#5 State of Research Prospectus

The problem for my research paper is will stretching prevent injuries during physical activity. I have found a lot of case studies and research done on this subject, some saying different things, some saying the same. When I first thought of this topic, I thought the answer would be simple. But as it turns out, the health care field is never simple. You would think that if you stretch your muscle, it won’t be as tight, so thus preventing injury. But that is not the case. There are other factors that you have to control in order to get an accurate answer. As complicated as it might be, its easier researching something you are interested in. This question always intrigued me since I took an exercise physiology class last year. My teacher told us that stretching is not effective unless someone is to do it chronically. Meaning for stretching to work, you have to stretch not just before exercise, but every day, a couple times a day. So seeing someone at the gym who holds a stretch for 5 seconds and then moves on, is really not doing anything for themselves. Interesting, right?

#4 Open Topic

I am nervous and excited for spring break to come. Over spring break I am going to different places in Italy. Exciting, right? Well I am nervous because I am traveling by myself. Well, kind of. I signed up to go to Italy with a group of people, but the group of people is from different parts of the US and I don’t know any of them. We are all meeting up at JFK (the airport in Long Island, NY), so I have to take a plane from Ronald Reagan to JFK all by myself. It will only be the third time in my life that I will be taking a plane, and the first time alone. I am excited to be traveling to Italy though. My mom is Italian, and I hardly know anything about the culture. It’s going to be great to see the different places and tradition and how different it is from America. I will be going to Rome, Florence, Isle of Capri, Naples, and Pompeii. I am leaving Saturday March 6 and returning Sunday March 14. It stinks that I have a final when I get back in my basic aerobic conditioning class, but I hope it won’t be too hard. I know I won’t be doing any studying when I am gone, unless it’s one the plane. When I went to Ireland last summer I slept for most of the flight, and it was an 8 hour flight. I did some reading, but nothing too much. I hope it does not snow that weekend and the flights get cancelled. I will be one angry student. So, wish me luck!

#3 Reading the Literature Review

The literature review discussed published information about stretching and injury prevention. The author found a lot of different case studies that said similar things and combined them into one paper. The author also found case studies that disagreed with the other case studies and argued both sides of the argument. The article used for the Anatomy of a Journal Article was an article I found to support my side of the argument. The literature review summarized and synthesized the arguments of other people, whether it supported my argument or not. The paper I read was organized like an abstract. It had objectives, data sources, study selection, data extraction, main results, and conclusion. After that, there was a commentary written. This is different from the case studies I have read in the past because the ones that I read usually have the abstract of the paper, and the actual experiment mapped out well enough that if someone else wanted to do that experiment, they could. Then, the author writes the results and conclusion on the experiment they performed. The literature review was just a summary of case studies, and then a commentary written about the subject. A literature review is a good source for a research proposal because it shows both sides of the argument and a opinion so it can help you with which side of the argument you want to write about.

#2 Open Topic

This weekend, I drove home (Suffolk, VA) to surprise my family! I told them I would come home before spring break, and I was going to go home two weekends ago, but it started snowing. And it started snowing bad, and everyone got snowed in! Then the weekend after that was homecoming and I had to go to that because I already got tickets for me and my friend. Even if I didn’t go to it, I still would have had clinicals. I was supposed to get 225 hours this semester, but since the snow knocked everyone out for a couple weeks, they lowered it to 180. But back to my drive home. I left on Friday around 5 p.m. and hit rush hour traffic. It would usually take me around 3 hours to get home from where I left from, but instead it almost took me four. I was getting kind of tired on the drive from waking up at 530 am and working and having clinicals back to back, but the excitement of seeing my family kept me up. When I got home, my family was surprised and I gave my sister a BIG hug! On Saturday, I woke up early to go apartment hunting with my mom and sister. My sister wants to move out and live somewhere closer to her job. She is looking for a place for her and her boyfriend who is currently in Haiti. We must have seen like 15 places, and of course the first one and last one we saw were really nice places. She wants to move in end of March, so hopefully I will be able to take another trip to help her decorate.

#3 Types of Writing in your Field

You might not think there is no writing in Athletic Training, but there is. We write something called SOAP notes. This stands for subjective, objective, assessment, and plan. It is a method we use for documenting injuries. This is important information in case we have to come back to the injury to see what we did and it’s not working, or in case we get a suit, and has to cover our tails. If I go into special education, writing is important for making IEP’s, which stands for Individualized Education Program. This is a specific plan written for students with special needs in school. The IEP lets the teachers know what accommodations the students need to best help the student learn. IEP includes assessing students in all area, considering the general curriculum, and how the disability affects the students learning, and develops goals and objectives that makes the biggest difference for the student. You can see how important this is for the student in need and how that little accommodation could help them learn better in school. Another consideration would be a GA position I applied for for Graduate school. It’s a physician’s extender, and I would deal with insurance. It is also important for writing the documentation for the insurance company so the patient could be reimbursed.

#5 Open Topic

Last night was Mason’s Homecoming basketball game. I have not been to Mason’s Homecoming since my freshman year (I’m a senior now), and I haven’t been to a regular Mason basketball game since my sophomore year. I took my good friend Matt with me, and we watched the game in the student section. There was a lot of Mason spirit around, along with drunken college kids, and annoying boys throwing torn up programs like confetti. This could be a reason why I do not attend many games. The actual game was good though. Throughout the whole game, it was close and intense. But, unfortunately, Mason ended up losing. I wanted to leave early to try and beat the traffic, but Matt did not want to since the game was so close. We left when the game ended, and surprisingly the traffic was not bad. I was thinking we were going to have to wait 30 minutes to try to get out of Mason, but it only took us like five minutes. When we left, my friend called for us to meet her and her guy friend at Chammps, in Fair Oaks Mall. There, the UFC game was on, so we watched that and got some dinner. After that, we went back to the house, and I passed out. O what a fun night!

#4 What did you see on your way to work/school/etc.?

I am sitting down on my couch right now. Before this, I picked my friend up and we went to Borders for some coffee. After that, we went back to her house to watch a movie, and then I came home, to where I am now. I noticed in her neighborhood cars that still haven’t been unshoveled or undug from the snow storm. I also noticed when I was driving how extremely nice it was out today and that the clumps of snow on the side of the roads are melting. There was a fair amount of cars on the road today, and I am thinking that it was because of the nice weather. She lives right down the street from me, so the drive back home was not that long. At Borders, I noticed the Girl Scout troop in front selling Girl Scout cookies. They were of course young, maybe middle school, or freshmen in high school. Two of them were wearing the Girl Scout cookie box around their waste, while the third one was on her cell phone. The adult there of course yelled at her and told her to put it away. On the way back to my friends house from Borders, I saw a car almost run through a red light, and the other car almost hit this car. There was a loud honking game going back and forth, and then other cars surrounding both cars started honking. Other than that, I can not recall anything else I saw.

#2 What are your strengths?

One of my biggest strengths is that I am a people person. I love being around people, conversing with them, helping them, anything that involves interaction with people. For athletic training, this is a good attribute to have because you are constantly interacting with people, whether it’s the athletes, coaches, parents, or administration. You also have to communicate with all these people. A big part of athletic training is communication: educating the athlete on what is wrong and what they need to do to get better, explaining the injury to the parents, and telling the coaches that that athlete will be out of play for an x amount of time. If I wasn’t a people person, communicating these things would be very difficult. Another good thing about being a people person in athletic training is that I feel like if someone is a people person, it would be easier to trust someone. Trust is a big thing because the athlete has to trust that the athletic training is going to make them better.

#1 Researching/Writing Goals and Aspirations

My goals for myself as a writer and researcher are unclear. My teachers are always encouraging myself, as well as the students in my class, to par take in different research topics for our field. I thought at first, what a stupid idea! I definitely don’t want to spend my free time doing research and writing papers. In order for my major and to graduate, we are required to take a research methods class. O how I was dreading it. But, as the semester went on, I started to enjoy that class, and my views on research had changed. My goal for this class is to practice writing a lot at a level that can make me excel at writing well. There are different goals I have in mind for my career, since I am still undecided on what I will be doing after I graduate. If I stick with athletic training, my goals would be to keep the best SOAP notes and documentation that could remind me of something in case I forget, or incase I need to cover my tail. If I was to go into special education, I would need to write IEP’s and keep notes for myself on different students. My goal for that would be to write the best IEP possible for that student.

Observation and Description Exercise: One hour of interrupted listening

I went to Borders at 7:30 p.m on a Wednesday night. I ordered a coffee and sat down in the café. There were students on laptops, a mother and child, and some older adults scattered sitting in the café. The café is connected to the actual book store, so I tried to scan the whole store from where I was sitting. The mother and child sitting at the table beside me were talking about how the child’s day went at school and the homework he had to do that night. He said he had a turkey sandwich for lunch and he drew pictures. The mother and child didn’t stay long, probably because the child seemed restless. Two girls ordering coffee at the register were chatting about how their day went and what one of the girls was doing with her boyfriend for Valentine’s Day. They wondered into the book section and disappeared out of vision. I also observed everyone who walked through the café door. There were so many different people. More than half of the people who walked in that door walked in to go to the book section, not the café. Most of the people who went to the café counter stood a few feet away and studied the menu before approaching the cashier. Other customers who walked in went straight to the counter and ordered quickly as though they were regulars or maybe just in a hurry. After sitting there for a while, a student came in with, who I assume, was a tutor. The student seemed frustrated as they time they worked together progressed, but the tutor seemed patient and seemed to explain everything in great length. People who sat down sat for a while and seemed to be sipping a beverage while working, or reading. Those who rushed in seemed to walk out or move into the bookstore. When I went to leave, it was closer to closing time and there was very few people settled in the café. Most people had left or seemed to be finishing up. I watched the many people in the café blend into the hustle and bustle of the early evening. As I was watching them, they all seemed to become interconnected. Their busy lives all seemed to be a smaller part of the bigger whole of the day.

Article Summary #15

Author Unknown. Unplanned pregnancy warning to older women over 35. BBC News. 9 Feb 2010.

Experts fear that older women are doing away with contraception in belief that they are not able to get pregnant past a certain age. The Family Planning Association (FPA) thinks that the message of infertility and age has put wrong ideas into women’s heads. Although infertility does happen, a woman can still be fertile well into her forties, and even fifties. For England and Wales, the abortion rate for women between 40 and 44 has matched the rates of those girls under 16. In 2008, both of these groups had an abortion rate of 4 out of 1,000 women. A common reason why older women get abortions is because there is more likely for a birth abnormality in the baby. But, FPA says that it is because of the unreliable evidence that women wrongly assume that they could not get pregnant because they are too old.

Aimed for women 35 and over, the FPA is putting on a new campaign ‘Conceivable?’ that reminds women to stay alert about unplanned pregnancies and to keep using the contraception until after menopause if they don’t want to become pregnant. Chief executive of the FPA says that the message of fertility is declining with age is important, its often an inconsistent message. She also says that it sends inaccurate messages to women and society that only the young can get pregnant, and it leads the older women to think their fertility is gone long before it actually is. Women 30 to 34 have the highest fertility rate- 113.1 births per 1,000 women. The rate among 40 year old women has doubled since 1988 from 5.1 to 12.6 per 1,000 births. In 2008, there was 26,000 births to women over 40.

Article Summary #14

Author Unknown. Brain clue may explain condition's 'hug avoidance'. BBC News. 12 Feb 2010.

Why people with autism do not like hugs could be linked to delays in the development of the brain when the child is still in the womb. A study was done with mice that have fragile X syndrome, and researchers found that the part of the brain that responds to touch is formed late. These findings might be able to explain why people with the condition are hypersensitive to physical contact, and could lead to key stages when treatment is most effective.

Fragile X syndrome is caused when a gene in the X chromosomes interferes with protein production of FMRP. If the gene wasn’t interfered, the protein usually directs the formation of other proteins that build synapses in the brain. Boys usually are more severely affected with this condition, which is in fact the leading cause of autism.

Researchers recorded electrical signals in the brains of the mice and found that something in the sensory cortex was late to mature. The study also found changes in the brain’s connections occur midway through a baby’s development in the womb. This suggests that there could be a window for treatments for fragile X and autism that could be most effective. Autism is common in people with fragile X syndrome, however there are other causes, most of which are not fully understood. But, understanding how the brain works in a person who has fragile X could help put together some ideas about what is going on in the brain when a person has autism.

Article Summary #13

Author Unknown. Obesity 'often set before age of two'. BBC News. 13 Feb 2010.

US researchers say that they will know if a child will be obese by the age of two. A study was done on over 100 obese kids and teens and was found that more than half were overweight by 24 months and 90% of them were overweight by the age of five. Right now in the UK, about 27% of kids are overweight. Researchers say that the reason for weight gain is not understood, and can vary from person to person, factors that can lead to being overweight is poor diet, early introduction to solid food, and not getting enough exercise.

Researchers also said that a diet is set for kids by the age of two, so changing the eating behavior at a later stage is difficult. The study leader, Dr. John Harrington, an assistant professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School said: “the results should be a wake-up call for doctors. Too often to doctors wait until health complications are already there before they start their treatment. Getting parents and children to change their eating habits is already a challenge. This study indicated that there needs to be a discussion on weight gain in early infancy to affect meaningful changes in the current obesity trend”.

Article Summary #12

Author Unknown. Morbidly obese 'may have missing genes'. BBC News. 4 Feb 2010

Researchers claim that it is possible that extremely overweight people may be missing some of the same genetic material. Some findings say that obesity can be linked to inheritance, but scientists at Imperial College London found dozens of severely obese people who lacked the same 30 genes. This missing gene could not be found in people of normal weight. The latest study focused on the morbidly obese who have a BMI of more than 40 and have high risk health problems. These people are estimated to be 700,000 in the UK.

The first hint was looking at a group of teens and adults with learning disabilities who were known to be at a high risk for obesity. The researchers found 31 people who had the identical “deletions” in their genetic code, all of whom had a BMI of over 30. Most patients had been normal weight at toddlers, but then became overweight later on in their childhood. The precise function of the missing genes is unclear. Dr. Robin Walters said that the particular set of deletions was rare, and it affects 7 in 1,000 morbidly obese people, but there is likely that other variations will be found. Dr. Sadaf Farooqi from Cambridge University said that “there is still an important public health message about diet and exercise, simply blaming people for their obesity is no longer appropriate.”

Article Summary #11

Author unknown. Artificial pancreas hope for children with diabetes. BBC News. 5 Feb 2010

Scientists in Cambridge have found that an artificial pancreas can be used to regulate blood sugar in children with Type 1 diabetes. This trial found that combining a “real time” sensor measuring glucose levels with a pump that delivers insulin can boost overnight blood sugar control. The study showed that the device cut the risk of blood sugar levels dropping too low. Type 1 diabetes is a life threatening conditions where the pancreas does not produce insulin.

Seventeen children and teenagers with Type 1 diabetes participated in the study that included 54 nights in the hospital. The glucose monitoring system and the insulin pump used in the study are both already used and commercially available. The problem would be to turn them into a closed loop system. This would have to monitor the patients condition and deliver the treatment accordingly. For this, researchers developed a algorithm to calculate the appropriate amount of insulin to deliver to the body based on real time glucose readings. Then, they measure how well the artificial pancreas system controls the glucose levels compared with the children’s regular continuous pump.

The testing was done in different circumstances to increase the risk of low blood sugar attacks. The results showed the artificial pancreas kept the blood glucose levels in the normal range for 60 percent of the time, compared with 40 percent for the continuous pump. The artificial pancreas halved the time the blood glucose levels fell below 3.9mmol/l. It also prevented blood glucose falling below 3.0mmol/l.

Article Summary #10

Author Unknown. Premature birth gene clue found. BBC News. 5 Feb 2010.

The US National Institutes of Health study found the variants in DNA differences which appear to affect the risk of giving birth early in both babies and mothers. Premature births account for 7 percent of UK births. Premature births are inadequately understood, making infections and other medical complications blamed. A study done looked at 700 DNA variants in 190 genes in women who delivered early, and also who carried their baby to term. It was found that the babies who carried a DNA variant for the gene Interleukin 6 receptor were more likely to be born early. Interleukin 6 is produced by cells in response to infection and is involved in inflammation. High levels of this in the amniotic fluid and fetal blood have been linked to the onset of premature labor.

Dr. Romero led the study and said that the hypothesis was that the mother and/or fetus signal the onset of the preterm labor when the environment inside the uterus is unfavorable and threatens the survival of the maternal-fetal pair. The onset of premature labor happens when the infection in the uterus is apparent and the body goes into survival mode. This allows the mother to rid herself of the infection, thus allowing her to have the ability to have future pregnancies.

Article Summary #9

Margottini, L. How Cancer Wreaks Havoc on Bone. ScienceNOW Daily News. 5 Feb 2010

A team of clinical pathologists found that an insulin-like hormone speeds the destruction of bone caused by malignant tumors. If this study is proven true, the results could point to drugs for slowing or stopping the damage to bones caused by cancer. The hormone relaxin has already been tied to cancer, and previous studies linked high levels of this hormone to aggressive endometrial and prostate cancer, as well as breast and thyroid. It still was unclear if relaxin was produced by cancerous tumors and could boost the destruction of bone tissue.

Relaxin belongs to the same class of hormones as the one produced in the testes, INSL 3. It was shown in previous studies that if its placed under a certain condition, INSL 3 interacts with osteoblasts that build up bone tissue. When the testes do not produce enough INSL 3, bone mass drops and osteoporosis occurs. Relaxin was found to trigger a similar effect, and researchers proved it by studying the effects of relaxin on cultured human bone cells. It was found that the hormone stimulates osteoclasts, which removes bone’s excess tissue. By binding with a receptor, relaxin caused the osteoclasts to consume too much bone tissue and release a huge quantity of calcium. Too much calcium into the blood causes hypercalcemia. It was also found by researchers that relaxin promotes growth, separation, and invasiveness of various tumors. Researchers added an anti-relaxin antibody to the cell cultures and resulted that the antibody prevented relaxin from binding with receptors and from causing bone damage. The findings suggest that a drug based on this antibody will inhibit the relaxin receptor and slow down bone damage.

#3 Survey of Current Topics in Your Field

Fluid replacement in athletes
Dehydration can compromise an athlete’s performance and increase their risk of a heat related illness. Athletes do not voluntarily drink a sufficient enough of water before physical activity to prevent dehydration. An athlete’s actions towards drinking a sufficient amount of fluids can be modified by education, accessibility, and tastiness. This should not be confused to cause overdrinking because that too can be harmful and cause a decrease in physical performance. Athletic trainers provide practical recommendations regarding fluid replacement for athletes.

Management of Sport Related Concussion
Large numbers of athletes participate in sport: youth, high school, recreational, collegiate, and professional. As sports became more popular in the lives of Americans, the responsibility falls on parents, coaches, physicians, and researchers to provide a safe environment to reduce injury. For example, the recommendations made for football between 1976 and 1980 resulted in a significant reduction in fatalities and catastrophic injuries. Certified athletic trainers average about 7 athletes with concussions a year. Many athletes do not know how dangerous a concussion is, and if second impact syndrome happens, possible death. This is why it is important for an athletic trainer to recognize the signs and symptoms, and educate the family with the next steps of how to insure a proper recovery.

Emergency Planning in Athletics
The objective of having an Emergency Action Plan (EAP) is to educate athletic trainers and others about the need for emergency planning, proved guidelines in the development of emergency plans, and to advocate documentation of emergency planning. Potentially life threatening emergencies in athletics are unpredictable, and proper management of these injuries is critical and should be known to minimize the risk to the injured athlete. Emergency plans should be developed by organizational personnel in consultation with the local emergency medical services. Component of the EAP include: identification of the personnel involved, specification of the equipment needed to respond to the emergency, and the establishment of a communication system to summon emergency care. EAP’s should be reviewed and rehearsed annually.

#6 Open Topic

I am going to write about how nervous I am to graduate. I am scared out of my mind about the certification exam I have to pass to be able to find a job. The first time passing rate for this exam is about 40 percent, and the test costs 300 dollars to take. If I don’t become certified, then I can not be hired, and having a degree wont really mean anything. I have been taking practice exams, and it just shows me of how much more I have to study. Graduating means that I actually have to grow up, find a job, and rely on myself. There is a really high burn out rate for athletic training, because of the long hours they have to work everyday, and the pay is not great. I’m still undecided about what I want to do after I graduate, if its to find a job, or go back to school to get my masters. I want to be able to find a job somewhere close to my family. I cherish my family and they are very dear to me, so I can not move far away from them. I never grew up with a big family myself, so I want my kids to grow up close to my parents, my sister, and her family.

#5 Learning Styles

I am a sensory learner; I prefer concrete, practical, and procedural information, and look for the facts. I like reading something that tells me that this is the way this is because of this. I hate looking for the meaning in something and interpret it myself. I am also an active learner. I prefer to do experiments, and enjoy working in groups rather than by myself to figure out problems. I enjoy having the company of other people and seeing their insights on something rather than relying on myself to do something.

After taking the survey, the results came up with me being 33% naturalistic, 58% bodily-kinesthetic, 31% musical, 31% interpersonal, 44% intrapersonal, 25% visual-spatial, 31% logical-mathematical, and 33% verbal-linguistic. I am definitely a spatial learner. I like to draw or doodle in class while the teacher is talking, in a weird way it helps me concentrate. I also enjoy engaging in artistic pursuits. Also, with athletic training being my major, I have become a bodily-kinesthetic learner. I am physically active and enjoy the outdoors, I excel at one or more sports, I like working with my hands, I have a need to touch things when learning about them, and need to practice skills by doing them rather than simply reading or hearing about them.

#4 Refine Your Research Topic/Question/Problem

The problem for my research topic is if stretching prevents injuries. My hypothesis would be that as stretching increases, injuries will decrease. There are many factors that can throw off the experiment and result in biased information. These factors include: compliance, flexibility of the participant, and if the participant has had any other injury before. Also, if the participant participates in a sport that is vigorously involved in contact like football, lacrosse, or rugby for example, the participant could be more exposed to injury that has nothing to do with if the athlete stretched or not. There will have to be controls to measure whether or not stretching will prevent injury or not, and these include they types of stretches the participants execute, the length of time being applied to the stretches, and the age of the participants.

#2 What are you passionate about?

I am passionate about helping people and making people happy. I think that is why I like special education so much because it is a very rewarding experience. I also love majoring in athletic training. I like watching the games, routing for the team that I am assigned to for my clinical, and helping the athletes with any problems they have. There are times when high schoolers, especially athletes, get wrapped into their body image, and develop eating disorders. Athletic trainers help the athlete recover and become healthy again. This connects me to joy in my non-work life just knowing that my job is rewarding and that I am helping people out. I also take my knowledge with athletic training and help friends and family when they have health issues or need advice on something.

#1 Recent Dream

I have had a couple of dreams in the past two nights, but unfortunately, as soon as I wake up, I cannot remember them. I cannot remember a single dream that I have had. I am a really light sleeper, so this could be a problem. People who go into deep sleeps have more of a chance to have dreams. My friend told me this morning that I don’t really sleep, I just take a lot of naps. Any little thing can wake me up during the night, whether it be a noise, a movement from a roommate, or the light shinning in my room in the morning. I took a psychology class last semester and we had to do a dream interpretation assignment. Even then, I did not have a dream to write about, so I asked my friend if she had a dream, and I used hers.

Article Summary #8

Couzin-Frankel, J. Can Thin Mountain Air Make You Slim? ScienceNOW Daily News. 4 Feb 2010.

A new study details twenty obese men spent a week near the top of Germany’s highest peak and saw their metabolism speed up, appetite decrease, and had lost more weight here than if they stayed at home. Unfortunately, the study did not have a control group, so the results were inconclusive. Mountain air contains less oxygen, so breathing it causes the heart to beat faster and the body to burn more energy. A couple of studies have found that athletes training at higher altitudes tend to lose more weight than those at lower altitudes.

Lippl, a gastroenterologist of the University of Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich in Germany, and his colleagues invited these twenty men to a research station 300 meters below the summit of Zugspitze. They wanted to see if the men would lose weight if they weren’t doing any more physical activity than normal. The men could only take the same number of steps each day that they were usually at home, which was monitored by a pedometer, and were also allowed to eat as much as they liked. Blood was taken so the researchers could test for hormones linked to appetite and obesity. Starting at about 105 kg, by the end of the week the men had lost an average of 1.5 kg. Also, the men’s blood pressure had dropped which researchers say was contributed by the loss of weight.

Researchers say that what actually caused the weight loss is uncertain, that a various number of variables can be a factor. Loss of appetite is common at higher altitudes, but the men ate less than normal not only because the loss in appetite, but because the men’s eating were being monitored. Lippl thinks the increased metabolic rate also contributed to the weight loss, but again the variables cannot be separated to see which factor helped with the weight loss.

Article Summary #7

Miller, G. Is there Anybody in There? ScienceNOW Daily News. 3 Feb 2010.

There is a new study that provides hope that will open the lines of communication between families and patients in a vegetative state. Researchers say that someone with severe brain injury can answer simple questions by controlling his thoughts to influence the scans of his brain activity. In 2006, researchers, using an MRI, tested a young woman who was diagnosed as being in a vegetative state after being involved in a car accident. She was unresponsive and unaware of her surroundings, but showed patterns of brain activity when she was asked to imagine herself playing tennis or walking in her house.

In the new study, a similar method was used to examine 53 people who were in a vegetative state or slightly less severe conscious state. Researchers found that in four of these patients, distinct patterns of brain activity during the tennis and house imaging task was found that showed some level of awareness that could not be detected by their behavior. A study was done in a 22 year old male who was in a vegetative state for 5 years. Researchers asked him to answer six questions by imagining tennis to indicate a “yes” or the house for a “no”. The questions involved basic questions about himself such as the name of his father, or if he had any brothers or sisters. Researchers reported this method worked 100 percent of the time.

Article Summary #6

Author Unknown. Fish oil supplements 'beat psychotic mental illness'. BCC News. 2 Feb 2010.

Findings suggest that taking fish oil supplements can hold off mental illness in people with a high risk of them. A three month study was done where the supplement was taken and appeared to be as effective as drugs, cutting the psychotic illness by a quarter. Researchers believe that omega 3 not only has benefit for healthy hearts, but beneficial effects for the brain. The study authors, who remain unnamed, say that finding this treatment gives hope that psychotic disorders for alternatives to antipsychotic drugs. Antipsychotic drugs are intoxicating and can have serious side effects, which leads to people having to not be able to take them, where fish oil supplements are easily tolerated.

An international team tested 81 people who had a high risk of developing psychosis. High risk meant that there was a strong family history of schizophrenia or similar disorders or the person had already developed mild symptoms of the conditions. In the study, half the individuals took fish oil supplements for 12 weeks, and the other half took a placebo, neither of the groups knowing which treatment they were receiving. The results, after following these participants for a year, were that two in the fish oil group developed a psychotic disorder, and eleven in the placebo group. Based on these results, it was estimated that for every four people treated over a year for psychosis, one high risk adult could be prevented from developing it. Researchers believe that the omega 3 fatty acids found in the supplements can alter the signaling to and from the brain with beneficial effects.

Article Summary #5

Gravitz, L. Monitoring Cell Death Could Help Cancer Treatment. Technology Review. 01 Feb 2010.

It is obvious for oncologists to know that the sooner they can determine whether a treatment is unsuccessful, the sooner they can try and fix it into a new course of action. The bad part is that it usually takes two or more months to compare the before and after to determine if the tumor is shrinking. An Israeli company, Aposense, could have found a way to speed up this process; they have an imaging marker that when its used with PET scans, it indicates which cells are dying.

Apoptosis is the process by which cells commit suicide and is a vital mechanism in the body that picks out damaged or unhealthy cells. These cells that undergo apoptosis have a distinct characteristic that the profile of the membrane changes and the cell becomes more acidic, thus leaving the membrane jumbled. Aposense believes they found a way to let doctors image the cell death that lets them know if the treatment is working or not. This can happen a few days after treatment begins rather than the two months in the previous procedures. The tracer can be delivered to patients when they are in an inactive state, letting the acidic environment surround the apoptotic cells, causing the molecule to activate. The new process recognizes the dying cells by their altered membrane, binds to it, and works its way into the cell. The tracer is then linked to the imaging isotope fluoride to make it easy for PET scans to pick up the signal. The idea with this is that you can see if a patient is getting benefits from the radiation treatment, and quickly change to an alternative treatment if its not.