briefs

(LATWP) Artificial illumination is fooling the body’s biological clock into releasing key… (LATWP) Artificial illumination is fooling the body’s biological clock into releasing key wakefulness hormones at the wrong times, contributing to seasonal fatigue and depression. And daylight saving time, extended by Congress this year for an extra four weeks, risks dragging even more Americans into a winter funk.

Much more than mental health is at stake. Women who work at night, out of sync with the light, have recently been shown to have higher rates of breast cancer – so much so that an arm of the World Health Organization will announce in December that it is classifying shift work as a “probable carcinogen.”

“Electric lights are wonderful, but as with a lot of other things, we really mess things up,” said David Avery, a psychiatrist at the University of Washington School of Medicine who studies light’s impact on health. “Our ancestors evolved in a very regular light-dark cycle, and our bodies just work better that way.”

Being out of phase with the natural day-night cycle can take a big toll, causing fatigue, mood disturbances and depression. But for millions of Americans, these symptoms become even worse in winter.

Scientists disagree on the cause of seasonal affective disorder. Some focus on winter’s late sunrises, which appear to push various hormone cycles out of phase with the daily wake-sleep cycle. Others focus on the early sunsets.

Daylight saving time, which has been stretched this year to Nov. 4 for a number of reasons, including an effort to save energy, exacerbates the problem by further delaying the time of sunrise, a key signal that resets the body’s clock each day. “From the psychiatric perspective, the extension of daylight saving time this year was a very bad decision,” Terman said. “Our expectation is we will see increased depression and mood disorders.” –Rick Weiss, The Washington Post

(MCT) WICHITA, Kan. – Over the years, jimson weed has drawn attention. Georgia O’Keeffe painted it. Gene Autry sang about it. And recently, some Derby, Kan., teens have become seriously ill after ingesting the plant.

What many people might not realize about the common weed with the trumpet-shaped, white or purple flower is that consuming it can trigger a powerful hallucinogenic effect and that the plant’s chemical effects can be fatal.

Every summer or fall, when the plant matures, some teens eat it, smoke it or drink a tea from it to get high. When they don’t get high fast enough, they take more. Some of them end up in emergency rooms, police and health officials in Wichita, Kan., say. They said other parents – and their children – need to be warned of the dangers.

The potentially deadly symptoms include abnormal heart rhythm, respiratory arrest, high fever, hallucination, seizures and coma.

In the United States in 2005, poison centers recorded 975 incidents involving the same class of plants as jimson weed, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers. -Tim Potter, McClatchy Newspapers

NEW YORK – Stressing the need to prevent the spread of a highly pathogenic influenza virus – such as the bird flu strain circulating in Southeast Asia and elsewhere in the world – researchers at Stony Brook University Medical Center have begun a clinical study of an experimental vaccine.

The study marks the first avian flu vaccine to be tested on Long Island, N.Y. Volunteers are being recruited to receive the experimental doses, which are administered in two shots several weeks apart.

“This is a Phase 1 vaccine,” said lead investigator Dr. Roy Steigbigel, referring to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration designation for a safety and efficacy clinical trial. “It’s a graded-dose vaccine, meaning that people are started off with a lower dose.”

Steigbigel and colleagues are studying the vaccine, manufactured by Vical Inc., of San Diego, Calif., in volunteers between the ages of 18 and 45. The vaccine targets H5N1, the avian flu virus that has been infecting people worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates the virus has been fatal in 204 of 332 cases over the past four years. Most people have caught it from direct contact with sick birds.

The vaccine is unlike previous ones because it is composed only of DNA derived from one of the two key surface proteins on H5N1. The DNA cannot cause infection. Steigbigel underscored the vaccine is manufactured via genetic technology, which eliminates the cumbersome and time-consuming use of chicken eggs, millions of which are required to produce the annual seasonal flu vaccine. – Delthia Ricks, Newsday