Category: Uncategorized

Weight-related peer teasing is a strong predictor of disordered eating behaviours in adolescents, particularly those at higher genetic risk, new research shows.

Focusing on teenagers, the Flinders University study found that specific environmental factors including peer pressure and conflict with parents can increase the risk of sometimes dangerous disordered eating behaviours – particularly among those with higher genetic risk.

“This study demonstrates that genetic risk for anorexia nervosa exerts a stronger influence on disordered eating behaviours in adolescent girls when combined with adverse parental and peer relationships. These social factors – including parental expectations, criticism, and care, as well as weight-related peer teasing – are pivotal in shaping vulnerability to disordered eating,” says Professor Sarah Cohen-Woods, senior author of the article in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

“It appears that modifiable factors, such as positive peer relationships, and parental behaviour and relationships with their children, may be leveraged to reduce the impact of increased genetic risk for disordered eating behaviours.”

Preventative efforts should target environmental influences such as weight-related peer teasing, and parental interactions and relationships with their children, particularly in those that are genetically at risk.

“For example, high parental expectations or criticism may increase genetic risk for self-induced vomiting and avoidance of eating.

“Weight-related peer teasing was found to increase the influence of genetic factors on disordered eating behaviours, such as objective bulimic episodes.”

The study of 383 Australian teenage twin girls aged between 14 and 19 collected responses to capturing their self-reported experiences of parental expectations, parental criticism, parental care, weight-related peer teasing and parental conflict.

Professor Cohen-Woods, from the Flinders Institute for Mental Health and Wellbeing, says research into the complex interplay between genetic predisposition and environmental factors can in the long term inform and improve clinical and non-clinical solutions to eating disorders.

“The research into anorexia nervosa polygenic risk scores in context with other known environmental risk factors highlights that a person’s genetic risk is not an isolated factor but can be significantly influenced by their social and family environment.”

The research, led by the Blackbird Initiative at the Flinders Institute for Mental Health and Wellbeing, bridges a gap between psychosocial research and molecular genetics, demonstrating a gene-environment interaction using polygenic risk scores and existing parental and peer teasing data.

Researchers, however, say future research is needed with larger cohorts and a broader range of environmental measures to further investigate these complex relationships to guide support and prevention efforts for young people, benefiting everyday families and communities in the future.

Source: Flinders University

Endotracheal intubation is a difficult task for highly trained individuals and under the best of circumstances. In the field and in the ER, where seconds matter, emergency medical personnel face many unknowns and wildly challenging conditions which lower their chances of success.

But what if successful endotracheal intubation could be less reliant on ideal conditions and years of specialised training? In a paper published in Science Translational Medicine, UC Santa Barbara researchers  David Haggerty, Elliot Hawkes and collaborators demonstrate a non-electronic soft robotic device that quickly and autonomously guides a soft tube into the trachea. Initial device testing with highly trained users yielded a 100% success rate, and a 96% overall success rate with prehospital medical providers (EMTs and paramedics).

“Current intubation tools require extensive anatomical knowledge, training, skill and ideal conditions to be highly successful,” said recent UC Santa Barbara Ph.D. graduate David Haggerty, a former researcher in the lab of mechanical engineering professor Elliot Hawkes. Current technology calls for the rescuer to first visualize the tracheal opening then manually direct a tube through the serpentine anatomy of the airway into the trachea. The challenge of this procedure increases in prehospital settings due to various factors including inadequate light and nonideal body position in addition to potential injuries and fluid in the airway.

This project is supported in part with funds from the National Science Foundation

From rigid tools to soft robotics

One of the main challenges to successful intubation is the body itself, and the mechanisms it has evolved to prevent food and foreign bodies from entering the lungs. The epiglottis is a small fleshy flap that closes over the trachea and guides food and liquid into the adjacent esophagus with each swallow. Conventional practice typically requires the rescuer to push a metal laryngoscope into the back of the mouth behind the tongue to lift the epiglottis out of the way in order to make room for the breathing tube.

But even with the epiglottis out of the way, the path the endotracheal tube must take is a twisted one, as it has to bend toward the front of the neck where the trachea is located, otherwise air could be delivered to the stomach via the esophagus, instead of to the lungs.

“Traditional tools, which you push from the base, are fundamentally limited in navigating delicate, tortuous anatomy,” Hawkes explained. “They must be relatively stiff so you can push them, and can only get around bends by deflecting off the sensitive tissue.”

The researchers’ device upends that paradigm with a soft, inflatable tube that everts from its tip. Called the soft robotic intubation system (SRIS), it consists of a curved “introducer” that slides into place at the back of the throat and stops at the esophagus. With that in place, a soft, pre-inflated tube is threaded through the introducer, emerging near its tip at the opening of the trachea. As the user advances the tube, it everts from its tip, carrying inside it a soft breathing tube as it enters the trachea. “So instead of trying to push this tube and bend it to get into this complex configuration, we can just mechanically create that complex configuration as we go,” Haggerty said. Once the endotracheal tube is at its destination, the user can inflate a cuff at its distal end to seal the opening and begin ventilation. The introducer can be removed, leaving the breathing tube in place.

Introducing a soft, growing tube eliminates friction with the surrounding tissue and minimizes injury due to excessive or misplaced force. It also automatically conforms to its environment, one of the major benefits of soft robotics. “This growing paradigm naturally accounts for minor variations in anatomical placement, size, shape or configuration,” Haggerty said, and because of this, users need not have extensive skill or a perfect understanding of the environment in order to navigate it.

In tests with mannequins and cadavers, the SRIS proved itself both effective, and, importantly, rapid, with a 100% success rate at a procedure duration of just seconds for expert users. For nonexpert users – the primary target of this technology – a five-minute training session was all that was needed to deliver an 87% success rate for first-pass attempts, translating into an 96% overall success rate, with a significantly lower procedure duration – 21 seconds versus 44 seconds – than state-of-the-art video laryngoscope intubation.

The next step for the researchers is to conduct clinical trials in order to get approvals from the Food and Drug Administration for clinical use. “We have good reason to believe it’s efficacious based on the data, but cadavers don’t say ‘ow’,” Haggerty said. They need to complete more testing to ascertain the device’s safety and effectiveness in a variety of airways and external conditions, he added. If successful, this device could benefit the millions of emergency intubations that occur each year in the US, and find application in military medical care. That’s in addition to its potential to save lives in global populations that have poor or no access to essential health services.

Source: University of California – Santa Barbara

People who regularly consume caffeine are usually in a better mood after a cup of coffee or another caffeinated drink – an effect that is much more pronounced in the morning than later in the day. This finding comes from a new study by researchers at the University of Warwick and Bielefeld University, published in the journal Scientific Reports. Participants reported feeling significantly happier and more enthusiastic on those mornings compared with other days at the same hour when they had not yet had coffee.

Links to negative moods such as sadness and feeling upset were also observed, though these effects were less pronounced: after drinking coffee, participants felt slightly less sad or upset than on comparable days without coffee. Unlike the boost in positive emotions, this effect was not dependent on the time of day.

In total, 236 young adults in Germany were studied over a period of up to four weeks. Participants completed short questionnaires on their smartphones seven times a day, indicating their current mood and whether they had consumed a caffeinated drink in the preceding 90 minutes. Accordingly, the study focused on caffeine consumption in everyday life, not just in artificial laboratory settings.

Perceived effect regardless of consumption habits

The researchers also investigated whether coffee has different effects on different individuals. Justin Hachenberger from the Bielefeld University in Germany says, ‘We were somewhat surprised to find no differences between individuals with varying levels of caffeine consumption or differing degrees of depressive symptoms, anxiety, or sleep problems. The links between caffeine intake and positive or negative emotions were fairly consistent across all groups.’

The researchers expected that people with higher levels of anxiety would experience negative mood changes, such as increased nervousness, after consuming caffeine. However, Hachenberger emphasises that people who react to caffeine in a bad way may avoid it and that the study did not include people who completely abstain from caffeine.

Role of caffeine withdrawal symptoms remains unclear

The researchers explain the mood-boosting effect of caffeine on morning mood with its ability to block adenosine receptors, which promotes wakefulness and makes people feel more energetic. ‘Caffeine works by blocking adenosine receptors, which can increase dopamine activity in key brain regions – an effect that studies have linked to improved mood and greater alertness’, says Professor Anu Realo from the University of Warwick.

Yet, it remains unclear whether these effects are related to a reduction in withdrawal symptoms after a night’s sleep. ‘Even people with moderate caffeine consumption can experience mild withdrawal symptoms that disappear with the first cup of coffee or tea in the morning’, says Anu Realo.

Caffeine consumption: a universal habit

‘Around 80 per cent of adults worldwide consume caffeinated beverages, and the use of such stimulating substances dates far back in human history’, says Professor Sakari Lemola from Bielefeld University, the study’s senior author. ‘Even wild animals consume caffeine; bees and bumblebees prefer nectar from plants that contain caffeine.’

Still, the study authors caution that caffeine can lead to dependence. Excessive intake is linked to various health risks, and consuming it later in the day can lead to sleep problems.

Source: Bielefeld University

University of California, Davis, researchers have developed a new, neuroplasticity-promoting drug closely related to LSD that harnesses the psychedelic’s therapeutic power with reduced hallucinogenic potential.

The research, published in PNAS, highlights the new drug’s potential as a treatment option for conditions like schizophrenia, where psychedelics are not prescribed for safety reasons. The compound also may be useful for treating other neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases characterised by synaptic loss and brain atrophy.

To design the drug, dubbed JRT, researchers flipped the position of just two atoms in LSD’s molecular structure. The chemical flip reduced JRT’s hallucinogenic potential while maintaining its neurotherapeutic properties, including its ability to spur neuronal growth and repair damaged neuronal connections that are often observed in the brains of those with neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases.

“Basically, what we did here is a tire rotation,” said corresponding author David E. Olson, director of the Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics and a professor of chemistry, and biochemistry and molecular medicine at UC Davis. “By just transposing two atoms in LSD, we significantly improved JRT’s selectivity profile and reduced its hallucinogenic potential.”

JRT exhibited powerful neuroplastic effects and improved measures in mice relevant to the negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, without exacerbating behaviours and gene expression associated with psychosis.

“No one really wants to give a hallucinogenic molecule like LSD to a patient with schizophrenia,” said Olson, who is also co-founder and chief innovation officer of Delix Therapeutics, a company that aims to bring neuroplastogens to the market. “The development of JRT emphasises that we can use psychedelics like LSD as starting points to make better medicines. We may be able to create medications that can be used in patient populations where psychedelic use is precluded.”

Testing JRT’s potential

Olson said that it took his team nearly five years to complete the 12-step synthesis process to produce JRT. The molecule was named after Jeremy R. Tuck, a former graduate student in Olson’s laboratory, who was the first to synthesise it and is a co-first author of the study along with Lee E. Dunlap, another former graduate student in Olson’s laboratory.

Following JRT’s successful synthesis, the researchers conducted a battery of cellular and mouse assays that demonstrated the drug’s neuroplastic effects and improved safety profile relative to LSD.

Key findings included:

• JRT and LSD have the exact same molecular weight and overall shape, but distinct pharmacological properties.
• JRT is very potent and highly selective for binding to serotonin receptors, specifically 5-HT2A receptors, the activation of which are key to promoting cortical neuron growth.
• JRT promoted neuroplasticity, or growth between cellular connections in the brain, leading to a 46% increase in dendritic spine density and an 18% increase in synapse density in the prefrontal cortex.
• JRT did not produce hallucinogenic-like behaviors that are typically seen when mice are dosed with LSD.
• JRT did not promote gene expression associated with schizophrenia. Such gene expression is typically amplified with LSD use.
• JRT produced robust anti-depressant effects, with it being around 100-fold more potent than ketamine, the state-of-the-art fast-acting anti-depressant.
• JRT promoted cognitive flexibility, successfully addressing deficits in reversal learning that are associated with schizophrenia.

“JRT has extremely high therapeutic potential. Right now, we are testing it in other disease models, improving its synthesis, and creating new analogues of JRT that might be even better,” Olson said.

A more effective treatment for schizophrenia

Olson emphasised JRT’s potential for treating the negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, as most current treatments produce limited effects on anhedonia — the inability to feel pleasure — and cognitive function. Clozapine is the one exception, but it has side effects, and is not first-line drug of choice for people with severe schizophrenia.

Olson and his team are currently testing JRT’s potential against other neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases.

Source: University of California – Davis