The Learning Blog

A study that focused on maternal bereavement during the prenatal period has found that female fetuses exposed to prenatal stress are at increased risk of type 1 diabetes in later life. This is the first population-based study that examined the link between prenatal stress and diabetes in the human offspring.

A total of  1.5 million Danish children from 1979 to 2004 were analyzed using the Danish register. Out of this, 39, 587 children were exposed to severe stress during or before the prenatal period. Children in the study were followed from 2 to 27 years. The appearance of type 1 diabetes was more pronounced when deaths are caused by traumatic events and also those involving a father or a sibling. On the other hand, the authors did not find a link between bereavement and diabetes in non-traumatic events, also with the deaths of grandparents or maternal siblings.

The mechanism as to how prenatal stress can cause type 1 diabetes is still unknown but the authors think that this supports the view that type 1 diabetes may have causes that operate in fetal life.

We have focused on stress as one of many possible exposures but are aware that stress may just be an upstream cause of other factors of importance such as infections, or changes in dietary habits. Stress exposure may impact the immune system and thus increase the susceptibility of infections. If stress is not a direct cause of diabetes it would explain the rather weak association we find.

Putting this finding to a more broader scope as in political unrests, migrations, wars and disasters may have public health implications with long-term effects on children’s health.

Study:  Early Life Disease Programming during the Preconception and Prenatal Period:  Making the Link between Stressful Life Events and Type-1 Diabetes

Phase two of The International Study on Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC), a European  study, reported in the June issue of Thorax that children who adhered to a Meditteranean diet high in fish, fruits, and vegetables had a lower risk of asthma in childhood.

However, these findings which are consistent with previous studies do not establish a causal relationship between children’s food choices and the risk of having asthma.

The researchers explained that because of the presence of foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids in the Mediterranean diet especially in fish, these substances have anti-inflammatory properties that counter-balance the effects of pro-allergic activities of the T-helper cells. Also, the high intake of fruits and vegetables rich in antioxidants, is found to lower the risk of asthma in adults.

References:

What Kids Eat is Tied to Asthma

Effect of Diet on Asthma and Allergic Sensitization in the International Study on Allergies and Asthma in Childhood (ISAAC) Phase Two. (Abstract)

Arsenic in water, even at low levels, can increase mortality of any cause as reported by researchers from the University of Chicago Medical Center. They based this finding from a prospective study done in Bangladesh from 2002 to 2009.

Concentrations of more than 10 micrograms were associated with a higher risk of all-cause mortality. Short-term reductions of the amount after long-term exposures doesn’t seem to alter the risk.

Arsenic (chemical symbol As) is a metal first discovered by Albertus Magnus in 1250 A.D. It is a highly toxic chemical that can even cause skin, lung, bladder cancers; cardiovascular disease; and also lowering immune system function.

The World Health Organization (WHO) gave a maximum acceptable level of 0.01 mg/L of arsenic in drinking water.

Medpage Today:  Arsenic in Water Increases Mortality

The Lancet:  Arsenic Exposure from Drinking Water, and All-Cause and Chronic Disease Mortalities in Bangladesh (HEALS).

From the Scientific American article, “Beyond Birth:  A Child’s Cells May Help or Harm the Mother Long after Delivery” by Nancy Shute

In 1979, Stanford researchers were surprised to see Y-sex chromosomes in a woman. Naturally, females do not have Y-chromosomes (they have two X chromosomes while males have the XY) so they concluded that these came from her son.

It is now known that women who carry their unborn babies to more than 20 months of gestation carry about 6% of the cells and DNA from the fetus in her blood.

What’s the medical implications of this finding? The presence of fetal cells may actually affect the overall health of the mother, although present findings are, overall, ambivalent and still controversial. Scientists find fetal cells in women with scleroderma and systemic sclerosis both autoimmune disorders affecting the skin primarily, and even in those with cervical cancer. On the other hand, a 2007 study by Dr. Vijayakrishna Gadi, et al from the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center reported that in the small group of women studied, 14% of women with breast cancer had the fetal cell DNA as compared to 43% of women with no breast cancer. Dr. Gadi said:

Our research found that these persisting fetal cells may be giving a woman an edge against breast cancer….. This experiment of nature is all the more fascinating because for years doctors treated a number of different cancers by transplanting cells from one person to another.

In addition, fetal cells were also found to have repair features in organ damage owing to the fact that they’re stem cells, able to transform themselves to other type of cells when needed. While experts suggest that the mechanism for this particular protective feature could be that fetal cells trigger the immune system.

We can then ask two questions:  (1) Why would the mother’s immune system does not attack the fetal cells and (2) what are these doing in organs with cancer – protecting, repairing or, on the negative side, helping cancer to spread?

As for the first question, experts does not know yet.

Good Hypothesis vs. Bad Hypothesis; The Bystander Hypothesis

In 2007, the US National Public Radio did an interview (with the interviewer’s additional thoughts) with Dr. Kirby Johnson of Tufts University School Medicine and Dr. Carol Artlett of Thomas Jefferson University. In this, Dr. Johnson gave two possible hypotheses:

The Bad Hypothesis suggests fetal cells increases the risk for women to have lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and scleroderma which may be the reason why these are much more common in women than in men.

The Good Hypothesis, on the other hand, suggests that the presence of these can help protect, defend and repair the mother in case of illness.

Or maybe these cells just don’t do anything and this is what article writer, Robert Krulwich calls as the “Bystander Hypothesis”.

At this time, the jury is still out as to what really fetal cells are meant for.

From PLoS ONE.

Italian researchers, in the Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research, investigated proton pump inhibitors, drugs used in the treatment of acid-related gastrointestinal disorders, as a new way of killing cancer cells.

In this report, the mechanism of destroying cancer cells focuses on the control of a pump that maintains the pH of cells. These so-called “V-ATPases” are pumps that maintain the neutral pH of the intracellular environment and the acidic extracellular environment. It is known that a low extracellular pH (an acidic environment) surrounding tumor or cancer cells contributes to invasion and spread of tumor cells by the secretion and activation of several proteases–enzymes that breakdown proteins. These proteases work as to develop new blood vessels supplying tumor cells the needed nutrients to grow rapidly–a phenomenon called “angiogenesis”.

Some studies tried various ways of neutralizing the above mechanism with only partial success. A 2005 study from China using a rat model pointed out that controlling the V-ATPases pump can prevent metastasis.

Proton pump inhibitors or PPIs such as omeprazole (Losec, Prilosec) works in an acidic environment. Using them in a highly acidic tumor environ have been shown in animals to be highly effective in controlling V-ATPases. In addition, using PPIs lower the risk of tumor-resistance to different anti-cancer drugs such as 5-fluorouracil, cisplatin, and doxorubicin.

The report concluded that PPIs can become a crucial addition to the armamentarium of oncologists due to their low-cost, low toxicity, and high efficacy, working best against malignant and drug-resistant tumors.

Click here for the study’s abstract.

I had the opportunity to transcribe a topic based on algae for fuel use.

Just think of this: Without algae, there’s no oxygen, and if there’s no oxygen, there’s no life that we now know of.

From Medscape Medical News

A study presented at the Society of Behavioral Medicine meeting reported that women’s blood pressure lowers faster after an apology from an insult than men.

The study tries to investigate the physiological effects of forgiveness in real-time situation as opposed in some previous studies where transgressions were imagined.

79 participants (29 men and 50 women) were tested for levels of forgiving using the Forgiving Personality Inventory. The participants were tasked to perform a mathematical problem and were subjected to multiple interruptions interjecting with insulting remarks.

The Forgiving Personality Inventory assesses a person’s forgiving personality.

40 of the participants received an apology from the experimenter.

Those who had higher forgiveness score showed faster recovery of the diastolic blood pressure (DBP = 4.88 mm Hg) and mean arterial pressure (MAP = 3.96 mm Hg) after the apology.

Additionally, women who scored high in forgiveness had lower DBP when compared with lower scores.  Women who received an apology recover faster than those who did not. In men, the effect was reversed – those who receive an apology had higher DBP and MAP than those who did not.

In short, the study gives as a real-time view of what happens in individuals who were provoked and were either apologized or not. With this, an individual who was insulted or harmed and received an apology experienced greater reduction of stress on the heart but the health benefits of this is however sex-dependent.

Comment:

Forgiveness, as McCullough and Witvliet observed, has one common denominator: When one forgives, their responses (what they feel, think, do and behave) towards the people who have offended or harmed them becomes less negative and more positive or prosocial over time.

I’m sure all of us, in one way, were put in a situation where we were insulted or harmed and were either apologized to or not. We can immediately feel the sense of having a “heavy weight taken off our chest” when we sincerely forgive or were forgiven or reparations were done.

Christians have very good examples of forgiveness in the Bible as I’m sure other religions have as well. The story of the Prodigal Son comes to mind. Catholics have a sacrament called Reconciliation where forgiveness is the aim in people who take part in this.

Psychologists measure forgiveness as either by state or trait. The state of forgiveness looks at how an individual remembers a specific betrayal situation. The trait of forgiveness looks at how forgiving the individual is.

In October 2003, researchers from the University of Kentucky reported in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine said that people who are forgiving by nature and are able to forgive after an interpersonal conflict have lower blood pressure and better cardiovascular status. There was also faster recovery of the diastolic blood pressure in people who has the forgiveness trait.