Statins might cut Parkinson’s disease risk
People who use cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may have a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, a study suggests.
The study, reported in the journal Neurology, found that people who had used statins for at least five years had about one-third the risk of Parkinson’s as non-users did. However, while the findings point to an association between statins and Parkinson’s, they do not prove that the cholesterol drugs help prevent the neurological disorder.
“Although our study findings suggest the very interesting possibility that statins may protect against Parkinson’s disease,” lead investigator Dr. Angelika D. Wahner told Reuters Health, “these findings are preliminary and must be confirmed by additional, well-designed studies.”
Obesity contributes to global warming: study
Obesity contributes to global warming, too.
Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.
This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school’s researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday.
Childhood anxiety may worsen anorexia
Anorexic women with a history of childhood anxiety may have particularly severe symptoms of the eating disorder, a study suggests.
It’s known that anxiety disorders, like social phobia and obsessive compulsive disorder, are far more common among people with anorexia than in the general population. Often, these anxiety disorders appear before the eating disorder does.
In the new study, published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, researchers looked at whether a history of childhood “overanxious disorder” was related to the severity of women’s anorexia.
Green tea may shield brain from sleep apnea effects
Compounds found in green tea may help ward off the neurological damage that can come with the breathing disorder sleep apnea, a new animal study hints.
Researchers found that when they added green tea antioxidants to rats’ drinking water, it appeared to protect the animals’ brains during bouts of oxygen deprivation designed to mimic the effects of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
The findings suggest that green tea compounds should be further studied as a potential OSA therapy, the researchers report in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
People with obstructive sleep apnea at risk for cardiac stress on airline flights
People with severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) on commercial airline flights may have a greater risk of adverse events from cardiac stress than healthy people, according to new research to be presented at the American Thoracic Society’s 2008 International Conference in Toronto on Sunday, May 18.
The researchers compared oxygen levels and ventilation of healthy people and people with severe OSA during simulated flight conditions replicating the oxygen and pressure levels of typical commercial flights that have “cabin altitudes” (a measure of the air pressure and oxygen) ranging from 6,000 feet and 8,000 feet—the maximum allowed, even if the airplane is flying at 30,000 feet. This is the first study to use these measurements to assess fitness to fly without supplemental oxygen.
“It is normal for the rate of breathing to increase when air pressure falls. We predicted that patients with OSA would have a much sharper fall in oxygen levels because they might not increase their breathing as much,” said Leigh Seccombe, M.Sc., senior scientist in the Department of Thoracic Medicine at Concord Repatriation General Hospital in Sydney, Australia. “And in fact, we found that patients with OSA do have a lower blood oxygen level before and during aircraft cabin condition stimulation, but that the change in oxygen was similar. We also found that their breathing intensity increases at about the same rate as it does in healthy people.”
Neural cell transplants may help those with Parkinson’s disease
The current issue of CELL TRANSPLANTATION (Vol. 17:4) features a number of publications by researchers seeking new ways to treat Parkinson’s disease (PD), a neurological disease characterized by muscle rigidity, tremor and slowed physical movements related to insufficient levels of dopamine (DA) in the basal ganglia of the brain, by using primate models to examine the potential therapy role of transplanted cells.
One research team looked at the ability of human neural progenitor cells (hNPCs) as a potential therapy when hNPCs were engineered to produce glial derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) in the brain following hNPC transplants.
“Localized delivery is essential for aiming therapeutic molecules when treating neurodegenerative disorders,” said Maria Emborg, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “There are currently a number of clinical trials underway using direct gene therapy approaches to deliver potent trophic factors throughout the basal ganglia.”
