Overweight People Are More Likely to Have Bad Breath, TAU Study Finds
Researchers publish study that finds a direct link between obesity and bad breath
Now there’s another good reason to go on that diet after the holidays. Tel Aviv University researchers have published a study that finds a direct link between obesity and bad breath: the more overweight you are, the more likely your breath will smell unpleasant to those around you.
The research, led by breath expert Prof. Mel Rosenberg from the Department of Human Microbiology and The Maurice and Gabriela Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine, Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, was reported in the Journal of Dental Research in October. The study also reported, for the first time, scientific evidence that links bad breath to alcohol consumption.
Research unveils new hope for deadly childhood disease
Investigators at the University of Rochester Medical Center have uncovered a promising drug therapy that offers a ray of hope for children with Batten disease – a rare neurodegenerative disease that strikes seemingly healthy kids, progressively robs them of their abilities to see, reason and move, and ultimately kills them in their young twenties.
The study, highlighted in the January edition of Experimental Neurology, explains how investigators improved the motor skills of feeble mice that model the disease, helping them to better their scores on successive coordination tests.
Venlafaxine extended-release effective for patients with major depression
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the most common major mental illness, afflicting almost one in five individuals. More than 75% of people who recover from an episode of MDD will have at least one recurrence, with the majority having multiple recurrences. MDD is the leading cause of disability of all medical illnesses, with substantial functional impairment, morbidity, and mortality. Few studies have assessed the efficacy of antidepressant medications beyond 1 year of maintenance treatment for the prevention of recurrent depression. However, a new study being published in the upcoming December 15th issue of Biological Psychiatry has done just that.
The PREVENT study, an acronym for the title of the study “The Prevention of Recurrent Episodes of Depression with Venlafaxine for Two Years study,” is, according to one of the senior authors on the paper, Dr. Martin B. Keller, “a multiphase, double-blind, randomized clinical trial designed to investigate the efficacy of the serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI) venlafaxine extended release in the prevention of depressive recurrence over 2 years in patients with a history of recurrent MDD who have responded to acute and continuation treatment.” The investigators randomly assigned patients with recurrent depression to receive treatment with either venlafaxine extended-release (ER) or fluoxetine, an antidepressant already established as efficacious as a comparative medication. Although the PREVENT study followed patients for over two years, this article reports only on the acute and continuation phases, which were 10 weeks and 6 months long respectively.
Genetic differences influence aging rates in the wild
Long-lived, wild animals harbor genetic differences that influence how quickly they begin to show their age, according to the results of a long-term study reported online on December 13th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. Evidence for the existence of such genetic variation for aging rates—a central tenet in the evolutionary theory that explains why animals would show physiological declines as they grow older—had largely been lacking in natural populations until now, the researchers said.
“We’ve found that individuals differ in their rates of aging, or senescence, and that these differences are (at least in part) caused by genetic effects so they will be inherited,” said Alastair Wilson of the University of Edinburgh. “While the genetic effects we found are completely consistent with existing theory, scientists hadn’t previously managed to test this theory properly except in controlled laboratory experiments.
