Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- Larkin Valley horse whisperer play is best medicine for stubborn …
- CE Richard Clark calls merger ‘transformational event’ for Merck
- lder fathers link to child brain
- Lawmakers’ interest in fertility treatments is political grandstanding
- Protein Helps Immune Cells To Divide And Conquer
- Gene therapy triggers rapid weight loss
- Antidepressant Use Tied to Cardiac Death in Women

Larkin Valley horse whisperer play is best medicine for stubborn …
San Jose Mercury News
That was one of the lessons Deb Cooper taught Sunday during a Day of Natural Horsemanship open house at her Moon Valley Ranch. Cooper is described as a horse whisperer someone who during the training process uses horse behavior and psychology to earn its trust. More than 100 people of all ages some with children in tow descended upon the property nestled off Larkin Valley Road at Highway 1 to watch Cooper at work. “We have two horses we keep at another stable” said Vicente Buggiano of San Jose. Curiosity about natural horsemanship made him and his family drive down to see what it was all about.

CE Richard Clark calls merger ‘transformational event’ for Merck
The Star-Ledger – NJ.com
At an investor conference in January Clark had hinted at the next step in his strategy. Merck faced the industry’s never-ending quandary: it needed new drugs to help offset the loss of revenues as one of its top-selling medicines faced the looming prospect of generic competition. In Merck’s case its top-selling asthma medicine Singulair is scheduled to lose market exclusivity in 2012. The medicine generated nearly $4. 3 billion in sales in 2007. “There is no doubt many companies are looking for a deal that will transform their company” Clark said during the conference. “It can’t be business as usual and certainly the consolidations aren’t over.

lder fathers link to child brain
BBC News
In contrast children with older mothers did well on the tests which assessed abilities such as memory learning and concentration. Experts believe mutations in a man’s sperm which build over time may be a factor. The University of Queensland study appears in the journal PLoS Medicine.

Lawmakers’ interest in fertility treatments is political grandstanding
Kansas City Star
Suleman’s doctor violated those guidelines and is under scrutiny. It should be obvious that is a decision for medical backgrounds not political showmanship. Also involved was Arizona’s Bioethics Defense Fund a group opposed to embryonic stem-cell research abortion human cloning and assisted suicide.

Protein Helps Immune Cells To Divide And Conquer
Science Daily (press release)
The study from the laboratory of Mark H. professor of medicine will be published online March 8 in advance of print in Nature Immunology. It describes why CD98hc is essential in order for B lymphocytes to transition into antibody-secreting cells. It also describes how this relates to the protein’s role in the signaling ability of integrins – a large family of adhesion molecules that transfer information between the inside and outside of a cell.

Gene therapy triggers rapid weight loss
FierceBioResearcher
fiercebioresearcher. Reporting in Nature Medicine During created a gene therapy that combines brain-derived neurotrophic factor–a protein that regulates weight–with material that spurs autoregulation of the protein. Researchers have also prepared a third ingredient that could knock out the BDNF that could quickly halt its activity if the experiment goes awry. The therapy is injected into the hypothalamus region of the brain. Researchers found that specially engineered mice suffering from morbid obesity lost 20 percent of their body weight in a matter of weeks. After that initial weight loss their weights stabilized.
Related from Weightlossmonster: Gene therapy triggers rapid weight loss

Antidepressant Use Tied to Cardiac Death in Women
MSN Health & Fitness
Narayan an associate professor of medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and co-author of an accompanying editorial said in a statement that the “data indicate the link between depression and serious heart rhythm problems may be more complex than previously thought. “His editorial called the relationship between antidepressant use and sudden cardiac death “surprising” and added it “merits scrutiny. “But it is possible that “antidepressant use merely indicates that depression is of sufficient severity to merit treatment” the editorial said. ne recent study of people with heart failure found that depression was associated with increased mortality but that use of antidepressants was not. Another report in the same issue of the journal said that feelings of anger and hostility are significantly associated with a higher risk of heart disease in healthy people and a poorer outcome in people with heart disease.