A new study by the American Headache Society's Women's Issues Section Research Consortium strongly suggests that migraine is linked to childhood abuse.

Researchers found that migraineurs who had been physically or emotionally abused as children and/or had suffered neglect had noticeably higher number of comorbid pain conditions compared to those who had not been abused.

Gretchen E. Tietjen from the University of Toledo Medical Center and his team examined 1348 headache clinic patients with physician-diagnosed migraine to come up with their findings.

Sixty one percent participants at least one comorbid pain condition and 58percent said they had a history of abuse or trauma.

It was seen that the number of maltreatment types suffered in childhood were related to the number of comorbid pain in adulthood.

Dr. Tietjen said: "Our study found that while childhood maltreatment is associated with depression, the child abuse-adult pain relationship is not fully mediated by depression."

He added: "Since migraine onset preceded onset of the comorbid pain conditions in our population, treatment strategies such as cognitive behavioral therapy may be particularly well suited in these cases."

The study has been published in the January issue of Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain.

Shutting down an energy-controlling mechanism in mice left them leaner than normal mice and could be a new way to fight obesity in humans, US researchers said in a study published on Tuesday.

And the finding is big news in the United States, where around a third of the adult population is considered obese, meaning they have a body mass index (BMI) greater than 30, according to the American Obesity Association. BMI is calculated by dividing a person's body weight in kilogrammes by their height in meters squared.

The researchers found that by switching off potassium channels which are sensitive to adenosine triphosphate (ATP) - a molecule in cells that stores the energy we need to do just about everything - made mice burn more energy and left them leaner than normal mice. The effect was evident even when the mice were fed high-fat 'Western' diets and was long-lasting, too, with the mice remaining slim throughout their lives, scientists from the Mayo Clinic, University of Iowa, University of Connecticut and New York University reported in the journal Cell Metabolism.

The channels - called KATP - sense pools of ATP molecules in cells and regulate heart and muscle performance according to what they find. Usually the KATP channels would spring into action to limit the duration or amplitude of heart and muscle actions, to prevent energy depletion.

By shutting off the mechanism in mice, the researchers got them to burn more stored energy by giving off more heat, both at rest or when active.

One finding was that mice in whom the KATP channel had been switched off burned more glycogen - the form in which carbohydrates are stored in the body and the primary source of energy for endurance athletes - and stored body fat than ordinary mice. That means that achieving greater leanness by deactivating KATP channels comes at the cost of reduced endurance. -- AFP

British researchers have developed a treatment that can be used to stop the disease returning after chemotherapy or bone marrow transplant.

Eventually it is hoped the drug, which activates the body's own immune system against the leukaemia, could be used to treat other types of cancers.

The first patients will be treated in the New Year as part of a small clinical trial at King's College London.

The patients in the trial have the form known as Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), the most common form in adults. Even with aggressive treatment half would usually find the disease returns.

The idea behind cancer 'vaccines" is not necessarily to prevent the disease. Instead, once a patient has been diagnosed, the 'vaccine' programmes the immune system to hunt down cancer cells and destroy them.

The vaccine then prompts the immune system to recognise leukaemia cells if they return which prevents a relapse of the disease.

The vaccine is created by removing cells from the patient's blood and manipulating them in the laboratory.

The cells are given two genes which act as flags to help identify the leukaemia. It effectively focuses and boosts the immune system's ability to seek out and destroy cancer cells.

The research is due to be published in the Journal of Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy shortly.

Leukaemia is a cancer of the white blood cells and bone marrow and affects around 7,200 patients a year. Around 4,300 die from the disease annually.

Treatment comes in two stages - chemotherapy to rid the body of the disease, then to prevent it returning either further chemotherapy or a bone marrow transplant.

Latest survival rates show that more than half the people with leukaemia die within five years of diagnosis.

The study led by Professors Ghulam Mufti and Farzin Farzaneh and Dr Nicola Hardwick at University College London, has involved intricate work to develop a man-made virus, similar to HIV, which carries the two genes into the immune system.

Prof Farzaneh, Professor of Molecular Medicine at King's College London, said if the trials are successful then it could "rolled out" to treat other leukaemias and cancers.

"It is the same concept as normal vaccines. The immune system is made to see something as foreign and can then destroy it itself. This has the chance to be curative."

The work, which has taken 20 years to develop, has more recently been funded by the Department of Health and various charities including the Leukaemia Research Fund (LRF) and the Elimination of Leukaemia Fund (ELF).

In the initial stages patients will be enrolled in the trial if they have had chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant.

If early trials are successful the vaccine may be tested in patients who cannot have a bone marrow transplant because they are unsuitable or a match cannot be found.

Dr David Grant, scientific director of the charity Leukaemia Research, said: "Vaccines against cancer are becoming a very interesting area of research and can offer a very beneficial alternative to punishing chemotherapy.

"However it is very early days and we need to see the results of these trials before we know if this potential is going too be realised."

For the first time a study has been launched that will gauge how exactly common medications affect pregnancy.

The FDA and a consortium of HMOs have launched a huge set of studies to find out how medications affect women during pregnancy.

"These data will guide regulatory policy and influence medical practice," Webmd quoted the FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg, as saying in a news release.

While many women do take some kind of medicine during pregnancy, but very few drugs are tested in pregnant women.

But now, the Medication Exposure in Pregnancy Risk Evaluation Program (MEPREP) has been launched.

The program is a collaboration between the FDA, Kaiser Permanente, Vanderbilt University (using Tennessee Medicaid data), and a consortium of HMOs called the HMO Research Network Center for Education and Research in Therapeutics (managed by Harvard University).

The study will analyze health care data on about 1 million U.S. births from 2001 to 2007.

The idea is to gather information on all medications prescribed for pregnant women and to look for health effects and birth outcomes.

"Results of these studies will provide valuable information for patients and physicians when making decisions about medication during pregnancy," said Dr. Gerald Dal Pan.

Until the data become available, women and their doctors will have to make their own decisions on whether a drug provides enough of a benefit to pregnant women to override concerns about possible risk.

Advances in stem cell treatment may make it possible to cure blindness. This was demonstrated when eight partially blind patients, who participated in the trial of a new treatment to restore vision at the North East England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI), Newcastle, reported radically improved vision among other benefits.

Among the patients was 38-year-old Russell Turnbull from Consett, Durham. He lost most of the vision in his right eye in 1994, when he had ammonia sprayed on his face even as he attempted to intervene in a quarrel on a bus. His cornea was burnt as a result of this leading to clouded sight, sensitivity to light and pain while blinking.

The chemical burn damaged Turnbull's limbal stem cells - a collection of special cells in the eye that are important to maintain the smooth, transparent outer surface of the cornea. As a result he suffered a limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD), a condition that causes the retina to become cloudy and rough, causing pain and sensitivity to light.

Doctors used limbal stem cells from Turnbull's functioning eye to grow more of these in a laboratory. These cells were then spread over a human amniotic membrane, which is the tissue that generally supports fetuses while they are in the womb. The stem cell grafts were then used to replace the damaged corneal tissue, enabling Turnbull to get back his sight.

Turnbull who, apart from blindness, also complained of pain and constant watering, has now almost recovered normal vision with no pain, just about a year and a half after the treatment. He has started working again and has resumed jet skiing and riding, hobbies which he had had to give up after the accident.

The trial of the treatment procedure was carried out by Dr Francisco Figueiredo and Dr Sajjad Ahmad, of the Royal Victoria Infirmary. All eight patients, with blindness in one eye due to LSCD, reported improvement about 19 months after the treatment.

Currently the treatment procedure is only useful for patients with one undamaged eye, from which stem cells can be removed and grown, explained Dr Ahmad. However in the future it may even be possible to use cells from other parts of the body to grow limbal stem cells to treat patients with bilateral blindness, he hoped.

About eight million people worldwide are estimated to suffer from blindness induced by corneal cloudiness each year. A report on the new treatment has been published in the journal Stem Cells.