infection upon visuomotor procedural memory processes. Results indicate the two conditions differently affect the processes involved in procedural learning and memory of visuomotor information. The different effects on memory processes ...

Liver cancer is the third leading cancer killer worldwide and new treatments are urgently needed. This study shows that loss of a regulatory molecule called microRNA-122 leads to liver cancer. The findings suggest that developing a drug that restores microRNA-122 levels might offer a new way to treat this deadly disease. COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study shows that loss of a small RNA molecule in liver cells might cause liver cancer and that restoring the molecule might slow tumor growth and offer a new way to treat the disease. The animal study was led by researchers ...

A clinical study in a remote region of southwest Uganda has demonstrated the feasibility of using a health campaign to rapidly test a community for HIV and simultaneously offer prevention and diagnosis for a variety of other diseases in rural and resource-poor settings of sub-Saharan Africa. At the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., the first results of this study, called the "Sustainable East Africa Research in Community Health (SEARCH) Collaboration," will be described by doctors at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco ...

In January, 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued new guidelines on dosing of an HIV medication used to treat people infected with both HIV and tuberculosis (TB) because of a potential interaction between two of the main drugs used to treat each disease. The drug rifampin, used for treating TB, can lower levels of the HIV medicine efavirenz, so the FDA recommended that patients who weigh more than 50 kg (110 pounds) and who are taking both medications should get 30 percent larger doses of efavirenz (an increase from 600 mg to 800 mg). Now, a new ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Watching videos on YouTube may be a new way to show the treatment for a common cause of vertigo, which often goes untreated by physicians, according to a study published in the July 24, 2012, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is an inner ear disorder that is a common cause of dizziness. "This type of vertigo can be treated easily and quickly with a simple maneuver called the Epley maneuver, but too often the maneuver isn't used, and people are told to 'wait ...

EDITOR'S PICK MiR-122 micromanages liver function MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenously encoded RNAs that regulate the stability or translation of mRNA molecules, and emerging research suggests that they have diverse roles in normal physiology and disease. In this issue, two groups investigated the role of the predominant liver miRNA, miR-122. Ann-Ping Tsou and colleagues from National Yang-Ming University in Taiwan, and a team led by Kalpana Ghoshal, from Ohio State University generated mouse models of MiR-122 loss of function, and determined that the molecule was critically ...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenously encoded RNAs that regulate the stability or translation of mRNA molecules, and emerging research suggests that they have diverse roles in normal physiology and disease. In this issue, two groups investigated the role of the predominant liver miRNA, miR-122. Ann-Ping Tsou and colleagues from National Yang-Ming University in Taiwan, and a team led by Kalpana Ghoshal, from Ohio State University generated mouse models of MiR-122 loss of function, and determined that the molecule was critically involved in modulating fat and cholesterol metabolism, ...

An analysis of newly sequenced polar bear genomes is providing important clues about the species' evolution, suggesting that climate change and genetic exchange with brown bears helped create the polar bear as we know it today. The international study, led by the Penn State University and the University at Buffalo, found evidence that the size of the polar bear population fluctuated with key climatic events over the past million years, growing during periods of cooling and shrinking in warmer times. The research also suggests that while polar bears evolved into a distinct ...

With widespread hunger continuing to haunt developing nations, and obesity fast becoming a global epidemic, any number of efforts on the parts of governments, scientists, non-profit organizations and the business world have taken aim at these twin nutrition-related crises. But all of these efforts have failed to make a large dent in the problems, and now an unusual international collaboration of researchers is explaining why. Publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers argue that while hunger and obesity are caused by a perfect storm ...

The first study of a procedure to make three-dimensional "maps" of electrical signals in children's hearts could help cardiologists correct rapid heart rhythms in young patients, according to new research presented at the American Heart Association's Basic Cardiovascular Sciences 2012 Scientific Sessions. Children with the condition atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia, or AVNRT, suffer from disruptions in the heart's electrical system that cause sudden rapid heart rates. Patients have been successfully treated with cardiac ablation , in which the abnormal tissue ...

Damaged and aged heart tissue of older heart failure patients was rejuvenated by stem cells modified by scientists, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Basic Cardiovascular Sciences 2012 Scientific Sessions. The study is simultaneously published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The research could one day lead to new treatments for heart failure patients, researchers said. "Since patients with heart failure are normally elderly, their cardiac stem cells aren't very healthy," said Sadia Mohsin, Ph.D., one of the ...

Infants are able to detect how speech communicates unobservable intentions, researchers at New York University and McGill University have found in a study that sheds new light on how early in life we can rely on language to acquire knowledge about matters that go beyond first-hand experiences. Their findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "Much of what we know about the world does not come from our own experiences, so we have to obtain this information indirectly—from books, the news media, and conversation," explained Athena Vouloumanos, ...

Using a newly developed analytical technique, a team led by scientists at USC was the first to identify long-hypothesized vitamin B deficient zones in the ocean. "This is another twist to what limits life in the ocean," said Sergio Sañudo-Wilhelmy, professor of biological and earth sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and lead author on a paper about the vitamin-depleted zones that will appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on July 23. B vitamins are organic compounds dissolved in the ocean and are important for living ...

Study results released today by the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) show disturbing rates of new HIV infections occurring among black gay and bisexual men in the U.S. (also known as men who have sex with men, or MSM), particularly young black MSM. The HPTN 061 study showed that the overall rate of new HIV infection among black MSM in this study was 2.8% per year, a rate that is nearly 50% higher than in white MSM in the U.S. Even more alarming, HPTN 061 found that young black MSM—those 30 years of age and younger—acquired HIV infection at a rate of 5.9% per year, ...

The impact of deforestation on loss of biodiversity is undeniable. Madagascar, a biodiversity hotspot for its richness of endemic species, has been especially hard hit by deforestation and subsequent destruction of natural habitats, caused mainly, it is thought, by human pauperisation, economic activities and population growth. A recent study, by an international research group led by Lounès Chickhi, group leader at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (Portugal) and CNRS researcher (in Toulouse, France), questions the prevailing account that degradation of tropical ecosystems ...

Increasing dietary intake of the antioxidant vitamins C, E, and selenium could help cut the risk of developing pancreatic cancer by up to two thirds, suggests research published online in the journal Gut. If the association turns out to be causal, one in 12 of these cancers might be prevented, suggest the researchers, who are leading the Norfolk arm of the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer (EPIC) study. Cancer of the pancreas kills more than a quarter of a million people every year around the world. And 7500 people are diagnosed with the disease every year ...

Two out of three severely obese kids already have at least one risk factor for heart disease, suggests research published online in Archives of Disease in Childhood. The prevalence and severity of childhood obesity has been rising worldwide, but little research has been carried out on the underlying health problems that children with severe weight problems have, say the authors. They base their findings on data supplied by paediatricians to the Dutch Paediatric Surveillance Unit between 2005 and 2007. During this period, doctors treating all new cases of severe obesity ...

(Boston, Mass.)—Severe psychological and physical neglect produces measurable changes in children's brains, finds a study led by Boston Children's Hospital. But the study also suggests that positive interventions can partially reverse these changes. Researchers led by Margaret Sheridan, PhD, and Charles Nelson, PhD, of the Labs of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children's Hospital, analyzed brain MRI scans from Romanian children in the ongoing Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP), which has transferred some children reared in orphanages into quality foster care ...

Most children exposed to high levels of alcohol in the womb do not develop the distinct facial features seen in fetal alcohol syndrome, but instead show signs of abnormal intellectual or behavioral development, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and researchers in Chile. These abnormalities of the nervous system involved language delays, hyperactivity, attention deficits or intellectual delays. The researchers used the term s functional neurologic impairment to describe these abnormalities.. The study authors documented an abnormality ...

CHICAGO – Total hip replacement (THR) and total knee replacement (TKR) surgeries were associated with increased risk of acute myocardial infarction (AMI, heart attack) in the first two weeks after the surgical procedures, according to report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. THR and TKR are effective for treating patients with moderate to severe osteoarthritis. These surgical procedures are commonly performed, with an estimated 1.8 million procedures performed annually worldwide, according to the study background. "This ...

CHICAGO – A study of adolescents with hypertension enrolled in the Michigan Medicaid program suggests that guideline-recommended diagnostic tests – echocardiograms and renal ultrasonography – were poorly used, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Hypertension is a growing problem for adolescents because of the association between obesity and hypertension. Current pediatric guidelines recommend laboratory tests and renal ultrasonography for all pediatric patients with hypertension to rule ...

BOSTON – July 23, 2012 – Scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center have identified biological mechanisms by which glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), a gut hormone, protects against kidney disease, and also mechanisms that inhibit its actions in diabetes. The findings, which are reported today online by Diabetes, may lead to the development of new therapeutic agents that harness the actions of GLP-1 to prevent the harmful effects of hyperglycemia on renal endothelial cells. Renal complications, also known as diabetic nephropathy, are one of the most life-threatening complications ...

Researchers at ICAP's Harlem Prevention Center (HPC) joined the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) today to announce study results that showed disturbing rates of new HIV infections occurring among black gay and bisexual men in the U.S. (also known as men who have sex with men, or MSM), particularly young black MSM. The HPTN 061 study showed that the overall rate of new HIV infection among black MSM in this study was 2.8% per year, a rate that is nearly 50% higher than in white MSM in the U.S. Even more alarming, HPTN 061 found that young black MSM—those 30 years of ...