MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
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Dr. Donata Vercelli[/caption]
Donata Vercelli, MD
Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of Arizona
Director, Arizona Center for the Biology of Complex Diseases
Associate Director, Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center
The BIO5 Institute
Tucson, AZ 85721
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: By probing the differences between two farming communities—the Amish of Indiana and the Hutterites of South Dakota—our interdisciplinary team (which included, among others, Erika von Mutius from Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Carole Ober and Anne Sperling from the University of Chicago, and myself) found that substances in the house dust from Amish, but not Hutterite, homes shape the innate immune system in ways that may prevent the development of allergic asthma.
Growing up in a microbe-rich farm environment has been known to protect against asthma. Our current study extends these findings by showing that in both humans and mice protection requires engagement of the innate immune system.
The Amish and Hutterite farming communities in the United States, founded by immigrants from Central Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, provide textbook opportunities for comparative studies. The Amish and the Hutterites have similar genetic ancestry and share lifestyles (e.g., family size, diet, lack of exposure to indoor pets) known to affect asthma risk. However, their farming practices differ. The Amish have retained traditional methods, live on single-family dairy farms and rely on horses for fieldwork and transportation. In contrast, the Hutterites live on large communal farms and use modern, industrialized farm machinery. This distances young Hutterite children from the constant daily exposure to farm animals.
Dr. Gang Hu[/caption]
Dr. Gang Hu, Associate Professor
LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center & Director
Chronic Disease Epidemiology Lab
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Some studies have found that maternal gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) places offspring at increased risk of long-term adverse outcomes, including obesity. However, most of studies are from high income countries, with limited data from low to middle income countries. The present study, conducted at urban and suburban sites in 12 countries, found that the increased risk for children of GDM mothers compared with non-gestational diabetes mellitus mothers was 53% for obesity, 73% for central obesity, and 42% for high body fat.
Dr. Lu Qi[/caption]
Lu Qi, MD, PhD, FAHA
HCA Regents Distinguished Chair and Professor
Director, Tulane University Obesity Research Center
Department of Epidemiology
Tulane University
School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine
New Orleans, LA 70112
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Prenatal malnutrition and other stresses may cause small newborn babies, who are more likely develop type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases during adulthood. However, whether such relation is causal remains to be determined. Genetic associations provide a new approach to provide evidence for such causality.
Dr. Mima Becevic[/caption]
Mirna Becevic, PhD, MHA
Assistant Research Professor
University of Missouri - Department of Dermatology
Missouri Telehealth Network
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Psychiatry is, by far, the biggest utilizer of telemedicine services on the Missouri Telehealth Network (MTN). MTN supports an average of 4000 tele-psychiatry appointments every month, and 10% of those are provided by the University of Missouri Department of Psychiatry. Since we are all aware of the ever-increasing demand for child and adolescent psychiatry, but also the stigma that goes along with it, we wanted to examine more closely the actual usage of those services at the University of Missouri.
Dr. Guang Yang[/caption]
Guang Yang, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
NYU Langone School of Medicine
Alexandria Center for Life Sciences
New York, NY 10016
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? How common is the problem of long-lasting behavioral deficits after repeated anesthesia exposure in neonates?
Response: Each year, in the United States alone, more than 1 million children under 4 years of age undergo surgical procedures that require anesthesia. Many lines of evidence from animal studies have shown that prolonged or repeated exposure to general anesthesia during critical stages of brain development leads to long-lasting behavioral deficits later in life. The results from human studies are less clear, although some studies suggest a higher incidence of learning disabilities and attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorders in children repeatedly exposed to procedures requiring general anesthesia. To date, there has been no effective treatment to mitigate the potential neurotoxic effects of general anesthesia.
Dr. Annika Rosengren[/caption]
Annika Rosengren MD
Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, Institute of Medicine
Sahlgrenska Academy
University of Gothenburg,
Gothenburg, Sweden
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: In an earlier study we found that while hospitalizations for heart failure decreased among people aged 55 and older in Sweden 1987-2006, there was a clear increase among those younger than 45 years, particularly in young men. We thought that increasing body weight in the population might be a factor behind this.
We used anonymized data from more than 1.6 million Swedish men from the Swedish conscript registry aged on average 18 and followed them from adolescence onwards. Those who were overweight as teenagers were markedly more likely to develop heart failure in early middle age. The increased risk of heart failure was found already in men who were within the normal body weight range (a body mass index of 18.5 to 25) in adolescence, with an increased risk starting in those with a BMI of 20 and rising steeply to a nearly ten-fold increased risk in those who were very obese, with a BMI of 35 or over.
Among men with a BMI of 20 and over, the risk of heart failure increased by 16% with every BMI unit, after adjustments for factors that could affect the findings, such as age, year of enlistment into the Swedish armed forces, other diseases, parental education, blood pressure, IQ, muscle strength and fitness.
Dr. Luca Passamonti[/caption]
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Luca Passamonti MD
Department of Clinical Neurosciences
University of Cambridge
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Dr. Passamonti: We wanted to study if the brain of young people with two different forms of conduct disorder (CD) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conduct_disorder), a neuropsychiatric disease associated with severe and persistent antisocial behaviors (weapon use, aggression, fire-setting, stealing, fraudulent behavior), was different from that of young peers with no such abnormal behaviors.
There is already evidence that conduct disorder may have a biological basis (i.e., reduced levels of cortisol under stress) and brain alterations but a whole “map” of the brain in conduct disorder studying cortical thickness was never been done before.