Discoveries
Research Briefs
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Inflammation variation
Cortisol, often called "the stress hormone,"
can be pro-inflammatory, anti-inflammatory,
or neither, depending on its concentration
in the blood. So found a recent study led by
Dartmouth anesthesiologist Mark Yeager,
M.D. In a variety of experiments, Yeager and
his colleagues showed that baseline cortisol
levels permit inflammatory immune responses,
but moderate cortisol concentrations
suppress inflammation and
high concentrations are neither pro- nor
anti-inflammatory. Cortisol regulation of human
inflammation is both "dualistic" and
"dynamic," wrote the researchers in the journal
Dose-Response. "It evolves over time."
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Adverse effects
Before 1971, millions of pregnant women
took the drug diethylstilbestrol (DES), on
the advice of their doctors, in hopes of preventing
pregnancy complications. Instead,
the drug proved dangerous for both mothers
and babies. A new study coauthored by
DMS's Linda Titus-Ernstoff, Ph.D.,
adds to the list of dangers posed by
DES. Women who were exposed to it in the
womb are at a higher lifetime risk of infertility,
preterm delivery, early menopause, and
several other adverse health outcomes, according
to the analysis, which was published
in the New England Journal of Medicine.
DMS geneticist Mathieu Lupien, Ph.D., recently discovered a "pioneer" factor, called PBX1, that may lead to an understanding of how breast cancer tumors become resistant to therapies.
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A hole in "lifesaver" argument
It is conventional wisdom "that every screendetected
breast cancer survivor has had her
'life saved' because of screening," wrote
DMS's H. Gilbert Welch, M.D., and Dartmouth
senior Brittney Frankel in Archives of
Internal Medicine. But they concluded that of
the 230,000 women a year diagnosed
with breast cancer after
mammography, only about 4,000 to 18,000
actually benefit from the test. Many who survive
would have been treated successfully
even without mammography, while thousands
of others are treated unnecessarily.
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Booze cues
Drinking references in song lyrics are nothing
new—think Willie Nelson's "Whiskey
River"—but they may be more frequent and
influential for today's teens. "The average
U.S. adolescent is exposed to 34 references to
alcohol in popular music daily," said a
paper coauthored by DMS pediatrician
James Sargent, M.D. Sargent and researchers
at the University of Pittsburgh
found that one in five songs that U.S. adolescents
listen to contains explicit references
to alcohol, often a specific brand. "These alcohol
brand appearances are associated commonly
with a luxury life-style characterized
by wealth, sex, partying, and other drugs,"
they wrote in the journal Addiction.
DMS's quantitative biology institute, its director Jason Moore, Ph.D., told Nature, is "training computational-biology students to speak multiple languages beyond bioinformatics."
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Home truth
Too many older adults with serious mental
illness reside in nursing homes when they
could be living in less-restrictive settings. So
suggests a study by members of the DMS Department
of Psychiatry, published in the Journal
of Aging and Social Policy. "The appropriateness
of nursing homes for individuals
with serious mental illness
remains a controversial issue in long-term
care policy," they wrote, "more than a decade
since [a landmark Supreme Court decision],
which affirmed the rights of persons with disabilities
to live in their communities."
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Motion potion
Getting adolescents off the couch and in motion
may have lasting benefits not just for
their waistlines but also for their brains. In a
study conducted by a DMS neuroscientist
and two students, rats that exercised regularly
during adolescence demonstrated better
memory function in adulthood than
rats that had not. They also had higher
levels of an important protein called brainderived
neurotrophic factor. "Exercising during
adolescence may capitalize on the peak of
neural plasticity that occurs during this developmental
stage," the researchers wrote in
the journal Neuroscience, "and lead to more
durable effects on cognitive function compared
to exercising during adulthood."
DH is taking part in a clinical trial to treat stroke victims with a chemical found in bat saliva; it can be used up to nine hours after the stroke—an important benefit in a rural area.
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