Health | WPN World People News

Draft rules to ensure that harmful psychoactive substances, known as "legal highs", are withdrawn rapidly from the EU market were approved by Parliament on Thursday. MEPs sought to protect the health and safety of young people from these drugs, whilst ensuring that trade in lower risk substances for industrial and commercial uses is not hindered. Criminals who breach the ban on the most harmful substances could face up to ten years in jail.

Researchers produced antidepressant-like behavioral effects by reversing out-of-balance electrical activity in reward circuit neurons of susceptible mice exposed to social stress. Further increasing an excitatory current (lh potentiation) triggered a compensatory increase in a potassium channel current (K’ current) – as did activating the potassium channel (K+ current) using pulses of light in mice with brain circuitry genetically engineered to respond to it (optogenetic excessive activation).

The strain of Ebola virus that has killed 121 people in West Africa may have been circulating there undetected for some time, according to a new study.

Shining a light on astrocytes. This image is an artist’s representation of an astrocyte. The light flashes represent changing calcium levels.

Sarcopenia, a loss of muscle mass often associated with weakness, is a commonly recognized cause of disability in older people. However, without consensus on ways to specifically measure this condition, the development of interventions for sarcopenia has been challenging. Now, a team of researchers proposes a comprehensive set of diagnostic criteria.

Top: Normally, the egg matures inside a spherical structure called a follicle. When the egg is mature, the follicle ruptures and the egg is released. The inside surface of follicles are lined with theca cells, which produce the protein DENND1A.V2, involved in the production of male hormones. Bottom: In polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), follicles fail to mature and form cyst-like structures. In the current study, the researchers determined that in women with PCOS, theca cells produce a much greater quantity of DENND1A.V2. In a series of experiments, the researchers found that the protein led to the production of high levels of male hormones—a characteristic of PCOS.

Scientists have identified two unlikely partners in a type of immune cell called a macrophage that work together in response to cancer drugs to increase inflammation in a way that may alter tumor growth.

MERS, by demographic