Why hospitals will soon sequence the genes of every single patient
Great, timely post courtesy of VentureBeat.com
MRI technique shows how energy drinks alter heart function
>>
Long-term effects?
While Dörner and colleagues concluded that energy drinks have a short-term effect on cardiac contractility, they do not know exactly how or if this greater contractility affects daily activities or athletic performance. Also unknown is the degree to which consumption may lead to an adverse cardiac event, such as a heart attack or arrhythmia.
“We cannot say if there is a risk for people with known heart disease, but that is a good question to answer in further investigations,” Dörner said. “Because cardiac disease is not that obvious in people drinking energy drinks in high amounts — and maybe in combination with alcohol or drugs — it may be possible to have arrhythmia that can be harmful. We don’t know that yet because all our subjects were healthy, with no known heart disease, and the dosages were very low.”
Dörner and colleagues plan to continue their research with extended timelines to see how long the effects of energy drink consumption may last.
“It is already known that caffeine concentration can last four to six hours,” Dörner said. “Taurine is different; it depends on the metabolism of each subject. So it’s hard to say how long the energy drink effects may last.”
In the meantime, the researchers recommend that children and people with known cardiac arrhythmias avoid energy drinks, given that changes in contractility could trigger arrhythmias.
They also advocate additional research to assess the potential risks of consuming energy drinks with alcohol.
<<
via Radiology, News, Education, Service.
Nature Neuroscience
Using olfactory molecular specificity, we examined the inheritance of parental traumatic exposure, a phenomenon that has been frequently observed, but not understood. We subjected F0 mice to odor fear conditioning before conception and found that subsequently conceived F1 and F2 generations had an increased behavioral sensitivity to the F0-conditioned odor, but not to other odors. When an odor (acetophenone) that activates a known odorant receptor (Olfr151) was used to condition F0 mice, the behavioral sensitivity of the F1 and F2 generations to acetophenone was complemented by an enhanced neuroanatomical representation of the Olfr151 pathway. Bisulfite sequencing of sperm DNA from conditioned F0 males and F1 naive offspring revealed CpG hypomethylation in the Olfr151 gene. In addition, in vitro fertilization, F2 inheritance and cross-fostering revealed that these transgenerational effects are inherited via parental gametes. Our findings provide a framework for addressing how environmental information may be inherited transgenerationally at behavioral, neuroanatomical and epigenetic levels.
Love that blog.
Medicare currently reimburses physicians the equivalent of about 1/3 of the annual cost of cable TV for the typical patient with multiple medical problems. Is this a case of being truly too expensive for a $650 Billion per year Medicare program that pays physicians to care for complex elderly medical patients far less than what most Americans pay for cable TV? Seriously?
Only in this wacky system of ours is something as critical as health care expected to be squeezed into a 10-15 minute office visit.
Maurice Preter, MD is a European and U.S. educated psychiatrist, psychotherapist, psychopharmacologist, neurologist, and medical-legal expert in private practice in Manhattan. He is also the principal of Fifth Avenue Concierge Medicine, PLLC, a medical concierge service and health advisory for select individuals and families.
We pride ourselves in providing exceptional quality of care, access, comfort and privacy to our patients.