Key to Better Sex Revealed in New Study (LiveScience.com)

People who can better communicate and understand another person's emotions are more likely to have a satisfying sex life, new research finds.

Personal attributes such as self-esteem and autonomy also play a role in sexual pleasure and health, the researchers said.

"Sexual health includes sexual well-being, and sexual enjoyment is an important part [of that]," said study researcher Adena Galinsky, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "How people interact and their ability to listen to each other and take each other's perspective can really influence the sex that they have." [Top 10 Aphrodisiacs]

The study analyzed data from about 3,200 students, ages 18 to 26, who were surveyed between 2001 and 2002 as part of the third wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

Studying sexual satisfaction

Respondents answered questions meant to gauge levels of autonomy, self-esteem and empathy, along with their sexual health and satisfaction. Autonomy is defined as the strength to follow personal convictions even when they go against conventional wisdom, which usually increases as adolescents age and enter adulthood, Galinsky said. Self-esteem is a belief in one's self-worth, which also increases with age. Empathy is the ability to take another's perspective, to see things from their angle and understand and respond to their emotions.

The study found that men were more likely than women to report having orgasms most or all of the time during sex, with 87 percent of men saying so, compared with 47 percent of women in the study. Men were also more likely to enjoy giving oral sex to their partner more than women were, the study found.

"The reality is that the majority of young men really like engaging in activities in which the goal is giving their partner pleasure," Galinsky told LiveScience. "There is a pretty consistent difference between young men and young women."

When the researchers compared the personality attributes with the three measures of sexual satisfaction (frequency of orgasm, enjoyment level for giving and receiving oral sex) they found that higher levels of self-esteem, autonomy and empathy were associated with greater total sexual pleasure in females, but only empathy had an impact in men.

In men, autonomy alone was positively correlated to the frequency of orgasm, while only higher self-esteem was linked to the enjoyment of giving oral sex.

Getting emotional in the bedroom

"Our hypothesis is that empathetic individuals are more responsive to a partner’s needs, and thus initiate a positive feedback cycle," said Galinsky. "These developmental assets may be more important to young women’s sexual pleasure since they help them break down impediments to sexual communication and exploration," he said, referring to the idea that women are more inhibited in the bedroom.

Interestingly, recent data reported by Sara Konrath at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science has shown that this type of empathy is dropping in adolescents and emerging adults, which might affect their sexual satisfaction. Females traditionally score higher in empathy and lower on self-esteem compared with their male counterparts.

Galinsky and her team are continuing to study sexual well being and satisfaction at all points of life, including in middle-age and older adults.

The study was published June 3 in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on Twitter @microbelover. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

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Nicotine's Appetite-Suppressing Power Could Be Used for Weight Loss (LiveScience.com)

Smokers tend to be thinner than nonsmokers, and new research reveals the exact spot in the brain where nicotine's appetite-suppressing effects take hold. The findings could be harnessed and used as a weight-loss treatment, researchers say.

The researchers found a receptor on the surface of some brain cells that nicotine binds to, the study said. When they activated this receptor in mice, the mice ate less. The researchers hope the findings will carry over to humans.

A treatment based on these findings could allay smokers' common fear that quitting will bring weight gain, and could potentially augment the weight-loss efforts of non-smokers.

"What we've been able to find out is where in the brain [appetite suppression] happens, and find the receptors for nicotine in the brain that are responsible," said study author Marina Picciotto, a professor of psychiatry at Yale. "I'm hopeful that we'll be able to make medications based on these nicotine receptors that could be helpful in controlling appetite."

In the study, researchers manipulated genes for nicotine receptors in mouse brains. By altering the genes to turn off different receptors in different mice, they were able to pinpoint the group of nicotine receptors responsible for appetite suppression —a group known as [alpha]3[beta]4.

The researchers' mouse model drew praise for the precision it achieved.

"What I was most impressed at here is the exactness with which they were able to find the nicotine receptor subunits that mattered," said Elissa Chesler, a neurogeneticist at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, who was not involved with the study. "If we can target that pathway...perhaps we can give people something that can control appetite that isn't associated with addiction to a harmful substance."

She said the results would likely carry over to people because in our cells, the processes at work are very similar to those in mice.

Picciotto said that future research in the area could help develop a better understanding of how the receptors work to harness appetite suppression.

As to the drug development possibilities,  some potential treatments may already be around, Picciotto told MyHealthNewsDaily.

"It may be that things already being used for smoking cessation in humans could be repurposed," she said.

For example, she pointed to Tabex, a plant-based supplement used in Eastern Europe for smoking cessation, but is not available in the United States.

However, she noted human research on these receptors may prove tricky, as they are involved in the fight-or-flight response, and so activating them can raise heart rate and blood pressure.

"It may not be an easy receptor to target," she said.

Picciotto said she is optimistic that research in this area may ultimately help some people, but will not be a solution for all who seek a drug to help them lose weight. Smokers tend to gain an average of about five and a half pounds when they quit, she said, and the benefit from a drug would likely be in that range.

"It's not going to solve obesity by any means," she said.

"It could be helpful for people who are trying to quit smoking but are worried about weight gain but it may also help people who need another tool to try to help control appetite," Picciotto said.

The study was published today in the journal Science.

This story was provided by MyHealthNewsDaily, sister site to LiveScience. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily on Twitter @MyHealth_MHND.

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Drug Halts Growth of Stubborn Breast Cancer Cells (LiveScience.com)

The tricky breast cancer cells that scientists say survive through chemotherapy treatments and sprout new cancer growths elsewhere in the body may soon meet their match.

A new study shows that these cells, called breast cancer stem cells, rely on a certain molecular pathway to survive, and that when this pathway is turned off by a drug, the cells stop dividing.

Not all types of breast cancer have these stem cells, said study researcher Dr. Kornelia Polyak, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

But about 50 percent of the hard-to-treat "triple-negative" breast cancer patients do have them, Polyak said. Triple-negative breast cancers get their name from the fact that they lack three hormone receptors found in other breast cancers.

There are no targeted therapies (which are treatments designed to selectively kill cancer cells) currently approved to treat triple-negative breast cancers, so chemotherapy (which affects many cells in the body) remains the only option, and it does not work for 80 percent of patients, Polyak said.

The new study reveals a way that a targeted therapy might work. The researchers found 15 genes that had higher levels of activity in breast cancer stem cells than in other breast cancer cells. They then found that all these genes played a role in a single pathway in the cells — called the Jak2/Stat3 pathway.

The high level of activity of the genes led the researchers to discover that not only is this pathway activated in breast cancer stem cells, but also that the stem cells need the pathway to be turned on in order to divide.

"When it's off, the tumors stopped growing," and some of the cancer stem cells died, Polyak said. Other cells, which do not have this pathway activated, can survive even if this pathway is blocked. So, the researchers concluded, blocking this pathway with a drug would be a good strategy for selectively halting the growth of these cells.

"Cancer stem cells" are not the same as other stem cells, Polyak noted, they are simply cells within a tumor that seem to give rise to new tumors more easily than other cancer cells do. Because of the many genetic changes that constantly occur in cancer cells, any given cancer cell may become a "cancer stem cell," or can revert back. 

"We're very excited about the findings," Polyak said, because the pathway is not only crucial to the growth of the cancer stem cells, it is also involved with the growth of blood vessels that feed tumors and with the production of inflammation around tumors. By blocking this pathway, she said, "we can hit tumor multiple different ways."

The study was conducted on human breast cancer cells growing in lab dishes and injected into mice to form tumors, so the findings need to be validated in clinical trials done with breast cancer patients.

But drugs that block this pathway, which can be taken orally, are already being tested in several types of blood cancer, so much of initial safety testing has already been done, Polyak said. In fact, a clinical trial is set to begin in patients with triple-negative breast cancer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston later this year, she said.  

Triple-negative breast cancers make up about 15 to 20 percent of breast cancers and tend to occur in younger women, those with BRCA1 gene mutations, and black women.

Pass it on:  Scientists have identified a way to selectively kill breast cancer stem cells.

Follow MyHealthNewsDaily Managing Editor KarenRowan on Twitter @karenjrowan

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