When given early treatment, children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) made significant improvements in behaviour, communication, and most strikingly, brain function, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in a new study.
The study was published by Yale Child Study Center researchers Dr. Fred Volkmar, Kevin A. Pelphrey, and their colleagues.
The results suggest that brain systems supporting social perception respond well to an early intervention behavioural program called pivotal response treatment. This treatment includes parent training, and employs play in its methods.
ASDs are complex neurobiological disorders that inhibit a person

What makes laparoscopic surgery ‘minimally invasive’

UCSF researchers found that poor HIV-infected individuals living in San Francisco are significantly more likely to visit emergency rooms and to have hospital stays if they lack access to food of sufficient quality and quantity for a healthy life.
‘In the prior three months, a quarter of participants in the study reported an ER visit, and just over a tenth reported a hospitalisation, which shows that we are dealing with a population with high levels of illness. But the food insecure people were even sicker than the food secure, which is consistent with their experiencing higher rates of chronic diseases,’ said the study’s primary investigator, Sheri Weiser, MD, assistant professor of medicine in the UCSF HIV/AIDS Division at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.
The study recruited 347 HIV-infected urban poor participants living in substandard housing in San Francisco. To determine levels of food insecurity, the participants were questioned about their anxiety and uncertainty about their food supply, whether they were able to access sufficient quality and variety of food, and their experience of insufficient food intake and the physical consequences. Just over half of the group, 56 percent, was classified as food insecure. The entire cohort of food secure and food insecure individuals was followed for two years, looking at healthcare utilisation as a primary outcome.
‘Compared to food secure participants, the odds were approximately two times higher that a food insecure participant was hospitalised or that a food insecure participant had visited the ER over the study’s time period,’ said Weiser. ‘For a long time we have known that adequate nutrition is crucial for HIV-positive patients to live long healthy lives. Our findings that food insecure individuals are also more likely to use costly services from hospitals and emergency rooms build on our previous work showing that food insecure individuals experience poorer HIV treatment outcomes.’
Food insecurity among HIV-infected homeless and marginally housed individuals in the City is higher than the rate of food insecurity seen nationally in non HIV-infected homeless persons, with about a quarter to a third experiencing food insecurity. For the general population, about one in seven Americans is food insecure.
‘Roughly three quarters of our participants are accessing some form of food aid. Project Open Hand, Glide, and other programs providing food assistance to San Francisco’s urban poor do a phenomenal job, but with falling levels of funding and increasing client loads, their efforts have not been enough to take people out of food insecurity,’ said the study’s senior investigator, Margot B. Kushel, MD, associate professor in the UCSF Division of Internal Medicine at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center.
‘One part of the problem lies in housing,’ she said. ‘While about a tenth of participants had a recent experience of homelessness, most of the rest were housed in single-room occupancy hotels, many of which do not include kitchen facilities. Providing secure housing with functional kitchens is an important part of addressing the problem.’
Surprisingly, said Weiser, less than a fifth of the participants had received federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP) over the previous year and only about a tenth had received SNAP over the previous month. ‘We were alarmed to see such low numbers accessing SNAP, since presumably this program is intended to serve urban poor who experience food insecurity. But many of our food insecure participants have a monthly income that is slightly above the $1,080 a month SNAP cut-off.’ In other words, SNAP does not seem to be reaching the majority of HIV-infected persons in need of food assistance. EurekAlert

Researchers from the University of Cambridge, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, and Cambridge University Hospitals used advanced DNA sequencing technologies to confirm the presence of an ongoing outbreak of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in a Special Care Baby Unit in real time. This assisted in stopping the outbreak earlier, saving possible harm to patients. This approach is much more accurate than current methods used to detect hospital outbreaks.
Using this technology, the team revealed that the outbreak had extended into the wider community, a conclusion that could not be reached with available methods. They also used sequencing to link the outbreak to an unsuspecting carrier, who was treated to eradicate MRSA.
‘We are always seeking ways to improve our patient care and wanted to explore the role that the latest sequencing technologies could play in the control of infections in hospitals,’ says Dr Nick Brown, author, consultant microbiologist at the Health Protection Agency and infection control doctor at Addenbrooke‟s Hospital Cambridge. ‘Our aim is to prevent outbreaks, and in the event that they occur to identify these rapidly and accurately and bring them under control.
‘What we have glimpsed through this pioneering study is a future in which new sequencing methods will help us to identify, manage and stop hospital outbreaks and deliver even better patient care.’
Over a six month period, the hospital infection control team used standard protocols to identify 12 patients who were carrying MRSA. However, this standard approach alone could not give enough information to confirm or refute whether or not an ongoing outbreak was actually taking place.
In this study, the researchers analysed MRSA isolates from these 12 patients with DNA sequencing technology and demonstrated clearly that all the MRSA bacteria were closely related and that this was an outbreak. They also revealed that the outbreak was more extensive than previously realised, finding that over twice as many people were carrying or were infected with the same outbreak strain. Many of these additional cases were people who had recent links to the hospital but were otherwise healthy and living in the community when they developed a MRSA infection.
While this sequencing study was underway, the infection control team identified a new case of MRSA carriage in the Special Care Baby Unit, which occurred 64 days after the last MRSA-positive patient had left the same unit. The team used advanced DNA sequencing to show in real time that this strain was also part of the outbreak, despite the lack of apparent links between this case and previous patients. This raised the possibility that an individual was unknowingly carrying and transmitting the outbreak MRSA strain.
The infection control team screened 154 healthcare workers for MRSA and found that one staff member was carrying MRSA. Using DNA sequencing, they confirmed that this MRSA strain was linked to the outbreak. This healthcare worker was quickly treated to eradicate their MRSA carriage and thus remove the risk of further spread.
‘Our study highlights the power of advanced DNA sequencing used in real time to directly influence infection control procedures,’ says Dr Julian Parkhill, lead author from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. ‘There is a real health and cost burden from hospital outbreaks and significant benefits to be gained from their prevention and swift containment. This technology holds great promise for the quick and accurate identification of bacterial transmissions in our hospitals and could lead to a paradigm shift in how we manage infection control and practice.’
In this instance, DNA sequencing was a key step in bringing the outbreak to a close, saving possible harm to patients and potentially saving the hospital money. Cambridge University

Researchers have used computational analysis to identify a new Achilles heel for the treatment of drug-resistant breast cancer. The results reveal that the disruption of glucose metabolism is an effective therapeutic strategy for the treatment of tumours that have acquired resistance to front-line cancer drugs such as Lapatinib.
‘The growth and survival of cancer cells can often be impaired by treatment with drugs that interfere with the actions of one or more oncogenes,’ said Prahlad Ram, the senior author of the study and Professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas. ‘However, the clinical benefits to patients are often short lived due to acquired drug resistance. Finding alternative intervention points or so-called new addictions for cancer cells is of critical importance for designing novel therapeutic strategies against tumours. Our results reveal specific new targets for drug intervention in the metabolic pathways of cancer cells and identify existing drugs that can be used to treat drug-resistant cancer.’
Lapatinib is used for the treatment of patients with advanced or metastatic breast cancer in cases where tumours over-express the ErbB2 gene. The ErbB2 gene provides instructions for making a specific growth factor receptor. If too much of this ErbB2 growth factor receptor is made, it can lead to cells that grow and divide continuously, one of the defining characteristics of breast cancer.
The scientists used microarrays to measure gene expression in breast cancer cells with and without treatment with Lapatinib. Computational analysis of more than 15000 gene interactions revealed four major populations of genes that were regulated in a significant way. Three of these groups were the regular suspects related to drug resistance, such as genes involved in oxidation and reduction reactions or cell cycle processes. A fourth group comprised a network of reactions linked to the deprivation of glucose.
Analysis of the gene expression networks of ErbB2-positive breast cancer patients revealed that the glucose deprivation network is linked to low survival rates of the patients. Computational screening of a library of existing drugs for therapeutics that target the glucose deprivation response identified several drugs that could be effective in treating drug-resistant breast cancer.
‘By developing novel gene expression analysis algorithms and integrating diverse data, we have been able to look beyond changes in the immediate molecular signaling pathways of breast cancer cells and to consider the wider system of molecular networks within the cell,’ remarked Ram. ‘Our approach predicts new uses for existing drugs that impact the metabolism of breast cancer cells and may offer an expedient route to improved treatments for breast cancer patients.’
The glucose-deprivation response network counteracts EGFR signalling in lapatinib resistant cells EMBO