Botulinum toxin could have an enormous potential in treatment of inflammatory skin diseases like psoriasis and eczema, researchers have claimed.

Erin Gilbert, MD, PhD, FAAD, a board-certified dermatologist and assistant professor of dermatology at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, New York, explained that a quandary in dermatology is the widespread use of steroids in treating inflammatory skin diseases.

While very little is known about the interaction between blood vessels and nerves in the skin, dermatologists are optimistic that the new research exploring how botulinum toxin type A can influence this interaction could lead to a new therapy for chronic inflammatory skin conditions.

Psoriasis is a chronic skin condition and is one of the most prevalent autoimmune diseases.

One animal-model study conducted by Gilbert in collaboration with Nicole L. Ward, PhD, at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, found promising results using botulinum toxin type A to target psoriasis. In this mouse-model psoriasis study, Gilbert and Ward showed that botulinum toxin injections improved the clinical appearance of psoriasis and decreased the presence of specific cells in the affected skin of the mouse, while also reducing the number of blood vessels and their adjacent nerves.

The decreased number of blood vessels within the affected skin of the treated mice illustrates the role of nerves and blood vessels in perpetuating the appearance of an inflammatory skin disease, like psoriasis.

Eczema is another chronic inflammatory skin condition marked by dry, itchy skin. Atopic dermatitis - the most common form of eczema - affects millions of people, including an estimated six to 10 percent of children.

Early research suggests that there could be a role for botulinum toxin in combating itch by better understanding the interaction of the vascular system in inflammatory skin conditions.

Injections of botulinum toxin could promote wound healing following a burn injury.

In rheumatology, the toxin can help treat painful blood vessel conditions like Raynaud`s disease and scleroderma.

In instances where scleroderma affected the fingertips, injections of botulinum toxin has shown to almost immediately reduce pain.

For the first time, a new study has found that cannabinoids-psychoactive compounds of marijuana-can be detected in the blood of daily pot smokers during a month of sustained abstinence.

Researchers behind the study suggest that the finding can provide real help in the public safety need for a drugged driving policy that reduces the number of drugged driving accidents on the road.

Cannabis is second only to alcohol for causing impaired driving and motor vehicle accidents. In 2009, 12.8 percent of young adults reported driving under the influence of illicit drugs and in the 2007 National Roadside Survey, more drivers tested positive for drugs than for alcohol.

These cannabis smokers had a 10-fold increase in car crash injury compared with infrequent or nonusers after adjustment for blood alcohol concentration.

In this study, 30 male chronic daily cannabis smokers resided on a secure research unit for up to 33 days, with daily blood collection. Twenty-seven of 30 participants were THC-positive on admission, with a median (range) concentration of 1.4 micro g/L (0.3-6.3). THC decreased gradually with only 1 of 11 participants negative at 26 days; 2 of 5 remained THC-positive (0.3 micro g/L) for 30 days.

These results showed, for the first time, that cannabis could be detected in blood of chronic daily cannabis smokers for a month after last intake.

This is consistent with the time course of persisting neurocognitive impairment reported in recent studies and suggests that establishment of `per se` THC legislation might achieve a reduction in motor vehicle injuries and deaths.

This same type of `per se` alcohol legislation improved prosecution of drunk drivers and dramatically reduced alcohol-related deaths.

"These data have never been obtained previously due to the cost and difficulty of studying chronic daily cannabis smoking over an extended period," said Dr. Marylin Huestis of the National Institutes of Health and author on the paper.
"These data add critical information to the debate about the toxicity of chronic daily cannabis smoking," Dr. Huestis added.

The research appeared online in Clinical Chemistry, the journal of AACC.

Children who missed meals can not only have problem concentrating in school, they may also have a higher risk of experiencing pain and depression in adulthood, a new University of Nebraska-Lincoln study has suggested.

Depression and chronic pain are experienced by 44 percent of working-aged adults and the study shows a correlation between childhood conditions and pain and depression in adulthood.

The study by UNL sociologist Bridget Goosby examines how childhood socio-economic disadvantages and maternal depression increase the risk of major depression and chronic pain in working-aged adults.

Goosby examined a survey of 4,339 adults from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication looking for a relationship between circumstances in childhood and physical and mental health in working-age adults. She specifically looked at data from adults 25 to 64 years old.

Goosby said she was surprised to find that experiencing hunger in childhood can lead to chronic pain and depression in adulthood.

"The most robust child socio-economic condition was experiencing hunger. Kids who missed meals have a much higher risk of experiencing pain and depression in adulthood," Goosby said.

The study also found that maternal depression had a correlation with adults having depression later in life.

In the study, Goosby noted that those who grew up with parents with less than 12 years of education had a much higher risk of experiencing chronic pain compared to adults with more highly educated parents, a disparity that becomes evident after age 42 and grew larger over time.

With this information, Goosby said she hopes policymakers will pay attention to creating more healthy family dynamics in society and that the study`s results will give policymakers a reason to examine circumstances in early childhood more closely.

The study is forthcoming in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

Scientists are using memristors- electronic microcomponents that imitate natural nerves- as key components in a blueprint for an artificial brain.

Scientists have long been dreaming about building a computer that would work like a brain. This is because a brain is far more energy-saving than a computer, it can learn by itself, and it doesn`t need any programming.

Dr. Andy Thomas from Bielefeld University`s Faculty of Physics and his colleagues constructed a memristor that is capable of learning a year ago.

He is now is experimenting with his memristors for building an artificial brain.

A nanocomponent that is capable of learning: The Bielefeld memristor built into a chip here is 600 times thinner than a human hair. Memristors are made of fine nanolayers and can be used to connect electric circuits.

For several years now, the memristor has been considered to be the electronic equivalent of the synapse. Synapses are, so to speak, the bridges across which nerve cells (neurons) contact each other. Their connections increase in strength the more often they are used. Usually, one nerve cell is connected to other nerve cells across thousands of synapses.

Like synapses, memristors learn from earlier impulses. In their case, these are electrical impulses that (as yet) do not come from nerve cells but from the electric circuits to which they are connected. The amount of current a memristor allows to pass depends on how strong the current was that flowed through it in the past and how long it was exposed to it.

Thomas said that because of their similarity to synapses, memristors are particularly suitable for building an artificial brain - a new generation of computers.

"They allow us to construct extremely energy-efficient and robust processors that are able to learn by themselves," he stated.

Dr. Thomas has summarized the technological principles that need to be met when constructing a processor based on the brain.

Thanks to these properties, synapses can be used to reconstruct the brain process responsible for learning, said Thomas.

He will be presenting his results at the beginning of March in the print edition of the prestigious Journal of Physics published by the Institute of Physics in London.

Mild maternal hypertension early in pregnancy actually benefits the fetus, but that late-pregnancy hypertension has negative health consequences for the child, a new study has found.

The study, conducted by researchers from the Centre for Social Evolution at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, is based on more than 750,000 births in Denmark, with follow-up data on children`s hospital diagnoses for up to 27 years.

"It has been known for some time now that pregnancy-induced hypertension can lead to more serious toxic conditions ( preeclampsia ), but it has puzzled biologists why such a medical condition that can be quite dangerous for both mother and child has not previously been removed by natural selection in our stoneage ancestors," said Professor Jacobus Boomsma, Director of the Centre for Social Evolution and coordinator of the study.

"However, evolutionary theory also emphasizes that paradoxes of this kind can be due to genetic parent-offspring conflicts, so we set out to test whether we could find statistical evidence for that type of explanation," he stated.

The results clearly indicate that mothers with minor increases in blood pressure in the first trimester of pregnancy have babies that enjoy generally better health than children of mothers who never get a hypertension diagnosis during pregnancy.

The difference was between 10 and 40 percent fewer diagnoses across all disease categories during the 27 years of available follow-up data, a result that has never been documented before.

However, when hypertension continues or starts later in pregnancy, this advantage shifts to a ca. 10 percent disadvantage in terms of an increased risk of acquiring a diagnosis in the Danish public health data bases.

Child mortality during the first year of life showed the same trend. In spite of this risk being very low in Denmark, no children of mothers with early pregnancy-induced hypertension died, whereas the mortality risk of children born to mothers with hypertension late in pregnancy was above average.

Parent-offspring-conflict theory maintains that father-genes in the placenta will have a tendency to `demand` a somewhat higher level of nutrition for the fetus than serves the interests of mother-genes. It argues that father genes that somehow manage to enhance maternal blood pressure will likely be met by maternal genes compensating this challenge.

Both types of genes are 50/50 represented and thus likely to find a `negotiated` balance while creating an optimally functioning placenta. However, when the pull of paternal genes cannot quite be managed by maternal counterbalances, there is a risk of elevated blood pressure to develop and persist, leading to late occurring pregnancy complications and compromised offspring health.

The results obtained are consistent with the idea that some deep fundamental conflicts lay buried in our genes right from the moment of conception. Imprinted genes are prime suspects for mediating such conflicts as they `remember` which parent they come from.

"Molecular biologists have recently found many such genes in mice and man, and they are particularly expressed in the placenta as the theory predicts. Our study therefore suggests that further research to test whether different patterns of pregnancy-induced hypertension are indeed related to paternal or maternal imprints would be highly worthwhile," said PhD student Birgitte Hollegaard, who did the analyses together with EU Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow Sean Byars.

The authors of the study hope these results will help build bridges between their evolutionary inspired public health analyses and established clinical praxis.

"Ultimately we are not only interested in the fundamental science aspects of genome level reproductive conflicts, but also in seeing some of these findings being made more directly useful, for example by adjusting pregnancy monitoring schemes to take long term risks for offspring health into account," Jacobus Boomsma concluded.