Health-Medical-Fitness-Diet-zk: Smell

duminică, 11 decembrie 2011

Unpleasant Smell Linked To Gonorrhea In Men

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Main Category: Sexual Health / STDs
Also Included In: Men's health
Article Date: 09 Dec 2011 - 18:00 PST

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A much higher percentage of men with an unpleasant smell were found to have gonorrhea compared to other men, researchers from the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia revealed in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. The authors explained that adult males with gonorrhea had a putrid smell, as far as many adult females were concerned.

As background information, the authors explained that animal research had demonstrated that rats and mice pick up on chemical signals to avoid sexual contact with infected potential mates. However, studies into body odor in humans have so far been limited to medical diagnostics. No studies had ever looked into smell modifications in humans, due to infection, and what impact that might have in choosing a sexual partner.

As STDs or STIs (sexually transmitted infections) have no clear visible external signs, the researchers wondered whether odor might be a sign that has been overlooked.

Mikhail Moshkin and team set out to determine whether odor unpleasantness in young adult males might be linked to infection with Neisseria gonorrhoeae (gonorrhea).

The researchers collected saliva and armpit samples from 16 healthy, 13 gonorrhea infected, and 5 other men who had recovered from gonorrhea after medical treatment. Healthy young female volunteers then assessed the sweat samples for odor (smell). With the saliva samples, the researchers measured for concentrations of testosterone, cortisol, immunoglobulin G (IgG), and immunoglobulin A (IgA). All the male participants were aged from 17 to 25 years and the female ones from 17 to 20.

Their aim was to determine whether the females could distinguish pleasant and unpleasant armpit sweat smells, and whether the differences might be linked to gonorrhea infection, no infection, or recent infection.

They found that: The women described the odor from infected individuals as less pleasant compared to the healthy and recently recovered men. A very high proportion of samples from the infected men were rated as putrid (rotten, rancid).There was a negative correlation between odor pleasantness and concentrations of nonspecific salivary IgA and IgC.In an Abstract in the journal, the authors wrote:

"Perhaps, the immune-dependent reduction of the scent pleasantness in the acute phase of STI is part of an evolutionary mechanism ensuring, unconsciously, avoidance of a risky romantic partner."

Written by Christian Nordqvist
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

Visit our sexual health / stds section for the latest news on this subject. "Scent Recognition of Infected Status in Humans"
Mikhail Moshkin DrSci, Nadezhda Litvinova DrSci, Ekaterina A. Litvinova PhD, Alena Bedareva PhD, Andrey Lutsyuk MD, and Ludmila Gerlinskaya DrSci
The Journal of Sexual Medicine 6 DEC 2011. DOI: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2011.02562.x Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

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vineri, 9 decembrie 2011

Potential New Therapies For People With Declining Sense Of Smell

Main Category: Ear, Nose and Throat
Also Included In: Seniors / Aging; Neurology / Neuroscience; Genetics
Article Date: 09 Dec 2011 - 1:00 PST

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University of California, Berkeley, neuroscientists have discovered a genetic trigger that makes the nose renew its smell sensors, providing hope for new therapies for people who have lost their sense of smell due to trauma or old age.

The gene tells olfactory stem cells the adult tissue stem cells in the nose to mature into the sensory neurons that detect odors and relay that information to the brain.

"Anosmia the absence of smell is a vastly underappreciated public health problem in our aging population. Many people lose the will to eat, which can lead to malnutrition, because the ability to taste depends on our sense of smell, which often declines with age," said lead researcher and campus neuroscientist John Ngai.

"One reason may be that as a person ages, the olfactory stem cells age and are less able to replace mature cells, or maybe they are just depleted," he said. "So, if we had a way to promote active stem cell self-renewal, we might be better able to replace these lost cells and maintain sensory function."

Gary K. Beauchamp, director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, who was not a member of the research team, noted that the olfactory system stands out for its ability to regenerate following injury or certain diseases

"This new paper ... presents an elegant analysis of some of the underlying genetic mechanisms regulating this regeneration," Beauchamp said. "It also provides important insights that should eventually allow clinicians to enhance regeneration, induce it in cases where, for currently unknown reasons, olfactory loss appears permanent, or even prevent functional loss as a person ages."

The discovery may also help scientists harness olfactory stem cells and stem cells found in other sensory systems more generally, to recover sensory function following injury or degenerative disease, said Ngai, the Coates Family Professor of Neuroscience in UC Berkeley's Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the QB3 Functional Genomics Laboratory.

Ngai, post-doctoral fellow Russell B. Fletcher and their UC Berkeley colleagues report their findings in the journal Neuron.

Self-renewal or differentiation

In the nose, smell sensory neurons live only about 30 days, then are replaced by new cells. The new cells are generated by adult stem cells in the olfactory epithelium. A key question, Ngai said, is what tells the stem cells to divide into new ones a process called self-renewal or to mature, or differentiate, into fully functional sensory nerve cells and other cells critical to maintaining olfactory function.

"These stem cells are capable of reconstituting the entire sensory epithelium of the nose following injury," Ngai said, "so understanding how these stem cells work is important for understanding the regeneration process that goes on in the nose."

Fletcher and Ngai screened nose epithelial cells for regulatory genes and discovered one, called p63, that was a previously known transcription factor that acts by controlling the transcription of other regulatory genes in epithelial stem cells, such as those in the skin, the lining of the airways and the prostate. By knocking out the p63 gene in mice, they showed that nasal olfactory stem cells rapidly differentiated into sensory neurons at the expense of the stem cells themselves.

"This gene produces a molecule that is like a brake on the stem cell," Fletcher said. "When the brake is on, stem cells self-renew. If you remove the brake, the stem cells go into differentiation."

A drug that regulates p63, or modulates one of the genes that p63, in turn, regulates, might be able to boost the number of nasal stem cells as well as the number that mature into smell neurons.

Because p63 is found in many epithelial tissues, Ngai noted, these findings could be applied to other adult tissue stem cells including stem cells in the skin and possibly lead to future therapeutic "cell replacement" strategies to take the place of damaged or dead cells not only in the nervous system but in other epihelial tissues in the body.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our ear, nose and throat section for the latest news on this subject. Coauthors with Ngai and Russell are former graduate student Melanie S. Prasol, graduate student Jose Estrada, staff professionals Ariane Baudhuin and Yoon Gi Choi, and the late Karen Vranizan of UC Berkeley's Functional Genomics Laboratory.
The research is funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health, UC Berkeley's Siebel Stem Cell Institute, the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine and the National Science Foundation.
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