As if phobias weren’t scary enough, new research finds that having intense phobic anxiety may speed up the biological aging process in middle-aged and older women.

A Scientific American Observations post reports on the study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston:

The researchers examined blood samples and survey results from 5,243 women ages 42 to 69 from the ongoing Nurses Health Study cohort. They found that women who had the highest levels of phobic anxiety had biological markers of women who were six years older. The findings were published online July 11 in PLoS ONE.

[Olivia Okereke, MD, SM] and her colleagues looked specifically at telomeres, the protective ends of chromosomes that keep genetic information from being lost during cell division. As we age, our telomeres shorten naturally. Scientists suspect this shortening results from exposure to oxidative stress and inflammation. (Shorter telomeres, especially for one’s age, have been implicated in upping the risk for heart disease, cancer and dementia.)

The study authors note that their findings demonstrate a connection, rather than a causal link, between phobic anxiety and premature aging.

Previously: Study suggests anticipation of stress may accelerate cellular aging and Study shows cell health linked to positive mood changes in meditation
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New research has found that in people who have been deaf since birth, the brain’s primary auditory cortex, normally used for hearing, can process touch and vision. According to a National Institutes of Health release, the findings could inform the development of better learning tools for deaf students and improved quality of hearing in children who receive cochlear implants.

From an Atlantic article:

In the study, [Christina M. Karns, PhD] and her colleagues at the University of Oregon strapped 13 deaf volunteers into a head apparatus that delivers a flash of light to the eye (to stimulate vision), along with two bursts of air to the face (to stimulate a touch response). They did the same with 12 hearing peers, and observed the brain responses in all subjects via fMRI.

Karns’ team found that the deaf subjects were not only processing both the touch and visual responses through the hearing part of their brains, but they were also far more likely to associate these inputs through something called the “double flash illusion.”

Using the head apparatus, researchers “flashed a light to each subject’s eye once, and then at the exact same moment we touched their face with two little puffs of air, so that the flash and the puff-puff were right at the same time,” Karns said, explaining her experiment. While deaf subjects reported seeing two flashes, their hearing peers didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, just one burst of light.

“I had the idea that maybe in people born deaf, touch and vision would be interacting more closely because these two senses have had more time to get to know each other during development, without sound monopolizing the conversation in the auditory cortex,” said Karns, “and it turned out to be true.”

Previously: Growing new inner-ear cells: a step toward a cure for deafness and Tennis, anyone? New York Times examines tennis for the blind
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If you’ve begun stoking Olympic fever by watching trials for U.S. athletes, it may be of interest to know some of the ways London officials have been readying the stage for the games, which open in three weeks.

In a Spoonful of Medicine Q&A posted today, Brian McCloskey, MD, lead health director for the Olympics, discusses infectious disease control, biomedical tools for gathering data and health surveillance systems in place for this summer’s festivities.

On the topic of tracking infectious diseases, McClosky says:

We will monitor all infectious diseases, but the main ones that will likely be an issue for us will be gastrointestinal diseases such as food poisoning and infectious diseases such as measles. There have been measles outbreaks in Europe and in UK in the past couple of years and those haven’t gone away.

Previously: Is the International Olympic Committee’s policy governing sex verification fair? and Continuing pollution restrictions used during Beijing Olympics could reduce cancer rates
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On the same day that at-home HIV tests won federal approval, a Fresh Air segment on National Public Radio discussed the health epidemic of HIV among black Americans, who are disproportionately affected by the virus.

From an NPR post:

Of the more than 1 million people in the U.S. infected with HIV, nearly half are black men, women and children — even though blacks make up about 13 percent of the population. AIDS is the primary killer of African-Americans ages 19 to 44, and the mortality rate is 10 times higher for black Americans than for whites.

Guests Renata Simone, director of the new PBS Frontline documentary Endgame: AIDS in Black America, and Robert Fullilove, EdD, a professor of clinical sociomedical studies at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, and chairman of the HIV/AIDS advisory committee at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, joined host Terry Gross in discussing political, social and cultural factors contributing to the rapid spread of the disease seen in the last three decades.

Having recorded numerous personal stories from churches, prisons, clinics and more during the making of her documentary, Simone reported, “Right now, today in 2012, this is an epidemic of people that we recognize and, if our lives were any different, we could be.”

Previously: A call for safe sex awareness to combat HIV in China and Women underrepresented in AIDS research

Your skincare regimen may protect you from sun damage or boast an advanced formula for wrinkle resistance, but what has it done for you genetically?

Ed Yong writes for The Scientist:

Researchers at Northwestern University have created small nanoparticles that can silence disease-related genes in skin cells after being applied via a cream or ointment.

Described today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the particles consist of small strands of RNA, densely packed around a gold core. They were 100 times more effective at shutting down a target gene than an alternative method using lipids to carry RNA into cells, and showed no harmful effects after weeks of use. With further testing and development, they could provide new ways of treating skin cancer, psoriasis, and other skin disorders caused by faulty or overactive genes.

Yong writes that existing pill or intravenous treatments targeting the genes involved in skin diseases may spread to internal organs, thus introducing harmful side effects.

Previously: What does nanotechnology bring to medicine? and Nanomedicine moves one step closer to reality

A Tell Me More segment on NPR today examined three doctors’ perspectives on how last week’s Supreme Court ruling to uphold most provisions of the Affordable Care Act will affect physicians and patients.

Three guests, including Congresswoman Donna Christensen, MD, (D-U.S. Virgin Islands), joined host Michel Martin to provide comment on their hopes and concerns about the implementation of the law. The panelists also illuminated what changes in health-care infrastructure, Medicaid, and cost, quality, and access to care they expect in coming years.

Previously: Stanford economist Victor Fuchs: Affordable Care Act “just a start”, Stanford experts respond to Supreme Court’s decision on health law and Supreme Court’s decision means more physicians are needed

What’s part substantial and sturdy, part spongy and delicate? A clementine. Also, tissues of the pelvis.

Shots reports today that Pamela Andreatta, EdD, a medical educator at the University of Michigan Medical School, realized the useful likeness of these two structures when considering how to prepare residents to conduct surgery. By practicing cutting and stitching techniques on the fruits, doctors in training could get a better feel for surgery than by only observing a surgeon, and they could do so more cheaply than using high-tech surgical simulators. Laparoscopic surgery in particular, Andreatta said, could be better understood using this simple model.

From the entry:

The idea came to Andreatta after a colleague in gynecologic oncology asked whether she could come up with a simulation to teach the delicate task of removing lymph nodes, something done to minimize the spread of cancer.

….

Andreatta set up an exercise using an opaque box with holes in the top through which you can insert a camera, scissors and grasper. She invited residents, medical students and faculty to dissect clementines.

They had to take off the peel in as few pieces as possible, remove the pith, separate the segments, then put everything back together and suture the peel closed. They had two hours to complete the task.

Among the 41 exercise participants, minimally invasive surgeons – many of whom remarked on the similarities between the simulation and actual surgery – scored best, with residents and nonsurgical faculty following and medical students further behind. Andreatta said the results “confirm that the clementine is a suitable model for training,” and she now encourages training on the fruits as well as foam shapes purchased from a craft store. She added:

You can find clementines or setsumas or tangerine variations all over the world… You can go out and pick them off a tree, and it costs very little or nothing… and yet it’s very advanced training.

Previously: Image of the Week: Antique trephination set and A look at an iPad in the operating room
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Previous research has demonstrated the effectiveness of music therapy in treating children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).  A recent Atlantic article follows a student of a New York  therapeutic school for children with neurodevelopmental disorders and documents how adhering to music’s clearly defined structure helped the 13-year-old manage social interactions and other challenging life situations.

From the piece:

For the last four years, Jaden has been attending [Rebecca School] for music therapy – broadly defined as the clinical use of music for treatment of people with mental, physical or emotional issues. Jaden was born without a corpus callosum – the flat bundle of cells that connects the left and right sides of the brain, facilitating communication between the two hemispheres. He has minimal speaking skills, said Dr. Gil Tippy, [PsyD,] the Rebecca School’s clinical director, but it’s made up for by a penchant for music.

The term “music therapy” first appeared in The Columbia Magazine back in 1789, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that music therapy began to emerge as a clinical profession when hospitals used music to treat World War II soldiers suffering from shell shock. Using music as a therapeutic medium has been shown to facilitate motivation, communication skills and social interaction, and it improves attention spans among children with autism.

Instructors at Rebecca School, which also uses Developmental, Individual-Difference, Relationship-Based (DIR) therapy to reach children, may accompany students on another instrument, encouraging communication by matching pace and tone and even using the rhythm of a piece of music to influence energy states of the student; for example, slowing a beat to calm down a child. The skills acquired through music lessons can be applied elsewhere:

Individuals with ASD often find it challenging to maneuver social situations. That’s because they tend to focus on details, which restricts their ability to understand implicit social cues, said Andrew Gerber,[MD, PhD,] an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia Medical Center. That explains why music is often more appealing: the rules are better defined. “One of the real advantages of using music for a kid with autism is that it’s a chance to be able to teach him rules that are knowable,” said Gerber. “They can feel like they’ve mastered something. It makes sense to them.”

Jaden found his calling in percussion.

Previously: Autism therapies: It still comes down to parents
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In this recently posted TEDMED talk, Rebecca Onie discusses the origins of Health Leads, the Boston nonprofit organization she cofounded that takes a comprehensive approach to preventing chronic or severe medical problems.

Onie says that while working as an intern for legal services in greater Boston, “I grew frustrated with feeling like we were intervening too far downstream in the lives of our clients, that by the time they came to us they were already in crisis.”

During the talk, Onie describes her vision of a health care system as one in which teams of medical professionals, social workers and college-student advocates not only prescribe medications, but also connect patients with resources that can provide basic necessities such as food, heat in the winter and exercise programs to address lifestyle concerns standing in the way of effective care. Through her organization, she strives to deploy underutilized resources to improve health outcomes for people who seek medical treatment in clinics; one component of her strategy involves optimizing waiting rooms to provide health education.

“If airports can become shopping malls and McDonalds can become playgrounds, surely we can reinvent the clinic waiting room,” she says.

Previously: Innovative Stanford clinic to support chronic care patients and Community-based workshops help patients manage chronic illness
Via Common Health

People who suffer from rare diseases often find comfort, information and empowerment through online peer networks. And some patients have gone as far as to drive scientists to study their condition and even investigate potential treatments for it. In today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, an article reports on a group of women who found each other through the Web and formed an action-oriented community to combat SCAD (spontaneous coronary artery dissection), a disease they share.

The article details how the self-described “SCAD Ladies” (including past Scope columnist and Durham, N.C., resident Laura Haywood-Cory) helped spread the word to researchers that SCAD needed to be better understood and studied:

“We thought if we could find these people and get their stories out, doctors would see that this is something that should be studied and researched,“ said [patient Katherine Leon of Alexandria, Va.], who enlisted Mayo Clinic cardiologist Sharonne Hayes [MD] to study SCAD.

….

“We now have a research foundation and Dr. Hayes let me know that the pilot study was successful and the Mayo Clinic approved the clinical trial. The greatest value of being in this group is that it strengthens each of us the minute we know there’s someone else out there.”

The current Mayo study to learn more about SCAD includes more than 200 participants and uses a virtual patient registry and DNA testing to track the condition. And researcher Hayes said she and her colleagues have “unquestionably benefited from the  organizational and leadership skills and frankly, the courage of Laura  [Haywood-Cory] and Katherine [Leon] and the willingness of the other women to  share themselves with us. This is one of the most gratifying things I’ve done in  my career.”

Previously: Dr. Google: Threat or menace?, Using social media to study rare diseases and Survey shows patients with rare diseases and their caregivers are avid Internet users
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