British Scientists Develop New Screening Test to Identify Postnatal Depression Risk

Changes in estrogen levels during pregnancy make women more sensitive to the stress hormone cortisol. Soon after the baby is born, the estrogen levels return to normal. However, women with these genetic variations are unable to do so, leading to postnatal depression.

Postnatal depression is a type of depression some women experience after they have had a baby. It usually develops in the first four to six weeks after childbirth, but in some cases, it may take months to develop.

Postnatal depression is not the same as 'baby blues' which is a mild type of depression that occurs after childbirth and lasting from a few hours to a few days. During this time, the new mother may feel tearful and irritable, but no medical treatment is needed since in milder forms it is considered normal. However, if it is more prolonged and severe, it can develop into postnatal depression.

Symptoms of postnatal depression include low mood, feeling unable to cope and difficulty with sleeping. Unfortunately, many women are not aware they have the condition. Sometimes, the new mother may feel very agitated or alternatively very apathetic or have feelings of guilt and self-blame. She may even be thinking about?harming self or the baby.

In view of this, the research is very important. 'There is evidence that if you can identify women at risk early, you could treat early or introduce measures to prevent or stop the process of the disease,' Grammatopoulos said.

Based on this research, Grammatopoulos and his team have developed the first ever blood test for postnatal depression which would allow women found to be at risk to receive treatment for the disease before they give birth.

Prof Grammatopoulos said he could test women for the genetic changes for between ?30 and ?40. But automating the test so that robots could screen large numbers of samples would bring the cost down to just ?10.

'Usually we focus on the mother, but the negative impact on the child is also immense,' Prof Grammatopoulos said. He is now looking for further genetic changes to increase the predictive power of the test.

Reference: http://www.journalofpsychiatricresearch.com/article
/S0022-3956%2813%2900143-X/abstract

Source-Medindia

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Researchers Develop Sugar Solution That Turns Tissues Transparent in 3 Days

Combined with fluorescence microscopy, this technique enabled researchers at the RIKEN Center for Developmental biology to obtain detailed images of a mouse brain at an unprecedented resolution.

Over the past few years, teams in the USA and Japan have reported a number of techniques to make biological samples transparent, that have enabled researchers to look deep down into biological structures like the brain.

"However, these clearing techniques have limitations because they induce chemical and morphological damage to the sample and require time-consuming procedures," explains Dr. Takeshi Imai, who led the study.

SeeDB, an aqueous fructose solution that Dr. Imai developed with colleagues Drs. Meng-Tsen Ke and Satoshi Fujimoto, overcomes these limitations.

Using SeeDB, the researchers were able to make mouse embryos and brains transparent in just three days, without damaging the fine structures of the samples, or the fluorescent dyes they had injected in them.

They could then visualize the neuronal circuitry inside a mouse brain, at the whole-brain scale, under a customized fluorescence microscope without making mechanical sections through the brain.

They describe the detailed wiring patterns of commissural fibers connecting the right and left hemispheres of the cerebral cortex, in three dimensions, for the first time.

Dr. Imai and colleagues report that they were also able to visualize in three dimensions the wiring of mitral cells in the olfactory bulb, which is involved the detection of smells, at single-fiber resolution.

IMAGE: Japanese researchers have developed a new sugar and water-based solution called SeeDB that turns tissues transparent in just three days, without disrupting the shape and chemical nature of the samples....

"Because SeeDB is inexpensive, quick, easy and safe to use, and requires no special equipment, it will prove useful for a broad range of studies, including the study of neuronal circuits in human samples," explain the authors.

The study was recently published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Source-ANI

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To Test the Effects of Drugs Scientists Develop Worm EEG

NeuroChip is a microfluidic electrophysiological device, which can trap the microscopic worm Caenorhadbitis elegans and record the activity of discrete neural circuits in its 'brain' - a worm equivalent of the EEG.

C. elegans have been enormously important in providing insight into fundamental signalling processes in the nervous system and this device opens the way for a new analysis. Prior to this development, electrophysiological recordings that resolve the activity of excitatory and inhibitory nerve cells in the nervous system of the worm required a high level of technical expertise - single microscopic (1mm long) worms have to be trapped on the end of a glass tube, a microelectrode, in order to make the recording. The worms are very mobile as well as being small and this can be a challenging procedure.

Source-Eurekalert

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