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"Adolescence is an important period of growth ," said Subhash C. Pandey, Ph.D., professor and director of the Alcohol Research Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "This is when the brain is maturing, and consistent epigenetic programing occurs. This is also a period when binge drinking is prevalent. Adolescent binge drinking can disrupt epigenetic programing in key brain regions by changing certain key molecular targets within the epigenome." Pandey explained that early life exposure to alcohol can have not only long-lasting effects on brain chemistry but also induce a predisposition to psychiatric problems such as alcohol abuse and anxiety disorders. "Anxiety disorder is highly comorbid with alcoholism," he said, "and adolescent alcohol exposure can lead to the development of high anxiety and alcohol intake in adulthood." Pandey will elaborate on these findings at the RSA meeting on June 25. "More specifically, our data ...

"Telomeres, the protein caps on the ends of human chromosomes , are markers of aging and overall health," said Naruhisa Yamaki, M.D., a clinical fellow at the Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine. Yamaki explained that every time a cell replicates, a tiny bit of telomere is lost, so they get shorter with age. But some groups may have shorter telomeres for reasons other than aging. "Our study showed that alcoholic patients have a shortened telomere length, which means that heavy drinking causes biological aging at a cellular level," he said. "It is alcohol rather than acetaldehyde that is associated with a shortened telomere length." Yamaki will present this research at the RSA meeting on June 25. Yamaki and his co-authors recruited 255 study participants from alcoholism treatment services at Kurihama National Hospital in Yokosuka, Japan: 134 alcoholic patients and 121 age-matched controls or non-alcoholics, ranging in age from 41 to 85 year...

Describing a typical smoker as smelly, inconsiderate and lacking self-control, many who use e-cigarettes -- also known as vaping -- while continuing to smoke traditional cigarettes are likely to try to distance themselves from a group they regard negatively, the research found. One participant commented that he would be offended if labelled a smoker and another said he regarded himself as a vaper because it was more socially acceptable -- despite both participants still smoking traditional cigarettes. Dr Tushna Vandrevala, an expert in Health Psychology and Senior Lecturer at London's Kingston University who co-wrote the report, said there was limited evidence about why, despite being promoted as a means of smoking cessation, the use of e-cigarettes did not always help smokers to kick the habit. "Our study suggests this may be linked to identity," Dr Vandrevala said. "People who exclusively smoke cigarettes and wish to dissociate themselves from the negative s...

The article, which is entitled "Landscape of innovation for cardiovascular pharmaceuticals : from basic science to new molecular entities" and appears in the journal  Clinical Therapeutics , tracked the development of 168 drugs currently approved for cardiovascular disease and 178 candidate drugs currently in development along with the maturation of the basic research underlying these products. These results show that the median time from the initiation of research on new drug targets to first approval of a drug based on this research was greater than 40 years, with the time required for maturation of this research contributing the most to the delay in emergence of new products. "Our analysis shows that there are promising new therapies for cardiovascular disease in the pipeline, but that these therapies only begin to emerge when the underlying science is mature." Said Dr. Jennifer Beierlein, lead author of this research. "The best way to speed drug deve...