Scientists in China have identified about 400 genes that appear to make some people more easily addicted to drugs, opening the way for more effective therapies and addiction control.
Experts believe genetic factors account for up to 60 percent of a person’s vulnerability to drug addiction, with environmental factors accounting for the remainder, according to Reuters.
The researchers focused on four addictive substances--cocaine, opiate, alcohol and nicotine--and mapped out five main routes, or “molecular pathways,“ that lead to addiction, they wrote in the journal PLoS Computational Biology.
Figuring out pathways are important in the study of complex diseases as they narrow down the genes and proteins involved. In diseases such as cancer, pathways help doctors make more accurate diagnoses and predictions of the course of the disease.
For drug addiction, the researchers said, “These common pathways may underlie shared rewarding and response mechanisms and may be targets for effective treatments for a wide range of addictive disorders.“
The researchers trawled through more than 1,000 peer-reviewed medical publications that linked genes and chromosome regions to drug addiction over the past 30 years and assembled a list of 1,500 addiction-related genes.
Some of these genes turned up more frequently than others in the pathways and scientists narrowed the list to 396.

Breast-feeding is considered a great way for a mother to form a close bond with her infant. And now there’s evidence to suggest it may also help kids be more resilient to stress.
Researchers in Sweden and the United Kingdom examined data on almost 9,000 children born in Great Britain in 1970, HealthDay wrote.
Relevant information was collected at birth and again at ages 5 and 10 from parents, teachers, health-care workers and midwives.
Teachers were asked to rate the kids’ anxiety levels on a zero-to-50 scale at age 10. And parents were asked about major life events--including divorce or separation--that occurred when their children were between 5 and 10 years old.
Not surprisingly, children whose parents had divorced or separated were more likely to have high anxiety.
But what the researchers found striking was the difference in stress levels between breast-fed and bottle-fed kids. Breast-fed children were significantly less anxious than kids who hadn’t nursed at their mother’s breast.
Lead author Scott Montgomery, an associate professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, said the research team was interested in examining whether there are any specific early-life exposures that make children better able to cope with stress later in life.
The study attempted to replicate animal studies that showed close physical contact between a mother and her offspring may have a positive impact on the development of the offspring’s stress response, he said.
“The best marker of maternal physical contact in the first month of life that we could find among the research information at our disposal was breast-feeding,“ Montgomery said.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that healthy women exclusively breast-feed their infants for at least the first six months of life and continue breast-feeding “for at least the first year of life and beyond for as long as mutually desired by mother and child.“
Breast-feeding offers many health and development benefits for baby, says the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development.
Kids get the right balance of nutrients to support optimal growth, fatty acids to promote brain development and protection against many childhood illnesses. And there are important emotional and physical benefits for moms as well.
“There is no question that breast-feeding is better for the health of mothers and children,“ said Nicole Else-Quest, an assistant professor of psychology at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, “but it is less clear how breast-feeding affects the mother-child relationship“.
Breast-feeding may help to establish an early bond, she added, but “it is only one of many ways to do so“.
As for why there might be differences in stress between breast-fed and bottle-fed kids, Else-Quest said it is difficult to speculate “given that many factors influence the decisions to breast-feed in the first place“.
The research team considered factors that might affect a child’s reaction to stress and ability to cope, such as maternal depression, parental education levels, social class, and smoking habits.
Even after accounting for those factors, breast-fed children were less anxious than their peers. In addition, bottle-fed children whose parents divorced were more anxious than breast-fed kids.

Phosphorescence comes from boron in the gem, the same element that makes it appear blue in normal light

The famed Hope Diamond glows a mysterious red when exposed to ultraviolet light, a finding that scientists say can help them ’fingerprint’ blue diamonds and tell the real ones from the artificial.
The phosphorescence comes from boron in the gem, the same element that makes it appear blue in normal light, explained Jeffrey Port, curator of the National Gem Collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, AP wrote.
But while all blue diamonds glow in ultraviolet light, most glow blue. The Hope glows red, indicating a different mix of boron and nitrogen, Post explained in a telephone interview.
He said researchers, by measuring the different glows, have been able to tell real blue diamonds from artificial ones as well as real ones that have been ’enhanced’ in laboratories.
The research was done at the Smithsonian and Naval Research Laboratory and their findings are reported in the journal Geology.
Some historians believe the Hope Diamond was cut from a larger gem first found in India and later part of the French crown jewels before the French Revolution.
If that is the case, Post said, the tests could also be used to identify other stones from the same source.
The 45.52-carat blue Hope Diamond is on display at the Natural History museum, but Post said lighting conditions there don’t allow it to be shown in ultraviolet light.
He said the museum hopes to make a video of the stone when it glows--which continues for some time after the light is turned off--so visitors can see that.
“People typically think of the Hope Diamond as a historic gem, but this study underscores its importance as a rare scientific specimen that can provide vital insights into our knowledge of diamonds and how they are formed in the earth,“ said Post.
Prior to this study, only limited scientific research existed regarding the phosphorescence properties of natural blue diamonds. Due to the rarity and extreme value of blue diamonds, scientists had typically used synthetic diamonds in past research.
Post and his colleagues’ recent research took advantage of a unique opportunity to examine a large collection of natural blue diamonds at the museum that were made available by diamond dealers.

As the world warms, the plants that billions of people depend on for their food are likely to become less nutritious.
That’s the worrying conclusion of an analysis of more than 40 studies investigating how crops will react to increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, NewScientist.com said.
This comes on top of the damage done as global warming leads to more floods and droughts, causing ever more frequent crop failures in poor countries.
Now it seems that even in the crops that survive, the changes in the atmosphere that affect the global climate will also cause plants to produce less protein.
Past attempts to link these changes to crop yields have produced notoriously variable results. Even small variations in growing conditions--whether a plant is located in the ground or in a pot, for example--can have a big impact.
Carbon dioxide reduces the level of protein in agricultural products, including wheat, rice and barley by 15 percent.
Nitrogen can help plants produce more protein, therefore researchers suggested that the plants should be planted in the nitrogen rich soil.

Doctors are being warned that using abbreviations in medical notes is putting patients’ lives at risk.
The UK’s Medical Defense Union said difficulties often arose because abbreviations can have more than one meaning or might be misread.
Some patients have had the wrong limb removed or operated on and others have been given deadly drug doses, it said, BBC reported.
A recent US study of 30,000 medication errors, some fatal, showed 5 percent were linked to abbreviations in notes.
Common errors included abbreviating drug names and dosages, the Joint Commission found.
An example involved a 62-year-old patient on haemodialysis who was treated for a viral infection with the drug acyclovir.
The order for acyclovir was written as “acyclovir (unknown dose) with HD“, meaning haemodialysis. Acyclovir should be adjusted for renal impairment and given only once daily.
However, the order was misread as TID (three times daily) and the patient died as a result.
A UK audit by the paediatric department at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood in November, found instances where abbreviations used had caused confusion because they had multiple interpretations.
For example, “TOF“ could be taken to mean “tetralogy of fallot“ or “tracheo-oesophageal fistula“--two completely different conditions.
When presented with a selection of abbreviations, the study authors found paediatric doctors agreed on the interpretation of 56-94 percent, while other healthcare professionals recognized only 31-63 percent.
The authors also found that the use of abbreviations was inconsistent--15 percent of the abbreviations used in medical notes appeared in the hospital’s intranet dictionary while 17 percent appeared in a medical dictionary used by paediatric secretaries.
The MDU, which defends members’ reputations when their clinical performance is called into question, advises doctors to use only the abbreviations or acronyms that are unambiguous and approved in their practice or hospital.
Dr Sally Old, MDU medico-legal adviser, said, “Abbreviations can cause confusion and risk patient safety.
“In one instance a diabetic patient was given a dose of 61 units of insulin because the notes say six international units--6IU--were misinterpreted.
“Thankfully, the error was spotted and the patient was treated.“
She said clear, concise communication was essential, particularly when care was provided by multi-disciplinary teams.
Kevin Cleary, of the National Patient Safety Agency, said, “Abbreviations in clinical notes, prescriptions and treatment charts should be kept to an absolute minimum. They cause confusion and present a risk to patients.

People with Down’s syndrome are less likely to get some cancers--and scientists hope to exploit this to help other people at risk.
Most cases of Down’s happen because the baby is carrying an extra chromosome packed with genetic information, said BBC.
But Johns Hopkins University experts, writing in the journal Nature, say the additional copy of one gene might help block cancers.
But another scientist said boosting the gene might actually help cancer spread.
Up to 95 percent of Down’s syndrome cases are caused by “trisomy 21“, in which the baby has three, rather than two, copies of chromosome 21, and the hundreds of genes it contains.
Common features of the condition include facial differences, learning difficulties, congenital heart defects and a far higher risk of childhood leukemia.
However, advances in medical science mean that the life expectancy of people with Down’s has risen sharply, and now averages 60 years.
This increase led to some studies finding that adults with Down’s syndrome appear to have less chance of developing certain cancers which involved ’solid’ tumors.
The Johns Hopkins researchers used experiments in mice to try to find out which part, if any, the extra chromosome might be responsible for this.
When mice designed to develop intestinal cancers were bred with mice which had a third copy of a chromosome, they developed far fewer cancers.
The team pinpointed a single gene, Ets2, and found that the chance of developing tumors seemed to be related to the number of copies of the gene carried by each mouse.
They believe that it might be possible to come up with a treatment which could help prevent tumors in humans.
“The phenomenon might be exploited to identify a pharmacological-based approach to tumor protection,“ they wrote in the journal.
However, David Threadgill, an associate professor of genetics at the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill, sounded a warning note.
In an accompanying article, he said that there was some evidence that Ets2 could actually boost the spread, or metastasis, of cancer around the body, making it far harder to treat.
He wrote, “Individuals with Down’s syndrome are at a lower risk of developing solid tumors, probably owing to the high Ets2 levels in their epithelial cells--but they might be at a greater risk of cancer metastasis.“
A spokesman for Cancer Research UK said: “The relationship between Down’s syndrome and cancer is complex.
“People with this genetic disorder have higher risk of leukemia, but seem to have lower risk of some other cancers.
“The study suggests that a gene which offers protection against the development of certain tumors may increase the risk of cancer spread.

Far more earthquakes shook the Himalayas in winter months than in the summer.

Hurricanes and tornadoes have seasons, but do earthquakes? They do in the Himalayas, and it is during the winter.
For years, seismologists had observed that far more earthquakes shook the massive Asian mountain range in winter months than in the summer, but they couldn’t pinpoint the cause of this seasonal change, LiveScience.com said.
A new study of GPS and satellite data presented last month at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union has connected the increase in earthquake activity to the monsoon season that drenches the region each summer.
The Himalayas are a highly quake-prone region because of the stresses building up between the Indian and Eurasian plates as India continues to drive into Asia.
Philippe Avouac of Caltech and his colleagues analyzed a catalog of 10,000 Himalayan quakes and found there were twice as many during the winter months (December to February) as during the summer.
For example, for magnitude-3 quakes, there were up to 150 per month in the winter, but only 75 in the summer.
(Quakes this small are often not even felt.) For magnitude-4 temblors (sometimes felt), the winter average was 16 per month, while the summer rate fell to eight per month. The numbers for larger, more damaging earthquakes would follow a similar pattern, Avouac said.
Satellite measurements of water levels in the rivers of the Ganges basin showed a strong seasonal change--a 4-meter rise began at the onset of the monsoon season in mid-May, reaching a maximum in September, followed by a slow decrease until the next monsoon began.
As the monsoon rains swell the rivers of the Ganges basin, they increase the pressure bearing down on the region. As the rains stop and the river water soaks through the ground, the built-up load eases outward toward the front of the Himalayan range.
This outward redistribution of stress leads to horizontal compression in the mountain range later in the year that triggers the wintertime temblors.
GPS instruments installed across the Himalayan front in 1994 yielded measurements of horizontal displacements that showed that the motion of the range was continuous along the front, but reached a maximum speed just before the earthquakes started to multiply.
While changes in water levels elsewhere (usually by tides) have been proposed to trigger earthquakes, Avouac says the Himalayan mechanism seems to be unique.