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Clue to Migraine Headache Cause

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Scientists may be a step closer to uncovering the cause of certain types of debilitating migraine headaches. A French team observed activation in the hypothalamus region of the brain as sufferers had a migraine attack.
Migraines can be debilitating

The hypothalamus has long been suspected as it regulates physiological responses to factors known to trigger headaches, such as hunger.

It is hoped the discovery, featured in the journal Headache, could lead to new treatments.

The researchers, from Rangueil Hospital, used a technique called Positron Emission Tomography (PET), which contrasts functional activity within the brain, on seven patients with migraine without aura, the most common type of migraine.

Previously, activation in the brain stem and midbrain, and a thickening in some areas of the cortex were seen in migraine sufferers.

The present study may have seen a more detailed pathogenesis of the condition for two reasons.

First, timing was crucial: to capture an attack as it happened, patients rushed to hospital without self-medicating, arriving on average around three hours after the onset of the migraine.

Second, the observed headaches were spontaneous, and not chemically induced as in other laboratory studies.

Lead researcher Dr Marie Denuelle said: “When you induce the attack you miss the hypothalamic activation.

“We suspect the hypothalamus may play a role in the start of the migraine attack.

“But to prove it we would need to do similar study before the start of an attack.”

Dr Andrew Dowson, director of headache services at Kings College Hospital, London, said: “It has been suggested for many years that the hypothalamus is involved in the early stages of migraine attacks.

“But there are other factors involved in the early generation of headache.”

Suicide headaches

Activation of the hypothalamus had previously only been seen in cluster headache, a different and altogether more crippling condition.

Cluster headache sufferers experience headaches on a regular basis: for certain months of the year in the episodic form, or every day at regular intervals in the chronic form.

So debilitating can the attacks be that they have been dubbed “suicide headaches” because some sufferers have taken their own lives.

The new evidence for hypothalamic activation in migraine may explain why some migraine drugs, particularly the triptans, can sometimes be effective at aborting a cluster headache attack.

However, Professor Peter Goadsby, of the Insitute of Neurology at University College London, said there were distinct clinical and physiological differences between cluster headache and migraine.

He said: “The area [of the hypothalamus] reported as activated in migraine is about 10mm more anterior than the cluster headache area.

“The hypothalamus is not one thing but a collection of discrete neurons.”

Professor Goadsby said a cascade of changes in the brain seemed to cause the migraine problem.

“It’s easy to think that migraine is a specific brain disorder, but it is a series of systems that go wrong – a system disorder.

“There is no single holy grail. Multiple structures are involved.”

Sources: BBC NEWS ( 25th.Dec ’07)

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Little exercise can help smokers quit

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As little as five minutes of exercise could help smokers quit, says a new study.

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Research published in the international medical journal Addiction showed that moderate exercise, such as walking, significantly reduced the intensity of smokers’  nicotine withdrawal symptoms.

If we found the same effects in a drug, it would immediately be sold as an aid to help people quit smoking,  said Dr Adrian Taylor, the study’s lead author and professor of exercise and health at the University of Exeter.

Taylor and colleagues reviewed 12 papers looking at the connection between exercise and nicotine deprivation. They focused on exercises that could be done outside a gym, such as walking and isometrics, or the flexing and tensing of muscles.

According to their research, just five-minutes of exercise was often enough to help smokers overcome their immediate need for a nicotine fix.

After various types of moderate physical exertion, researchers asked people to rate their need for a cigarette. People who had exercised reported reduced a desire. “What’s surprising is the strength of the effect,” said Dr Robert West, professor of health psychology at University College London. West was not involved in the review.

“They found that the acute effects of exercise were as effective as a nicotine patch,” he said. West cautioned that it was unknown how long the effects of exercise would last. “You could in theory use exercise to deal with short bouts of nicotine cravings, but we don’t know if it would help in the longer term,   he said

Source:The Telegraph (Kolkata,India)

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Obesity Is Found to Make Ovarian Cancer Deadlier

 

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Ovarian cancer is fairly common. ”About one in 60 American women will develop ovarian cancer,” said Dr. Andrew J. Li, the senior author of the study, a faculty physician at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Each year, about 20,000 new cases are diagnosed and about 15,000 women die of the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.

It is well known that obesity is associated with various malignancies, including kidney, throat, breast and colon cancers. Findings about obesity and ovarian cancer have been somewhat less clear, the researchers say, but evidence from previous studies suggests that obesity predicts a worse outcome for ovarian cancer patients as well.

The scientists wanted to know whether excess fat, apart from any other health problems it might cause, had direct effects on tumor growth. They reviewed the medical records of 216 patients at Cedars-Sinai who had surgery for epithelial ovarian cancer. The data included information on height, weight, age and any other diseases. The cause of death was presumed to be cancer related if the patient had advanced recurrent disease at the time of death.

Half the patients had ideal weight, with a body mass index from 18.5 to 24.9, and 8 percent had a B.M.I. of less than 18.5, considered underweight. Twenty-six percent were overweight, with indexes exceeding 25, and 16 percent were obese, with indexes higher than 30.

The overweight and obese differed little from normal and underweight people in age or in health status, except that they had more hypertension and diabetes.

But among patients with Stage III or Stage IV disease, the most advanced stages, those with B.M.I.’s greater than 25 survived disease free for an average of 17 months, compared with 25 months for people with indexes lower than 25.

For each increase of one unit in the index, the researchers found a 4 percent increase in the risk of recurrence and a 5 percent increase in the risk of death.

This ”dose response” effect strongly suggests that obesity alone is responsible for the decreased survival time, Dr. Li said.

The researchers acknowledge that their study, published yesterday in the journal Cancer, has certain weaknesses.

They found that a slightly lower dose of chemotherapy relative to body surface was given to obese patients, and it is possible that this underdosing may have had a role.

In addition, fluid in the body cavity, a symptom of the disease, may have artificially increased the B.M.I. of some patients. And it is possible that other diseases like hypertension and diabetes, more prevalent among the obese, could have decreased survival among those patients.

The study was also limited by its retrospective method and small sample population.

The researchers said they believed that it was unlikely that those factors could have accounted for the decreased overall survival time of obese women. More likely, they said, is that the presence of fat tissue encourages tumor growth or increases resistance to treatment.

”There may be some factor secreted by adipose tissue that makes tumors less sensitive to chemotherapy,” Dr. Li said, referring to fat tissue. ”We have some ideas, and we’re working on looking at those factors now.”

Dr. Li said obesity did not increase the risk of developing ovarian cancer, but did affect the chance of survival when a person developed it.

”Reducing obesity and maintaining an ideal body weight,” he said, ”is important for many reasons. This is just one more health problem in which obesity plays a role.”

Source:The New York Times

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