SAD: Take your light therapy, and stick it in your ear

Many readers in the Northern Hemisphere are likely already starting to experience seasonal affective disorder, appropriately enough known as SAD.

For those people fortunate enough not to be familiar with it, SAD is a mood disorder that is brought on by the shorter day-length experienced in winter - less sunlight results in gloomier people.

One of the most common treatments involves regular exposure to bright artificial lights, that appear to psychologically serve the same purpose as sunlight.

Now, one might assume that such light therapy would require that people see the light. According to the Finnish designers of the Valkee device, however, light also does the trick if you shine it up your ears.

The invention is based around the assertion that not only are our visual systems photosensitive, but so are our brains themselves.

More specifically, there are apparently 18 sites in our brains, where OPN3 photoreceptor proteins are located. These regions will supposedly react favourably to exposure to light, even when that light is filtered through tissue and bone.

The Valkee itself looks a lot like a personal music player, complete with earbuds. Instead of emitting music, however, these buds contain fiber optic lights.

By turning the device on and sticking the glowing fibers in your ears for about ten minutes a day, it is claimed that your brain will receive enough light to send the SAD packing.

Does it sound like quackery? A great deal of people would certainly say so.

Not among those people, however, would be a group of scientists from Finland's University of Oulu.

In two clinical trials, they had people with severe SAD use the device daily, for 8 to 12 minutes a day.

Afterward, when those people completed a BDI-21 questionnaire (a standard for assessing depression), it was found that 92 percent of the subjects in the first trial had completely recovered.

The information presented by the company is definitely somewhat difficult to sort out, although it appears that the results of the second trial were similarly encouraging.

A placebo group was included in at least one of the trials, to ensure that people weren't feeling better merely because they expected to.

To read more about the Valkee device visit their website

Experimental drug helps kids with neuroblastoma

Two new studies offer hope for babies and toddlers suffering from neuroblastoma, a rare but often deadly cancer of the nervous system that strikes about 750 children a year.

Both therapies offer better, safer treatments for the disease, and belong to the emerging field of "personalized" cancer therapy, with medications tailored to the specific genetic profiles of a patient's tumor, says co-author John Maris of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Children diagnosed with neuroblastoma, which grows in nerve cells in the neck, chest and abdomen, are typically only about 17 months old, Maris says. About have an aggressive form of disease that relapses despite the best therapy.

A study of 226 children focused on an experimental, man-made antibody, called ch14.18, given as a cocktail with other immune stimulants. Doctors randomly assigned half of children to get standard care and half to receive the new antibody, according to the study in today's New England Journal of Medicine.

This type of antibody is the "holy grail" of cancer therapy, Maris says, because it targets a protein found only on cancer cells, but rarely on healthy ones. Scientists first identified this protein in the 1980s, he says.

The new therapy cut the risk of relapse from 66% to 46% after two years Because most relapses occur in the first two to three years, these children have likely been cured, Maris says. About 86% of those given the new therapy were alive after two years, compared to 75% of those given standard care.

"This is the biggest improvement we've ever seen in neuroblastoma," Maris says. "It's not a magic bullet, but it's the biggest result we've seen in a long time.. .. This is the culmination of 20 years of work."

Tumours hide out from the immune system by mimicking lymph nodes

Tumours hide out from the immune system by mimicking lymph nodes

A new mechanism explaining how tumours escape the body's natural immune surveillance has recently been discovered at EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) in Switzerland. The study shows how tumours can create a tolerant microenviroment and avoid attack by the immune system by mimicking key features of lymph nodes.

The discovery, published in Science and in Science Express, underscores the role of the lymphatic system in cancer and may open up new possibilities for cancer treatment.

"The tumour tricks the body into thinking it is healthy tissue," says lead author Melody Swartz, head of the Laboratory of Lymphatic and Cancer Bioengineering (LLCB) and EPFL professor. Swartz and her team set out to understand how immune tolerance is induced by tumours, allowing them to progress and spread.

The researchers from EPFL concentrated their efforts on a certain protein that is normally present in healthy lymph nodes to attract T cells and program them to perform vital immune functions. They found that some tumours can secrete this protein to transform the outer layer of the tumour into lymphoid-like tissue.

This outer layer then attracts and effectively re-programs the T cells to recognise the tumour as friend not foe, resulting in a tumour that goes undetected by the immune system.

Since most tumours progress only if they have escaped the immune system, this new understanding of one mechanism by which the tumour can bypasses or hides from immune defenses is an important step towards future cancer therapies.

Acne drug prevents HIV breakout

Acne drug prevents HIV breakout

Johns Hopkins scientists have found that a safe and inexpensive antibiotic in use since the 1970s for treating acne effectively targets infected immune cells in which HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, lies dormant and prevents them from reactivating and replicating.

The drug, minocycline, likely will improve on the current treatment regimens of HIV-infected patients if used in combination with a standard drug cocktail known as HAART (Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy), according to research published now online and appearing in print April 15 in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

"The powerful advantage to using minocycline is that the virus appears less able to develop drug resistance because minocycline targets cellular pathways not viral proteins," says Janice Clements, Ph.D., Mary Wallace Stanton Professor of Faculty Affairs, vice dean for faculty, and professor of molecular and comparative pathobiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

"The big challenge clinicians deal with now in this country when treating HIV patients is keeping the virus locked in a dormant state," Clements adds. "While HAART is really effective in keeping down active replication, minocycline is another arm of defense against the virus."

Read the full article here