Skin Fat Helps Protect Against Infections, Study Finds

Fat cells just under a person's skin may be the first responders to invading bacteria, buying time until the white blood cells arrive at a wound site, according to a new study.

The new findings suggest that the task of fighting infections is not solely the responsibility of the immune system, the researchers said. Moreover, fat cells may fight infections by producing antimicrobial compounds, lab experiments in mice and human fat cells showed.

"That was totally unexpected," study co-author Dr. Richard Gallo, chief of dermatology at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, said in a statement. "It was not known that [fat cells] could produce antimicrobials, let alone that they make almost as much" as immune system cells, he said.

In the study, the researchers exposed mice to the bacterium methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a type of staph bacteria that is found on human skin and is resistant to several antibiotics. MRSA can cause hard-to-treat — and even deadly — infections in people. [6 Superbugs to Watch Out For]

When the skin is cut and exposed to pathogens, the immune systemsends specialized white blood cells, such as neutrophils, to the wound site to kill the bacteria entering the skin. But it takes time for these cells to reach the site of injury.

In the experiments in mice, the researchers found that the layer of fat under the skin at the site of an infection thickened, and that the fat cells produced an antimicrobial compound called cathelicidin. These findings suggest that these fat cells can directly sense the staph bacteria and respond accordingly, the researchers said.

In addition, mice that lacked healthy fat cells under the skin suffered more frequent and severe infections with MRSA, according to the study, published today (Jan. 2) in the journal Science.

However, the findings don't mean that having too much fat in the body will bring better protection against infections. In fact, obesity or insulin resistance could result in having fat cells that don't respond as they should, and may actually lower a person's defense against infections, the researchers said. This could explain the results of previous studies that found that obese people may be at higher risk for skin infections, the researchers said.

Experimental Diet Pill Tricks Body into Thinking It Ate

A new drug could trick the body into thinking it had a meal, according to a new study in mice.

Although the drug is far from becoming a miracle diet pill for treating obesity in people, it does show promise as a weight-loss solution, at least in mice, the researchers said. The drug works in the intestines and mimics the physiological processes that occur after an animal consumes a meal.

As a result, mice that consume the drug burn calories to make room for the imaginary calories they didn't actually consume, according to the study, published today (Jan. 5) in the journal Nature Medicine.

"It sends out the same signals that normally happen when you eat a lot of food, so the body starts clearing out space to store it," said Ronald Evans, director of the Gene Expression Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.

The drug, called fexaramine, activates a molecular switch that releases bile acids into the intestines in response to food. Normally, the job of bile is to help the body digest the food, but its release also has ripple effects, triggering a set of other processes throughout the body, Evans said.  [The 7 Biggest Diet Myths]

The new drug also appears to have fewer side effects than other similar weight-loss medications because it stays in the intestines, rather than entering the bloodstream and affecting the whole body, according to the study.

In the experiments, the researchers gave mice that were on a high-fat diet and were already obese a daily oral dose of fexaramine for five weeks. The found that the animals stopped gaining weight. The drug also lowered the animals' blood sugar levels and cholesterol levels, and caused a buildup of brown fat, which helps burn energy. Untreated obese mice in the study didn't show these improvements.

The drug works by switching on a receptor called the farnesoid X receptor (FXR), which Evans and his colleagues have studied for about two decades. Some of the researchers stand to gain financially if a drug based on the research ever comes to fruition, the study noted.

After a meal is consumed, FXR triggers the release of bile acids, and also changes blood sugar levels and causes the body to burn some fats, the researchers noted.

The researchers said they believe a drug working on the same principles could one day offer people a nonsurgical treatment for extreme obesity. Currently, people who are severely obese even after trying to lose weight though diet and exercise have only a few treatment options, including gastric bypass surgery.

But first, the drug has to be tested in bigger animals, such as primates, and then in humans, before being used as a treatment for obesity. This process could take a couple of years, the researchers said.

6 Healthy Habits Dramatically Reduce Heart Disease Risk in Women

Up to three-quarters of heart attacks in younger women could be prevented if women followed a number of healthy lifestyle practices, a new study shows.

Researchers followed nearly 70,000 women over two decades. They documented all cases of heart disease and death that occurred during the study period, and every two years, they looked at six aspects of the women's lifestyles: smoking, alcohol consumption, body mass index, physical activity, TV-watching habits and diet quality.

"We wanted to find out what proportion of heart disease cases could be attributed to unhealthy habits," said study co-author Andrea Chomistek, a researcher at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington.

In general, people's risk of dying from heart disease in the United States has been declining over the past couple of decades. But women ages 35 to 44 have not shown the same reduction as other groups, and researchers think a part of the difference could be explained by lifestyle choices, according to the study.

At the start of the study, the participants were 37 years old on average, and those who developed heart disease during the study period did so at age 50, on average, the researchers said. The researchers defined being "healthy" in the six habits as not smoking, consuming no more than one alcoholic drink daily, having a BMI in the normal range (18.5 to 24.9), exercising for at least 2.5 hours weekly, watching TV for fewer than 7 hours weekly, and consuming a diet rich in vegetables and whole grains and low in red meat, refined grains and sugar.

The researchers found that the women who followed healthy practices in all six aspects of their lifestyle had a 92 percent lower risk of having a heart attack, and a 66 percent lower risk of developing a risk factor for heart disease — such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure or high blood cholesterol — compared with the women who were unhealthy in all six measures.

The results also showed that three-quarters of heart attacks in women in this age range, and almost half of all risk factors in these women, could have been prevented if all of the women in the study had lived a healthy lifestyle, the researchers said.

Taking up a healthier lifestyle by eating better and exercising more is often the first recommendation made for people who have high blood sugar, high cholesterol or another risk factor for heart disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In line with those recommendations, when the researchers looked only at women who had developed risk factors for heart disease (and not those who actually had heart attacks), they found that women who followed at least four of the healthy lifestyle practices had a markedly lower risk of going on to develop heart disease than the women who did not practice any of the healthy habits.

"Women should begin following these lifestyle practices early in life, especially if they are already taking medication for a risk factor such as hypertension or high cholesterol," Chomistek said. "It's an easy way to prevent future heart trouble."

2 Years After Car Crash, Man in 'Minimally Conscious State' Suddenly Speaks

A man in Italy who was in what doctors call a "minimally conscious state" for nearly two years unexpectedly regained full consciousness and the ability to talk, according to a new report of his case.

The man woke up after he was given a drug normally used as a sedative before surgery and other medical procedures, the case report showed.

The 43-year-old man was admitted to a hospital after a car accident, and was in a coma for 40 days. People who are comatose are completely unconscious — they have no sleep/wake cycles, and do not respond to their surroundings in any way.

The man awoke from the coma but remained in a "minimally conscious state," which means that although he remained largely unable to communicate or move, he was able to voluntarily open and close his eyes, and reach for and touch objects. He also had a sleep-wake cycle.

When he was discharged from the hospital 10 months later, he still did not talk or communicate with other people, nor did he respond to simple commands asking him to, for instance, close his eyes.

Over the next year, the man's cognitive ability started to decline; his movements became abnormally slow; and he began to engage in aimless, repetitive behaviors, such as clapping.

But then, about two years after the accident, the man's doctors wanted to examine his brain using a CT scan. To do the scan, they gave the man a mild sedative called midazolam. [7 Mind-Bending Facts About Dreams]

A few minutes later, the man began to talk and interact with others.

"He talked by cellphone with his aunt and congratulated his brother when he was informed of his graduation; he recognized the road leading to his home," the researchers who treated the man wrote in the case report. However, the man did not remember the accident, and he was not aware of the way it had affected his health, they wrote.

This is the first report of midazolam having an "awakening" effect, the researchers said.

However, the effect wore off after about two hours, and the man returned to his previous state, unresponsive to the environment, according to the study.

To see whether it was indeed the drug that caused the brief improvement in the man's condition, the researchers gave the man midazolam again. Several minutes following the administration, the patient began to interact with his brother and answered questions the researchers asked him. He was also able to calculate simple math problems, such as 100 minus 7, as well as read and understand simple sentences, such as "Close your eyes."

This time around, the researchers scanned the man's brain before, during and after the administration of midazolam, and identified the locations within the brain that were affected by the drug. They found that those regions previously had been linked to the symptoms of catatonia, which is a state of unresponsiveness to stimuli that is often associated with schizophrenia.

Moreover, the researchers noted, patients with catatonia have been reported to respond to midazolam in the past. The symptoms of the man in this report were similar to those of catatonic patients, which may mean that he was indeed catatonic and therefore responded to the drug, according to the study.

However, it is not completely clear whether the patient did indeed suffer from catatonia or whether his condition merely included certaincatatonic symptoms, the researchers wrote.

Although midazolam was effective as a short-term method of treating the man's symptoms, the researchers said they could not keep giving it to him. Usually, the drug is given only to people in intensive-care units, where they can be monitored continuously, said Dr. Maria Chiara Carboncini, medical director of the Brain Injury Unit in the University Hospital of Pisa's Department of Neuroscience in Italy, who treated the patient and was a co-author of the report.

The researchers tried treating the man with another drug called lorazepam, which belongs to the same class of drugs as midazolam but can be administered more easily, as the patient does not have to be monitored continuously, Carboncini told Live Science.

However, after several days of therapy with lorazepam, the man became agitated and aggressive. His doctors switched him to carbamazepine, a drug used to treat people with epilepsy. This drug allowed the man to "maintain the improvement of his ability to interact and communicate with people," Carboncini said.

Drinking Declines with Age, UK Study Finds

People tend to drink less as they get older, but how much a person's alcohol intake declines over time depends on both their overall health and whether they have a partner, a new report from the U.K. finds.

People in poor health tend to have a steeper drop in their drinking as they age than those in better health, the researchers found. It's likely that older adults with deteriorating health drink less because it's difficult to meet their friends for drinks if they're not feeling well, or because alcohol may interact with medicationsprescribed by their doctors, the researchers said.   

For those who lose their partner, either through a separation or death, the effect on drinking depends on the person's gender: Women who lose their partner show faster decline in their drinking compared with women who don't lose their partner, whereas men who lose their partner show a slower decline in drinking than men who remain partnered up.

The study challenges the assumption that the loss of a partner often leads to alcohol misuse in aging adults, the researchers said. "In particular, our analysis of drinking behaviors demonstrates that change in partnership status for women is associated with a reduction in alcohol consumption," Clare Holdsworth, a professor of social geography at Keele University in England, said in a statement.

In their report, the researchers looked at surveys of more than 4,500 men and women living in the U.K., examining how people's drinking habits changed as they grew older. The study participants were all over age 45 at the start, and every two years, they answered survey questions about their life, including their wealth, health, education levels and life events, such as retirement or the passing of a spouse.

The researchers also found that men who are wealthy, single and educated drink the most of any group. It's possible these men have more disposable income to spend on alcohol, as well as more social engagements, especially because they are single, the researchers said. Men who fit into this group drank, on average, an equivalent of 24 small glasses of wine a week.

In contrast, when the men reached retirement age, those who had poor or deteriorating health or less education tended to drink an equivalent of five small glasses of wine weekly, the researchers said. Similarly, women with lower levels of education and poor health tended to have the lowest alcohol intake throughout the study.

Women over age 50 who lost a partner also drank an average of 16 percent less at the end of the study than they did at the beginning, the researchers found. By comparison, women who stayed in a relationship showed an 11 percent drop in alcohol consumption over the same period.

"Our findings suggest that the group most at risk of heavy drinking in later life are older single men with high levels of education and above-average wealth," Holdsworth said.  

But men in this group might not identify their drinking as problem behavior, making it difficult for health organizations to target them for intervention, she said. "Also this group are less likely to have poor health in the short term, hence the need for intervention might not be apparent."

The study, which started surveying people in 1998 and 2000, found that, on average, men older than 45 drank 14 small glasses of wine a week, whereas women of the same age drank seven small glasses of wine a week. The researchers considered a small glass of wine (11 percent alcohol by volume) to be the equivalent of about a half cup (125 milliliters).

The number of men who said they did not drink grew from 6 percent to 18 percent from the beginning to the end of the study. For women, that percentage grew from 18 percent to 26 percent over the course of 10 years.