Hot temper may increase your risks to heart attacks

Having a hot temper may increase your risk of having a heart attack or stroke, according to researchers.

Rage often precedes an attack and may be the trigger, say the US researchers who trawled medical literature.
They identified a dangerous period of about two hours following an outburst when people were at heightened risk.
But they say more work is needed to understand the link and find out if stress-busting strategies could avoid such complications.

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It's not clear what causes this effect. It may be linked to the physiological changes that anger causes to our bodies, but more research is needed to explore the biology behind this”

Doireann Maddock British Heart Foundation

People who have existing risk factors, such as a history of heart disease, are particularly susceptible, they told the European Heart Journal.

In the two hours immediately after an angry outburst, risk of a heart attack increased nearly five-fold and risk of stroke increased more than three-fold, the data from nine studies and involving thousands of people suggests.
The Harvard School of Public Health researchers say, at a population level, the risk with a single outburst of anger is relatively low - one extra heart attack per 10,000 people per year could be expected among people with low cardiovascular risk who were angry only once a month, increasing to an extra four per 10,000 people with a high cardiovascular risk.
But the risk is cumulative, meaning temper-prone individuals will be at higher risk still.
Five episodes of anger a day would result in around 158 extra heart attacks per 10,000 people with a low cardiovascular risk per year, increasing to about 657 extra heart attacks per 10,000 among those with a high cardiovascular risk, Dr Elizabeth Mostofsky and colleagues calculate.

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Preventing problems

• Eat healthily
• Exercise regularly
• Keep a healthy weight
• Give up smoking
• Don't drink too much alcohol
• Take medications prescribed for you

Dr Mostofsky said: "Although the risk of experiencing an acute cardiovascular event with any single outburst of anger is relatively low, the risk can accumulate for people with frequent episodes of anger."

It's unclear why anger might be dangerous - the researchers point out that their results do not necessarily indicate that anger causes heart and circulatory problems.
Experts know that chronic stress can contribute to heart disease, partly because it can raise blood pressure but also because people may deal with stress in unhealthy ways - by smoking or drinking too much alcohol, for example.
The researchers say it is worth testing what protection stress-busting strategies, such as yoga, might offer.
Doireann Maddock, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "It's not clear what causes this effect. It may be linked to the physiological changes that anger causes to our bodies, but more research is needed to explore the biology behind this.
"The way you cope with anger and stress is also important. Learning how to relax can help you move on from high-pressure situations. Many people find that physical activity can help to let off steam after a stressful day.
"If you think you are experiencing harmful levels of stress or frequent anger outbursts talk to your GP."
Story source http://www.bbc.com/news/health-26416153

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Biggest ancient virus 'comes back to life'

An ancient virus has come back to life after lying dormant for at least 30,000 years, scientists say.

It was found frozen in a deep layer of the Siberian permafrost, but after it thawed it became infectious once again.
The French scientists say the contagion poses no danger to humans or animals, but other viruses could be unleashed as the ground becomes exposed.
The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Professor Jean-Michel Claverie, from the National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS) at the University of Aix-Marseille in France, said: "This is the first time we've seen a virus that's still infectious after this length of time."
Biggest virus
The ancient pathogen was discovered buried 30m (100ft) down in the frozen ground.
Called Pithovirus sibericum, it belongs to a class of giant viruses that were discovered 10 years ago.

The virus infects amoebas but does not attack human or animal cells

These are all so large that, unlike other viruses, they can be seen under a microscope. And this one, measuring 1.5 micrometres in length, is the biggest that has ever been found.
The last time it infected anything was more than 30,000 years ago, but in the laboratory it has sprung to life once again.
Tests show that it attacks amoebas, which are single-celled organisms, but does not infect humans or other animals.
Co-author Dr Chantal Abergel, also from the CNRS, said: "It comes into the cell, multiplies and finally kills the cell. It is able to kill the amoeba - but it won't infect a human cell."
However, the researchers believe that other more deadly pathogens could be locked in Siberia's permafrost.
"We are addressing this issue by sequencing the DNA that is present in those layers," said Dr Abergel.
"This would be the best way to work out what is dangerous in there."
'Recipe for disaster'
The researchers say this region is under threat. Since the 1970s, the permafrost has retreated and reduced in thickness, and climate change projections suggest it will decrease further.
It has also become more accessible, and is being eyed for its natural resources.

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Finding a virus still capable of infecting its host after such a long time is still pretty astounding”

Prof Jonathan Ball University of Nottingham

Prof Claverie warns that exposing the deep layers could expose new viral threats.

He said: "It is a recipe for disaster. If you start having industrial explorations, people will start to move around the deep permafrost layers. Through mining and drilling, those old layers will be penetrated and this is where the danger is coming from."
He told BBC News that ancient strains of the smallpox virus, which was declared eradicated 30 years ago, could pose a risk.
"If it is true that these viruses survive in the same way those amoeba viruses survive, then smallpox is not eradicated from the planet - only the surface," he said.
"By going deeper we may reactivate the possibility that smallpox could become again a disease of humans in modern times."
However, it is not yet clear whether all viruses could become active again after being frozen for thousands or even millions of years.
"That's the six million dollar question," said Professor Jonathan Ball, a virologist from the University of Nottingham, who was commenting on the research.
"Finding a virus still capable of infecting its host after such a long time is still pretty astounding - but just how long other viruses could remain viable in permafrost is anyone's guess. It will depend a lot on the actual virus. I doubt they are all as robust as this one."
He added: "We freeze viruses in the laboratory to preserve them for the future. If they have a lipid envelope - like flu or HIV, for example - then they are a bit more fragile, but the viruses with an external protein shell - like foot and mouth and common cold viruses - survive better.
"But it's the freezing-thawing that poses the problems, because as the ice forms then melts there's a physical damaging effect. If they do survive this, then they need to find a host to infect and they need to find them pretty fast."
From: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26387276

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Childhood Nightmares Warning for Psychotic Disorders:

Regular nightmares in childhood may be an early warning sign of psychotic disorders, researchers in the UK warn.

The study, in the journal Sleep, said most children had nightmares, but persistent ones may be a sign of something more serious.
Having night terrors - screaming and thrashing limbs while asleep - also heightened the risk.
The charity YoungMinds said it was an important study which may help people detect early signs of mental illness.
Nearly 6,800 people were followed up to the age of 12.
Parents were regularly asked about any sleep problems in their children and at the end of the study the children were assessed for psychotic experiences such as hallucinations, delusions and thinking their thoughts were being controlled.

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Nightmares are relatively common, as are night terrors, it is quite normal, but if they persist then there may be something more serious about it"”

Prof Dieter Wolke University of Warwick

The study showed that the majority of children had nightmares at some point, but in 37% of cases, parents reported problems with nightmares for several years in succession.

One in 10 of the children had night terrors, generally between the ages of three and seven.
Warning light The team at the University of Warwick said a long-term problem with nightmares and terrors was linked to a higher risk of mental health problems later.
Around 47 in every 1,000 children has some form of psychotic experience.
However, those having nightmares aged 12 were three-and-a-half times more likely to have problems and the risk was nearly doubled by regular night terrors.
One of the researchers, Prof Dieter Wolke, told the BBC: "Nightmares are relatively common, as are night terrors, it is quite normal, but if they persist then there may be something more serious about it."
The relationship between sleep problems and psychosis is not clear.
One theory is that bullying or other traumatic events early in life can cause both symptoms.
Or the way some children's brains are wired means the boundaries between what is real and unreal, or sleeping and wakefulness, are less distinct.
It means treating the sleep issues may not prevent psychotic events.
However, nightmares may act as an early warning sign of future, more serious, problems.
Prof Wolke said a regular routine and quality sleep were key to tackling nightmares: "Sleep hygiene is very important, they should have more regular sleep, avoid anxiety-promoting films before bed and not have a computer at night."
Night terrors occur at specific points during sleep and can be managed by briefly waking the child.
Lucie Russell, the director of campaigns at YoungMinds, said: "This is a very important study because anything that we can do to promote early identification of signs of mental illness is vital to help the thousands of children that suffer.
"Early intervention is crucial to help avoid children suffering entrenched mental illness when they reach adulthood."
FROM: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-26385274

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4 women with new ransplanted wombs are trying to get pregnant:

LONDON (AP) — A Swedish doctor says four Swedish women who received transplanted wombs have had embryos transferred into them in an attempt to get pregnant.
Since 2012, nine women have received wombs donated by relatives in an experimental procedure designed to test whether it's possible to transfer a uterus into a woman so she can give birth to her own child. The women had in-vitro fertilization before the transplant, using their own eggs to make embryos.
"We have already begun transferring embryos into four of the women and plan to make attempts with the others when they are ready," said Dr. Mats Brannstrom, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Goteburg, who is leading the research.
He would not say Monday whether any of the women are pregnant. Of the nine who got transplanted wombs, two had to have them removed because of complications.
Brannstrom predicted that three or four of the seven women might successfully give birth.
"One or two more will perhaps get pregnant and miscarry and one or two won't be able to get pregnant," he said.
Brannstrom said any woman who does get pregnant will be on a low dose of drugs to keep from rejecting the transplanted womb and will be monitored as a high-risk pregnancy. He said some women had received their new wombs from their mothers and there was a higher rate of complications with older uteruses.
The transplants are intended to benefit women unable to have children because they lost a uterus to cancer or were born without one. About one girl in 4,500 is born with MRKH, where she doesn't have a womb.
Brannstrom said the transplanted wombs would be removed after a maximum of two pregnancies.
"Based on our previous work and animal studies, we are optimistic," he said. "But we cannot guarantee anything."

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Doctors aim to grow ears and noses from fat:

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

New ears could be the first application of the technique

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Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London are aiming to reconstruct people's faces with stem cells taken from their fat.

The team has grown cartilage in the laboratory and believe it could be used to rebuild ears and noses.
They say the technique, published in the journal Nanomedicine, could revolutionise care.
Experts said there was some way to go, but it had the potential to be "transformative".
The doctors want to treat conditions like microtia, that results in the ear failing to develop properly and can be missing or malformed.
At the moment, children have cartilage taken from their ribs, which is then delicately sculpted by surgeons to resemble an ear and implanted into the child.
It requires multiple operations, leaves permanent scarring on the chest and the rib cartilage never recovers.
From fat The team envisage an alternative - a tiny sample of fat would be taken from the child and stem cells would be extracted and grown from it.
An ear-shaped "scaffold" would be placed in the stem cell broth so the cells would take on the desired shape and structure. And chemicals would be used to persuade the stem cells to transform into cartilage cells.
This could then be implanted beneath the skin to give the child an ear shape.
The researchers have been able to create the cartilage in the scaffold, but safety testing is needed before they could be used in patients.
One of the researchers, Dr Patrizia Ferretti, told the BBC: "It is really exciting to have the sort of cells that are not tumourogenic, that can go back into the same patient so we don't have the problem of immunosuppression and can do the job you want them to do.
"It would be the Holy Grail to do this procedure through a single surgery, so decreasing enormously the stress for the children and having a structure that hopefully will be growing as the child grows."
New ear

Samuel Clompus before the operation to rebuild his ear

The technique could help patients like 15-year old Samuel Clompus, who has had the reconstructive ear surgery.
His mother, Sue, said the family welcomed the research.
She told the BBC: "They wouldn't have needed to take the cartilage.
"He has a scar there now and Sam said it was the most uncomfortable bit."
The technique could be used to create cartilage for other tissues such as the nose, which can be damaged in adults after cancer surgery.
Doctors say they could also make bone using the same starting material.
"Obviously we are at the beginning of this, the next step will be to perfect just the choice of materials and to develop this further," said Dr Ferretti.
Commenting on the study, Prof Martin Birchall, a surgeon at University College London, said: "If you had something that was truly regenerative, that would be transformative."
He was involved in the first operations to give people lab-grown windpipes.
He said the fat-based technique needed more safety testing to reach that stage.
"We used [bone marrow] stem cells as they've been used in 10,000s of people for bone marrow transplants, fat stem cells are likely to be fine, but they haven't got that safety record yet."

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Silencing genes May Reduce spread of Breast cancer:

Myoferlin, a protein only recently linked to cancer, may help breast cancer cells transform so they can escape tumors and migrate to new sites. When researchers implanted mice with breast cancer cells that couldn't make the protein because of its gene was switched off, the cells did not transform into the type that migrates.
Researchers at The Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus, had already shown this was happening in cell cultures. Now in a study published in the journal PLOS ONE, they describe how they got similar results in mice.
The mice implanted with breast cancer cells lacking the ability to make myoferlin developed small, self-contained tumors that only contained non-migrating cells.
But mice implanted with breast cancer cells that could make myoferlin developed larger, irregular tumors whose cells invaded surrounding tissue.
In their study report the researchers describe how they found two main effects from reducing cancer cells' ability to make myoferlin: one affected behavior of the cells, and the other their mechanical properties.
It appears that without myoferlin, many genes required to help cells migrate (metastasize) don't get switched on, so they behave more like cells that stay put.
And without myoferlin, the cells can't alter the mechanical properties that make it possible for them to travel and invade. Instead, they stay huddled together in the primary tumor.

Findings open door to possible new individualized treatments

These and other findings mean it may be possible to develop breast cancer treatment tailored to an individual's need - depending on the protein levels and mechanical properties of their breast cancer cells.
Senior author Douglas Kniss, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at OSU's Wexner Medical Center, explains how their discoveries may be useful:
Read more on: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/273442.php

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Friends social pain or empathy causes physical pain:

 We all have friends that we cherish. Some can be as close to us as our own family. Now, new research suggests that if a bond with a friend is threatened or lost, we see a friend in distress, or we become excluded socially, these experiences can cause us to feel physical pain.

This is according to a study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
The research team, from the International School for Advance Studies (SISSA) in Italy, conducted a series of experiments on a group of participants, during which their brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The investigators say the way they conducted this study is innovative, compared with previous research looking at the association between social and physical pain.
"Classic experiments used a stylized procedure in which social exclusion situations were simulated by cartoons. We suspected that this simplification was excessive and likely to lead to systematic biases in data collection, so we used real people in videos," explains study author Giorgia Silani.
One of the experiments involved a game in which subjects tossed a ball to each other, but one of the players was deliberately excluded by the others. Either a player was excluded his or herself, or a friend was excluded to trigger a condition of social pain.
In another experiment, a participant or the friend of a participant received a mildly painful stimulus. Each participant was a witness to their friend's experience and this triggered the condition of physical pain.

Social pain in ourselves and others triggers physical pain

The researchers found that both conditions activated the posterior insular cortex of the brain - the region linked to the sensory processing of physical pain. Interestingly, this region of the brain was activated whether a person experienced the social or physical pain conditions themselves, or witnessed a friend experiencing both conditions.
According to the investigators, the feeling of social pain guides our behavior. They explain that a person's ultimate goal is to "prioritize escape, recovery and healing," which is why we feel social pain and are able to empathize when others experience it.
Commenting on the research, study author Giorgia Silani says:

"Our findings lend support to the theoretical model of empathy that explains involvement in other people's emotions by the fact that our representation is based on the representation of our own emotional experience in similar conditions."

Source:http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/273413.php

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