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Caffeine pill ‘can boost memory’
ISLAMABAD: A study has raised the possibility that one can rely on caffeine to boost memory as well as to wake up.
The research tested the memories of 160 people over 24 hours. It found those who took caffeine tablets, rather than dummy pills, fared better on the memory tests, BBC Health reported.
The Johns Hopkins University study involved people who did not regularly eat or drink caffeinated products. Saliva samples were taken, to check base levels of caffeine, then participants were asked to look at a series of images.
Five minutes later they were given either a 200-milligram caffeine tablet equivalent to the caffeine in a large cup of coffee, according to the researchers or a dummy pill. Saliva samples were taken again one, three and 24 hours later.
The next day, both groups were also tested on their ability to recognise the previous day’s images. Twenty-four hours may not sound like a long time, but it is in terms of memory studies. Most “forgetting” happens in the first few hours after learning something. People were purposely shown a mixture of some of the initial tranche of images, some new - and some that were subtly different.
Being able to distinguish between similar, but not identical items, is called pattern separation and indicates a deeper level of memory retention.
More members of the caffeine group were able to correctly identify “similar” images, rather than wrongly saying they were the same. Study suggests that 200mg of coffee is beneficial to those who do not regularly ingest caffeine.
But experts warned people to remember that caffeine could cause negative effects, such as jitteriness and anxiety.
Antidepressant use during pregnancy ups risk of preterm birth: Researchers have linked antidepressant medications taken by pregnant women with increased rates of preterm birth.
Lead author Krista Huybrechts, MS PhD, from the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said preterm birth is a major clinical problem throughout the world and rates have been increasing over the past two decades. At the same time, rates of antidepressant use during pregnancy have increased approximately four-fold.
Huybrechts and colleagues conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of published studies that evaluated women who took antidepressants during pregnancy and had information on gestational age at birth.
Senior author Adam Urato, MD, a Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist at Tufts Medical Center and MetroWest Medical Center, said that they studied 41 papers on this topic and found that the available scientific evidence is becoming clearer that antidepressant use in pregnancy is associated with preterm birth.
He said that the complication of preterm birth did not appear to be due to the maternal depression but rather it appears likely to be a medication effect.
Reesha Shah Sanghani MD, MPH, from Vanderbilt University said several of the studies in this review controlled for maternal depression and these studies continued to show increased rates of preterm birth in the antidepressant exposed pregnancies.
The results have been published online in the journal PLOS ONE.
Deleting ‘fat gene’ may combat obesity, ageing: Deleting a single ‘fat gene’ may be a simple way to reduce body fat while extending lifespan, a new study suggests.
The gene appears to play a crucial role in coordinating the immune system and metabolism, and deleting the gene in mice reduces body fat and extends lifespan, according to new research by at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Centre (USDA HNRCA) on Ageing at Tufts University and Yale University School of Medicine.
Based on gene expression studies of fat tissue, researchers initiated studies of the role of FAT10 in adipose tissue and metabolism.
“No one really knew what the FAT10 gene did, other than it was ‘turned on’ by inflammation and that it seemed to be increased in gynecological and gastrointestinal cancers,” said study co-author Martin S Obin.
“Turning off the FAT10 gene produces a variety of beneficial effects in the mice, including reduced body fat, which slows down ageing and extends lifespan by 20 per cent,” said Obin. Typically, mice gain fat as they age. The authors observed that activation of the FAT10 gene in normal mice increases in fat tissue with age. Mice lacking FAT10 consume more food, but burn fat at an accelerated rate. As a result, they have less than half of the fat tissue found in normal, aged mice, researchers said.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk