Research Notes




Updated 5:00 PM January 13, 2003
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Research Notes

Internet porn filters may block access to health sites
A comprehensive study of Internet filtering software finds that libraries, schools and parents can bar access to pornographic Internet sites without necessarily blocking important access to health information. But the study also finds that setting Internet filters to their most restrictive levels will keep computer users from seeing many health sites—and only will give marginally better protection against porn than the least restrictive setting tested.

The findings, published in the Dec. 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, come from a scientifically designed study of six filtering packages that was performed for the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) by a U-M team.

The lead author was Dr. Caroline R. Richardson, a lecturer in the Department of Family Medicine at the U-M Health System and a research scientist at the Veterans Administration Health Services Research and Development Service in Ann Arbor. Paul J. Resnick, an associate professor at the School of Information, was a co-author. KFF vice president Vicky Rideout was the senior author. The study’s other authors include Holly Derry of the Health Media Research Laboratory, and Derek Hansen, a student at the U-M School of Information. Richardson is a former Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the U-M Medical School, under the direction of Dr. Joel Howell and Dr. Rodney Hayward.
-By Kara Gavin, UMHS Public Relations

Cocaine harms brain’s pleasure center
New research results strongly suggest that cocaine bites the hand that feeds it, in essence, by harming or even killing the very brain cells that trigger the “high” that cocaine users feel. This most comprehensive description yet of cocaine-induced damage to key cells in the human brain’s dopamine “pleasure center” may help explain many aspects of cocaine addiction, and perhaps aid the development of anti-addiction drugs. It also could help scientists understand other disorders involving the same brain cells, including depression.

U-M and VA psychiatry researcher Dr. Karley Little holds a sample of frozen brain tissue from a cocaine addict like those used in his study. (Photo by Kara Gavin, UMHS)

The results are the latest from research involving postmortem brain tissue samples from cocaine abusers and control subjects, performed at the U-M Health System and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System (VAHS). The paper appears in the January issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

The study’s authors were Dr. Karley Little, associate professor of psychiatry at the Medical School and chief of the VAHS Affective Neuropharmacology Laboratory; David Krolewski, Lian Zhang and Dr. Bader Cassin. U-M nuclear medicine researcher Dr. Kirk Frey led the team that developed the radioactive tracer used to measure binding levels of a protein called VMAT2. The study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health, and by a VA Merit Award.
-By Kara Gavin

American Customer Satisfaction with government drops slightly
Although Americans are slightly less satisfied with the federal government compared with a year ago, customer satisfaction with federal services still ranks closely behind that of private industry, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) released last month.
The ACSI score for government agencies, including those that are regulatory and those that administer benefits, fell to 70.2 in 2002 from a record-high 71.3 last year. Overall, the customer satisfaction score for the aggregate ACSI (which includes the public and private sectors) increased from 72 to 73.1 during the same time.

In its annual report on how satisfied Americans are with the services of the federal government, the ACSI shows that large declines in satisfaction with Medicare and parts of the Internal Revenue Service account for most of the drop in the overall government score.
The ACSI data is compiled and analyzed by the Business School’s National Quality Research Center, directed by Prof. Claes Fornell. The ACSI is a national economic indicator of customer evaluations of the quality of products and services available to household consumers in the United States. It is updated each quarter with new measures for different sectors of the economy replacing data from the prior year. Each December, the ACSI issues a special report on the satisfaction of recipients of federal services.
-By Bernie DeGroat, News Service

Ecstasy use, overall drug and alcohol use among teens drop
Smoking, drinking and drug use all showed downturns among teenagers in a recent study. Monitoring the Future, conducted at the Institute for Social Research and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has tracked substance use among American high school seniors for 28 years and among 8th and 10th graders for 12 years. In 2002, about 44,000 students in nearly 400 secondary schools across the country participated in the scientific survey, often described as the most reliable source of information on adolescent substance use.

Researchers found that use of ecstasy and illicit drugs overall declined in all three grade levels. They also found sizeable drops in all three grades in the proportion of students saying they had any alcohol to drink in the past year and in the past 30 days.

Social psychologist Lloyd Johnston was the study’s principal investigator, and his colleagues Patrick O’Malley and Jerald Bachman were coauthors.
-By Diane Swanbrow, News Service

Teen smoking declines sharply in 2002
American young people are turning away from cigarette smoking at a pace that should bring cheer to parents, educators and health professionals alike. Teen use of cigarettes has been dropping steadily and substantially since the peak rates in 1996 and 1997. Between 2001 and 2002, the proportion of teens saying that they had ever smoked cigarettes fell by 4 or 5 percentage points in each grade surveyed (8, 10 and 12)—more than in any recent year.
The Monitoring the Future study has tracked the smoking habits of high school seniors in the country since 1975. Grades 8 and 10 were added in 1991 and have been surveyed annually along with the 12th graders for the past 12 years. The 2002 survey results are based on about 44,000 students in nearly 400 randomly selected public and private secondary schools from across the continental United States.

Lloyd Johnston was the principal investigator of the study and lead author of the report with fellow social psychologists Patrick O’Malley and Jerald Bachman.
-By Diane Swanbrow

Breaks in chromosomes occur at specific “fragile sites”
With 46 chromosomes and six feet of DNA to copy every time most human cells divide, it’s not surprising that gaps or breaks sometimes show up in the finished product—especially when the cell is under stress or dividing rapidly, as in cancer.

Arrows point to fragile site gaps or breaks in chromosomes. (Courtesy Anne Casper, U-M Medical School)

What is surprising is that breaks in chromosomes don’t occur at random, but at the same handful of specific locations. Scientists call them fragile sites. In recent research, Thomas Glover, a geneticist in the Medical School, and Anne Casper, a U-M graduate student in human genetics, discovered that a protein called ATR is the key to protecting fragile sites from breaking during DNA replication. Results of their research were published in the Dec. 13 issue of Cell.

Casper is first author on the Cell paper and is supported by a Predoctoral Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Martin F. Arlt, a post-doctoral fellow in human genetics, and Paul Nghiem, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, collaborated on the study.
-By Sally Pobojewski, Medical School Communications

Firefly’s glow may help drug discovery
The process that makes fireflies glow bright in the summer night also can shed light on how well new medicines work, showing immediately whether the drugs are effective at killing cells or causing other effects. That’s the conclusion of a team of scientists from the U-M Health System, who report that they have inserted the gene for a firefly’s glow-producing molecule into mice with cancer, and kept it from producing its telltale beacon of light until the cells started to die in response to cancer treatment.

The findings were published in the Dec. 24 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The lead author was Alnawaz Rehemtulla, associate professor of radiation oncology at the Medical School and co-director of the Center for Molecular Imaging. The U-M team was led by Rehemtulla and Brian Ross, professor of radiology and co-director of the center. Other authors are former postdoctoral fellow Bharathi Laxman, research associate Daniel Hall, research fellow Mahaveer Swaroop Bhojani, radiation oncology resident Daniel Hamstra and radiology professor Thomas Chenevert.
-By Kara Gavin

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