UC Science Today

Hi there! It’s been a busy week here at Science Today. We learned that diagnosing brain disorders can often be a challenge for doctors because some psychological diseases have overlapping symptoms. These include memory loss in patients with depression and suppressed mood in people suffering from dementia. But radiologist Cyrus Raji of UC San Francisco led a study, which found that neuroimaging and machine learning can help improve diagnosis.

"Each individual had a perfusion neuroimaging, where this is a nuclear tracer injected into them and that allowed the mapping of the blood flow in the brain and that allows us to quantify blood flow in 128 regions and use machine learning analysis to separate who had depression or cognitive disorders or both."

Raji explains that machine learning is often used to quickly process and analyze patient’s data in digital format – and it may be used in the future to find new biomarkers that can help in deciphering if one has a brain disorder vs. another issue. While on campus, we also visited pediatric surgeon Hanmin Lee, who is working to get more pediatric grants to provide devices and therapeutics for children. Right now, Lee says when it comes to spending on research and innovation, adults get the lion’s share of benefits.

"The market for most drugs and devices is significantly better and bigger and more robust in the adult world. I think we just need to be staunch advocates for children. I firmly believe that that is the best investment that you could make, is in the health of our children."

And finally, some great news for advocates for coral reef preservation. A decade-long study led by Jennifer Smith of UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography has found that remote coral reefs can thrive despite threats posed by climate change. Smith says coral reefs surrounding remote islands were dramatically healthier than those in populated areas subject to a variety of human impacts, including overfishing and coastal development.

"In a healthy coral reef, you have a landscape that is dominated by these beautiful reef building corals that are really the ecosystem engineers - that provides food and shelter for all the other organisms that live in that ecosystem."

This shows that preservation efforts can buy researchers time as they figure out how to deal with the threat posed by ocean warming. That’s it for the weekly update – to hear more episodes about University of California research, subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud. I’m Larissa Branin – have a great Mother’s Day weekend.

Excessively overweight women may be at higher risk of developing breast cancer. That’s a big problem in the United States where over half the country's population is overweight or obese.

“Even though it is not a very strong risk factor it becomes so prevalent. If you look at postmenopausal women who are diagnosed with breast cancer, about a third of them are overweight or obese."

Study leader Karla Kerlikowske says the hormone estrogen is to blame.

"When you are a postmenopausal woman, your estrogen level becomes very low, approaching 0. But when you are obese, that fat can create estrogen metabolite, so instead of your estrogen levels being 0, they would remain higher than they would otherwise. And that circulating estrogen from being overweight women contributes to women developing breast cancer. ”

So keeping body mass index under control might help you lower the risk of cancer.

Diagnosing brain disorders can often be a challenge for doctors, as some psychological diseases have overlapping symptoms. These include memory loss in patients with depression and suppressed mood in people suffering from dementia. But neuroimaging and machine learning can help improve diagnosis. In fact, radiologist Cyrus Raji of the University of California, San Francisco, led a study to prove just that.

“Each individual had a perfusion neuroimaging, where there is a nuclear tracer injected into them and that allowed the mapping of the blood flow in the brain. And that allow us to quantify blood flow in 128 regions of the brain and use machine learning analysis to separate who had depression or cognitive disorders or both."

Machine learning is used often to quickly process and analyze patients’ data in digital format.

“What machine learning will do in the future for research is it will help us find new biomarkers that are helpful in predicting either who has a disorder or who has one disorder vs another that we are trying to separate from each other.”

Stem cells studies have been controversial, but once scientists started using adult cells, instead of embryos, their experiments became more acceptable. Neurologist Lauren Weiss of the University of California, San Francisco, says with technological advancements, researchers are now facing new challenges.

"A lot of the current public debates are around gene editing technologies, so we are not actively using those in the labs now. But I think that’s where I think some of the concern has shifted. So with this new ability to make a change in someone’s genome, if it is done at a very early stage of development, it could affect every generation from there on out.”

Weiss, who is studying brain disorders using neurons grown out of stem cells, thinks that researchers can use gene editing without ethical implications.

"But that is sort of a thought of where it could go in the future, where we sort of need to be prepared to think about what are the limitations that we want to impose and need to impose.”

Younger women are more likely to develop breast cancer if their breasts are dense. This means they have more supportive tissue, rather than fatty tissue, around the ducts. That’s according to a new study by Karla Kerlikowske of the University of California, San Francisco.

“The risk of breast cancer increases with age, but if you look among younger women who do develop breast cancer, more of them will have dense breasts. “

Cancer rarely develops in fat, so that’s why when it comes to breast density older women have a smaller risk of developing the disease. And that’s because compared to younger women, they tend to have fatty breast tissue.

“In older women it maybe a third of women that have dense breasts, when in premenopausal women it is about two-thirds of women who have dense breasts. It is a more common risk factor, but it is also a strong risk factor. ”

This week on Science Today, we learned that the treatment of concussions has not been very well-defined, so radiologist Pratik Mukherjee at UC San Francisco is calling for more studies and a better understanding from doctors and researchers.

"Some people recommend cognitive rest, where you stay away from doing anything intense; physical or mental activities; stay away from bright lights and loud noises for several days. Some of the more recent studies are saying, well, maybe that’s not quite the right approach. People should try to return to their regular activities as soon as they can and stay active."

We also learned while at UCSF that younger women are more likely to develop breast cancer if their breasts are dense. That means, there is more supportive tissue, rather than fatty tissue around the ducts. Breast cancer researcher Karla Kerlikowske told us that cancer rarely develops in fat and older women have a smaller risk of developing the disease because compared to younger women, they tend to have fatty breast tissue.

"In older women, maybe a third of women that have dense breasts; when in premenopausal women, it is about two-thirds of women who have dense breasts. It is a more common risk factor, but it is also a strong risk factor."

Well, that’s all for now - but if you want to learn more about the University of California’s efforts to mitigate climate change, you should check out climate.universityofcaliornia.edu - there’s a lot to look at there! And please go to iTunes to subscribe to Science Today. I’m Larissa Branin, thanks for listening.

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The treatment of concussions has not been well-defined, and it’s sometimes controversial. So radiologist Pratik Mukherjee of the University of California, San Francisco is calling for more studies and a better understanding from doctors and researchers.

“Some people recommend cognitive rest, where you stay away from doing any intense physical or mental activities, stay away from bright lights and loud noises for several days. Some of the more resent studies are saying, well, maybe this is not quite the right approach. People should try to return to their regular activities as soon as they can and stay active and that would be better for leaving the symptom of concussion and doing better long term.”

Mukherjee has been studying injured brains with advanced MRI scanners, which he believes could help solve some of the mystery about concussions.

“The methods to do cognitive training, cognitive rehabilitation in the areas that are affected by concussions, namely attention, memory, decision making are improving all the time. ”

Advanced image-capturing technology for MRI scanners paired with powerful computers, allow researchers to quickly detect and analyze the smallest changes in brain function after a concussion. Radiologist Pratik Mukherjee of the University of California, San Francisco explains how it works.

“With the latest technology that we are starting to apply, we can actually get several images of the brain within one second. So we can image the entire brain in less than a second. And we do it continually during the scan for many minutes so we are getting thousands, even tens of thousands images of the brain, which are snapshots over time of function in the brain and the way different brain regions connected to each other.”

In the late 1990s, it used to take the whole day to process much smaller amount of data with the best computers scientists had at the time.

“Now we can do the statistics within seconds. So as we are doing the scan, we can start getting the information we need.”

Want to know how our brain is formed and what causes changes in its structure? You could look at a mini-brain…this is emerging 3D technology created from stem cells.

“Mini brains allow you to ask some questions that are more challenging to ask about a single cell essentially in isolation, vs. what happens when cells are moving in a three-dimensional space and interacting with each other in three-dimensions as well.”

That’s neurologist Lauren Weiss of the University of California, San Francisco. She has been studying brain disorders in the lab by looking at neurons grown from skin cells. Weiss says a mini brain is the next step in research because it re-creates the structure of a real brain.

“It is layers of cells that have different kinds of structures and functions, ultimately.”

Using mini-brains Weiss hopes to study micro- and macrocephaly, autism and other developmental disorders.

This week on Science Today, we learned that a major risk factor for breast cancer is a woman’s breast structure – specifically, what’s called breast density. Karla Kerlikowske of the University of California, San Francisco explains it’s a radiologic term because on a mammogram, doctors look at how much dense tissue someone has versus how much fat tissue.

"We found breast density was four times more likely to account for the development of breast cancer than having a first degree relative who'd had breast cancer."

So Kerlikowske recommends that women in this risk group should pay extra attention to screening. Meanwhile, at UCLA, we talked to Karen Gylys at the School of Nursing, who says when it comes to Alzheimer’s disease, some simple lifestyle changes can make a huge difference – even in patients who are already cognitively impaired.

"So things like exercise, things like Mediterranean diet, fish oil, there’s evidence that that these things can move the dial on neuropsychiatric tests in elderly subjects and in some studies in elderly subjects who are beginning to be impaired."

And the added benefit? These lifestyle changes are also good for your heart. Now while we’re on the subject of the brain – have you ever heard of a mini brain? Jokes aside, it’s an emerging 3D technology created from adult stem cells.

"Mini brains can allow you to ask some questions that are more challenging to ask about a single cell, essentially in isolation vs. what happens when cells are moving through more of a three-dimensional space and interacting with each other in three-dimensions as well."

That’s neurologist Lauren Weiss at the University of California, San Francisco. She’s been studying brain disorders in the lab looking at neurons grown from skin cells and says a mini-brain is the next step in research because it recreates the structure of a real brain. Well, that’s it for this weekly update. To hear full episodes about the latest research at the University of California, please subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud. You’ll be more informed if you do! Thank for listening, I’m Larissa Branin - have a great weekend!