Appetite-related chemical also affects drug-seeking: Hungry rats more resistant to drug relapse in absence of chemical signal

Appetite-Related Chemical Also Affects Drug-Seeking: Hungry Rats More Resistant to Drug Relapse in Absence of Chemical Signal


ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2011) — A behavioral study of food-deprived rats shows that the animals were less likely to return to heroin-seeking habits when given a compound that blocks specific brain receptors.



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Health & Medicine

Pharmacology
HIV and AIDS

Mind & Brain

Addiction
Illegal Drugs

Plants & Animals

Behavioral Science
Bacteria

Reference

Narcotic
Detox
Drug addiction
Sleep deprivation

These results, which have implications for drug treatments, were presented at Neuroscience 2010, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, held in San Diego.
More than 2.4 million Americans are in some sort of rehabilitation program for drug use. Yet 40 to 60 percent of drug addicts relapse when trying to get sober, often because of stressful situations. Scientists use animal models of drug use to further understand addict-like behavior and relapse, training rats to press a lever to self-administer heroin or other illicit drugs. Previous studies employed food deprivation as the stress "trigger" for potential relapse in drug-deprived animals. These studies showed that rats exposed to a short period of intense hunger quickly seek out drugs, mimicking the behavior of a relapsed addict.
The new results suggest that a molecule known as NPY, which is released into the body in times of food restriction, also acts as a trigger for drug-seeking. In this study, Concordia University researchers found that rats given a chemical that blocks the NPY brain receptors don't search for heroin. Moreover, the authors observed no side effects from the drugs in the rats, such as weight loss or behavioral changes.
"Our findings suggest a novel approach to the treatment of drug addiction, at least for addicts who also have eating disorders," said Uri Shalev, PhD, the study's lead author.
Research was supported by the Natural Science and Engineering Council of Canada, funds from the Canada Research Chair to the United States, and the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec.

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Eating more fruit and vegetables is linked to a lower risk of dying from ischemic heart disease

Eating More Fruit and Vegetables Is Linked to a Lower Risk of Dying from Ischemic Heart Disease


ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2011) — A European study investigating the links between diet and disease has found that people who consume more fruit and vegetables have a lower risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease -- the most common form of heart disease and one of the leading causes of death in Europe. However, the authors point out that a higher fruit and vegetable intake occurs among people with other healthy eating habits and lifestyles, and that these factors could also be associated with the lower risk of dying from IHD.



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Health & Medicine

Vegetarian
Heart Disease
Cholesterol

Plants & Animals

Food
Botany
Trees

Reference

Ischaemic heart disease
Coronary heart disease
Mediterranean diet
Food groups

The study is published online on January 19 in the European Heart Journal.
Data analysed from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) Heart study has shown that people who ate at least eight portions of fruit and vegetables a day had a 22% lower risk of dying from IHD than did those who consumed fewer than three portions a day. A portion weighed 80 grams, equal to a small banana, a medium apple, or a small carrot.
Dr Francesca Crowe of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford, UK, and the first author of the paper by the EPIC study collaborators, said: "This study involved over 300,000 people in eight different European countries, with 1,636 deaths from IHD. It shows a 4% reduced risk of dying from IHD for each additional portion of fruit and vegetables consumed above the lowest intake of two portions. In other words, the risk of a fatal IHD for someone eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day would be 4% lower compared to someone consuming four portions a day, and so on up to eight portions or more."
Ischaemic heart disease (IHD) is characterised by reduced blood supply to the heart; people suffering from it can develop angina, chest pains and have a heart attack.
The EPIC study started in 1992 and recruited participants from a total of ten European countries* until 2000. For the analysis of IHD deaths, data from eight countries for people aged between 40 and 85 were used. Participants answered questions about their diet at the time of entry to the study and other questions about health, socio-economic status and life-style, such as smoking, drinking and exercise habits. They were followed-up for an average of nearly eight and a half years.
The researchers found that the average intake of fruit and vegetables was five portions a day; people in Greece, Italy and Spain ate more, and those in Sweden ate less.
When analysing the data, the researchers made allowances for confounding factors such as differences in lifestyles and eating habits. However, the study could be limited by errors in measuring correctly people's fruit and vegetable intake as well as other aspects of their diet. In addition, the study had a higher proportion of women, which might not be generalisable to the wider European population.
Dr Crowe said: "The main message from this analysis is that, in this study, people who consume more fruits and vegetables have lower risk of dying from IHD. However, we need to be cautious in our interpretation of the results because we are unsure whether the association between fruit and vegetable intake and risk of IHD is due to some other component of diet or lifestyle.
"If we could understand, by means of well-designed intervention studies, the biological mechanisms that could underlie the association between fruits and vegetables and IHD, this might help to determine whether or not the relation between fruit and vegetables with IHD risk is causal."
In an accompanying editorial, Professor Sir Michael Marmot, director of the University College London (UCL) International Institute for Society and Health, head of the UCL Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, and chairman of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, writes that it is difficult to reach firm conclusions about causation from results that show a 22% lower risk of dying from IHD (an odds ration of 0.78) in people who eat eight portions of fruit and vegetables a day.
He continues: "Such an odds ratio is, however, of huge practical importance. Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death. A reduction of 22% is huge. But... this reduction in mortality comes with consumption of eight portions a day, or 640g. Such a high consumption was found in only 18% of the men and women in these eight cohorts. There would need to be big shift in dietary patterns to achieve this healthy consumption of eight portions a day. It is worth trying to move in that direction. Reductions in cancers of several sites, in blood pressure and stroke, would add to this reduction in fatal CHD. Moving to a diet that emphasises fruit and vegetables is of great importance to public health."
*The ten countries include: Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. For the Heart component of the study, data from France and Norway were excluded due to the small number of IHD deaths at the end of the follow-up period.

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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by European Society of Cardiology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.




Journal Reference:

Francesca L. Crowe et al. Fruit and vegetable intake and mortality from ischaemic heart disease: results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Heart study. European Heart Journal, January 18, 2011 DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehq465

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Birth control pills do not cause weight gain, new research suggests

Birth Control Pills Do Not Cause Weight Gain, New Research Suggests


ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2011) — According to research conducted at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University, the commonly held belief that oral contraceptives cause weight gain appears to be false. The results of the study are published online and will appear in next month's edition of the journal Human Reproduction.



See Also:
Health & Medicine

Diet and Weight Loss
Fitness
Obesity

Mind & Brain

Dieting and Weight Control
Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Consumer Behavior

Reference

General fitness training
Overweight
Oral contraceptive
Liposuction

"A simple Google search will reveal that contraceptives and the possibility that they may cause weight gain is a very highly debated topic," said Alison Edelman, M.D., a physician and researcher in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at OHSU and lead author of the study.
"Issues surrounding weight are hard to study in humans, and the research thus far has been insufficient to demonstrate whether or not oral contraceptives cause weight gain or loss. But this is an extremely important question as concern about weight gain is one of the main reasons why women may avoid or discontinue birth control, which in turn places them at greater risk for an unplanned pregnancy."
To conduct their research, scientists and physicians studied a group of rhesus macaque monkeys at the OHSU Oregon National Primate Research Center for almost a year. Rhesus monkeys were used in this study because their reproductive system is nearly identical to humans. However, unlike human studies, more variables can be controlled and measured -- such as exact food intake -- to provide more meaningful data.
At the beginning of the study, half the animals were obese and half were normal weight. During the eight-month treatment period, animals received doses of oral contraceptives, adjusted to the weight of the animals so that it mimicked dosage in humans. Researchers tracked weight, food intake, activity levels, body fat and lean muscle mass. At the study's conclusion, the normal weight group remained weight stable whereas the obese group lost a significant amount of weight (8.5%) and percent of body fat (12%) due to an increase in basal metabolic rate. No changes were seen in food intake, activity or lean muscle mass for either group.
"This study suggests that worries about weight gain with pill use appear to be based more on fiction than on fact," said Judy Cameron, Ph.D., senior author of the paper and a researcher at the primate center.
"Additionally, there may be a differential affect depending on your starting weight -- heavier individuals who keep their diet stable may see a weight loss with pill use. Most likely, the reason why this belief continues to exist is that the weight gain that seems to occur with age is being attributed to these medications. We realize that research in nonhuman primates cannot entirely dismiss the connection between contraceptives and weight gain in humans, but it strongly suggests that women should not be as worried as they previously were."
The research was funded by the Society for Family Planning.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Oregon Health & Science University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.




Journal Reference:

A. Edelman, J. T. Jensen, M. Bulechowsky, J. Cameron. Combined oral contraceptives and body weight: do oral contraceptives cause weight gain? A primate model. Human Reproduction, 2010; DOI: 10.1093/humrep/deq335

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Appetite-related chemical also affects drug-seeking: Hungry rats more resistant to drug relapse in absence of chemical signal

Appetite-Related Chemical Also Affects Drug-Seeking: Hungry Rats More Resistant to Drug Relapse in Absence of Chemical Signal


ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2011) — A behavioral study of food-deprived rats shows that the animals were less likely to return to heroin-seeking habits when given a compound that blocks specific brain receptors.



See Also:
Health & Medicine

Pharmacology
HIV and AIDS

Mind & Brain

Addiction
Illegal Drugs

Plants & Animals

Behavioral Science
Bacteria

Reference

Narcotic
Detox
Drug addiction
Sleep deprivation

These results, which have implications for drug treatments, were presented at Neuroscience 2010, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, held in San Diego.
More than 2.4 million Americans are in some sort of rehabilitation program for drug use. Yet 40 to 60 percent of drug addicts relapse when trying to get sober, often because of stressful situations. Scientists use animal models of drug use to further understand addict-like behavior and relapse, training rats to press a lever to self-administer heroin or other illicit drugs. Previous studies employed food deprivation as the stress "trigger" for potential relapse in drug-deprived animals. These studies showed that rats exposed to a short period of intense hunger quickly seek out drugs, mimicking the behavior of a relapsed addict.
The new results suggest that a molecule known as NPY, which is released into the body in times of food restriction, also acts as a trigger for drug-seeking. In this study, Concordia University researchers found that rats given a chemical that blocks the NPY brain receptors don't search for heroin. Moreover, the authors observed no side effects from the drugs in the rats, such as weight loss or behavioral changes.
"Our findings suggest a novel approach to the treatment of drug addiction, at least for addicts who also have eating disorders," said Uri Shalev, PhD, the study's lead author.
Research was supported by the Natural Science and Engineering Council of Canada, funds from the Canada Research Chair to the United States, and the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Society for Neuroscience.

Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats:


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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Eating more fruit and vegetables is linked to a lower risk of dying from ischemic heart disease

Eating More Fruit and Vegetables Is Linked to a Lower Risk of Dying from Ischemic Heart Disease


ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2011) — A European study investigating the links between diet and disease has found that people who consume more fruit and vegetables have a lower risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease -- the most common form of heart disease and one of the leading causes of death in Europe. However, the authors point out that a higher fruit and vegetable intake occurs among people with other healthy eating habits and lifestyles, and that these factors could also be associated with the lower risk of dying from IHD.



See Also:
Health & Medicine

Vegetarian
Heart Disease
Cholesterol

Plants & Animals

Food
Botany
Trees

Reference

Ischaemic heart disease
Coronary heart disease
Mediterranean diet
Food groups

The study is published online on January 19 in the European Heart Journal.
Data analysed from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) Heart study has shown that people who ate at least eight portions of fruit and vegetables a day had a 22% lower risk of dying from IHD than did those who consumed fewer than three portions a day. A portion weighed 80 grams, equal to a small banana, a medium apple, or a small carrot.
Dr Francesca Crowe of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford, UK, and the first author of the paper by the EPIC study collaborators, said: "This study involved over 300,000 people in eight different European countries, with 1,636 deaths from IHD. It shows a 4% reduced risk of dying from IHD for each additional portion of fruit and vegetables consumed above the lowest intake of two portions. In other words, the risk of a fatal IHD for someone eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day would be 4% lower compared to someone consuming four portions a day, and so on up to eight portions or more."
Ischaemic heart disease (IHD) is characterised by reduced blood supply to the heart; people suffering from it can develop angina, chest pains and have a heart attack.
The EPIC study started in 1992 and recruited participants from a total of ten European countries* until 2000. For the analysis of IHD deaths, data from eight countries for people aged between 40 and 85 were used. Participants answered questions about their diet at the time of entry to the study and other questions about health, socio-economic status and life-style, such as smoking, drinking and exercise habits. They were followed-up for an average of nearly eight and a half years.
The researchers found that the average intake of fruit and vegetables was five portions a day; people in Greece, Italy and Spain ate more, and those in Sweden ate less.
When analysing the data, the researchers made allowances for confounding factors such as differences in lifestyles and eating habits. However, the study could be limited by errors in measuring correctly people's fruit and vegetable intake as well as other aspects of their diet. In addition, the study had a higher proportion of women, which might not be generalisable to the wider European population.
Dr Crowe said: "The main message from this analysis is that, in this study, people who consume more fruits and vegetables have lower risk of dying from IHD. However, we need to be cautious in our interpretation of the results because we are unsure whether the association between fruit and vegetable intake and risk of IHD is due to some other component of diet or lifestyle.
"If we could understand, by means of well-designed intervention studies, the biological mechanisms that could underlie the association between fruits and vegetables and IHD, this might help to determine whether or not the relation between fruit and vegetables with IHD risk is causal."
In an accompanying editorial, Professor Sir Michael Marmot, director of the University College London (UCL) International Institute for Society and Health, head of the UCL Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, and chairman of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, writes that it is difficult to reach firm conclusions about causation from results that show a 22% lower risk of dying from IHD (an odds ration of 0.78) in people who eat eight portions of fruit and vegetables a day.
He continues: "Such an odds ratio is, however, of huge practical importance. Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death. A reduction of 22% is huge. But... this reduction in mortality comes with consumption of eight portions a day, or 640g. Such a high consumption was found in only 18% of the men and women in these eight cohorts. There would need to be big shift in dietary patterns to achieve this healthy consumption of eight portions a day. It is worth trying to move in that direction. Reductions in cancers of several sites, in blood pressure and stroke, would add to this reduction in fatal CHD. Moving to a diet that emphasises fruit and vegetables is of great importance to public health."
*The ten countries include: Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. For the Heart component of the study, data from France and Norway were excluded due to the small number of IHD deaths at the end of the follow-up period.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by European Society of Cardiology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.




Journal Reference:

Francesca L. Crowe et al. Fruit and vegetable intake and mortality from ischaemic heart disease: results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Heart study. European Heart Journal, January 18, 2011 DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehq465

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Birth control pills do not cause weight gain, new research suggests

Birth Control Pills Do Not Cause Weight Gain, New Research Suggests


ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2011) — According to research conducted at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University, the commonly held belief that oral contraceptives cause weight gain appears to be false. The results of the study are published online and will appear in next month's edition of the journal Human Reproduction.



See Also:
Health & Medicine

Diet and Weight Loss
Fitness
Obesity

Mind & Brain

Dieting and Weight Control
Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Consumer Behavior

Reference

General fitness training
Overweight
Oral contraceptive
Liposuction

"A simple Google search will reveal that contraceptives and the possibility that they may cause weight gain is a very highly debated topic," said Alison Edelman, M.D., a physician and researcher in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at OHSU and lead author of the study.
"Issues surrounding weight are hard to study in humans, and the research thus far has been insufficient to demonstrate whether or not oral contraceptives cause weight gain or loss. But this is an extremely important question as concern about weight gain is one of the main reasons why women may avoid or discontinue birth control, which in turn places them at greater risk for an unplanned pregnancy."
To conduct their research, scientists and physicians studied a group of rhesus macaque monkeys at the OHSU Oregon National Primate Research Center for almost a year. Rhesus monkeys were used in this study because their reproductive system is nearly identical to humans. However, unlike human studies, more variables can be controlled and measured -- such as exact food intake -- to provide more meaningful data.
At the beginning of the study, half the animals were obese and half were normal weight. During the eight-month treatment period, animals received doses of oral contraceptives, adjusted to the weight of the animals so that it mimicked dosage in humans. Researchers tracked weight, food intake, activity levels, body fat and lean muscle mass. At the study's conclusion, the normal weight group remained weight stable whereas the obese group lost a significant amount of weight (8.5%) and percent of body fat (12%) due to an increase in basal metabolic rate. No changes were seen in food intake, activity or lean muscle mass for either group.
"This study suggests that worries about weight gain with pill use appear to be based more on fiction than on fact," said Judy Cameron, Ph.D., senior author of the paper and a researcher at the primate center.
"Additionally, there may be a differential affect depending on your starting weight -- heavier individuals who keep their diet stable may see a weight loss with pill use. Most likely, the reason why this belief continues to exist is that the weight gain that seems to occur with age is being attributed to these medications. We realize that research in nonhuman primates cannot entirely dismiss the connection between contraceptives and weight gain in humans, but it strongly suggests that women should not be as worried as they previously were."
The research was funded by the Society for Family Planning.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Oregon Health & Science University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.




Journal Reference:

A. Edelman, J. T. Jensen, M. Bulechowsky, J. Cameron. Combined oral contraceptives and body weight: do oral contraceptives cause weight gain? A primate model. Human Reproduction, 2010; DOI: 10.1093/humrep/deq335

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Infants not exempt from obesity epidemic

Infants Not Exempt from Obesity Epidemic


ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2011) — Most people understand that children are part of the obesity epidemic. However, a revealing new study finds that obesity might begin in babies as young as nine months old.



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Health & Medicine

Children's Health
Diet and Weight Loss
Obesity
Infant's Health
Fitness
Diseases and Conditions

Reference

Body mass index
Birth weight
Overweight
Fertility

"With the consistent evidence that the percent of overweight children has steadily increased over the past decade, we weren't surprised by the prevalence rates we found in our study, but we were surprised the trend began at such a young age," said lead study author Brian Moss, at the social work school at Wayne State University in Detroit.
The new study used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort to analyze the early weight of 16,400 U.S. children born in 2001. Of these, 8,900 were nine months old and 7,500 were two years old.
The researchers found that 31.9 percent of babies at nine months and 34.3 percent at two years of age were either at risk or obese. The study also found that children who were Hispanic and from lower-income families were at greater risk of being obese than white children, while Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders had lower risk. Female children were at lower risk for obesity than males.
"Being in an undesirable weight category at nine months subsequently predisposed children to remain in a less desirable weight category," said Moss, whose study appears in the January-February 2011 issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion.
Childhood obesity expert Joyce Lee, MD, an assistant professor in pediatric endocrinology and health services research at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, confirmed that obesity is indeed becoming a problem in increasingly younger children.
"At younger ages, it is critical for parents to watch their child's nutritional intake as this will be the main determinant of their weight status," Lee said. "There is no approved 'diet' for children that young, so parents should communicate with their child's health care provider about healthy ways to feed their child."

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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Health Behavior News Service, part of the Center for Advancing Health.




Journal Reference:

Brian G. Moss, William H. Yeaton. Young Children's Weight Trajectories and Associated Risk Factors: Results From the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort. American Journal of Health Promotion, 2011; 25 (3): 190 DOI: 10.4278/ajhp.090123-QUAN-29

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