Smoking changes brain the same way as drugs do
Smoking causes long-lasting changes in the brain similar to changes seen in animals when they are given cocaine, heroin and other addictive drugs, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
A study of the brain tissue of smokers and nonsmokers who died showed that smokers had these changes, even if they had quit years before, the team at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reported.
Italian doctors transplant HIV-infected organs
Italian doctors mistakenly transplanted organs from an HIV-positive donor into three recipients, the head of a Florence hospital said on Tuesday.
Doctors at Careggi hospital told reporters that an infected woman’s liver and kidneys were transplanted after a laboratory biologist incorrectly wrote on her medical records that she had tested negative for HIV.
Pregnancy hormone increases nerve cells’ insulation, restores damage
A hormone produced during pregnancy spontaneously increases myelin, which enhances signaling within the nervous system, and helps repair damage in the brain and spinal cord, according to new animal research.
The findings, published in the February 21 Journal of Neuroscience, indicate that the hormone prolactin promotes an increase in myelin production and may have a use in treating multiple sclerosis (MS).
A black and white look at breast cancer mortality
African and African American women are more likely to die of breast cancer than their white counterparts because they tend to get the disease before the menopause, suggests new research from the University of East Anglia and the Children’s Hospital Boston in collaboration with researchers in the US and Italy.
A racial disparity in mortality rates from breast cancer in the US first appeared in the 1970s coinciding with the introduction of mammography. The new research, published in The International Journal of Surgery, posits that the reason for this is not reduced access to medical care, but because surgery in pre-menopausal women could encourage growth of the cancer.
Older Adults May be Unreliable Eyewitness, Study Shows
A University of Virginia study suggests that older adults are not only more inclined than younger adults to make errors in recollecting details that have been suggested to them, but are also more likely than younger people to have a very high level of confidence in their recollections, even when wrong. The finding has implications regarding the reliability of older persons’ eyewitness testimonies in courtrooms.
The study, “I misremember it well: Why older adults are unreliable eyewitnesses,” is published in a recent issue of the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
