Research advances from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Intramural Research Program (IRP) often make headlines. Read the news releases that describe our most recent findings:
Whether you’re shedding pounds with the help of effective new medicines, slimming down after weight loss surgery or cutting calories and adding exercise, there will come a day when the numbers on the scale stop going down, and you hit the dreaded weight loss plateau.
In a recent study, Kevin Hall, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health who specializes in measuring metabolism and weight change, looked at when weight loss typically stops depending on the method people were using todrop pounds. He broke down the plateau into mathematical models using data from high-quality clinical trials of different ways to lose weight to understand why people stop losing when they do. The study published Monday in the journal Obesity.
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, in collaboration with extramural organizations, have sequenced nearly the entire genome of human, mouse and rat Pneumocystis. This organism causes a life-threatening pneumonia in immunosuppressed hosts. Pneumocystis was one of the first infections that led to the initial recognition of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It has been responsible for thousands of deaths over the past 30 years and remains a significant risk in the HIV/AIDS population as well as in transplant recipients and other immunosuppressed patients. Findings were published in Nature Communications. NIH scientists collaborated with investigators from the Broad Institute and Leidos, Inc.
Through analysis of the genomes, researchers now better understand where the organism lives and how it avoids elimination by its hosts’ immune system. The high quality of the genomes allowed not only identification of metabolic pathways that are critical to the growth and survival of the organism, but also recognition that a large number of pathways that are present in other closely related fungi are absent from Pneumocystis. These pathways likely disappeared as Pneumocystis evolved to become highly dependent on its mammalian host to stay alive.
NIH study finds that depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts increase after treatment.
Children with Cushing syndrome may be at higher risk for suicide as well as for depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions long after their disease has been successfully treated, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health.
Cushing syndrome results from high levels of the hormone cortisol. Long-term complications of the syndrome include obesity, diabetes, bone fractures, high blood pressure, kidney stones and serious infections. Cushing’s syndrome may be caused by tumors of the adrenal glands or other parts of the body that produce excess cortisol. It also may be caused by a pituitary tumor that stimulates the adrenal glands to produce high cortisol levels. Treatment usually involves stopping excess cortisol production by removing the tumor.
“Our results indicate that physicians who care for young people with Cushing syndrome should screen their patients for depression-related mental illness after the underlying disease has been successfully treated,” said the study’s senior author, Constantine Stratakis, M.D., director of the Division of Intramural Research at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “Patients may not tell their doctors that they’re feeling depressed, so it’s a good idea for physicians to screen their patients proactively for depression and related conditions.”
NIH study finds daily multivitamin before and after conception greatly reduces miscarriage risk.
A woman is more likely to miscarry if she and her partner drink more than two caffeinated beverages a day during the weeks leading up to conception, according to a new study from researchers at the National Institutes of Health and Ohio State University, Columbus. Similarly, women who drank more than two daily caffeinated beverages during the first seven weeks of pregnancy were also more likely to miscarry.
However, women who took a daily multivitamin before conception and through early pregnancy were less likely to miscarry than women who did not. The study was published online in Fertility and Sterility.
“Our findings provide useful information for couples who are planning a pregnancy and who would like to minimize their risk for early pregnancy loss,” said the study’s first author, Germaine Buck Louis, Ph.D., director of the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
A clinical trial in which volunteers were infected with dengue virus six months after receiving either an experimental dengue vaccine developed by scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or a placebo injection yielded starkly contrasting results. All 21 volunteers who received the vaccine, TV003, were protected from infection, while all 20 placebo recipients developed infection. The study, published in Science Translational Medicine, underscores the importance of human challenge studies, in which volunteers are exposed to disease-causing pathogens under carefully controlled conditions.
Middle school students from the Washington, D.C., area will become brain scientists for a day when they visit the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland, on March 16 and 17, 2016. Scientists from the National Institutes of Health will be at the museum to lead students through hands-on activities that explore the structure and function of the brain, and how alcohol and drugs can affect brain health.
The NIH activities are part of the museum’s celebration of Brain Awareness Week (March 14-18), an annual global public outreach partnership of government agencies, universities, hospitals, patient advocacy groups, scientific societies, service organizations, and schools. The event was started nearly two decades ago by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, a nonprofit organization of over 300 leading neuroscientists, as a campaign to increase public awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research.
Our eyes constantly send bits of information about the world around us to our brains where the information is assembled into objects we recognize. Along the way, a series of neurons in the eye uses electrical and chemical signals to relay the information. In a study of mice, National Institutes of Health scientists showed how one type of neuron may do this to distinguish moving objects. The study suggests that the NMDA receptor, a protein normally associated with learning and memory, may help neurons in the eye and the brain relay that information.
“The eye is a window onto the outside world and the inner workings of the brain,” said Jeffrey S. Diamond, Ph.D., senior scientist at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), and the senior author of the study published in Neuron. “Our results show how neurons in the eye and the brain may use NMDA receptors to help them detect motion in a complex visual world.”
Survey shows marijuana use disorder linked to substance use/mental disorders and disability
Marijuana use disorder is common in the United States, is often associated with other substance use disorders, behavioral problems, and disability, and goes largely untreated, according to a new study conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The analysis found that 2.5 percent of adults — nearly 6 million people — experienced marijuana use disorder in the past year, while 6.3 percent had met the diagnostic criteria for the disorder at some point in their lives. A report of the study, led by Bridget Grant, Ph.D., of the NIAAA Laboratory of Epidemiology and Biometry, appears online today in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
“The new analysis complements previous population-level studies by Dr. Grant’s group that show that marijuana use can lead to harmful consequences for individuals and society,” said George F. Koob, Ph.D., director of NIAAA.
Early exposure may affect pregnancy outcomes, NIH study finds.
Pregnant women with asthma may be at greater risk of preterm birth when exposed to high levels of certain traffic-related air pollutants, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions.
The researchers observed an increased risk associated with both ongoing and short-term exposure to nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide, particularly when women were exposed to those pollutants just before conception and in early pregnancy.
For example, an increase of 30 parts per billion in nitrogen oxide exposure in the three months prior to pregnancy increased preterm birth risk by nearly 30 percent for women with asthma, compared to 8 percent for women without asthma. Greater carbon monoxide exposure during the same period raised preterm birth risk by 12 percent for asthmatic women, but had no effect on preterm birth risk for non-asthmatics.
The Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health is investigating the potential use of a new generation of a computerized tomography (CT) scanner, called a photon-counting detector CT scanner, in a clinical setting. The prototype technology is expected to replicate the image quality of conventional CT scanning, but may also provide health care specialists with an enhanced look inside the body through multi-energy imaging. Patients could receive a minimum amount of radiation, while the maximal amount of information needed would be delivered to health care providers.
Over the next five years, David Bluemke, M.D., Ph.D., chief of the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, and his team will continue to develop scan protocols and image processing algorithms, which could improve screening, imaging, and treatment planning for health conditions like cancer and cardiovascular disease.
National Institutes of Health researchers have identified a striking signature in tumor DNA that occurs in five different types of cancer. They also found evidence that this methylation signature may be present in many more types of cancer. The specific signature results from a chemical modification of DNA called methylation, which can control the expression of genes like a dimmer on a light switch. Higher amounts of DNA methylation (hypermethylation), like that found by the researchers in some tumor DNA, decreases a gene's activity. Based on this advance, the researchers hope to spur development of a blood test that can be used to diagnose a variety of cancers at early stages, when treatments can be most effective.
