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Remarriage Does Not Heal The Health Damage Of Divorce And Widowhood, Study
New research from the US suggests that divorce and widowhood damage health in ways that even getting married again doesn"t heal.

Disclosing Your Feelings May Help The Course Of Rheumatoid Arthritis: Results From A Randomized Clinical Trial
The health and physiological effects of an intervention which facilitates the opening of feelings are described in a paper published in the current issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
News of the day
CDC, National Chlamydia Coalition Partner To Raise Awareness, Testing Rates
The National Chlamydia Coalition is partnering with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to increase public awareness and screening efforts for chlamydia, the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reports. According to CDC, there were 1.1 million recorded cases of chlamydia in 2007, although experts estimate that there are twice as many cases that are not detected largely because the infection often causes few symptoms and many people go unscreened. The infection is three times more common in women than men, which experts say could be because men eliminate it from their bodies more readily than women. Chlamydia is treatable with a single dose of antibiotics, but if left untreated, it can lead to infertility or increased risk for ectopic pregnancies in women.CDC recommends that all sexually active women younger than age 26 be tested annually for the infection, as well as older women who have had a change of sexual partners. However, fewer than 40% of women in those groups are tested, the Journal reports. Chlamydia is particularly prevalent in women ages 15 to 19 and blacks, although sample studies have shown nearly 10% of all female Army recruits, 10% of female college freshmen and 14% of women in managed care plans are infected with chlamydia.Despite its prevalence, chlamydia is one of the least known STIs, which has compounded the difficulty of promoting screening efforts, the Journal reports. It causes few symptoms, and many people are unaware they were exposed to it. According to the Journal, many patients do not ask to be screened for the disease because the few symptoms it causes -- such as bleeding between periods, occasional vaginal discharge, pain during intercourse, pelvic pain in women, and burning upon urination in men -- are common to many conditions. While most screening efforts aim to identify active cases in younger women, there is a serious risk of infertility to older women who were exposed to the bacteria when they were younger, the Journal reports.According to the Journal, the chlamydia bacteria can move to a woman"s upper genital tract and set off pelvic inflammatory disease, which often leaves inflammation and scar tissue that obstructs a woman"s fallopian tubes and fertilization. PID is the most common cause of ectopic pregnancy and can cause endometriosis, a condition in which small portions of the uterine lining tissue grow outside the uterus, which can cause infertility and pain. Miklos Toth, a New York City-based ob-gyn, said, "It"s not the infection itself but the body"s response to get rid of the bacteria that causes scarring. And even if just some fragments of the bacteria remain, the immune system thinks an active infection is still present."According to the Journal, about 25% of women treated for chlamydia are re-infected within six months likely because of a partner who was not treated. CDC recommends that doctors prescribe a second course of antibiotics for partners of people with the infection. However, many doctors do not screen for or discuss chlamydia during office visits with their patients, especially pediatricians who may be uncomfortable discussing sexual activity with their younger patients, the Journal reports. Lynn Barclay, president of the American Social Health Association, said, "A lot of health care providers aren"t making the connection when they are dealing with adolescents. But to pretend that teenagers aren"t having sex is very dangerous."The Journal reports that the issue of how minors can pay for chlamydia testing can also create barriers. All 50 states allow minors to be tested and treated for STIs without parental consent. However, if a minor"s health insurance is provided by his or her parents, a lab fee listed on an explanation of benefits report for the testing could be considered a breach of confidentiality. Although some doctors suggest that minors pay the $40 to $90 cost for the test in cash, many refer younger patients to STI or family planning clinics that offer low- or no-cost testing. The Jour
Diagnostics

New Molecular Pathway For Targeting Cancer, Disease Discovered By UCLA Researchers

A UCLA study has identified a way to turn off a key signaling pathway involved in physiological processes that can also stimulate the development of cancer and other diseases. The findings may lead to new treatments and targeted drugs using this approach. In the study, which is currently available in the online edition of the journal Molecular Endocrinology, scientists found that by activating a receptor in cells called the liver X receptor (LXR), they were able to inhibit the hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway, which is involved in the maintenance of tissue integrity and stem cell generation. When stimulated in an unregulated manner, however, the Hh pathway can also cause cancers of the brain, lung, blood, prostate, skin and other tissues. Blocking such unregulated stimulation of the Hh pathway had previously been shown in animal studies to prevent cancers, according to the researchers. How LXR was able to inhibit tumor cell growth by impeding the Hh pathway was previously unknown. "Our finding shows that activation of LXR signaling is a novel strategy for inhibiting Hh pathway activity and for targeting various cell types, including cancer cells, which may provide important clues as to how we might be able to intervene with tumor formation," said Farhad Parhami, a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study"s principal investigator. During the study, researchers performed various tests activating LXR receptors in cells and found that specific gene expression induced by the Hh pathway could be inhibited. This finding was also confirmed in mice. "Since Hh signaling plays a major role in other physiological and pathological processes, we may be able to impact other diseases as well," Parhami said. Dr. William Matsui of Johns Hopkins Medical Institute, an expert on Hh signaling in cancer development, noted the importance of the UCLA study and its significance for the next stages of research - finding a pharmaceutical drug or substance molecule to act as an agonist, which would stimulate LXR activity to inhibit aberrant Hh signaling. "The hedgehog Hh signaling pathway is an important regulator of tumor formation, and these findings suggest that LXR agonists may be novel treatments for a wide variety of human cancers," Matsui said. According to researchers, utilizing this new treatment pathway could have broad applications in the cancer field. "This discovery identifies an entirely new and unexpected mechanism of hedgehog pathway modulation," said study author Dr. James A. Waschek, an expert on Hh signaling in brain tumor development and a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "This has great potential in offering other options, because current hedgehog pathway inhibitors have severe side effects which preclude their use in many cancer patients, especially children." Waschek also noted that this discovery may reveal new details on how Hh signals within the cell, which is currently poorly understood. The next stage of the research will focus on activating the LXR pathway using various pharmacological molecules to inhibit tumor formation. Matsui will be a collaborator in this follow-up research. In addition, the team has started a medicinal chemistry program to design and test small molecules that activate the LXR pathway while avoiding the adverse effects that may be caused when LXR is activated in tissues such as the liver. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. Other authors include Woo-Kyun Kim and Vicente Meliton from the UCLA Department of Medicine; Peter Tontonoz from the UCLA Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Kye Won Park from the department of food science and biotechnology at Korea"s Sungkyunkwan University; Cynthia Hong from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; Pawel Niewiadomski from the UCLA Department of Psychiatry; and Sotirios Tetradis from the UCLA School of Dentistry. Rachel Champeau University of California - Los Angeles


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