Sexual abuse in childhood increases the chances of high-risk pregnancy, shows a new study conducted by Prof. Rachel Lev-Wiesel, Head of the Graduate School of Creative Arts Therapies at the University of Haifa, Lee Yampolsky and Dr. Tzachi Ben Zion, Deputy Director of Soroka Hospital. “Even when a woman willingly and happily commences a pregnancy, it seems that the body relates the sexual act that created the pregnancy with the abuse trauma, evoking negative feelings which can then be expressed in physical and gynecological problems,” Prof. Lev-Wiesel explains.

The current study examined the possibility of sexual abuse experienced in childhood triggering retraumatization during wanted pregnancy. A group of 1,830 pregnant women participating in the study were divided into high- and low-risk groups, which were further divided into three subgroups: those who were victims of child sexual abuse, those who experienced other types of trauma in childhood, and those who had experienced no notable trauma. Compared with women who had not endured any notable trauma before, those who had been sexually abused in childhood, the study shows, suffered higher levels of depression and more post-traumatic symptoms.

According to Prof. Lev-Wiesel, the main post-traumatic symptoms that these women reported were detachment and avoidance. The study also found that the more severe the child sexual abuse, the stronger the correlation between the PTS symptoms and poor physical health during pregnancy. “Gynecological problems might be the body’s manifestation of the child sexual abuse trauma,” Prof. Lev-Wiesel explains.

“The current study’s findings have important practical implications for health care providers, practitioners and obstetrical gynecologists. There is a need to to recognize and address the psychological state of pregnant child sexual abuse survivors,” Prof. Lev-Wiesel says. “It is also important to remember that since the screening process itself may serve as a trigger to retraumatization, a specially trained team should provide a safe environment and psychological assistance.”

As all parents know, children often want to do exactly what their parents don’t want them to do. In three areas that children often consider parts of their personal domain – clothing, friendship, and leisure activities – having a degree of choice over decisions is important for children’s sense of identity and mental health. A new study that considered connections between control over issues within children’s personal domain, identity, and emotional well-being has found that children make important distinctions between different kinds of rules.

The study was carried out by researchers at the University of California, Davis, the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Brock University in Ontario, Canada. It is published in the March/April 2010 issue of the journal Child Development.

The researchers looked at the beliefs of 60 4- to 7-year-olds about how child characters in role-playing situations would act and feel when a parent forbids them from engaging in a desired activity. At times, the parent’s rule intruded on the child’s personal domain (as in, you shouldn’t play with a particular friend, take part in a certain activity, or wear certain clothes), while in others, the parent’s rule fell within the moral domain (as in, you shouldn’t hit or steal).

From ages 4 to 7, children’s predictions that the characters would comply with moral rules (such as prohibitions against stealing) and feel good about doing so rose significantly, suggesting that between these ages, children become increasingly aware of the limits to legitimate disobedience. In stark contrast, children of all ages predicted that the characters would frequently break parents’ rules when those rules intruded on the personal domain and that this disobedience would feel good, particularly when the desired activities were described as essential to the character’s sense of identity.

“The findings suggest that children make important distinctions between different kinds of rules when reasoning about decisions and emotions,” notes Kristin Hansen Lagattuta, associate professor of psychology and the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, who led the study. Previous research has shown that “although the particulars of what gets defined as the personal domain can vary across cultural settings, the establishment of a zone of personal choice and privacy appears to be culturally universal,” she adds.

“These results have practical implications for parents and educators,” Lagattuta suggests. “Foremost, they argue for balance in promoting morality in young children – not only restricting actions that they shouldn’t do, but helping them identify situations where they can assert personal control.”

Northwestern University researchers have found that even before infants begin to speak, words play an important role in their cognition. For 3-month-old infants, words influence performance in a cognitive task in a way that goes beyond the influence of other kinds of sounds, including musical tones.

The research by Alissa Ferry, Susan Hespos and Sandra Waxman in the psychology department in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, will appear in the March/April edition of the journal Child Development. In the study, infants who heard words provided evidence of categorization, while infants who heard tone sequences did not.

Three-month-old infants were shown a series of pictures of fish that were paired with words or beeps. Infants in the word group were told, for example, “Look at the toma!” – a made-up word for fish, as they viewed each picture. Other infants heard a series of beeps carefully matched to the labeling phrases for tone and duration. Then infants were shown a picture of a new fish and a dinosaur side-by-side as the researchers measured how long they looked at each picture. If the infants formed the category, they would look longer at one picture than the other.

The results, say the authors, were striking. The researchers found that although infants who heard in the word and tone groups saw exactly the same pictures for exactly the same amount of time, those who heard words formed the category fish; those who heard tones did not.

“For infants as young as three months of age, words exert a special influence that supports the ability to form a category,” said Hespos, associate professor of psychology and one of the authors of the study. These findings offer the earliest evidence to date for a link between words and object categories.”

Participants included 46 healthy, full-term infants, from 2 to 4 months of age. Half of the infants within each age bracket were randomly assigned to the word group. All infants in the language group were from families where English was the predominant language spoken in the home. The remaining infants were in the tone group.

“We suspect that human speech, and perhaps especially infant-directed speech, engenders in young infants a kind of attention to the surrounding objects that promotes categorization,” said Waxman, a co-author and professor of psychology. “We proposed that over time, this general attentional effect would become more refined, as infants begin to cull individual words from fluent speech, to distinguish among individual words and kinds of words, and to map those words to meaning.”

The quality of the relationship between children and their parents is important to children’s development, but past research on the link between attachment and development has been inconsistent. Now a new analysis concludes that children, especially boys, who are insecurely attached to their mothers in the early years have more behavior problems later in childhood.

The meta-analysis of 69 studies involving almost 6,000 children ages 12 and younger was conducted by researchers at the University of Reading (in the United Kingdom), the University of Leiden (in the Netherlands), the Barnet, Enfield & Haringey Mental Health National Health Service Trust (also in the U.K.), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is published in the March/April 2010 issue of the journal Child Development.

According to attachment theory, children with secure attachments have repeated experiences with caregivers who are responsive to their needs and thus expect their caregivers to be available and comforting when called upon. In contrast, children with insecure attachments have experiences in which requests are discouraged, rejected, or responded to inconsistently, which is thought to make them vulnerable to developing behavioral problems.

The researchers sought to clarify the extent to which bonds between children and their moms early in life affect children’s later behavioral problems, such as aggression or hostility; behavior problems were measured up to age 12. The studies included in their review used a range of methods for assessing children’s behavior problems, including parent and teacher questionnaires and direct observations.

“The results suggest that the effects of attachment are reliable and relatively persistent over time,” notes Pasco Fearon, associate professor of psychology at the University of Reading, who was the study’s lead author. “More specifically, children who seem unable to maintain a coherent strategy for coping with separation are at greatest risk for later behavior problems and aggression.”

From the first tip-off during March Madness to the championship’s final buzzer, and with start of the 2010 Major League Baseball season, on Sunday, April 4, thousands of people will relentlessly scream and shout, placing tremendous strain on their voices. While no one is recommending complete silence, the constant pressure on the vocal cords can cause great damage.

“Yelling at basketball and baseball games, talking too much on your cell phone, and other forms of overuse can damage your voice,” says Lee M. Akst, M.D., assistant professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and director of the Johns Hopkins Voice Center. “Red flags for an over-used voice are frequent hoarseness, a sense of strain while talking, or discomfort while speaking. If hoarseness lasts for more than two weeks or is accompanied by ear pain, difficulty breathing, or difficulty swallowing, it may indicate a potentially serious vocal cord condition. If these symptoms occur, then you should be evaluated by an ear-nose-throat specialist as quickly as possible.”

The American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS) says nearly three of every 10 people have experienced voice problems. Chronic hoarseness is an occupational hazard not just for singers, but for coaches, teachers, broadcast journalists, clergy, attorneys, and other people who use their voices a lot as part of their professional responsibilities. “According to AAO-HNS statistics, more than one in four people in the United States report voice disorders during their lifetimes,” says Akst, “and this number goes up to more than one in two for high-risk professions such as teaching.”

Akst recommends the following steps to protect your voice:

- Drink plenty of water. Moisture helps keep thin secretions flowing to lubricate vocal cords.
- Try not to scream or yell at ball games or other similar events. This can strain the lining of the vocal cords.
- Don’t overuse your voice. Give it a rest rather than talking on the cell phone all the time.
- Don’t smoke.
- Use good breath support. Fill your lungs before talking and don’t wait until you are almost out of air before taking another breath to power your voice.
- Use a microphone when giving a speech or presentation.
- Most of all, pay attention to how your voice sounds and how your voice feels. If you are getting hoarse or strained, know when to rest your voice so that it can recover.

Fast food is not only bad for your body, but may also harm your bank account.

Eating habits have shifted dramatically over the last few decades – fast food has become a multibillion dollar industry that has widespread influence on what and how we eat. The original idea behind fast food is to increase efficiency, allowing people to quickly finish a meal so they can move on to other matters. Researchers at the Rotman School of Management, however, have found that the mere exposure to fast food and related symbols can make people impatient, increasing preference for time saving products, and reducing willingness to save.

“Fast food represents a culture of time efficiency and instant gratification,” says Chen-Bo Zhong, who co-wrote the paper with colleague Sanford DeVoe to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science. “The problem is that the goal of saving time gets activated upon exposure to fast food regardless of whether time is a relevant factor in the context. For example, walking faster is time efficient when one is trying to make a meeting, but it’s a sign of impatience when one is going for a stroll in the park. We’re finding that the mere exposure to fast food is promoting a general sense of haste and impatience regardless of the context.”

In one experiment, the researchers flashed fast food symbols, such as the golden arch of McDonald’s, on a computer screen for a few milliseconds, so quick that participants couldn’t consciously identify what they saw. They found that this unconscious exposure increased participants’ reading speed in a subsequent task compared to those in a control condition, even when there was no advantage to finishing sooner. In another study, participants who recalled a time when they eat at a food restaurant subsequently preferred time-saving products – such as two-in-one shampoo – over regular products. A final experiment found people exposed to fast food logos exhibited greater reluctance for saving – choose a smaller immediate payment rather than opting for a much larger delayed payment.

“Fast food is one of many technologies that allow us to save time,” says Sanford DeVoe, “But the ironic thing is that by constantly reminding us of time efficiency, these technologies can lead us to feel much more impatience. A fast food culture that extols saving time doesn’t just change the way we eat but it can also fundamentally alter the way they experience our time. For example, leisure activities that are supposed to be relaxing can come to be experienced through the color glasses of impatience.”

The researchers point out that it’s impossible to know whether fast food in part caused the value for time efficiency in our culture or is merely a consequence of it – but it’s clear from their findings that exposure to fast food reinforces an emphasis on impatience and instant gratification. “Given the role that financial impatience played in the current economic crisis,” says Chen-Bo Zhong, “we need to move beyond counting calories when we examine the consequences of fast food as it is also influencing our everyday psychology and behavior in a wider set of domains than has been previously thought.”

US scientists have successfully completed a study where they showed targeted nanoparticles injected directly into a patient’s bloodstream navigated into tumors, delivered double-stranded small interfering RNAs and turned off a gene that drives cancer growth.

The results reported in this study are from a Phase 1 clinical trial that began treating patients with nanoparticles in May 2008. As well as intending to establish scientific proof of concept in humans, like all Phase 1 trials, the goal is to test safety and determine toxicity levels of the therapy. The trial is being sponsored by Calando Pharmaceuticals, a Caltech startup company.

A UCLA statement describes the study as the first to prove that a targeted nanoparticle can be used as an experimental therapeutic in human cancer tumors: it demonstrates the “feasibility of using both nanoparticles and RNA interference-based therapeutics in patients”.

Another first by the team is that they showed the therapeutic can be used in a dose-dependent fashion: the more nanoparticles they injected, the more they found in the cancer cells.

In 2006, American scientists Andrew Fire and Craig Mello won the Nobel Prize for medicine for their discovery of RNA interference (RNAi), the mechanism by which double strands of RNA silence genes by targeting the messenger RNAs (MRNAs) that code proteins.

Fire and Mello first reported their discovery in a 1998 Nature study, and since then there have been high hopes that this way of silencing genes could be developed to treat diseases like cancer.

The reason RNAi could be so powerful is that it does not target a protein directly but the mechanism that codes the protein. Targeting proteins with therapeutics is tricky as often the target areas can be inacessible, perhaps tucked away inside three-dimensional folded structures. But RNAi offers the opportunity to target the mRNA that encodes the information for making the protein: destroy the mRNA and you effectively switch off the corresponding gene and the production of its particular protein.

Lead author Dr Mark E Davis, the Warren and Katharine Schlinger told the press that in principle:

“Every protein now is druggable because its inhibition is accomplished by destroying the mRNA.”

“And we can go after mRNAs in a very designed way, given all the genomic data that are and will become available,” he added.

However, as is often the case, what looks straightforward in theory is fraught with obstacles when you try and apply it in practice. One such difficulty, when trying to apply RNAi technology to humans is, how do you deliver such tiny, fragile molecules, the small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), to the tumors?

Senior author Dr Antoni Ribas,said:

“There are many cancer targets that can be efficiently blocked in the laboratory using siRNA, but blocking them in the clinic has been elusive.”

Davis and colleagues had a solution: they had already been working on ways to deliver nucleic acids into cells before RNAi was discovered. They eventually came up with a method featuring four components, one of which is a unique polymer that can assemble itself into a targeted nanoparticle that carries siRNA.

Davis explained that their nanoparticles can take the siRNAs into the targeted site within the body, and when they reach their target, the cancer cells inside the tumor, the nanoparticles enter the cells and release the siRNAs.

The researchers used a new method developed at Caltech to find and image the nanoparticles inside cells biopsied from the tumors of several patients taking part in the trial.

They also found that the more nanoparticles a patient was given, the more were present in the tumor cells: thus establishing there was a dose-dependent response.

But what was even better, said Davis, was they found evidence the siRNAs had done their job: in the cells they analyzed, which had been targeted to prevent production of the cell-growth protein ribonucleotide reductase, they found the corresponding mRNA had been degraded. Thus effectively the siRNAs had silenced the gene that was fuelling cancer growth.

Davis explained that this was the first time that anyone has found an RNA fragment from patient cells showing that the RNAi mechanism had severed the mRNA at exactly the correct base:

“It proves that the RNA interference mechanism can happen using siRNA in a human,” said Davis.

Ribas said:

“This research provides the first evidence that what works in the lab could help patients in the future by the specific delivery of siRNA using targeted nanoparticles.”

“We can start thinking about targeting the untargetable,” he added.

However, the researchers stressed that while these results are promising, it is still early days and there is a lot of work still to do. However, they are hoping these findings will open the door for future “game-changing” therapeutics that attack cancer and other diseases at the genetic level.

“Evidence of RNAi in humans from systemically administered siRNA via targeted nanoparticles.”

Flip-flops and sneakers with flexible soles are easier on the knees than clogs or even special walking shoes, a study by Rush University Medical Center has found. And that’s important, because loading on the knee joints is a key factor in the development of osteoarthritis.

“Traditionally footwear has been engineered to provide maximum support and comfort for the foot, with little attention paid to the biomechanical effects on the rest of the leg,” said Dr. Najia Shakoor, a rheumatologist at Rush and the primary author of the study. “But the shoes we wear have a substantial impact on the load on the knee joints, particularly when we walk.”

“Our study demonstrated that flat, flexible footwear significantly reduces the load on the knee joints compared with supportive, stable shoes with less flexible soles.”

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis and a significant source of disability and impaired quality of life. A higher-than-normal load on the knees during walking is a hallmark of the disease, associated with both the severity of osteoarthritis and its progression.

Shakoor and her colleagues analyzed the gait of 31 patients with symptoms of osteoarthritis in the Rush Motion Analysis Lab while they walked barefoot and with four popular shoe types: Dansko clogs, which are often worn by healthcare professionals who have to be on their feet much of the day; Brooks Addiction stability shoes, which are prescribed for foot comfort and stability; Puma H-Street shoes, a flat athletic shoe with flexible soles; and flip-flops.

The loads on the knee joints differed significantly depending on the footwear. For the clogs and stability shoes, the loads on the knee joints were up to 15 percent greater than with the flat walking shoes, flip-flops or barefoot walking. Knee loading was roughly the same whether the subject wore flips-flops or walked barefoot.

“Currently, knee braces and wedged orthotic shoe inserts are used to relieve the load on the knee joints of patients with osteoarthritis, but everyday footwear is also a factor to consider. The results in our study demonstrate that the reduction in load achieved with different footwear, from 11 to 15 percent, is certainly comparable to reduction in load with braces and shoe inserts ,” Shakoor said.

According to Shakoor, several aspects of footwear affect the joint loading.

“Heel height is one factor, and may explain why the stability shoes and clogs in our study, both of which had higher heels, produced greater knee loads,” Shakoor said.

“Stiffness is also a factor. We’ve shown in earlier studies that barefoot walking is associated with lower knee loads than walking with conventional footwear. It may be that the flexible movement of the bare foot is mechanically advantageous. The natural flex of the foot when it contacts the ground probably attenuates the impact on the joint, compared to the artificial ‘stomping’ movement created by a stiff-soled shoe.”

In the present study, Shakoor said, flip-flops and the walking shoe were flat, flexible and lightweight and seemed to mimic the mechanics when walking with bare feet.

“Clogs and stability shoes, conventionally believed to provide appropriate cushioning and support, actually increased the loading on the knee joints, as opposed to shoes with less ‘support,’ flatter heels and more flexibility,” Shakoor said.

Shakoor cautioned, however, that knee loading is not the only consideration in any clinical recommendations based on her study.

“For the elderly and infirm individuals, flip-flops could contribute to falls because of their loose-fitting design. Factors like these need to be taken into account,” Shakoor said.

Patients admitted to intensive heart care with chest pains have a better chance of surviving if they have high blood pressure. This is shown in a study by scientists at Linköping University in Sweden published in the world’s largest medical journal JAMA.

High blood pressure is usually associated with poor prognoses in heart disease. But that means blood pressure monitored at rest. The new findings show that it is important to factor in the situation in which the blood pressure is measured.

The study, by researchers Ulf Stenestrand, Fredrik Nyström, Magnus Wijkman, and Mats Fredriksson of Linköping University, comprised 119,151 patients admitted to intensive heart care for acute chest pain between 1997 and 2007. The data was retrieved from RIKS-HIA, a register that covers all Swedish intensive heart care units.

The blood pressure first measured upon admission was related to the risk of the patient dying during the care period or within a year. It turned out that the higher the upper, systolic, pressure was, the lower was the risk of dying. Among patients who had more than 162 mm Hg, the fatality risk was 22 percent lower than for those in the interval 128-144. The latter in turn ran a 40-percent lower risk of dying than those whose systolic blood pressure was under 128 mm Hg.

“The really big news in the study is that the risk continued to decline at even higher levels, all the way up to 200 mm Hg, after which the reduction in risk leveled off,” says Fredrik Nyström, professor of internal medicine.

The differences between the various groups were even clearer when the researchers examined the patients’ risk of dying only from cardiovascular disease. The improved prognosis was also valid for high-risk groups, such as diabetics, smokers, and obese patients.

It was previously known that low blood pressure can be associated with poor prognoses for certain types of heart disease, but in those cases the low blood pressure was caused by heart failure.

Despite the aches and pains that occur in old age, many older adults maintain a positive outlook, remembering the positive experiences from their past. A new study, reported in the April 2010 issue of Elsevier’s Cortex, reveals that older adults’ ability to remember the past through a positive lens is linked to the way in which the brain processes emotional content. In the older adult brain, there are strong connections between those regions that process emotions and those known to be important for successful formation of memories, particularly when processing positive information.

Dr Donna Rose Addis from the University of Auckland, together with a team of researchers supervised by Dr. Elizabeth A. Kensinger of Boston College (Chestnut Hill, MA), asked young adults (ages 19-31) and older adults (ages 61-80) to view a series of photographs with positive and negative themes, such as a victorious skier or a wounded soldier. While participants viewed these images, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan recorded the brain activity across a number of different regions. When participants had completed the fMRI scan, they were asked to remember as many of the photographs as they could.

Analyses revealed that aging did not affect the connectivity among regions engaged during memory formation for negative photographs. However, age differences did arise during the creation of memories for positive photographs. In older adult brains, two regions that are linked to the processing of emotional content the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (a region located just behind the bridge of the nose) and the amygdala (a region embedded in the tissue between the ears) were strongly connected to regions that are linked to memory formation. In young adults, there was not a strong connection between the emotion-processing regions and the memory-creation regions.

These findings suggest that older adults remember the good times well, because the brain regions that control the processing of emotions act in concert with those that control the processing of memory, when older adults experience positive events. Young adults lack these strong connections, making it harder for them to remember positive experiences over the long term.