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A Scratch of Relief?
It can strike at any moment. It may linger around the ankles and flare up and down the spine. Itching for relief, you dig out that long, skinny souvenir Aunt Agnes brought back from Costa Rica. Hardwood, shmardwood—the little arm makes things worse. You rip open the medicine cabinet. Drat! It’s the crusty calamine lotion the kids took to summer camp, expired in 1999. Crazed, hopeless, itchy, you give up and try to go Zen. Maybe with supreme concentration, you can will it away.
We’ve all felt that pesky pain, but scientists are now convinced that itchiness is not really a pain at all. Try telling that to people who suffer from any one of more than 50 diseases that induce debilitating itching. It’s a unique, unpleasant, and uncontrollable sensation that the medical world categorizes as low-level pain. But neuroscientists at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, isolated an itch-specific nerve cell; it’s the cell responsible for signaling the brain “itch” rather than “ouch.”
The research team, led by Zhou-Feng Chen, PhD, was able to suppress mice’s need to scratch without tampering with their ability to recognize pain. This may be the key to revolutionizing therapy for scratchy side effects. Chen hopes that patients with chronic itchiness, the kind that does not respond to antihistamines, will benefit from a therapeutic application of his findings.
If the leap can be made from mice to man, we may see the first-ever, nerve-targeting, all-purpose, fail-proof itch relief. —Olympia Kyriakides

Cholesterol and Alzheimer’s
It turns out that what’s bad for the heart is bad for the mind as new research links high cholesterol in midlife to an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. A study of 9,844 men and women who had high cholesterol in their 40s, published last month in the journal Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, revealed that—compared with people whose cholesterol levels were less than 200—those with a level of 240 or more had a 66% higher risk of Alzheimer's disease some 30 years later, while those with levels between 200 and 239 had a 52% higher risk of vascular dementia. The researchers from the University of Kuopio in Finland and Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research in Oakland, CA, recruited 40- to 45-year-olds between 1964 and 1973, controlling for weight, hypertension, and diabetes. When they reviewed their medical records between 1994 and 2007, they found 469 had Alzheimer's disease and 127 had vascular dementia, the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer's. "We need to start thinking about risk factors for dementia in middle age, and cholesterol is a risk factor that is somewhat modifiable,” the study's senior author, Rachel Whitmer, MD, told Reuters Health. According to the American Heart Association, more than 106 million Americans have borderline high cholesterol levels. Doctors say the best way to lower cholesterol is through daily exercise, stress reduction, and proper nutrition, and, if needed, statins. Other studies have shown two genes associated with cholesterol are also linked to Alzheimer’s and have suggested statins can lower the risk of Alzheimer’s, but there is still no research proving high cholesterol causes Alzheimer’s disease.
—Andrew Matthius

FDA UPDATE: Black Box Warning Update for TNF Blockers
FDA UPDATE: Black Box Warning Update for TNF Blockers
The FDA announced last month that tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blockers must carry an updated “black box” warning label cautioning that the drug may increase the risk of cancer in children and adolescents. TNF blockers, such as Cimzia, Enbrel, Humira, Remicade, and Simponi, are commonly used to treat juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and other inflammatory diseases. The drugs work by neutralizing a protein that causes inflammation and that is overproduced in these patients. TNF blockers already have a Boxed Warning for other side effects such as fungal infections, but the FDA investigated the drugs after several reports last year of children developing cancer. Most malignancies started to arise after 30 months of treatment with the drugs, and about half the cases were lymphomas. Some reported cases were fatal.
The chief public health officer of the Arthritis Foundation, Patience White, MD, told HealthDay, “The risks of the side effects are often very small, but the chance that a person with juvenile arthritis will be disabled and deformed is very high if they don’t take therapy. People often focus on risks and forget the benefits.” She added: “It really matters to have a discussion about this. There isn’t really one risk-benefit profile that fits everybody.” —A.M.

Rated Zzzzzzzzzz
Insomniacs who are tired or, perhaps more accurately, not tired of counting sheep to while away the wee hours may find relief in knowing a good night’s sleep could be only a few mouse clicks away. Two new sleep studies have found that cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, done online is effective in treating chronic insomnia. At the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville, 45 adults participated in a
nine-week study of its SHUTi program. The program used text, graphics, animation, vignettes, quizzes, and games to help patients learn and understand the best techniques for improving sleep. Patients also kept a sleep diary, so the program could calculate the time and hours they should be sleeping. At first, sleep was restricted to only a few hours, but the duration gradually increased. Participants found that their sleep efficiency, total time asleep compared to total time in bed, improved by 16% while time awake during the night decreased by 55%, according to the findings published in a recent Archives of General Psychiatry.
At the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, 118 chronic insomniacs participated in a five-week program that used audiovisual clips and downloadable MP3 files to teach relaxation methods, sleep education, and sleep restriction. A total of 81% of participants reported at least mild improvement, while 35% reported much improvement, according to findings in the journal Sleep.
Both groups of researchers plan to make their programs available to the public in the near future. In the meantime, www.CBTforinsomnia.com is a program now online, created and run by insomnia specialist Gregg Jacobs of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. —A.M.