Turning another piece of conventional wisdom on its head, US researchers have concluded that depressed people are no more likely to burst into tears than those are not depressed. In fact, a Stanford University study showed that long-term depression may cut the chances of a major crying jag — a sign of the ‘‘blunted’’ emotions at the heart of one of the most common mental illnesses. The Stanford study, published this month in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, is among the first to look at the links between depression and crying. It compared 48 women and 23 men diagnosed with major depression with 24 women and nine men with no psychiatric problems. Each subject was shown a film clip proven to be a ‘‘tear-jerker’’ — a scene from the 1979 movie The Champ in which a young boy learns of the death of his father — and monitored for emotional reaction. About one-fifth of the subjects cried during the film, whether or not they were depressed. But the depressed group did not cry any longer or harder than the non-depressed group, and also reported feeling ‘‘less sad’’ than the non-depressed criers. The study offered up a much bigger surprise when researchers looked at relative rates of crying among women who had been depressed for six months or longer and those depressed for a shorter period. ‘‘Those individuals who had been depressed the longest were the least likely to cry,’’ the authors wrote. Rottenberg said one reason long-term depression might reduce a person’s ability to cry is that tears are often a ‘‘social signal’’ of emotional turmoil may no longer be effective as a call for help. He also said it was further evidence that depression, rather than amplifying or exaggerating feelings of sadness, may in fact work by dampening emotional responses, leaving sufferers unable to react to either happy or sad stimuli. One hormone holds key to lesser kilos A Hormone released by the stomach and upper intestine may be the key to helping overweight people shed extra pounds and keep them off, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. ‘In tests on 33 volunteers, researchers at the University of Washington found that in most people, the levels of the hormone ghrelin rose before each meal and dropped after each meal. But in the five people who had undergone surgery to have food bypass, ghrelin levels remained at nearly-undetectable levels. People trying to stay on a diet had the highest ghrelin levels, which may explain why people who lose weight typically have a hard time keeping it off. (Reuters) Found: likely heart attack gene clusters Australian scientists said they’ve identified three clusters of genes they think might be linked to heart attacks. The study, published in the American Heart Association journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, found that brothers and sisters who had had heart attacks had similarities in chromosomes two, three and 20. The study involved scanning the DNA of 61 pairs of siblings who had had heart attacks and found there were more similarities in chromosomes two, three and 20 than would be expected in brothers and sisters. (Reuters)
