Why do cells age? The biological mystery seems to have been solved, thanks to scientists who`ve discovered a weakness in a component of brain cells which they claim may be responsible for ageing process occurring in mind.

A team at Salk Institute for Biological Studies says that the findings may pave the way for better understanding of diseases like Alzheimer`s and Parkinson`s, the latest edition of the `Science` journal reported.


In the research, the scientists have in fact discovered that certain proteins, called extremely long-lived proteins (ELLPs), found on surface of the nucleus of neurons, have a remarkably long lifespan.

While the lifespan of most proteins totals two days or less, the scientists identified ELLPs in the rat brain that were as old as the organism, they say.

ELLPs make up the transport channels on the surface of the nucleus; gates that control what materials enter and exit.

Damage to the ELLPs weakens the ability of three- dimensional transport channels composed of these proteins to safeguard the cell`s nucleus from toxins, said Prof Martin Hetzer, who led the team.

These toxins may alter the cell`s DNA and thereby the activity of genes, resulting in cellular ageing.

Prof Hetzer added: "The fundamental defining feature of ageing is an overall decline in the functional capacity of various organs such as the heart and the brain. This decline results from deterioration of the homeostasis, or internal stability, within the constituent cells of those organs.

"Recent research has linked breakdown of protein homeostasis to declining cell function. Our results also suggest that nuclear pore deterioration might be a general ageing mechanism leading to age-related defects in nuclear function."

Cancer of the lung is the commonest cancer among men in Delhi, while that of the breast is way ahead of all other forms of cancer among women in the national Capital.

Indian Council of Medical Research's (ICMR) latest data on the 10 leading sites of cancer in Delhi shows that prevalence of breast cancer among women in Delhi stands at almost 27%, followed by cervix, whose recurrence is almost half of breast cancer cases at 14.6%. Among men, lung cancer is the most common at 10%, while 7% of all cancers are of the prostate.

According to the ICMR data, cancer of the tongue was the third commonest cancer (6.8%) among men, followed by larynx (5.9%). In women, cancer of the ovary (7.6%) has the highest prevalence after breast and cervix, followed by gall bladder (6.9%). As far as "sites of cancer associated with the use of tobacco" is concerned, the prevalence is high among men in Delhi.

Two in every five cases of cancer among men in Delhi is due to tobacco (39.4%), while it is one in every 10 women (11%). Dr Harit Chaturvedi, director of surgical oncology at Max Hospital, said, "Cancer of the prostate is on the rise among men and that of breast is increasing among women. In northern India cancer of the gall bladder is very common. This could be due to chemicals and fertilizers in the water."

Dr Amit Aggarwal from Fortis Hospital, Noida, added, "We are seeing a major trend of mouth cancer among youngsters due to smoking and chewing of gutka. Oral cancers in Delhi are becoming common."

"It is depressing to see increasing number of young cancer victims. We hope the states implement the Food Safety and Standards Authority law in the larger interest of this generation falling prey to the tobacco menace," said Bhavna Mukhopadhyay, executive director of Voluntary Health Association of India.

FSSAI has notified the Food Safety and Standards (Prohibition and Restriction on sales) Regulation, 2011, mandating prohibition and restriction on sale of food products having tobacco and nicotine as their ingredients.

ICMR has also come out with the "possibility of one in number of persons developing cancer of any site" score. The calculation is age specific - 0-64 years and 0-74 years.

For Delhi, it says that one in 13 men and one in 11 women run the risk of developing cancer by the time they attain 64 years. The probability becomes more acute: one in seven men and one in eight women before they turn 74 years.

In other metros like Mumbai and Kolkata, one in 19 men and one in 14 women run a similar risk of developing cancer before their 64th birthday.

However, while one in 10 men and one in nine women in Mumbai face the possibility of suffering from cancer by the time they are 74 years, and the risk is faced by one in 10 men and women in Kolkata. In Chennai, one in 14 men and one in 12 women are prone to develop cancer before turning 64, while the probability is one in eight men and women before turning 74.

The report looked at incidents of cancer and probability rates for three years (2006-08). Dr A Nandakumar, in charge of the report, says that since the establishment of the national cancer registry programme in 1982, this is the maiden report of 20 population-based cancer registries covering 7% of the population.

India has the highest prevalence of oral cancer globally, with 80,000 new cases every year. National Institute of Health and Family Welfare (NIHFW) says India alone accounts for 86% of the total oral cancer figure across the world.

Pain Relief and Palliative Care Society, Hyderabad, is screening a multi-award winning documentary 'Life Before Death' on the occasion of World Cancer Day 2012 on Saturday, February 4 from 5.30 p.m. at Taj Banjara, a press release stated.

The documentary 'Life before Death' is an award winning film that traverses 11 countries and follows the journey of terminally ill patients and their families.

It also charts the extraordinary health care professionals fighting to change the culture of medicine to be more focused on care, rather than on cure.
Objective

The objective of the documentary is to raise awareness on crisis of untreated pain and the lack of access to palliative care to scores of people suffering from cancer.

Early maternal support and nurturing has a strong positive effect on brain development in young children, new research shows.

In a longitudinal study, researchers found that supportive caregiving during the preschool years predicted larger hippocampal volume at school age in nondepressed children.

"This particular publication is unique in that it combines observational data of parent-child interaction at preschool with structural brain outcomes at school age," Dr. Joan Luby, MD, professor of child psychiatry and director of the Early Emotional Development Program at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who led the study, told Medscape Medical News.

"It's the first finding in humans of a clear link between early nurturance and hippocampal volume. A well-established link has been known in animals for more than 20 years," Dr. Luby added. "This has very important general public health implications about the importance of attention to early parenting."

The study was published online January 30 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) .

Unique Focus

Commenting on the study for Medscape Medical News, Charles A. Nelson III, PhD, professor of pediatrics and neuroscience from Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, said "a unique element of this study is that it focuses on positive outcomes rather than negative."

"There is an abundance of work showing reductions in hippocampal volume when children, or even adults, experience adversity," explained Dr. Nelson, who was not involved in the study. "This turns that issue on its head and shows that hippocampal volume actually increases as a function of increases in maternal warmth."

The 92 children in the study were originally recruited between the ages of 3 and 6 years from daycare centers and preschools in the St. Louis, Missouri, metropolitan area. The sample included 51 healthy nondepressed children and 41 with early-onset depression.

Between the ages of 4 and 7 years, the children were closely observed and videotaped interacting with a parent, almost always a mother, during a challenging and mildly stressful task.

How much or how little the parent was able to support and nurture the child in this stressful situation, which was designed to approximate the stresses of daily parenting, was evaluated by raters blind to the child's health or the parent's temperament.

"Whether a parent was considered a nurturer was not based on that parent's own self-assessment. Rather, it was based on their behavior and the extent to which they nurtured their child under these challenging conditions. It was very objective," said Dr. Luby.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the brain obtained at school age revealed that children without depression who had very nurturing mothers in preschool had a hippocampus almost 10% larger than their peers whose mothers were not as nurturing. The estimated increase in hippocampal volume by unit of increased maternal support was 13.4 mm3, the researchers report.

Robust Finding

Notably, say investigators, the link between healthy maternal nurturing and increased hippocampal volume remained robust even after accounting for other factors known to affect hippocampal volume, such as stressful life events, comorbid internalizing and externalizing symptoms, and a history of maternal depression.

Maternal nurturing did not have a strong impact on hippocampal volume in the children with early-onset depression.

"The fact that this association was only observed among the nondepressed children argues, and is consistent with, the fact that early-onset depression may limit a child's ability to benefit from warm, maternal care," Dr. Nelson said. "This is quite unfortunate."

Dr. Luby and colleagues think their findings could have "profound public health implications and suggest that greater public health emphasis on early parenting could be a very fruitful social investment."

"The finding that early parenting support, a modifiable psychosocial factor, is directly related to healthy development of a key brain region known to impact cognitive functioning and emotion regulation opens an exciting opportunity to impact the development of children in a powerful and positive fashion," they write.

"This finding, when replicated, would strongly suggest enhancement of public policies and programs that provide support and parenting education to caregivers early in development," they add.

The study, Dr. Nelson commented, has a "few limitations, but nothing serious, just the nature of research such as this." He noted that the investigators focus exclusively on the hippocampus and do not report on whether other structures benefit from increases in maternal care. They also do not address whether increases in hippocampal volume affect behavior; for example, do these children show improvements in learning and memory?

Unusual patterns of eye contact could help detect developing autism symptoms in babies just six months old, reveals a study.

La Trobe University psychologist Kristelle Hudry, a key researcher in the study, says the results of the study are linked with emerging autism.

Hudry and her UK colleagues studied six to 10-month-old babies who were at risk of developing autism because they had a sibling with the condition.
They placed sensors on the babies' scalps to register their brain activity, while they viewed videos of faces that switched from looking at them to looking away, or vice versa, said a university statement.

"These results are important because early diagnosis can secure the best possible outcome for individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), through early access to intervention," Hudry said.

While behaviours characteristic of autism emerge over the first few years of life, a firm diagnosis using existing methods can usually only be made after the age of two.

In reality, however, diagnosis often doesn't happen until much later, so most autism research has concentrated on children older than two years, which means we still know very little about the very earliest symptoms and signs, said Hudry.

Releasing the report in the UK, Mark Johnson, professor and chief investigator, University of London, said: "Our findings demonstrate for the first time that direct measures of brain functioning during the first year of life associate with a later diagnosis of autism - well before the emergence of behavioural symptoms."