Antidepressant drugs MAY make you live longer

American researchers are suggesting that antidepressant drugs may possibly lengthen a person's lifespan.

The researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle have come up with this possibility following research with nematode worms which are a very basic life form.

In the study the tiny worms were exposed to as many as 88,000 chemicals drug compounds before four drugs were found that extended life span by 20 to 30 percent.

One of these drugs was Mianserin, which belongs to a class of drugs known as tetracyclic antidepressants, which proved to be the most effective in that it extended the lifespan of the worms by almost a third.

The drug apparently mimics the effects on the body of the only known animal long-life regime - virtual starvation.

Experts say the findings might indicate genes in humans that could be targeted to increase lifespan and possibly to identify additional genes important in ageing.

Dr. Linda Buck of the research center says it remains unclear why, depriving the body of all but the minimum amount of calories needed to survive seems to enhance longevity but the Seattle team believe they may have found an easier way to achieve the same effect.

Nematode worms are ideal subjects for studies into lifespan, they are similar in many ways to humans as they have a central nervous system and sexual reproduction; they also only live for only a matter of weeks.

Dr. Buck says they are unable to explain it but it is possible the drug disturbed the balance of two brain chemicals which help the nematode decide whether there is enough food around to justify laying eggs and this, might produce a "perceived, but not real" state of starvation.

Dr. Buck says that finding a chemical that increased lifespan in animals might point to genes in humans that could be targeted to do the same and it may be possible to identify additional genes important in ageing.

The researchers say such life-extending benefits however come at a cost with weight gain and increased appetite some of the side effects which is why the drugs are not popular antidepressants.

It's a bald fact...smoking makes your hair fall out!

According to new research apart from the plethora of illnesses associated with smoking the habit can make men prematurely bald.

Smoking has been linked to lung disease, heart and blood vessel disease, stroke and cataracts and cancers as well as impotence and tobacco-related diseases are some of the biggest killers in the world today.

Now a study by scientists, led by Dr Lin-hui Su, from the Far Eastern memorial hospital in Taiwan, has shown that smoking cigarettes can also encourage male hair loss.

Scientists say male baldness, or androgenetic alopecia, is a hereditary matter and caused in part by the male sex hormones.

Male baldness varies between different races and as a rule Asian men are less likely to become bald as they age than white Europeans or Americans but early hair loss in a smoker may be a warning signal of more serious damage elsewhere in the body.

The scientists became aware of the connection between smoking and baldness after conducting a survey of 740 Taiwanese men with an average age of 65.

The survey collected information on the age at which the men started losing their hair, the risk factors which may have affected their hair loss, and their smoking history and the men's height and weight were measured, and blood samples analysed.

The results showed that smoking led to significantly more baldness even after taking other factors into account.

The risk of hair loss though it increased with advancing age, nevertheless remained lower than the average risk for Caucasian men.

The researchers suggest that smoking may damage the micro-circulation supplying blood to the follicles.

The research is published in the journal Archives of Dermatology.

New way to burn off calories

A new study in the September issue of Cell Metabolism, a publication of Cell Press, points to a new method for burning off all those irresistible extra calories-by turning on an energy-draining, but otherwise futile, cycle of protein synthesis and breakdown.

Christopher Lynch of The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine and his colleagues found that they could drive such heightened protein turnover in mice by disrupting an enzyme involved in the metabolism of some amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The enzyme-deficient animals showed elevated blood levels of the essential amino acid leucine, an important nutrient signal, and became slimmer than normal mice despite eating more food. They also showed "remarkable" improvements in glucose and insulin tolerance, and resistance to becoming obese on a high-fat diet.

"The mice on the outside look normal, just skinnier and smaller," Lynch said. "After looking at their metabolism, we found that for the same activity, they were using more energy."

Moreover, the researchers found that the animals that ate the most food also expended the most energy. "That would be ideal for people who are overweight," Lynch said. "They could continue to eat and just waste the energy and be thin."

Abundant food supplies and a sedentary lifestyle have contributed to the current epidemic of obesity in Western nations, the researchers said. Obesity results when people consume more energy in their diet than they expend. In both short-term and relatively long-term studies, high-protein and low-fat diets have been found to increase energy expenditure, they noted, while short-term protein intake helps stave off hunger.

The effects of dietary protein are thought to be driven at least in part by leucine and perhaps other so-called branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs). Yet it has remained unclear whether leucine supplementation actually improves or worsens obesity, Lynch said.

In the current study, the researchers generated mice lacking the enzyme BCATm, critical for the first step in BCAA breakdown, which caused their leucine levels to rise by more than 10-fold. As a result of the enzyme deficiency, the animals ate more food but were lean in comparison to normal mice. The researchers traced the effect to an energy-demanding increase in protein turnover that appeared to be directly related to the amount of food the mice ate.

"Unfortunately for dieters, it appears unlikely that the tactic used by the [mutant mice] to avoid weight gain, i.e., a big increase in protein turnover, can be achieved by merely ingesting high-protein diets or leucine supplements," said Susan Fried and Malcolm Watford in an accompanying commentary. An earlier study found that eating leucine can only increase its levels to twice the normal concentration, they noted. And unlike the enzyme disruption, dietary leucine stimulates protein synthesis while it slows protein breakdown.

Nonetheless, the scientists all agree that the findings could lead to new weight-loss therapies. "It is possible that revving up protein turnover by manipulating BCATm activity through pharmacological means is worth exploring as a treatment for obesity in humans," Fried and Watford said.

http://www.cellpress.com/

Psychiatrists are the least religious of all physicians

A nationwide survey of the religious beliefs and practices of American physicians has found that the least religious of all medical specialties is psychiatry.

Among psychiatrists who have a religion, more than twice as many are Jewish and far fewer are Protestant or Catholic, the two most common religions among physicians overall.

The study, published in the September 2007 issue of Psychiatric Services, also found that religious physicians, especially Protestants, are less likely to refer patients to psychiatrists, and more likely to send them to members of the clergy or to a religious counselor.

"Something about psychiatry, perhaps its historical ties to psychoanalysis and the anti-religious views of the early analysts such as Sigmund Freud, seems to dissuade religious medical students from choosing to specialize in this field," said study author Farr Curlin, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago. "It also seems to discourage religious physicians from referring their patients to psychiatrists."

"Previous surveys have documented the unusual religious profile of psychiatry," he said, "but this is the first study to suggest that that profile leads many physicians to look away from psychiatrists for help in responding to patients' psychological and spiritual suffering."

"Because psychiatrists take care of patients struggling with emotional, personal and relational problems," Curlin said, "the gap between the religiousness of the average psychiatrist and her average patient may make it difficult for them to connect on a human level."

In 2003, to learn about the contribution of religious factors on physicians' clinical practices, Curlin and colleagues surveyed 1,820 practicing physicians from all specialties, including an augmented number of psychiatrists; 1,144 (63%) physicians responded, including 100 psychiatrists.

The survey contained questions about medical specialties, religion, and measures of what the researchers called intrinsic religiosity-the extent to which individuals embrace their religion as the "master motive that guides and gives meaning to their life."

Although 61 percent of all American physicians were either Protestant (39%) or Catholic (22%), only 37 percent of psychiatrists were Protestant (27%) or Catholic (10%). Twenty-nine percent were Jewish, compared to 13 percent of all physicians. Seventeen percent of psychiatrists listed their religion as "none," compared to only 10 percent of all doctors.

Curlin's survey also included this brief vignette, designed to present "ambiguous symptoms of psychological distress" as way measure the willingness of physicians to refer patients to psychiatrists.

"A patient presents to you with continued deep grieving two months after the death of his wife. If you were to refer the patient, to which of the following would you prefer to refer first" (a psychiatrist or psychologist, a clergy member or religious counselor, a health care chaplain, or other)."

Overall, 56 percent of physicians indicated they would refer such a patient to a psychiatrist or psychologist, 25 percent to a clergy member or other religious counselor, 7 percent to a health care chaplain and 12 percent to someone else.

Although Protestant physicians were only half as likely to send the patient to a psychiatrist, Jewish physicians were more likely to do so. Least likely were highly religious Protestants who attended church at least twice a month and looked to God for guidance "a great deal or quite a lot."

"Patients probably seek out, to some extent, physicians who share their views on life's big questions," Curlin said. That may be especially true in psychiatry, where communication is so essential. The mismatch in religious beliefs between psychiatrists and patients may make it difficult for patients suffering from emotional or personal problems to find physicians who share their fundamental belief systems.

http://www.uchospitals.edu/