New Method makes Adult Cells Act like Embryonic Cells

USA Today

Stem cell researchers on Thursday reported a new method for reprogramming adult cells into ones that act like more versatile embryonic stem cells, an advance that could open a new avenue for lab-grown transplant tissues.

Stem cells are the building blocks from which replacement cells, everything from blood to bone to brain, grow in early development and throughout life. Researchers consider embryonic stem cells the most useful type for generating replacement tissues, but obtaining them requires the controversial destruction of embryos. Then, in 2006, a Kyoto University team first reported adult skin cells can be "induced" into resembling embryonic stem cells.

That breakthrough relied on viruses infecting cells with four cancer-related genes to spur the transformation. But the new study pulls off the trick with ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules, normally the workhorses that translate DNA-encoded genes into proteins and perform other housekeeping roles inside cells.

In the journal Cell Stem Cell, a team led by Derrick Rossi of Children's Hospital Boston unveils a cancer-mutation-free method, 40 to 100 times more productive than normal, to create induced stem cells. Induced stem cells are similar to embryonic stem cells in their potential to transform into every type of tissue in the body — but lack the controversy.

"This is very exciting," Rossi says. "We have a new experimental process that can efficiently give us patient cells in clinically useful types."

"RNA, if it works, sounds like a very realistic, promising alternative," says stem cell biologist Gary Stein of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, who was not part of the study. Worries about virus contamination and cancer have dogged induced stem cells since their discovery, he notes, along with concerns about their low efficiency rate, with perhaps one cell in 1,000 transforming through the use of viruses.

Treating adult human cells with RNA engineered to overcome immune system defenses reliably creates induced stem cells, the study says. Moreover, the same RNA molecule cued to fire up different genes over three days' time can then be used to turn those induced stem cells into specific types of tissues, such as muscle.

For that reason, "this paper is a major advance in the field of regenerative medicine," says stem cell researcher Douglas Melton of Harvard, who was not part of the study team. Since the isolation of human embryonic stem cells in 1998, researchers have sought ways to turn early stem cells into heart, spine and other tissues needed by transplant patients. The RNA advance means labs can experiment on deriving these tissues in test tubes, he says, speeding progress in the field.

Slims’ Transplant Inspires Push for Organ Donations

Bloomberg

In 2008, Carlos Slim Domit watched his younger brother suffer progressive health troubles. Not yet 40, Patrick, chairman of Latin America’s largest wireless company, was often fatigued, his hands and feet swollen.

After doctors told Patrick his kidneys were beginning to fail, Carlos had himself tested to see if one of his could be used to save his brother. So did his father, the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. The younger Carlos turned out to be the best fit, and surgeons transplanted his kidney to Patrick.

“I wouldn’t have imagined how immediate the change would be,” Carlos said in an interview. “He had better color. He had another expression.”

The Slim family, led by the world’s richest man, has taken the experience as a call to action in their native Mexico. While the country’s rate of organ donation is one of the lowest in Latin America, the family is using its wealth and public profile to encourage people to embrace the practice.

On Oct. 1, the brothers Carlos and Patrick will unveil a campaign with the country’s Health Ministry to promote organ donation. Through print and television advertising, the effort will explain the need for donations and encourage Mexicans to talk with loved ones about contributing their bodies after death.

The younger Carlos said Mexicans may grow more comfortable with the idea of organ donations by hearing the brothers’ story.

“Learning and hearing about the experience from people who have been through the process can always help,” said Carlos, 43, the eldest of the six children of Carlos Slim and chairman of Telefonos de Mexico SAB.

Mother’s Legacy

The elder Slim, whose public holdings are worth about $60.3 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, said last month he disagrees with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that billionaires should donate half their wealth to charity. Slim has said he prefers to fight poverty by investing in projects that create jobs. Slim’s charities have a budget of 18.8 billion pesos ($1.49 billion) this year, according to an advertisement his companies placed in Mexico City newspapers in June.

The issue of organ transplants has the family’s financial and personal support. Their recent effort builds on the legacy of Soumaya Domit, the elder Slim’s wife, who also received a kidney transplant and died of kidney failure in 1999. Slim, 70, has never remarried. The family’s National Transplant Foundation has funded 6,500 transplants over the past decade.

More than two-thirds of the family’s wealth comes from stakes in America Movil, Latin America’s largest mobile-phone carrier, and Telefonos de Mexico, the nation’s biggest land-line phone company.

Long-Term Funding

Through his Carlos Slim Health Institute, the billionaire and his family spend about $20 million a year on research and administrative costs around organ transplants, or about 10 percent of its annual budget, said Roberto Tapia, chief executive officer of the organization.

The idea, Tapia said, is to move from simply funding transplants for Mexicans to improving the medical technology available to make operations safer and more successful. The group’s projects include funding genomic research at the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University to understand genetic factors in medical conditions including kidney failure.

“They prefer to see it as a social investment, instead of calling it philanthropic,” Tapia said of the Slim family.

The Slim Institute, founded in 2007, also is funding research at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston to increase the duration and health of a donated kidney awaiting a recipient, Tapia said.

Health Ministry

Mexico’s government has welcomed the Slims’ help as it seeks ways to fund more donations through its own health-care system and to train more medical experts to guide families through organ donations from patients who are near death, said Enrique Martinez, director of the National Transplant Registry at Mexico’s Health Ministry.

“Around the world these organizations are important, but in a country like Mexico they take up an even more important role,” Martinez said in a phone interview. “We always have problems in institutions with a lack of resources, and these organizations offer an opportunity to patients that, truthfully, would be very difficult for them to find through other means.”

Mexico’s kidney transplant rate from live donors last year was 16.6 per million people, about the same as the U.S. and ahead of Spain, Colombia and Uruguay, according to Martinez and to statistics from the International Registry of Organ Donation and Transplantation, compiled by Spanish and Italian researchers.

Drop-off After Death

The drop-off for Mexico came from deceased donors, with a rate of 4.6 kidney transplants per million. That compares to 18 in Colombia, 33 in Uruguay, 29 in the U.S. and 45 in Spain, the leader in organ donations after a years-long government effort. A lack of trained medical personnel and legal frameworks are some of the biggest obstacles to surmount, Slim Domit said.

“A big part of what’s going on is that there is very little information,” Carlos Slim Domit said. “The other part is all the infrastructure that is being created so that there are people specialized in organ donations in the different health centers, public and private, that know all the legal processes that are required so people can donate.”

Transplant Improvements

Doctors have been successfully performing kidney transplants since the 1950s, with success rates improving over the decades with advances in tissue-matching tests and drugs to suppress rejection of organs by the recipient’s immune system.

In the U.S., where the Slim Domit brothers had their operation to gain access to the latest immune system suppression therapies, kidney recipients between 35 and 49 years old had a survival rate of 93 percent after the first year and of 89 percent after five years, according to government statistics.

Two years after their transplant, the Slim Domit brothers are talking about the operation publicly to help Mexicans learn more. Carlos and Patrick, 41, recorded Web video testimonials to encourage more families to consider donations. While the Slim family cherishes its privacy, the decision to talk openly about the transplant was easy, Carlos Slim Domit said.

“Our aim is that the experience that Patrick and I had can help other people to sensitize themselves more to the subject of organ donations,” he said.

Searching for Breast Cancer Culprits in Chemicals

USA Today

When Heather Rogers was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago, she asked herself, "Why me?"

Like 90% of women with the disease, Rogers had no family history of breast cancer. She was healthy, only 46, never considered herself at high risk.

And like many breast cancer survivors, she wonders if her disease was caused by chemicals in the environment.

Rogers says she's frustrated that doctors are unable to give her a clear answer.

"They've made a lot of progress, which I'm really grateful for," says Rogers, of Alexandria, Va. "But I was surprised that, after all these years, there are still so many unanswered questions."

Although the American Cancer Society estimates that environmental pollution causes 6% of all cancer deaths — or about 34,000 lost lives each year — the group doesn't offer specific advice on which chemicals to avoid to reduce breast cancer risk.

Difficult to ascertain

To some extent, scientists will never have "definitive" answers, says Julia Brody of Silent Spring Institute, an advocacy group that studies breast cancer and the environment.

People are exposed to a countless mix of chemicals over a lifetime. Since cancers usually take decades to develop, it can be hard to make clear connections. And since researchers can't test toxins on humans, they rely on studies in animals and lab dishes, as well as observations of population trends, Brody says.

Scientists sometimes disagree about how to interpret the results. Even more crucially, though, experts disagree about how to act in the face of uncertainty.

Some cancer experts, such as the American Cancer Society's Michael Thun, says it's important to make health recommendations only when doctors can be very sure about the science.

"The problem with sounding too many alarms is that people can't tell what's real," he says.

Exercise caution to reduce exposure

Other medical leaders, such as the President's Cancer Panel and the Endocrine Society, follow the "precautionary principle," arguing that it makes sense to reduce exposures to chemicals that appear harmful. In a May report, the cancer panel urged the country to act to protect people from "grievous harm" caused by toxins. And in a 2009 report, the Endocrine Society warned that hormone-disrupting chemicals in consumer products may contribute to cancer, infertility and other conditions.

Doctors expect to get many answers from the National Children's Study, launched this year, which will follow 100,000 children from birth — or earlier — through age 21. Researchers will study chemicals in blood, urine and even umbilical cords, looking for links to cancer, asthma, autism and other disorders.

But Brody says that Americans don't need to wait for that study's results to begin protecting themselves and their children. More than 200 chemicals have been linked to breast cancer in animals, she says.

A growing number of scientists are particularly concerned about chemicals that alter natural hormonal systems. These chemicals don't need to cause genetic mutations to cause breast cancer, says Janet Gray, a professor at New York's Vassar College.

Toxins could increase the number of new cancers by pushing girls into early puberty — a known risk factor for breast tumors, Gray says. Such "hormone-disrupting" chemicals are everywhere — plastics, pesticides, even perfumes.

"We believe there's enough science to act now," says Janet Nudelman of the Breast Cancer Fund.

Researchers seek new Tools to flag Concussions

Philadelphia Inquirer

 

Four Eagles games, four concussions - the latest two suffered by wide receiver Riley Cooper and cornerback Asante Samuel on Sunday. Coach Andy Reid said Monday that their injuries "seem to be mild," but that word seem is telling.

From a scientific perspective, no one really knows. Physicians can see when someone's outward symptoms have returned to normal, as most do within a few weeks. But there is no lab test to measure internal damage from a concussion and no medicine to treat it.

"Absolutely nobody knows when it's safe to go back in," said Douglas H. Smith, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Brain Injury and Repair. "If anyone says one week is good, three weeks is good, they're not basing it on facts."

The scientific study of concussions, sometimes called mild traumatic brain injuries (TBI), lags behind research on many other ailments - a failing attributed to a lack of funding and public pressure, among other reasons. Smith and a growing number of others are striving to change that, investigating techniques such as advanced brain scans, genetic screens, and the analysis of biomarkers - small amounts of certain proteins that may leak into the blood after a brain injury.

They want to know if there has been subtle damage inside brain cells - the sort of thing that might lead to chronic problems years later.

The quest has taken on new urgency with the prevalence of soldiers who suffer head injuries from the jolt of an explosion, experiencing cognitive deficits despite the lack of external wounds. Concern over the issue has filtered through to civilians as well, from professional athletes down to neighborhood leagues.

The sports world has paid particular attention to an ongoing study at Boston University, where researchers have analyzed the brains of deceased football players, identifying numerous cases of chronic traumatic encephalopathy - a degenerative disease marked by "tangles" in the brain.

But the goal is to peer inside the body while the patient is still alive. An ideal solution: a simple blood test that would allow the diagnosis of concussions within minutes, on the playing field or even in a war zone.

One biotech firm working to develop such a test is called Banyan Biomarkers, founded by scientists from the University of Florida. The Department of Defense plans to collaborate with the firm on a phase-three trial of its biomarkers, said Col. Dallas C. Hack, who is based at Fort Detrick, Md., and directs the Combat Casualty Care Research Program.

The key is to make sure that such proteins are specific to brain injury, and not something that turns up in the blood after injuries elsewhere in the body. Kevin Wang, a Banyan cofounder, said he and his colleagues had identified several good candidates, including one protein normally found in the cytoplasm of brain cells.

"We're just taking what Mother Nature gives us," Wang said.

Biomarkers are under scrutiny at Penn, too, as part of a joint study with the Baylor College of Medicine. That study also includes research on a kind of advanced MRI called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), both in humans and pigs.

A traditional MRI does an excellent job of distinguishing among different kinds of tissue, in part by measuring the density of protons in bodily fluid. But it's not useful for looking at anomalies within a given type of tissue of uniform density, such as white matter - the fatty, insulating tissue that covers axons in brain cells.

The type of cellular injury that is thought to be associated with concussions, in other words, can't be seen in a regular MRI.

That's where DTI may be useful, allowing the measurement of protons contained in water molecules. Scientists can detect how these protons are moving inside an axon, the long, skinny portion of a neuron. In a healthy axon, the water protons are more free to travel along its length, said Elias Melhem, a neuroradiologist at Penn. In an axon that has been stretched, suffering internal damage and even swelling, the paths of the water protons are more random, he said - a quality that can be quantified with sophisticated mathematics.

Lots of work remains to determine how the results should be interpreted, said Alisa Gean, a neuroradiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. In theory, DTI measures the structural integrity of axons, but it's not clear yet how the measurements correspond to actual brain function, she said.

"While it does hold great promise, it's not ready for prime time," she said. Other kinds of advanced imaging are being studied as well, in some cases revealing internal abnormalities even after the patient reports feeling back to normal, Gean said.

To get a better look at individual axons, Smith's lab also puts rat brain cells on a silicon membrane and then stretches them by administering puffs of air. The amount of stretching, and the speed at which it occurs, is akin to what a human brain would suffer in a mild traumatic brain injury, Smith said, though he doesn't like the adjective mild because the consequences can be grave.

The results are not pretty. Looking at the stretched cells under a microscope, the scientists can see breakage in internal structures called microtubules, which Smith likens to train tracks that carry crucial proteins along the length of an axon. This can lead to a pileup of proteins, causing swelling and even disintegration of the cell.

Even if there is no internal breakage, stretching an axon too quickly leads to chemical changes that appear to make the cell more susceptible to damage from a repeat stretch a day later, he and colleagues have reported.

"These types of changes may underlie the suspected 'period of vulnerability' for athletes suffering concussion that is the center of debate about when they should return to the game," Smith said.

Another challenge is studying the sort of axonal stretching thought to occur during the blast wave from an explosion. The amount of stretching is much less than when a football player's head is slammed into the turf, but the rate of stretching is faster, due to the high frequency of the blast wave, Smith said.

Injuries can occur even when the soldier suffers no physical impact or external injury. But how to measure these unseen impacts?

With engineering colleagues Shu Yang and Kacy Cullen, Smith has developed a small, wearable sensor that will change color when subjected to strain at the high frequency of a blast wave. The sensor is made of a crystalline material, which responds by collapsing at a certain frequency - a little bit like an opera singer shattering a crystal glass. The color of the sensor changes because the collapsed structure refracts light differently.

These various lines of research are welcomed by neurologists, said Jeffrey S. Kutcher, chair of the American Academy of Neurology's Sports Neurology Section. Kutcher is involved in re-writing the academy's concussion guidelines to reflect some of the latest studies.

For example, it used to be considered medically acceptable for athletes to return to action if they had mild symptoms that cleared up within 15 minutes of being hit, said Kutcher, who is also director of Michigan NeuroSport, a medical and research team at the University of Michigan. But symptoms can arise or worsen up to several hours later, he said.

Much more science is needed, he and other brain-injury experts said. Obtaining consistent research data is difficult because an identical impact can cause a range of responses in different people, Kutcher said.

"Concussion is not like an ACL injury. Everybody's knee is essentially the same. We know what it does, we know what it should do," allowing for a standard treatment protocol, Kutcher said. "Brains are way too diverse for that."

Then there's the problem that concussions have historically been underreported, because of the old attitude that athletes should shake it off and get back on the field - an approach that neurologists say is dangerous. Estimates of the number of concussions vary widely, but tend to place it well above one million each year.

One of the biggest risk factors for concussion is having already had a concussion. But it is not entirely clear what that means.

The first concussion might have weakened those people and made them more susceptible to repeat injury. Or perhaps they were more prone to having concussions to begin with, either because of the nature of their brains or their occupation. Outward symptoms are meaningful, but Kutcher said indicators from inside the head are desperately needed. Hack, the head of the military research program, agreed.

"This is truly an under-addressed area of medicine, one of the last frontiers of medicine that we have not done a good job on as a medical community," Hack said. "We're going to change medicine with the work we're doing."

Manual Labor, Active Commutes Improve Heart Health

USA Today

You don't necessarily have to sweat it out at the gym for hours every week to have a healthy heart. If your job keeps you relatively active, you're reaping heart benefits, suggests new research.

In fact, the study found that men who were moderately active at work were 10% less likely to develop heart failure, while women who were moderately active at work were 20% less likely to develop heart failure.

Not surprisingly, the study found that the best of both worlds — physical activity during leisure time and work activity combined — led to even greater heart health.

Studies have showed that leisure activity and occupational activity and daily walking to and from work can reduce the risk of heart failure, say Wayne Cardiologists.

The study may be the first to show that physical activity at work — and commuting to work — protect against heart failure in the same way that leisure-time exercise does.

Results of the study appear in the Sept. 28 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The team reviewed data from two large groups of Finnish men and women. Just over 28,000 men and 29,874 women were included in the study.

The study volunteers were between 25 and 74 years old, according to the study. All filled out surveys on their levels of physical activity. For work activity, "low" activity was defined as office work, or any job where you're sitting most of the day. "Moderate" activity at work includes jobs that require a lot of standing and walking, such as a waitress or store clerk. "High" levels of activity at work came from heavy manual labor that included walking and lifting in industrial or farm jobs.

Commuting activity was also divided into three categories: "low" meant no walking or cycling, "moderate" included up to 29 minutes of walking or cycling to get to work, and "high" was walking or bicycling more than 30 minutes daily to commute to work.

For leisure activity, the study defined "low" activity as almost completely inactive, such as reading or watching TV. "Moderate" included some physical activity for more than four hours a week, such as walking, biking, or gardening, but did not include commuting activity. "High" leisure activity included vigorous physical activity, such as running, jogging, swimming, heavy gardening or competitive sports, for more than three hours a week.

After an average 18.4 year follow-up, the researchers found that heart failure developed in 1,868 men and 1,640 women.

After adjusting for known risk factors such as age, smoking, body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol and more, the researchers found that physical activity was protective against heart disease.

Physical activity during leisure time tended to provide the most benefit. In men, moderate activity during leisure time reduced the risk of heart failure by 17%, and high levels of leisure-time activity dropped the risk by 35%. In women, the risk reductions were 16% and 25%, respectively.

Physical activity during work was also protective, said Woodhaven Cardiologists involved in the study. In men, moderate activity reduced the risk of heart failure by 10%, while high physical activity during work reduced the risk by 17%. In women, moderate activity reduced the risk of heart failure by 20%.

The researchers found an association between high commuting activity and a reduction in heart failure in women, but not in men (after adjusting for other risk factors).

They also found that any two activities combined reduced the risk of heart failure even more.

Hu said that the leisure activity was probably more protective simply because those people who were engaged in leisure activities were just getting more exercise.

This study confirms the message — the more activity the better. It doesn't matter where it comes from.

When thinking about increasing physical activity, people don't always think about increasing their activity at work, but any activity — to and from work, at work or leisure activity — can reduce the risk of heart disease.

Westland Heart Doctors suggest that people try to increase physical activity during work time, especially because many people now spend the day sitting, using computers.

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Most Americans do Not get Daily Exercise

USA Today

 

Only about 5% of American adults do some type of vigorous physical activity on any given day, according to the results of a new study.

Researchers analyzed 2003-2008 data from nearly 80,000 participants, aged 20 and older, in the American Time Use Survey, a national telephone-based poll that asked people what they did in the preceding 24 hours.

Most respondents reported sedentary activities such as eating and drinking (95.6%) and watching television/movies (80.1%), or light activities such as washing, dressing and grooming (78.9%), and driving a car, truck or motorcycle (71.4%).

The most frequently reported moderate activities were food and drink preparation (25.7%) and lawn, garden and houseplant care (10.6%), lead investigator Catrine Tudor-Locke, director of the Walking Behavior Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, and colleagues found.

Only 5% of respondents reported vigorous physical activities, including using cardiovascular exercise equipment (2.2%) and running (1.1%).

The survey findings are published online and in the October print issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

"On any given day, most U.S. adults reported performing predominantly sedentary and light activities. The greatest prevalence for reported moderate activities was food and drink preparation for both men (12.8%) and women (37.6%)," the authors wrote in the report.

No Laps for Warm Laptops; Skin Damage Possible

Associated Press

 

Have you ever worked on your laptop computer with it sitting on your lap, heating up your legs? If so, you might want to rethink that habit.

Doing it a lot can lead to "toasted skin syndrome," an unusual-looking mottled skin condition caused by long-term heat exposure, according to medical reports.

In one recent case, a 12-year-old boy developed a sponge-patterned skin discoloration on his left thigh after playing computer games a few hours every day for several months.

"He recognized that the laptop got hot on the left side; however, regardless of that, he did not change its position," Swiss researchers reported in an article published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Another case involved a Virginia law student who sought treatment for the mottled discoloration on her leg.

Dr. Kimberley Salkey, who treated the young woman, was stumped until she learned the student spent about six hours a day working with her computer propped on her lap. The temperature underneath registered 125 degrees.

That case, from 2007, is one of 10 laptop-related cases reported in medical journals in the past six years.

The condition also can be caused by overuse of heating pads and other heat sources that usually aren't hot enough to cause burns. It's generally harmless but can cause permanent skin darkening. In very rare cases, it can cause damage leading to skin cancers, said the Swiss researchers, Drs. Andreas Arnold and Peter Itin from University Hospital Basel. They do not cite any skin cancer cases linked to laptop use, but suggest, to be safe, placing a carrying case or other heat shield under the laptop if you have to hold it in your lap.

Salkey, an assistant dermatology professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said that under the microscope, the affected skin resembles skin damaged by long-term sun exposure.

Major manufacturers including Apple, Hewlett Packard and Dell warn in user manuals against placing laptops on laps or exposed skin for extended periods of time because of the risk for burns.

A medical report several years ago found that men who used laptops on their laps had elevated scrotum temperatures. If prolonged, that kind of heat can decrease sperm production, which can potentially lead to infertility. Whether laptop use itself can cause that kind of harm hasn't been confirmed.

In the past, "toasted skin syndrome" has occurred in workers whose jobs require being close to a heat source, including bakers and glass blowers, and, before central heating, in people who huddled near potbellied stoves to stay warm.

Dr. Anthony J. Mancini, dermatology chief at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, said he'd treated a boy who developed the condition from using a heating pad "hours at a time" to soothe a thigh injured in soccer. Mancini said he'd also seen a case caused by a hot water bottle.

He noted that chronic, prolonged skin inflammation can potentially increase chances for squamous cell skin cancer, which is more aggressive than the most common skin cancer. But Mancini said it's unlikely computer use would lead to cancer since it's so easy to avoid prolonged close skin contact with laptops.

People with Parkinson's Disease have High Levels of Peta-HCH Pesticide

Medical News

People with Parkinson's disease have significantly higher blood levels of a particular pesticide than healthy people or those with Alzheimer's disease, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.

In a study appearing in the July issue of Archives of Neurology, researchers found the pesticide beta-HCH (hexachlorocyclohexane) in 76 percent of people with Parkinson's, compared with 40 percent of healthy controls and 30 percent of those with Alzheimer's.

The finding might provide the basis for a beta-HCH blood test to identify individuals at risk for developing Parkinson's disease. The results also point the way to more research on environmental causes of Parkinson's.

"There's been a link between pesticide use and Parkinson's disease for a long time, but never a specific pesticide," said Dr. Dwight German, professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern and a senior author of the paper. "This is particularly important because the disease is not diagnosed until after significant nerve damage has occurred. A test for this risk factor might allow for early detection and protective treatment."

About 1 million people in the U.S. have Parkinson's, a number expected to rise as the population ages. The disease occurs when brain cells in particular regions die, causing tremors, cognitive problems and a host of other symptoms.

The study involved 113 participants, ages 50 to 89. Fifty had Parkinson's, 43 were healthy and 20 had Alzheimer's. The researchers tested the subjects' blood for 15 pesticides known as organochlorines.

These pesticides, which include the well-known DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), were widely used in the U.S. from the 1950s to the 1970s but are more tightly regulated now. They persist in the environment for years without breaking down. In the body, they dissolve in fats and are known to attack the type of brain nerves that die in Parkinson's disease, the researchers said.

"Much higher levels of the beta-HCH were in the air, water and food chain when the Parkinson's patients were in their 20s and30s," Dr. German said. "Also, the half-life of the pesticide is seven to eight years, so it stays in the body for a long time."

Parkinson's disease is more common among rural men than other demographic groups, but it is not a matter of a single factor causing the devastating disease, Dr. German said.

"Some people with Parkinson's might have the disease because of exposure to environmental pesticides, but there are also genes known to play a role in the condition," Dr. German said.

Although the current study points to an interesting link between the pesticide beta-HCH and Parkinson's, there could be other pesticides involved with the disease, he said.

For example, the pesticide lindane often contains beta-HCH, but lindane breaks down faster. Beta-HCH might simply be a sign that someone was exposed to lindane, with lindane actually causing the damage to the brain, the researchers said.

In future research, Dr. German hopes to test patients from a wider geographical area and to measure pesticide levels in post-mortem brains. He and his team also are collecting blood samples from both patients with Parkinson's and their spouses to see if a genetic difference might be making the one with Parkinson's more susceptible to pesticides than the other.

Move Over, Bedbugs: Stink Bugs Have Landed

NY Times

 

When they retreated from the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate troops passed by the area that is now Richard Masser’s orchards. If only the latest enemy — the brown marmorated stink bug — would follow suit.

Damage to fruit and vegetable crops from stink bugs in Middle Atlantic states has reached critical levels, according to a government report. That is in addition to the headaches the bugs are giving homeowners who cannot keep them out of their living rooms — especially the people who unwittingly step on them. When stink bugs are crushed or become irritated, they emit a pungent odor that is sometimes described as skunklike.

Suddenly, the bedbug has competition for pest of the year.

Farmers in Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and other states are battling a pest whose appetite has left dry boreholes in everything from apples and grapes to tomatoes and soybeans. Stink bugs have made their mark on 20 percent of the apple crop at Mr. Masser’s Scenic View Orchards here. Other farmers report far worse damage.

“They’re taking money out of your pocket, just like a thief,” said Mr. Masser, flicking stink bugs off his shirt and baseball cap as he overlooked his 325 acres, a few miles south of the Pennsylvania border. “We need to stop them.”

No one seems to know how. Government and university researchers say they need more time to study the bug, which has been in the United States since about 1998. Native to Asia, it was first found in Allentown, Pa., and has no natural enemies here.

Some people noticed an increase in the stink bug population last year, but all agreed that this year’s swarm was out of control. Researchers say the bugs reproduced at a faster rate this year, but they are unsure why.

“These are the hot spots right now, but they’re spreading everywhere,” Mr. Masser said. “They even found them out in Oregon.”

Populations of the brown marmorated stink bug — different from the green stink bugs that are kept in check by natural predators here — have been found in 15 states, and specimens in 14 other states, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

The bug travels well, especially as it seeks warm homes before the onset of cold weather.

“It’s an incredible hitchhiker,” said Tracy Leskey, an entomologist with the Agriculture Department’s Appalachian Fruit Research Station in Kearneysville, W.Va. “The adults are moving and looking for places to spend the winter.”

The research station is among three laboratories looking for a solution. Government and university researchers also formed a working group this summer. But Kevin Hackett, national program leader for invasive insects for the Agriculture Department’s research arm, said no immediate solution was in sight.

“We need to do considerable more research to solve the problem,” he said. “We don’t even have a way to monitor the pests. I’m confident that we have excellent researchers. I’m not confident we’re going to find a solution immediately.”

The department is spending $800,000 this fiscal year on stink bug research, double last year’s budget, Mr. Hackett said. But he estimated that seven more full-time researchers were needed, at a cost of about $3.5 million a year for salaries and research expenses.

In Asia, a parasitic wasp helps control stink bug populations by attacking their eggs. Unleashing those wasps here, however, is at least several years away because they would first need to be quarantined and studied.

There has been limited success using black pyramid traps in orchards, Ms. Leskey said. The traps contain scents that trigger sexual arousal. The nymphs, or young bugs, respond seasonlong, Ms. Leskey wrote in a recent report, but adults respond only late in the season, in late August.

Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett, Republican of Maryland, convened a meeting last week of officials from the Agriculture Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. He is pushing to have the stink bug reclassified, which would allow farmers to use stronger pesticides, and is advocating that the Agriculture Department reallocate $3 million of its budget for research.

A problem that can arise when more pesticides are used, experts and farmers say, is that many years’ worth of effective “integrated pest management” can be ruined in the process. Farmers kill some pests but allow others to live because they prey on yet other pests. Wasps, for example, eat worms that otherwise would kill crops.

“It is a way to use nature’s own defenses against pests in orchards,” said Steve Jacobs, an urban entomologist at Pennsylvania State University. “That’s been finely tuned and works well. This brown marmorated stink bug blows all that out the window. You kill them today, new ones come tomorrow. So this is a serious problem.”

Meanwhile, homeowners in the region are coping with this latest nuisance.

Vicky Angell of Thurmont, Md., said she first noticed the stink bugs last year, but “not in flocks” like this summer. She kills about six a day and suspects that they get inside her home when she leaves the door open to let the dog out.

Ms. Angell said she flushes them down the toilet after catching them in a napkin. Other people use their vacuum. And many have turned to exterminators.

Stink bugs, whose backs resemble knights’ shields, do not bite humans and pose no known health hazards — even the fruit they have gotten to is edible, once the hardened parts are cut out. They leave small craters on the surface of an apple or pear, and the inside can get brown and corklike. Females can grow to nearly the size of a quarter. “Marmorated” refers to their marbled or streaked appearance.

Still, sometimes they are just too close for comfort. Ms. Angell said she got a surprise when she put on her pants Friday morning, having washed them and left them to dry in her laundry room.

She felt something in the right rear pocket.

“I thought I left a piece of paper in them when I washed them,” she said.

But it was not paper.

“Pulled it out. He was alive. Stink bug. Flushed him down the toilet,” she said. “I thought, I’m glad I didn’t sit on that.”

Kelli Wilson of Burkittsville, Md., said her home had been overrun by the bugs, especially in the past week. In the afternoon sun, the north-facing exterior of the house “is black with stink bugs,” she said. “It looks like the wall is crawling.”

Mrs. Wilson’s husband, Raymond, skipped services on Sunday at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Burkittsville to remove stink bugs from the house. Mrs. Wilson discovered a little hitchhiker as she and her children arrived at the church. “I just pulled into the parking lot and there’s one on my purse,” she said. “They travel with me now.”

Mr. Jacobs, the urban entomologist, said the response to stink bugs so far is not an overreaction. “I’m standing here in my living room watching some of them crawl up my walls,” he said. “The best thing to do is make your house as tight as possible. Use masking tape to seal around sliding glass doors, air-conditioners.”

Mr. Masser, the Sabillasville farmer, said that he had not yet raised his prices to offset losses, but added that it was a possibility next year if a solution to the stink bug invasion was not found.

“Stink bugs are going to destroy a lot of food — it’s just starting,” he said. “When Joe Blow starts hollering because he can’t find the food he wants, they’ll respond then.”

Nestlé to Expand Business in Health Care Nutrition

NY Times

Nestlé said on Monday that it planned to invest more than $500 million over the next decade to develop health and wellness products to help prevent and treat major ailments like diabetes and obesity.

Nestlé will create a wholly owned subsidiary, Nestlé Health Science, as well as a research body, the Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences, “to pioneer a new industry between food and pharma,” the company said in a statement.

The company, which is based in Vevey, Switzerland, said the initiatives would seek to develop nutritional products for diseases like diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s, which are placing an increasing burden on governments at a time when budgets are being squeezed.

“It is our strong conviction that disease prevention will have to play a much bigger role” in future health spending, Nestlé’s chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, told a news conference in Lausanne.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 220 million people worldwide suffer from diabetes and about 18 million people have Alzheimer’s. By 2030, almost 23.6 million people are expected to die from cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of deaths worldwide.

The company said it planned to invest about 500 million Swiss francs ($509 million) over the next decade in the new areas.

The new business unit will be “run at arm’s length” from the main food, beverage and nutrition activities, Nestlé said, and it will incorporate the existing Nestlé HealthCare Nutrition business, which had sales of about $1.6 billion in 2009.

Analysts said the path appeared to be relatively clear for Nestlé, which would be able to extend its existing strengths in research and distribution.

Nestlé will be competing in part with pharmaceutical companies like Abbott Laboratories, which makes nutritional supplement drinks, as well as diversified groups like Unilever, which owns the weight management brand Slim-Fast.

“Nestlé is tackling a new industry,” said Jean-Philippe Bertschy, an analyst at Bank Vontobel in Zurich. “It’s quite hard to define what the market for this will be.”

But he said that Nestlé had the money to expand without requiring a return on investment for some time. Nestlé should be almost debt-free by the end of the year, he said, in part because it received $28.3 billion from the pharmaceutical company Novartis last month for a majority stake in the Alcon eye care division.

The new focus is unlikely to dent Nestlé’s status as the “clear leader in the food sector,” Mr. Bertschy added.

Nestlé has 280,000 employees and brands that include Kit Kat chocolate bars and San Pellegrino bottled water. Its annual sales of about nearly $102 billion are more than double its nearest competitor, Kraft of the United States. Other global competitors in food include Danone of France.

Nestlé declined to provide any more specific targets for its new venture, but Luis Cantarell, who will head the new unit, described it as “an opportunity that is more in billions than millions.”