T H E N I H C A T A L Y S T | J U L Y A U G U S T 2006 |
|
A Poster Day Sampler of 9 from among 200+ POSTBACS EXPLORE PATHWAYS TO DISEASE, APPROACHES TO TREATMENT. |
All in the Family Aixa
Alemán-Díaz, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor The
Role of Family and Culture in Health Decision Making: A Conceptual Model Preceptor:
Laura Koehly, Social
and Behavioral Research Branch, NHGRI During the past
year, Alemán-Díaz and Koehly have developed a protocol to
study how family interactions affect the sharing of accurate health information
and health-promoting behaviors. The study will focus on
multigenerational Latino families living in the United States. Several
members of each familytypically the parents and grandparents of
young childrenwill be asked about their family social structure
and their perceptions of common health problems such as diabetes and heart
disease. The same family members will then complete a Family Health History
(FHH) tool, such as the CDC's Family Healthware!", which will assess
risk for various diseases based on genetic, environmental, and behavioral
factors. Upon completing the FHH,
participants will be told of their disease risk based on family health
history and given tips for disease prevention based on behavioral assessments.
The researchers are interested
in what happens next, when the participants go back to their families
armed with this new information. They will do two follow-ups, at several
weeks and six months after the administration of the FHH, to look for
changes in perceptions of what causes common diseases and their own risks
of disease, as well as changes in health-related attitudes and behaviors.
Importantly, says Alemán-Díaz,
they want to focus not just on individual family members but on how the
information affects the entire family system. For example: Has the family
changed the way it shares information about health issues or makes health-care
decisions? Have family members developed a more accurate picture of their
risk of disease based on what the study participants learned about their
risk? Have family members made lifestyle changes to reduce their disease
risk? This study is part of a
larger effort to understand how family relationships influence health
perceptions and decision making. Studies on other demographic groups are
in the works, says Alemán-Díaz, who graduated from the University
of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2005 and plans to study cultural anthropology
and public health in graduate school. She will stay at NHGRI through
this fall and help put her protocol into action working with families
in the Houston, Texas, area in partnership with the University of Texas
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. |
|
.
Cortisol-RA Connection Shaan
Alli, Baruch College, City University of New York Circadian
Rhythm of Pro-inflammatory Cytokines in Rheumatoid Arthritis Preceptor:
Raphaela
Goldbach-Mansky, Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune disease
that causes pain, swelling, and stiffness in the joints, often observe
that their symptoms are worst in the early morning. Work
by Alli and Goldbach-Mansky in collaboration with Marc
Blackman's group at NCCAM suggests that this phenomenon may be associated
with natural daily variations in cortisol, a steroid hormone produced
by the adrenal gland that can suppress the immune system. Secreted at high levels in stressful situations, cortisol
increases blood pressure and blood sugar and suppresses the production
of some inflammatory agents of the immune system. Aside from stress-related
spikes, cortisol levels exhibit a circadian rhythmpredictably low
in the middle of the night and peaking in the morning. Alli and his colleagues hypothesized that the secretion
of hormones might be influenced by the hyperactive immune system of RA
patients and contribute to the development of their signs and symptoms.
So they collected blood from RA patients and healthy control subjects
at 20-minute intervals for 24 hours and measured the levels of several
hormones and inflammatory molecules that might contribute to RA symptoms:
TNF-a,
GM-CSF, IL-8, and IL-6. In both patients and control subjects, all four molecules
showed a circadian variation, with the highest levels occurring in the
early morning near the end of the low-cortisol period. Although analysis of their data is ongoing, one interesting
finding, says Alli, is that RA patients had significantly higher levels
of IL-6 levels in the early morning than did control subjects, suggesting
that cortisol might be important to keep IL-6 levels in check in RA patients.
In general, RA patients had higher levels of immune mediators than control
subjects at all times of day, but the differences were often not statistically
significant. The correlation between daily fluctuations in cortisol and
RA symptoms fits in nicely with clinical data showing that steroid hormones
similar to cortisol are often an effective treatment for RA, says Alli.
Future studies on the behavior of the immune system in RA patients, he
adds, might do well to take into account the time of day that samples
are collected. |
|
ProlactinBreast Cancer Kamun
Chan, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. Effects
of Prolactin Over-expression on the Progression of Breast Cancer Preceptor:
Barbara
Vonderhaar, Mammary
Biology and Tumorigenesis Laboratory, NCI Chan has been studying breast tumor development in Vonderhaar's
lab since August 2005. Her research concerns the complex and poorly understood
relationship between the hormone prolactin and the development of breast
cancer. Prolactin promotes breast milk production and is secreted in large
amounts by the pituitary gland in pregnant and breastfeeding women. Prolactin
is also made locally by breast tissue and breast cancer cells. In addition, the Nurses' Health Study at Harvard University,
Boston, showed that pre-and postmenopausal women with the highest serum
prolactin levels have an increased risk of developing breast cancer. To explore this dynamic on a cellular level, Chan designed
a system to overexpress prolactin in four cell lines that represent different
stages of breast cancer development normal breast tissue, preneoplastic
(some oncogenes have been activated but the tissue has not yet succumbed
to the uncontrolled proliferation of full-blown cancer), invasive breast
cancer, and metastatic breast cancer. Chan can control whether or not
prolactin is overexpressed in her cells by adding the antibiotic doxycycline
to the culture medium. Chan plans to stay in the lab for another year to continue
her project. Now that her system is ready to go, she will test how prolactin
affects cell proliferation and cell motility, which is necessary for cancers
to metastasize. Then she will inject her prolactin-overexpressing cells
into mice and look at the aggressiveness of any resulting tumors. She
hopes eventually to tease out the cellular signaling pathways that prolactin
uses to influence tumor growth. Chan is also a fellow in the NIH
Academy, a program that aims to educate young researchers about health
disparities in the United States. In addition to conducting her research,
she has been participating in workshops and seminars on how and why disease
and health care differ among population subgroups in this country. |
|
Immunity to Hepatitis C Brittany
Holmes, University of ColoradoBoulder Immunological
Memory in Hepatitis C: A Comparison of Treatment-induced Recovery and
Spontaneous Recovery Preceptor: Barbara
Rehermann, Liver
Diseases Branch, NIDDK Hepatitis C, a liver disease caused by an RNA virus (HCV),
spreads from person to person through contact with infected blood or blood
products. Occasionally, people who contract hepatitis C recover spontaneously,
especially if they are "young, lucky, and female," says Holmes,
who has been studying the disease in Rehermann's lab since last October.
In most cases, however, HCV causes chronic hepatitis, and
treatment with interferon and the antiviral drug ribavirin is necessary
to stamp out the infection. If left untreated, HCV infection can cause
liver failure or liver cancer. Interestingly, people who fend off HCV on their own develop
an immunological memory of the virus, so that if they encounter HCV again,
T cells optimized to kill the virus are rapidly activated. People who
require treatment to be cured appear not to develop this population of
protective memory T cells. Holmes aimed to understand why. She mixed immune cells from patients who had recovered spontaneously
from hepatitis C with HCV proteins and saw a vigorous immune response.
T cells proliferated and began to secrete interferon-g,
an important weapon in the immune system arsenal. When she did the same experiment with immune cells from
HCV patients who recovered after treatment, she got a much weaker response.
There was no difference between patients who were treated within the first
six months of contracting the virus and those who were treated later,
she says. She found that T cells from both untreated and treated patients
were able to respond to many different pieces of HCV, but in each case
the response in the untreated cohort was more intense. The immune response
of the treated patients fell shorter in "strength, not breadth,"
she observes. Before she heads to Nashville, Tenn., to Vanderbilt Medical
School in the fall, Holmes will continue her research from a couple of
new angles. She will explore whether genetic differences in HLAs, immune system molecules that help recognize foreign invaders, affect the ability to recover from HCV without treatment, as well as whether the frequency of spontaneous recovery varies with different HCV strains. |
|
Sickle Cell Strategies Vicki
R. McGowan II, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Clinical Evaluations in Sickle Cell Disease: A Story in Three
Acts Preceptors: Mark
Gladwin and Jane
Little, Cardiovascular
Branch, NHLBI Sickle
cell disease is a genetic disorder that causes red blood cells, normally
doughnut-shaped, to become rigid and misshapen. These abnormal cells obstruct
blood vessels and are prone to rupture, causing an array of health complications,
including anemia, chronic renal failure, stroke, and pulmonary hypertension.
There is no cure for the disorder. Effective management of sickle cell
complications relies on addressing symptoms early. Pulmonary hypertension (increased blood
pressure in the artery leading from the heart to the lungs) is a major
complication of sickle cell disease. The most accurate test currently
for measuring pulmonary hypertensionright heart catheterizationis
invasive and therefore less than ideal for use in frequent monitoring.
McGowan is exploring the value of two less-invasive alternatives for routine
monitoring of pulmonary hypertension. McGowan's team measured serum lactate
dehydrogenase (LDH) levels taken from 213 sickle cell patients and ranked
them into three groups: low, medium, and high. LDH is usually present
in serum only when cells rupture, a characteristic of sickle cell disease.
Seventy percent of patients with high
levels of LDH also had pulmonary hypertension, suggesting that "LDH
shows promise as a marker for hemolysis in sickle cell patients and may
suggest a risk of pulmonary hypertension," says McGowan. The team also demonstrated the value of echocardiography
in assessing pulmonary hypertension. Tricuspid valve regurgitant jet velocity
(the speed at which blood flows back into the atrium through the tricuspid
valve), as measured by echocardiogram, correlated well with pulmonary
pressures measured directly by right heart catheterization and with patients'
performance of a timed six-minute walk used to assess cardiopulmonary
function. These results bolster previous findings that echocardiography
is a reliable means of measuring pulmonary hypertension. A third area of her work involves the design of a clinical
trial to further study benefits of treating sickle cell disease with a
combination of hydroxyrurea and erythropoietin two drugs that typically
are administered independently but were reported by NIDDK's Griff
Rodgers in a 1993
article in the New England Journal of Medicine to have a synergistic
effect. The "essential goal is to extend [Rodgers'] findings,"
says McGowan, who begins medical school this fall at the Virginia College
of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg.
|
|
Binging
and Weight Gain Margaret
Mirch, Cornell University Effects
of Binge Eating on the Energy Intake, Satiation, and Satiety of Overweight
Children during Buffet Meals Preceptor:
Jack
Yanovski, Developmental
Endocrinology Branch, NICHD The
percentage of overweight children in the United States has tripled since
1980. Overweight children who binge-eat gain more weight and fat mass
than overweight children who do not exhibit this tendency. It is speculated
that external stimuli, such as the sight and smell of food, motivate binge-eaters
to consume food beyond satiation. Mirch's research explores the role binge-eating
plays in the developmental progression of obesity.
Mirch's lab conducted an experiment to assess energy intake
and satiety duration of overweight children and to examine the contribution
binge-eating behavior plays in food consumption. Study participants were
overweight children, ages 6 to 12. Each participant completed two surveys:
One addressed eating and weight patterns; the other was a 57-item food-preference
questionnaire. After an overnight fast, the children were presented with
a 27-item food array and told, "Let yourself go and eat as much as
you like. You may eat as much of anything that you would like to, but
you do not have to eat anything you do not like." The duration
of the meal and the calories consumed were recorded. To establish the
duration of satiety, participants were asked to refrain from eating or
drinking until they reported the onset of hunger.
On the second day, after an overnight fast, participants
consumed a standardized breakfast consisting of a 500-cc shake containing
787 kcal. Again, the satiety duration was recorded. After reporting hunger
onset, the children were presented with a second buffet identical to the
one of the previous day. Again, calories consumed were recorded. Immediately
before and after food was presented, participants were asked to rate on
a visual analog scale their hunger, their desire to eat, and their fullness. Overweight children who exhibited binge-eating behavior
had a significantly greater desire to eat and, when given access to large
quantities of palatable food, consumed more calories than children who
did not binge. The study also showed that binge-eating children feel hungry
sooner than their non-bingeing counterparts. "Training children to attend to physical hunger signals"
rather than sensory cues, Mirch says, might be a way to slow weight
gain in children with binge-eating tendencies. More studies are needed to elucidate the "behavioral,
genetic, and neurohumoral mechanisms" that may account for deficits
in appetite regulation among binge-eating children, she adds. Mirch plans to continue her work in nutrition science this fall when she enters Boston University's graduate program in nutrition.
|
|
Anticancer
Liposomes Shrikant
Tele, University of Maryland, College Park The
Development of Multifunctional Liposomes with Targeting, Imaging, and
Triggered Release Properties Preceptors:
Robert
Blumenthal, Anu
Puri, Nanobiology
Program, NCI Most
anticancer drugs are good at killing cancer cells, but they can also wreak
havoc on healthy tissues. Encasing drugs inside a protective lipid particle
and targeting the particle directly to the tumor would go a long way toward
increasing the efficacy and decreasing the toxicity of chemotherapy, says
Tele, who has been developing this technology with Blumenthal and Puri. Tele is working on two aspects of drug delivery using lipid
particleshow to target the particle to the tumor, and how to get
the particle to release its contents once it gets there. The route of
delivery of the lipid particle is determined by the targeting ligand(s)
and the biophysical properties of the liposomes. To get the particles to congregate at the site of the tumor,
Tele plans to decorate the outside of the particles with specific antibodies
that bind to molecules found only on the surface of tumor cells. Each
type of tumor will probably require a different antibody, he says. At first he will use the anti-HER2-neu antibody, which recognizes a growth factor
receptor expressed by about one-third of breast cancers. He will also
experiment with anti-HER2-neu Affibodies (TM)",
commercially available molecules that function like antibodies but are
smaller and easier to handle. Liposomes "dump their payload" upon temperature regulation, says Tele.
The particles they use hold together very well at body temperature (37
degrees C) but disintegrate at slightly higher temperatures (4142
degrees C). He plans to use a focused ultrasound device for local heating
of breast cancer tissue. To help during the development and testing stages, Tele
has incorporated dyes into the particles so they can be tracked inside
the body with imaging equipment. After several attempts, he found a dye
that doesn't adversely affect the structure of the particles or their
temperature-dependent breakdown. He plans to continue his stay and this
research for another year, after which he hopes to go to graduate school.
|
|
Autistic
Traits April
Timberlake, Harvard University The
Relationship between Temperament, Autistic Traits, and Cognitive Functioning
in a Sample of Typically Developing Children and Adolescents Preceptor:
Jay Giedd,
Child Psychiatry
Branch, NIMH People
with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulty communicating, interacting
socially with others, and adapting to change. ASD now affect about 0.30.6
percent of the population and are becoming more common, says Timberlake,
a 2005 Harvard graduate who came to NIH last October to study social cognition
with Giedd. ASD cover a wide rangefrom the relatively mild behavioral
and pragmatic speech abnormalities of people with Asperger's syndrome
to the odd, repetitive behaviors and very limited speech and social interaction
observed in people with severe classical autism. Studies have shown that people with ASD have problems with
specific skills, such as strategizing, planning, and shifting attention
back and forth among tasks that are collectively called executive functioning.
The brains of people with autism also look a little unusual in MRI studiesfor
example, they have less gray matter than normal in the temporal lobes.
Because ASD comprise a spectrum of conditions, conceptually
this continuum could be extended down to the general population. Timberlake
wanted to know whether autistic traits in typically developing people
are associated with ASD-like findings in executive functioning and brain
structure. Also, because ASD disproportionately affect males, she asked
whether males were generally more likely than females to have many autistic
traits. Timberlake worked with a group of 88 typically developing
children, half male and half female, from ages 8 through 18. Their parents
filled out the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), a 65-item questionnaire
that assesses social and communication skills and flexibility; the children
underwent tests for executive functioning and an MRI to look at brain
structure. Timberlake emphasizes that the study "needs more power"the
number of subjects was too small and the analysis of brain structure too
rough to glean very many statistically significant results. She is working
to overcome these limitations. But, she notes, there were a few significant findings and
many interesting trends. Children with poorer communication skills on
the SRS tended to do less well on the executive functioning tests. Children
with high SRS scores (many autistic traits) had reduced gray matter in
the right temporal lobe. Finally, boys on average had higher SRS scores
than girls. Such findings suggest that autistic traits in typically developing children are associated with executive dysfunction and some group-level brain differences, as observed in ASD, says Timberlake, who begins medical school in the fall.
|
|
Bone
Density Blues Caitlin
Toomey, Cornell University Is
Major Depression Associated with Decreased Bone Mineral Density? A Comprehensive
Meta-Analysis of All Published Studies Preceptor:
Giovanni
Cizza, Clinical
Endocrinology Branch, NIDDK More
than 1.5 million osteoporotic fractures occur annually in the United States,
many requiring hospitalization. Low bone mineral density (BMD), usually
determined by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, is viewed as a major risk
factor for osteoporosisand several studies have suggested a link
between major depression and low BMD. To assess the evidence in support of a link between low
BMD and depression, Toomey conducted a meta-analysis of data from 16 studies
that compared BMD in depressed individuals and nonde-pressed controls.
Some of these studies used DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders) criteria to define depression; others relied on less stringent
methods, such as the Geriatric Depression Scale, which Toomey says are
not as reliable. BMD values from the antero-posterior spine (AP spine), the
total femur, and the femoral neck were analyzed. Overall analysis showed
that in all three anatomic areas, BMD was significantly lower in depressed
subjects. When the data were limited to studies that used DSM criteria,
BMD values of the total femur and AP spine of depressed patients were
even lower than those in the broader analysis described above. There was
no similar reduction in the femoral neck BMD in subjects whose depression
was diagnosed by DSM criteria. Toomey notes, however, that because this
data subset included far fewer subjects, the findings should be interpreted
with caution. In addition, Toomey analyzed a subset of data derived from
studies that examined BMD in men and found that only total femur BMD was
lower in depressed subjects than in their nondepressed counterparts. No
difference was detected in the AP spine or femoral neck BMDs in depressed
men versus men without depression. Again, because the numbers were relatively
small, Toomey urges caution in interpretation. "We think there probably
is some effect in men, but not as large" as that in women, she
says. The results of this meta-analysis do support a correlation
between major depression and low BMD, Toomey says, but further studies
are required to elucidate the exact nature of the relationship. Toomey's
group speculates that people with major depression fail to reach optimal
peak bone density, which is usually established by age 30. Meanwhile, she adds, patients with low BMD might well be screened for depression, and patients diagnosed with depression might well have their BMD evaluated. Toomey starts medical school this fall at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.
|
|