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quinta-feira, 22 de maio de 2014

Training brain patterns of empathy using functional brain imaging

May 21, 2014

Instituto D'Or de Pesquisa e Ensino (IDOR)

An unprecedented research conducted by a group of neuroscientists has demonstrated that it is possible to train brain patterns associated with empathic feelings. Volunteers who received neurofeedback about their own brain activity patterns whilst being scanned inside a functional magnetic resonance machine were able to increase empathic brain states. These findings could open new possibilities for treatment of clinical situations, such as antisocial personality disorder and postpartum depression.

An unprecedented research conducted by a group of neuroscientists has demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to train brain patterns associated with empathic feelings -- more specifically, tenderness. The research showed that volunteers who received neurofeedback about their own brain activity patterns whilst being scanned inside a functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) machine were able to change brain network function of areas related to tenderness and affection felt toward loved ones. These significant findings could open new possibilities for treatment of clinical situations, such as antisocial personality disorder and postpartum depression.

In Ridley Scott's film "Blade Runner," based on the science fiction book 'Do androids dream of electric sheep?' by Philip K. Dick, empathy-detection devices are employed to measure tenderness or affection emotions felt toward others (called "affiliative" emotions). Despite recent advances in neurobiology and neurotechnology, it is unknown whether brain signatures of affiliative emotions can be decoded and voluntarily modulated.

The article entitled "Voluntary enhancement of neural signatures of affiliative emotion using fMRI neurofeedback" published in PLOS ONE is the first study to demonstrate through a neurotechnology tool, real-time neurofeedback using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), the possibility to help the induction of empathic brain states.

The authors conducted this research at the D'Or Institute for Research and Education where a sophisticated computational tool was designed and used to allow the participants to modulate their own brain activity related to affiliative emotions and enhance this activity. This method employed pattern-detection algorithms, called "support vector machines" to classify complex activity patterns arising simultaneously from tenths of thousands of voxels (the 3-D equivalent of pixels) inside the participants' brains.

Volunteers who received real time information of their ongoing neural activity could change brain network function among connected areas related to tenderness and affection felt toward loved ones, while the control group who performed the same fMRI task without neurofeedback did not show such improvement.

Thus, it was demonstrated that those who received a "real" feedback were able to "train" specific brain areas related to the experience of affiliative emotions that are key for empathy. These findings can lead the way to new opportunities to investigate the use of neurofeedback in conditions associated with reduced empathy and affiliative feelings, such as antisocial personality disorders and post-partum depression.

The authors point out that this study may represent a step towards the construction of the 'empathy box', an empathy-enhancing machine described by Philip K. Dick's novel.

The paper can be found in PLOS ONE website on May 21, 2014.

The study was supported by Foundation for Research Support in the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) and D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR).

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Instituto D'Or de Pesquisa e Ensino (IDOR). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

Jorge Moll, Julie H. Weingartner, Patricia Bado, Rodrigo Basilio, João R. Sato, Bruno R. Melo, Ivanei E. Bramati, Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza, Roland Zahn. Voluntary Enhancement of Neural Signatures of Affiliative Emotion Using fMRI Neurofeedback. PLoS ONE, 2014; 9 (5): e97343 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0097343

Elderly may have trouble accessing online health records

(Reuters Health) - Electronic medical records will let patients access their health information over the Internet, but a new study suggests some of the most vulnerable older Americans may be left behind.

While Internet use doubled among seniors in general over the past decade, researchers found, there was little growth among people with physical impairments - suggesting a new digital divide could be forming.

Functional impairments, including physical disabilities such as the loss of a sense or the ability to walk, make it difficult for people to live in their community, take care of personal finances and coordinate transportation.

“If you look at the subgroup of people functionally impaired, there was also a doubling (of Internet use) there but it was still remarkably low,” said the study's lead author, Dr. S. Ryan Greysen, from the University of California, San Francisco.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees those two U.S. government-run health insurance programs, wants doctors to go digital.

CMS runs a $30 million incentive program that pays individual doctors to use electronic medical records (EMRs) – also known as EHRs for electronic health records. The agency will also begin penalizing doctors who don't adopt EMRs by 2015.

Greysen and his colleagues point out in their report in JAMA Internal Medicine that part of the program requires that patients be able to access their own medical information through online portals.

“What I think has gotten lost in this is yes, we need the electronic medical records to be accessible, but who are the groups that will have difficulty getting to those portals?” Greysen said.

For the new study, he and his colleagues analyzed responses from a national survey of about 19,000 Americans who were at least 65 years old and did not live in nursing homes.

Overall, the proportion of respondents who reported using the Internet in any way doubled from 21 percent in 2002 to 42 percent in 2010. But that increase varied depending on the characteristics and health of some groups.

Those who started with very low rates of Internet use saw some of the sharpest increases. For example, among non-white seniors, rates of Internet use rose from 7 percent to 21 percent.

After adjusting the numbers for factors that are known to influence Internet access - such as sex, race, education and wealth, the researchers found only those who were 75 years old and older, not white or considered themselves to be in poor or fair health significantly increased their Internet use over the study period.

Those with functional impairments ended the study period more or less where the larger group began, however. Just 10 percent of people with a functional impairment used the Internet in 2002 and that rose to 23 percent in 2010.

If people with functional impairments don’t start increasing their use of the Internet, Greysen and his colleagues suggest, they may be left behind as the management of healthcare becomes digital.

To address this gap, the authors suggest strategies to help those with functional limitations to access the Internet. For example, people can use special software on their computers to have the text of a website read to them or to operate a computer with voice commands instead of a mouse and keyboard.

Greysen added that his team is currently trying to teach older patients how to access their own information through the portals.

“We show them how the patient portal works and how to navigate it,” he said.

“For those who have more severe functional impairment, showing them isn’t going to be enough,” Greysen said. But teaching younger, unimpaired caregivers about the portals may be another possibility for expanding access.

SOURCE: bit.ly/1lWb0ct JAMA Internal Medicine, online May 16, 2014.

Too little sleep can affect many aspects of young kids’ health

(Reuters Health) - In a new study, children who regularly got too little sleep had worse physical, emotional and social health than those who slept the average amount.

“Sleep is important for a lot of reasons, and can influence health and well-being and cognitive functioning,” said lead author Christopher A. Magee. “The typical sleep pattern appeared to have the best outcomes as measured in this paper,” he told Reuters Health in an email.

But since this is a relatively new area of research, the researchers can’t say for sure that this pattern of sleep causes better health and wellbeing, said Magee, of the University of Wollongong in Australia.

Genetics do influence the regulation of sleep, but the results suggest that environmental and social factors, like household financial hardship, may play a role as well, he said.

The researchers used Medicare Australia data from a group of almost 3,000 children to track the kids’ health and quality of life at four points between birth and seven years of age.

Parents completed sleep journals and answered interview questions about their children’s sleep patterns, and included how often their children had experienced problems like difficulty waking, feeling sad, problems socializing or missing school due to illness, which were meant to rate the child’s overall quality of life.

Researchers divided the kids into four groups based on their sleep patterns: “typical sleepers” slept the most as infants, about 14 hours, and gradually decreased their sleep duration until age seven, when they got an average of almost 11 hours per night.

“Persistent short sleepers” showed a similar decline in sleep hours over time, but they always got about an hour less sleep than the typical sleepers. Only 11 percent of kids fell into this group.

“Initially short sleepers” started out like the short sleepers, but by age five or six were getting as much sleep as typical sleepers. This group included 45 percent of the kids, followed by typical sleepers, who made up 40 percent.

Less than three percent of kids had the most unusual sleep pattern, which started short, with sleeps of less than 10 hours in infancy, gradually increasing with time. Researchers called this group the “poor sleepers.”

Poor and initially short sleepers tended to have a lower physical functioning score on the quality of life scale than typical sleepers. Persistent short sleepers also had the physical disadvantage, as well as lower emotional and social functioning scores, according to the results published in Pediatrics.

Following one group of kids for seven years helps to focus on the problem of too little sleep as a chronic issue, not just one bad night, said Dr. Elsie M. Taveras, director of Pediatric Population Health Management at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Taveras worked on a similar study published in the same issue of the journal, following 1,000 kids from age six months to seven years, and found that kids who chronically slept too little tended to have more body fat at age seven than longer sleepers.

Kids who had shortened sleep most often were more than twice as likely to be obese than kids who rarely or never had short sleep duration. That’s a significant increase in risk, she said.

“Two times the odds of obesity for any risk factor for obesity is very rare,” she said.

In Taveras’ study, short sleepers not only had more fat, but more abdominal fat than longer sleepers.

“Abdominal fat is particularly hazardous for later cardiometabolic diseases,” like diabetes and heart disease, she told Reuters Health by phone.

Taking the results of her study with the results of the Australian quality of life study, the amount of sleep kids get seems to be linked to a huge number of areas of health, she said.

According to recommendations from the National Sleep Foundation and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, toddlers need more than 12 hours of sleep per day, children up to four years old need between 10 and 11 hours and up to age seven kids should get at least 10 hours, Taveras said.

“For many children, good sleep could be promoted by having regular bedtimes, limiting household noise, and limiting TV viewing and electronic media near bedtime,” Magee said, but some sleep problems like sleep apnea or primary insomnia may need specialized treatment.

“If a child has persistent problems sleeping and this is impacting on their normal daily activities, then it may be a good idea to seek some advice,” he said. “A general practitioner could be a good starting point.”

SOURCE: bit.ly/1gGJ0KR and bit.ly/1vsqt9h Pediatrics, May 19, 2014.

Fear, MRIs tied to double mastectomy decision

(Reuters Health) - Factors other than medical history and risk may influence women with cancer in one breast to have both breasts removed even if it doesn't improve their odds of survival, suggests a new study.

Receiving genetic tests, advanced imaging and having a strong fear that cancer would develop in their second breasts were tied to an increased likelihood that women would choose to have a preventive double mastectomy, researchers found.

“Usually if something is not needed to be removed, it’s not removed,” said Sarah Hawley, from the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor, the study’s lead author.

The Society of Surgical Oncology suggests that preventive double mastectomy - also known as contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) - be considered for patients at an increased risk of cancer, such as those with genetic susceptibility or strong family history of cancer.

But the recommendation stops there because of a lack of evidence that removing the second breast will improve survival for women outside those categories.

Despite that guidance and research indicating that less than 10 percent of women with cancer in one breast meet one of those risk criteria, the rate of preventive double mastectomies has increased, Hawley's team writes in JAMA Surgery.

One study found the overall rate of preventive double mastectomy increased from about 2 percent of women with breast cancer in 1998 to about 4.5 percent in 2003.

The researchers analyzed data on 1,447 women who were diagnosed with breast cancer between 2005 and 2007 in the Los Angeles and Detroit areas to see which women chose double mastectomy and get a sense of why they did.

“We found that just under 20 percent of all women in our sample reported that they strongly considered having CPM,” Hawley said. “Ultimately, about 8 percent had the procedure.”

Less than a third of the women who had both breasts removed were at higher than average risk due to genetics or family history.

“There are a substantial number of women who get it in absence of clinical indications,” Hawley said.

They found, for example, that women who had a double mastectomy were 10 times as likely to have been tested for genetic susceptibility - regardless of the result - as women who had one breast removed, and 20 times more likely to have been tested as women who had breast-conserving surgery.

Women with a family history of breast cancer, those who received magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) when they were diagnosed and the highly educated were also more likely to get both breasts removed.

The researchers note that anxiety over the possibility that the cancer would return was an important factor in the women's choices, regardless of their actual risk of recurrence.

“Women who were very worried were very likely to get the procedure, compared to those who were less worried,” Hawley said.

She thinks that understanding what may influence women to choose a preventive double mastectomy could help doctors and researchers create educational and decision-making tools that better inform women about their risks and comfort them in their choices.

Women may have misunderstandings about their risks and an urge to do everything in their control to lessen the risk, said Dr. Ann Partridge of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

For example, women may think the biggest risk is cancer spreading to their other breast, but the bigger risk is that it will spread to other parts of the body, Partridge, who co-wrote a commentary accompanying the new study, said.

“We don’t want women having regrets or complications that they do not need,” she said.

“If you’re not sure what to do, wait,” Partridge said. “You can always take the breast off, but you can’t put a natural breast back on.”

SOURCE: bit.ly/1lRIMOj and bit.ly/1lRIQgW JAMA Surgery, online May 21, 2014.

Brains of simple sea animals could help cure neural disorders

(Reuters) - A Florida scientist studying simple sea animals called comb jellies has found the road map to a new form of brain development that could lead to treatments for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.

"There is more than one way to make a brain," University of Florida researcher Leonid Moroz, who led an international research team, told Reuters.

Moroz said his research, published on Wednesday in a report in the magazine Nature, also places comb jelly-like creatures on the first branch of the animal kingdom's "tree of life," replacing and bumping up sponge-like species from the bottom rung of evolutionary progression.

Moroz said that finding should lead to a reclassification of the animal kingdom's "tree of life" and reshape two centuries of zoological thought.

Comb jellies are different from common jellyfish.

Moroz said his team found that comb jellies' molecular makeup and the way they developed was radically different - although still complex - from all other animals, involving different genes and neural transmitters.

Traditional scientific reasoning has held that simple nerve nets evolved all the way up to a human level of complexity along a single path. But it now appears that comb jellies took a different route, using neurochemical language that does not exist in other animals.

"All other animals have the same chemical language and these guys have completely different language. It's not only different grammar. It's a different alphabet," Moroz said.

Comb jellies, for example, don't use dopamine, implicated in Parkinson's disease, to control brain activity. They also can regenerate their brains in less than four days. In one experiment, a comb jelly regenerated its brain four times.

"Now we know we can construct neural systems differently," Moroz said.

Moroz said degenerative brain diseases typically can be treated to stall progression but not reversed.

Discovering the key to regeneration, or appropriating the comb jellies' different chemical languages, could lead to advancements in synthetic and regenerative medicine, he said.

(Editing by Kevin Gray and Eric Walsh)

Soil bacteria may provide clues to curbing antibiotic resistance

May 21, 2014

Washington University in St. Louis

Bacteria that naturally live in the soil have a vast collection of genes to fight off antibiotics, but they are much less likely to share these genes, a new study has revealed. Drug-resistant bacteria annually sicken 2 million Americans and kill at least 23,000. A driving force behind this growing public health threat is the ability of bacteria to share genes that provide antibiotic resistance.

Researchers led by Gautam Dantas have found evidence that soil bacteria do not share drug-resistance genes as often as infectious bacteria.

Drug-resistant bacteria annually sicken 2 million Americans and kill at least 23,000. A driving force behind this growing public health threat is the ability of bacteria to share genes that provide antibiotic resistance.

Bacteria that naturally live in the soil have a vast collection of genes to fight off antibiotics, but they are much less likely to share these genes, a new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has revealed. The findings suggest that most genes from soil bacteria are not poised to contribute to antibiotic resistance in infectious bacteria.

The researchers hope that what they are learning from soil bacteria will help identify ways to reduce gene sharing among infectious bacteria, slowing the spread of drug-resistant superbugs, said senior author Gautam Dantas, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and immunology.

The results appear May 21 in Nature.

"Soil bacteria have strategies for fighting antibiotics that we're only just starting to learn about," Dantas said. "We need to make sure the genes that make these strategies possible aren't shared with infectious bacteria, because they could make the problem of drug-resistant infections much worse."

Most of the antibiotics used to fight illness today were devised by soil microbes, which employ them as weapons in the competition for resources and survival. Penicillin, the first successful antibiotic, came from the soil fungus Penicillium.

But widespread use of penicillin and other newer antibiotics has prompted bacteria to evolve strategies for blocking, evading or otherwise resisting these drugs. Antibiotic-resistant disease now adds $20 billion to annual health-care costs and leads to 8 million additional hospital treatment days in the United States.

For the new study, the scientists analyzed bacterial DNA in 18 soil samples from agricultural and grassland sites from Minnesota and Michigan.

Using a technique they helped develop, the researchers isolated small fragments of bacterial DNA from the soils and screened those pieces for genes that confer antibiotic resistance.

Other scientists have identified sections of genetic code that make it possible for bacteria to share genes. A gene must be close to these "mobility elements" to be shared. The approximately 3,000 antibiotic resistance genes the researchers identified in soil bacteria typically were not close to such elements.

The researchers also found that the antibiotic-resistance genes in soil are linked tightly to specific bacteria, suggesting little sharing between species. In infectious bacteria, though, more frequent sharing of genes creates antibiotic-resistance portfolios that differ greatly among related bacteria.

"We suspect that one of the primary factors that drives the sharing of antibiotic resistance genes is exposure to new antibiotics," Dantas said. "Because soil bacteria need many thousands of years to develop new antibiotics, the bacteria in that community don't encounter these threats anywhere near as often as disease-causing bacteria, which we regularly treat with different antibiotics."

Dantas and his colleagues continue to study factors that affect the spread of drug resistance in bacterial communities in hospitals, the environment and the human digestive tract.

"We were happy to find that antibiotic resistance genes from soil bacteria generally aren't poised to jump suddenly into pathogens," Dantas said. "But we want to do everything we can -- whether it's changing how we treat infections in medical clinics or altering the way we manage the environments where bacteria grow -- to keep the odds stacked against sharing of these genes."

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Washington University in St. Louis. The original article was written by Michael C. Purdy. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

Kevin J. Forsberg, Sanket Patel, Molly K. Gibson, Christian L. Lauber, Rob Knight, Noah Fierer, Gautam Dantas. Bacterial phylogeny structures soil resistomes across habitats. Nature, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nature13377

New anticancer compound discovered

May 21, 2014

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

A previously unknown Cent-1 molecule that kills cancer cells has been discovered by scientists. The objective of the research was to accelerate the drug development process by identifying new compounds that would possess similar binding properties and cellular phenotype, but a different chemical structure, as the selected drugs in clinical use or investigational compounds in development. The scientists combined computer-based screening and cell-based assays to create a method that can significantly accelerate drug discovery and thereby lower development costs.

A team of research scientists from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, the University of Turku and the University of Eastern Finland has discovered a previously unknown Cent-1 molecule that kills cancer cells. Their research also shows that new cancer drug candidates can be identified faster and at lower cost by using computer-assisted and cell-based screening of compounds.

The objective of the research project led by Marko Kallio, Principal Scientist at VTT, was to accelerate the drug development process by identifying new compounds that would possess similar binding properties and cellular phenotype , but a different chemical structure, as the selected drugs in clinical use or investigational compounds in development.

The scientists combined computer-based screening and cell-based assays to create a method that can significantly accelerate drug discovery and thereby lower development costs. It is highly likely that the new compounds identified using this method have not yet been patented.

The research team conducted a computer-assisted screening of 65,000 compounds and cell-based assays on the 150 highest scoring hit compounds, before identifying the Cent-1 molecule. The Cent-1 molecule kills cancer cells through a mechanism similar to that of the template drug Rigosertib that is currently under commercial development. However, since the chemical structure of the Cent-1 compound differs from Rigosertib, there are no major obstacles to further development.

What makes the study also significant is evidence that Rigosertib did not inhibit its reported target genes; there is reason to believe that the drug has a different mechanism of action at molecular level than anticipated. This drug discovery related study was published in the Molecular Cancer Therapeutics in April 2014.

Development of new drugs is an expensive and time-consuming process. It usually takes around 10-15 years to complete and costs several hundreds of millions of euros. In addition, risks associated with the usability, therapeutic efficacy and market share of medicinal substances are usually realized only in the final stages of drug development.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

J. H. E. Maki-Jouppila, L. J. Laine, J. Rehnberg, E. Narvi, P. Tiikkainen, E. Hukasova, P. Halonen, A. Lindqvist, L. Kallio, A. Poso, M. J. Kallio. Centmitor-1, a Novel Acridinyl-Acetohydrazide, Possesses Similar Molecular Interaction Field and Antimitotic Cellular Phenotype as Rigosertib, ON 01910.Na. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, 2014; 13 (5): 1054 DOI: 10.1158/1535-7163.MCT-13-0685

In your genes: Family history reveals predisposition to multiple diseases

May 21, 2014

University of Melbourne

Nine simple questions can be used to identify people who may be at increased risk of various cancers, heart disease and diabetes because of their family history of these conditions, research shows. The family history screening questionnaire can be used to provide insight into people's susceptibility to breast, ovarian, bowel and prostate cancer, melanoma, ischaemic heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Researchers have identified nine simple questions that can be used to identify people who may be at increased risk of various cancers, heart disease and diabetes because of their family history of these conditions.

The family history screening questionnaire can be used to provide insight into people's susceptibility to breast, ovarian, bowel and prostate cancer, melanoma, ischemic heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

These findings will lead to greater insight into the process of preventative treatment for cancer in primary care and provide a cost-effective intervention for tailored disease prevention in Australian primary care..

Lead researcher Professor of Primary Care Cancer Research at the University of Melbourne Jon Emery said this research is the first of its kind to validate the family history screening questionnaire as a tool to cover multiple conditions.

"No brief tool has been developed to cover a range of conditions in primary care that has been validated to the same extent as ours."

"This finding could be used as a screening tool in general practice to identify people who need a more detailed discussion about their family history of cancer, diabetes or heart disease," Professor Emery said.

"Some people may require referral to a genetics clinic to discuss genetic testing, many more may require earlier cancer screening and lifestyle management," he said.

Family medical history remains the most relevant genetic risk took in use in clinical practice.

Evidence suggests that having knowledge of a family history of a specific condition is associated with improved uptake of a range of disease-preventative activities, such as cancer screening and reduced sun exposure.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Melbourne. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Cholesterol plays key role in cell migration, study shows

May 21, 2014

Universidad de Barcelona

Cholesterol plays a key role in cell mobility and tissue invasion, scientists have concluded. The results of a study prove that the accumulation of LDL cholesterol cells —- the one carried by low-density lipoproteins -— may play a crucial role in promoting cell mobility. On the contrary, high levels of HDL cholesterol —- the one carried by high-density lipoproteins -— may avoid cell propagation. This is a key study to better understand cancer metastasis, the process in which cancer cells invade healthy tissues, and foster the discussion on the relationship between cholesterol levels and cancer incidence.

Researchers Carles Enrich, Meritxell Reverter, Anna Álvarez Guaita, Ana García Melero, Carles Rentero and Elsa Meneses, at the Faculty of Medicine of UB.

University of Barcelona's researchers led by Professor Carles Enrich, from the Department of Cell Biology, Immunology and Neurosciences of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Barcelona (UB) and CELLEX Biomedical Research Centre of IDIBAPS, have found that cholesterol plays a key role in cell mobility and tissue invasion. The results of the study prove that the accumulation of LDL cholesterol cells -- the one carried by low-density lipoproteins -- may play a crucial role in promoting cell mobility. On the contrary, high levels of HDL cholesterol -- the one carried by high-density lipoproteins -- may avoid cell propagation. This is a key study to better understand cancer metastasis, the process in which cancer cells invade healthy tissues, and foster the discussion on the relationship between cholesterol levels and cancer incidence.

Daniel Grinberg and Lluïsa Vilageliu, from the Department of Genetics of the Faculty of Biology, and Joan Blasi, from the Department of Pathology and Experimental Therapy of the Faculty of Medicine, participated in the paper, published on the journal Cell Reports. Researchers from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, the University of Sidney (Australia), Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia) and the University of Hamburg (Germany) also collaborated in the study.

The study was developed by means of experiments carried out with cell cultures of patients with Niemann-Pick disease. These people present a genetic anomaly that causes cholesterol accumulation in the cell; that produces different motor and neurological disorders. "It is generally thought that cholesterol, one of the most important lipids in our body, is in the blood; but few people ask themselves what cholesterol does in the cell," points out Carles Enrich. "Cholesterol -- adds the researcher -- plays different functions in the cell. Besides being crucial to produce membranes, it also regulates vesicular trafficking. Now, it has been proved that cholesterol plays a key role in the regulation of other mechanisms, for instance cell mobility and propagation and, therefore, it is a crucial factor in metastasis."

Most cells in our body bind other cells by means of integrins, molecules that act as bridges located at the cell surface. UB researchers explored how integrins move in the cells and discovered cholesterol's key role. Enrich points out that "in the cell, cholesterol controls the trafficking of vesicles, which are responsible for transporting integrins to cell surface. Cholesterol depletion in the trans-Golgi network interferes integrin trafficking which has direct repercussions on cell migration."

New knowledge about the mechanisms of cancer metastasis

The study provides new therapeutic options to control metastasis and points out a strategy to be applied to cancer patients who also have cholesterol disorders. "It must be considered that the drugs prescribed to regulate cholesterol may modify cell migration ability. Therefore, progress in personalized therapy is absolutely important," highlights Enrich.

Now, researchers' challenge is to understand why cholesterol stays in the cell. "We want to study what endosome membrane mechanisms block intracellular traffic and hold cholesterol and their negative consequences for our health," concludes Carles Enrich.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Universidad de Barcelona. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

Meritxell Reverter, Carles Rentero, Ana Garcia-Melero, Monira Hoque, Sandra Vilà de Muga, Anna Álvarez-Guaita, James R.W. Conway, Peta Wood, Rose Cairns, Lilia Lykopoulou, Daniel Grinberg, Lluïsa Vilageliu, Marta Bosch, Joerg Heeren, Juan Blasi, Paul Timpson, Albert Pol, Francesc Tebar, Rachael Z. Murray, Thomas Grewal, Carlos Enrich. Cholesterol Regulates Syntaxin 6 Trafficking at trans-Golgi Network Endosomal Boundaries. Cell Reports, 2014; 7 (3): 883 DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2014.03.043

Counterfeit medication: Quicker way to determine who's faking it on the Internet

May 21, 2014

Universite de Montreal

An improved chemical analysis method that is more efficient and faster in detecting counterfeit medicine -- which have skyrocketed in recent years -- has been developed by scientists. Buying prescription drugs online exposes the buyer to potentially serious health risks. "These drugs are often manufactured in garages with poor sanitation. They can be dosed less, even devoid of the active ingredient," the lead researcher says. "Worse, they can contain a different substance that can cause undesirable side effects."

Researchers at the University of Montreal have developed an improved chemical analysis method that is more efficient and faster in detecting counterfeit medicines, which have skyrocketed in recent years. The method was developed and tested in a study by Philippe Lebel, Alexandra Furtos and Karen Waldron of the university's Department of Chemistry. It identifies and quantifies the various compounds present in a pharmaceutical product, in a fifth of the time it takes governmental services to do the same job. "Fake drugs are a scourge for public health," says Lebel. Once a simple artisanal activity, counterfeiting has become a global industry linked to organized crime and the mafia. "According to the World Health Organization, worldwide sales of counterfeit medicines reached $75 billion in 2010. Sildenafil citrate, better known by its trade name, Viagra, and the two other erectile dysfunction drugs, Cialis and Levitra, are among the most counterfeited drugs in the world."

It is not a coincidence. Men who suffer from erectile problems often have difficulty talking about it with their doctor. "On the Internet, they don't have to consult a professional or have embarrassing conversations," says Furtos. "It also costs much less: $1 per tablet compared to $15 for the real deal."

However, buying prescription drugs online exposes the buyer to potentially serious health risks. "These drugs are often manufactured in garages with poor sanitation. They can be dosed less, even devoid of the active ingredient," Waldron says. "Worse, they can contain a different substance that can cause undesirable side effects."

In 2008, in Singapore, 150 patients were hospitalized with severe hypoglycemia caused by a sudden drop in blood sugar. Four died and seven suffered brain damage. They had taken counterfeit erection-inducing drugs that contained glyburide, a drug to treat diabetes. "The number of deaths from counterfeit drugs is unknown," Waldron says, "but given the scale of the trade, the risks are considerable."

Faced with this potential danger, the researchers decided to unite their efforts to improve detection systems.

A better method Between September 2012 and June 2013, at the University of Montreal's Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, using highly specialized equipment, Lebel developed an analytical method to detect the 80 substances that may be substituted for the active ingredients in the three erectile dysfunction drugs on the market: Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra. Thirty pharmaceutical and natural products, some of which were seized at the Canadian border, were then analyzed to test and prove the potential of the new method.

"Our approach does not only target a medication's active ingredient," says Furtos. "Rather, using a scanning technique, it also detects non-targeted compounds, some of them new synthetic analogs of the active ingredient. This is the originality of the method."

The results of the study, which were recently published in the Journal of Chromatography, reveal that the University of Montreal analyses match those previously conducted by Health Canada using the older method. While it is therefore possible to tell whether a product is counterfeit or not using either method, the researchers' technique is much more efficient. "Our analysis takes ten minutes, whereas previously, it took up to fifty," says Lebel. "In addition, our method identifies compounds that were not identified before, even in low concentrations."

Another sign that their approach is promising is that Health Canada has already incorporated it in its counterfeit monitoring process. It could even serve as a model for the rest of the world in the anti-counterfeiting and anti-doping battle.

Awareness above all The threat of counterfeit pharmaceuticals is not new. But the growth of e-commerce has flooded the market with a wide range of both brand name and generic drugs.

Note, generics are not counterfeit products. They are copies of drugs whose formulas have become part of the public domain. They are subject to the same safety and quality control regulations as brand name drugs.

"The problem comes from the sale of prescription drugs outside pharmacies," notes Lebel. "There is no information on the actual origin of these products, their storage conditions, their composition, their dosages, or their toxicity, for example."

Asia and India take the lion's share of the counterfeit drug trade. But there is counterfeiting all over the world, and counterfeiters have been extremely creative in imitating products and avoiding detection. "Customs officials often find them hidden in plush toys, natural products, or rice cookers," notes Furtos.

People do not necessarily realize that the medicine they purchased online is counterfeit because the packaging and appearance are often similar to the genuine product. But the tablets received are anything but genuine. A Dutch study cited by the International Journal of Clinical Practice in 2009 found that of 370 samples of Viagra seized, only 10 were genuine.

"Our method can identify counterfeit medicines more quickly and efficiently, but safety must begin with public awareness," says Waldron.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Universite de Montreal. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

Philippe Lebel, Jacques Gagnon, Alexandra Furtos, Karen C. Waldron. A rapid, quantitative liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry screening method for 71 active and 11 natural erectile dysfunction ingredients present in potentially adulterated or counterfeit products. Journal of Chromatography A, 2014; 1343: 143 DOI: 10.1016/j.chroma.2014.03.078