The baby chain

SCIENTISTS claim to have discovered why becoming pregnant significantly reduces a woman’s risk of breast cancer: the mothers’ bodies often keep hold of bits of their babies’ young DNA, which stimulate their immune systems.

Washington University researchers who studied 82 women found that those who had traces of their babies’ DNA circulating in their bloodstream were more than three times less likely to have developed breast cancer.

The investigators report in Cancer Research that the mothers had, in effect, transplanted their babies’ cells into their own systems during pregnancy, a process called foetal microchimerism. It appears that the persistent existence of their offspring’s “foreign” cells in their bodies irritates their own immune systems and puts them into a higher state of alert, which means they are more ready to spot and destroy malignant cancer cells.

The lead researcher, Vijayakrishna Gadi, an assistant professor at Washington University, says: “Our research indicates that these persisting foetal cells may be giving a woman an edge against developing breast cancer.”

He says this may give new leads into anticancer treatments and adds: “This experiment of nature is all the more fascinating because for years doctors treated a number of cancers by transplanting cells from one person to another.”

But, in common with many medical treatments, this natural protection is not without cost in terms of unwanted side-effects. A report by America’s Centre for Human Reproduction, in the Journal of Autoimmunity, earlier this year pointed out that women have a much higher incidence of autoimmune diseases, such as arthritis, than men – and their studies indicated that the irritant presence of their babies’ DNA cells may be the cause.

Mood monitors

FEELING bored, underworked or frustrated? Never mind, your computer may soon know when to gee you up or to give you a break.

American researchers are working to equip PCs with infrared brain-scanners, in the hope that they can read users’ moods from minute to minute and get the computers to respond accordingly.

Users wear a headband containing a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) device, which sends light beams through the forehead, to a depth of 3cm, to monitor brain blood flow. In early tests, researchers at Tufts University have found they can watch blood flow increasing as volunteers try to complete steadily more challenging tasks on screen.

The technology is to be revealed next week at the Association for Computing Machinery. Sergio Fantini, a biomedical engineering professor working on the project, hopes it will open a small window into PC-users’ emotions. “The particular area of the brain where the blood-flow change occurs should give indications of the brain metabolic changes and, by extension, workload, which could be a proxy for emotions such as frustration.”

Petal power

A CHEMICAL in daisies is about to be tried on people as a leukaemia drug therapy. Dimethylamino-parthenolide is extracted from feverfew, a daisy-like plant, and laboratory tests show that it attacks stem cells in leukaemia. Clinical trials will begin in England soon, report Rochester University scientists in the journal Blood.

Prefrontal police

YOUR internal Asbo has been found by Swiss neurologists who monitored volunteers’ brains as they played a game that relied on mutual trust. They report that specific parts of our prefrontal cortex light up when we resist temptation to do something that would get us punished if caught. The scientists say in Neuron that psychopaths seem to have brain damage in this area. In teens it isn’t yet fully grown.

New headache

HAVE you checked your food for biogenic amines?

American technologists are working on the next thing for us to fret about in the kitchen. They have created a high-tech home test for the substances, which are blamed for millions of “out of the blue” headaches every year.

Richard Mathies, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, says that the amines are natural toxins that occur in foods such as chocolate, cheese and certain red wines, and cause headaches and high blood pressure in people who are susceptible. “They are more common than people think,” he claims. “But you can’t tell because they aren’t listed on the food labels.”

The cheap, quick, testing kit employs lab-on-a-chip technology to examine the light spectrums reflected by small samples of food. Mathies’ team already has a working prototype and is moving towards production.

Deadly enemas

SOMETHING new to add to your don’t-try-this-at-home list: sherry enemas.

A relieved Tammy Jean Warner has just learnt that prosecutors are dropping manslaughter charges over the death of her husband, Mike, from alcoholic poisoning after she gave him a enema that sent his blood-alcohol levels to six times the legal driving limit.

Texan Tammy Jean, 45, says Mike had been addicted to enemas since childhood and often asked for alcohol ones to get drunk. Sadly, Tammy never told him where not to stick his odd habit.

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