How much a person believes in the strength of a drug might influence how powerfully that drug influences brain activity, a new study has found. Smokers told to expect a low, medium or high dose of nicotine from an e-cigarette showed a brain response that tracked with the purported dose, even though nicotine levels were actually constant, researchers said.  “We set out to investigate if human beliefs can modulate brain activities in a dose-dependent manner similar to what drugs do, and found a high level of precision in how beliefs can influence the human brain,” said senior researcher Xiaosi Gu. She’s an associate professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City. For the study, Gu and her team recruited a group of people hooked on nicotine and had them puff on an e-cigarette, after telling them how powerful a nicotine dose they should expect. The participants then underwent brain scans while performing a decision-making task known to engage parts of the brain affected by nicotine. “Beliefs can have a powerful influence on our behavior, yet their effects are considered imprecise and rarely examined by quantitative neuroscience methods,” Gu noted in a Mount Sinai news release. The thalamus — an important binding site for nicotine in the brain — showed a dose-dependent response to each person’s…  read on >  read on >

An electrical zap to the brain can temporarily render a person more susceptible to hypnosis, a new study shows. Participants became more easily hypnotized after paddles placed against their scalp delivered two 46-second rounds of electrical pulses to a precise location in their brain, researchers reported Jan. 4 in the journal Nature Mental Health. This increase in their susceptibility to hypnosis lasted for about an hour, results show. These findings could make hypnotherapy a viable treatment for people who otherwise couldn’t be deeply tranced, the researchers said. “We know hypnosis is an effective treatment for many different symptoms and disorders, in particular pain,” said lead researcher Afik Faerman, a postdoctoral scholar in psychiatry at Stanford Medicine. “But we also know that not everyone benefits equally from hypnosis.” About two-thirds of adults are at least somewhat prone to hypnosis, and 15% are considered highly hypnotizable, researchers said in background notes. “Hypnosis is a state of highly focused attention, and higher hypnotizability improves the odds of your doing better with techniques using hypnosis,” senior researcher Dr. David Spiegel, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, said in a university news release. Spiegel has studied hypnotherapy for decades, using it to help patients control pain, lower stress and stop smoking. Up to now, hypnotizability has seemed to be a stable trait in people that changes little…  read on >  read on >

Some people might be prone to low back pain because of specific cells contained in their spinal disks, a new study suggests. The research could explain why only certain people develop back pain due to the degeneration of their spinal discs, which are jelly-filled spacers that act as shock absorbers between the small bones of the vertebrae. “We’ve identified for the first time particular cells that could be the key to understanding disk pain,” said senior study author Dmitriy Sheyn, a research scientist in the Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “Learning more about how these cells work could lead to the eventual discovery of new treatment options,” Sheyn added in a Cedars Sinai news release. About 40% of adults experience low back pain due to degenerating disks in the spine, but up to now it’s not been clear exactly why the disks become painful. The jelly in spinal disks tends to dry out and degenerate as people age, but that doesn’t automatically trigger back pain, the researchers noted. “This is because the inner jelly-like layers of the disks contain no nerve endings,” Sheyn said. “But sometimes, when disks degenerate, nerve endings from the surrounding tissues invade the disk, and we believe this causes pain.” For this study, researchers first compared spinal disks from patients with low back…  read on >  read on >

Glaucoma can steal your sight before you even realize it, and early diagnosis is the best way to prevent it. Many of the 3 million Americans who have glaucoma are unaware of it because they have no symptoms, according to the Glaucoma Foundation. In glaucoma, a buildup of fluid in the front part of the eye increases pressure and damages the optic nerve. Here are seven key facts to know about glaucoma:  Most forms of the disease have no symptoms and vision changes don’t happen right away. Once eyesight is lost, the damage is permanent Glaucoma can strike at any stage of life, not just in old age. In fact, about 1 baby in 10,000 is born with the condition While family history is a risk factor, just because your family doesn’t have glaucoma doesn’t make you risk-free. Everyone in the family should be tested if there’s a family history Black folks are six times more likely to have glaucoma than white Americans, and it starts years earlier, often with greater loss of vision. Asian people are also at high risk and glaucoma is more common among Hispanic Americans than once believed Elevated pressure inside the eye is a risk factor for glaucoma, not the disease itself. In some of the more than 40 forms of glaucoma, elevated eye pressure is not involved. The common…  read on >  read on >

A diet supplement derived from citrus fruits reduced swelling and pain after knee replacement surgery, a new clinical trial found. The flavonoid supplement, diosmin, could offer a new approach to painful swelling after the procedure, according to a team led by Dr. Pengde Kang of Sichuan University in Chengdu, China.  “Postoperative lower-extremity swelling is a major hindrance to the enhanced recovery of patients” after knee replacement, the researchers wrote recently in The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.  Various strategies, including rest, cold packs and compressive bandages, have had mixed success. And no medications are available to reduce post-operative swelling, the researchers noted. Diosmin — which is often combined with a related flavonoid called hesperidin — is used to reduce swelling in limbs of patients with disorders of the blood vessels. It is not approved as a prescription medication in the United States or Europe, but the researchers noted that experience suggests it is well-tolerated.  For the study, the team looked at 330 patients who had total knee replacement at 13 university-affiliated hospitals. They were randomly assigned to a treatment group that received a 14-day course of diosmin after surgery or to a control group that received no treatment. Both groups received standard pain medication.  Swelling at specific spots was measured four times after surgery and compared between the two groups. Pain scores, knee function,…  read on >  read on >

Seniors with vision issues are at much higher risk for dangerous falls, new research confirms. Compared to seniors with good vision, the odds for a fall rose by 38% for seniors with glaucoma, 36% for those with cataracts and 25% for seniors with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), say a team reporting Dec. 28 in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology. Worldwide, over 650,000 people lose their lives to falls each year, the research team noted, and falls can be especially deadly for the frail elderly. In the United States, medical costs for falls top more than $23 billion annually. Impaired vision is an obvious risk factor for falling, and a team at the University of Manchester in the U.K. wanted to quantify that risk. They looked at data on vision health, falls and fractures from a national British database on over 410,000 people. Participants were typically in their 70s at the time of the study. Besides the increased risk of falls associated with various vision ailments, the study also found a rise in risk for bone fractures. Compared to their peers with good vision, folks with glaucoma had a 31% higher odds for a fracture, those with cataracts had a 28% increased risk and people with AMD faced an 18% higher risk, the Manchester group found. Injuries included fractures of the hip, spine, forearm, skull or facial…  read on >  read on >

A new cellular therapy improved learning and memory in mice with Alzheimer’s disease, researchers report. The therapy — developed at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) — relies on both the immune system to fight key aspects of Alzheimer’s, plus modified cells that zero in on the brain protein plaques that are a hallmark of the disease.  In patients with Alzheimer’s, amyloid-beta protein forms plaques that prevent nerve cells from signaling each other. One theory is that this might cause irreversible memory loss and behavior changes characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease. The new study was recently published in the journal Molecular Neurodegeneration. Researchers used genetically modified immune-controlling cells called Tregs to target amyloid-beta.  When the UNMC team injected the modified Treg cells into the bloodstreams of mice, buildup of plaque and brain inflammation slowed. Thinking skills also appeared to improve in the diseased mice. While the results of animal studies often turn out differently in humans, researchers were encouraged by the findings. “The study is an important development in the field that advances the possibility of using cell-based therapies for targeting protein aggregates in neurodegenerative diseases,” said senior investigator Dr. Avindra Nath, of the National Institutes of Health, which funded the study. Researchers said the engineered immune cells could offer a targeted and more effective treatment for Alzheimer’s, a disease affecting an estimated 6.7 million…  read on >  read on >