Suffering from migraine? Fret not, slip on a pair of a shades, for a new study has revealed that sunglasses can help in easing the debilitating pain from the condition, even at night.

Previous researches have found that even at night, light intensifies a migraine headache but failed to explain the exact reason behind the cause.

Now, a team, led by Prof Rami Burstein of Harvard Medical School, has found the reason why light makes migraine worse - by identifying a new visual pathway which underlies sensitivity to light during migraine in both blind individuals and in individuals with normal eyesight.

In fact, migraine pain are believed to develop when the matter surrounding the brain and central nervous system becomes irritated and 85 per cent of sufferers become sensitive to light.

Prof Burstein said they should do anything to avoid light during an episode. "Patients may wear sunglasses, even at night. The dimmest of light can make migraine pain worse," the British media quoted him as saying.

In their study, the researchers showed that light increased the effects of migraines by recruiting two groups of people who suffered regular severe headaches.

Shorter people more are more likely to develop lung disease, says a new study. And they could hail from poorer backgrounds.

University of Nottingham researchers say those with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) were 1.12cm shorter on average.

In the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, they write this lack of height may be a "marker" that people have come from a poorer background.

A number of historical studies have suggested that early life deprivation increases the risk of developing COPD in adult life, but whether this is still true now that living conditions have improved is not known, they point out.

So they set out to quantify the current association between adult height (a maker of socioeconomic status in early life) and COPD, and to determine how this varies by age.

They examined data on 1,204,110 people (aged over 35yrs old) from The Health Improvement Network - a general practice database and concluded, "The risk of developing COPD is still strongly associated with adult height. This association is strongest in the youngest age category suggesting that early life experience will remain an important risk factor for COPD for some time to come and possibly that COPD related to early life deprivation is more severe and tends to present at a younger age."

The smallest height difference was in the over 90s where the average difference was only 0.51cm.

They say this could be because many of the older generation who suffered from the disease actually died from it in recent years.

People with COPD have permanent scarring to the lung tissue caused mostly be smoking.

It is estimated that 3.7 million people in the UK have the disease, but only 900,000 are currently diagnosed.

The researchers
think that people who came from poorer backgrounds were more likely to have had mothers who smoked, had poor nutrition during their early years affecting general growth and lung development, and were more likely to live in smoking households and smoke themselves.

Richard Hubbard, professor of respiratory epidemiology at the University of Nottingham, who co-authored the study said: "There's a double whammy associated with deprivation.

"Poorer nutrition in the 'womb' and when growing up as a child can affect general growth and lung development.

"This is combined with an increased likelihood to live with families and peers who smoke - influencing the chance of taking up and sticking with the habit.

"We know that smoking is the principal cause of COPD and all of these factors combined could increase the risk even more."

Professor Mike Morgan, chairman of the British Thoracic Society, said: "We need to make it easier for people from disadvantaged backgrounds to make positive life choices and improvements to their health - whether it be eating well or stopping smoking.

"GPs and primary care professionals could also look out for height alongside smoking status and other chronic lung disease symptoms, to ensure that the disease is caught early."

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."