CLUE TO WHY FEMALES LIVE LONGER THAN MALES

A study from the University of Exeter has found that male flies die earlier than their female counterparts when forced to evolve with the pressures of mate competition and juvenile survival. The results could help researchers understand the mechanisms involved in aging.

The research, published in the journal Functional Ecology, used populations of the fly Drosophila simulans that had evolved under different selection regimes. The study shows that mate competition (sexual selection), along with survival (natural selection), is tougher on male aging than it is on females reducing their lifespan by about a third.

Some species, like the flies in this study, age quickly over a number of days while others -- including some trees and whales -- age slowly across centuries.

Professor David Hosken from Biosciences at the University of Exeter said: "We found dramatic differences in the effects of sexual and natural selection on male and female flies. These results could help explain the sex differences in lifespan seen in many species, including humans, and the diverse patterns of aging we observe in nature."

The flies were subjected to elevated or relaxed sexual and natural selection and left to evolve in these conditions. To elevate sexual selection groups of males were housed with single females. A stressful temperature was used to elevate natural selection.

Males court females by singing, dancing and smelling good but their efforts come at considerable cost and this cost is amplified when they also have to cope with stressful temperatures.

The results of the study showed that under relaxed sexual and natural selection, male and female flies had very similar lifespans -- around 35 days. However males that evolved under elevated sexual selection and elevated natural selection had a much shorter lifespan -- just 24 days -- and died seven days earlier than females under the same conditions.

Both sexual selection and natural selection were found to affect lifespan but their effects were greatest on males. The findings show that the sexes can respond differently to the same selection regimes.

VITAMIN D FOR LONGER LIFE

Higher levels of vitamin D may protect people from an earlier death, particularly from cancer and heart disease, suggests a new analysis of existing research.

And, the opposite may also be true — low levels of vitamin D may be linked to a higher risk of premature death.

But the researchers acknowledge that the review’s findings aren’t definitive.

“People with low vitamin D die more frequently from heart disease and cancer, but it is not known if the low vitamin D is a cause of these diseases or just a byproduct of generally poor health,” said study lead author Ben Schoettker, a post-doctoral scientist with the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany.

Still, the research published online June 17 in BMJ does hint at the possibility that vitamin D may benefit people across genders, ages and Western countries, including the United States. The findings are “compellingly consistent,” Schoettker said.

Vitamin D is a hot topic in the medical world. Studies have both supported and debunked its supposed powers as a booster of lifespans. Researchers are looking forward to future studies that they expect to be more definitive.

Vitamin D is nicknamed the sunshine vitamin because the body produces vitamin D when exposed to sunlight. People also get vitamin D through foods like eggs, milk, yogurt, tuna, salmon, cereal and orange juice.

The current analysis only examined what happened to people with various levels of vitamin D in their bodies. The studies included in this analysis didn’t go a step further to randomly assign participants to take vitamin D supplements or an inactive placebo. That kind of study would cost much more, Schoettker said.

The researchers examined eight studies from Europe and the United States that together tracked more than 26,000 nonsmoking men and women. They were all between ages 50 and 79. About 6,700 participants died during the time period of the studies, mostly of heart disease or cancer.

Those with the lowest levels of vitamin D were about 1.5 times more likely than those with the highest levels to die from any cause and from heart disease during the periods of the studies. Those with low levels of vitamin D and a history of cancer were 1.7 times more likely to die of the disease. People who hadn’t previously had cancer saw no change in the risk of cancer death by vitamin D levels.

“Very low vitamin D levels are mainly associated with higher age and lower physical activity,” which could lead to less exposure to the sun, Schoettker noted.

On the other hand, “the reasons for very high vitamin D levels are unknown,” he added.

The researchers pointed out that vitamin D may not change levels of risk for health problems and earlier deaths. It’s possible that levels of vitamin D reflect overall health. Low levels of vitamin D may just be a sign of poor health rather than a cause of it, according to the study.

It’s not clear how vitamin D could help people live longer, but it might have something to do with the way it acts like a hormone, said Susan Mayne, chair of the department of chronic disease epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health. Still, she said, the science linking the vitamin to heart disease and cancer is in its early stages.

For now, both Mayne and Schoettker said people should follow the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine regarding vitamin D. Its 2010 report says most Americans and Canadians already get enough vitamin D. It says nothing about whether people with heart disease or cancer should take supplements, however.

SADNESS LASTS LONGER THAN OTHER EMOTIONS

Why is it that you can feel sad up to 240 times longer than you do feeling ashamed, surprised, irritated or even bored? It's because sadness often goes hand in hand with events of greater impact such as death or accidents. You need more time to mull over and cope with what happened to fully comprehend it, say Philippe Verduyn and Saskia Lavrijsen of the University of Leuven in Belgium. Their research, published in Springer's journal Motivation and Emotion, is the first to provide clear evidence to explain why some emotions last a longer time than others

The Belgian researchers asked 233 high school students to recollect recent emotional episodes and report their duration. The participants also had to answer questions about the strategies they use to appraise and deal with these emotions.

Meaningful differences in duration were indeed found to exist between emotions. Out of a set of 27 emotions, sadness lasted the longest, whereas shame, surprise, fear, disgust, boredom, being touched, irritated or feeling relief were often over in a flash. Interestingly enough, boredom also counts among the shorter emotions experienced. Verduyn and Lavrijsen say that this means that even though time seems to pass slowly when one is bored, an episode of boredom typically doesn't last that long.

The researchers discovered that emotions that last a shorter time are typically elicited by events that have relatively low importance attached to them. On the other hand, long-lasting emotions tend to be caused by events that have strong implications for a person's major concerns. Verduyn says some of these implications may only become apparent over time, which then causes the emotion to be maintained or strengthened. The feeling therefore endures while a person rethinks the events and consequences over and over again.

Duration was found to be a dimension that can differentiate between otherwise very similar emotions. For instance, Verduyn and Lavrijsen found that guilt is an emotion that persists much longer than shame, while anxiety lingers longer than fear.

"Rumination is the central determinant of why some emotions last longer than others. Emotions associated with high levels of rumination will last longest," says Verduyn, explaining the role that such constant and repetitive thinking has on the experience of positive and negative emotions.

"Emotions of shorter duration are typically -- but, of course, not always -- elicited by events of relatively low importance. On the other hand, long-lasting emotions tend to be about something highly important," Lavrijsen explains further.

How Much Longer Will Lyrica Be A First Choice Neuropathy Drug

Today's post from sciencedaily.com (see link below) needs to be taken seriously, if only because it comes from sciencedaily.com, which is one of the most trusted medical sites on the internet. You may wonder what an article about birth defects has to do with neuropathy but the common link is the drug pregabalin (Lyrica). Despite Pfizer withdrawing its own recommendation for Lyrica for many forms of neuropathy as long ago as 2013 and despite the mounting evidence of the harm it can do, it remains one of the most widely prescribed mainstream drugs for nerve pain across the whole world. The reasons for this are unclear but you have to suspect the mass marketing of the drug still goes on and of course doctors still make use of so-called 'off-label prescribing because the right information is not getting through. This particular article looks at the evidence of the potential for birth defects due to pregabalin but this is just the latest in a long line of contra-indications for Lyrica. If it is prescribed for your neuropathy symptoms, you should probably have a serious discussion with your doctor and maybe take along some of the evidence you can find here on the blog (type 'pregabalin' in the search box to the right of the page) because there's a distinct possibility that it may do you more harm than good.

Drug used for pain, anxiety may be linked to birth defects 
Date: May 18, 2016 Source: American Academy of Neurology (AAN)

A drug commonly used to treat pain, epilepsy, anxiety and other brain health disorders may be associated with an increased risk of major birth defects, according to a study published in the May 18, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The drug pregabalin is approved by the FDA to treat epilepsy, fibromyalgia and neuropathic pain, such as pain from diabetic neuropathy or pain after shingles or spinal cord injury. It is also used for generalized anxiety disorder and other mental health issues. This is called off-label prescribing.

For the study, information was collected in seven countries from 164 women who took pregabalin during a pregnancy and 656 pregnant women who were not taking any anti-seizure drugs. The women or their practitioners were then contacted again after their expected date of delivery.

Pregnancies of the women who took pregabalin during the first trimester of pregnancy were three times more likely to result in major birth defects than those of the women who did not take anti-seizure drugs. Seven of the 116 pregnancies in women taking anti-seizure drugs, or 6 percent, had major birth defects, compared to 12 of 580 pregnancies, or 2 percent, in women who did not take the drug. Birth defects due to chromosomal abnormalities were not included in these results.

The major birth defects included heart defects and structural problems with the central nervous system (CNS) or other organs. The women taking pregabalin were six times more likely to have a pregnancy with a major defect in the central nervous system than women who were not taking the drug, with four CNS defects out of 125 pregnancies, or 3.2 percent, compared to three CNS defects out of 570 pregnancies, or 0.5 percent.

Of the women taking pregabalin, 115 were taking it to treat neuropathic pain, 39 were taking it for psychiatric disorders, including depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and psychosis, five were taking it for epilepsy and one was taking it for restless leg syndrome.

A total of 77 percent of the women started taking pregabalin before they became pregnant. The women in the study stopped taking the drug at an average of six weeks into their pregnancies. Of the women taking pregabalin, 22, or 13 percent, were also taking another anti-seizure drug.

"We can't draw any definitive conclusions from this study, since many of the women were taking other drugs that could have played a role in the birth defects and because the study was small and the results need to be confirmed with larger studies, but these results do signal that there may be an increased risk for major birth defects after taking pregabalin during the first trimester of pregnancy," said study author Ursula Winterfeld, PhD, of the Swiss Teratogen Information Service and Lausanne University Hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Winterfeld said, "Pregabalin should be prescribed for women of child-bearing age only after making sure that the benefits of the drug outweigh the risks and after counseling them about using effective birth control. In cases where women have taken pregabalin during pregnancy, extra fetal monitoring may be warranted."

Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by American Academy of Neurology (AAN). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:
Ursula Winterfeld, Paul Merlob, David Baud, Valentin Rousson, Alice Panchaud, Laura E. Rothuizen, Nathalie Bernard, Thierry Vial, Laura M. Yates, Alessandra Pistelli, Maria Ellfolk, Georgios Eleftheriou, Loes C. de Vries, Annie-Pierre Jonville-Bera, Mine Kadioglu, Jerome Biollaz, and Thierry Buclin. Pregnancy outcome following maternal exposure to pregabalin may call for concern. Neurology, May 2016 DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000002767

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160518170014.htm

SPICY FOOD FOR A LONGER LIFE

This is an observational study so no definitive conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect, but the authors call for more research that may "lead to updated dietary recommendations and development of functional foods."

Previous research has suggested that beneficial effects of spices and their bioactive ingredient, capsaicin, include anti-obesity, antioxidant, anti-inflammation and anticancer properties.

So an international team led by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences examined the association between consumption of spicy foods as part of a daily diet and the total risk and causes of death.

They undertook a prospective study of 487,375 participants, aged 30-79 years, from the China Kadoorie Biobank. Participants were enrolled between 2004-2008 and followed up for morbidities and mortality.

All participants completed a questionnaire about their general health, physical measurements, and consumption of spicy foods, and red meat, vegetable and alcohol.

Participants with a history of cancer, heart disease, and stroke were excluded from the study, and factors such as age, marital status, level of education, and physical activity were accounted for.

During a median follow-up of 7.2 years, there were 20,224 deaths.

Compared with participants who ate spicy foods less than once a week, those who consumed spicy foods 1 or 2 days a week were at a 10% reduced risk of death (hazard ratios for death was 0.90). And those who ate spicy foods 3 to 5 and 6 or 7 days a week were at a 14% reduced risk of death (hazard ratios for death 0.86, and 0.86 respectively).*

In other words, participants who ate spicy foods almost every day had a relative 14% lower risk of death compared to those who consumed spicy foods less than once a week.

The association was similar in both men and women, and was stronger in those who did not consume alcohol.

Frequent consumption of spicy foods was also linked to a lower risk of death from cancer, and ischaemic heart and respiratory system diseases, and this was more evident in women than men.

Fresh and dried chilli peppers were the most commonly used spices in those who reported eating spicy foods weekly, and further analysis showed those who consumed fresh chilli tended to have a lower risk of death from cancer, ischaemic heart disease, and diabetes.

Some of the bioactive ingredients are likely to drive this association, the authors explain, adding that fresh chilli is richer in capsaicin, vitamin C, and other nutrients. But they caution against linking any of these with lowering the risk of death.

Should people eat spicy food to improve health? In an accompanying editorial, Nita Forouhi from the University of Cambridge says it is too early to tell, and calls for more research to test whether these associations are the direct result of spicy food intake or whether this is a marker for other dietary or lifestyle factors.

* A hazard ratio is a measure of how often a particular event happens in one group compared to how often it happens in another group, over time.