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:
The act of cooking offers the chance to unwind and create something special, whether you’re planning to feed a crowd or just yourself. And while you may have noticed feeling good after whipping up that perfect pie or braise, there’s actually a lot of scientific data to suggest that cooking can have a positive impact on mental health.
One meta-analysis (a report of pre-existing research) from the National Institutes of Health looked at 11 studies and found that “cooking interventions” — encouraging people to follow certain recipes or giving people cooking classes — can improve a person’s mental well-being. It specifically found that people who participated in cooking interventions reported having better self-esteem and quality of life, as well as a more positive emotional state after the fact. Another study even discovered that baking can help raise a person’s confidence level.
For many years, clinicians debated the best time to start antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV infection, with some worrying that the risks of treatment in terms of drug toxicities could outweigh the benefits of controlling the virus. In a new commentary, scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, argue that the results of three large clinical trials definitively prove that the benefits of starting ART early in infection outweigh any theoretical risk. Together, the findings from the NIH-funded SMART study reported in 2006, HPTN 052 study in 2011 and START study this year conclusively demonstrate that starting ART promptly after HIV diagnosis protects the health of the infected individual while preventing HIV transmission to uninfected sexual partners, the authors write.
Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Carl Dieffenbach, Ph.D., Director, Division of AIDS, NIAID Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., NIH Director
When the first cases of what would become known as AIDS were reported in 1981, scientists and physicians did not know the cause and had no therapies to treat those who were infected. Times have changed and today physicians can offer their patients highly effective medicines that work as both treatment and prevention. We can now speak credibly about having within our sights the end to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, when new HIV infections and deaths due to AIDS are rare.
Ending the HIV/AIDS pandemic as we know it will require using antiretroviral therapy (ART) to treat all infected people upon diagnosis, facilitating the implementation of an array of prevention tools including pre-exposure prophylaxis, and eliminating mother-to-child HIV transmission. While recent scientific advances demonstrate these objectives are all possible, we must encourage universal HIV testing so that people know their status and are linked to care if infected and linked to a prevention program if at risk of infection. Approximately 50,000 people in the United States are newly infected with HIV each year, and about 1 in 8 of the 1.2 million who currently are infected do not know their status. Tragically, nearly a third of all new HIV infections in this country are transmitted by people who are unaware of their infection; another 60 percent of infections arise from people who are diagnosed but not in care.
In a Federal Register notice on Nov. 25, 2015, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published safeguards and criteria for research to assess the safety and effectiveness of solid organ transplantation from donors with HIV infection to recipients with HIV infection. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), led the development of the criteria, which provide the framework for clinical studies on transplantation of HIV-infected organs to begin in the United States as early as 2016.
The HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act, signed into law on Nov. 21, 2013, allows scientists to carry out research into organ donations from one person with HIV infection to another and mandates development of safeguards and criteria for the conduct of such research. Prior to passage of this law, transplantation of organs from people with HIV infection was illegal in the United States.
In the United States, and throughout the world, men drink more alcohol than women. But a recent analysis by scientists at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health, indicates that longstanding differences between men and women in alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms might be narrowing in the United States.
Researchers led by Aaron White, Ph.D., NIAAA’s senior scientific advisor to the director, examined data from yearly national surveys conducted between 2002 and 2012.
A newly discovered link between order in the activity of neurons in the brain and excitability—how likely it is that individual neurons will “fire”—may provide a means for monitoring treatment of conditions like epilepsy that would be less invasive and thus more versatile than current methods. This new approach, developed by NIMH scientists, has implications beyond conditions like epilepsy; the findings support an emerging picture of how the brain balances flexibility and order during wakefulness and sleep.
An analysis by National Institutes of Health researchers has shown that people with sickle cell anemia who took the drug hydroxyurea at the recommended dose had higher survival rates than those who took less than the recommended dose. The findings appear in the journal PLOS ONE.
Researchers at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases reviewed data from 383 people who came to NIH for treatment or evaluation for sickle cell anemia between 2001 and 2010. The study found that 66 percent of people were taking hydroxyurea. Of the group taking hydroxyurea, only two-thirds (or 44 percent of all patients) were using doses high enough to fall within the recommended range. People taking the recommended dose were 64 percent less likely to die from sickle cell anemia compared to those not taking hydroxyurea. This survival benefit was not observed in those taking less than the recommended dose of hydroxyurea. Hydroxyurea is the only FDA-approved drug to treat sickle cell anemia, a rare blood disorder.
Study sheds light on preventing or reversing certain obesity-associated diseases
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health have identified a potential molecular target for reducing obesity-related inflammation. Researchers have known that overeating (that is, excess calorie consumption) by individuals with obesity often triggers inflammation, which has been linked to such diseases as asthma and Type 2 diabetes. In their study, published recently in The Journal of Clinical Investigation (Nov. 3, 2015, online version), the investigators found that a protein called SIRT3 provides resistance to this inflammatory response and could potentially prevent or reverse obesity-associated diseases of inflammation.
Lead researcher Michael N. Sack, M.D., Ph.D., a senior investigator at NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, explained that he and his team identified the role of SIRT3 through an investigation involving 19 healthy volunteers who fasted for a 24-hour period.
NIH analysis allays concerns raised by previous study
The recommendation to delay delivery of otherwise healthy infants until at least the 39th week of pregnancy does not appear to have increased stillbirths in the United States, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions. These findings contradict an earlier study that raised the concern that waiting until 39 weeks could lead to more stillbirths.
Research has shown that foregoing delivery before 39 weeks, either by induced labor or via cesarean, when there is no medical reason to deliver early lowers the chances of newborn illness and death. Yet one study linked a policy in a large hospital group of avoiding such optional, or elective, deliveries before 39 weeks to an increase in stillbirths in its patients.
Deficit in intracellular trafficking underlies speech disorder
A defect in intracellular trafficking, the process that cells use to move proteins to their correct locations, causes an inherited form of persistent stuttering, according to a new study led by scientists at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), part of the National Institutes of Health. The findings extend previous studies, providing new insights into the molecular underpinnings of the disorder and reinforcing the notion that persistent stuttering is a neurological (brain) disorder. The results may contribute to a foundation for the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for stuttering. The study was published November 5 in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Stuttering is a speech disorder in which a person repeats or prolongs sounds, syllables, or words, disrupting the normal flow of speech. The disorder affects people of all ages and begins most frequently in young children between the ages of 2 and 6, as they are developing their language skills. Most children outgrow stuttering but many do not. Researchers estimate that as many as 1 percent of Americans, roughly 3 million people, live with persistent stuttering. While the exact causes of stuttering are unknown, scientists believe that it stems from problems with the circuits in the brain that control speech.
Scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and MedImmune, LLC, have developed a vaccine candidate to protect infants and young children against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that appears to elicit a stronger protective immune response than the previous lead vaccine candidate. RSV is the most common cause of lower respiratory tract infections—including pneumonia and bronchiolitis—among young children worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each year in the United States, RSV leads to an average of about 55,000 hospitalizations among children younger than 5 years, with most hospitalizations occurring among infants younger than 6 months. There is currently no approved vaccine to prevent RSV infection.
