News U Can Use

Fish oil is touted for its anti-inflammatory and anti-diabetic benefits, but scientist weren't sure how the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil work. Now, according to a report in the September 3rd issue of the journal Cell, scientists have nailed how omega-3 fatty acids both shut down inflammation and reverse diabetes in obese mice.

Omega-3s alleviate inflammation by acting on a receptor (GPR120) found in fat tissue and on inflammatory immune cells called macrophages, studies in mice show.

"Omega-3s are very potent activators of GPR120 on macrophages -- more potent than any other anti-inflammatory we've ever seen," said Jerrold Olefsky of the University of California, San Diego.

In fact, there are all sorts of ways to trigger inflammation, he added. Activation of GPR120 by omega-3s blocks not one, but all inflammatory pathways.

We humans only need minimal clues to figure out how others are feeling about the big emotional events in their lives, it seems. The sense that something is going wrong, or right in another's life can be something we work out in seconds from what they say, and more importantly how they say it, according to new research from Ashley Mason at the University of Arizona.

Her work shows that people in the midst of a divorce typically reveal how they are handling things – not so much by what they say but how they say it.

In fact, data revealed that even complete strangers were able to figure out how people were coping with their emotions using relatively small amounts of information.

"We wanted to know how much information people actually need in order to know how another person is coping," said Ashley Mason, a UA doctoral student who conducted the research. "There's been a lot of person-perception research in terms of perceiving a stranger's personality or intelligence. And data have shown that we really don't need much."

"We too are curious about what it was that the listeners heard that communicated the psychological states of recent divorcees," Ashley told NewsUCanUse. "But what we know now is that it wasn't what they said - it was likely other nonverbal aspects of the recordings, such as sighing, pausing, sniffling, crying, etc. We didn't assess the non-verbal sounds (or lack of sounds) in this study."

While 66% of Americans are overweight, only 16% who try to lose weight succeed according to new research. They say if they can work out how they do it, there may be a way to fight the obesity epidemic.

Only about one in every six Americans who have ever been overweight or obese loses weight and maintains that loss, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.

While that number is larger than most weight-loss clinical trials report, the majority of Americans are still unable to lose weight and keep it off. Identifying those who lose weight and successfully maintain that loss may aid health professionals in developing approaches to help others maintain weight loss, the researchers say.

A chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Nubians shows that they were regularly consuming tetracycline, most likely in their beer.The finding is the strongest evidence yet that the art of making antibiotics, which officially dates to the discovery of penicillin in 1928, was common practice nearly 2,000 years ago.

The research, led by Emory anthropologist George Armelagos and medicinal chemist Mark Nelson of Paratek Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. “We tend to associate drugs that cure diseases with modern medicine,” Armelagos says. “But it’s becoming increasingly clear that this prehistoric population was using empirical evidence to develop therapeutic agents. I have no doubt that they knew what they were doing.”

There have been suggestions for some time that women subjected to bright lights at night have higher rates of cancer. The National Institutes of Health found in 2005 that there are higher rates of breast cancer in women shift workers and generally in industrialised countries. The theory was that the use of bright lights at night suppresses our natural cycle of melatonin production, making us more susceptible to cancer.

Now a new study from the Center for Interdisciplinary Chronobiological Research at the University of Haifa has found an additional link between Light At Night (LAN) and cancer. This research joins a series of earlier studies carried out at the University of Haifa that also established the correlation. “High power light bulbs contribute more to ‘environmental light pollution’, which the study has shown is a carcinogenic pollution,” notes Prof. Abraham Haim, who headed the study.

S-Adenosyl Methionine (SAMe), an over-the-counter dietary supplement, can be an effective, relatively well-tolerated, adjunctive treatment for adults with major depressive disorders who do not respond to their treatment with antidepressant medication according to a  new study conducted by investigators at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

A total of 73 adults were enrolled in this six week study and randomly assigned to the placebo control group or the SAMe treatment group. SAMe, in combination with standard depression treatment, was more effective than antidepressant treatment alone in improving measures of depression and remission rates of patients with significant clinical depression. SAMe-treated subjects had a greater response and remission rate to treatment than the placebo-treated group. SAMe was well-tolerated with no reported adverse reactions.

Health conscious consumers who hesitate at the price of fresh blueberries and blackberries, fruits renowned for high levels of healthful antioxidants, now have an economical alternative, scientists reported a meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). It is black rice, one variety of which got the moniker "Forbidden Rice" in ancient China because nobles commandeered every grain for themselves and forbade the common people from eating it.

"Just a spoonful of black rice bran contains more health promoting anthocyanin antioxidants than are found in a spoonful of blueberries, but with less sugar and more fiber and vitamin E antioxidants," said Zhimin Xu, from Louisiana State University, who reported on the research. "If berries are used to boost health, why not black rice and black rice bran? Especially, black rice bran would be a unique and economical material to increase consumption of health promoting antioxidants."

Seven-year-old children only need to interact with a person once to learn who to trust and seek information from, according to a study by Queen's University researchers.

"It shows that kids really pay attention to people's accuracy and they don't forget it, even after interacting with that person one time," says psychology professor Stanka Fitneva, who conducted the study with graduate student Kristen Dunfield.

The study tested adults, seven-year-olds and four-years-olds by asking a question and then having two people on a computer screen give a right and wrong answer.

When a second question was asked and participants were told they could only ask one person for the answer, the adults and seven year olds always choose to ask the person who previously gave the right answer.

A cranberry juice cocktail blocked a strain of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) from beginning the process of infection in a surprise finding by researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 

The data was reported in a poster presentation at the American Chemical Society's national meeting in Boston on August 23, 2010, by Terri Camesano, professor of chemical engineering at WPI. "Most of our work with cranberry juice has been with E. coli and urinary tract infections, but we included Staphylococcus aureus in this study because it is a very serious health threat," Camesano said. "This is early data, but the results are surprising."