The Strident Centrist Blog

A piece in Science Daily describes a study in which a drug approved by the FDA for other purposes was administered to Alzheimer’s disease patients with startling results:

The authors hypothesized that elevated levels of TNF in Alzheimer’s disease interfere with this regulation [of neural impulses in the brain]. To reduce elevated TNF, the authors gave patients an injection of an anti-TNF therapeutic called etanercept. Excess TNF-alpha has been documented in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with Alzheimer’s. . . The new study documents a dramatic and unprecedented therapeutic effect in an Alzheimer’s patient: improvement within minutes following delivery of perispinal etanercept, which is etanercept given by injection in the spine. Etanercept (trade name Enbrel) binds and inactivates excess TNF. Etanercept is FDA approved to treat a number of immune-mediated disorders and is used off label in the study.

. . .

“It is unprecedented that we can see cognitive and behavioral improvement in a patient with established dementia within minutes of therapeutic intervention,” said [Dr. Sue] Griffin [director of research at the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS)]. “It is imperative that the medical and scientific communities immediately undertake to further investigate and characterize the physiologic mechanisms involved. This gives all of us in Alzheimer’s research a tremendous new clue about new avenues of research, which is so exciting and so needed in the field of Alzheimer’s. Even though this report predominantly discusses a single patient, it is of significant scientific interest because of the potential insight it may give into the processes involved in the brain dysfunction of Alzheimer’s.”

This is a development to watch.

To thoughts of chocolate, that is. At least according to the researchers whose work is described in this Science Daily piece.

The results indicated that there is a clear behavioural rebound among both male and female participants and both males and females who suppressed thoughts of chocolate ate significantly more than those in the control condition. Secondly, for males, actively thinking about chocolate can enhance subsequent consumption of that food.

When you click on an article thumb-nailed on the home page of the Science Daily website, in addition to the piece desired you get links to past articles that their algorithms calculate that you’re likely to be interested in as well. Today I selected a recent article on why the Indian subcontinent collided with the Eurasian land mass at the relatively high speed of 20 cm per year that brought up this link to a six year old piece about the genetics behind the caste system. The opening sentence pretty much sums it up:

In India, members of higher ranking castes are genetically more similar to Europeans, while lower castes are more similar to Asians, according to a study published in this month’s issue of Genome Research.

As for the subcontinent’s ‘lightening’ speed, that’s caused by the fact that it sits on the thinnest layer of lithosphere science knows of.

According to a piece in Science Daily, I haven’t been doing my part to promote human longevity:

It turns out that older men chasing younger women contributes to human longevity and the survival of the species, according to new findings by researchers at Stanford and the University of California-Santa Barbara.

My wife tells me she’s like to have a word with the authors.

After two years, accounts of what it was like in New Orleans during Katrina can still leave me with nothing to say. This week Dr. Anna Pou, the head and neck cancer surgeon who was arrested at the behest of the Louisiana attorney general but whom the grand jury refused to indict, tells her side of the story in an interview in Newsweek. Here’s an excerpt:

Tuesday night, we lost generator power, and that changed things a lot. ‘Til then we were on generator power so we did have some lights, and we did have some water. Water wasn’t clean, but it was running. But then we didn’t have water, we didn’t have any electricity, commodes were backing up everywhere. Conditions in the hospital started to deteriorate Tuesday night and early Wednesday.

. . .

By the time Wednesday evening came around, if you can imagine in our mind, there is a central area that is a sea of people. A lot of very sick patients in that central triage area. It’s grossly backed up. Few patients had been evacuated. So there was just enough space to walk between the stretchers. It is extremely dark. We’re having to care for patients by flashlight. There were patients that were moaning, patients that are crying. We’re trying to cool them off. We had some dirty water we could use, some ice. We were sponging them down, giving them sips of bottled water, those who could drink. The heat was—there is no way to describe that heat. I was in it and I can’t believe how hot it was. There are people fanning patients with cardboard, nurses everywhere, a few doctors and wall-to-wall patients. Patients are so frightened and we’re saying prayers with them. We kind of looked around at each other and said, “You know there’s not a whole lot we can really do for those people.” We’re waiting [for help]. The people in that area could have [been evacuated] by boat but no boats were coming. I would do what I could with the nurses: changing diapers, cooling patients down with fanning. It wasn’t like, “I’m a doctor, you’re a nurse.” We were all human beings trying to help another human being, whatever it took.

. . .

Let me tell you, for a patient to be triaged—typical triage isn’t that difficult. Reverse triage is heart wrenching. Absolutely heart wrenching. You place patients into categories. With boats coming and going we could evacuate patients who could sit. There were elderly couples—how do you make that decision who can go when one was sick and the spouse wasn’t? Do you let elderly couples go together as husband and wife? Some of these couples had been married 50 years.

. . .

I was tired but I was more in total disbelief that the sick and the poor could be abandoned the way that they were in the United States of America. I never thought I would ever live to see that day. I was sad, heartbroken, kind of amazed and shocked at the lack of organization—the fact that there was no type of coordination. I have friends who practice in the third world and this was less than third world.

From the New England Journal of Medicine:

Since he was adopted by staff members as a kitten, Oscar the Cat has had an uncanny ability to predict when residents are about to die. Thus far, he has presided over the deaths of more than 25 residents on the third floor of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families. Oscar has also provided companionship to those who would otherwise have died alone.

Here’s the title of a piece on Science Daily: “Molecular Biologists Convert Protein Sequences Into Classical Music.” Apparently it’s not a joke, considering we’re now almost seven weeks past the Day of Spoofs. The research was done by an undergraduate student at UCLA who is also a pianist. From the article it’s not clear to me what the benefit is beyond pure intellectual curiosity and fun. Keep an eye on this come the time for the awarding of the Ig Nobel Prizes.

Michael Sandel of Harvard has an insightful Op Ed in the Sunday Boston Globe about the moral issues behind the stem cell research debate:

The moral oddness of the Bush “don’t fund, don’t ban” position confused even his spokesman, Tony Snow. Last year, Snow told the White House press corps that the president vetoed the stem cell bill because he considered embryonic stem cell research to be “murder,” something the federal government should not support. When the comment drew a flurry of critical press attention, the White House retreated. No, the president did not believe that destroying an embryo was murder. The press secretary retracted his statement, and apologized for having “overstated the president’s position.”

How exactly the spokesman had overstated the president’s position is unclear. If embryonic stem cell research does constitute the deliberate taking of innocent human life, it is hard to see how it differs from murder. The chastened press secretary made no attempt to parse the distinction. His errant statement that the president considered embryo destruction to be “murder” simply followed the moral logic of the notion that embryos are human beings. It was a gaffe only because the Bush policy does not follow that logic.

Since when has logic had anything to do with any policy initiative of this administration?

Some principled right-to-life opponents of stem cell research meet this test of moral consistency. Bush’s “don’t fund, don’t ban” policy does not. Those who fail to take seriously the belief that embryos are persons miss this point. Rather than simply complain that the president’s stem cell policy allows religion to trump science, critics should ask why the president does not pursue the full implications of the principle he invokes.

If he does not want to ban embryonic stem cell research, or prosecute stem cell scientists for murder, or ban fertility clinics from creating and discarding excess embryos, this must mean that he does not really consider human embryos as morally equivalent to fully developed human beings after all.

But if he doesn’t believe that embryos are persons, then why ban federally funded embryonic stem cell research that holds promise for curing diseases and saving lives?

Shelly Batts at Retrospectacle points us to the Beer Microscopy Project at Florida State. Was The Onion story true, that FSU is bowing to pressure from alumni and students and has begun phasing out all academic operations?

Via Science Daily comes this piece on Canadian research that indicates that regarding people who are diagnosed with varying kinds of dementia, fluently bilingual people descend into the condition an average of four years later than monolinguals.

In this present study, researchers set out to answer that question by examining the diagnostic records of 184 patients who came to Baycrest’s Sam and Ida Ross Memory Clinic between 2002 and 2005 with cognitive complaints. Of that group, 91 were monolingual and 93 were bilingual. The bilinguals included speakers of 25 different languages, the most prevalent being Polish, Yiddish, German, Romanian and Hungarian.

Researchers found that 132 patients met criteria for probable Alzheimer’s; the remaining 52 were diagnosed with other dementias. Patient data included Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores (a measure of general cognitive functioning), years of education and occupation. The MMSE scores were equivalent for the monolingual and bilingual groups at their initial visit to the clinic, indicating comparable levels of impairment. The age of onset of cognitive impairment was determined by the interviewing neurologist at the first clinic visit who asked patients and their families or caregivers when symptoms were first noticed.

The researchers determined that the mean age of onset of dementia symptoms in the monolingual group was 71.4 years, while the bilingual group was 75.5 years. This difference remained even after considering the possible effect of cultural differences, immigration, formal education, employment and even gender as influencers in the results.