It might make you sneeze, wheeze and itch, but evidence is mounting that the hyperactive immune system responsible for allergies can also protect against brain cancer. Understanding the link may help provide new avenues for treating all cancers, say experts.
Studies have found that people with atopic or allergic diseases---asthma, hay fever or eczema--show a reduced risk of being diagnosed with a primary brain tumor called a glioma. These tumors are notoriously deadly: just 3 percent of people with the most common form live five years beyond diagnosis, NewScientist.com said.
But many of these studies have been small, says Eleni Linos from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, US. To confirm the link, Linos and her colleagues conducted a pooled analysis of eight studies comprising nearly 4500 people diagnosed with either glioma or a more benign brain tumor called a meningioma.
Linos found that a people with a history of allergies were 39 percent less likely to be diagnosed with glioma. “I am pretty much convinced that this is a true relationship we are seeing,“ she says.
Researchers are also beginning to unravel the mechanism behind this connection, says Linos. The development of allergies is linked to alterations in the genes behind some immune-system signalling molecules called cytokines. In cell culture and animal experiments, these molecules have been found to inhibit glioma growth.
Linos found no protective relationship between allergies and the slower-growing meningiomas, however. This suggests that the protective effect on gliomas may stem from the immune activity blocking active tumor growth, rather than just detecting early abnormal cells, says co-author Tim Raine at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital in London, UK.
“This is just so tremendously encouraging for those working on immune-based treatments, since it implies that once a cancer is detected or established, it isn’t too late to start trying to do something about it with immunotherapy,“ he says.
Judith Schwartzbaum at Ohio State University in Columbus, US, has been researching the connection between atopy and glioma for several years. Though the connection is robust, she says, Linos’ analysis still does not address the possibility that the tumor itself is behind the drop in allergies.
Gliomas are known to be potent suppressors of the immune system, she notes: “I am still not completely convinced that it’s not the tumor suppressing the allergy.“

Researchers have identified 60 different kinds of phytochemicals and vitamins in the skins and flesh of 100 wild and commercially grown potatoes.

Americans love their spuds, consuming 130 pounds per person annually. Now that culinary love affair could grow even more passionate with Agricultural Research Service (ARS) findings that some potato varieties are packed with health-promoting compounds called phytochemicals.
Using a new analytical method, ARS plant geneticist Roy Navarre and colleagues in Washington State and Oregon have identified 60 different kinds of phytochemicals and vitamins in the skins and flesh of 100 wild and commercially grown potatoes, Science Daily said.
The team’s analysis of Red and Norkotah potatoes, for example, revealed that the spuds’ total dietary-phenolics content rivaled that of broccoli, spinach and brussel sprouts. These phenols included the flavonoids subgroup, which may play a role in helping diminish cardiovascular disease, respiratory problems and certain cancers, notes Navarre, at the ARS Vegetable and Forage Crops Research Unit in Prosser, Wash.
His team also identified potatoes with high levels of vitamin C, folic acid, quercetin and kukoamines. These last compounds are of interest for their potential to lower blood pressure, and have only been found in one other plant, Lycium chinense.
Navarre began his “phytochemical profiling“ of potatoes in 2006, working with ARS geneticist Chuck Brown at Prosser, research associate Roshani Shakya at Washington State University, and research associate Aymeric Goyer at Oregon State University.
Earlier investigations of phytochemicals in potatoes and other crops have been limited to one or two varieties. But Navarre’s team significantly expanded the search by using a method that draws on high-throughput liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. Their analysis of wild and cultivated potatoes, for example, revealed phenolic concentrations of 100 to 675 milligrams per 100 grams dry weight.
Eventually, potato breeders, distributors and farmers will be able to use the team’s phytochemical profiles to explore new consumer markets, or even develop entirely new varieties based on the dietary findings of nutritional science.

Most babies can detect the difference between sounds like ’bih’ and ’dih’ by the age of 17 months. Not so children raised in bilingual households, it seems.
Christopher Fennell’s team at the University of Ottawa in Canada and his colleagues monitored infants aged 14, 17 and 20 months as they watched a video of two characters: ’bih’, a plasticine crown, and ’dih’, a plastic molecule. Later, the babies saw another video, but this time the crown was named ’dih’. Babies who spent significantly longer looking at the crown were judged to have noticed the difference, according to NewScientist.com.
While monolingual babies can detect such differences by 17 months, bilingual babies were 20 months old before they noticed it (Child Development, vol 78, p 1510). Fennell thinks the demands of learning two languages mean babies don’t notice differences until later--although there is no difference in age at first word.

New research shows that job strain not only increases the risk of a first coronary heart disease (CHD) event, it increases the odds of further events as well.
This study “is the first time that the effect of stressful work has been evaluated in a large number of men and women of various ages who have returned to work after a first heart attack,“ study co-author Dr. Chantal Brisson, from Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada, told Reuters Health.
She added that “previous studies of people who had a heart attack mainly focused on the effect of medical factors or personal characteristics including lifestyle. The effect of the work environment has rarely been studied.“
The new study, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association for October 10, involved 972 subjects, between 35 and 59 years of age, who returned to work after experiencing a first MI and were followed for nearly 10 years. Job strain was assessed via interviews conducted at baseline (typically a few weeks after returning to work) and at 2 and 6 years.
Job strain was based on two parameters: psychological demands and decision latitude. High job strain was defined as high psychological demands and low decision latitude. The main focus was on the occurrence of CHD events in patients with and without chronic job strain, defined as high strain on the first two interviews.
Overall, 206 patients experienced the composite outcome of fatal CHD, nonfatal heart attack, or unstable angina, the report indicates.
Job strain appeared to have little impact on the risk of recurrent CHD in the first 2 years after the index event. Beyond 2 years, however, chronic job strain was associated with a 2.2-fold increased risk of recurrent events. The rates of CHD events for subjects with and without chronic strain were 6.18 and 2.81 per 100 persons per year, respectively.
Even after adjusting for 26 potential confounding factors, chronic job strain appeared to double the risk of recurrent CHD.
“These results suggest that preventive interventions aimed at reducing stressful work might prevent further complications for people returning to work after a heart attack,“ Dr. Brisson said.
“This means that recommendations should not focus exclusively on the individual, for example, by promoting a healthy lifestyle, but should also take into account the person’s work environment. We recommend that cardiologists and occupational health services be informed of this finding in order to reduce stressful work for those returning to work after a heart attack,“ she added.

The reason why even professional basketball and soccer players sometimes miss an easy shot may be partly explained by spontaneous fluctuations of electrical activity within the brain, a study suggests.
An experiment conducted by researchers at Washington University, in Missouri, US, found that fluctuations in brain activity caused volunteers to subconsciously exert slightly less physical force when pressing a button on cue. Crucially, this activity is independent of any external stimulus and does not appear related to attention or anticipation, NewScientist.com reported.
The scientists involved say it is the first direct evidence that internal instabilities--so-called “spontaneous brain activity“--may play an important role in the variability of human behavior.
From the mid-1990s onwards, brain-scanning techniques have revealed variable brain activity that appears unrelated to external stimuli and occurs even when a person is asleep or anaesthetized.
But just how such fluctuations in neuronal firings may influence physical behavior has proven different to untangle. To explore the issue, Michael Fox at Washington University and colleagues designed an experiment that involved monitoring volunteers’ brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as they performed a simple finger-tapping task.
The 17 volunteers were asked to push a button with their right hand as soon as they saw an on-screen prompt and the timing and force of each button press were recorded.
As expected, the brain scans revealed increased activity within the left motor cortex--the region associated with controlling movement of the right hand--shortly after each button-pushing prompt.
Fox and colleagues also monitored spontaneous activity within the left motor cortex by analyzing its “mirror image“ in the right motor cortex. This allowed them to see how spontaneous brain activity affected each button press, independent of the “task-related“ brain signals.
The researchers found that volunteers pressed the button with about half the force, on average, if spontaneous activity occurred a few seconds before each prompt.
“This is the first clear evidence that [spontaneous brain activity] has some behavioral significance,“ says Rasmus Birn of the National Institute of Health in Maryland, US, who was not involved with the research.
Fox admits that it remains unclear how spontaneous activity in the motor cortex might cause people to tap their fingers more gently, but speculates that it could be because the activity fools the brain into thinking the finger has already moved partly towards the button.
He suggests that spontaneous brain activity may perhaps explain why people engaging in sports sometimes miss an apparently easy goal or basket, by altering the force with which they kick or throw a ball.
However, Birn cautions that, “it remains to be seen whether this result holds for more complex cognitive tasks or other brain regions or networks“.

Arthritis may trigger the deposit of uric acid crystals in joints, the main cause of gout, according to a report in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
Case reports and hospital-based case series have linked gout with the presence of arthritis in the same joints, the authors explain.
This led Dr. Edward Roddy and colleagues from University of Nottingham , UK to investigate whether patients with gout are more likely to have arthritis, and if the same joints are affected, Reuters reported.
The researchers sent questionnaires to patients served by two general practices in Nottingham . A total of 164 subjects with confirmed cases of gout were evaluated.
Analysis of more than 5900 individual joint sites demonstrated a strong association between the site of acute attacks of gout and the presence of arthritis, the authors report.
“These data support the hypothesis that the presence of...arthritis at an individual joint site predisposes to the formation of urate crystals at that site,“ the investigators conclude.

lizards and toads use their toes all the time. They don't get contaminated and they create very strong adhesion.

Inspired by the toe pads of tree frogs and crickets, researchers in India have created a form of sticky coating that is both strong and reusable.
When conventional adhesive tape is pulled off a surface, cracks form on the tape, which also picks up dust and other particles, quickly losing its stickiness.
Writing in the journal Science, the researchers described how the toe pads of tree frogs contain “microscopic channel patterns“ that stop cracks from forming, Reuters reported.
“Toe pads have patterns on the surface, it’s not a smooth layer. Underneath these patterns, there are fluid vessels, glands and blood vessels,“ said Animangsu Ghatak, an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur .
“Sticky tape gets contaminated with dust and you only use it once or twice. But lizards and toads use their toes all the time. They don’t get contaminated and they create very strong adhesion. We are trying to mimic that by creating this material.“
Ghatak and his colleagues added tiny fluid vessels in their model adhesive and found they increased adhesion by 30 times.
“These fluid vessels, because of the capillary pressure, the adhesion stress increased by 30 times,“ Ghatak said by telephone.
The team hopes to use their technology on stickers for utensils and food so that they may be peeled off cleanly, and on other adhesive devices that are meant to be reused.
“One application is for stickers on utensils, fruit, where you want to remove them cleanly, you don’t want the adhesive to remain on them, which is annoying,“ he said.

Multiple sclerosis that runs in families appears to cause more severe brain damage than the non-familial form, say University at Buffalo researchers.
They used MRI scans to examine the brains of 759 MS patients and found that the 198 patients with familial MS had significantly more destructed lesions, and significantly lower volume of whole brain, white matter and gray matter, as well as other indications of greater brain damage.
“Patients whose parents, children or siblings (first-degree relatives) had MS showed more damage than patients who had cousins with MS. This indicates that the closer the relationship, the greater the risk of MS,“ research team leader Dr. Robert Zivadinov, professor of neurology, said in a prepared statement, HealthDay said.
“Of particular interest is the finding of more severe gray matter damage and more lesions, particularly in those with MS in first-degree relatives. These findings are very interesting, and we will be investigating them further,“ he added.
“From the early 1980s on, MS researchers thought that genetic factors likely played a role in the disease, that its traits were determined by several different genes, and our findings support this hypothesis,“ Zivadinov said.
“Our MRI analysis showed a difference between the severity of disease characteristics in familial MS patients versus what we call sporadic, or non-familial, MS patients. These differences may be related to some disease-modifying genes, but to prove this, we must do further investigation,“ he added.
Multiple sclerosis (abbreviated MS) is a chronic, inflammatory, demyelinating disease that affects the central nervous system (CNS). MS can cause a variety of symptoms, including changes in sensation, visual problems, muscle weakness, depression, difficulties with coordination and speech, severe fatigue, cognitive impairment, problems with balance, overheating, and pain. MS will cause impaired mobility and disability in more severe cases.