Healthcare News and Research

[*Anya*]

Aaron Hernandez suffered from most severe CTE ever found in a person his age

By Adam Kilgore November 9, 2017 at 3:50 PM

BOSTON — Aaron Hernandez suffered the most severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy ever discovered in a person his age, damage that would have significantly affected his decision-making, judgment and cognition, researchers at Boston University revealed at a medical conference Thursday.

Ann McKee, the head of BU’s CTE Center, which has studied the disease caused by repetitive brain trauma for more than a decade, called Hernandez’s brain “one of the most significant contributions to our work” because of the brain’s pristine condition and the rare opportunity to study the disease in a 27-year-old.

Hernandez, a former New England Patriots tight end, hanged himself with a bedsheet in April in a Massachusetts prison while serving a life sentence for the murder of his friend Odin Lloyd in 2013.

In a diagnosis that linked one of football’s most notorious figures with the sport’s most significant health risk, doctors found Hernandez had Stage 3 CTE, which researchers had never seen in a brain younger than 46 years old, McKee said. Because the center has received few brains from people Hernandez’s age, McKee could not say whether Hernandez’s brain was representative of a 27-year-old who had played football as much as Hernandez. But she found the advanced stage of CTE alarming.

“In this age group, he’s clearly at the severe end of the spectrum,” McKee said. “There is a concern that we’re seeing accelerated disease in young athletes. Whether or not that’s because they’re playing more aggressively or if they’re starting at younger ages, we don’t know. But we are seeing ravages of this disease, in this specific example, of a young person.”

At Thursday’s conference, McKee flipped through slides comparing sections of Hernandez’s brain to a sample without CTE. Hernandez’s brain had dark spots associated with tau protein and shrunken, withered areas, compared to immaculate white of the sample. His brain had significant damage to the frontal lobe, which impacts a person’s ability to make decisions and moderate behavior. As some new slides appeared on the projectors, some physicians and conference attendees gasped.

“We can’t take the pathology and explain the behavior,” McKee said. “But we can say collectively, in our collective experience, that individuals with CTE, and CTE of this severity, have difficulty with impulse control, decision-making, inhibition of impulses for aggression, emotional volatility, rage behaviors. We know that collectively.”

McKee said Hernandez had a genetic marker that makes people vulnerable to certain brain diseases and could have contributed to how aggressively he developed CTE.

“We know that that’s a risk factor for neurogenerative disease,” McKee said. “Whether or not that contributed in this case is speculative. It may explain some of his susceptibility to this disease.”

The condition of Hernandez’s brain, pristine because of his age and the adept handling of medical examiners, could lead to future breakthroughs and better understanding of CTE. For example, researchers could better study the interaction of inflammation and tau pathology through the use of fluorescent stains. It gave researchers their best view yet of a marker associated with CTE.

“We are able to understand this disease at the scientific level in a way that’s very rarely presented,” McKee said. “We’re very grateful to the family for making this donation. We’re hoping this will advance medical science in a very significant way. . . . This will really accelerate and advance our research going forward.”

Medical examiners delivered Hernandez’s brain, weighing 1,573 grams, to BU’s labs in April. From the outside, it looked like a typical brain — no lesions, no bruises, no abnormalities. When researches sliced the brain into sections, they discovered startling damage.

Ventricles were dilated, in response to the brain shrinking. Researchers determined Hernandez had lost brain tissue. Membranes that were supposed to be firm had grown “thin and gelatinous,” McKee said. There were abnormal, large holes in parts of Hernandez’s bran.

The hippocampus, which plays a key role in memory, had shrunk.

The fornix, which also contributes to memory function, had atrophied.

The frontal lobe, which is responsible for problem-solving, judgment, impulse control and social behavior, had been pockmarked with tau protein.

The amygdala, which produces emotional regulation, emotional behavior, fear and anxiety, had been severly affected.

The temporal lobes, which process sights and sounds, showed significant damage.

Together, they were “very unusual findings in an individual of this age,” McKee said. “We’ve never seen this in our 468 brains, except in individuals some 20 years older.”

The physical damage inside Hernandez’s brain provides another layer to the catastrophic and tragic downfall of Hernandez, a gifted player who caught a touchdown pass from Tom Brady in the 2012 Super Bowl.

Hernandez grew up a football star in Connecticut and fell in with a rough crowd at age 15, after his father died unexpectedly during a routine operation. He starred at Florida even as off-field trouble, in the form of drugs and violence, dogged him. The problems caused some teams to remove him from consideration in the NFL draft, and he lasted until the Patriots plucked him in the fourth round.

Hernandez formed a dominating tandem with fellow 2010 draftee Rob Gronkowski and convinced the Patriots he had straightened out his life. The Patriots signed him to a seven-year, $40-million contract after the 2012 season. Months later, in the summer of 2013, Lloyd was murdered in the summer of 2013, his body found in a gravelly field a mile away from Hernandez’s mansion in North Attleboro.

Hernandez’s estate filed a federal lawsuit against the Patriots in September, alleging the Patriots knew hits to the head could lead to brain damage and failed to protect him.

A jury convicted Hernandez of the killing in 2015. Hernandez hanged himself in his cell just four days after a jury had acquitted him of the murders of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, two strangers whom the state argued Hernandez killed in 2012 after an altercation at a Boston club.

BU researchers say they have discovered CTE in more than 100 former NFL players, a handful of whom have committed suicide. The extent of damage in Hernandez’s brain represents another signpost in football’s ongoing concussion crisis. Thursday’s news conference coincided with the release of an NFL study consisting of video reviews of the 459 known concussions that occurred over the 2015 and 2016 seasons, from preseason games through the playoffs

The NFL has attempted to make the sport safer for its players, through rule changes, policies designed to remove concussed players and technologic advances. But brain trauma occurs when a football player’s brain accelerates or decelerates after it hits another player or the turf, bashing the sides of the head, an action a helmet is defenseless against.

“It happens inside the skull,” McKee said. “It’s an intrinsic component of football.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...=.d7191a3753d1






Normal 27-year-old's brain and Aaron Hernandez's brain. (Boston University School of Medicine/Boston University School of Medicine)

[*Anya*]

No Excuses, People: Get the New Shingles Vaccine

By Paula Span NOV. 10, 2017

Medical researchers and government health policymakers, a cautious lot, normally take pains to keep expectations modest when they’re discussing some new finding or treatment.

They warn about studies’ limitations. They point out what isn’t known. They emphasize that correlation doesn’t mean causation.

So it’s startling to hear prominent experts sound positively excited about a new shingles vaccine that an advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved last month.

“This really is a sea change,” said Dr. Rafael Harpaz, a veteran shingles researcher at the C.D.C.

Dr. William Schaffner, preventive disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said, “This vaccine has spectacular initial protection rates in every age group. The immune system of a 70- or 80-year-old responds as if the person were only 25 or 30.”

“This really looks to be a breakthrough in vaccinating older adults,” agreed Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, a physician and researcher at the National Institutes of Health.

What’s causing the enthusiasm: Shingrix, which the pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline intends to begin shipping this month. Large international trials have shown that the vaccine prevents more than 90 percent of shingles cases, even at older ages.

The currently available shingles vaccine, called Zostavax, only prevents about half of shingles cases in those over age 60 and has demonstrated far less effectiveness among elderly patients.

Yet those are the people most at risk for this blistering disease, with its often intense pain, its threat to vision and the associated nerve pain that sometimes last months, even years, after the initial rash fades.

Almost all older Americans harbor the varicella zoster virus that causes shingles; they acquired it with childhood chickenpox, whether they knew they had the disease or not.

The virus stays dormant until, for unknown reasons, it erupts decades later. The risk rises sharply after age 50.

Shingles is hardly a minor menace. “A million cases occur in the United States each and every year,” Dr. Schaffner said. “If you’re fortunate enough to reach your 80th birthday, you stand a one-in-three to one-in-two chance of shingles.

Preventing the great majority of these cases — along with the risk of lingering and debilitating nerve pain, called postherpetic neuralgia — would represent a major advance in public health.

So while the old vaccine will remain on the market, the C.D.C. committee voted to make Shingrix the preferred vaccine and recommended it for all adults over age 50 — a group younger by a decade than those earlier encouraged to get Zostavax.

The committee also recommended Shingrix for adults who’ve previously gotten Zostavax, since a smaller study in people over age 65 demonstrated effectiveness and safety in those already vaccinated. The Food and Drug Administration approved Shingrix last month.

Once the C.D.C.’s director endorses the committee’s recommendations, and the agency publishes them, insurers — including Medicare and Medicaid — will start covering the vaccine.

“By early 2018, it should be broadly available to consumers in the U.S.,” said Dr. Thomas Breuer, chief medical officer of GSK Vaccines. (Canada has also approved Shingrix; it awaits approval in Australia, Japan and Europe.)

What makes the new vaccine so promising, especially for older adults?

* It provides better protection against shingles from the start. Though Zostavax, introduced in 2006, can reduce shingles cases by about half (and postherpetic neuralgia by two-thirds), that overall rate conceals big differences by age.

That vaccine’s effectiveness drops from 64 percent for people in their 60s to 38 percent among those over age 70, and falls still lower for people in their 80s.

But the new vaccine protects nearly as well in older groups as in the middle-aged. Shingrix racked up a 97 percent effectiveness rate in adults over age 50 and, in a separate study of people over age 70, prevented 90 percent of shingles in those 70 to well past age 80.

“In groups such as the elderly, who often don’t maintain vigorous responses to vaccines, this represents extremely strong disease protection,” said Dr. Kathleen Dooling, an epidemiologist at the C.D.C.

* Shingrix’s protection appears to last longer. Among seniors, the effectiveness of Zostavax wanes with disappointing speed. “After 11 years, the protection was close to zero,” Dr. Harpaz said.

Regulators don’t yet have 11 years of data on Shingrix, but in some samples, it remained effective for six years or longer, according to GSK. That should great reduce the incidence of postherpetic neuralgia, too, assuming the 42 million people in their 50s start getting vaccinated.

* The new vaccine may protect people with compromised immune systems.

A substantial number of older Americans have suppressed immunity because they’re undergoing chemotherapy or transplants, have H.I.V. or take steroids. For them, the previous vaccine was off-limits because it was made with a weakened live virus.

Yet immune suppression itself leaves the people vulnerable to shingles. Shingrix, a recombinant vaccine made from a glycoprotein and a combination of immunity boosters called adjuvants, doesn’t pose the same danger.

The C.D.C. committee held off on recommending Shingrix for the immunocompromised, because GSK is still running trials with these patients. But since the F.D.A. did not declare Shingrix contraindicated for them when approving it, they can get the vaccine once it’s available.

Public health advocates do foresee a couple of potential problems.

First, Shingrix requires two doses, administered at least two months apart. Prodding the older population to get a single shot has proved tough: barely 31 percent of those over age 60 have been vaccinated against shingles. How much harder will it be to persuade people to get two Shingrix injections?

Further, “it tends to be a bit of an ouch-y vaccine,” Dr. Schaffner cautioned.

In studies, most older recipients said they’d experienced pain, redness or swelling in their upper arms for a day or two after the shot, and 8.5 percent of those over age 70 deemed those symptoms uncomfortable enough to interfere with normal activities.

About half of those over age 70 reported more systemic side effects like fatigue, fever or aching joints, lasting one to two days. Physicians and pharmacists should prepare people for such reactions, Dr. Schaffner said.

“If people anticipate it, they’ll cope with it better. They’ll take a couple of Tylenol” — and not worry that something is seriously wrong.

They may feel pocketbook pain, too. Zostavax is the most expensive adult vaccine, and at $140 for each dose (plus the cost of administering the injection), Shingrix will be pricier still.

The 50- to 65-year-old cohort, many of whom have coverage under employee health plans, may not find that much of a barrier. At older ages, cost matters more.

Medicare will cover Shingrix under Part D (like its predecessor), not under Part B like the flu vaccine. That complicates reimbursement for those seeking vaccination in doctors’ offices, so Medicare patients will probably find it simpler to head for a pharmacy.

But not all Medicare recipients have Part D, and those that do could face co-payments.

Still, it’s no contest: The hazards of shingles and its complications dwarf any problems yet reported with Shingrix.

“Compared to shingles, a little arm pain for a day or so is a small price to pay,” Dr. Schaffner said. “If you know people who’ve had this illness, you’ll be first in line for this vaccine.”

Follow @NYTHealth on Twitter. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/h...e=sectionfront

[Kätzchen]

Funny that you post about this today! My BFF who has suffered an litany of shingles attacks? Her doctor gave her a shot for thus last week. We hope it helps to build up immunity to further attacks of the shingles!

Originally Posted by *Anya*

No Excuses, People: Get the New Shingles Vaccine

By Paula Span NOV. 10, 2017

Medical researchers and government health policymakers, a cautious lot, normally take pains to keep expectations modest when they’re discussing some new finding or treatment.

They warn about studies’ limitations. They point out what isn’t known. They emphasize that correlation doesn’t mean causation.

So it’s startling to hear prominent experts sound positively excited about a new shingles vaccine that an advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved last month.

“This really is a sea change,” said Dr. Rafael Harpaz, a veteran shingles researcher at the C.D.C.

Dr. William Schaffner, preventive disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said, “This vaccine has spectacular initial protection rates in every age group. The immune system of a 70- or 80-year-old responds as if the person were only 25 or 30.”

“This really looks to be a breakthrough in vaccinating older adults,” agreed Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, a physician and researcher at the National Institutes of Health.

What’s causing the enthusiasm: Shingrix, which the pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline intends to begin shipping this month. Large international trials have shown that the vaccine prevents more than 90 percent of shingles cases, even at older ages.

The currently available shingles vaccine, called Zostavax, only prevents about half of shingles cases in those over age 60 and has demonstrated far less effectiveness among elderly patients.

Yet those are the people most at risk for this blistering disease, with its often intense pain, its threat to vision and the associated nerve pain that sometimes last months, even years, after the initial rash fades.

Almost all older Americans harbor the varicella zoster virus that causes shingles; they acquired it with childhood chickenpox, whether they knew they had the disease or not.

The virus stays dormant until, for unknown reasons, it erupts decades later. The risk rises sharply after age 50.

Shingles is hardly a minor menace. “A million cases occur in the United States each and every year,” Dr. Schaffner said. “If you’re fortunate enough to reach your 80th birthday, you stand a one-in-three to one-in-two chance of shingles.

Preventing the great majority of these cases — along with the risk of lingering and debilitating nerve pain, called postherpetic neuralgia — would represent a major advance in public health.

So while the old vaccine will remain on the market, the C.D.C. committee voted to make Shingrix the preferred vaccine and recommended it for all adults over age 50 — a group younger by a decade than those earlier encouraged to get Zostavax.

The committee also recommended Shingrix for adults who’ve previously gotten Zostavax, since a smaller study in people over age 65 demonstrated effectiveness and safety in those already vaccinated. The Food and Drug Administration approved Shingrix last month.

Once the C.D.C.’s director endorses the committee’s recommendations, and the agency publishes them, insurers — including Medicare and Medicaid — will start covering the vaccine.

“By early 2018, it should be broadly available to consumers in the U.S.,” said Dr. Thomas Breuer, chief medical officer of GSK Vaccines. (Canada has also approved Shingrix; it awaits approval in Australia, Japan and Europe.)

What makes the new vaccine so promising, especially for older adults?

* It provides better protection against shingles from the start. Though Zostavax, introduced in 2006, can reduce shingles cases by about half (and postherpetic neuralgia by two-thirds), that overall rate conceals big differences by age.

That vaccine’s effectiveness drops from 64 percent for people in their 60s to 38 percent among those over age 70, and falls still lower for people in their 80s.

But the new vaccine protects nearly as well in older groups as in the middle-aged. Shingrix racked up a 97 percent effectiveness rate in adults over age 50 and, in a separate study of people over age 70, prevented 90 percent of shingles in those 70 to well past age 80.

“In groups such as the elderly, who often don’t maintain vigorous responses to vaccines, this represents extremely strong disease protection,” said Dr. Kathleen Dooling, an epidemiologist at the C.D.C.

* Shingrix’s protection appears to last longer. Among seniors, the effectiveness of Zostavax wanes with disappointing speed. “After 11 years, the protection was close to zero,” Dr. Harpaz said.

Regulators don’t yet have 11 years of data on Shingrix, but in some samples, it remained effective for six years or longer, according to GSK. That should great reduce the incidence of postherpetic neuralgia, too, assuming the 42 million people in their 50s start getting vaccinated.

* The new vaccine may protect people with compromised immune systems.

A substantial number of older Americans have suppressed immunity because they’re undergoing chemotherapy or transplants, have H.I.V. or take steroids. For them, the previous vaccine was off-limits because it was made with a weakened live virus.

Yet immune suppression itself leaves the people vulnerable to shingles. Shingrix, a recombinant vaccine made from a glycoprotein and a combination of immunity boosters called adjuvants, doesn’t pose the same danger.

The C.D.C. committee held off on recommending Shingrix for the immunocompromised, because GSK is still running trials with these patients. But since the F.D.A. did not declare Shingrix contraindicated for them when approving it, they can get the vaccine once it’s available.

Public health advocates do foresee a couple of potential problems.

First, Shingrix requires two doses, administered at least two months apart. Prodding the older population to get a single shot has proved tough: barely 31 percent of those over age 60 have been vaccinated against shingles. How much harder will it be to persuade people to get two Shingrix injections?

Further, “it tends to be a bit of an ouch-y vaccine,” Dr. Schaffner cautioned.

In studies, most older recipients said they’d experienced pain, redness or swelling in their upper arms for a day or two after the shot, and 8.5 percent of those over age 70 deemed those symptoms uncomfortable enough to interfere with normal activities.

About half of those over age 70 reported more systemic side effects like fatigue, fever or aching joints, lasting one to two days. Physicians and pharmacists should prepare people for such reactions, Dr. Schaffner said.

“If people anticipate it, they’ll cope with it better. They’ll take a couple of Tylenol” — and not worry that something is seriously wrong.

They may feel pocketbook pain, too. Zostavax is the most expensive adult vaccine, and at $140 for each dose (plus the cost of administering the injection), Shingrix will be pricier still.

The 50- to 65-year-old cohort, many of whom have coverage under employee health plans, may not find that much of a barrier. At older ages, cost matters more.

Medicare will cover Shingrix under Part D (like its predecessor), not under Part B like the flu vaccine. That complicates reimbursement for those seeking vaccination in doctors’ offices, so Medicare patients will probably find it simpler to head for a pharmacy.

But not all Medicare recipients have Part D, and those that do could face co-payments.

Still, it’s no contest: The hazards of shingles and its complications dwarf any problems yet reported with Shingrix.

“Compared to shingles, a little arm pain for a day or so is a small price to pay,” Dr. Schaffner said. “If you know people who’ve had this illness, you’ll be first in line for this vaccine.”

Follow @NYTHealth on Twitter. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/h...e=sectionfront

[Kätzchen]

***** BUMPING Anya's article about Aaron Hernandez and Traumatic Brain Injury within the NFL ******

Thanks for the great article Anya!

Originally Posted by *Anya*

Aaron Hernandez suffered from most severe CTE ever found in a person his age

By Adam Kilgore November 9, 2017 at 3:50 PM

BOSTON — Aaron Hernandez suffered the most severe case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy ever discovered in a person his age, damage that would have significantly affected his decision-making, judgment and cognition, researchers at Boston University revealed at a medical conference Thursday.

Ann McKee, the head of BU’s CTE Center, which has studied the disease caused by repetitive brain trauma for more than a decade, called Hernandez’s brain “one of the most significant contributions to our work” because of the brain’s pristine condition and the rare opportunity to study the disease in a 27-year-old.

Hernandez, a former New England Patriots tight end, hanged himself with a bedsheet in April in a Massachusetts prison while serving a life sentence for the murder of his friend Odin Lloyd in 2013.

In a diagnosis that linked one of football’s most notorious figures with the sport’s most significant health risk, doctors found Hernandez had Stage 3 CTE, which researchers had never seen in a brain younger than 46 years old, McKee said. Because the center has received few brains from people Hernandez’s age, McKee could not say whether Hernandez’s brain was representative of a 27-year-old who had played football as much as Hernandez. But she found the advanced stage of CTE alarming.

“In this age group, he’s clearly at the severe end of the spectrum,” McKee said. “There is a concern that we’re seeing accelerated disease in young athletes. Whether or not that’s because they’re playing more aggressively or if they’re starting at younger ages, we don’t know. But we are seeing ravages of this disease, in this specific example, of a young person.”

At Thursday’s conference, McKee flipped through slides comparing sections of Hernandez’s brain to a sample without CTE. Hernandez’s brain had dark spots associated with tau protein and shrunken, withered areas, compared to immaculate white of the sample. His brain had significant damage to the frontal lobe, which impacts a person’s ability to make decisions and moderate behavior. As some new slides appeared on the projectors, some physicians and conference attendees gasped.

“We can’t take the pathology and explain the behavior,” McKee said. “But we can say collectively, in our collective experience, that individuals with CTE, and CTE of this severity, have difficulty with impulse control, decision-making, inhibition of impulses for aggression, emotional volatility, rage behaviors. We know that collectively.”

McKee said Hernandez had a genetic marker that makes people vulnerable to certain brain diseases and could have contributed to how aggressively he developed CTE.

“We know that that’s a risk factor for neurogenerative disease,” McKee said. “Whether or not that contributed in this case is speculative. It may explain some of his susceptibility to this disease.”

The condition of Hernandez’s brain, pristine because of his age and the adept handling of medical examiners, could lead to future breakthroughs and better understanding of CTE. For example, researchers could better study the interaction of inflammation and tau pathology through the use of fluorescent stains. It gave researchers their best view yet of a marker associated with CTE.

“We are able to understand this disease at the scientific level in a way that’s very rarely presented,” McKee said. “We’re very grateful to the family for making this donation. We’re hoping this will advance medical science in a very significant way. . . . This will really accelerate and advance our research going forward.”

Medical examiners delivered Hernandez’s brain, weighing 1,573 grams, to BU’s labs in April. From the outside, it looked like a typical brain — no lesions, no bruises, no abnormalities. When researches sliced the brain into sections, they discovered startling damage.

Ventricles were dilated, in response to the brain shrinking. Researchers determined Hernandez had lost brain tissue. Membranes that were supposed to be firm had grown “thin and gelatinous,” McKee said. There were abnormal, large holes in parts of Hernandez’s bran.

The hippocampus, which plays a key role in memory, had shrunk.

The fornix, which also contributes to memory function, had atrophied.

The frontal lobe, which is responsible for problem-solving, judgment, impulse control and social behavior, had been pockmarked with tau protein.

The amygdala, which produces emotional regulation, emotional behavior, fear and anxiety, had been severly affected.

The temporal lobes, which process sights and sounds, showed significant damage.

Together, they were “very unusual findings in an individual of this age,” McKee said. “We’ve never seen this in our 468 brains, except in individuals some 20 years older.”

The physical damage inside Hernandez’s brain provides another layer to the catastrophic and tragic downfall of Hernandez, a gifted player who caught a touchdown pass from Tom Brady in the 2012 Super Bowl.

Hernandez grew up a football star in Connecticut and fell in with a rough crowd at age 15, after his father died unexpectedly during a routine operation. He starred at Florida even as off-field trouble, in the form of drugs and violence, dogged him. The problems caused some teams to remove him from consideration in the NFL draft, and he lasted until the Patriots plucked him in the fourth round.

Hernandez formed a dominating tandem with fellow 2010 draftee Rob Gronkowski and convinced the Patriots he had straightened out his life. The Patriots signed him to a seven-year, $40-million contract after the 2012 season. Months later, in the summer of 2013, Lloyd was murdered in the summer of 2013, his body found in a gravelly field a mile away from Hernandez’s mansion in North Attleboro.

Hernandez’s estate filed a federal lawsuit against the Patriots in September, alleging the Patriots knew hits to the head could lead to brain damage and failed to protect him.

A jury convicted Hernandez of the killing in 2015. Hernandez hanged himself in his cell just four days after a jury had acquitted him of the murders of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado, two strangers whom the state argued Hernandez killed in 2012 after an altercation at a Boston club.

BU researchers say they have discovered CTE in more than 100 former NFL players, a handful of whom have committed suicide. The extent of damage in Hernandez’s brain represents another signpost in football’s ongoing concussion crisis. Thursday’s news conference coincided with the release of an NFL study consisting of video reviews of the 459 known concussions that occurred over the 2015 and 2016 seasons, from preseason games through the playoffs

The NFL has attempted to make the sport safer for its players, through rule changes, policies designed to remove concussed players and technologic advances. But brain trauma occurs when a football player’s brain accelerates or decelerates after it hits another player or the turf, bashing the sides of the head, an action a helmet is defenseless against.

“It happens inside the skull,” McKee said. “It’s an intrinsic component of football.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...=.d7191a3753d1






Normal 27-year-old's brain and Aaron Hernandez's brain. (Boston University School of Medicine/Boston University School of Medicine)

[*Anya*]

Bisexual people at higher risk of developingf mental health issues

They face pressures that others from straight and queer communities don’t

OLIVIA PETTER Thursday 7 September 2017 09:10 BST

Bisexual people experience more discrimination that other members in LGBTQ communities don’t, a new study has revealed.

Researchers from American University analysed data from 503 participants aged 18 to 64 who identified as being attracted to more than one gender.

They were asked questions that reflected how their bisexuality had affected their lives.

What it's like for women to date bisexual men
Whilst previous studies have shown that bisexual people are more at risk of experiencing anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts, this new study published in Prevention Science, found that these risks are exacerbated because bisexual people feel as if they don’t belong in any one community.

“Bisexual people face double discrimination in multiple settings — bisexual people are often invisible, rejected, invalidated, [and] stigmatised in the heterosexual community as well as the traditional LGBTQ communities,” explained lead study author Ethan Mereish.

“Given that isolation and discrimination, bi people might be experiencing increase factors that might make them more lonely or isolated,” the professor told NBC News.

Company pedalled spyware to ‘find out if your son is gay’
The social isolation that many bisexual people face often limits their access to support and resources, the study found. Whilst there is a plethora of support available for the wider LGBTQ community, the study revealed that resources for bisexual people specifically are often lacking and this has a negative effect on their mental wellbeing, fostering feelings of bisexual invisibility and erasure.

In worst-case scenarios, this overriding sense of discrimination and ostracism can lead to poor mental health and suicidal thoughts.

In terms of addressing the problem, Mereish and his team believe that more should be done to distinguish bisexual people from other LGBTQ members, giving them a singular identity that can subsequently allow their mental health to be understood exclusively.

"This research highlights the unique stress experiences of bisexual individuals, with implications for addressing bisexual-specific stress in clinical settings as well as designing preventive interventions that increase access to bisexual-specific support and resources," the study concludes.

"Bisexual-specific experiences must be considered independently from the experiences of other sexual minority subgroups to address sexual orientation disparities in mental health."


http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...-a7933806.html

Study:

http://go.redirectingat.com/?id=4468...osexual-issue-

[Kobi]

Originally Posted by *Anya*

The NFL has attempted to make the sport safer for its players, through rule changes, policies designed to remove concussed players and technologic advances. But brain trauma occurs when a football player’s brain accelerates or decelerates after it hits another player or the turf, bashing the sides of the head, an action a helmet is defenseless against.

“It happens inside the skull,” McKee said. “It’s an intrinsic component of football.”

I snipped this cuz it is the most important part of understanding brain injuries regardless of how they occur.

There is no helmet made that protects your brain inside your skull. And knowing what happens to your brain inside your skull is both disgusting and fascinating.

If you have a weak stomach, dont read this.

If you are curious, read on.

People tend to think of the inside of your skull as a smooth bone structure. It is not. The bottom of your skull, on which the brain rests, is a bumpy and grooved surface. The brain is soft tissue and floats over and within this bone structure.

With trauma, either a singular event or repetitive events, the brain sloshes around inside the skull. Multiple types of damages can occur to the structure of the brain itself which in turn affects the cognitive areas which that part of the brain controls. Repetitive blows cause more and more injury to both the tissue itself and the areas of functioning it controls.

When you have trauma to the head what is happening is the bottom of the brain is sloshing over the bumpy surface of the bottom of the skull causing shearing of the tissue. Simultaneously, you have direct impact damage i.e. if your hit the front of your head the brain will slosh forward and bang against the front of the skull, and you have a contra coup injury to the back of the brain when it sloshes backwards.

Same dynamic with a side impact. If you hit the left side of your head, the brain will slosh left, hit your skull and then slosh right until it hits your skull.

The brain will continue sloshing and hitting the hard and rough surfaces back and forth until it regains its equilibrium.

That is a lot of potential for damage and that is just with one event.

Helmets may protect you from fracturing your skull but they will not stop your brain from sloshing around inside your skull.

And this phenomenon is not unique to sports. You can have the same dynamic if you fall off your bike or motorcycle and hit your head, or if you are punched in the face, or if you fall and hit your head.

Neuro-cogitive testing can diagnose closed brain injuries. Often people know themselves something isnt right or those who know them know they are not acting like themselves.

Ok I'm done.

[~ocean]

ty Kobi , now it makes sense that so many people have lost their minds .

[*Anya*]

Having older brothers increases men's likelihood of being gay

By Jen Christensen, CNN Updated 6:42 AM ET, Tue December 12, 2017

Story highlights:

Scientists say mothers who have more than one boy had higher concentrations of a certain protein
Earlier studies have noticed that gay men often have older brothers

(CNN) If you're a guy with an older brother, there's an increased chance you're gay.

Scientists have noticed this pattern in previous research, but now they think they have a biological explanation as to why, and it starts long before birth. The results were published in the journal PNAS on Monday.

The researchers say that if their findings can be replicated, we may know at least one of the biological reasons some men are gay.

Many factors may determine someone's sexual orientation, but in this case, researchers noticed a pattern that may be linked to something that happens in the womb. The phenomenon is related to a protein linked to the Y chromosome (which women do not have) that is important to male brain development.

Researchers think it's possible that when a woman gets pregnant with her first boy, this Y-linked protein gets into her bloodstream. The mother's body recognizes the protein as a foreign substance, and her immune system responds, creating antibodies. If enough of these antibodies build up in the woman's body and she gets pregnant with another a boy, they can cross the placental barrier and enter the brain of the second male fetus.

"That may alter the functions in the brain, changing the direction of how the male fetus may later develop their sense of attraction," said study author Anthony Bogaert, a Canadian psychologist and professor in the departments of psychology and community health sciences at Brock University.

Earlier research has shown that the more older brothers a boy has, the more of a chance that boy will be attracted to men. A 2006 study showed that with each brother, the chance that a man will be gay goes up by about a third, but the researchers didn't determine why that was.

Bogaert and his co-authors tested a small group of 142 women and 12 men ages 18 to 80 and found a higher concentration of antibodies to the protein, known as NLGN4Y, in blood samples from women than from men. They found the highest concentration of antibodies to the protein in women with gay younger sons who had older brothers, compared with women who had no sons or who had given birth to only heterosexual boys.

The study builds on research Bogaert and his co-authors have been exploring for more than 20 years. Since their initial research that noted the trend, other research -- although not all studies -- have detected the phenomenon, even across cultures.

One found that a man's chances of being gay increased even if he was raised apart from his older brother.

Researchers did not see a similar pattern in families with adopted brothers, so scientists started to think there must be a maternal developmental explanation.

The research does not give a biological explanation for why some men may be bisexual or may not be attracted to anyone at all, nor can it give a biological explanation for gay only children, gay oldest sons or women who are attracted to women.

J. Michael Bailey, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University, thinks the latest research is important. "It is significant, and I believe science granting agencies should put a high priority into additional research to see if this is true," he said.

Bailey was not involved in the new study but has worked on studies that have found genetic factors that may explain some differences in sexual orientations.

Bailey's latest paper, published this month in the journal Nature Research, looked at people's genomes and found several regions with single-letter DNA changes that were more common among gay men than straight men and may be relevant to the development of sexual orientation. Bailey believes this new study may be even more significant than general genetic findings if the findings can be replicated:

"Our studies only show that there may be genes that matter in sexual orientation," he said. "It is not like this study, that shows there is a potential specific mechanism by which sexual orientation may have changed prenatally. This is important work and fascinating if it proves to be true."

Clarification: A previous version of this story referred to higher concentrations of the protein instead of higher concentrations of antibodies to the proteins when describing the findings of the study.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/11/health...udy/index.html

[*Anya*]

UTMB develops promising anti-obesity drug that shrinks fat without suppressing appetite

January 4, 2018

GALVESTON, Texas – Given the ever-increasing obesity epidemic, researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have discovered a promising developing drug that has been shown to selectively shrink excess fat by increasing fat cell metabolism. The drug significantly reduces body weight and blood cholesterol levels without lowering food intake in obese mice, according to a recent study published in Biochemical Pharmacology.

Obesity is a major public health problem around that world that is a leading cause of healthcare costs and compromised quality of life. In the U.S., 40 percent of adults are obese and 30 percent are overweight, battling serious obesity-related chronic diseases. The estimated cost of obesity in the U.S. is about $150 billion each year.

“As fat cells grow larger, they begin to overexpress a protein that acts as a metabolic brake that slows down fat cell metabolism, making it harder for these cells to burn accumulating fat,” said senior author Stanley Watowich, UTMB associate professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology. “In addition, as the fat tissue expands, they secrete greater amounts of hormones and pro-inflammatory signals that are responsible for several chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.”

The researchers discovered a molecule that blocks this metabolic brake from operating in obese white fat cells. By blocking this metabolic brake, they were able to increase the metabolism within white fat cells.

In the study, mice were fed a high-fat diet until they became obese and then received either the drug or a placebo. Following 10 days of drug treatment, researchers found that the obese mice receiving the actual drug lost more than seven percent of their total body weight and their white fat tissue mass and cell size decreased by 30 percent compared with the placebo group. In addition, blood cholesterol in drug-treated mice were lowered to normal levels, similar to those of non-obese mice.

On the contrary, placebo-treated mice continued to accumulate white fat and gain weight throughout the study. Interestingly, mice in both the drug-treated and placebo groups consumed the same amount of food during the course of the study period, showing that the fat loss was not due to appetite suppression.

“Blocking the action of the fat cell brake provides an innovative ‘fat’-specific mechanism to increase cell metabolism and reduce the size of white fat deposits, thereby treating a root cause of obesity and related metabolic diseases,” said senior author Harshini Neelakantan, a UTMB research scientist in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology. “These initial results are encouraging and support further development of this technology as a new and more effective approach to combating metabolic diseases.”

Other study authors include UTMB’s Virginia Vance, Michael Wetzel, Celeste Finnerty and Jonathan Hommel as well as Hua-Yu Leo Wang and Stanton McHardy from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

https://www.utmb.edu/newsroom/article11716.aspx

[Esme nha Maire]

I've just watched a fascinating Royal Institute lecture by a Canadian scientist on the role that the microbes that co-exist with us have on our health. From obesity to Alzhemers and Parkinsons, asthma and lactose tolerance, the effects of keeping a dog or overdoing it regarding hygiene, it's all covered, and some of it is seriously surprising. I'd particularly urge anyone thinking of having children or with very young children to watch this right through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlEFI5A3QFM

All I can say is thank goodness I tend to like Italian food - but I am going to increase how many times I brush my teeth up to three times a day now, having seen this!

[Kätzchen]

For anyone who is licensed as a medical professional, in a variety of trades (nurse, physician, social worker/scientist, microbiologist, healing arts practitioner, etc), there are two great resources which provide a wealth of scientific based articles and supplemental information: Medscape & JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association)

Both Medscape and JAMA have entire sections devoted to the latest news about COVID 19, as well as peer reviewed journal articles on a wide variety of medical interests.