An Iranian researcher has discovered early blood markers in people genetically predisposed to develop Huntington’s disease, a mysterious neurodegenerative disorder. The signs may provide future targets for staving off or even preventing symptoms of the disease. According to Sciam, Huntington’s disease, which affects an estimated 30,000 Americans, kills neurons (nerve cells), which leads to cognitive difficulties, a loss of movement control and emotional distress.

HuntingtonÕs disease kills neurons (nerve cells), which leads to cognitive difficulties, a loss of movement control and emotional distress.

A carrier typically does not experience symptoms until he or she is in her 30s or 40s, and lives an average of 15 to 20 years once they show up. Patients ultimately die of heart failure, pneumonia or choking triggered by the disorder. Children with a parent who has the disease have a 50 percent chance of inheriting the mutated Huntingtin gene that causes it.
In other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s--which primarily affects a person’s motor abilities--scientists know that nerve cells begin to die long before symptoms appear. Researchers wondered if the same was true in Huntington’s. Previous research indicated this was the case in mice, but this is the first study to document presymptomatic dysfunction in humans.
“In gene carriers, before they show signs of the disease, the neurodegeneration process has already started,“ said Sarah Tabrizi, a neurologist at University College London who led the study, which appears in The Journal of Experimental Medicine. “This indicates that the process of neuronal dysfunction which goes on to neuronal degeneration is theoretically rescuable.“
Tabrizi and her team collected blood samples from 194 people with the gene to determine whether there were early markers that could be targeted to delay the disease’s onset.
They found that they all produced an excess of cytokines (immune system scouts that signal other disease-fighting cells to combat invading germs or to fix damaged tissue)--some as early as 16 years before researchers would have expected symptoms to appear.
Study co-author Thomas Moeller, a neurologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, speculates that the cytokines--which are also produced in excess by immune cells in the brain called microglia--may be killing or contributing to the death of healthy neurons, leading to symptoms down the road. He says that if researchers can design a drug that keeps these cells at bay, they may be able to slow the progression of the disease.

Scientists have for the first time shown how a ’trust’ hormone is released in the brains of breastfeeding mothers.
It is further proof that breastfeeding promotes the maternal bond through a biochemical process, BBC reported.
The team at Warwick University said the hormone oxytocin was known to be released during breastfeeding but the mechanism in the brain was unclear.
Oxytocin also produces contractions during labor and causes milk to be “let down“ from the mammary glands.
The hormone is produced in the hypothalamus--the part of the brain that controls body temperature, thirst, hunger, anger and tiredness.
It has been shown to promote feelings of trust and confidence and to reduce fear.
The study, published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology, found that in response to a baby suckling, specialized neurons in the mothers’ brain start to release the hormone from the nerve endings.
But surprisingly oxytocin is also released from the part of the cell called the dendrite which is usually the part of a neurone which receives, rather than transmits information.
Using a mathematical model, the researchers worked out that this release from the dendrites allows a massive increase in communication between the neurons, co-ordinating a ’swarm’ of oxytocin factories producing intense bursts of the hormone.
It is an example of an “emergent process“, the scientists said--a closely coordinated action developing without a single leader, in the same as a flock of birds or insects swarms.

Scientists have used human cells to grow new blood vessels in a mouse for the first time, a US journal reports.
“It could eventually help patients who had suffered heart attacks,“ they said.
A mixture of “progenitor“ cells, taken from blood and bone marrow, made cells lining the vessels, and also those surrounding the lining, BBC reported.
A UK expert said that the Harvard research was ’promising’, and could eventually help lab-grown organs to be implanted successfully.
The ability to develop swiftly a new network of tiny blood vessels--known as capillaries--would be a prize for scientists.
There are dozens of potential applications in medicine, particularly in the treatment of conditions which involve damage to a tissue’s blood supply, such as that to the heart muscle following a heart attack.
However, the complex structure of these vessels has slowed progress.
The latest study, published in the journal Circulation Research, uses two types of ’progenitor’ cells, which have the ability, like stem cells, to form different cell types.
In this case, ’endothelial’ progenitor cells have the ability to form the cells which line blood vessels, while ’mesenchymal’ progenitor cells can form the cells adjacent to this lining, which help to support it.

A regimen of supplements and lifestyle coaching is just as effective as statin medication for reducing levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or ’bad’ cholesterol, and more effective in helping people lose weight, new research shows.
People with high cholesterol who took red yeast rice and fish oil daily and received counseling on diet, exercise and relaxation techniques showed the same 40 percent drop in LDL cholesterol seen among people taking 40 milligrams of simvastatin daily, Dr. David J. Becker of the University of Pennsylvania Health System’s Chestnut Hill Hospital and colleagues found, Reuters wrote.
And they pared off an average of 10 pounds over 12 weeks, compared to less than a pound for patients taking the statin.
Becker has run a lifestyle program for people at risk of heart disease for 13 years. “People had a uniform desire to get off statins, and when they did their cholesterol was only going down maybe 5 percent at most,“ he said. The cardiologist decided to launch the current study after seeing many patients have success in lowering their cholesterol with red yeast rice and fish oil.
With a grant from the state of Pennsylvania, Becker and his team randomly assigned 74 patients to receive 40 milligrams of simvastatin (Zocor) daily along with printed information on lifestyle changes, or to three capsules of fish oil twice daily and 600 milligrams of red yeast rice daily along with the 12-week lifestyle program.
LDL cholesterol levels fell by 42.4 percent in the red yeast rice group and by 39.6 percent in the simvastatin group, not a statistically significant difference. Triglyceride levels didn’t change in the statin group, but fell 29 percent in the red yeast rice group, probably because they were taking fish oil, according to Becker and his team.