Oldest People - Scans & Autism - Adrenal Anxiety - Fetal Diet
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Breedlove, Stephen
Jun 8, 2017, 6:50:15 AM6/8/17
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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/07/oldest-homo-sapiens-bones-ever-found-shake-foundations-of-the-human-story
Oldest Homo sapiens bones ever found shake foundations of the human story
Ian Sample Science editor
Fossils recovered from an old mine on a desolate mountain in Morocco have rocked one of the most enduring foundations of the human story: that Homo sapiens arose in a cradle of humankind in East Africa 200,000 years ago.
Archaeologists unearthed the bones of at least five people at Jebel Irhoud, a former barite mine 100km west of Marrakesh, in excavations that lasted years. They knew the remains were old, but were stunned when dating tests revealed that a tooth and stone tools found with the bones were about 300,000 years old.
Why we're closer than ever to a timeline for human evolution
Read more
“My reaction was a big ‘wow’,” said Jean-Jacques Hublin, a senior scientist on the team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. “I was expecting them to be old, but not that old.”
Hublin said the extreme age of the bones makes them the oldest known specimens of modern humans and poses a major challenge to the idea that the earliest members of our species evolved in a “Garden of Eden” in East Africa one hundred thousand years later.
“This gives us a completely different picture of the evolution of our species. It goes much further back in time, but also the very process of evolution is different to what we thought,” Hublin told the Guardian. “It looks like our species was already present probably all over Africa by 300,000 years ago. If there was a Garden of Eden, it might have been the size of the continent.”
© 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited
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https://www.newscientist.com/article/2133941-baby-brain-scans-can-predict-who-is-likely-to-develop-autism/
Baby brain scans can predict who is likely to develop autism
By Anil Ananthaswamy
A machine-learning algorithm has analysed brain scans of 6-month-old children and predicted with near-certainty whether they will show signs of autism when they reach the age of 2. The finding means we may soon be able to intervene before symptoms appear, although whether that would be desirable is a controversial issue.
“We have been trying to identify autism as early as possible, most importantly before the actual behavioural symptoms of autism appear,” says team member Robert Emerson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Previous work has identified that bundles of nerve fibres in the brain develop differently in infants with older siblings with autism from how they do in infants without this familial risk factor. The changes in these white matter tracts in the brain are visible at 6 months.
For the new study, Emerson and his team did fMRI brain scans of 59 sleeping infants, all of whom were aged 6 months and had older siblings with autism, which means they are more likely to develop autism themselves.
The scans collected data from 230 brain regions, showing the 26,335 connections between them. When the team followed-up with the children at the age of 2, 11 had been diagnosed with an autism-like condition. The team used the brain scans from when the babies were 6 months old and behavioural data from when the children were 2 years old to train a machine-learning program to identify any brain connectivity patterns that might be linked to later signs of autism, such as repetitive behaviour, difficulties with language, or problems relating socially to others.
© Copyright New Scientist Ltd.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/magazine/she-had-never-suffered-from-anxiety-was-she-having-her-first-panic-attack.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fhealth&action=click&contentCollection=h
She Had Never Suffered From Anxiety. Was She Having Her First Panic Attack?
By LISA SANDERS, M.D.
She didn’t have any urgent medical problems, the woman told Dr. Lori Bigi. She was there because she had moved to Pittsburgh and needed a primary-care doctor.
Bigi, an internist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, quickly eyed her new patient. She was 31 and petite, just over five feet tall and barely 100 pounds. And she looked just as she described herself, pretty healthy. Doctors often rely on patients’ sense of their well-being, especially when their assessment matches their appearance. But as Dr. Bigi was reminded that day, patients aren’t always right.
The patient did say that she had seen her old doctor for awful headaches she got occasionally. They felt like an ice pick through the top of her head, the patient explained, which, at least initially, usually came on while she was going to the bathroom. The headache didn’t last long, but it was intensely painful. Her previous doctor thought it was a type of migraine. He prescribed medication, but it didn’t help. Now her main problem was anxiety, and she saw a psychiatrist for that.
Sudden Panic
Anxiety is common enough, and because the patient was seeing a specialist, Bigi wasn’t planning to spend much time discussing it. But then the doctor saw that in addition to taking an antidepressant — a recommended treatment for anxiety — the patient was on a sedating medication called clonazepam. It wasn’t a first-line medication for anxiety, and this tiny woman was taking a huge dose of it.
The young woman explained that for most of her life, she was not a particularly anxious person. Then, two years earlier, she started experiencing episodes of total panic for seemingly no reason. At the time she chalked it up to a new job — she worked in a research lab — and the pressures associated with a project they had recently started. But the anxiety never let up.
© 2017 The New York Times Company
--------------------
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/pregnancy-diet-high-refined-grains-could-increase-child-obesity-risk-age-7-nih-study-suggests
Pregnancy diet high in refined grains could increase child obesity risk by age 7
Children born to women with gestational diabetes whose diet included high proportions of refined grains may have a higher risk of obesity by age 7, compared to children born to women with gestational diabetes who ate low proportions of refined grains, according to results from a National Institutes of Health study. These findings, which appear online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, were part of the Diabetes & Women’s Health Study, a research project led by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
Gestational diabetes, or high blood sugar during pregnancy, affects about 5 percent of all pregnancies in the United States and may lead to health problems for mothers and newborns. The authors noted that previous studies have linked diets high in refined grains — such as white rice — to obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The researchers compared records from 918 mother-child pairs who took part in the Danish National Birth Cohort, a study that followed the pregnancies of more than 91,000 women in Denmark. They found that children born to women with gestational diabetes who consumed the most refined grain (more than 156 grams per day) were twice as likely to be obese at age 7, compared to children born to women with gestational diabetes who ate the least amount of refined grain (less than 37 grams per day). The link between maternal grain consumption during pregnancy and obesity by age 7 still persisted when the researchers controlled for factors that could potentially influence the children’s weight — such as physical activity level and consumption of vegetables, fruit and sweets. The authors called for additional studies to confirm their results and to follow children through later childhood, adolescence and adulthood to see if the obesity risk persists later in life.
--------------------
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/well/mind/persistent-pain-may-increase-dementia-risk.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fhealth&action=click&contentCollection=health®ion=rank&module=packa
Persistent Pain May Increase Dementia Risk
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Chronic pain may be linked to an increasing risk for dementia.
Researchers interviewed 10,065 people over 62 in 1998 and 2000, asking whether they suffered “persistent pain,” defined as being often troubled with moderate or severe pain. Then they tracked their health through 2012.
After adjusting for many variables, they found that compared with those who reported no pain problems, people who reported persistent pain in both 1998 and 2000 had a 9 percent more rapid decline in memory performance. Moreover, the probability of dementia increased 7.7 percent faster in those with persistent pain compared with those without.
The study, in JAMA Internal Medicine, does not prove cause and effect. But chronic pain may divert attention from other mental activity, leading to poor memory, and some studies have found that allaying pain with opioids can lead to cognitive improvements.
Still, the lead author, Dr. Elizabeth L. Whitlock, an anesthesiologist at the University of California at San Francisco, acknowledged that treatment with opioids is problematic, and that safely controlling chronic pain is a problem that so far has no satisfactory solution.
“I’d encourage clinicians to be aware of the cognitive implications of a simple report of pain,” she said. “It’s a simple question to ask, and the answer can be used to identify a population at high risk of functional and cognitive problems.”
© 2017 The New York Times Company
--------------------
Oldest Homo sapiens bones ever found shake foundations of the human story
Ian Sample Science editor
Fossils recovered from an old mine on a desolate mountain in Morocco have rocked one of the most enduring foundations of the human story: that Homo sapiens arose in a cradle of humankind in East Africa 200,000 years ago.
Archaeologists unearthed the bones of at least five people at Jebel Irhoud, a former barite mine 100km west of Marrakesh, in excavations that lasted years. They knew the remains were old, but were stunned when dating tests revealed that a tooth and stone tools found with the bones were about 300,000 years old.
Why we're closer than ever to a timeline for human evolution
Read more
“My reaction was a big ‘wow’,” said Jean-Jacques Hublin, a senior scientist on the team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. “I was expecting them to be old, but not that old.”
Hublin said the extreme age of the bones makes them the oldest known specimens of modern humans and poses a major challenge to the idea that the earliest members of our species evolved in a “Garden of Eden” in East Africa one hundred thousand years later.
“This gives us a completely different picture of the evolution of our species. It goes much further back in time, but also the very process of evolution is different to what we thought,” Hublin told the Guardian. “It looks like our species was already present probably all over Africa by 300,000 years ago. If there was a Garden of Eden, it might have been the size of the continent.”
© 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited
--------------------
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2133941-baby-brain-scans-can-predict-who-is-likely-to-develop-autism/
Baby brain scans can predict who is likely to develop autism
By Anil Ananthaswamy
A machine-learning algorithm has analysed brain scans of 6-month-old children and predicted with near-certainty whether they will show signs of autism when they reach the age of 2. The finding means we may soon be able to intervene before symptoms appear, although whether that would be desirable is a controversial issue.
“We have been trying to identify autism as early as possible, most importantly before the actual behavioural symptoms of autism appear,” says team member Robert Emerson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Previous work has identified that bundles of nerve fibres in the brain develop differently in infants with older siblings with autism from how they do in infants without this familial risk factor. The changes in these white matter tracts in the brain are visible at 6 months.
For the new study, Emerson and his team did fMRI brain scans of 59 sleeping infants, all of whom were aged 6 months and had older siblings with autism, which means they are more likely to develop autism themselves.
The scans collected data from 230 brain regions, showing the 26,335 connections between them. When the team followed-up with the children at the age of 2, 11 had been diagnosed with an autism-like condition. The team used the brain scans from when the babies were 6 months old and behavioural data from when the children were 2 years old to train a machine-learning program to identify any brain connectivity patterns that might be linked to later signs of autism, such as repetitive behaviour, difficulties with language, or problems relating socially to others.
© Copyright New Scientist Ltd.
--------------------
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/magazine/she-had-never-suffered-from-anxiety-was-she-having-her-first-panic-attack.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fhealth&action=click&contentCollection=h
She Had Never Suffered From Anxiety. Was She Having Her First Panic Attack?
By LISA SANDERS, M.D.
She didn’t have any urgent medical problems, the woman told Dr. Lori Bigi. She was there because she had moved to Pittsburgh and needed a primary-care doctor.
Bigi, an internist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, quickly eyed her new patient. She was 31 and petite, just over five feet tall and barely 100 pounds. And she looked just as she described herself, pretty healthy. Doctors often rely on patients’ sense of their well-being, especially when their assessment matches their appearance. But as Dr. Bigi was reminded that day, patients aren’t always right.
The patient did say that she had seen her old doctor for awful headaches she got occasionally. They felt like an ice pick through the top of her head, the patient explained, which, at least initially, usually came on while she was going to the bathroom. The headache didn’t last long, but it was intensely painful. Her previous doctor thought it was a type of migraine. He prescribed medication, but it didn’t help. Now her main problem was anxiety, and she saw a psychiatrist for that.
Sudden Panic
Anxiety is common enough, and because the patient was seeing a specialist, Bigi wasn’t planning to spend much time discussing it. But then the doctor saw that in addition to taking an antidepressant — a recommended treatment for anxiety — the patient was on a sedating medication called clonazepam. It wasn’t a first-line medication for anxiety, and this tiny woman was taking a huge dose of it.
The young woman explained that for most of her life, she was not a particularly anxious person. Then, two years earlier, she started experiencing episodes of total panic for seemingly no reason. At the time she chalked it up to a new job — she worked in a research lab — and the pressures associated with a project they had recently started. But the anxiety never let up.
© 2017 The New York Times Company
--------------------
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/pregnancy-diet-high-refined-grains-could-increase-child-obesity-risk-age-7-nih-study-suggests
Pregnancy diet high in refined grains could increase child obesity risk by age 7
Children born to women with gestational diabetes whose diet included high proportions of refined grains may have a higher risk of obesity by age 7, compared to children born to women with gestational diabetes who ate low proportions of refined grains, according to results from a National Institutes of Health study. These findings, which appear online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, were part of the Diabetes & Women’s Health Study, a research project led by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
Gestational diabetes, or high blood sugar during pregnancy, affects about 5 percent of all pregnancies in the United States and may lead to health problems for mothers and newborns. The authors noted that previous studies have linked diets high in refined grains — such as white rice — to obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
The researchers compared records from 918 mother-child pairs who took part in the Danish National Birth Cohort, a study that followed the pregnancies of more than 91,000 women in Denmark. They found that children born to women with gestational diabetes who consumed the most refined grain (more than 156 grams per day) were twice as likely to be obese at age 7, compared to children born to women with gestational diabetes who ate the least amount of refined grain (less than 37 grams per day). The link between maternal grain consumption during pregnancy and obesity by age 7 still persisted when the researchers controlled for factors that could potentially influence the children’s weight — such as physical activity level and consumption of vegetables, fruit and sweets. The authors called for additional studies to confirm their results and to follow children through later childhood, adolescence and adulthood to see if the obesity risk persists later in life.
--------------------
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/well/mind/persistent-pain-may-increase-dementia-risk.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fhealth&action=click&contentCollection=health®ion=rank&module=packa
Persistent Pain May Increase Dementia Risk
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Chronic pain may be linked to an increasing risk for dementia.
Researchers interviewed 10,065 people over 62 in 1998 and 2000, asking whether they suffered “persistent pain,” defined as being often troubled with moderate or severe pain. Then they tracked their health through 2012.
After adjusting for many variables, they found that compared with those who reported no pain problems, people who reported persistent pain in both 1998 and 2000 had a 9 percent more rapid decline in memory performance. Moreover, the probability of dementia increased 7.7 percent faster in those with persistent pain compared with those without.
The study, in JAMA Internal Medicine, does not prove cause and effect. But chronic pain may divert attention from other mental activity, leading to poor memory, and some studies have found that allaying pain with opioids can lead to cognitive improvements.
Still, the lead author, Dr. Elizabeth L. Whitlock, an anesthesiologist at the University of California at San Francisco, acknowledged that treatment with opioids is problematic, and that safely controlling chronic pain is a problem that so far has no satisfactory solution.
“I’d encourage clinicians to be aware of the cognitive implications of a simple report of pain,” she said. “It’s a simple question to ask, and the answer can be used to identify a population at high risk of functional and cognitive problems.”
© 2017 The New York Times Company
--------------------
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