Category Health/Medical

Predicted mean values of YAL, YoL, and YAL/YoL% from statistical models that prespecified values of healthy and unhealthy lifestyles. At comparable values of sociodemographic factors, a healthy lifestyle differed considerably from an unhealthy lifestyle in terms of YAL, YoL, disabled years, and YAL/YoL% and was associated with an absolute and relative compression of the disabled period in all race and sex groups.

New research published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society indicates that a healthy lifestyle may help reduce the duration of an individual’s disabled period near the end of life. In the community-based study of 5248 older adults recruited at an average age of 73 and followed for 25 years, the average number of disabled years was ~2.9 for men and 4.5 for women.

Multi...

Neurons in the zona incerta expressing Lhx6 are shown in green. Cells in this region that are activated during sleep express c-fos and are shown in red. Credit: Seth Blackshaw, Ph.D

Researchers find new sleep-promoting cells. Johns Hopkins researchers report the unexpected presence of a type of neuron in the brains of mice that appears to play a central role in promoting sleep by turning ‘off’ wake-promoting neurons. The newly identified brain cells, located in a part of the hypothalamus called the zona incerta, could offer novel drug targets to treat sleep disorders, such as insomnia and narcolepsy, caused by the dysfunction of sleep-regulating neurons.

A summary of the research describes neurons that express a gene called Lhx6...

Brian J. O’Roak, Ph.D., assistant professor of molecular and medical genetics, OHSU, January 4, 2017. Credit: OHSU/John Valls

Autism spectrum disorder affects ~1 out of every 68 children in the US. Despite expansive study, the origin and risk factors of the complex condition are not fully understood. To better understand the root causes, an team led by researchers at OHSU in Portland, Oregon has applied a new systematic analysis to a cohort of 2,300 families who have a single child affected with autism. The study focused on identifying and characterizing low-lying genetic mutations that may have been missed in previous research, given these mutations are only present in a fraction of the bulk DNA of an individual.

Known as postzygotic mosaic mutations, or PMMs, these genetic changes occur ...

Asthma medicine has positive side effects, a study from the University of Bergen shows. Copyright: Colourbox

Using data gathered from 100 million Norwegian prescriptions, researchers have found that asthma medicine can halve a patient’s risk of developing Parkinson´s disease. Researchers at the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care (IGS) at the University of Bergen (UiB) have completed a large study that included data from the Norwegian Prescription Database, in cooperation with researchers at Harvard University.

“Our analysis of data from the whole Norwegian population has been decisive for the conclusion in this study,” says Professor Trond Riise at IGS. He leads the registery study in Norway...