Fitter kids have better brains

Children who are fitter tend to have better-developed brains than out-of-shape ones. Researchers from the University of Illinois studied 49 children aged nine to ten. They measured their fitness on a treadmill, used an MRI scanner to measure the volume of their hippocampus and tested their memory. The fitter children tended to have a bigger hippocampus - an area of the brain associated with learning and memory - about 12% larger than the unfit ones. The fitter children also did better on tests of relational memory - the ability to remember and integrate various types of information - but only if their hippocampus was bigger, suggesting that the link between fitness and a larger hippocampus was the crucial one.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Researchers give thumbs up to acamprosate

People who are trying to give up drinking sometimes take drugs to stop them relapsing. Researchers from the University of Munich have been looking into the effectiveness of one of these drugs - acamprosate. They reviewed 24 trials involving 6,915 alcoholics who were also receiving non-medical help. Acamprosate prevented relapse in one in every nine patients and increased the number of days patients spent not drinking by an average of three days a month. The risk of a patient on acamprosate returning to drinking was 86% of that of a patient who took a placebo instead. Diarrhoea was the only side effect which was frequently reported.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Brain scans show healing power of nature

Researchers from the universities of Bradford and Sheffield in the U.K. and the Institute of Medicine and Neuroscience at Julich, Germany, have been investigating the effects of tranquil, natural environments and stressful artificial ones on brain activity. They showed participants in their study pictures of waves breaking on a beach and traffic rushing down a motorway with the same background noise designed to sound similar to waves and traffic noise. The participants' brains were scanned while they watched the videos and the study found that the natural, tranquil scenes caused different brain areas to become connected with one another - indicating that these brain regions were working 'in sync.' The people who watched the traffic on the motorway, however, showed disrupted connections within their brain.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Misery in the mountains

Living at high altitude could increase people's risk of committing suicide. Researchers from the University of Utah studied suicide rates in different US states. Those with the highest average altitudes - Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and Oregon - were all in the top 10 for suicide rates. Although these states both have high levels of gun ownership and sparse populations (both risk factors for suicide) this did not explain the whole of the increased rates of suicide. A similar study in South Korea found that suicide rates increased by 125% in areas over 2,000m in altitude. Other research has shown that lack of oxygen at higher altitudes can lead to worsening mood which can last for up to 90 days - something which might be significant in people already suffering from mood disorders.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Heart disease and depression

There has long been known to be a link between heart disease and depression but new research from the University of Versailles and University College London shows what a deadly combination the two can be together. The researchers followed the health of nearly 6,000 civil servants for an average of five-and-a-half years. They found that people with heart disease had a 67% higher chance of dying than those without heart disease or depression. However, having heart disease and depression triple the risk of death from any cause and quadrupled the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Children with autism's progress over time

Children with autism have different cognitive skills and weaknesses to other children. They find it harder to assess other people's thoughts and feelings and have problems controlling their behaviour but can be better at noticing details. However, there has been little research into how these skills and weaknesses change over time. Researchers from the Institute of Education in London studied 68 children when they were aged 5-6 and again three years later. 37 of the children had autism and 31 were unaffected. The children were tested on their ability to predict other children's behaviour based on their mental state (theory of mind), their ability to plan ahead and show flexibility (executive function), and their ability to make patterns from wooden blocks and search for shapes hidden in pictures (central coherence). The study showed that the strengths and weaknesses of the autistic children did not change much over time. However, not all of the autistic children had similar patterns of weaknesses with some being weak in just theory of mind while others were weak in theory of mind and executive function. The study also found that most of the children's skills in these areas improved over time - they were better able to plan, regulate and control their thoughts and actions and had a better appreciation of other people's thoughts and actions.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease - shedding more light on the link

There has already been a lot of research linking type 2 diabetes with Alzheimer's disease but it can be difficult to assess which people with type 2 diabetes go on to develop Alzheimer's. Researchers from the University of Alberta studied 499 people aged between 55 and 81, 41 of whom had type 2 diabetes. They found that having high blood pressure, problems with walking and balance and reporting oneself as being in a poor state of health all increased the risk of people with type 2 diabetes developing Alzheimer's disease.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Supervised injections help drug users

Sometimes people who inject drugs are provided with supervised facilities where they can do this on the basis that this allows them to use clean needles and brings them into contact with health professionals who may persuade them to seek treatment for their drug use. One of the places where this happens is Vancouver, in a project called Insite. Researchers from St Paul's Hospital in British Columbia and the University of British Columbia studied the effectiveness of the Insite programme and came up with some encouraging results. Of 902 Insite clients who visited the facility between December 2003 and June 2006 95 reported quitting injecting drug use for at least six months, 78% of whom had recently taken part in addiction treatment. The Insite clients who went into treatment were more likely to have been regular users of the service and to have had contact with on-site addiction counsellors.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Starving mothers and ageing brains

During the winter of 1944 German forces restricted food deliveries to the people of the northern Netherlands and by April 1945 it was estimated that 20,000 people had died from malnutrition. Scientists have been following babies who were conceived at this time in order to assess what effects malnutrition in pregnant mothers could have on children. They studied 300 people who were conceived in the 'Hongerwinter' and gave them a series of tests to measure their cognition. In the 1970s there were no differences between the Hongerwinter babies and other adults of the same age but more recent tests showed that their perfomance in tasks designed to measure attention was worse. Attention often declines with age so it could be that the brains of those people conceived during the Hongerwinter are ageing faster than those of other people.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Life is very short when you're lonely

Researchers from the universities of Utah and North Carolina have been reviewing the research into the effects of loneliness on people's health and have found that it can be as dangerous as smoking and alcohol and probably a lot less fun. The researchers analysed data from 148 studies carried out over three decades and involving more than 300,000 people. They found that people who have no social life are 50% more likely to die early than those who are well connected and those who socialise regularly with family and friends live an average of 3.7 years longer. People with little social support have a mortality rate as high as alcoholics while the impact of making friends is comparable to the effect of giving up smoking.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Shocking therapy for major depression

Electrical stimulation of one of the main nerves going into the brain could be an alternative to antidepressants for people suffering from major depression. Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles used a stimulator about the size of a large mobile phone to send an electric charge to the trigeminal nerve via electrodes on people's foreheads. The participants in the trial used the device for around eight hours each night while they were asleep. The participants achieved an average of a 70% reduction in symptom severity over the eight weeks of the study and 80% of them achieved remission. This compares to a 30% recovery rate among people taking drugs which can also have side effects such as obesity, sexual dysfunction, fatigue, drowsiness and nausea.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Psychological bullying and postnatal depression

Psychological bullying during pregnancy could be linked to an increased risk of postnatal depression. Researchers from the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco in Brazil studied 1,045 women who were interviewed while they were pregnant and after they had their child. 28% of them said that they had experienced psychological victimization during their pregnancy and those who reported the highest frequency of psychological bullying had more than twice the risk of developing postnatal depression.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Are men more likely to have senior moments?

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a condition in which people have problems with memory or thinking beyond that explained by the normal rate of ageing. It can lead on to Alzheimer's disease and a new study suggests that it could be more common among men than women. Researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota studied 2,050 people between the ages of 70 and 89 in Olmstead County, Minnesota. They were interviewed about their memory and their medical history and the researchers tested their memory and thinking skills. 14% were found to have MCI, 10% had dementia and the rest had normal memory and thinking skills. However 19% of the men had MCI, compared to only 14% of the women. People in the study who had a low level of education or who had never married also had a higher rate of MCI.

Surviving the tsunami in Sweden

Lars Wahlstrom from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet has been looking into the mental health of Swedish people who survived the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004. His study surveyed around 1,500 people from Stockholm who had been in the disaster area. Around 70% reported that they had recovered relatively well and most were satisfied with the support that they had received, the most important source of which was family and friends. However, about 30% of those who were in the disaster area continued to experience pyschological symptoms including post-traumatic reactions, mood disturbances and sleep problems. 20% of those who were still unwell had NOT been directly exposed to the wave, severely injured or lost a loved one but had still experienced the situation as life-threatening - something that was enough to still be causing psychological problems over a year later.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Anxiety and insomnia drugs linked to increased risk of death

Taking drugs to fight anxiety or insomnia could significantly increase people's risk of death. Researchers from the Universite Laval in Quebec analysed 12 years of data on over 14,000 Canadians from the National Population Health Survey. They found that respondents who said they had used drugs to treat insomnia or anxiety at least once in the month before the survey had a mortality rate about 50% higher than those who did not use them. After allowing for alcohol and tobacco consumption, physical health, exercise and depression the researchers concluded that the drugs were associated with a 36% increase in the risk of death. The increased risk of death could be due to a number of causes including: the drugs' effect on reaction times, alertness and concentration leading to more falls and accidents; their effect on people's breathing particularly during sleep and a possible increased risk of suicide after taking the drugs.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Why your liver could affect your Alzheimer's risk

Low levels of a substance called docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in people's brains have been associated with Alzheimer's disease but new research from the University of California Irvine suggests that the problem might lie in people's livers not their skulls. Previous studies have shown that most DHA in the brain is actually made in the liver and the university's post-mortem research suggests that the Alzheimer's patients' livers were unable to synthesize DHA from shorter molecules found in leafy plants and other foods. DHA occurs naturally in cold-water fatty fish (like salmon) and seaweed and is essential for the proper functioning of adult human brains and the development of the nervous system and vision during the first six months of life. Alzheimer's is a complicated disease with a huge number of risk factors but monitoring DHA levels in people's blood and dietary supplements for those in the early stages of the disease could prove helpful.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Stress could be big killer in over 65s

People aged 65 and over are five times more likely to die if they are suffering from high levels of stress. Researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Medical Centre in Amsterdam studied 861 people aged 65 and over over a six-year period. They measured the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in people's urine at the start of the study and their health was monitored over the next six years. Those with the highest levels of cortisol in their bloodstream were five times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than those with the lowest levels. The results took into account the influence of socioeconomic status, obesity, high blood pressure and smoking.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Feeling stressed - help yourself to a book

In 2003 it was estimated that the equivalent of 13.4m working days were lost in the U.K. because of workplace stress. The U.K.'s National Health Service is one of the biggest employers in the world so anything that reduces the number of days lost through stress could have a huge impact. The usual way of dealing with workplace stress is by using one-to-one, face-to-face counselling but telephone counselling can be cheaper and easier for people to use and bibliotherapy (giving people self-help books) can also be effective. A team of researchers, led by Catherine Kilfedder from the Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Service in Edinburgh compared these three approaches in a 4-month study of 90 NHS employees. Their study concluded that overall the three methods were equally effective. As bibliotherapy is significantly cheaper than the other two options it was suggested that this was used first with people only moving on to telephone or face-to-face counselling if this proved unsuccessful.

Kilfedder, Catherine ... [et al] - A randomized trial of face-to-face counselling versus telephone counselling versus bibliotherapy for occupational stress Psychology and Psychotherapy: theory, research and practice September 2010, 83(3), 223-242

Extra help boosts schizophrenia victims

Receiving non-medical help as well as antipsychotic drugs could substantially improve outcomes for people suffering from the early stages of schizophrenia. Researchers from the Central South University in Hunan, China studied 1,268 people with early-stage schizophrenia treated between January 2005 and October 2007. 633 of them had extra, non-medical help (psychosocial intervention) while the rest just took drugs. The extra help included instruction for families and caregivers about mental illness, family therapies designed to teach coping and socializing skills, skills training and cognitive therapy. The rates of treatment discontinuation or change were lower in the group getting the extra help (32.8% vs 22.5%). The participants getting extra help also showed greater improvements in insight, social functioning, activities of daily living and quality of life and a higher proportion of them were employed or in education.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

Levels and causes of postnatal depression

Researchers from the Medical Research Council in the U.K. have been looking into the levels of postnatal depression experienced by mothers and fathers and what might make some people more vulnerable to suffering from it. They looked at data from 86,957 families seen in primary-care clinics between 1993 and 2007. They found that more than a third of mothers and about a fifth of fathers had an episode of depression between their child's birth and their 12th birthday. In any one year 7.53% of mothers and 2.69% of fathers suffered from depression but there was a greater risk - 13.93% in mothers and 3.56% in fathers - in a child's first year. Depression was most likely to occur in parents with a history of depression, those who were aged 15 to 24 when their child was born and those who were more socially deprived.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.