Health Highlights: Feb. 25, 2009

Feb. 26 -- Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

China to Create Central Food Safety Commission

A central food safety commission will be established in China as part of the nation's efforts to reduce the number of scandals involving dangerous food products, the state news agency Xinhua said Wednesday.

The news agency said the commission will be set out under a new food safety law to be introduced at the annual parliamentary session next month and the commission's mandate will be to strengthen China's food monitoring system, Agence France Presse reported.

Scandals have plagued China's huge and poorly regulated food industry, resulting in public health emergencies and recalls at home and abroad. One of the worst occurred last year when about 300,000 infants were sickened and at least six died after consuming baby formula tainted with the industrial chemical melamine.

Experts say one major reason for the problems is that too many different agencies have jurisdiction over China's food industry, AFP reported.

-----

Gene May Determine Life Attitude

A single, hormone-delivery gene may determine whether a person is naturally happy or gloomy, say British researchers who conducted a series of psychological and genetic tests on 97 volunteers.

The results showed that participants with the long variant of the 5-HTTLPR gene paid attention to pleasant pictures and screened out distressing images, while those with a short variant of the gene had opposite preferences, Agence France Presse reported.

"The results indicated that a genetically driven tendency to look on the bright side of life is core cognitive mechanism underlying resilience to general life stress," wrote the University of Essex researchers.

The study appears in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The 5-HTTLPR gene plays a key role in determining how the neurotransmitter serotonin functions within the brain. Serotonin transmits chemical messages between nerve cells and has been closely linked to mood, AFP reported.