Category: Health

For humans, death in old age has always been life’s great punchline. It takes 70 or 80 years to get really good at the whole business of being alive, and no sooner does that happen than mortality begins looking your way, tapping its watch and discreetly reminding you that there’s a line waiting for your table, a report by TIME magazine has said.

It’s the job of aging—and the multiple diseases that accompany it—to make sure we eventually get out of the way, an unhappy fact humans have been battling practically as long as we’ve been around. But some experts argue that aggressively treating the age-related diseases—heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia—instead of aging itself has been a mistake.

A collection of studies just published in Science aims to explore some promising new strategies for getting down into the machinery of the cells themselves to stop or at least slow the aging process. “Age is the greatest risk factor for nearly every major cause of mortality in developed nations,” wrote Matt Kaeberlein, University of Washington professor of pathology, and his colleagues in an introduction to the studies. “Despite this, most biological research focuses on individual disease processes, without much consideration for the relationship between aging and disease.”

The effort to change this is a war being fought on multiple fronts. Here are the places science is making some of the greatest advances. Whether you like it or not, your body is home to many trillions of bacteria that are essential to digestion and other bodily processes. In the aged, however, the makeup of that population changes, with higher concentrations of a bacterial species known as bacteroides, which which are harmless and helpful as long as they remain in the gut, but can cause infections and other problems when they infiltrate other tissues. Overall, researchers have found, the changing makeup of the microbiome can have an impact on immunity, cognitive function and maintenance of muscle tissue—all of which decline in older people.

The problem is exacerbated by antibiotics, which tend to be prescribed at higher rates as people age, and generally kill good bacteria as well as bad. Studies have shown that long-term stays at assisted living facilities or nursing homes are associated with both increased frailty and further deterioration of the microbiome—though it’s not certain whether this is a matter of causation or mere association. Either way, the microbiome is one of the easier parts of the human system to manipulate. It’s too much to say that we can eat our way to immortality, but better health and, perhaps, more years are hardly out of the question.

Telomeres are cuff-like structures at the ends of chromosomes that grow shorter over the course of a lifetime, leaving the body susceptible to a range of age-related breakdowns. According to Nobel Laureate Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, who wrote one of the papers in the Science release, the rate at which any one person’s telomeres burn down is from 30% to 80% determined by genetics, with the rest most heavily influenced by external variables such as diet, environmental toxins, exercise and stress.

The low-hanging fruit here are lifestyle variables: improving diet, increasing exercise, doing what you can to reduce stress and limit exposure to environmental toxins. No matter the reason for telomere shortening, boosting the levels of the body’s own telomere-building enzyme, known as telomerase, may help. That can be done, but it’s risky. According to Blackburn, who is one of the discoverers of telomerase, “in 80 to 90% of fully malignant human tumors, cancer cell telomerase is up-regulated compared to normal tissue counterparts.” Still, the enzyme remains one of the great hopes of anti-aging scientists, provided the dangers can be controlled. That’s no easy feat, which is why a hope—but a promising one—is what telomerase will remain for now.

The body’s best little construction workers are stem cells, the versatile progenitor cells that have the power to rebuild organs and other systems by becoming whatever kind of specialty tissue they need to be. No surprise, stem cell production and performance decline as we age—and organ decline follows. Environmental factors such as toxins and poor diet can further damage stem cells, as can sun exposure, in the case of the skin. Two approaches can help reverse, or at least slow, the aging and death of stem cells. In numerous experiments, stem cells from an older organism injected into a younger one have been shown to revert to a more youthful state, and the reverse is true for young cells place in an aged body. Introducing plasma or other blood factors from younger people into older ones may work a similar rejuvenation. Simpler interventions may also help: if a person with a poor diet and little exercise or a high stress level is exhibiting stem cell decline too early in life, reducing the stressors and otherwise changing the lifestyle may reduce the problem too.

There’s a little tiny engine room deep inside your cells that is responsible for metabolizing energy and keeping the cell alive. It’s the mitochondria, and it’s so important it’s thought of as its own tiny organ. It even has its own DNA profile. But the engine starts to falter as we age, and that has an impact across the entire power grid that is the body. The good news is, researchers have definitely determined that yes, this plays a direct role in aging. The bad news is that reversing the process doesn’t seem to reverse aging—at least not by itself.

The breakdown in the mitochondria has to do with how key proteins—which are densely packed inside the organelle—unfold as they go about their work. This process is less efficient in older organisms. Investigators working with roundworms have figured out ways to intervene in this process and improve the unfolding, but that hasn’t had an impact on the apparent age of the animal. Still, the authors of the Science paper have concluded that while mitochondrial health does not, on its own, determine aging, it all but surely plays an important role. Determining that role—and making the most of it—is where anti-aging therapy might lie.

Over100 makers and marketers of dietary supplements have come under scrutiny by the United States Department of Justice, according to an announcement on November 17. As per reports, the cases came as part of a nationwide sweep that dated back to November 2014, the DOJ said in a statement. It focused on enforcement resources in an area of the dietary supplement market that has been causing increased concern among health officials, it added.

In each case filed, the Justice Department or one of its federal partners alleged the sale of supplements contained ingredients other than what was listed on the product label. It added that, if not for the mislabeled product, the sale of products that make health or disease treatment claims that are not supported by adequate scientific evidence led to the cases filed.

Among the cases announced was a criminal case charging USPlabs LLC, known for its workout and weight loss supplements, and a number of its corporate officers, the Justice Department said.

Following the sweep on USPlabs and its products such as Jack3d and OxyElite Pro, federal court cases were opened up in 18 states.

Many agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigation unit took part in the effort. Additionally, the Department of Defense and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency are participating in the sweep to unveil new tools to increase awareness of the risks in taking unlawful dietary supplements.

In the Justice Department statement, principal deputy assistant attorney general Benjamin Mizer said, “The Justice Department and its federal partners have joined forces to bring to justice companies and individuals who profit from products that threaten consumer health. The USPlabs case and others brought as part of this sweep illustrate alarming practices the department found — practices that must be brought to the public’s attention so consumers know the serious health risks of untested products.”

The joint-agency sweep pursued 117 individuals and entities through criminal and civil enforcement action, with 89 subject to cases filed since November 2014. Dallas-based USPlabs was charged with an 11-count indictment, including S.K. Laboratories Inc. for the sale of their products. Several officers, including S.K. Laboratories vice president Sitesh Patel, received various counts associated with the unlawful sale of the supplements.

Thousands of people with various disabilities gathered at India Gate for the Walk to Freedom.
The passing of The Right of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2014 in the ongoing winter session of parliament will be of huge help to the disabled, said activists who gathered here on World Disability Day on Thursday.

Thousands of people with various disabilities gathered at India Gate for the Walk to Freedom that was organised by the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP).

“The new law will take us to the next level of development. If the 1995 disability act was the first phase of development, this bill will rocket us,” Javid Abidi, honorary director of NCPEDP, told media. “The final version is with the cabinet. We are really hoping that it would be passed this week in parliament.”

Abidi, who is himself disabled, said the definition of disability is limited under the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995. “The definition of disability right now is very limited and includes only seven disabilities. Whereas the new law will expand it to 19 and it will be path breaking,” he said.

However, senior Congress Party leader and spokesperson, Randeep Singh Surjewala, said: “From parliament to the common people, everyone should participate in helping to overcome disability,” he said. Abidi also said there should be “no political fight” over the passing of the bill.

He said there are no provisions for deaf people right now but “the new law guarantees development for deaf people and improvement in sign languages as well”. “When people with autism can work in good companies elsewhere, why can’t it happen in India,” he asked. Several groups, including differently-abled people, participated in song performances and presented various acts at the event.

A discovery by Rutgers scientists links a protein in sperm to the same molecule needed for reproduction in tiny roundworms and provides clues to human infertility. In a study published in Current Biology, Andrew Singson, a professor in the Department of Genetics in the School of Arts and Sciences, and colleagues from the National Institutes of Health and the College of William and Mary in Virginia, identified a protein, SPE-45, on the sperm of C. elegan worms that help bind sperm to eggs during fertilization. It is the same as the Izumo protein considered essential for humans and other mammals to reproduce that was discovered a decade ago by Japanese scientists who named it after a marriage shrine in Japan.

“Humans and worms are connected by a common ancestor that lived more than 700 million years ago and this discovery will give us insight into their shared genetics and fertility pathways,” said Singson, a principal investigator at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology.

The new research suggests that a common ancestor to both worms and humans had a SPE-45/Izumo-like gene that was required for sperm to function properly at fertilization, said Singson, who has been researching the biological process of fertility for the past two decades.

“Twenty years ago when we started this research, we predicted that we would find the genes that are required for fertility from worms to humans,” said Singson.  “Now we know that this kind of molecule functions the same way beyond the mammalian branch of the tree of life.”

In the United States, one in eight couples has fertility problems. While about 70 percent of the cases can be attributed equally to the man or woman, 30 percent of the time no explanation can be found.

In the new Rutgers study, scientists found that worms produced normal-looking sperm but could not create offspring because the sperm cell lacked the SPE-45 protein on its surface similar to sperm in humans and other mammals that lacked the Izumo protein. Blocking the protein prevents sperm from binding and fusing with the egg.

“The protein works like molecular Velcro and helps the sperm and egg bind and fuse,” said Singson. “This type of finding can play an indispensable role in understanding the biological process.”

The discovery was corroborated by a team of scientists working at Emory University in Georgia and Setsunan University in Japan. Taking a different approach and using computer analysis to look at DNA sequences, this international team came up with the same conclusion which was also published in Current Biology. Comparing the worm and mammalian DNA sequences they created a hybrid SPE-45/Izumo molecule that can cure infertility in worms.

“This makes the results much more solid because two research groups have basically validated the results of the other,” Signson said. Since studying human infertility directly is very challenging due to many ethical and experimental limitations, making a genetic connection between worms and humans will help in future treatments because scientists can do experiments in worms to learn more about the function of Izumo-like molecules that they cannot do in mammals, Singson said.

“Finding new fertility genes in the worm can help us further understand the molecular basis of human fertility,” he said.  “The end result of this knowledge could be more informed and effective treatments for human infertility and reliable contraceptives for both sexes.”

“Working with the Government of India and Indian partners, the U.S. has invested close to $100 million to prevent and control tuberculosis in India, and has helped treat over 15 million people over the last 18 years,” United States Agency for International Development, responsible for administering civilian foreign aid, said here on November 19^th, 2015.

“The progress is real. Millions of lives have been saved, and we have seen dramatic improvements in diagnosis and care. But the challenge to end TB in India remains. Despite a strong national TB control program, TB continues to be a leading cause of death in India,” the USAID said, adding that the U.S. will remain a sustained, committed partner, supporting India along the path toward ending TB.

India carries the highest burden of TB in the world, an estimated 2.2 million new cases. A staggering 220,000 deaths are reported annually. More than 110,000 people are co-infected with HIV/AIDS and TB, it said.

A $22.5-million program, Tuberculosis Health Action Learning Initiative, will be initiated by USAID to complement the Revised National TB Control Program by engaging municipal governments and private providers to prevent, test and treat TB in select cities in India, a media report said.

It will help urban slum communities by strengthening the capacity of private providers to follow global standards for TB care, diagnosis and treatment and by testing and scaling innovations that improve treatment adherence, it said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will work closely with India to develop national trainings for airborne infection control and improve infection control in HIV treatment centers.

The CDC also supports counselors to provide education and social support to MDR-TB patients to ensure treatment completion and cure. It will also work closely with India to develop national trainings for airborne infection control and improve airborne infection control in HIV treatment centers.

Further in partnership with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Office of AIDS Research/National Institute of Health, the Indian Department of Biotechnology and the Indian Council of Medical Research, the NIH has established RePORT India (Regional Prospective Observational Cohort) which is a multinational collaborative effort designed to advance TB science in India.

The consortium consists of five distinct TB cohorts in South India working in collaboration with U.S. universities to address a wide array of scientific objectives and to institute a common prospective observational research protocol that is supported by a central repository, a central data management center, utilization of harmonized data elements, and specimen collection standard operating protocols.

Dr. Anil Potti, an Indian American cancer researcher, has been cited for engaging in research misconduct after an investigation by Duke University, where he was working at the time, and the Office of Research Integrity, according to a report by Duke University’s “The Chronicle.”

Former Duke University School of Medicine associate professor Dr. Anil Potti, based on reports and investigations conducted by the school and ORI, was found to have performed the misconduct in research supported by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute and covered by several grants.

According to the ORI findings, Potti included false research data in a number of published papers.

In one grant, Potti claimed in his paper that six of 33 patients responded positively to a treatment when he actually only had four patients enrolled in the research. None of the four responded to the treatment. Potti additionally altered data sets to improve the accuracy of predictors for response to treatments. The altered data was submitted to Clinical Cancer Research. In 2008, he provided a file of falsified data to a colleague; and in 2010, he provided additional misleading data to the NCI, according to the Duke article.

In a number of publications which published Potti’s research, the information provided included false data. ORI reported that falsified Potti research data was published in eight journals between 2006 and 2009. As a result of the investigation, the papers have been retracted.

Potti and ORI have come to a voluntary settlement agreement, though the professor has never admitted or denied the findings of the misconduct. The settlement, while it is not an admission of guilt, is to conclude the investigation without further resources being spent to look into the matter.

The researcher, according to the Health and Human Research Department notice published Nov. 9, has not engaged in U.S. Public Health Service-supported research since 2010.

He, additionally, has stated he does not intend to engage in further PHS research, according to the research department notice.

Early life stress is a major risk factor for later episodes of depression and people who are abused or neglected as children are almost twice as likely to experience depression later in life, says a new study. There may also be diminished processing of reward in the brain and associated reductions in a person’s ability to experience positive emotions.

Researchers at Duke University and the University of Texas Health Sciences Centre at San Antonio recruited 106 adolescents, between the ages of 11-15, who underwent an initial magnetic resonance imaging scan, along with measurements of mood and neglect.

The study participants then had a second brain scan two years later.

The researchers focused on the ventral striatum — a deep brain region that is important for processing rewarding experiences as well as generating positive emotions — both of which are deficient in depression.

“Our analyses revealed that over a two-year window during early to mid-adolescence, there was an abnormal decrease in the response of the ventral striatum to reward only in adolescents who had been exposed to emotional neglect,” said first author Jamie Hanson. Emotional neglect is a form of childhood adversity where parents are persistently emotionally unresponsive and unavailable to their children, researchers said.

This study suggests that, in some people, early life stress compromises the capacity to experience enthusiasm or pleasure. “This pathway might be targeted by neural stimulation treatments. Further, it suggests that survivors of early life trauma and their families may benefit from learning about the possibility of consequences that might appear later in life,” said John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry where the study appeared.

Dr. Atul Mehta, a transplant physician, saved the life of one of his patients, whom he had selected as a match to receive a double lung transplant. As a thank you, the woman whose life he saved, Lori Buoncore, gave the facility where Mehta works, the Cleveland Clinic, a $2 million gift in the form of the Buoncore Family Endowed Chair in Lung Transplantation.

“I was humbled by Mrs. and Mr. Buoncore’s generosity,” Mehta said. “I knew that this type of recognition comes with higher responsibility. I feel obligated to the entire transplant community.” Now, a year after the surgery, Buoncore is doing well. The national survival rate post-transplant surgery is more than 80 percent. “Saving someone’s life is beyond my capabilities,” Mehta noted. “My professional career is built upon providing my patients honest opinion and helping them make right decision for their health.”

Mehta selects patients for lung transplant and takes care of them after the transplantation is done. Buoncore, 60, in 2008 was diagnosed with interstitial lung disease – a disease that damages lung tissues, inflames the air sacs, and can cause permanent scarring of the tissues between the air sacs, making it very difficult to breathe.

Needing a lung transplant, Buoncore turned to Mehta and went on the transplant list in August 2014. She was notified of a match that was available just three months later in November 2014. She checked in and received a double lung transplant. “Proper selection of the recipient as well as the donor and the lifelong care of the transplant patient is equally important for the successful outcome,” the 62-year-old physician told India-West.

Mehta was born in Gujarat and currently resides in Moreland Hills, Ohio. He earned his undergraduate degree at Saint Xaviers College in Ahmedabad and his medical degree at N.H.L. Municipal Medical College at Gujarat University. Following medical school, Mehta completed an internship and residency in Ahmedabad, then residencies in Drexel Hill and Easton, Penn., as well as in Trenton, N.J. Additionally, he completed a fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic.

With decades of experience, Mehta said receiving a life-saving transplant is often a second chance at life.

“Many patients consider their transplant date as their second birth date,” he said. Buoncore and her husband Rick took the successful transplant and subsequent treatment to another level with the $2 million gift. The endowed chair, which is in the Buoncore name, was intended to have Mehta’s name, but he declined the offer. However, the Buoncores have said once the pulmonologist retires, the chair for the Lung Transplant Program will shift into his name.

Mehta has accomplished a lot in his career, including receiving the Gustav Killian Centenary Award for contributions in the field of bronchoscopy and interventional pulmonology by the World Association for Bronchology and Interventional Pulmonology, and the Pasquale Ciaglia Award for contributions in the field of interventional pulmonology by the American College of Chest Physicians.

He has also previously received funding by the Brundige family for bronchoscopy work. Despite all he has achieved, Mehta truly remains humbled. “Having an endowed chair is an honor,” he said. “But my bigger honor is when a patient asks me to participate in his or her medical care.”

Dr. Bhushan Pandya, founder and president of the Danville Gastroenterology Center, has been  elected president of the Medical Society of Virginia, according to the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research. “I love what I’m doing and what I’ve always done,” Pandya told local ABC affiliate WSET. “My mother said as a physician you get to take care of the patients at the end of the day, most of them feel better and you feel better about yourself.”

The Indian American gastroenterologist, who has served on the Medical Society’s board as the director and associate director for more than 10 years as a representative of the 5th district, was installed as president-elect at the organization’s annual meeting in Chatilly.

Prior to his appointment by Governor Mark Warner and Governor Tim Kaine, Pandya recently finished his term as vice chair on the State Board of Health, which he had served for eight years.

Pandya had additionally served as the president of the Danville Pittsylvania Academy of Medicine and the Danville Regional Medical Center medical staff, and is currently the regional director of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin.

After earning his medical degree, Pandya went on to serve as president of the alumni association of his alma mater, the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi, before coming to the U.S., where he did his post-graduate training at the Jersey City Medical Center.

Currently an alternate delegate of the Virginia delegation to the American Medical Association, Pandya is also the chair-elect for the AMA-IMG Governing Council and for several years has been the chair of board of directors at Gateway Health Alliance.

The Medical Society of Virginia, a professional association for Virginia physicians, is dedicated to supporting physicians in their practice and advocating on their behalf for health care legislation.

Locally, Pandya has served as the president of the Danville Pittsylvania Academy of Medicine and the Danville Regional Medical Center medical staff. He is also the regional director of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin.

Additionally, he has served as president of the alumni association of Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi, where he earned his medical degree before completing post-graduate training at the Jersey City Medical Center.

The Medical Society of Virginia was founded in 1890. Its vision is to make Virginia the best place to practice Medicine and receive care. The Medical Society of Virginia is a professional association that is dedicated to supporting physicians in their practice and advocating on their behalf of them for health care legislation. The society also supports its members through educational and auxiliary activities that assist physicians in the practice of medicine.

He has served as the regional director of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin representing the South Atlantic region. He has served as president of the alumni association of Maulana Azad Medical College, where he earned his medical degree in New Delhi, India.

Dr. Pandya believes that the practice of medicine is very challenging in today’s time. To preserve the profession and to leave a healthy legacy for the next generation of physicians, each one of us should remain engaged in organized medicine. In the words of Nathan Laufer, MD, “If we don’t try to achieve some of these goals (stand together against the forces that prevent us from taking care of our patients), we are guaranteed a 100% failure rate in implementing any of them!”

India has around 65 million diabetic patients, the number being second only to China, Apollo Hospital’s senior endocrinologist S.K. Wangnoo said on Tuesday.

“The main reasons for the rise in the number of diabetic patients are lifestyle changes like lack of exercise and poor dietary habits,” Wangnoo told IANS.

Creating awareness will be the key factor in treating and preventing diabetes, he said.

He also pointed out that “India does not have enough trained doctors to deal with the disease”.

Meanwhile, 1,500 people, including doctors, participated in a marathon held for diabetes awareness on Sunday.

The campaign, organised in partnership with Hope and Helping Hands Society and Noida Running Group, was held on Sunday between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m. at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium here.

It included walk for diabetes awareness and Half Marathon, 11 km and 6 km.

Sharing the experience, Dr. Rekha Khandelwal said: “Being a diabetes patient, I realise the importance of early detection and management. Regular exercise keeps me going and my diabetes under control. This run was a great event to raise awareness about diabetes.”

“A pathologist’s job is to diagnose patients suffering from the disease. Rarely do we get a chance to spread awareness. This event helped me reach out to people and educate them about diabetes,” Dr. Ila Jain, who too participated, commented.

Husbands and wives married for a long time don’t look at marital problems in the same way. When a marriage has troubles, women worry. They become sad. They get frustrated. For men, it’s sheer frustration and not much more.

In a new Rutgers and University of Michigan study, published in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, the sociologist who found that ‘A Happy Wife, Means a Happy Life’ looked at sadness, worry and frustration – among the most common negative emotions reported by older adults – and discovered that men and women in long-term marriages deal with marriage difficulties differently.

“The men don’t really want to talk about it or spend too much time thinking about it,” said Deborah Carr, a professor in the Department of Sociology, School of Arts and Sciences, who studies marital relationships. “Men often don’t want to express vulnerable emotions, while women are much more comfortable expressing sadness or worry.”

Men and women have very different emotional reactions to the strain and support they experience in marriage, Carr said. While talking about issues and offering support makes the wives – who traditionally feel responsible for sustaining the emotional climate of a marriage — feel good, this only frustrated the husbands surveyed.

“For women, getting a lot of support from their spouse is a positive experience,” said Carr. “Older men, however, may feel frustrated receiving lots of support from their wife, especially if it makes them feel helpless or less competent.”

In the study, 722 couples, married an average of 39 years, were asked how their marital experience – and the reactions of their spouse – affected them. They responded to whether they could open up to their spouse if they needed to talk about their worries, whether their spouse appreciates them, understands the way they feel about things, argues with them, makes them feel tense and gets on their nerves.

The husbands in the study  – who more often rated their marriages positively and reported significantly higher levels of emotional support and lower levels of marital strain than their wives  – felt frustrated giving as well as receiving support.

“Men who provide high levels of support to their wives may feel this frustration if they believe that they would rather be focusing their energies on another activity,” Carr said.

It may also have something to do with the age of the couples, with one spouse in the study having to be at least 60. Men of this generation may feel less competent if they need too much support from their wives, Carr said.

“We don’t know if younger generations of men would act differently in this situation,” Carr said. “But frustration is an under-researched emotion that needs to be looked at further.”

This is particularly important as couples age, become more dependent, less healthy and face the possibility of getting dementia or becoming a caregiver, Carr said.

“If older men or women with dementia have reduced impulse control, they could lash out against their spouse if they’re feeling frustrated,” she said. “It’s very important to keep in mind these dynamics even with long married couples who you may not think have any problems.”

The bottom line, said Carr, is that there has to be a middle ground between marital suffocation and togetherness.  Spouses want to feel loved and supported but not trapped.

“The general message is that support is good only if one views it as helpful and desirable,” she said. “Most people want to feel they’re capable of managing their own life.”

Children who receive antibiotics throughout the course of their childhood gain weight significantly faster than those who do not, says a new study. The findings suggest that early antibiotics use may have a compounding effect on body mass index (BMI), a measure often used to determine whether someone is at a healthy weight.

“Your BMI may be forever altered by the antibiotics you take as a child,” said study leader Brian Schwartz, professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, US. “Our data suggest that every time we give an antibiotic to kids they gain weight faster over time,” Schwartz noted.

For the study, the researchers analysed health records of 163,820 children between three and 18 years old from January 2001 to February 2012. They examined body weight and height (which are used to determine BMI) and antibiotic use in the previous year as well as any earlier years for which records were available. At age 15, children who had taken antibiotics seven or more times during childhood weighed about three pounds (1.3 kg) more than those who received no antibiotics, the findings showed.

“While the magnitude of the weight increase attributable to antibiotics may be modest by the end of childhood, our finding that the effects are cumulative raises the possibility that these effects continue and are compounded into adulthood,” Schwartz said.

Antibiotics kill off harmful bacteria but also those vital to gastrointestinal health. Repeated antibiotics use can forever change the microbiota, or the microorganisms that inhabit the body, thereby altering the way it breaks down food and increasing the calories of nutrients absorbed. This, in turn, can increase weight gain, the study explained.

As many as 293 patients of an Indian American cardiologist, Dr. Arvind Gandhi and Dr. Satyaprakash Makam, around a small town in Indiana have filed lawsuits against him and two other doctors in his practice claiming that they performed needless procedures. Indiana’s Medicaid program has started an investigation against Munster, Indiana-based Dr. Arvind Gandhi and his partners, Dr. Wail Asfour and Dr. Satyaprakash Makam, according to the New York Times.

The three doctors received nearly $5 million in combined Medicare payments in 2012, making them the three most reimbursed cardiologists in Indiana, it said. The Times quoted one doctor not named in the litigation as saying he had received a subpoena from the U.S. attorney’s office and provided the medical charts of several former patients of Gandhi and his colleagues whom he has since treated.

Lawyers for Gandhi and his practice, Cardiology Associates of Northwest Indiana, said they had not received any subpoenas, and the doctors denied any wrongdoing. The partners invested in real estate, including luxury apartments in Chicago, and a local restaurant, the Times said.

Besides the doctors, the malpractice lawsuits also name Community Hospital, where “Dr. Gandhi was a star,” through the foundation that oversees its operations, as a defendant, the daily said. Gandhi was a high-ranking member of the medical staff at the hospital, and the lawsuits charge that the superfluous procedures were done “with the authority and consent” of Community Hospital, it said. Lawyers for the hospital deny any wrongdoing.

Lawyers for Gandhi, his practice and the hospital say the lawsuits are without merit. The legal actions, they say, are being driven by envious physicians eager to take patients from Gandhi and by greedy lawyers seeking a big settlement.

A whistle-blower lawsuit brought by a physician and a hospital employee against the hospital, Gandhi and his practice in 2008 raised similar accusations that the hospital had billed for unnecessary defibrillator and pacemaker implantations that were performed by doctors without the proper credentials to implant the devices. But the suit, eventually joined by the U.S. attorney’s office in Hammond, Indiana, just north of Munster, was settled without anyone admitting wrongdoing. The hospital paid a $48,942 settlement.

The hospital and the doctors say that the settlement shows that the issues have been investigated and that they have been absolved of many of the same allegations contained in the current malpractice suits, the Times said. According to a PTI report, Gandhi retired last fall.

Dr. Khurshid Guru, an Indian American doctor has saved the life of a 2-year-old boy who suffered an asthma attack on board a transatlantic flight by creating a makeshift inhaler out of a cup and a bottle. Dr. Khurshid Guru, director of robotic surgery at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in New York, was aboard the Air Canada flight from Spain to the U.S. on Sept. 18 when he was notified of the toddler in trouble.

The boy was crying and short of breath, and his parents had accidentally packed his asthma medication in checked luggage, ABC News reported.  The child’s oxygen level was dipping down, and he needed oxygen, as well as asthma medication.

“The child had developed a cold,” Guru, who hails from Jammu and Kashmir, said. “We were three or four hours into the flight. I think the cold and popping of the ears and crying. … He got worse.”

After putting an oxygen meter on the child, Guru said he was disturbed to find the child’s oxygen level was dipping down to a dangerously low level — about 87 or 88 percent. Guru, who normally doesn’t treat pediatric patients, said he knew he needed to do something quickly.

Guru said he knew the child needed oxygen but also asthma medication, but the plane only had an adult inhaler on board. Guru was concerned the crying toddler was too young to understand how to use the adult inhaler that requires the patient to breathe and hold in the medication.

Instead, the doctor, who normally works with high-tech robots to treat patients, came up with a jerry-rigged device similar to a nebulizer that would deliver both oxygen and asthma medication to the crying child.

To create the nebulizer, the surgeon cut up a water bottle and added oxygen to one end and the adult inhaler through a small hole in the bottle. That way the oxygen and medication could be delivered through the bottle’s opening directly to the child.

“As the bottle went near to the child’s face, he pushed it away,” Guru said. “I got a water cup and made a hole in the bottle and focused it to his face … told [the parents] to keep it there. Within about half an hour and two treatments he was sounding much better.” After the very unusual treatment, the child’s oxygen level was around 94 or 95 percent, Guru said. “When I was landing, I checked on the child, and he was playing with the mom,” he said.

Guru said he wanted to share the story as a reminder to parents of asthmatic children to always keep their vital medication nearby. “I told the father then that the most important thing is that you never ever leave these medications away,” he told ABC News. “I wanted to make sure that everyone realized that we need to carry these things.”

In a first, Sreekanth Chalasani, an Indian American researcher from Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California has developed a new way to selectively activate brain, heart, muscle and other cells using ultrasonic sound waves. Dubbed as sonogenetics, the new technique has some similarities to the burgeoning use of light to activate cells in order to better understand the brain.

“Light-based techniques are great for some uses. But this is a new, additional tool to manipulate neurons and other cells in the body informed ,” Sreekanth Chalasani, assistant professor in Salk’s molecular neurobiology laboratory.

The new method – which uses the same type of waves used in medical sonograms – may have advantages over the light-based approach – known as optogenetics – particularly when it comes to adapting the technology to human therapeutics. In optogenetics, researchers add light-sensitive channel proteins to neurons they wish to study. By shining a focused laser on the cells, they can selectively open these channels, either activating or silencing the target neurons.

Chalasani and his group decided to see if they could develop an approach that instead relied on ultrasound waves for the activation. “In contrast to light, low-frequency ultrasound can travel through the body without any scattering,” he noted. “This could be a big advantage when you want to stimulate a region deep in the brain without affecting other regions,” adds Stuart Ibsen, post-doctoral fellow in the Chalasani lab. So far, sonogenetics has only been applied to C. elegans neurons. “The real prize will be to see whether this could work in a mammalian brain,” Chalasani pointed out.

His group has already begun testing the approach in mice. “When we make the leap into therapies for humans, I think we have a better shot with noninvasive sonogenetics approaches than with optogenetics,” he emphasised in a paper appeared in the journal Nature Communications. Chalasani obtained his PhD from University of Pennsylvania. He then did his post-doctoral research in the laboratory of Dr Cori Bargmann at the Rockefeller University in New York.

Are you hooked on to porn in a way that you feel you cannot control the urge to watch it? If yes, the mere idea of porn addiction can make you sick, says a new study. While some say porn is a healthy form of sexual expression, others believe it is an evil that leads to unrealistic expectations and addiction.

The new study from Case Western Reserve University suggests that the mere idea of porn addiction can have medicaldaily.com reported. The researchers found that those who believed they had an addiction to pornography also experienced psychological issues, like depression, anger, and anxiety.

However, this was not a result of watching porn itself, but rather it was a result of the feeling that watching porn was becoming an uncontrollable habit. “It does not seem to be the pornography itself that is causing folks problems, it is how they feel about it,” said lead study author Joshua Grubbs.

“Perceived addiction involves a negative interpretation of your own behaviour, thinking about yourself like, ‘I have no power over this’ We know from many studies that thinking something has control over you leads to psychological distress,” Grubbs said.

Grubbs added that psychological distress does not always come from a sense of guilt about viewing pornography. In fact, some people have no problem with the porn itself, but instead worry more about what will happen if they watch too much of it.

“Someone can be called out and publicly shamed, a marriage can become troubled, or maybe you are caught at work and get fired. Any of these causes psychological distress,” said Grubb.

Healthcare providers in India are expected to spend $1.2 billion on IT products and services in 2015 — an increase of seven percent over 2014, according to a new report released by market research firm Gartner.

The report includes spending by healthcare providers (includes hospitals, as well as ambulatory service and physicians practices) on internal services, software, IT services, data centre, devices and telecom services.

“IT services, which includes consulting, implementation, IT outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO), will be the largest overall spending category throughout the forecast period within the health care providers sector,” said Anurag Gupta, research vice president at Gartner.

“It is expected to reach $334 million in 2015, growing seven percent over 2014. The BPO sub-segment will record the fastest growth rate of 15 percent over 2014. ITO will be the largest sub-segment in IT services recording a 10 percent increase in 2015 to reach $103 million in 2015,” he added.

According to the report, the software market is slated to grow 6.7 percent in 2015 to reach $102 million — up from $96 million in 2014.

Vertical specific software (VSS), which includes hospital information system, electronic health/ medical records, health information management, patient financial management, and more, is expected to grow six percent in 2015 to reach $28 million, it added.

“The growth in the Indian healthcare ICT market will be driven by the private sector mainly focusing in tertiary specialised care, secondary hospital care and the government investments on core public health and primary care across several states,” Gupta said.

India plans to stop issuing a certificate that allows Indian doctors headed to the United States for higher studies to work in that country, a report said. The Ministry of Health has decided that it will no longer give the doctors the certificate that says there is no obligation for them to return to India, NDTV reported.

The certificate is key to the doctors finding jobs in the U.S. Under normal circumstances, U.S. immigration laws mandate two years of home residency for doctors holding J-1 study visas. But when doctors have the “No Obligation to Return to India” certificate, the U.S. waives the residency, allowing them to apply for work visas and accept employment.

The Indian health ministry’s move is a bid to tackle an acute shortage of doctors in India.

According to the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, a healthcare organization, India has an 81% shortage of specialist doctors, and a 12% shortage of general physicians. India has one doctor for every 1,800 people, three times higher than the WHO mandate of one doctor for every 600 people.

Dr. Naresh Trehan, a leading heart surgeon who for many years worked in the U.S., backed the Indian plan.

“All countries have this rule. India has been very lax in (implementing) it. Very few of us have come back and I think this should be an obligation that you come and serve your country,” he told NDTV.

V.V.N. Phani Babu Tiruveedhula, an Indian American student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has discovered new compounds that can reduce an alcoholic’s impulse to drink.

A new drug to help combat these urges could be ready for the market within five to six years.

Scientists found in tests using rats bred to crave alcohol that the compounds drastically diminished drinking.

In addition, the scientists observed limited side effects traditionally seen in alcoholism treatment drugs, such as depression and losing the ability to experience pleasure. The drugs also appeared to reduce anxiety in the rats who craved alcohol, but not the control rats.

“Alcoholism is a major problem. We need a better treatment right now,” said Tiruveedhula, a graduate student at U.W. Milwaukee. Studies found that alcohol triggers the brain to release dopamine, a neurochemical whose levels increase in response to eating, sex or listening to music.

Some of the drugs now available to treat alcoholism are geared toward dopamine, which prevents people from becoming happy when consuming an alcoholic beverage.

The medications, however, come from a class of compounds called opioid antagonists, which can lead to depression. They also are addictive and could lead to drug abuse. Tiruveedhula has made several new beta-carboline compounds – which may be less addictive – that could represent the future of treatment of alcoholism. Tiruveedhula and his team will present the results at the national meeting and exposition of the American Chemical Society in Boston this month.

Psychologists at the University of York have revealed new evidence showing how specific language used by parents to talk to their babies can help their child to understand the thoughts of others when they get older.

Studying the effects of maternal mind-mindedness (the ability to ‘tune in’ to their young child’s thoughts and feelings), lead author Dr. Elizabeth Kirk observed 40 mothers and their babies when they were 10, 12, 16, and 20 months old.

Keeping a record of parental language while a mother and her child played for 10 minutes, psychologists logged every time the mother made ‘mind related comments’ – inferences about their child’s thought processes through their behaviour (for example, if an infant had difficulty with opening a door on a toy car, they could be labelled as ‘frustrated’).

Revisiting 15 mother-child pairs when children reached 5 – 6 years old, the child’s Theory of Mind (ToM) or socio-cognitive ability was assessed. Using the ‘strange stories’ method, the level at which the child was able relate to others and understand another person’s thoughts was recorded.

The strange stories method involves reading a fictional vignette to the child which poses one of 12 social scenarios (contrary emotions, lies, white lies, persuasion, pretend, joke, forget, misunderstanding, double-bluff, figure of speech, appearance versus reality or sarcasm). Children are then asked a comprehension question followed by a test to prove whether they have understood the mental manipulation covered in the story.

Results showed a strong, positive correlation between mind-related comments at 10, 12 and 20 months old and a child’s score on the strange stories task. Therefore, children’s ability to understand the thoughts of other people when they were aged 5 was related to how mind-minded their mothers were when they were babies.

Dr Kirk, Lecturer in York’s Department of Psychology, said: “These findings show how a mother’s ability to tune-in to her baby’s thoughts and feelings early on helps her child to learn to empathise with the mental lives of other people. This has important consequences for the child’s social development, equipping children to understand what other people might be thinking or feeling. “These results are significant as they demonstrate the critical role of conversational interaction between mothers and their children in infancy. This also supports previous research led by psychologist Professor Liz Meins, who leads mind-mindedness research at York.”

Single mothers are far more likely to live in poverty than single fathers and their condition deteriorates with each additional child they have, new research has found. The income of single fathers, on the other hand, remains the same or increases with each added child in their family, the findings showed.

“Single mothers earn about two-thirds of what single fathers earn,” said Karen Kramer, assistant professor of family studies at University of Illinois in Chicago, US. In 2012, 28 percent of all US children lived with one parent. Of that number, 4.24 million single mothers lived below the poverty line compared to 404,000 single fathers, she noted. The single most important factor that allows single-parent families to get out of poverty is working full-time, she said.

“Single fathers are more likely to become single parents as the result of a divorce; single mothers are more likely never to have been married,” Kramer added. “Divorced single parents tend to be better off financially and are more educated than their never-married counterparts,” she explained.

The most common living arrangement for children after a divorce is for mothers to have custody. Single fathers with custody are more likely to have a cohabiting partner than single mothers, and that partner is probably at least sharing household tasks. “Single mothers are more likely to be doing everything on their own,” she said.

She also noted that society still stigmatises single mothers. “People think: How did you get in this position? It is irresponsible to be a single mother with so many kids. Now you do not have time to work,” Kramer said.

Kramer recommended that more emphasis and pressure should be placed on fathers and their ability to pay child support and spousal maintenance, raising the minimum wage to a living wage, and providing similar benefits and rewards for part-time work as the ones full-time workers get. The study appeared in the journal Gender Issues.

As more Indians surf for online pornography, despite efforts to ban it, experts caution that excessive exposure to explicit sex on the net may result in some of them turning into porn addicts and hypersexuals.

“Obsessive porn viewing can turn some into hyper-sexuals and addicts. This may later lead to porn dependence or even promiscuity, leading to relationship break-ups,” says Dr Manish Jain, senior consultant (psychiatrist) at BLK Super Speciality Hospital, New Delhi.

In India, porn watching on internet, particularly among women, is on the rise. They are slowly bridging the gap with their male counterparts who have traditionally been leading consumers of sex online. Today Indian women are 30 percent of the regular visitors to porn websites, says a study undertaken by New York-based news website, The Daily Beast in collaboration with popular sex website Pornhub.

The figure has risen from last year, when 26 percent of Indian visitors were women. The data was collated from nearly 40 million Pornhub users. According to Dr. Sameer Malhotra, director (mental health and behavioural sciences) at Max Super Speciality Hospital, too much explicit porn can be associated with a need for stronger visual signals for arousal.

“It can make the act feel too mechanical. It can also cause stress in a relationship along with various other problems in one’s romantic and personal life,” he told the media. Sexual behaviour and libido, however, vary from person to person.“There is evidence to suggest that watching pornography does result in a greater objectification of both men and women,” stresses Dr Samir Parikh, director of mental health and behavioural sciences at Fortis Hospital in New Delhi.

Can excessive porn affect the libido in women? “Results can vary as in some cases, it can increase libido leading to promiscuity and excessive masturbation. In others, however, it may lead to decreased sexual activity in which gratification is attained only by watching pornography,” explains Dr. Jain.

Despite several studies claiming that porn is bad for your brain and your relationships, there are other studies saying that porn does not cause irrecoverable harm to the brain or your sex life and, in fact, it might even be kind of good for you. “In a recent paper, two Danish researchers concluded from a survey of 688 Danish adults that porn did not yield any negative mental or health effects,” Dr. Jain said.

In fact, the researchers found a positive correlation between subject’s porn viewing and increased sexual satisfaction, as well as self-reported benefits in other areas of their lives, he said. Another recent study by Pornhub for Mic.com – a New York-based website focussed on news for millennials – revealed that while the core audience for porn is predominantly male, there has been a surge in women porn viewers among the millennial generation (those born after 1980) globally.

“Perhaps if this trend continues, we will get to a place where porn is produced with both male and female fantasies in mind,” the Mic study said. According to the data, 60 percent of porn-watching millennials watch it on their smartphones while only 33 percent watch porn on computers.

Dr. Parikh, however, tends to differ. “There is nothing to say that pornography is healthy. At the same time, depending on the nature of pornographic viewing, and that too infrequently, may not be of concern but either ways would not be a healthy thing to do,” he said. “It can also stimulate one’s fantasy and predispose one towards risky sex behaviour,” notes Dr Malhotra.

At times, multiple clippings are used and clubbed to showcase a prolonged intercourse in the porn movie. “This could generate myths and anxieties with respect to one’s own performance capabilities,” he warns. In the meantime, a healthy and mature porn watching is what experts recommend for the young women. “Do not just treat porn for carnal pleasure but for enhancing the overall experience of being together with your partner,” they advise.

Dr. Ananth Murthy, in a miraculous surgical feat, has gifted a pair of new ears to an 8-year-old boy, according to news reports. Elijah Bell, of North Canton, Ohio, is a second-grade student at Frazer Elementary in Canton. He was born with bilateral atresia microtia, a rare  birth defect  where the outer ears are undeveloped. Over the course of five surgeries in four years, Bell’s ear procedures were completed August 21 by a team led by Dr. Murthy. The surgical feat has been reported across the United States as a “miracle” because of the intricacies involved.

Besides five surgeries to create the ears – which began when Bell was just 4 – Murthy had to use a skin graft from the boy’s thigh to create a gap between his ears and his head. The final surgery was done in July when Murthy gave Bell’s ears detailed “hills and valleys.”

“The body naturally wants to smooth everything out as it heals, so we always have to go back a couple of times to help create the natural curves of an ear,” Murthy said in a statement. “It is an artistic procedure,” the Indian American doctor added.

Searching for a doctor who could help Elijah, Bell turned to Children’s Hospital in Akron, Ohio. It’s the same facility where Elijah was treated after being born prematurely. There, Elijah and his medical team, led by Indian American surgeon Dr. Ananth Murthy, the director of plastic surgery, started the long process of developing new ears.

Bilateral artesia microtia is a very rare birth defect which affects about 1 in 50,000 people. “By the time you are 6 to 8 years old, your ears are pretty much fully grown. Doing the surgeries at that age allows these kids to start their school careers with normal ears,” Murthy explained.

For Bell, the surgery has helped develop a new confidence in him. “He’s just learning to love himself the way he is,” the boy’s mother Colleen Bell said. Murthy is described by his Akron-based hospital as “our very own ‘Doogie Howser’,” who completed his undergraduate degree at the age of 19 and earned his medical degree by the time he was 22 years old.

New York-based HelpMeSee, which also has offices in New Delhi, China and the Netherlands, was recognized Aug. 13 with 11 Stevie Awards at the 12th annual International Business Awards. HelpMeSee is a global campaign with a singular mission to eradicate preventable blindness caused by cataracts — the leading cause of blindness worldwide — within two decades.

The company, whose volunteer medical officer is Indian American Dr. Ajay Singh, was recognized with a silver Stevie Award for Company of the Year in the nonprofit category. Other recognition included Gold Stevie Awards for a video on the HelpMeSee Reach mobile app and the Partners in Sight eNewsletter; Silver Stevie Awards for creative use of Instagram, video and direct mail; and Bronze for its Facebook feed, Twitter feed, the Giving Tuesday Campaign and 2014 Annual Report.

The campaign uses social media as a crucial tool to raise awareness about the health issue of cataract blindness in the developing world and the cost-effective solutions that have been developed. HelpMeSee technologies featured in the winning entries include the HelpMeSee Reach app for community screening, a high-fidelity surgical simulator for training specialists and a single-use surgical kit to improve the quality of care.

Singh has worked closely with HelpMeSee chief medical officer Dr. Glenn Strauss in developing the surgical simulation technology needed to provide cataract surgical training in the developing world. Most recently he has co-authored a paper with Strauss on the need for advanced simulation for microsurgical training.

More than 3,700 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration. Stevie Award winners were determined by the average scores of more than 200 executives worldwide who participated in the judging process from May through early August.

In their comments on the entries, the judges highlighted HelpMeSee’s “incredible use of technology to solve a common problem,” according to a statement. The International Business Awards are one of the world’s premier business awards program. All individuals and organizations worldwide are eligible to submit nominations. The 2015 competition received entries from more than 60 nations and territories. Dr. Ajay Singh, was recognized with a silver Stevie Award for Company of the Year  HelpMeSee and all the Stevie Awards winners will be presented with their awards at a banquet in Toronto Oct. 23.

India’s healthcare sector is expected to be U.S. $ 280 billion in size by 2020, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 16 percent, but it is in “dire need” of right policy framework and infrastructure push, says a FICCI-KPMG report. With the healthcare industry seeing a robust growth trajectory, workforce in the sector is expected to be at 7.4 million in 2022, said the report — ‘Healthcare: The Neglected GDP Driver’.

The sector, which was at U.S. $ 73.92 billion in 2011, is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16 percent to U.S. $ 280 billion in 2020, it said. The report added however that it was high time the country realised the significance of healthcare as an economic development opportunity at national and state levels.

“With the increasing disease burden, the healthcare sector in the country is in dire need to get the right policy framework and infrastructure impetus. Granting infrastructure status may not only help the sector receive investments, but also bring down the cost of healthcare delivery,” it said. The report further said healthcare is traditionally seen as a social sector in India, with less government focus and low budget allocation.

“India currently spends cumulatively 4.2 percent of its GDP on healthcare, with just 1 percent being contributed by the public sector, amongst the lowest globally,” it added. As per the report the healthcare sector impacts the country’s GDP through various routes. It is also one of the largest sectors in India in terms of employment generation. If appropriate investments are made in areas, such as healthcare delivery and education, they are expected to further increase the employment rate and positively impact the country’s GDP.

Commenting on the need to increase investment in the sector, KPMG in India Government & Healthcare Partner and Head Nilaya Varma said: “…investment in healthcare propels overall economic growth and is more than just social expenditure in India. Improvements in the health of citizens contributes to overall economic prosperity of the nation.” The Indian healthcare workforce is expected to double to 7.4 million in 2022 from 3.6 million in 2013, the report said.

The share of healthcare FDI has almost doubled since 2011, highlighting the growing interest of foreign players in the sector, it added. “Investment opportunities in the Indian healthcare sector have increased significantly and the sector is expected to be one of the most attractive investment targets for private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) companies,” the report said.

An Indian-American scientist has found a simple mechanism controlling the sleep-wake process in animals, which appears to have been conserved over several hundred million years and could be possible in humans.

Ravi Allada, circadian rhythms expert at the Northwestern University in the US state of Illinois, has discovered how an animal’s biological clock wakes it up in the morning and sends it to sleep at night.

A simple two-cycle mechanism turns key brain neurons on or off during a 24-hour day, according to the findings published in journal Cell. The clock’s mechanism is much like a switch.

In the study of brain circadian neurons that govern the daily sleep-wake cycle timing, Allada and his research team found high sodium channel activity in these neurons during the day turn the cells on and ultimately awakes an animal. Similarly high potassium channel activity at night turn them off, allowing the animal to sleep. The researchers were surprised to discover the same sleep-wake switch in flies and mice as well.

“This suggests the underlying mechanism controlling our sleep-wake cycle is ancient,” Allada was quoted as saying in a report on the website of Northwestern University. “This oscillation mechanism appears to be conserved across several hundred million years of evolution. And if it’s in the mouse, it is likely in humans, too,” said Allada, professor and chair of neurobiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

Better understanding of this mechanism could lead to new drug targets to address sleep-wake trouble related to jet lag, shift work and other clock-induced problems. Eventually, it might be possible to reset a person’s internal clock to suit his or her situation.

The researchers call it a ‘bicycle’ mechanism: two pedals that go up and down across a 24-hour day, conveying important time information to the neurons. That the researchers found the two pedals — a sodium current and potassium currents — active in both the simple fruit fly and the more complex mouse was unexpected. “Our starting point for this research was mutant flies missing a sodium channel who walked in a halting manner and had poor circadian rhythms.

“It took a long time, but we were able to pull everything — genomics, genetics, behavior studies and electrical measurements of neuron activity — together in this paper, in a study of two species,” Allada said. “Now, of course, we have more questions about what’s regulating this sleep-wake pathway, so there is more work to be done,” he added.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – For the first time, scientists have seen evidence of where the brain records the time and place of real-life memories. Results showed that the similarity of the brain activation patterns when memories were recalled was an indicator of the breadth of space and time between the actual events.

Participants in the Ohio State University study wore a smartphone around their neck with an app that took random photos for a month. Later, when the participants relived memories related to those photos in an fMRI scanner, researchers found that a part of the brain’s hippocampus stores information about where and when their specific memories occurred.

In fact, the study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the further apart the memories occurred in space and time, the farther apart the memories’ representations appeared in the hippocampus.

“What we’re picking up here is not the whole memory, but the basic gist – the where and when of the experience,” said Per Sederberg, senior author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State.

“This could be viewed as the memory hub, where we have these general, large-scale representations of our experiences.” Similar work has been done in rats – in fact the discovery of rat neurons that code for space won the Nobel Prize in Medicine last year. But in rats, the space they live in can be measured in feet.

There have also been studies in humans that ask them to recall lists of words or other information that they had just seen – but that recorded memories of just a few minutes that were created under experimental conditions. This study greatly expands on both of those dimensions, by looking at real-life memories in humans.

“We found that the hippocampus represents time and space for at least a month of memories spanning up to 30 kilometers (19 miles) in space,” Sederberg said. “It is the first time we’ve been able to study memories on the scale of our lives.”

Sederberg led the study with Dylan Nielson, a Ph.D. graduate of Ohio State. Other co-authors were Troy Smith and Vishnu Sreekumar of Ohio State and Simon Dennis, a former Ohio State professor now at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

The study involved nine women aged 19 to 26 who wore an Android-based smartphone on a strap around their neck for one month. The phone was equipped with a custom lifeblogging app designed by Dennis. The app would take photos at random times of the day, recording the time, location, whether the person was moving and other information. Over the course of the month, the phone took an average of about 5,400 photos for each participant.

After the month was over, the participants were placed in an fMRI scanner that measured activity in their brain while they were shown 120 of their own photos. Participants were asked to try to remember the event depicted in each picture and relive the experience in their mind while viewing the photo for eight seconds.

The researchers compared fMRI data on pairs of images for each participant. The photo pairs chosen were taken at least 100 meters and 16 hours apart. Remembering an experience “lights up” many parts of the brain, but different memories create different patterns of activity. The more different two memories are, the more different the pattern of activity will be. Results showed that patterns of activity in the left anterior hippocampus were more different for memories of events that happened further apart in time and space.

He also plans to collect months or even a year’s worth of data to see how we target memories over even longer periods of time and greater distances. “We’ve got a decade or more of work ahead of us. This is just the first step,” Sederberg said

A healthy mood spreads faster through social networks but depression does not, say researchers. Being friends with someone who is depressed does not put you at risk of becoming depressed and it is likely to help the depressed person recover, they said.

Researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Warwick looked at over 2,000 adolescents in a network of US high school students to see how their mood influenced each other by modelling the spread of mood using similar methods to those used to track the spread of infectious diseases.

The team said while depression does not “spread”, having enough friends with healthy mood can halve the probability of developing, or double the probability of recovering from, depression over a 6-12 month period.

In the context of depression, this is a very large impact. Researchers know that social factors, for example living alone or having experienced abuse in childhood, influences whether someone becomes depressed.

“We also know that social support is important for recovery from depression, for example having people to talk to,” said study co-author Thomas House from the University of Manchester.

“This was a big effect that we have seen here. It could be that having a stronger social network is an effective way to treat depression,” House said. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

(Dallas, Texas – August 11, 2015) CEO of Dallas-based home textiles company Nextt, Arun Agarwal, will be honored with the Bert Tonkin Gift of Giving Award at GIFT FOR LIFE’s 2016 gala to be held in New York City on February 1, 2016.

GIFT FOR LIFE, the gift and home industries’ charitable organization, lauded Agarwal for his generosity toward organizations in the U.S. and abroad for “more awareness raised and more education and care provided to individuals impacted by HIV/AIDS.”

“I am thrilled to be honored with this award for helping make a difference in the lives of those who are living with HIV/AIDS,” said Agarwal. “Organizations like GIFT FOR LIFE and DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS) are committed to raising monies to provide direct care and resources to these individuals, and I’m proud to be a part of their movement.”

Dallas-based home textiles company Nextt is as a key supplier to big retailers such as Walmart, Target, Kohl’s and Dillard’s; the $500-million company manufactures home textiles, garments, apparel fabrics and polyester yarns, primarily from India, and sells under popular name brands such as Trina Turk, Kathy Ireland, Jessica McClintock and Raymond Waites.

Agarwal, who studied at Harvard University and University of New Hampshire before pursuing his dream to become an entrepreneur, has been building and nurturing the Indian home textiles sector in the U.S. for the past 15 years. Under his leadership, Nextt unveiled a 17,000 square feet flagship showroom on Madison Avenue in Manhattan in 2014. For more information about Nextt, please visit: www.nextt.com.

Dr. Amar Desai, an Indian American doctor based in the Greater Los Angeles area of California, was recently named to the Becker’s Hospital Review “25 Healthcare Leaders Under 40” list. The leaders are selected through an editorial review process that included peer nominations. All leaders were under 40 years old at the time of their nomination earlier this year. This is the fourth year the annual list has been released.

“I am honored. This recognition is really about the distinctive individuals and teams I have had the privilege to work with,” Desai told the media. “We are at such a dynamic moment in healthcare and medicine right now, there is so much we are doing that will improve the health and well-being of our communities.”

Desai, 39, who was born and raised in Southern California to parents who immigrated to the United States from India, resides in Manhattan Beach, Calif., with his wife Priya and their three daughters. An associate professor of medicine at Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and the CEO for the USC Care and Ambulatory Care Services, he has dedicated the better part of a decade to improving patient care.

Desai is currently responsible for the operations of all ambulatory satellites, which include hospital-based clinics, Keck School of Medicine department clinics, outpatient joint venture partnerships, community practices, the access center and billing operations.

“As I have progressed in my medical career, I have seen firsthand how patient care is influenced by public policy decisions, systems of care, and the business of medicine,” he said. “Over the past years, my roles have focused on driving health system change by building innovative care models that improve quality, make care more affordable, and transform the experience of being a patient.”

Desai spent time as an executive at Da Vita Healthcare Partners and an engagement manager at McKinsey and Company. At the latter firm, he was a member of the North American Provider/Payer Practice. He is board certified in internal medicine and nephrology, having completed his residency and fellowship at U.C. San Francisco.

Desai received his bachelor’s and medical degrees at Brown University and his master’s of public health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He has held faculty appointments at the Stanford School of Medicine and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.