Health Care Blog

The enzyme, MGAT2, determines whether dietary fat is used to generate energy or stored under the skin around the waist. The discovery of its role could be the key to preventing obesity, diabetes and heart disease Scientists found that mice missing the gene for MGAT2 were able to feast on a high fat diet without becoming flabby or overweight. Mice lacking MGAT2 were also protected against glucose intolerance - a precursor to diabetes - high cholesterol and a build up of fat in liver cells. Enzymes are biological catalysts that are essential for numerous biological functions MGAT2 is one of three MGAT enzymes found in the intestines of both mice and humans. Cutting MGAT activity with drugs could be another way to combat obesity, the scientists believe. Dr Robert Farese, from the University of California at San Francisco, and colleagues, reduced MGAT activity in mice by more than half by knocking out MGAT2. On a low fat diet, the mice developed in just the same way as normal animals. But ...

Writing in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, a group of researchers found that nutrient deprivation of neurons produced sex-dependent effects. Male neurons more readily withered up and died, while female neurons did their best to conserve energy and stay alive. That's right, nature has declared female brains should survive with a lot less than males. Take that, glass ceiling! The idea that the sexes respond differently to nutrient depravation is not new and revolves around the male preferences to conserve protein and female preferences to conserve fat. However, these metabolic differences have really only been examined in nutrient-rich tissues like muscles, fat deposits, and the liver. Robert Clark and colleagues at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center examined whether this sex-dependent response in starvation could manifest in brain cells. They grew neurons taken separately from male and female rats or mice in lab dishes and subje...

The alarm that tells if you Are Going To Have Heart Attack A device implanted in the chest that can warn when someone is about to have a heart attack, is being trialled in the U.S.The matchbox-sized gadget vibrates gently when it detects changes in the heart's electrical patterns that signal a heart attack is about to strike. It also sends a message to a pager carried by the patient, which beeps to make sure they are aware of the danger. The revolutionary implant, called the AngelMed Guardian, could alert patients several hours, or even days, before they fall ill, giving them time to seek emergency help and saving lives in the process. It is undergoing trials in America, but has already been approved for use in some parts of the world, such as Brazil. It's hoped the device will reduce the death toll from heart disease. Every year, around 270,000 people in Britain suffer a heart attack, and coronary disease remains Britain's biggest killer. About a third of sufferers die bef...

The condition, called varicocele, is a network of tangled blood vessels in the scrotum which prevents the normal circulation of blood through the veins in the testicles. A minimally invasive radiological procedure called embolization can, in most cases, correct the problem. “Using the embolization of varicoceles, we were able to improve factors related to infertility, especially sperm count and sperm motility,” said lead researcher Dr. Sebastian Flacke, an associate professor of radiology at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston. In embolization, a small catheter is inserted into the groin and, using X-ray guidance, is placed in the varicocele. Once the catheter is placed, a tiny platinum coil and a few milliliters of an agent to ensure the closure of the gonadic vein are also inserted. The minimally invasive procedure has a short recovery time; most patients go home the next day. Varicoceles are very common, Flacke noted. In fact, about 20 percent of all men have them. Not al...

Long-time mobile phone users who talk more than an hour a day on the devices may be may be more likely to have high-frequency hearing loss, researchers say. “Our intention is not to scare the public,” says Naresh K. Panda, MS, DNB, chairman of the department of ear, nose, and throat at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India, and researcher for the study. The study, he tells WebMD, is preliminary and small. “We need to study a larger number of patients.” His team found that people who had talked on cell phones for more than four years and those who talked more than an hour daily were more likely to have these high-frequency losses. These losses can make it difficult to hear consonants such as s, f, t and z, making it hard to understand words. But another hearing expert familiar with the study says there is as yet no cause for alarm. Panda and his colleagues evaluated 100 people, aged 18 to 45, who had used mobile phones for at least a year, d...

In the journal Cell, researchers report that when a worm gene called elt-3 becomes less active, lots of other genes do the same, and worms age. So what, you ask? The scientists want to find out if a similar process happens in other animals, including humans. If so, keeping key genes active may keep aging at bay. Stanford University’s Yelena Budovskaya and colleagues basically showed that aging is written into worms’ genetic script — at least, in a lab where worms lived out their days without becoming some other animal’s supper. The elt-3 gene was one of the worms’ important aging genes. When the elt-3 slowed down, aging picked up its pace. Budovskaya’s team notes that in humans and other mammals, aging has been shown to result from DNA damage, stress, and inflammation. The worm findings don’t change that, but scientists write that it will be “interesting” to see if changes in gene activity are also part of the aging process. If so, that could lead to a search for ways to edit the gen...

Kidney stones, crystals that develop in the kidneys or the tubes that carry urine from the kidney to the bladder, affect 10 percent of the U.S. population, and men run a four times greater risk than women of developing them. The chance of forming kidney stones rises steeply after the age of 40. Oxalate, a key chemical in the formation of kidney stones, comes in high concentrations in iced tea. “For many people, iced tea is potentially one of the worst things they can drink,” John Milner, an instructor in the department of urology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, said in a news release. “For people who have a tendency to form kidney stones, it’s definitely one of the worst things you can drink.” The failure to stay hydrated is a common cause of kidney stones. Summertime heat and humidity, which causes excessively sweating and dehydration, combined with an marked increase in iced tea consumption in the United States, raises the risk of kidney stones during this t...