I thought that they used an ample number of subjects and were very honest about the limitations of accuracy from some of the methods used in the study. Does anyone have any opinions on the design of the investigtation?
24 September 2008
News realse and article about Metabolic Syndrome
When I was looking into metabolic syndrome I wondered: how at risk are people to this disorder? I found a news release that directed me back to our topic of life style choices. It's a summary of an article that was published this summer about alcohol consumption (also posted).
23 September 2008
Prenatal Stress and postnatal outcome
I went to a presentation today by Chris Coe and he talked about prenatal stress and postnatal outcomes. The presentation covered a wide variety of topics ranging from psychological to immunological, so he was not able to go into much detail about any one topic. I do want to share with everyone the part about the immunology of the infant in a stressed mother.
Chris performed an experiment on pregnant monkeys. Once a day in the afternoon a loud noise would go off three times. He had three groups of monkeys: a control, ones stressed in early pregnancy, and ones stresses in late pregnancy. He said the stress was no more stressful than an average day for humans, and it would not alter the weight or the length of the pregnancy.
The results showed that stress anytime during a pregnancy can alter the immune response and overall health of the baby. When stressed the body naturally pulls iron out of the blood, and takes it to the muscles and organs. Stress deprives the baby of the necessary iron in the blood and can be born with an iron deficiency that can lead to anemia. Babies that are born with an iron deficiency do not receive enough iron from the mother after birth so they usually become anemic at about 6 months. The anemia affected the production of NK cells. The baby was born with a reduced number of NK cells and due to the anemia late in infancy the NK levels were reduced even more. This affected the infants response to pathogens.
This experiment also showed that cytokine levels were reduced in the infant. This shows that the adaptive response is altered. There was an increase in the TH-2 cells indicating that prenatal stress can lead to an increase in allergies and asthma in the child or adult. This was also demonstrated in another study were adults were asked about how their pregnancy went, if the mom was stressed or if they had a short gestation, normal, or long gestation and how that related to the health of the adult. In an interesting twist the adults that had a longer than average gestation usually had allergies or asthma as well as the adults with a short gestation.
This led me to wonder of the increase in asthma and allergies in children and adults is a result of the working culture we are in? Would we see a decrease in the number of children with allergies and asthma if the pregnant mother did not perform stressful activities?
Chris performed an experiment on pregnant monkeys. Once a day in the afternoon a loud noise would go off three times. He had three groups of monkeys: a control, ones stressed in early pregnancy, and ones stresses in late pregnancy. He said the stress was no more stressful than an average day for humans, and it would not alter the weight or the length of the pregnancy.
The results showed that stress anytime during a pregnancy can alter the immune response and overall health of the baby. When stressed the body naturally pulls iron out of the blood, and takes it to the muscles and organs. Stress deprives the baby of the necessary iron in the blood and can be born with an iron deficiency that can lead to anemia. Babies that are born with an iron deficiency do not receive enough iron from the mother after birth so they usually become anemic at about 6 months. The anemia affected the production of NK cells. The baby was born with a reduced number of NK cells and due to the anemia late in infancy the NK levels were reduced even more. This affected the infants response to pathogens.
This experiment also showed that cytokine levels were reduced in the infant. This shows that the adaptive response is altered. There was an increase in the TH-2 cells indicating that prenatal stress can lead to an increase in allergies and asthma in the child or adult. This was also demonstrated in another study were adults were asked about how their pregnancy went, if the mom was stressed or if they had a short gestation, normal, or long gestation and how that related to the health of the adult. In an interesting twist the adults that had a longer than average gestation usually had allergies or asthma as well as the adults with a short gestation.
This led me to wonder of the increase in asthma and allergies in children and adults is a result of the working culture we are in? Would we see a decrease in the number of children with allergies and asthma if the pregnant mother did not perform stressful activities?
Obesity and Diabetes II
The one issue we discussed yesterday in class that really caught my attention was the cultural differences and disposition to obesity and diabetes. It was the last research article that I enjoyed the most. The article compared the CRP levels (a possible marker for silent inflammation) of South Asian and European men and women. The article stated that the median CRP level in South Asian women was nearly double that in European women (1.35 vs 0.70mg=1, P .0.05). I found this interesting because we didn't cover much information on the subject in class, so I did some research of my own and found this article...
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/540922
A section of this article addresses an interesting topic we discussed in class regarding how normal BMI's may need to be altered to account for gender and cultural differences. Under the section titled "Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders" there is a table that highlights this. My only question to this would be how they accounted for the differences. What criteria did they consider?
I also liked how the article addressed possible reasons for why different cultures might have a higher incidence of diabetes. They talked about genetic differences, access to healthcare, and socioeconomic barriers to buying healthy foods and medication. The article is broken down into different sections by each race that was studied and it talks about the different initiatives that are underway to try and slow down the diabetes epidemic. If you have the time, it's a great article to read. Let me know what you think!
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/540922
A section of this article addresses an interesting topic we discussed in class regarding how normal BMI's may need to be altered to account for gender and cultural differences. Under the section titled "Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders" there is a table that highlights this. My only question to this would be how they accounted for the differences. What criteria did they consider?
I also liked how the article addressed possible reasons for why different cultures might have a higher incidence of diabetes. They talked about genetic differences, access to healthcare, and socioeconomic barriers to buying healthy foods and medication. The article is broken down into different sections by each race that was studied and it talks about the different initiatives that are underway to try and slow down the diabetes epidemic. If you have the time, it's a great article to read. Let me know what you think!
22 September 2008
Inflammation, Diabetes and Heart Disease
In the article "Profinflammatory cytokines are increased in type 2 diabetic women with cardiovascular disease", nondiabetic and diabetic women with and without cardiovascular disease are tested for plasma cytokine concentration (IL-1beta, IL-6, TNF-alpha). This article was particularly interesting to me because of how it described the snowball effect with diseases. During the last discussion, someone briefly mentioned how the inflammatory system had somewhat of a snowball effect (on the cellular level) where if one cytokine was present, more would be produced as an effect which would then signal for something else, etc, etc. In this article, it was suggested that inflammation effects many diseases/pathways at one time. For example, inflammation in type 2 diabetes can cause circulates cytokines which can aggravate atherosclerosis. Therefore hinting that if you have inflammation and type 2 diabetes, it would be likely for you to develop/encourage athersclerosis and heart problems. I think that this is the scary truth, but nonetheless, very fascinating. Note: Although this article does mention correlations, it states that there has been no studies that have grasped the correlation of cytokine concentrations in women with both cardiovascular disease and diabetes
In addition to disease relationships, this article reported some facts. Here are a few that I found pertinent.
- 17 million people in U.S. have diabetes. 95% of those people have type 2 diabetes.
- in 2000, CVD was #1 cause of death among women in U.S. (American Heart Association)
In addition to disease relationships, this article reported some facts. Here are a few that I found pertinent.
- 17 million people in U.S. have diabetes. 95% of those people have type 2 diabetes.
- in 2000, CVD was #1 cause of death among women in U.S. (American Heart Association)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)