Month: February 2014

LONDON (AP) — A saliva test for teenage boys with mild symptoms of depression could help identify those who will later develop major depression, a new study says.

Find out which Olympic athletes were injured at Sochi.        

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) – British brain scientists have identified the first biomarker, or biological signpost, for clinical depression and say it could help find boys in particular who are at risk of developing the debilitating mental illness. In a study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) journal, the team found that teenage boys who have a combination of depressive symptoms and raised levels of the stress hormone cortisol are up to 14 times more likely to develop major depression than those who show neither trait. “We’re very bad about looking after our mental health, and yet the problems of mental health are extremely common,” said Barbara Sahakian, a Cambridge University professor of Clinical neuropsychology who worked on the study. “(And) we now have a very real way of identifying those teenage boys most likely to develop clinical depression.” He said armed with such knowledge, doctors and other carers could target prevention strategies at depression-vulnerable boys and “hopefully help reduce their risk of serious episodes of depression and their consequences in adult life”.

By Gul Yousafzai QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) – A couple were stoned to death for adultery in a remote area of Pakistan’s western Baluchistan province, an official said Monday, leading to six men being held on suspicion of murder. The couple, both married to other people, were believed to be in their 30s, said Sarfaraz Bugti, the home minister for Baluchistan.

By Shereen Jegtvig NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Norwegians who started using snus before age 16 were more likely to become cigarette smokers than those who started using snus later in life, according to a new study. Snus is moist smokeless tobacco developed in Sweden. It’s contained in a small pouch, and unlike regular chewing tobacco, it doesn’t make the user spit. Research suggests snus has lower levels of chemicals called nitrosamines than cigarettes and may be less harmful.

Sleep masks can be great if you want to improve the quality of your Zs, but a new nighttime accessory claims to go one step further by reducing the number of hours' sleep you need per day. NeuroOn is being billed as the world's first brain wave-monitoring sleep mask that helps wearers switch to polyphasic sleep patterns. According to its designers, polyphasic sleepers need as little as two-to-six hours of sleep per day, which could create an extra 28 hours of free time each week.