New approach to blocking malaria transmission

At university of illinois Chicago (UIC), the United States, researcher Dr. John Quigley has proposed a promising new approach to blocking malaria transmission. The research focuses on potential targets to inhibit transmission of the Plasmodium parasite that causes malaria. Previous studies have shown that mosquitoes with increased oxidative stress in their mid-gut (where Plasmodium reproduces) are resistant to the parasite’s transmission. Dr. Quigley and his term hypothesize that if they can disrupt the function of a cell-surface transport protein called FLVCR that pumps haeme out of the cell, it will increase the oxidative stress in the mosquito gut and hamper Plasmodium at a crucial point in the parasite’s life cycle.
The researchers isolated the FLVCR gene from two common malaria-transmitting mosquitoes and showed that the gene encodes a protein that exports haeme and protects cells from oxidative stress. Using gene-silencing techniques, they were able to significantly reduce levels of FLVCR in the mosquito gut. “If disruption of the function of the protein inhibits parasite transmission, then we can potentially use parts of the protein as an antigen to try to stimulate a vaccine in people”, said Dr. Quigley, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at UIC College of Medicine. The antibody blocks FLVCR  and increases oxidative stress, and the parasite is not able to complete its life cycle, thus preventing the spread of malaria, he explained. The research, he says, may be applicable to all blood eating insects that a variety of diseases, such as dengue fever and leishmaniasis.

Jan-Feb, 2011 VATIS UPDATE: Biotechnology

Cancer Cells

British scientists have found a new and faster way of studying a crucial class of cancer cells, called cancer stem cells, which they say should speed up work on developing drugs against them. The researchers from Oxford University developed a way of obtaining samples rich in caner stem cells from bowel cancer cell lines and keeping them in a  lab - a method which allows cells to be repeatedly tested against possible drug treatment.
Cancer stem cells are master cells which are resistant to conventional treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy and may be the reason many tumours grow back. They are called cancer stem cells because, like stem cells present in other parts of the body, they drive cell growth by either replicating themselves or developing into various different cell types.
The researchers said that until now, identifying cancer stem cells has meant using cancer biopsies from human patients.  Scientists then needed to enrich the number of cancer stem cells in samples and wait to see if they produced tumours in mice. This is a long process, and the samples can’t then be used in further experiments, they said in the study.
But with the new technique, work on stem cells could be far quicker and more productive, they said, allowing for repeatable, high-speed screens of drugs as well as basic studies on the nature of cancer stem cells and their role in producing tumours.  In the long term, it should allow the development of more useful, safe, and specific drugs targeting cancer stem cells. The study also found that cancer stem cells are not necessarily just a small subset of cells within a tumour, as was previously thought.
The researchers found the proportion of cancer stem cells within different bowel cancers, for example, can vary widely, with larger amount of cancer stem cells found in more aggressive tumours.

March –April,  2010 Biotech Bulletin

Antiviral therapy for HCV

About 170 million people are chronically infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV), which increases their risk of developing liver cancer. Although HCV infections can be treated with interferon a and ribavirin, this expensive therapy is only effective in about 50% of patients. Now two studies suggest ways to predict patient responses to interferon therapy. In one study, researchers measured pretreatment amounts of miR-122 (a microRNA that mediates the inhibitory effect of interferon on HCV replication in cultured cells) in liver biopsies from patients chronically infected with HCV. Patients who did not respond to interferon treatment had lower pretreatment amounts of miR-122 than patients who responded to interferon. Thus, measurements of miR-122 expression might help to predict the outcome of interferon therapy. In the second study, researchers examined how HCV genome variations affect patient responses to interferon therapy by searching the protein coding region of viral RNAs isolated from patients chronically infected with HCV for pairs of amino acids that vary together (“amino acid covariance”). They report that the patterns of these covariance differed between interferon responders and non-responders, which suggests that it might be possible to use amino acid covariance networks to identify which patients will benefit from interferon therapy.

Feb, 2009 The Lancet Infectious Diseases

Their immune cells, fighting your cancer

Immune, cells from “cancer resistant” people are to be injected into those with cancer to help fight the disease. Zheng Cui at Wake Forest University of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and his colleagues have received permission from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to screen people for their ability to ward off cancer. Immune cells from the best cancer fighters will be given to cancer patients, after being matched for blood type.
All of us have some ability to fight cancer, via immune cells called NK cells which can identify and kill tumour cells, although the extent of these cells’ influence is not known. But Cui has now discovered that a much larger population of immune cells called granulocytes can also kill cancer and that the effectiveness of these cells varies from person to person.
Cui took blood samples from more than 100 people and mixed their granulocytes with cervical cancer cells. While granulocytes from one individual killed around 97 per cent of cancer cells within 24 hours, those from another healthy individual only killed around 2 percent of cancer cells. Average cancer-killing ability appeared to be lower in adults over the age of 50 and even lower in people with cancer. It also fell when people were stressed, and at certain times of the year. “Nobody seems to have any cancer-killing ability during the winter months from November to April,“ says Cui, who presented preliminary result at the strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence meeting in Cambridge, UK.
Initial evidence suggests it may be possible to transfer the ability to fight off cancer between people. Granulocytes are already taken from donors and given to some patients whose immune systems have been depleted by chemotherapy, for example, though not to treat cancer directly. And last year Cui successfully treated a range of different cancers in mice by injecting them with granulocytes from a strain of mice that are completely resistant to cancer. “The concept of using immune cells from one person to fight cancer in another person is a very hot topic right now”.

September 22, 2007 New Scientist
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Get your sight right

• Eat sweet potato and beetroot: Sweet potatoes are rich in vitamin A, a night-vision booster, while the anthocyanins in beetroot protect against retinopathy (a cause of blindness) by preventing capillaries from leaking.

• Turn the air conditioner off: It dries out the air and your eyes. Grow a few plants to add humidity.

• Regular exercise may help glaucoma sufferers by reducing intraocular pressure, which occurs when the aqueous humour (the liquid between the lens and the cornea) pushes on the eye. In one study, those who walked for 40 min four times a week stopped needing medication.

• Fallow your nose: Dilute jasmine essential oil with carrier oil, dab on your arm and sniff. It increases beta waves in your brain, making it more active. You will be able to focus better.

• Trash mascara every three months and other eye make-up such as eye-liner twice a year. It is breeding ground for bacteria that can cause eye infections.

• Get your beta carotene: Mangoes, papaya, carrot and other orange-yellow fruit and vegetables are rich in this organic compound that produces vitamin A. The blindness caused by vitamin A deficiency is rare in India’s major mango-growing areas.

• Check your BP every month. High blood pressure and diabetes are both linked to blindness, and they damage blood vessels. You can get tested at your GD.

• Eat fish without the chips! Studies shows that people whose diets are high in omega-3 fatty acids and low in omega-6 (found in ready meals and takeaways) are less likely to develop age-related macular degeneration.

• Go for grey: Grey-tinted sunglasses give less colour distortion than amber-tinted ones.

February, 2011 Health Action

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Integrative Medicine, Spirituality improves outcomes in Urban adolescents with asthma

A new study by researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) shows that urban adolescents with asthma may experience worse outcomes when not using spiritual coping and often use complementary and alternative medicine, or integrative medicine, like prayer or relaxation, to manage symptoms.
The study, led by Sian Cotton, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, looked at urban adolescents dealing with asthma and uncovered the ways that they were both coping with their illness as well as ways coping methods affected their mental and physical health outcomes. One set of analyses examined ways these adolescents used complementary and alternative medicine strategies for symptom management; the other set of analyses looked at spiritual struggles in adolescents with asthma to see whether they contributed to health-related quality of life."Few studies have examined the role of spiritual struggles in children, and none have examined the relationship between spiritual struggles, secular coping and their outcomes; we wanted to see if spiritual struggles contribute uniquely to a patient's quality of life, beyond demographic variables," says Cotton."Similarly, prior studies have shown that 50 to 80 percent of adolescents with asthma have used complementary and alternative medicine and feel that these actions are successful in treating symptoms. We wanted to understand more about which sorts of patients might benefit from being approached on this subject by a physician."The analyses involved 151 adolescents with asthma between the ages of 11 and 19 at a children's hospital in the Midwest who were given questionnaires assessing spiritual coping, secular coping, complementary alternative medicine use and other psychosocial, clinical and demographic variables. In the spiritual struggles analyses, outcome variables included anxiety and depressive symptoms as well as quality of life. Researchers then determined the association between spiritual struggles and health outcomes after accounting for age, gender, ethnicity and asthma severity. Those who were male African-Americans, experiencing more spiritual struggles and using more negative secular coping methods, had poorer quality of life. In addition, researchers found that non-African-Americans, adolescents who struggled spiritually and adolescents with more severe disease had increased anxiety symptoms. Also, non-African-Americans and females had increased depressive symptoms."As hypothesized, religious or spiritual coping and secular coping predicted similar amounts of variance in these outcomes, similar to previous findings in adult populations, suggesting that spiritual coping is an important element to consider when caring for adolescents with asthma," Cotton says."These issues may be particularly relevant among urban African-American adolescents for whom religion and spirituality is especially important. Future studies should examine the effectiveness of interventions or screening efforts to address spiritual struggles in these populations. "In the second analysis, the same group of adolescents completed a survey looking at 10 forms of complementary and alternative medicine methods used for symptom management, including prayer, guided imagery, relaxation, meditation, yoga, massage, herbs, vitamins and rubs as well as dietary changes.
Participants were most likely to tell their provider about their use of yoga and dietary changes and least likely to discuss their use of prayer and guided imagery. Relaxation and prayer were perceived to be most efficacious, while imagery and massage were perceived to be least helpful.
In addition, adolescents with more frequent asthma symptoms used prayer more often than those with less frequent symptoms. African-Americans were more likely to report using prayer and consider using prayer in the future for symptom management compared with non-African-Americans. Also, older adolescents perceived relaxation to be more efficacious for symptom management."These findings show that this group of chronically ill adolescents is using complementary methods and finding them helpful," says Cotton. "Providers should consider discussing the use of complementary or alternative medicine with their patients with asthma to help improve outcomes."These analyses point to findings that will help physicians care not only for patients with asthma but also for those with other chronic illnesses to ensure the best outcomes physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, producing a better quality of life."

http://www.sciencedaily.com
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Smart tips to tackle diabetes

• Start your day with a good breakfast. Eating breakfast everyday will help you have energy as well as steady blood sugar levels.

• Eat small meals at regular times.

• Cut down on sweet, split dessert with friend when out enjoying a treat.

• Balance your crab, choose fats wisely and keep portion sizes under control

March, 2011 Health Action

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Creeping protein is Alzheimer’s friend

I angled proteins that strangle brain cells from within seem to be what allows Alzheimer’s disease to spread through the brain.
Alzheimer’s damages the brain via a tangled version of the tau Protein. Now Michel Goedert of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues has shown that tangles spread the disease from site to site. When they injected the brains of ordinary mice with brain material from mice that didn’t have Alzheimer’s, but were engineered to produce tangles, the tangles spread beyond the injection sites. Next the researchers hope to indentify and block the agent that allows the tangles to spread. 

June 13, 2009 New Scientist

Alternative therapy for hand pain

Living, working, and socializing in the computer age can be very efficient and rewarding, however, sitting dormant at a computer screen all day can wear on your body. While searching the Internet or typing an email, your eyes are scanning the screen but the main body parts that are moving are your hands. Using your wrists and fingers to manipulate the keyboard and mouse can be particularly stressful on your tendons and muscles while the rest of your body is relaxed sitting at a computer all day.
Here are some helpful tips for helping your hands get the relief they need after a hard day... whether you have an office job pecking on a keyboard, working outside with your hands, crafting, tending to a garden, or simply suffering from sore and overworked hands.
Posture: The way you sit or stand carries importance to more than just your mother. Posture professionals recommend sitting up while typing and leaning back a little at the keyboard to allow your spine to stretch. Finding the right office chair can be a hassle and they are also very costly, but you can find inexpensive lower back supports to keep you from slouching at your desk and helping to cradle your lumbar for the best possible seated position. Wrist guards, an ergonomically enhanced mouse, and supportive mouse pads can also be found and will help your posture and hopefully, your productivity.
Movement: Whether working with tools and machinery or living on the other side of a screen doing too much of one activity gets tedious and everyone needs a break. Experts say that if you are sitting for long periods of time, get up for two minutes every half hour and stand, walk around a bit, or just stretch from your toes up to your head.
Exercise: A little well known fact is that most of the crafty hobbies and everyday situations in which you use your hands actually need your finger strength instead of your palm strength. Sage advice from Dr. Alejandro Badia of the Badia Hand to Shoulder Center based in South Florida. Dr. Badia recommends finger exercises and wrist strengthening ideas to increase the blood flow to your hands and tighten the muscles in order to lessen pain. Common painful conditions that can arise from hurt upper limbs include: osteoarthritis, tendinitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and general overall discomfort. Dr. Badia says that using a resistance band (or a device like the Xtensor, a popular resistance glove-like apparatus that works all your extensor muscles) hones in on certain finger extensor muscles that provide the basis of the finger strength necessary for healthy hands. Improve your range of motion by doing a couple exercises a couple of times per week. More often than not we take our fingers for granted from driving, holding, gripping, touching, typing, eating, cooking, putting on makeup, shaving, and any other thousand things we do all the time that require the use of our hands we barely remember to take the time to pamper them and give them the support they need to help us throughout the day. Knuckle-cracking and joint pulling have often been used for relief however they have proven over the years not to be the healthiest idea because it can impair your dexterity and possibly decrease your flexibility over time. Ultimately by improving posture, remembering to move around while staying inactive, and building up our tendons, we can prevent injuries, stress, and strains that our joints would normally accrue over time. 

http://www.healthnews.com

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Orange juice can reduce blood pressure

Two glasses of orange juice a day can lower your blood pressure and cut the risk of heart disease. High blood pressure puts our arteries under greater pressure when the heart beats and is one of the major risk factors contributing to a cardiac arrest or stroke. Scientists at the University of Auvergne, France, investigated the effect of orange juice and its major flavonoid, hesperidin, on blood pressure and cardiovascular risk. They found that middle aged, overweight men who drank half-a-liter of juice everyday for a month, equivalent to about two glasses, saw a significant decline in their blood pressure readings.
However, if you are taking blood pressure pills, you should take your physician’s advice before consuming more orange juice than your usual intake, as previous studies suggest that some fruit juices, including orange, grapes and apple, can reduce the effectiveness of some drugs.

April, 2011 Health Action

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Research confirms gene link to obesity

A new study has provided the first direct evidence that over-activity of a gene called FTO leads to over-eating and obesity in mice. The findings suggest that the gene could be a promising target for developing anti-obesity drugs that decrease the gene’s activity. The research team from the University of Oxford and the Medical Research Council (MRC) Harwell, published their results in the journal 'Nature Genetics'. "This work makes us confident that FTO is an important gene that contributes to obesity," says Professor Frances Ashcroft of the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford, and one of the leaders of the research."Too much activity of this gene can lead to putting on weight by over-eating". We can now think about developing drugs that turn down the activity of the FTO gene as potential anti-obesity pills. That's a long way off and there's no certainty of success, but it's an enticing prospect," she adds. In 2007, the results of a large genome-wide association study revealed the first genetic variant that could be linked to increased likelihood of obesity. The variant was a single change in DNA sequence that lay within the FTO gene. People with two copies of this genetic variant, around 16 per cent of people of European descent, were 3 kg heavier on average than those without. While this was an important result, genome-wide association studies are often first steps that enable detailed research to pin down the mechanisms behind the observed connection, in this case to obesity. In particular, genome-wide studies cannot be certain that the genetic variation identified directly increases obesity risk. The DNA change could show that the important gene lies nearby, or the DNA change could lie within a control element that regulates a different gene some distance away. The researchers in the current study, led by Professor Roger Cox at MRC Harwell and Professor Ashcroft, set out to determine if it was differences in the activity of the FTO gene itself that were directly causing the increase in body weight. Female mice with two extra copies of the FTO gene, when fed a standard diet, became 22 per cent heavier than normal female mice after 20 weeks. The difference in weight for male mice was 10 per cent. The researchers also showed that the difference came because mice with FTO over-activity consumed more food. There is no suggestion that weight differences in humans with FTO variants are, or would be, nearly as large, or would necessarily affect the sexes in a similar proportion. Chris Church, a PhD student from MRC Harwell and first author of the study, said: "For the first time we have provided convincing proof that the FTO gene causes obesity. The next step is to understand how it does this, for instance whether it increases appetite by influencing our brain, or alters messages from our fat stores and other tissues. Once we know how FTO causes obesity we have the potential to look at developing drugs to treat it.

 Jan - Feb 2011, Vatis update: Biotechnology