Hearing implants improve quality of life
For people with profound hearing loss, getting a cochlear implant—an electronic device that restores partial hearing—leads to a marked improvement in speech recognition and quality of life, new research confirms.
A cochlear implant is surgically implanted in the inner ear and activated by a device worn outside the ear. Unlike a hearing aid, it does not make sound louder or clearer. Instead, the device bypasses damaged parts of the hearing system and directly stimulates the hearing nerve, allowing individuals who are profoundly hearing-impaired to hear sound.
“The results of our study are once more proof that cochlear implantation is indeed a successful treatment for improving quality of life and speech recognition for deaf patients,” write Dr. Anke Hirschfelder from Charite-Universitatsmedizin in Berlin and colleagues.
Some people may transmit weaker AIDS virus: study
People with a genetic variation that slows down HIV may also be causing a mutation to the AIDS virus that makes it less potent if transmitted to others, researchers said on Friday.
The human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS attacks immune system cells. Like other viruses, it cannot replicate on its own but must hijack a cell and turn it into a virus factory. HIV must evade several genes to do this, including an immunity gene called HLA.
“Some people have versions of the HLA gene that are known to force HIV to tolerate mutations that damage its ability to reproduce,” Carolyn Williamson and Salim Abdool Karim at the Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa wrote in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens.
Youth’s social problems contribute to anxiety and depression
Socially successful children tend to have fewer symptoms of anxiety or depression, while children with problems such as anxiety and depression tend to have difficulties forming relationships and being accepted by friends. However, it is difficult to determine whether the anxiety and depression lead to the social problems, or vice versa. New research suggests that social problems are more likely to contribute to anxiety and depression than the reverse. The research also shows that this is particularly likely during the transition from adolescence into young adulthood.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Vermont and the University of Minnesota, appears in the March/April 2008 issue of the journal Child Development.
Using data from Project Competence, which has followed a group of 205 individuals from middle childhood (ages 8 to 12) over 20 years into young adulthood, the researchers used detailed interviews with participants and reports from their parents, teachers, and classmates to create measures of so-called internalizing problems (anxiety, depressed mood, being withdrawn) and social competence (how well one functions in relation to other people, particularly with respect to getting along with others and forming close relationships).
