Vodcast 2007 Show Notes
Episode #0008 — December 7, 2007 Welcome to i on NIH! This holiday episode is packed with new, timely stories. Featured in this month’s episode is information about how to eat healthily during the holiday season, new ways to find illnesses—under your tongue, and an i-to-eye interview about depression.
NARRATOR: From the national institutes of health in Bethesda, Maryland – America’s premiere medical research agency – this is “i on NIH”! HOST: Welcome to a special, holiday edition of eye on NIH! In this episode, we’ll get tips from two NIH institutes on how to eat healthily during the holidays, get insight on the latest technologies to diagnose diseases, and see an eye-to-eye interview with an expert on depressions. But first, we turn to Harrison Wein for a quick, news update. Harrison? HARRISON: THANKS, JOE. IN THIS NIH RESEARCH UPDATE, GENES INVOLVED IN LUNG CANCER, SLEEP AND THE BRAIN, AND A BRAINBOW OF DIFFERENT COLORS. * LIKE MOST CANCERS, LUNG CANCER COMES FROM GENETIC CHANGES THAT BUILD UP THROUGHOUT YOUR LIFETIME. SINCE CANCER IS SO COMPLEX, SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN TEAMING TOGETHER TO ROOT OUT THE GENETIC CHANGES THAT CAN CAUSE TUMORS. THE NIH-FUNDED TUMOR SEQUENCING PROJECT ANALYZED THE DNA OF MORE THAN 370 TUMOR SAMPLES COLLECTED FROM PATIENTS WITH LUNG ADENOCARCINOMA—THE MOST COMMON TYPE OF LUNG CANCER NATIONWIDE. THEY LINKED DOZENS OF GENETIC CHANGES WITH THIS CANCER. ONLY ABOUT A THIRD WERE ALREADY KNOWN TO BE INVOLVED IN LUNG ADENOCARCINOMA. THE RESEARCHERS ARE NOW GIVING THESE AND OTHER KNOWN CANCER GENES A CLOSER LOOK.* * WE ALL KNOW THAT SLEEPLESS NIGHTS CAN UNHINGE YOUR EMOTIONS. NOW SCIENTISTS ARE STARTING TO UNDERSTAND WHY. NIH-FUNDED RESEARCHERS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, AND HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL LOOKED AT HOW SLEEP LOSS AFFECTS THE BRAIN’S EMOTIONAL CENTER—THE AMYGDALA. THE RESEARCHERS STUDIED VOLUNTEERS WHO’D HAD A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP AND OTHERS WHO WERE KEPT AWAKE FOR ABOUT 35 HOURS STRAIGHT. THAT’S LIKE STAYING AWAKE ALL NIGHT AND INTO THE NEXT AFTERNOON WITHOUT NAPS. THEN THEY MEASURED EVERYONE’S BRAIN ACTIVITY WHILE THEY LOOKED AT A HUNDRED IMAGES. AT FIRST THE IMAGES WERE NEUTRAL. THEN THEY BECAME MORE UNPLEASANT—A DIRTY TOILET BOWL, A BURN VICTIM, A DYING PATIENT. ALL THE VOLUNTEERS HAD MORE AMYGDALA ACTIVITY WHEN THEY SAW NEGATIVE PICTURES. BUT IN THE SLEEP-DEPRIVED GROUP, THE EMOTIONAL BRAIN CENTERS WERE OVER 60% MORE REACTIVE. THE EMOTION CENTER ALSO SEEMED TO BE MORE STRONGLY CONNECTED TO A PRIMITIVE, IMPULSIVE BRAIN REGION AND LESS CONNECTED TO A REGION THAT NORMALLY KEEPS EMOTIONS AND BEHAVIORS IN CHECK. THAT’S WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO GET YOUR Z’S. * * AND FINALLY, SCIENTISTS HAVE DEVELOPED A SPECTACULAR NEW TOOL—WHAT THEY CALL “BRAINBOWS”. IT LETS THEM SEE HUNDREDS OF CELLS IN VIBRANT COLORS AND HOW THEY CONNECT TO EACH OTHER IN THE BRAIN. IN THE SAME WAY A TV CAN CREATE ALMOST UNLIMITED COLORS BY MIXING RED, GREEN AND BLUE, THE RESEARCHERS USED DIFFERENT COLORED PROTEINS. THIS NOT ONLY LOOKS REALLY COOL. IT’LL HELP FUTURE RESEARCHERS UNDERSTAND HOW THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM WORK. * *WE COVER THESE AND MANY OTHER NIH RESEARCH STUDIES IN “NIH RESEARCH MATTERS”. GO TO THE NIH HOME PAGE AND LOOK FOR THE LINK ON THE RIGHT-HAND SIDE, UNDER “IN THE NEWS,” THAT SAYS, “E-COLUMN: NIH RESEARCH MATTERS.” * * AND IN THIS MONTH’S HEALTH NEWSLETTER, “NIH NEWS IN HEALTH”… CELEBRATING THE HOLIDAYS WITHOUT RISKY DRINKING. ALSO, DEALING WITH HEARING LOSS. YOU CAN READ THESE OTHER STORIES IN “NIH NEWS IN HEALTH” AT NEWS-IN-HEALTH-DOT-NIH-DOT-GOV. * * THIS IS HARRISON WEIN AT THE NIH SCIENCE DESK. HOST: Thanks Harrison. For our first feature this month, Kim Pelis prepared a report on healthy holiday eating by talking to experts from two NIH institutes. Here’s her story. HOST: Thank you Kim. In our next feature, we look at a new field of diagnostics. Diagnostics are tests that help identify what kind of illness a person has. Some new diagnostics use human saliva--also known as “spit.” Belle Waring recently caught up with Dr. Lawrence Tabak, Director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, to talk about salivary diagnostics. VO – Belle: Dr. Tabak explained how researchers are creating miniature tests called “laboratories on a chip.” These measure elements in saliva that include signatures of oral cancer. And although salivary diagnostics are new, the idea of prevention is not. Dr. Tabak: Dentistry has a long history of prevention. Actually, we thought of it long before our medical colleagues did, and we’re very proud of that tradition. And In salivary diagnostics we think we have the promise of taking prevention to a new level, to intercept disease at its earliest inception and, doing that, it would allow you to have the best possible treatment outcome. Belle: Could you tell us a little about salivary diagnostics and how it works?" Dr. Tabak: The basis of this lies in two separate areas. One is the microelectronic industry, which, as you know, has succeeded in making electronic devices smaller and smaller and smaller. And what that has led to is the ability of microengineers to create things that we refer to as “laboratories on a chip.” The second area where this has its origins is so-called “point of care diagnostics,” the idea that you would want to be able to do diagnoses right at the patient’s side. Belle: What Makes Salivary Diagnostics different from other tests? Dr. Tabak: Right, that first step makes it so very unique because in contrast to blood samples, for example, there’s no need for an intermediary. you can do the collection by yourself--just simply expectorate in a tube--or you can use a cotton ball and swab your mouth, and you can put that sample into a preservative mixture. And what that does is: it opens up possibilities to provide diagnoses to individuals who heretofore may not have been accessible: individuals, for example, in countries where the medical infrastructure is minimal or in fact non-existent; individuals in our country who live in very rural parts of the country; individuals who are very infirm; people who are morbidly obese; people who are very elderly. And so it really allows you to provide diagnoses for individuals who otherwise would have a very difficult time getting the typical blood test. It also opens up a spectacular opportunity to do sampling by mail, and there are a number of examples of this. And because of the contents of the saliva, because you can measure so very many different things in it, you can learn a great deal about an individual, or populations of individuals, by collecting salivary samples and then doing an analysis on them. VO – Belle: Squamous cell carcinoma is a type of cancer, and if it’s found in the mouth and is not diagnosed early, it can be disfiguring and painful to treat. The Labs on a chip now being developed show promise for oral cancer screening. Dr. Tabak: There is good progress being made in being able to delineate individuals with squamous cell carcinoma. And of course getting back to the original discussion we had about why salivary diagnostics—because of their ability in prevention. and in all cancer, of course, the single most important feature is to detect the disease as early as possible, and we think that salivary diagnostics have that potential, to really to detect the disease at its earliest possible inception. VO – Belle: elements in saliva reflect elements in the blood, although at different levels, and these ELEMENTS include not only biomarkers for oral cancer, but bacteria, viruses, drugs, and hormones. If labs on a chip become routine, Salivary diagnostics could be used to monitor health in a new way. We want to have a test that the individual can do in the privacy of their own home. And so as the bioengineers get more and more clever about their ability to shrink these labs on a chip, It’s not too far out of reach to make one of these labs on a chip so small that you can insert it in the mouth so it’s there all the time. and so let’s say it encounters one of these cells that has an overabundance of the signature for this protein that I spoke about earlier. So now this chip turns purple, and the individual sees the purple chip in their mouth and says Oh, I’d better go to the doctor, a dentist, or somebody to have this looked at. We know that African American men are a very high-risk group for oral cancer, so how can you find and help patients with that kind of problem? As the intermediary step, which is what you were referring to, yes, we would hope to have devices that could be used inexpensively enough and rapidly enough so that they could be done in community settings or in workplace and so forth. Because one of the large issues within the African American male community is access to care, access to testing, on a routine basis. And we would hope that if we could make a test both user-friendly and culturally appropriate and accepting that we would gain better penetrance into, in this case, the African American male population, which is most at risk for this disease. Because if you can detect that disease very early, the survival rate goes way up, and that’s of course the key to this whole thing. HOST: Thanks Belle. Now for our Eye-to-Eye interview. We talked to Dr. Carlos Zarate from the National Institute of Mental Health about depression. Our fist question, with days getting shorter and the holidays around the corner, is depression more of a concern this time of year? HOST: Thanks for tuning in for this holiday episode of eye on NIH. Be sure to tune in next year – for our January episode we’re working on stories about cervical cancer, a dangerous blood disorder and much more. For eye on NIH, I’m Joe Balintfy, Happy Holidays!  NIH Vodcast Questions? |
