Frogs much like humans, genetically speaking

At least 1,700 genes in African clawed frog genome are similar to humans 

African clawed frogs have more in common with humans than you might think, according to their newly sequenced genome, which shows a surprising number of commonalities with the human genome.

The frog in question is a slimy, rotund type scientifically named Xenopus tropicalis. This is the first time an amphibian genome has been sequenced, and scientists say it represents a big hop forward in understanding not just frogs but Earth's whole tree of life.

"A lot of furry animals have been sequenced, but far fewer other vertebrates," said study co-leader Richard Harland, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. "Having a complete catalog of the genes in Xenopus, along with those of humans, rats, mice and chickens, will help us reassemble the full complement of ancestral vertebrate genes." 

Currently, more than 175 organisms have had their genetic information nearly completely sequenced. That's just a drop in the bucket of the world's plethora of life.

In fact, many of Earth's creatures are more similar to each other, genetically speaking, than you might guess just by looking at them. When scientists compared regions around specific genes in the frog genome to those same regions in chicken and human genomes, they found some amazing similarities, indicating a high level of conservation of organization, or structure, on the chromosomes (packets of DNA in cells).

"When you look at segments of the Xenopus genome, you literally are looking at structures that are 360 million years old and were part of the genome of the last common ancestor of all birds, frogs, dinosaurs and mammals that ever roamed the Earth," said study leader Uffe Hellsten of the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, Calif. "Chromosome archaeology helps [us] to understand the history of evolution, showing us how the genetic material has rearranged itself to create the present-day mammalian genome and present-day amphibian genome."

At least 1,700 genes in the African clawed frog genome are very similar to genes in humans that are associated with specific diseases, such as cancer, asthma, and heart disease. So finding these connections means that experiments on the frogs could help doctors learn more about how to treat those conditions in people.

The frogs' similarity to humans has come in handy before.

In the early 20th century biologists discovered that these frogs were unusually sensitive to human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone produced by pregnant women. The frogs gained popularity as a low-cost pregnancy test in the 1940s and 1950s. Doctors would inject a frog with a woman's urine, and if she was pregnant, the frog would ovulate and produce eggs in 8 to 10 hours.

 

Feel down? It may be better to talk to the dog

Many married couples say they share their troubles with their pet, poll finds

LOS ANGELES - Husbands, if you end up in the doghouse, consider it a promotion.

A third of pet-owning married women said their pets are better listeners than their husbands, according to an Associated Press-Petside.com poll released Wednesday. Eighteen percent of pet-owning married men said their pets are better listeners than their wives.

Christina Holmdahl, 40, talks all the time to her cat, two dogs or three horses — about her husband, naturally.

"Whoever happens to be with me when I'm rambling," said Holmdahl, who's stationed with her husband at Fort Stewart in Georgia. "A lot of times, I'm just venting about work or complaining about the husband."

She thinks everyone should have a pet to talk to like her horse, Whistle, who's been with her since she was 19.

"We all say things we don't mean when we are upset about stuff," she said. "When we have time to talk it out and rationalize it, we can think about it better and we can calm down and see both sides better."

It would be a toss-up whether Bill Rothschild would take a problem to his wife of 19 years or the animal he considers a pet — a palm-sized crayfish named Cray Aiken. His daughter brought it home four years ago at the end of a second grade science project.

Rothschild, 44, of Granite Springs, N.Y., considers Cray a better listener than his wife, "absolutely. She doesn't listen worth anything." He doesn't get much feedback from the crustacean, but it's been a different story over the years with family dogs and cats.

"You definitely feel much more comfortable sharing your problems with them," he said. "A little lick from a big dog can go a long way."

Overall, about one in 10 pet owners said they would talk their troubles over with their pets.

‘The dog doesn't have an opinion’
The AP-Petside.com poll also found that most people believe their pets are stable and seldom struggle with depression. Just 5 percent of all pet owners said they had taken an animal to a veterinarian or pet psychologist because it seemed down in the dumps. Even fewer said they'd ever given antidepressants to a pet.

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Vote: Who's a better listener — your spouse or your pet?

But they weren't opposed to the idea: 18 percent of those polled said they were at least somewhat likely to take a pet to a vet or pet psychologist if it was dejected.

When pets become the therapists, the dogs have it. Twenty-five percent of dog owners said their canines listened better than a spouse, while only 14 percent of cat owners chose the feline.

Ron Farber, 55, of Hoxie, Kan., said it's easier to talk to his dog Buddy than his wife because "the dog doesn't have an opinion."

"I think better out loud. He doesn't care what you say or do. He looks at you, pays attention, you walk through the problem in your mind and eventually, the answer comes. It's not as easy when other people are offering opinions," he said.

Farber would take Buddy to a vet if he needed help, but "I doubt there's a dog psychologist within 300 miles."

A pet psychologist is also called a veterinary behaviorist. Veterinarian Karen Sueda, whose office is at the VCA West Los Angeles Animal Hospital is one of 50 certified by the American Veterinary Medical Association.

Most of her canine patients have problems with aggression and anxiety, while her cats' biggest problem is failure to use a litter box, she said.

Karen Manderbachs, 38, has tried drugs for her dog Kensey, a Shiba Inu who is afraid of thunder. "She sits and full body-shakes. She tries to climb the walls, will hide behind the couch. She gets frantic."

But the first time, the pill didn't take effect in time. The next, "she was so out of it, I couldn't do it again."

Without thunder, Kensey is fine and listens with the other pets — three dogs and a cat — as Manderbachs talks.

The dogs seldom react, "but if I'm upset, if I cry, they will hover around and try, in their own way, to make it better," said the 38-year-old from Rocky Mount, N.C.

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Sueda, the veterinary behaviorist, said she thinks everyone talks to their animals.

"Pets are great because they provide us with unconditional support. They never talk back, never give us the wrong opinion and they are always there for us," she said. "As much as we love our spouses or significant others, sometimes they are not there, sometimes they have their own thoughts about how we should deal with situations. And sometimes, especially when it's a husband or male significant other, they want to solve the problem rather than just listening to the problem."

The AP-Petside.com Poll was conducted April 7-12, 2010, and involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,112 pet owners nationwide. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

 

What women eat may affect kids, grandkids

High-fat diet during pregnancy could raise cancer risk for generations

While cancer victims usually blame themselves — I shouldn't have smoked, should have eaten better, should have exercised — or the cruelty of chance, they may now have a new scapegoat: Grandma.

Eating poorly during pregnancy can increase your children's and your grandchildren's risk of cancer, even if they themselves eat healthily, a new study on rats suggests.

The risk associated with high-fat diets, especially those high in omega-6 fatty acids, "can be passed from one generation to another without any further exposure," said lead researcher Sonia de Assis of Georgetown University.

 While done in rats, the diets used by the study mirrored some typical American eating habits, and so the researchers suspect the results could hold for humans as well.

The research was presented last week at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting in Washington D.C.

During the study, some pregnant rats were fed a diet high in omega-6 fat while others received standard fare. After the babies were delivered, all the mothers, their children and their eventual grandchildren ate healthy moderate-fat diets.

Granddaughters of the rats that gobbled excess fat during pregnancy had a 30-percent greater chance of developing breast cancer than those with grandparents who ate healthfully. When only one grandmother, on either the mother's or father's side, had indulged, the granddaughter's disease risk was 19-percent higher.

For the high-fat diet, the study used a chow that was 43-percent fat, predominantly from omega-6 rich vegetable oil. Most recommendations for a healthy diet include keeping fat intake at 25 to 30 percent, de Assis told LiveScience, "but with fast foods and everything, a lot of people eat more than that each day."

Fat gone rogueThis should not imply that fat causes cancer — many fats are quite good for you, after all. But it is more bad news for omega-6 fatty acids, found in corn oil and most non-grass-fed meats.

Omega 6s, while essential to a healthy diet, should be balanced with omega 3s. The optimum ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 is likely between 4:1 to 1:1, but in the typical American diet the ratio is more like between 20 and 16:1. This imbalance has previously been linked to a host of health problems, including depression, infertility, heart disease and, yes, cancer.

In the new study, the researchers theorize the increased cancer risk might be a result of the epigenetic effects of omega-6 fats. (Epigenetics refers to the idea that even if genes themselves aren't altered, how they function can change.) Omega 6s may indirectly turn off genes that slow cell apoptosis (normal cell death). Cells can then proliferate and lead to tumors, which are essentially a bundle of multiplying cells gone wild.

Somehow, the fat must also be affecting the "germ line," the pathways that lead to viable sperm and eggs, for the effect to be crossing multiple generations.

DNA is not in the driver's seat
Epigenome, which literally means "on top of the genome," refers to all the factors that control how a gene is expressed. The new study potentially adds to the growing body of research suggesting the epigenome may be at the root of many health problems.

"People think there is nothing you can do (about your disease risk)," said researcher Rod Dashwood of Oregon State University, who gave a lecture on epigenetics at the Experimental Biology 2010 conference in Anaheim, Calif. "But you are not just what your genes are." (Dashwood has conducted separate research from de Assis.)

Rather, you are your genes under the influence of your epigenome, which, during critical periods, is shaped by your environment, your lifestyle, your life experience — and those of your immediate ancestors.

"Genes only account for 5 to 10 percent of the familial risk of breast cancer," said de Assis, by way of illustration. Something inherited in the epigenome could account for the rest.

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Take hold of the steering wheel
For decades, studies have been associating diet with disease risk. Now, research on the epigenome may be revealing the mechanism at play.

For example, Dashwood's work indicates that many whole foods — including broccoli sprouts, onions, garlic, radishes, wasabi, daikon, horseradish and wheat bran — may help prevent epigenetic processes that lead to degenerative diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, stroke and even aging.

"The (epigenetic) effect may be contributing to the overall health benefits of these particular foods," Dashwood told LiveScience.

While the multi-generational impact of veggies has not been studied, Dashwood said, "some epigenetic marks can go through six, seven generations."

More research is needed but the lunchroom choice between a bacon-cheeseburger or stir-fry may not only affect your own health, but that of your children and grandchildren.

Some people can’t remember a face

But tricks can help them compensate for face blindness

Some people can't remember names. Thomas Grüter can't hold onto a face. Instead, this medical doctor, who has what is called prosopagnosia, or face blindness, uses several tricks to avoid an embarrassing social gaffe.

"The first thing is I think, 'Who can I expect where?'" Grüter told LiveScience. For example, if a person is standing in Dr. Smith's office, it's safe to assume it's Dr. Smith. Grüter has also become an expert at recognizing voices.

By intentionally hiding this "inability," Grüter and others could go under the radar of scientists or doctors in the field. In a perspectives essay in the April 23 issue of the journal Science, Grüter and co-author Claus-Christian Carbon, both of the University of Bamberg, Markusplatz, in Germany, suggest several reasons this and other cognitive disorders get missed. 

"I am convinced that there are many cognitive peculiarities and disorders we don't know about yet," Grüter told LiveScience. In fact, they think many cognitive disorders still await discovery.

Face blindness
Before 2005, the face blindness disorder was only known from individual case reports and it was thought to be extremely rare. New research by Grüter and his wife, both medical doctors, suggested 2.5 percent of the general population in Germany have the disorder. "So it's millions of people suffering from that, but it wasn't known," Grüter said, adding that he thinks it's reasonable the same would hold across Europe.

Culture can play a role. For instance, in a primitive, mostly illiterate society, a cognitive disorder would only get noticed if it, say, kept a person from becoming an expert archer, the researchers say.

Even in literate societies, conditions differ and so can get missed depending on which version of the disorder a person has.

"Chinese dyslexia is different from European dyslexia, because Chinese characters are totally different and you need different cognitive skills to read them," Grüter said. "You may be dyslexic for Chinese characters but wouldn't have any trouble reading European characters."

Even tests meant to capture individuals with cognitive disorders can miss the mark. For instance, in the Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT), used by cognitive scientists to fish out face blindness, individuals are asked to compare a face photo on the left with three face photos on the right and then indicate which of the three is identical to the one on the left. The problem is subjects commonly rely on matching features such as hairline and eyebrows rather than recognizing the facial configuration, Grüter said.

Bottom line: Normal scores on some cognitive tests might not reflect reality.

Spotting subtle cues
In reality, the subtle cues that someone can't recognize faces or is dyslexic might only show up if you were looking for certain behaviors in everyday life situations, not on a test. That's because often subtasks are involved with cognitive processes. For those with a hereditary type of color blindness called color agnosia, they might instead compare surface texture of one object with a known one to compensate for the impaired ability. Similarly relevant subtasks might be used for voice agnosia.

Since these people were born with the impairment, they've "never known normal cognition," the researchers write. And so it might even be difficult for them to describe their condition to a doctor. If someone were to complain to a doctor that he or she had trouble recognizing people, the doctor might just chalk it off to a patient who can't remember names — a very common memory problem.

When Grüter and his wife, both medical doctors, interviewed 700 individuals in Germany (17 of which turned out to have face blindness), they used interviews and behavioral questions to find those with the cognitive impairment.

For instance, they might ask a subject to imagine being a receptionist at a hotel — a situation in which it's vital you accurately recognize faces — those with face blindness had several tricks up their sleeve. One individual said she had "dozens of strategies."

"She said, 'most of them come in pairs, that makes it a lot easier. You just have to remember what kind of pair,'" Grüter recalled.

Why it matters
But if these individuals aren't suffering, why point out their deficits?

"They're functioning but they still kind of suffer," Grüter explained. "A lot of people we talked to said, 'I thought I was just distracted all the time; I just couldn't remember the people.'" ("They say people; they mean faces," he added.)

In addition, by studying these ailments scientists can learn a lot more about the brain — an organ that still befuddles even the most intelligent. Perhaps the brains of individuals with certain cognitive deficits operate differently in order to compensate, causing "the neural networks to develop and connect in specifically different ways and lead to typical behavioral changes," the researchers write.

As for how Grüter found out he had face blindness, his wife had seen a TV program on PBS about a guy with a severe form of face blindness. "And my wife said, 'This could be you,' and I said, 'No it can't,'" Grüter recalled. "In a way, it was. I wasn't really suffering from it, but she was right."

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Late spring bursting with pollen, fueling misery

Exposure overwhelming medicine for millions of allergy sufferers

This year's late spring is bringing a burst of warm days and beautiful flowers. Unfortunately, it's also made millions of allergy sufferers miserable. And, scientists say, the awful season could be a sign of worse suffering to come.

Unprecedented levels of pollen have been measured across the Eastern United States this April. On April 7, the Atlanta Allergy and Asthma Clinic in Georgia saw a near-record-breaking concentration of 5,733 particles per cubic foot. And in mid-April, Kansas City, Mo., recorded a pollen level of over 8,000 particles per cubic foot, the highest ever seen at that station.

To put that in perspective, 15 particles per cubic foot can cause sniffling and sneezing in those with bad allergies , said Jay Portnoy, the chief of allergy, asthma and immunology at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, Mo. At 100 particles per cubic foot, everyone with allergies gets sick. April's record levels went even further. 

"The sheer number of particles in the air was enough to trigger symptoms even in patients who didn't have allergies, just because of the irritant effect," Portnoy said.

The culprit for this year's bumper crop of pollen is the weather, according to Portnoy. Temperatures stayed cool throughout February and March, preventing flowering trees from beginning their annual pollination ritual. Instead of a gradual, species-by-species release of pollen, the trees stored up until the weather got balmy. Then they all released at once.

For the 40 million Americans who have indoor/outdoor allergies, the pollen explosion translated into runny noses, scratchy throats and itchy eyes. Many of Portnoy's patients complained that their usual medications weren't working, but that wasn't quite true, Portnoy said.

"The exposure to the pollen was so great that it overwhelmed the medicine," he said. 

A rising trend
The tree pollen burst has settled down somewhat, and allergists aren't yet sure how severe the grass pollen season, which starts in a few weeks, will be. Nonetheless, people with allergies might want to stock up on tissues.

Research suggests that the overall trend for pollen is up, and global warming could be to blame.

Both warmer temperatures and carbon dioxide trigger plants to grow faster and larger — and to produce more pollen. A 1995 study in the journal Grana found that birch pollen in Europe gradually increased over the previous 30 years. And a 2003 study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found that ragweed growing near carbon-dioxide rich cities grew faster and denser than ragweed growing in the countryside. The urban ragweed also produced more pollen, said lead researcher Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Global warming lengthens the growing season, Ziska said, pointing to evidence that trees in carbon-dioxide rich cities flower earlier than those in the countryside. That could be good news for some farmers, but bad news for allergy sufferers.

"The combination of both increasing CO2 and, of course, warmer temperatures is likely to exacerbate both weed growth and pollen production from those weeds," Ziska said.

Halting hay fever
Allergies develop when pollen or another allergen triggers the immune system to produce an antibody called IgE. The tiny, y-shaped IgE antibodies then attach to large mast cells in the mucous membranes of the nose, throat, lungs and digestive system. When these primed mast cells encounter more pollen, they burst, spewing forth granules full of histamines and other chemicals. The result is the sneezing, sniffling mess of hay fever.

What scientists don't know is why something as ubiquitous as pollen makes so many of us sick. Allergies could be a byproduct of the way our immune system evolved: annoying, but not so detrimental that natural selection deletes the genes responsible. Another theory, dubbed the "hygiene hypothesis ," notes that people in areas rampant with parasite infections have low allergy rates. IgE antibodies help defend the body against parasitic worms, the theory goes, so perhaps by curing ourselves of parasites, we've freed IgE to run amok, overreacting to every grain of pollen. 

The hygiene hypothesis is far from proven, but that hasn't stopped some online entrepreneurs from selling parasitic worms to allergy patients desperate for a cure. Fortunately for the squeamish, there are other, more reliable options.

Allergists have an arsenal of antihistamine sprays, pills and eye drops, and corticosteroids can soothe swollen airways. In some cases, allergen immunotherapy — better known as allergy shots — can help people control their allergies. In fact, scientists have a slew of tips for allergy sufferers .

The important thing, said Rebecca Piltch, M.D., an allergist in San Rafael, Calif., is that patients figure out which types of pollen set off their allergies. That way, they can prepare for the season by developing a treatment plan in advance.

"For most people with allergies, it is possible to achieve good control over symptoms, and it is possible to have a good quality of life, including outdoor activities," Piltch said. "So many people suffer for years or sometimes even decades, and that isn't necessary most of the time."

 

Adult death rates lowest in Iceland, Cyprus

Study finds widening gap between highest, lowest premature death rates

LONDON - Men in Iceland and women in Cyprus have the lowest risk of dying worldwide, a new study says.

In a survey from 1970 to 2010, researchers found a widening gap between countries with the highest and lowest premature death rates in adults aged 15 to 60. The study was published Friday in the medical journal Lancet.

The findings are in contrast to the trends in child and maternal mortality, where rates are mostly dropping worldwide. Health officials have long thought if child deaths were decreasing and health systems were improving, adult deaths would similarly decline. But that's not what researchers found.

"The new analysis challenges the common theories," wrote Ai Koyanagi and Kenji Shibuya of the department of global health policy at the University of Tokyo, in an accompanying commentary. They were not linked to the study. Koyanagi and Shibuya said it wasn't clear why there were such major differences among countries in adult deaths.

Researchers in Australia and the U.S. calculated death rates in 187 countries using records from government registries, censuses, household surveys and other sources. It was paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Only a few countries have cut death rates by more than 2 percent in the last 40 years: Australia, Italy, South Korea, Chile, Tunisia and Algeria. The U.S. lagged significantly behind, dropping to 49th in the rankings for women and 45th for men. That puts it behind all of Western Europe as well as countries including Peru, Chile and Libya.

"The U.S. is definitely on the wrong trajectory," said Chris Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics at the University of Washington, one of the study's authors. "(The U.S.) spends the most on health out of all countries, but (it) is apparently spending on the wrong things."

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Murray said they weren't sure why some countries — like Australia and South Korea — were particularly successful in reducing death rates, but guessed better policies on things like tobacco control and road accidents might be responsible.

Death rates were highest for men in Swaziland and for women in Zambia. Researchers also found death rates jumped in eastern Europe, perhaps because health systems fell apart after the collapse of the Soviet Union and widespread smoking. In sub-Saharan Africa, deaths have fallen, possibly due to the rollout of lifesaving AIDS drugs.

Murray said adult deaths have largely been neglected by the U.N., except for AIDS and tuberculosis programs. "We need to recognize just how bad things are getting in some parts of the world," he said.

 

FDA approves new drug for prostate cancer

Provenge trains the body’s immune system to fight the disease

WASHINGTON - A first-of-a-kind prostate cancer treatment that uses the body's immune system to fight the disease received federal approval Thursday, offering an important alternative to more intensive treatments like chemotherapy.

Dendreon Corp.'s Provenge vaccine trains the immune system to fight tumors. It's called a "vaccine" even though it treats disease rather than prevents it.

Doctors have been trying to develop such a therapy for decades, and Provenge is the first to win approval from the Food and Drug Administration. 

"The big news here is that this is the first immunotherapy to win approval, and I suspect within five to ten years immunotherapies will be a big part of cancer therapy in general," said Dr. Phil Kantoff, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who helped run the studies of Provenge.

Experimental vaccines to treat other cancers — including the deadly skin disease melanoma and an often fatal childhood tumor called neuroblastoma — are already in late-stage development.

Currently doctors treat cancer by surgically removing tumors, attacking them with chemotherapy drugs or blasting them with radiation. Provenge offers an important fourth approach by directing the body's natural defense mechanisms against the disease.

The drug is intended to treat prostate cancer that has spread elsewhere in the body and is not responding to hormone therapy.

A milestoneMedical specialists hailed the approval as an important milestone, but stressed it will serve as an addition to current practice, not a replacement.

"This is just one step in a new pathway for treating patients," said Dr. Simon Hall, chairman of urology at Mt. Sinai Hospital "We have to make them realize this isn't a cure, it's very variable."

Company studies showed that taking Provenge added four months to the lives of men with advanced prostate cancer.

INTERACTIVE Prostate cancer: What you need to know

That may not sound like a lot, but it is longer than the three months afforded by Taxotere, the only chemotherapy approved for men in this situation. Doctors hope for even greater benefit if they give the drug earlier in the course of the disease.

Dendreon would give no cost estimate for Provenge, but analyst estimates range from between $60,000 to $100,000.

The approval marks a remarkable turnaround for Seattle-based Dendreon, whose shares plummeted three years ago when the FDA delayed a decision on the therapy, asking for more proof of safety and effectiveness. That delay came despite an expert panel's recommendation for approval.

Dendreon shares jumped 19 percent to new highs ahead of the news, rising to an all-time high of $47.32. Trading of the stock was halted at 12:34 p.m. Eastern, 35 minutes before the FDA announced its decision. At the time, Dendreon shares were up $5.88, or 14.8 percent, at $45.50.

The company does not have any products on the market.

Tailored therapyAnalysts expect the product to reach blockbuster sales status — over $1 billion — by 2016, as the company expands production capacity.

Video   How prostate cancer therapy drug works   April 29: Dr. Andrew Armstrong of Duke University Medical Center shares more information on Provenge, the breakthrough prostate cancer treatment. Nightly News

Each regimen of Provenge must to tailored to the immune system of the patient using a time-consuming formulation process.

Doctors collect special blood cells from each patient that help the immune system recognize cancer as a threat. The cells are mixed with a protein found on most prostate cancer cells and another substance to rev up the immune system. The resulting "vaccine" is given back to the patient as three infusions two weeks apart.

Initially, Dendreon will identify Provenge patients through the medical centers that helped test the drug. But researchers have been told the company will only be able to provide vaccines for a few patients at each site per month.

"There are going to be a lot of patients that want it and there will be limited resources as they are getting this up and running," said Dr. Deborah Bradley of Duke University School of Medicine

About 192,000 new cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed in 2009, and 27,000 men died of the disease, according to the FDA. Prostate cancer most often affects older men.

Side effects of Provenge are relatively mild, such as chills, fatigue, fever, and headache. By comparison, side effects of chemotherapy typically include hair loss, nausea, anemia and diarrhea.

 

Post office releasing shelter animal stamps

Part of campaign to encourage pet adoptions; set of 10 goes on sale Friday

WASHINGTON - The post office is holding out a friendly paw to dogs, and cats too.

A new set of 10 first-class stamps featuring cheerful dogs and cats will go on sale nationwide on Friday, designed to promote adoption of animals from shelters.

The 44-cent stamps are part of a "Stamps to the Rescue" campaign, not only to encourage pet adoptions but also raising funds to buy food for animals in shelters.

The stamps feature photographs of five cats and five dogs taken by photographer Sally Andersen-Bruce. All ten animals were adopted from a shelter in New Milford, CT.

Previous postage stamps featuring cats and dogs have included a 13-cent stamp of a kitten and puppy playing in the snow in 1982; a set of pet stamps in 1998 and in 2002 when a kitten and puppy were featured on the "Neuter or Spay" stamps.