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A story earlier this week gave hope that a new method might be sensitive and reliable enough to help predict who will develop early memory problems that could later lead to dementia.

BBC News online reported that ‘memory and language tests can reliably reveal “hidden” early dementia’.

These tests aim to detect small slips in memory or slight loss of fluency in speech, and could help doctors monitor people coming to them with memory complaints.

It also could help researchers in this area, as Rebecca Wood, Chief Executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, points out in the BBC Online piece: ‘Being able to spot and measure the initial stages of dementia is a crucial challenge if we are to improve drug testing and lay the groundwork for prevention trials.’

Oxford University researchers in the Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing (OPTIMA) were behind this study, funded by the Alzheimer's Research Trust and others. They gave a group of 241 healthy elderly volunteers regular tests that were designed to measure their use of language and their learning and memory abilities. They did this for a very long period of time: 20 years.

By following the volunteers for this length of time, the study, published in the journal Neurology, was able to show that the results of the Cambridge Cognitive Examination could reliably predict when a healthy elderly person was likely to develop mild cognitive impairment, a frequent precursor to dementia.

Professor David Smith of the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, who led the study, explains: ‘In normal elderly people, those who perform very slightly below average in two cognitive tests (use of language, and learning and memory) are likely to convert to a state called ‘mild cognitive impairment’ sooner than those who score just above average on the tests. People with mild cognitive impairment have a high risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease later on.’

91 of the participants developed mild cognitive impairment during the study. Older people and those scoring lower on the language or memory tests were more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment more quickly.

‘These sensitive tests indicate that some changes that are marked in Alzheimer’s disease actually occur many years before the disease is apparent,’ says Professor Smith. ‘This implies that the disease process goes on for many years, but it also allows us to detect the disease long before it can be diagnosed.’

‘These simple tests could be used in memory clinics to help predict when elderly people will become cognitively impaired,’ he adds. It also raises the prospect that, should preventive methods be developed for dementia in the future, these tests could be used to identify who would benefit from early treatment.

At Halloween our thoughts turn to spiders and all things scary but how about spiders and dinosaurs?

Martin Brasier of Oxford University's Department of Earth Sciences has shown that amber found by amateur dinosaur hunters contains threads of the world's oldest spider webs - webs that were spun 140 million years ago.

The Oxford team report their results in the latest issue of the Journal of the Geological Society.

Martin comments: ‘This amber is very rare. It comes from the very base of the Cretaceous, which makes it one of the oldest ambers anywhere to have inclusions in it.'

Their evidence shows that the webs these threads belong to would have graced lush prehistoric forests frequented by dinosaurs such as Iguanadon and Allosaurus.

The web-spinners in question were closely related to the modern day orb-web, or garden spider. ‘These spiders are distinctive and leave little sticky droplets along the spider web threads to trap prey,’ Martin explains.

‘We actually have the sticky droplets preserved within the amber. These turn out to be the earliest webs that have ever been incorporated in the fossil record to our knowledge.'

The cobwebs were preserved in tree sap, possibly emitted by trees in response to fire damage, which then fossilised into amber. To reconstruct the webs, the scientists focused through the amber at 40 different positions, tracing it through the layers and then splicing it together again using a computer technique called confocal microscopy.

As well as the amber, there are several other types of deposit at the site which are showing remarkable levels of preservation, including silica and phosphate minerals.

Martin adds: 'It’s part of a larger project which is yielding rich rewards. There’s still a lot more to find, and we have even more exciting things to report in the near future.'

When, in 1985, Mark Moloney began to investigate how penicillin was formed he didn’t imagine that it would lead to advances in polymer chemistry and a new spin out firm employing 17 people.

As we’ve highlighted before Oxford was where vital research into the chemical, pharmacological and clinical development of penicillin took place (starting in the 1930s with Florey, Chain & Heatley).

But even by the 1980s quite how penicillin was formed chemically in its fungal source was still poorly understood, and the relevant chemical reactions were known to be highly complex and very unusual.

Mark, of Oxford University’s Department of Chemistry, tells me: ‘Our strategy to unravel this process involved working with highly reactive chemical entities called carbenes, which we used as a type of chemical ‘warhead’ to bind with, and allow subsequent identification of, the enzyme binding site which controlled the remarkable chemical reaction leading to the formation of penicillins.’

‘This was ‘pure’ academic research, with no obvious immediate use, and could never therefore be construed as ‘applied’.'

Polymer problem
The idea that this penicillin research might be relevant to polymers came from Bill Norris who had previously worked with Mark at Oxford’s Dyson Perrins Laboratory before moving to ICI Specialties.

Mark explains: ‘He rang me up and presented me with a problem he was working on relating to dye migration in plastics. This was a long-standing difficulty, well known in the industry, and relates to the instability of mixtures of polymers, resulting from their extreme chemical inertness and very different chemical properties.’

‘He suggested that my carbene reagents might provide a solution, in which we would use the ‘warhead’ properties to attach the relevant molecules of the materials together.’

They developed the idea and used an undergraduate project to test its practicality in the lab but Mark says that the notion that penicillin research might have an immediate impact on polymer chemistry ‘seemed ridiculous’ and that results from the initial work were unpromising.

‘But the germ of an idea had been sown, and the more we looked into it, the more the idea had potential; there had to be substantial value in simple chemical technology that permitted direct modification of a polymer surface.’

By 1998 they had established that it was possible to modify the surface of many organic polymers and inorganic materials to introduce colour using a simple chemical process. Mark describes this discovery as ‘unprecedented’:

‘Although we initially focused on colouring, principally because it gave an immediate initial indication of success, we had it in mind to design a process that would enable introduction of other types of functionality.’

Developing ideas
Convinced that the idea was worth pursuing, in 2003 Mark used funding from internal OU sources to appoint researcher Jon-Paul Griffiths, who rapidly developed a number of aspects of the idea, and retained complete ownership of the intellectual property. 

‘This funding enabled us to take the basic idea and demonstrate that it could be used to incorporate not only colour, but biocidal, fluorescent, adhesive, and pH sensing effects onto polymers which would normally be considered to be chemically too inert to allow such modification.’

‘We even surprised ourselves at what was possible; for example, we discovered that we could introduce fluorescence onto diamond, and have more recently demonstrated that we can impart aqueous and organic dispersability onto C60, carbon nanoparticles and nanotubes.’ 

After patenting some of this work Mark and colleagues sought to commercialise it through launching a spin out company, Oxford Advanced Surfaces (OAS), in July 2006 – with the help of Oxford University Innovation.

The new firm moved to facilities in the Centre for Innovation and Enterprise at Begbroke Science Park, just north of Oxford. The location was perfect, giving them access to the surface characterisation facilities of the Materials Department at Begbroke, but still keeping them close to the Department of Chemistry.

In 2007 OAS Group plc was listed on AIM, and now employs 17 people. The firm is currently developing the carbene technology, trademarked as ONTO, both in-house and in collaboration with companies in fields as diverse as electronics to commodity goods and healthcare. 

Looking ahead, Mark comments: ‘We are satisfied that our technology is robust and delivers measurable effects against commercially relevant objectives, but the challenge now is to demonstrate that it can be done within the financial constraints imposed by the market.’

In October 2009 Mark Moloney received THE's Serendipity Award for his work, an award that celebrates the unexpected outcomes of research. 

When the first reports of swine flu cases in Mexico emerged in early April, it wasn’t just health authorities and governments that leapt into action. Researchers – including many at Oxford – also rushed to find out more about the new flu virus and its spread to help guide public health responses in the UK and worldwide.

The vast majority of people with swine flu continue to experience mild symptoms and there is little evidence so far that the virus is changing. But as we wait for an expected second wave in the autumn or winter, researchers are investigating questions that will guide the next phase of the response.

In August, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) announced funding for a number of projects around the UK to provide evidence to guide the government’s response in the coming months. These projects cover everything from how to tell which patients with suspected swine flu should be admitted to hospital to the impact of school closures in preventing spread of the virus.

Oxford is heavily involved in two of these studies: a comparison of two swine flu vaccines in children and an investigation of the effect of flu in pregnancy.

Which vaccine for children?
Professor Andrew Pollard of the Oxford Vaccine Group is chief investigator of a study running this month that is comparing head-to-head the use of two vaccines in children. The two vaccines are the ones the Department of Health has purchased to control the expected second wave this autumn, and from this week they are already beginning to be used among high-risk groups and frontline healthcare workers. Use of the vaccines could be expanded more widely later, but information about their most effective use in children is limited.

‘We will look at the immune response each vaccine generates in children, and also carefully study any side-effects that might occur such as soreness at the injection site and fever,’ says Professor Pollard. ‘Results should be available later in the autumn to inform government and guide immunisation strategy, but also to help decisions by healthcare workers and parents. The study will tell us the balance of protection against swine flu and side-effects.’

Around 1,000 children aged between six months and 12 years at five centres around the country (including Oxford’s Children’s Hospital) are being given two doses of a swine flu vaccine three weeks apart in the study being undertaken in collaboration with the Health Protection Agency. Blood tests are also taken using a local anaesthetic cream before and after the two immunisations to check each child’s response to the vaccines.

‘Children have poorer responses to influenza vaccines but are also one of the age groups likely to be most vulnerable to swine flu infection, so it is vital that we obtain information on their response to these vaccines. This study will help in decisions about which vaccine will be best for protecting children,’ Professor Pollard explains.

Advice for pregnant women
Pregnant women are known to be a group at higher risk from all types of flu including normal seasonal flu. To make sure the best information is available about managing swine flu during pregnancy, Dr Marian Knight at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit [NPEU] will be logging all admissions of women with swine flu at maternity units across the UK. This will go hand-in-hand with work led by Professor Simon Thomas at Newcastle University that will review how cases are handled by GPs and midwives in the community.

‘We’ll be looking at what treatments are used and the timing of those treatments to see what’s helpful. We’ll also see if any characteristics – the mother’s age, whether they’ve had babies before, when they got ill – are associated with any risk of complications for the mother or infant,’ explains Dr Knight. ‘It will help doctors and midwives give the best care during a pandemic.’

Data are already being recorded and the Oxford team are reporting the latest results monthly from the middle of this month. The researchers are collaborating with the Royal Colleges of Obstetricians, Midwives and General Practitioners, the Department of Health, and the Health Protection Agency, so that the best use of the data is assured.

<To read the rest of the article click on 'full story' below>

Swine flu origins
It’s easy to forget how little was known about swine flu in the very beginning with the first reported cases in Mexico and the US, not least its severity and where it came from. Right back at the start of the outbreak, when health agencies were racing to understand the new flu strain and how virulent it might be, Oliver Pybus of the Department of Zoology was part of international research groups that sought to characterise the new virus genetically.

The early papers they published in Science and Nature in June showed that the virus had come from pigs and had probably been circulating in people since the beginning of 2009 – three months before it was first identified. ‘This was reassuring at the time, as it suggested that the new H1N1 swine flu wasn’t very virulent in humans because it would have been picked up sooner,’ says Dr Pybus.

One other finding from that work might become more important in the future, Dr Pybus notes. Before it jumped into humans, the research suggest the new swine flu virus may have been hiding in pigs for around 10 years without being noticed by scientists.

‘Although we have good surveillance systems for monitoring flu strains in circulation in birds and humans, there may be a surveillance gap in pigs,’ says Dr Pybus. He is now part of an international consortium that aims to plug this gap.

Global response
Professor Jeremy Farrar also got involved at the start. He leads the University’s Clinical Research Unit [CRU] in Vietnam, which has been working on flu since 2004 when bird flu reached the country. The unit also coordinates the South-East Asia Infectious Disease Clinical Research Network (SEAICRN), supported by the US National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organisation, and the Wellcome Trust. Its largest focus is on flu.

With an interdisciplinary team of clinicians, pharmacologists, virologists, immunologists and ethicists, the unit aims to help lead thinking on how the world responds to pandemic threats, along with collaborators in the US and Europe. This also includes how the research world can put systems in place to be able to respond swiftly and learn lessons from new epidemics of infectious disease.

Professor Farrar has been involved in guiding the responses to swine flu in Mexico and Argentina, both countries that have seen a large number of cases. For example, he visited Mexico in May at the peak of the outbreak there, to share ideas and experiences from his involvement in H5N1 bird flu. Hospitals there were particularly keen to understand how they could share information better and work together as a group. Their initial response to swine flu had been slowed when no one hospital saw a noticeable increase in number of flu cases above the normal level. Teams in Mexico have now adapted research protocols from the CRU in Vietnam and translated them into Spanish.

He has also been involved in discussions in the UK to try and link the blood transfusion service and intensive care (ITU) units. The aim is to conduct a trial in the UK of plasma therapy for optimising the use of ITU beds in the event of a large number of severe cases this winter, making sure as many people as possible won’t require intensive care beds.

But there is still a lack of clinical research about some aspects of influenza, according to Professor Farrar. ‘For example, pregnant women and obese people seem to be more at risk, yet we don’t know why or whether such people need different doses of antiviral drugs and whether their bodies handle the drug differently. As part of the SEAICRN, we are conducting a large trial to determine appropriate does of oseltamivir (Tamiflu) in cases of severe influenza, whether that’s H5N1 bird flu, seasonal flu, or H1N1 swine flu.

‘We are also concerned about the potential for the virus to become resistant to the available drugs and there are individual reports now from many countries. Such a development could have major implications for treatment of more severe cases in a second wave.’

Use of antivirals
Drs Matthew Thompson and Carl Heneghan in the Department of Public Health have also been interested in the use of antivirals for flu. When swine flu emerged, they were working on a review of the available evidence on the effectiveness of antivirals in children for seasonal flu. Their paper, published in the BMJ in August, received a great deal of interest.

They showed that the benefits of taking Tamiflu or Relenza in terms of shortening the duration of flu symptoms and reducing spread of the virus were quite small. They suggested that the UK Government’s policy of making Tamiflu available to all who reported swine flu symptoms, regardless of their severity, was neither ‘a necessary nor appropriate strategy’.

Although the Government have stood by their ‘safety-first’ strategy, Matthew Thompson believes that the emphasis of the World Health Organisation and US Centre for Disease Control’s advice subsequently shifted to emphasise that antiviral use is not necessary in those with mild flu-like symptoms.

‘The Government’s vaccination programme for swine flu is now starting, added onto the normal seasonal flu programme’ says Dr Thompson, who is also a GP. ‘And there is likely to be a benefit for some patients, the same patients who get the flu jab every year. But Tamiflu will continue to be recommended on the flu helpline. With winter coming on, it will also become increasingly difficult to distinguish typical coughs and colds from the similar symptoms of swine flu, possibly leading to further inappropriate use of antivirals.’

Dr Thompson is now shifting his attention slightly. The research team to which he belongs is hoping to secure funding to carry out a trial of antibiotic use in children with flu. This would help show whether it is bacterial infections on top of flu that tend to cause the most severe complications, and whether antibiotics might have a beneficial effect.

It's clear from all of these examples that Oxford’s research on swine flu will continue to guide the public health measures taken and the care provided for us all.

How do we know who we are?

In tonight's Horizon Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy explores this age-old question and comes up with some surprising answers thanks to the latest scientific discoveries about consciousness. 

Marcus told me: 'It's great that Horizon is prepared to tackle some of the biggest problems of science. Understanding how the brain gives us a sense of "I" has been one of the greatest challenges for scientists and philosophers for centuries.'

'It was a real privilege to make this programme with Horizon and to journey round the world to see the cutting edge research that is being done to unlock the mysteries of what happens in our heads. On the way I must have had my brain scanned, tricked, drugged, prodded and stimulated in every fashion imaginable. Hopefully the programme will tickle viewers' brains too.'

The programme takes in many of the different ways scientists have found to investigate our sense of ourselves, from the mirror test, devised by Gordon Gallup, that shows when babies can recognise themselves, to the latest research examining that building block of the brain: the neuron.

You can read more about tonight's show and what Marcus found out in this BBC Online article or on Marcus's blog.

What's clear about this fascinating topic is that consciousness touches on so many other areas science is only now beginning to tackle in earnest: such as why we sleep, how we make decisions, and how our minds deal with our sense of our own mortality.

Just writing about it makes me want to go back and read the works of Oliver Sacks and Antonio Damasio all over again...

'Horizon: The Secret You' airs tonight on BBC Two at 9pm. UPDATE: Watch it now on BBC iPlayer

Marcus du Sautoy is Professor of Mathematics and Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.