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Injuries such as spinal, & infections: Anthrax, Colds, Cancer, Dengue Fever, Flu, Leptospirosis, Leprosy, Malaria, Muscular Dystrophy, Multiple Sclerosis, Plague, Smallpox, Typhus, ...
. . "Flu" comes from Italian: influenza di freddo --influence of the cold (wrong idea). It's also known somewhere/when, I think, as the "grip".
. . NON-HUMAN, but can jump: mousepox!,
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Dec 22, 04: Some 300 million people are drinking unsafe or harmful water because more than 70 percent of China's rivers and lakes are polluted. "More than 63 million peasants living in north, northwest, northeast and east China plains are drinking water with fluorine above set standard." [floride?] In addition, 60 million people in 110 counties of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Sichuan and Yunan provinces are threatened by schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease.
Smoking is bad for the brain. The killer habit measurably reduces the IQ of smokers over the course of their lifetime, according to a study spanning over 50 years.
Dec 15, 04: Scientists have cultured small pieces of heart tissue which beat in the same way as the whole organ. The US Massachusetts Institute of Technology team hope the work will lead to new ways of repairing heart damage. Myocardium, or heart muscle cells, cannot regenerate after injury, limiting the effectiveness of standard therapies.
. . They grew the tissue from a few rat heart cells which were placed on an artificial scaffold, and then stimulated with an electric current.
. . Dr Robert Langer: "Think of it as a patch for a broken heart. The real advance here is we mimicked what the body does itself and got it to work."
The pressure of meeting a work deadline can produce a sixfold increase in the risk of suffering a heart attack over the course of the following day. And competition at work could double the ongoing risk, according to a new study.
Dec 14, 04: Women on the pill who have migraines could be at very high risk
People who have migraines are twice as likely to have a stroke as others, researchers estimate. The increased risk of stroke is probably down to the reduced blood flow to the brain which usually occurs in a migraine. The risk of stroke for migraine sufferers is 2.16 times that for non-sufferers. Those who have migraines with auras are 2.27 times as likely to suffer a stroke and in those with migraines without auras the risk is increased 1.86 times.
. . Three of the studies showed that women migraine sufferers who were also taking oral contraceptives were up to eight times more likely to suffer a stroke than those not taking the pill. Women with non-aura migraines could try using the pill but should come off it if they have any problems. In some women, the pill can even help with migraines.
. . Still, you are far more likely to get a stroke from smoking. That's the big risk factor.
Dec 9, 04: A team of South Korean and US researchers said they have identified a killer gene that triggers the death of neural cells within the brains of mammals. By inhibiting the gene, known as Bax, the cycle of death of neurons in brains could be prevented so that neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease could be treated.
. . "We have found that the Bax gene plays a crucial role in the programmed death of neural cells in brains that generate from adult stem cells", said one of the scientists. Stem cells producing new neurons exist in the brains of all mammals, including humans, and about 70 percent of these neurons meet natural deaths within a month after birth. "We have discovered that in the absence of the Bax gene, brain neurons from adult stem cells simply do not die and all of the neurons keep surviving."
Dec 3, 04: Dogs with paralyzed hind legs regained the ability to walk after getting a shot of a chemical cousin of antifreeze that helped repair nerve cells in their damaged spinal cords.
. . Purdue University researchers hope the approach can soon be tried in people, but caution that there are significant differences between human and canine spinal cords.
. . The treatment only worked on dogs given the injections within about three days of their injury. Some dogs not given the injections eventually walked again, but those getting the new treatment had a dramatically higher recovery rate. Within eight weeks, 13 of the 19 canines, about 68 percent, regained the use of their hind legs and were able to walk, some almost as well as before their injury.
. . In the study, 19 paraplegic dogs were injected with polyethylene [not polypropelene] glycol, or PEG — a nontoxic liquid polymer composed of long strings of the same type of molecules found in antifreeze.
. . "This stuff is kind of like a radiator stop-leak for the nervous system. The polymer spreads out and forms a seal over the damaged areas in the nerve cells and allows the membrane below to reconstruct itself." He said PEG also appears to prevent secondary tissue death that often causes more damage than the original injury. Borgens said the agent only covers damaged cells and tissues when injected into the blood stream.
Dec 1, 04: A skull fragment found in a 400-year-old trash pit at Jamestown contains evidence of the earliest known surgery —-and autopsy-— in the English colonies in America.
. . Circular cut marks indicate someone attempted to trepan --drill two holes in the skull to relieve pressure on the brain, the researchers said. The patient, a European man, died and was apparently autopsied. Researchers know the fragment came from a European man because of its shape and thickness and because it contained traces of lead, Straube said. Eating and drinking from lead-glazed pottery or pewter was a common practice in Europe.
. . Such surgery was not unusual —-it was done in ancient Egypt, for example-— "but all early medical manuals talk about how tricky it is." In the Jamestown case, the procedure was not completed, probably because the patient died.
Nov 29, 04: The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has gone to extremes to protect its pristine environment, its ancient culture and the well being of its citizens. The country's forests are strictly conserved. Television was banned until a few years ago. And only a few thousand tourists are allowed in each year. Only about 1 percent of the population is thought to smoke.
. . Next month, this idiosyncratic Buddhist nation of 700,000, nicknamed Shangri-La, will become the first country in the world to ban all smoking in public and all sales of tobacco. It will be illegal to buy tobacco, sell it or smoke anywhere in public. The fine for breaking the rules: $225 —-an enormous sum in an impoverished nation. The World Health Organization's Web site says Bhutan is the first country in the world to enact such legislation.
. . The environment in Bhutan is fiercely protected. It has some of the strictest rules in the world to protect some of the planet's last great remaining forests. The national assembly declared in 1995 that 60 percent of the country must be forested, including 26 percent that is set aside as protected areas.
. . The Himalayan nation boasts some of the world's most beautiful mountains, but climbing is not allowed in order to preserve the forests that cover most of the country. Such policies earned the country the nickname Shangri-La.
Roman Catholic priests are 30 percent more likely to get prostate cancer.
Nov 24, 04: Chronic pain may permanently shrink the brain, US researchers believe.
The Northwestern University team had previously shown patients with back pain had decreased activity in the same brain region called the thalamus. This area is known to be important in decision-making and social behavior.
. . The patients with chronic pain caused by damage to the nervous system showed shrinks in the brain by as much as 11% --equivalent to the amount of gray matter that is lost in 10-20 years of normal aging. The decrease in volume, in the prefrontal cortex and the thalamus of the brain, was related to the duration of pain.
. . What the researchers now need to find out is whether this loss is permanent or whether it can be reversed with treatment.
Nov 29, 04: Scurvy wiped out nearly half of the colonists who established one of the first French settlements in North America 400 years ago, scientists confirmed. The colony existed in 1604 and 1605 on St. Croix Island off present-day Calais, Maine.
. . Scurvy, a fatal disease characterized by weakness, anemia, gum disease and internal bleeding, is caused a lack of vitamin C, which is found in citrus fruits, tomatoes and some vegetables. Written in a travel journal: "Their teeth barely held in place, and could be removed with the fingers without causing pain."
Nov 22, 04: More than 800 people in northern Sweden may have cancer as a result of the fallout that spewed over the region after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, according to a new study by Swedish scientists. The cancer risk increased in areas with higher levels of fallout.
Researchers have discovered that heavy drinking slows the creation of new brain nerve cells, or neurons, in animals. An estimated 8 percent of Americans are thought to be alcoholics.
Up to 3.7 percent of females suffer from anorexia at some point during their lifetimes
It's estimated that up to 1 percent of females in the United States have anorexia, and more than 90 percent of those diagnosed are young. Anorexia's fatality rate can reach 15 percent, the highest of any psychological disorder.
Since the 1970s, when anorexia nervosa was first brought to the public eye, most people believed it was a social disease caused by pressure to be thin coupled with depression or anxiety. But genetic research over the past several years shows that genes might play as big a role as the environment in one's propensity to develop an eating disorder.
Nov 17, 04: Heavy computer use could be linked to glaucoma, especially among those who are near-sighted, fear researchers. Glaucoma is caused by increased fluid pressure within the eye compressing the nerves at the back, which can lead to blindness if not treated.
Nov 17, 04: As part of the effort to thwart a global flu pandemic, US scientists have announced a scheme to determine the genetic sequence of many thousands of strains of influenza. With influenza genomes deposited in a database, the organizers hope to spur scientists in their efforts to stave off the next pandemic. They might, for example, survey and compare the virus strains circulating in poultry to see how they are changing. This might alert them to an imminent epidemic and may help them to select a strain to target with a vaccine.
. . The information might also piece together a more accurate picture of what makes one strain more lethal than another, or more virulent in a particular population.
Nov 12, 04: A new nanotechnology-based technique could lead to a test for diagnosing the early signs of Alzheimer's disease. The Bio-Barcode-Assay can recognise ADDL, a protein that accumulates in the brains of sufferers. It is a million times more sensitive than conventional tests and could revolutionize disease detection. In the future, it might form the basis not only of a test for Alzheimer's, but also for types of cancer, the human form of mad cow disease and HIV.
. . A research assay could be available to scientists within a year, Professor Mirkin said. A clinical assay could be commercialized within two.
Nov 8, 04: The latest advance in heart failure treatment is a kind of support hose for the heart, an elastic mesh sleeve that squeezes enlarged hearts into a more normal shape and may stall progression of the deadly disease, says a new study.
. . About five million Americans now suffer from heart failure, a progressive muscle breakdown that thins and expands the heart's walls and robs it of its pumping power. About 2.5 million have weak hearts that can't meet the demand for blood. Some of those with moderate heart failure might benefit from the so-called CorCap Cardiac Support Device.
. . The device's maker, Acorn Cardiovascular, plans to file for government approval by early next year. Until Acorn produces a version that can be implanted through small incisions, doctors must divide the chest to gain access to the heart.
Nov 3, 04: Researchers say they have perfected a method to deliver cancer treatment directly into tumors, bypassing healthy tissue. The research team used the benefits of a known anticancer therapy, interferon beta, that can kill cancer cells. In practice, that therapy has proven problematic. It causes toxic side effects and its benefits disappear within minutes of patients getting their shots.
. . The research team worked around those problems by manipulating a certain type of stem cells to encode the interferon beta gene. The stem cells then move like guided missiles, targeting tumor cells and producing high concentrations of therapeutic proteins within the tumor cells. Besides taming toxic side effects, the cancer treatment stuck around in the tumor longer.
Nov 1, 04: Cone snails are potentially dangerous, especially the fish-eating types. There is no antidote. A person can die within an hour of being stung. Some 30 people have been reported killed by cone snails during sea expeditions dating back to the 1930s. Scientists are studying these poisons with the hope of turning them into potential drugs that could one day treat chronic pain, epilepsy and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's. Cone snail venom may someday be used in pain management as an alternative to or in tandem with morphine, but without morphine's addicting side effects. Scientists studying cone snail poison have found that a single snail can produce up to 100 different kinds of toxins. Now they're trying to find out why and how it happens.
. . Several companies worldwide are testing different cone snail toxins in animals and humans. One, Prialt, is synthetically made from a naturally occurring toxin from the marine snail Conus magus, and works by blocking nerve channels in the body responsible for transmitting pain signals. The drug, which is injected into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord, reduced severe chronic pain in human patients.
Nov 1, 04: Whooping cough is making a comeback 40 years after most industrialized countries started vaccinating children, and the culprit seems to be weakening effects of the shot. They recommend that countries start organized programs to provide booster shots to teens. The problem with the vaccine is that immunity wanes after five years.
Caused by the bacteria Bordetella pertussis, whooping cough is highly infectious. Infected children and adults can give whooping cough to young infants, with fatal results. They looked at every study that had been done on the bacteria that infected patients and found they were all very similar -- suggesting that the bacteria had not evolved.
Nov 1, 04: A steaming cup of tea, the relaxing drink of choice for millions in countries such as Britain and China, could help ward off the effects of Alzheimer's disease, scientists said. Laboratory tests found that regular cups of green and black tea inhibit the activity of certain enzymes in the brain which bring on Alzheimer's, a form of generative dementia that affects an estimated 10 million people worldwide.
. . Scientists tested coffee as well as green and black tea, the latter of which --the variety enjoyed by most Britons-- is derived from the same plant as the green variety but has a different taste and appearance as it is fermented.
. . The results found that while coffee had no significant effect, both green and black tea inhibited the activity of enzymes associated with the development of Alzheimer's. The tea inhibited the activity of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE), which breaks down the chemical messenger, or neurotransmitter, acetylcholine. Alzheimer's is characterised by a drop in acetylcholine.
. . Green tea and black tea also hinder the activity of the enzyme butyrylcholinesterase (BuChE), seen in protein deposits found on the brains of patients with Alzheimer's. However, green tea alone had a further effect, obstructing the activity of beta-secretase, which has a role in the production of protein deposits in the brain associated with Alzheimer's.
. . The effects of green tea also last for a week, scientists found, as against only a day for black tea.
Oct 23, 04: The European Union unveiled a new anti-smoking campaign that calls on governments to put both horrific and humorous pictures on cigarette packs to deter people from smoking.
. . Among the 42 pictures is one grisly photo of a man with a cancerous growth on his neck. But most make only indirect allusions to the dangers of smoking, like a picture of a drooping cigarette meant to illustrate how smoking can cause impotence.
. . EU member states now use 14 written health warnings, which must cover at least a third of the packaging. So far, Ireland and Belgium have indicated they will require cigarette makers to use the photos, which should appear on packs next year.
. . Tobacco is the single largest cause of avoidable death in the 25-nation EU. The Commission said it accounts for over 650,000 deaths a year, or 15 percent of all deaths and 25 percent of all cancer deaths.
. . Of one picture that shows a glum-looking couple sitting far apart in bed, Byrne said: "I think this one emphasizes there are some better things than smoking ... a lot better."
Researchers at MIT showed that they were able to cause neural progenitor cells to change into neurons (rather than the scar tissue that causes paralysis) upon spinal injury. Using nanofibers, the two scientists were able to stop paralysis from happening in rats.
Oct 14, 04: Lots of babies are born with jaundice, indicated by a yellowing of the skin and the whites of the eyes. The condition is normally caused by overproduction of a substance produced by the liver called bilirubin.
. . In most cases, the jaundice quickly goes away by itself. But if the infant's color grows too yellow or doesn't go away, it could indicate a serious condition called kernicterus.
. . Kernicterus, left untreated, can lead to brain damage, cerebral palsy and hearing loss, the CDC says. It also can cause vision problems and mental retardation.
Oct 7, 04: Embryonic stem cells may not have to actually grow replacement body parts to be useful. New research suggests these cells also secrete healing molecules powerful enough to reverse a lethal birth defect in mice.
. . Researchers injected stem cells directly into the embryos of mice destined to develop heart defects so severe that the mice would die in the womb. Half the mice were born with healthy hearts. "We were surprised these (mice) were born and they were normal."
. . Yet few of the stem cells actually grew into healthy heart tissue. Instead, the researchers found that the stem cells secreted certain molecules that signaled nearby heart cells to make changes, repairing the defects developing in those tissues. Fraidenraich called the secretions "rescue factors."
Oct 7, 04: Scientists who synthesized two genes from the virus that caused the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic said they have a found new clues about what made it so deadly. "We found that just one gene called HA, haemagglutinin, is sufficient to make a benign virus pathogenic."
. . Between 20 million and 50 million people worldwide died in the 1918-1919 pandemic, the deadliest in the past century. By unraveling the secrets of the virus, researchers hope to improve methods to spot the next potential flu pandemic which some scientists believe is overdue.
. . Scientists suspect the 1918 virus originated in birds and leapt to humans. The spread of bird flu in Asia has raised fears that the strain could mutate and become highly infectious in humans. "We can use that information to predict, when a new virus appears, whether it is pathogenic and can cause a devastating outbreak or not."
Sept 28, 04: Researchers at University of Louisville Hospital are studying whether the vampire bats' ability to drink the blood of an animal while preventing the blood from clotting might help control damaging strokes. An experimental clot-busting drug modeled after bat saliva is being tested at University and 16 other sites.
. . The only drug approved for the treatment of ischemic stroke, "IV t-PA," must be administered within three hours of the onset of symptoms. Because many stroke victims arrive at a hospital too late, the drug is given to only a small percentage of patients.
. . The bat-saliva drug, known as desmoteplase, can be given up to nine hours after the onset of symptoms, can be administered quickly and is very potent, doctors said. Researchers believe that it works by breaking up clots and improving blood flow so that areas of the brain starving for blood don't die.
Sept 24, 04: Scientists reported that dogs can be used to detect bladder cancer by smelling urine. There is already anecdotal evidence of dogs alerting their unsuspecting owners of skin cancer by persistently sniffing suspicious moles which were later diagnosed as malignant. Now, scientists have shown dogs can identify bladder cancer by detecting chemicals in urine emitted by cancerous cells. The dogs had an average success rate of 41 percent, which Willis said is significant because it would have been 14 percent by chance alone.
. . During the training phase of the study, the dogs consistently identified a urine sample from a healthy control patient as cancerous. Further tests confirmed the volunteer did in fact have the disease!
. . Bladder cancer is the ninth most common cancer worldwide with 330,000 new cases each year and more than 130,000 deaths.
Sept 23, 04: Corporate researchers working outside controversial federal restraints said they had engineered human stem cells that they believe could be used to repair eyes. "We believe these new retinal cells could be used to treat blindness and may, in fact, be the one of the very first applications of embryonic stem-cell technology." ...we think that millions of patients with retinal degeneration might conceivably benefit from these cells in the future. In fact, we would not have made this discovery if our research had been limited to the stem-cell lines approved by President Bush", Lanza said.
Sept 21, 04: Mosquitoes can be genetically engineered so they cannot give people malaria. But scientists have a history of getting it wrong, even as they try to save the world from insect-borne scourges, said entomologist Fred Gould of North Carolina State University. "In the late 1940s, entomologists had no reason to doubt that DDT would cure the world's pest problems." "In the 1960s, advocates of biological control did not consider that imported predators of insect pest species might cause extinction of rare species."
. . Durvasula's team is working to develop a kissing bug that cannot carry Chagas disease, which can lead to a range of problems from heart disease or digestive tract malfunctions and which kills 50,000 people a year in Latin America. Instead of affecting the bug itself, Durvasula's approach is to alter a bacterium that allows the bug to carry the trypanosomiasis parasite. But modifying bacteria is different from modifying an insect, given that bacteria can freely exchange genes with a range of other bacteria and even viruses, he said. "This remains a very important hurdle."
Sept 17, 04: Oregon researchers have started work on a new five-year, $10.3 million biodefense contract to find the proteins associated with bacteria that cause salmonella poisoning and typhoid fever, and the virus that causes monkeypox, which is similar to the smallpox virus.
. . Monkeypox was reported for the first time in the United States in June 2003 when a Wisconsin girl became ill after her mother bought an infected prairie dog at a swap meet. The disease previously had been seen only in the African rain forest.
Sept 17, 04: Drinking any kind of alcohol in moderation can reduce damage to affected tissue after a heart attack, says a University of Missouri-Columbia study. A heart attack results in reduced blood flow to a number of areas of the body. Once blood flow is restored, several processes take place that can actually cause more harm to damaged tissue.
Sept 17, 04: Up to 130 million women around the world have undergone various forms of female genital mutilation (FGM), with north Africa, parts of east and central Africa and the Arabian peninsula, leading the pack. FGM is strongly to linked to the spread of AIDS. Africa, where the HIV virus has hit hardest, also has more FGM women than any other region.
Sept 11, 04: Newborn babies with brain damage could be treated by stem cell therapy using cells taken from their bone marrow. Researchers told the BA Festival of Science they successfully transplanted human fetal cells from bone marrow into the brains of newborn mice. Dr Huseiyn Mehmet of Imperial College hopes to use the technique to replace dead tissue in the brains of babies.
Sept 11, 04: The biggest UK study of cannabis-based drugs has shown evidence for a long-term benefit in easing the symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS). "There is some evidence of a long-term effect", Dr John Zajicek, who heads the trial, confirmed to the BA Festival of Science at Exeter University. He also said the data so far "were consistent" with the idea the drugs could arrest nerve death in sufferers.
. . He presented results that update a study published in The Lancet last year.
Sept 9, 04: Hypnosis can relieve suffering and improve the quality of life of cancer patients, researchers said. Dr Christina Liossi, of the University of Wales in Swansea, said there is medical evidence that hypnosis helps to relieve the depression, nausea, vomiting and pain suffered by cancer patients. There have also been suggestions that hypnosis could increase survival in patients with the disease, but she added there is not enough evidence to support them.
. . Professor John Gruzelier, of Imperial College London, said he has used brain-imaging technique to observe changes in the frontal lobe of the brain, which is involved in critical evaluation and behavior, in people under hypnosis.
. . He believes the changes could help to explain some of the mechanisms by which hypnosis works. "We have a magnificent therapeutic tool which has been ignored because there has been no evidence of the mechanism (of how it works)."
Sept 7, 04: Other-animal-to-human organ transplants could be at the dawn of a new era thanks to progress in overcoming rejection and the creation of transgenic pigs. Only about 25 percent of critically ill patients in need of a donor heart, kidney or liver receive the life-saving organs. Many die while waiting for a transplant.
. . Genetically modified pigs could be a new avenue to overcome organ rejection.
"I would predict that at least six genes will need to be modified or eliminated in transgenic pigs to allow for the survival of donor organs", McKenzie said. "There are already pregnant pigs that have up to five of the genes that could be important for carrying out xenotransplantation."
Sept 1, 04: French and American scientists said Wednesday they have identified a "Jekyll and Hyde" type of cancer gene that could lead to better ways to diagnose and treat the disease. Unlike other cancer genes that either promote cancerous tumors or block their growth, researchers have found a gene that does both.
. . The gene called DCC is a receptor on the surface of cells. It was thought to be a suppressor gene that stops cancerous growth but the researchers discovered that it could be switched to promote cancer by a protein. DCC usually acts as a brake and stops cancerous cells from proliferating and causes them to commit suicide. But when the growth factor protein called netrin-1 is abundant, the brake is removed.
Sept 1, 04: Dyslexia, a common reading and learning disorder, could be influenced by culture, researchers said. They discovered that a different area of the brain is affected in dyslexic Chinese children who read the character-based language than in western youngsters who use an alphabet language.
. . Last month, Finnish scientists said they had found a gene called DYXC1 that they believe could be important in causing dyslexia.
Aug 26, 04: Silicon Valley tycoons, Nobel laureates and Hollywood celebrities are backing a measure on California's Nov. 2 ballot to devote $3 billion to human embryonic stem cell experiments in what would be the biggest-ever state-supported scientific research program in the country.
. . The measure —-designed to get around the Bush administration's restrictions on the funding of such research-— would put California at the very forefront of the field. It would dwarf all current stem cell projects in the United States, whether privately or publicly financed.
. . Proposition 71 promises to be one of the most contentious election issues in California, pitting scientists, sympathetic patients who could benefit from stem cells and biotechnology interests against the Roman Catholic Church and conservatives opposed to the research because it involves destroying days-old embryos and cloning.
Aug 23, 04: People in their thirties who smoke are five times likelier to suffer from a non-fatal heart attack than non-smokers, according to a new study. Eighty percent of those who had a heart attack between the ages of 35 and 39 were smokers. The rate was even higher among women smokers, at 5.3.
Aug 19, 04: A collection of genes involved in early development may help explain why black babies are more at risk of sudden infant death syndrome than other U.S. groups, researchers said. The gene mutations may also help explain why thousands of U.S. infants still succumb each year to SIDS, also known as crib death or cot death, despite education campaigns that have cut the rate in half.
. . Heart rate and breathing may not be able to adapt quickly and may simply shut down.
. . The researchers found 11 different mutations in 14 of the 92 SIDS cases but only one mutation --the same one-- in two of the 92 healthy babies. "The curiosity is that 71 percent of the SIDS cases that had the mutation were African-American and both controls (healthy babies that had it) were African-American."
. . In July, a team in Arizona found a new disorder in Amish families from Pennsylvania that causes sudden infant death and sometimes malformation of the genitals.
. . In 2000 and 2001, researchers in the United States and Japan found a role for the serotonin transporter gene promoter in the brainstems of SIDS victims.
. . While SIDS is a general term for unexplained infant deaths, doctors suspect a variety of causes.
Aug 18, 04: Scientists have found a switch in the brain that appears to control anxiety and wakefulness. In tests on rodents, the University of California team found a protein called NPS was active in areas of the brain governing arousal and anxiety.
. . This switch could be a target for drugs to treat sleep and anxiety disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, they hope. It might lead to treatments for a condition called narcolepsy that causes excessive daytime sleepiness attacks, or anxiety disorders. "Treatments would be five to 10 years down the road."
Aug 18, 04: An ingredient in marijuana may be useful for treating brain cancers, say Spanish researchers from Madrid. Chemicals called cannabinoids could starve tumours to death by halting the growth of blood vessels that feed it, the Complutense University team hope.
By studying mice, the team has shown for the first time how these chemicals block vessel growth. Their study, published in Cancer Research, also shows the treatment appears to work in humans.
About 8 percent of U.S. women of childbearing age have enough mercury in their blood to put a fetus at risk, according to the EPA.
July 29, 04: Scientists studying a rare genetic disorder have made a surprising discovery that helps explain why certain heart tumors develop and suggests they may be more common than had been believed. Doctors should look more broadly for signs of such tumors, which aren't cancerous but are dangerous because they can break off and cause strokes, researchers say.
. . Now that the cause of such tumors is known, scientists can try to design treatments like drugs and gene therapy as alternatives to surgery, the only treatment for them now. The discovery also could have implications for the field of stem cell biology. The myosin defect Basson identified is in a gene that was thought to stop functioning shortly after birth. His work shows it may keep going to some degree in some people, which he views as evidence that there's a type of stem cell in the adult heart, a widely debated theory.
July 27, 04: Brain cells taken from fetuses may be able to replace some of those killed in a stroke, U.S. researchers reported. Implanting the brain cells in rats showed that the immature brain cells found their way to the area of stroke damage and stayed alive --an important feat, because the damage caused by stroke often kills off neighboring cells, too. The cells may also offer a way to treat devastating brain diseases and spinal cord injuries.
. . "It's the first time it's been shown that such a human cell can survive, migrate and differentiate in a stroke environment, which is not the most favorable environment." The brain cells "are not embryonic stem cells", Steinberg said, referring to controversial cells taken from days-old human embryos. "They are from a line established many years ago and should not be as controversial."
. . Stem cells are immature cells that have the potential to give rise to any number of different kinds of cells and tissues. There are various sources, from the bone marrow to fetal tissue to embryos.
. . "Why do these cells migrate toward the stroke? We think and have some preliminary evidence that it is due to chemicals or chemokines being released in the stroke area." Chemokines are chemical signals released by cells --a kind of molecular call for help.
July 27, 04: Malaria-carrying mosquitoes were once a scourge of Shakespeare's chilly England and even Arctic regions of the Soviet Union. With malaria's history of surviving in the cold, experts are at odds about how far modern global warming may spread one of the planet's most deadly diseases which kills a million people a year in poor countries.
. . U.N. reports say rising temperatures linked to human burning of fossil fuels are likely to widen malaria's range in the tropics because mosquitoes and the parasite they pass on when sucking human blood thrive best in hot, wet climates.
. . Malaria kills an African child every 30 seconds, saps economic growth in developing countries and consumes 40 percent of health budgets in some nations. And predictions of its future range will affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
. . Professor Alistair Woodward of the University of Auckland, New Zealand was a co-author of a 2003 U.N. book that says climate change already kills 150,000 people a year and that the number could double by 2030. Malnutrition, diarrhea, malaria and floods were the biggest threats in a warming world.
. . Reiter admits mosquitoes and plasmodium parasites reproduce faster in hot, damp climates but says higher temperatures might trigger floods that wash away stagnant pools in which malaria larva breed or spread deserts and dry up the waters.
. . Shakespeare, who lived from 1564-1616, mentioned malaria --then called ague-- in plays like "The Tempest." Horace and Tacitus also described malaria-like fevers in Imperial Rome. In 1923-25, 600,000 people died in the Soviet Union from a malaria epidemic that reached the Arctic port of Archangelsk.
. . Drainage of marshes and the spread of farm land in Europe in the 19th century were big factors in destroying mosquito breeding grounds. Farmers built barns, drawing mosquitoes away from human homes to feed on cows and other livestock. And many people moved to towns, and built better houses, making it harder for mosquitoes to buzz in.
. . Reiter says that dengue fever, for instance, was first described in Philadelphia in 1780 and has been kept at bay in the United States --as has malaria-- largely by simple measures such as windows that seal homes.
July 27, 04: Medical researchers have located a genetic indicator of a higher than normal risk of developing lung cancer, a discovery that might help identify those most susceptible to the disease. The researchers' report concludes that families with multiple cases of lung cancer share an inherited genetic trait that can make it harder for their bodies to stop tumor growth.
. . Researchers traced the common trait to an area of just 50 genes located along chromosome 6, one of the body's 22 pairs of chromosomes. People carrying this trait could be more vulnerable to harm caused by smoking, and they could pass the trait on to their children.
. . Much work remains, and there still isn't a test people can take to find out whether they have the gene. But it could be an important step toward developing better treatments.
Germans are Europe's worst binge drinkers with almost one in five believing "the point of drinking is to get drunk", according to a survey.
July 21, 04: Anthrax has killed apes in tropical rainforests in Ivory Coast where it has never been seen before and could pose a threat to humans, German researchers said. It's never been found killing chimpanzees in the wild before. Conservationists have warned that Africa's lucrative bushmeat industry, which is a key source of food and income for poor people, is threatening species such as gorillas and chimpanzees with extinction. Scientists are also concerned that people who hunt and eat the wild animals are being infected with animal illnesses that could pose a public health threat to humans.
. . They suspect infections may be occurring in other parts of Africa. Anthrax can be transmitted by inhaling the spores, the deadliest form of the illness, through a cut in the skin, or by eating contaminated meat.
July 15, 04: A second-generation cancer drug offers one last shot at life for leukemia patients who have not been helped by the "miracle" drug Gleevec, doctors reported. Tests on mice show the experimental drug overcomes virtually all of the genetic mutations that cause some cancers to resist treatment with Gleevec.
July 15, 04: Frontotemporal dementia, or FTD, is an umbrella term that includes several related brain disorders. They generally strike people in their 50s —-a decade earlier than Alzheimer's typically hits-— and can take a severe financial, as well as emotional, toll on the sufferers' families. Like Alzheimer's, FTD has no cure and no confirmed treatment to slow the slide into dementia. About 4.5 million Americans are believed to have Alzheimer's; the number with FTD is unclear because it is often misdiagnosed.
. . While Alzheimer's is marked by memory loss, FTD patients retain their memories of people and events. They instead have trouble speaking and remembering words, and they may become extroverted or withdrawn, make inappropriate remarks in public, exhibit rude or childlike behavior, and appear selfish or apathetic.
. . Sometimes compulsive behaviors develop, like walking to the same location day after day, constant hand-clapping or rubbing, or humming the same tune for long periods.
. . Researchers are looking for ways to stabilize a protein in the brain that seems to degrade and disappear in these dementia sufferers.
July 14, 04: Habitual patrons of tanning parlors may be drawn to the ultraviolet exposure for its mood-boosting ability, says a study. The moods were better and relaxation greater after the subjects had used the UV light beds. The study speculates that endorphins, the "feel-good" chemicals released in the brain during exercise, for instance, may also be released when the body is exposed to UV light. Previous laboratory studies have shown endorphin release with UV light exposure.
July 6, 04: Drinking at least a glass of milk a day may lower the risk of colorectal cancer, say researchers who pooled some of the world's largest studies on the long-believed link. Calcium, from milk or other sources, has long been thought to play a role in preventing colorectal cancer, the nation's second-leading cancer killer. Studies show high calcium intake reduces the occurrence of polyps that can turn cancerous.
. . People who consumed 6 to 8 ounces of milk a day had a 12 percent lower risk of later developing colorectal cancer than those who drank less than two glasses a week. With more than a glass a day, the risk reduction was 15 percent. Other dairy foods didn't show a statistically significant relationship.
. . Vitamin D, commonly added to milk, also is thought to play a role, either alone or because it helps the body absorb calcium. The study couldn't tease out vitamin D's role, but found the biggest protective effect with the highest doses of both nutrients.
July 1, 04: Australian scientists have identified the immune response that determines why some mice are infected with mousepox and others are not, a discovery that could lead to better protection for humans in a bio-terror attack.The findings raise the possibility of identifying humans vulnerable to smallpox and targeting vaccination and treatment in the event of an outbreak.
. . Scientists know relatively little about the immune response to smallpox because the virus was eradicated decades ago after a successful worldwide vaccination program. Smallpox was highly contagious and killed around 30 percent of those infected.
. . Mice that are resistant to mousepox, a close relative of the smallpox virus, produce three regulatory proteins called cytokines that are absent in mice that become infected.
July 13, 04: A new study of over 3,000 human skeletons in a Croatian archaeological collection suggests that cancer is more common today than at any point in humankind's history. A team of Croatian archaeologists and medics studied ancient human remains dating from 5,300 B.C. to the mid-19th century.
July 1, 04: Many healthy people who smoke or drink may have a genetic alteration in the cells of the mouth and throat that could signal an increased risk of developing cancer, according to researchers at the University of Hong Kong.
. . The genetic alteration affects the p15 gene, which is involved in the process that normally kills off cells when they go haywire. In many cancers, the p15 gene is methylated, meaning that it is turned off and is unable to perform its "tumor suppressor" function.
. . The researchers' study of healthy adults and patients with head and neck cancers found that 68 percent of healthy smokers and drinkers showed methylated p15 in some of their oral cells. The same was true of 48 percent of the cancer patients, but only 8 percent of healthy adults who were non-smokers and drank only occasionally or not at all.
. . The investigators say it is unclear whether the healthy men and women who showed signs of p15 methylation are in fact at increased risk of developing head and neck cancer, a group of diseases that includes cancers of the mouth, nasal cavity and throat.
. . That smokers and drinkers face a risk of head and neck cancers is nothing new. Tobacco use is behind the majority of these cancers, and people who smoke and drink are at greater risk than those who do one or the other.
June 29, 04: Africa is on the brink of the biggest polio epidemic in years, with the crippling disease hitting Nigeria hard and re-emerging in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region, the World Health Organization said. The number of polio cases globally has reached 333 so far this year, almost double the number for the same period last year. Total cases last year reached 783.
An estimated 4 million Americans have Alzheimer's, and the numbers will increase as better medical care helps people escape other major killers, such as heart disease. The Alzheimer's Association estimates the total will be 14 million by the middle of this century unless a cure or prevention is found. The number of people with the disease doubles every five years after age 65. Beyond 85, nearly half have it --including former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, singer Perry Como, actress Rita Hayworth and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.
. . The disease begins in parts of the brain that regulate memory and thinking skills, but eventually it spreads to other areas. This attack on the brain can be fatal, although victims often die first of other things. The disease typically lasts for eight to 10 years, although some die much sooner or live as long as 20 years.
. . The eventual loss of cells in the brain leads to the failure of other essential systems in the body. But the actual cause of death for someone with Alzheimer's may be no single factor because many patients have other illnesses.
. . Under a microscope, the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease is abnormal lumps of proteins in the brain. Clumps of what is called amyloid plaque accumulate outside of brain cells, while tangles of misplaced proteins build up inside.
. . Scientists are working on treatments intended to prevent these proteins from gathering. Even if this is possible, though, it is unclear whether the strategy will help, since researchers are still unsure whether the proteins truly cause Alzheimer's or are simply a byproduct of some still unknown process. The precise genes involved are not known.
June 23, 04: A compound in breast milk has been found to destroy many skin warts, raising hopes it might also prove effective against cervical cancer and other lethal diseases caused by the same virus. Skin warts are caused by the human papilloma virus, which is extremely widespread. Swedish researchers found that when the breast-milk compound — since named HAMLET — is applied to the skin, it kills virally infected cells in warts resistant to conventional treatments.
. . Doctors knew breast milk contained a natural antibiotic. But its potential against viruses and tumors was discovered by accident. Researchers hope to start small-scale testing of the compound soon on women with cervical cancer. There are 130 known types of the human papilloma virus. Nearly all cases of cervical cancer are caused by two sexually transmitted types. Other types cause skin and genital warts, squamous cell skin cancer and lesions in the throat that are deadly in rare cases.
. . Many people carry the virus in skin cells, but it does not always cause disease.
June 8, 04: Doctors have found a treatment that increases life expectancy, while reducing pain, for prostate cancer sufferers who do not respond to hormonal treatment. The results of two studies on a large number of patients highlighted the effectiveness of chemotherapy and docetaxel, which is made by the French-German group Aventis.
June 4, 04: Doctors claim to have uncovered new evidence
that the tiny particles known as "nanobacteria" are indeed
alive and may cause a range of human illnesses.
. . The existence of nannobacteria is one of the most
controversial of scientific questions --some experts claim
they are simply too small to be life forms. But US
scientists report they have now isolated these cell-like
structures in tissue from diseased human arteries.
. . The team, led by Dr John Lieske at the Mayo
Clinic in Rochester, conducted an analysis of calcified and
non-calcified arteries, arterial plaques and heart valves.
The team found tiny spheres ranging in size from 30-100
nanometers (nm - billionths of a meter), which is smaller even than many viruses.
. . They thot the nanoparticles were multiplying of
their own accord. The particles are also recognised by a
dye for DNA and absorbed uridine, a key chemical component
of RNA, which the researchers argue is evidence the
particles are constantly synthesising nucleic acids. Viewed
with electron microscopy, the particles also appeared to
have cell walls. The nano-scale objects showed up in tissue
from patients with calcified arterial aneurysms but not uncalcified samples.
. . However, Dr Cisar said in research he had
conducted, nanoparticles had tested positive with a stain
for nucleic acids. But when he and his team tried to
extract these nucleic acids, none had been found. Previous
research showed that to contain the DNA and proteins it
needs to function, a cell must be a minimum of 140nm across.
June 4, 04: Almost everyone with diabetes should consider
taking a statin drug to lower cholesterol, even if they
already have low cholesterol levels, the American Diabetes
Association advised. Diabetes patients are at such high
risk of heart disease that the statins almost certainly
will do them some good, the group said in its latest treatment guidelines. People with diabetes should all consider taking a daily aspirin, too.
June 2, 04: A new treatment using ultrasound to break up
fibrous clumps in the uterus could soon become the first
U.S.-approved alternative to hysterectomies and other surgical treatments. On Thursday, an advisory panel to the FDA is due to discuss whether to recommend approval of the procedure. The agency usually follows its panels' advice.
The procedure, already approved in Europe and Israel, uses
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to pinpoint the non-
cancerous tumors. Heat from conventional ultrasound waves
is then used to kill the fibroid tissue, which is flushed from the body naturally.
May, 04: An effective weapon against many women's most feared disease might be as close as their medicine cabinets, according to new research linking aspirin with a reduced risk of breast cancer. Women who frequently used aspirin were less likely than nonusers to get the most common type of breast cancer, but faced no reduced risk for developing another form of the disease —-a distinction the researchers said may explain why previous studies had conflicting results.
. . The reduced risk was found for tumors whose growth is fueled by the sex hormones estrogen or progesterone. About 70 percent of women who develop breast cancer have this type of cancer, called hormone receptor-positive.
. . Women in the study who used aspirin at least four times a week for at least three months were almost 30 percent less likely to develop hormone-fueled breast cancer than women who used no aspirin. Aspirin had no effect on the risk of developing the other type of tumor, hormone receptor-negative.
. . Similar studies have suggested that aspirin might reduce the risks of developing other kinds of cancer, including cancer of the pancreas, cancer of the ovaries, and Hodgkin's disease.
May 30, 04: A new technology allows scientists to peer
inside patients' brains in hopes of cutting down the
arduous process of evaluating antidepressants.
. . Scientists can use at least three methods --
positron emission topography (better known as PET),
functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), or
electroencephalogram (EEG)-- to study the brain and its functions.
. . Aspect Medical Systems Inc. has developed a
system based on the EEG, which records the firing of brain
cells, blood flow and other activity, to gauge the
effectiveness of antidepressants. It can take months, even
years, for a doctor to prescribe the best-performing
antidepressant because people react differently to different drugs.
. . "There are 25 common antidepressants on the
market", added Phil Devlin, vice president of Aspect's neuroscience unit. "Without the technology, every person becomes their own clinical trial."
May 24, 04: A combination of therapies helped damaged
spines regrow nerve fibers, researchers report in a study
of rats. Three separate therapies, each of which had shown
promise in earlier tests, were combined in the new effort
by a team at the University of Miami. They combined cell
grafts with the administration of a messenger molecule and
the drug Rolipram in animals with spinal injuries. The
therapy, they found, helped protect nerve fibers from dying
and promoted new growth of fibers into, as well as beyond,
the area of injury. "This work opens up new possibilities
for treatments for spinal cord-injured humans."
May 24, 04: Male breast cancer is on the rise in the
United States --bad news for men and their doctors, who do
not even know to look for it, researchers reported.
Although the disease remains extremely rare --just 1,600
cases are predicted for 2004-- the 25 percent increase in
25 years is worrying.
. . In both sexes, breast cancer is related to the
hormone estrogen, so obesity could be a factor. Fat cells
produce estrogen. So could environmental chemicals, or
changes in lifestyle. "Anecdotally, the male patients I see
and treat haven't been heavy and overweight."
. . Male breast cancer represents just 0.6 percent of
all breast cancers and less than 1 percent of all malignancies in men.
May 20, 04: Devices that synchronize the two halves of the
failing heart and shock hearts that falter cut the risk of
death by more than one-third, a study reports
A separate study of 458 heart failure patients, reported
in the same journal, found that defibrillators cut the risk
of death from rhythm disturbances almost in half, from 14%
to 8%. A study is underway to determine whether the device
is cost-effective.
May ~18, 04: Botswana eradicated polio more than a decade
ago. But in February, a 7-year-old boy, living in a dusty
village at the fringes of the country's Okavango swamp,
came down with the disease. Genetic tests showed it was a
strain common in northern Nigeria, where thousands of
families, suspicious of the vaccine, have refused to
inoculate their children, leading to an outbreak in least nine African countries.
. . No one is sure how the virus made its way 2,500
miles south to rural Botswana. The case has prompted
authorities to launch a campaign to vaccinate every child
in the country under age 5. Health workers in blue T-shirts
last week went door-to-door in the nation of 1.5 million,
dispensing drops, updating health cards and stamping little
hands with an indelible purple mark.
. . Until the most recent outbreak, polio had been
virtually eliminated in Africa, apart from Nigeria and
Niger. Health authorities announced this year that the
virus was eradicated in Somalia, which has not had a
government for more than a decade. Last year, the continent
had 388 polio cases, down from 75,000 less than a decade ago.
PLAGUE SPECIES: Seventy-six species of mammals can carry plague.
May 10, 04: Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison have discovered a new way to attack tuberculosis,
which could lead to more effective antibiotics. The
research has taken four years. TB remains a deadly disease
and antibiotics used to treat it are losing their effectiveness.
. . They discovered how an enzyme and vitamin work
together to build a multilayered cell wall around the
bacteria. "...we can design inhibitors of the enzyme."
. . The same enzyme, they said, is found in numerous
other diseases, including African sleeping sickness,
malaria, and leprosy. But it is the promise of new and more
effective treatments for TB that is most significant.
May 10, 04: Stimulating an area of the brain with magnetic
pulses may help patients with partial damage to their
spinal cord to improve muscle movement and feeling,
scientists said. In a preliminary study of four partially
paralyzed patients who had been injured more than 18 months
or years earlier, repetitive transcranial magnetic
stimulation (rTMS) improved the patients' ability to move and feel.
. . All of the patients in the study had incomplete
spinal cord injuries. Their spinal cord had not been
completely severed. Davey said the treatment is not suitable for patients with more severe injury because it does not repair the spinal cord.
May 6, 04: Scientists have found a way to convert stem
cells in human fat to human bone cells when transplanted
into a mouse. They said the breakthrough is an important
step toward using stem cells for regenerative therapies.
The goal is that one day doctors could repair broken bones
using stem cells donated by people who have gotten liposuction.
. . Gimble extracted human fat through liposuction,
identified and extracted just the stem cells and multiplied
them in the lab. He attached the growing stem cells onto a
chip of artificial bone and implanted the chip under the
skin of mice for six weeks. After removing the bone chip,
Gimble found the stem cells had converted to living human
bone cells and had begun to grow on their own.
May 5, 04: The cells in the pancreas that make insulin can
create copies of themselves, a finding that shows potential
new ways to treat juvenile or type-1 diabetes, U.S.
researchers said. The research, in this week's journal
Nature, also boosts arguments that controversial research
using embryonic stem cells may be the best way to pursue a
cure for the disease, experts said.
Apr 30, 04: A parasite that causes trout to swim in
circles has prompted Yellowstone National Park to prohibit
fishing in a drainage that empties into Yellowstone Lake.
The parasite damages cartilage in young fish, causing nerve
damage that kills the fish directly or causes them to spin,
making them vulnerable to predators.
. . In August, 2002 —-a time of year when the creek
would be expected to be teeming with very young fish-—
researchers found no fry in the lower seven miles of the
creek. Last August, they counted just nine fry. "They're
just not there anymore", Koel said. "The fish are gone." Of
the fish placed in a cage in Pelican Creek to test
infection rates, 90 to 100 percent got whirling disease.
. . Whirling disease was first detected in
Yellowstone in 1998. Park officials theorize that the
whirling disease parasite, which is native to Europe and
has been spreading across the United States since 1956,
might have hitched a ride into the park on someone's fishing gear.
Apr 24, 04: The United Nations is harnessing nuclear
technology to try to eradicate the mosquitoes whose bite
transmits malaria, a deadly disease devastating the African
continent. Sunday is Africa Malaria Day, when governments
will focus attention on a disease which kills millions of
Africans a year, most of them children, and costs the
continent at least $12 billion in lost gross domestic product.
. . The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is a simple
idea. Scientists breed insects and expose the males to
enough radiation to render them sterile. The males are then
released into the environment to breed with the females,
whose eggs are unfertilized and never hatch. "The whole
idea or concept is that the population would actually start
to crash and eventually may actually lead to eradication of
the insect." Over the next five years, they need to reach a
point where they can produce a million sterile male insects a day. The females, the ones which bite humans, only mate once in their two-week lives.
Apr 20, 04: A study that links lawn chemicals to bladder
cancer in Scottish terriers could help shed light on
whether they cause cancer in some people, U.S. researchers
said. "The risk ... was found to be between four and seven
times more likely in exposed animals." "...we hope to
determine which of the many chemicals in lawn treatments
are responsible..." Scotties are about 20 times more likely
to develop bladder cancer than other breeds.
. . The National Cancer Institute says about 38,000
men and 15,000 women are diagnosed with bladder cancer each
year. Humans and animals often share genes that can predispose them to cancer.
Apr 19, 04: At age 33, Leonid Stadnik wishes he would stop
growing. He's already 8 feet, 4 inches. Recent measurements
show that Stadnik is already 7 inches taller than Radhouane
Charbib of Tunisia, listed by the Guinness Book of World
Records as the tallest living man. He's also gaining on the
8-11 Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in history.
. . Stadnik's unusual growth began after a brain
operation at age 14, which is believed to have stimulated his pituitary gland.
. . His weight of about 440 pounds aggravates a
recently broken leg, and he suffers from constant knee
pain. Although he once was able to work as a veterinarian
at a cattle farm, he had to quit three years ago after his
feet were frostbitten because he wasn't able to afford
proper shoes for his 17-inch feet. Stadnik sleeps on two
beds joined lengthwise and moves in a crouch through the small one-story house.
Apr 10, 04: Scientists have discovered two genes that are
linked to asthma, potentially opening the way for new
medications to fight the allergic breathing disorder,
according to a new study. Asthma affects around 150 million
people worldwide and kills around 130,000 people each year.
Apr 6, 04: It may sound revolting, but scientists say
drinking a concoction containing thousands of pig worm eggs
could protect people against bowel disease. Early trials of
the beverage called TSO, which was developed by the German
company BioCure, were so successful in patients suffering
from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that the firm hopes
to begin selling the product in Europe in May.
. . "A lot of researchers couldn't believe this
treatment was effective, but people are always skeptical
when confronted with new ideas." He came up with the idea
after noticing that a rise in cases of IBD coincided with a
drop in infections caused by roundworms and human
whipworms. Weinstock also noted that IBD is rare in
developing countries where parasitic infections are more common.
. . When he tested it twice a month on 100 patients
in the United States with IBD, which includes ulcerative
colitis and Crohn's disease, symptoms such as abdominal
pain, bleeding and diarrhoea, disappeared. Fifty percent of
patients with ulcerative colitis and 70 percent of Crohn's
disease sufferers went into remission.
. . The scientists decided to use pig whipworms
because they do not survive long in the body. About half a
billion people are infected with human whipworm.
"Weinstock's theory is that our immune systems have evolved
to cope with the presence of such parasites and can become overactive without them."
The Netherlands, the first country to legalise euthanasia,
last year also became the first to make cannabis available
as a prescription drug in pharmacies for chronically ill
patients.
Apr 5, 04: A woman whose 176-pound benign tumor was
removed by an American surgeon and Romanian doctors was
released from the hospital, 10 weeks after surgery. Her
tumor covered much of her back and ran halfway down her
thighs. Without it, she weighed 88 pounds. The growing
tumor had absorbed blood and nutrients from her body like a giant parasite.
Apr 1, 04: Huntington's disease may be more
straightforward to fight than doctors have feared,
paradoxically because the genetic brain disorder is more
complicated than anyone knew, U.S. researchers said.
. . Their research in fruit flies shows that nerve
cells modify the mutated protein responsible for
Huntington's disease, and this basic cell process could in
theory be altered with a drug.
. . Huntington's disease affects about 30,000 people
in the United States. It is a dominant genetic defect,
meaning that a child who inherits just one copy of the bad
gene from a parent has a 50 percent chance of eventually
developing Huntington's. It hits late in life, usually
after people have had children. It causes uncontrolled
movements, loss of intellectual capacity and severe
emotional disturbances before killing the patient.
Huntington's patients get a gluey buildup of proteins
similar to the so-called plaques that mark Alzheimer's disease.
. . "This is a common feature of many
neurodegenerative diseases", Marsh said. He hopes his
team's findings could be used to find treatments for
Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and similar diseases.
Mar 30, 04: 24% increase in melanoma in Britian in last five years.
Mar 25, 04: A genetic analysis of a potentially deadly
parasite that is a major cause of food poisoning has shed
light on why the bug is so hard to treat, U.S. researchers
reported. They mapped the DNA of the Cryptosporidium parvum
parasite, which can cause veterinary as well as human-
health problems, and found it has a few tricks that help it
evade drugs. "Despite intensive efforts over the past 20
years, there is currently no effective therapy for treating
or preventing it.
. . Their study shows the parasite is missing many of
the structures that current drug therapy targets. Without a
target, the drugs are worthless. But they found some
genetic weaknesses that could be exploited by drug
developers. The weak points look like they were originally
plant or bacteria genes, and they might be so different
from any human genes that they could safely be targeted by new drugs, they said.
Mar 24, 04: Singapore authorities are preparing for an
eight-month war against rats. An estimated 12,950 rats are
being targeted in the $165,950 campaign, which begins next
week in five neighborhoods across the city-state, the
National Environment Agency said.
. . More than 40 people were infected last year with
typhus and leptospirosis, a bacterial disease that causes
fever. Both illnesses are spread by rats.
. . Singapore has stepped up hygiene measures since
the outbreak a year ago of SARS --severe acute respiratory syndrome-- which crippled the country's economy and killed 33 people in the city-state.
Mar 23, 04: Despite the advances of modern medicine,
diseases like malaria, dengue fever, and even plague still
afflict millions of people each year, crippling some while
proving fatal for others. Many of the diseases are spread
through infected, bloodsucking mosquitoes, which can cause
widespread epidemics by feeding on people or animals then flying to another target.
. . Earth-watching satellites capable of identifying
potential disease hotspots before an outbreak has time to
spread. The method combines computer modeling of satellite
data with good old-fashioned fieldwork. It could give local
health officials more lead time to distribute preventative
medical care before a disease strikes.
. . There's an effort to develop an early warning
system to accurately predict the progression of malaria
across the Mewat region of India, a predominantly rural
area south of New Dehli. If his model is successful, it
could be used for any number of diseases that can be spread through mosquitoes.
. . According to World Health Organization
statistics, malaria alone infects up to 500 million people
each year, killing at least a million. The spread of other
mosquito-borne sicknesses, such as dengue fever, West Nile
Virus and hantavirus can also lead to outbreaks across
small villages, towns and whole regions.
. . "What you're tracking [with satellites] is not
really a disease", said Assaf Anyamba, a research scientist
with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "You're tracking
the conditions that lead to the disease, and it's putting
that whole chain of events together that is challenging."
. . The United Nations' Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO) warned that northwest Africa was at risk
of a massive invasion of locusts which could have "a
dramatic impact on food security in the region." In
Morocco, intensive aerial and ground control operations are
in progress against swarms that are laying eggs.
Mar 4, 04: Biologists are trying to determine what is
causing the biggest elk die-off anyone in Wyoming can
remember. The elk started falling nearly a month ago, and
the death count has topped 280 over a 15-square-mile area,
but that figure is probably low. With plenty of forage
available and hardly any snow in their way, the elk are
relatively fat, suggesting they have at least been willing and able to eat.
Chronic wasting disease —-the elk and deer equivalent of
mad cow disease-— has been ruled out from post-mortem
examinations. The usual viruses, bacteria and plant toxins
also have been eliminated. A vitamin or mineral deficiency remains a possibility.
Mar 3, 04: Scientists at Harvard University announced on
Wednesday they had created 17 batches of stem cells from
human embryos, in defiance of attempts by President Bush to
limit such research. Scientists have complained this limits
a promising field of biological research.
. . Dr. Douglas Melton, a stem cell researcher at
Harvard Medical School, said he and colleagues had used
private, legal funding to make 17 batches of the cells, and
made them available free of charge. "What we have done is
to make use of previously frozen human fertilized eggs that
otherwise were going to be discarded. In my case, we want
them only to become pancreatic beta cells that make
insulin", said Melton, who is seeking a cure for his two
children with type-1 diabetes, a disease that affects as many as 2 million Americans.
Mar 3, 04: For years, health officials have been battling
improper antibiotic use by emphasizing that the drugs
should not be used for viruses, such as colds, because they
do no good. This time, health officials are going even
further, urging that antibiotics also be withheld for
bacterial ear infections if they appear to be minor. Most children with ear infections —-about 80 percent-— typically recover in two to seven days.
. . Health officials believe if they can reduce child
antibiotic use for such infections, they can stop the rise
of antibiotic-resistant germs created by overuse of the drugs.
Mar 1, 04: A new study in Australia finds that having an
optimistic attitude does not help lung cancer patients live
longer. In fact, say the Australian researchers,
encouraging an optimistic attitude may be harmful because
it may represent an additional burden for these patients.
Feb 27, 04: A rare, deadly lung condition is so common
among people with sickle cell anemia that testing for and
treating it could help many patients live longer, healthier lives, a new study found.
. . Experts called the study a major advance in the
fight against sickle cell disease, an inherited blood
disorder that affects 70,000 to 100,000 Americans. One-
third of sickle cell patients have the lung condition,
which makes them 10 times more likely to die within 18
months. "I think the number of deaths could be cut by 30
percent or more, easily" if all patients were screened and treated.
. . Sickle cell disease, which mostly affects blacks,
used to be a childhood death sentence. Now, half of all
patients make it past the age of 50, and doctors are
learning what the disease does to the older body.
Feb 26, 04: Deaths in Britain from an increasingly drug-
resistant superbug are 15 times higher than they were a
decade ago, according to new figures. Health authorities
have become increasingly worried over the past 50 years
about the spread of the bacteria, called methicillin-
resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. Staph is commonly
carried on the skin or in the nose of healthy people and
mostly causes mild infections such as pimples and boils.
. . Gradually, chiefly through improper use of
antibiotics, the bacteria have become immune to many
conventional antibiotics. Most of the time, the superbug
infections have been found in hospital intensive care
units, burn units or surgical wards.
. . In Britain, the number of people dying directly
or indirectly from that superbug has increased from 51 in
1993 to 800 in 2002. Laboratory reports of blood poisoning
caused by the superbug also increased from 210 in 1993 to
5,309 in 2002. Countries around the world have reported
similar increases in such infections for many years.
. . Some strains of staph have also acquired
resistance to vancomycin, a drug considered the "last line
of defense" when all other antibiotics have failed.
. . Although new antibiotics are constantly being
developed, some experts fear it is only a matter of time
until virtually every drug is useless.
Researchers extract stem cells at an early stage, when the
embryo is little more than a hollow ball of cells known as
a blastocyst. ...not what you'd call human.
Feb 26, 04: The first drug that promises to attack cancer
by choking off its blood supply won federal approval, a
treatment for advanced colon cancer called Avastin. It's
not a cure, cautioned the Food and Drug Administration:
Avastin can extend patients' lives by a median of five
months, meaning half do better and half worse. But it's a
significant development. Few other drugs for advanced
stages of this cancer have provided even that much benefit.
. . Avastin becomes the first drug proved to work
according to a novel theory that tumors must form a network
of blood vessels to survive — a process called angiogenesis
— and that shutting down that process could fight cancer in a completely new way.
. . Scientists are working to see if Avastin can
treat other cancers, too. It failed as a last-ditch breast
cancer treatment, but studies are under way to see if it
helps in earlier stages of that disease and lung cancer.
Feb 19, 04: An experimental vaccine wiped out lung cancer
in some patients and slowed its spread in others in a small
but promising study. Three patients injected with the
vaccine, GVAX, had no recurrence of lung cancer for more
than three years afterward, according to the study of 43
people with the most common form of the disease, non-small
cell lung cancer.
. . The vaccine, developed by researchers at Baylor
University Medical Center in Dallas, is years away from
reaching the market, if ever. The researchers hope to apply
for Food and Drug Administration approval in three years.
Feb 19, 04: Ireland will introduce a tobacco ban on March
29 making it the first country in Europe to outlaw smoking
in pubs, bars and restaurants. There'll be a a fine of up to 3,000 euros ($3,824).
Feb 16, 04: A gene therapy that has been shown in rats to
double muscle strength and power could illegally be used to
build super athletes, a researcher said. Sports officials
are looking for ways to detect the genetic manipulation.
Laboratory studies show that injecting a virus carrying the
gene for insulin-like growth factor 1 into lab rats caused
their target muscles to grow in size and strength by 15 to
30 percent. When the technique was used on rats that were
also put through an exercise program, the animals doubled their muscle strength.
. . There are blood and urine tests to detect most
performance-enhancing drugs, but the gene therapy detection
would be much more difficult. Sweeney said that the
presence of added genes in muscle could be detected now
only through a muscle biopsy, a severely invasive procedure.
. . The gene therapy is being developed to increase
the strength of muscles for the elderly and for treatment
of muscular dystrophy, a muscle wasting disorder.
Feb 13, 04: Bedbugs have bitten in 35 states, including
Iowa, and continue to spread across the country, pest
control experts say.
. . Bedbugs are tiny bloodsucking insects that smell
like soda pop syrup and are shaped like apple seeds. They
live in bedding or furniture, or hide behind baseboards and
wallpaper. They don't carry diseases [but *could they?],
but they bite while you sleep, turning brownish-red after feeding on your blood.
. . Infestations are on the rise across the country
in metropolitan cities with high travel populations,
according to Orkin Exterminating Co. Reports show a 300
percent increase in calls about bedbug infestation in homes and commercial buildings from 2000 to 2001 and 70 percent increases in both 2002 and 2003.
Jan 30, 04: Medical X-rays cause thousands of cancers.
Medical experts stress they can be very beneficial, but say
the new study shows they should be used as sparingly as possible.
Jan 19, 04: Small farms, squalid and teeming with fetid
animals, are widely believed to make southern China and
other densely populated areas across Asia cauldrons for
lethal new flu strains. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome,
the flu-like illness that first swept out of Guangdong last
year to claim 800 lives around the globe, was only the latest warning sign.
. . Scientists, though often stymied in their
attempts to connect the dots, commonly point to a triangle
of contagion linking man, bird and swine. As the theory
goes, viruses of farmers and fowl may co-mingle or trade
genes. An avian flu by-product can then incubate in pigs,
which in turn re-infect humans.
. . The prospect of the next big pandemic haunts
Southeast Asia. "Asian Flu" in 1957-58 and "Hong Kong Flu"
in 1967-68 killed 4.5 million people combined. Scientists
in recent years have even traced the 1918-19 "Spanish flu"
pandemic, in which 40 million to 50 million people
perished, back to southern China.
Jan 15, 04: The World Health Organization (WHO) and six
countries in which polio remains endemic agreed on a final
push to eradicate a disease that once paralysed hundreds of
thousands of children a year. The plan calls for massive
vaccination campaigns, mainly in the six states --India,
Pakistan, Egypt, Nigeria, Niger and Afghanistan --with some
250 million children being vaccinated several times in a
bid to stop transmission.
. . Polio was one of the world's most devastating and
widespread diseases. But the number of new cases so far
recorded worldwide for 2003 is just 650, although data is
still coming in, only around a third of the figure for the
previous year. "Polio should be relegated to the history
books within the next 12 months."
. . Nigeria remains a problem. Late last year local
religious leaders in the mainly Muslim north forced the
suspension of an immunization program because they feared
the vaccine spread AIDS and infertility.
. . The WHO declared smallpox eradicated worldwide in
1977 and is also working to halve the toll inflicted by
malaria, which still kills a million people a year, by 2010.
Jan 14, 04: Researchers said they had found a gene that
seems to put people more at risk of alcoholism, but said
they cannot yet explain how it works. "It is likely that
many genes that influence alcoholism act through indirect
pathways. In other words, there is no gene that directly
causes you to become alcoholic, but rather there are genes
that alter your risk of becoming alcoholic."
Jan 14, 04: By improving the delivery method, an
international research team has developed a new gene
therapy for advanced skin cancer that spares normal tissue.
Gene therapy combats disease by delivering various genes to
the affected cells. Once in the cell, the genes produce
proteins that, it's hoped, arrest or slow the disease
process. Typically, the genes are delivered to the cells by harmless viruses.
Jan 6, 04: British scientists said they have made a
breakthrough in meningitis research which could lead to the
development of a vaccine against all forms of the
potentially deadly disease. "There are still many years
work to do but we are hopeful that it is going to give us a
route toward developing a broad vaccine", he said.
. . Meningitis, an inflammation of the lining of the
brain and spinal cord which affects hundreds of thousands
of people worldwide, has historically been difficult to
treat because it has so many different strains.
. . In the UK, there are between 2,000 and 3,000
cases each year, and one in ten people who contract the disease die.
. . "Whilst there is already a vaccine available to
protect against group C meningitis, it is important to find
a vaccine for group B as it continues to kill hundreds of
people in the UK every year", Guyatt said.
Dec 25, 03: US scientists have found a way to turn adult
cells back into immature cells with the potential to become
many different types of tissue. The breakthrough by Scripps
Research Institute in California could provide a non-
controversial way to grow tissue for medical treatments.
The use of immature "stem" cells holds great promise as a
treatment for paralysis or diseases like Parkinson's.
. . The key to the new development is a small
molecule called reversine. The researchers found that it
caused cells which are normally programmed to form muscles
to turn back into immature cells whose final state is not sealed.
Dec 21, 03: South Korea, grappling with a highly
contagious strain of bird flu, agreed to measures to
contain the outbreak and to limit its impact on the poultry
industry. The virus, which can be deadly for humans,
surfaced among chickens at a farm about 50 miles southeast
of the capital Seoul. Authorities have slaughtered 210,000
chickens and ducks, but officials say a further 405,000, at least, will be culled.
Dec 9, 03: More than 50 years ago, US Navy doctors
stationed on the Pacific island of Guam found a shocking
rate of an unknown neurodegenerative disease with the fatal
progressive paralysis of Lou Gehrig's disease, the tremors
of Parkinson's, and the forgetfulness of dementia. Guam's
indigenous Chamorro people were 50 times to 100 times more
likely to suffer the symptoms of amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease and ALS, than
populations just about anyplace else on the planet.
. . The answer may lie in the Chamorro's favorite
entree: Flying fox bats boiled in coconut cream. This
month, researchers led by enthnobotanist Paul Alan Cox,
reported finding a toxin they believe works its way up the
food chain from the seeds of an ancient palmlike tree that
the bats eat, to the nerve cells of the Chamorros, who have
devoured the flying foxes nearly into extinction.
. . To their surprise, Cox and his team also found
the same toxin in the brain tissues of people in their
control group of Canadians living thousands of miles away.
Nov, 03: A new drug could be on the market within three
years, if all the tests work out. It's derived from a
blowfish poison --a substance so dangerous that a mere
trace can paralyze a person within minutes. The poison,
tetrodotoxin, has already passed two phases of clinical
tests, and doctors conducting early surveys say it eased
pain in terminally ill cancer patients, where no other pain
medication had worked.
. . There's a $38 billion North American painkiller
market, some 10 percent of which comes from managing cancer pain.
. . The company says Tectin differs from other
painkillers in that it doesn't have the same side effects
as morphine and its derivatives, doesn't interact with
other medicines and is not addictive. It is up to 3,200
times stronger than morphine. They say that each puffer
fish can provide about 600 doses of the drug from within
its liver, kidneys and reproductive organs, so there is no shortage of the toxin.
Dec 1, 03: The latest CT-scan technique that yields three-
dimensional images of the bowel is faster, simpler and
safer than the standard colon exam for preventing colon
cancer, researchers said. However, people being screened
using either method will still have to follow an often
distasteful regimen for cleaning the bowel. And if
something suspicious is found using the CT scan technique,
patients will still need a conventional colonoscopy to have suspicious polyps removed.
. . Colon cancer kills 60,000 people in the United
States each year, making it the second leading cause of
cancer deaths. Having a colonoscopy every three to five
years after age 50 virtually eliminates that risk. scanning took half the time.
Aneurysms can develop in people with Marfan syndrome, a
genetic disorder of the connective tissue that can affect the blood vessels.
Dec 15, 03: The giant pouched rats that have been trained
to sniff out land mines in Africa are now learning to
detect tuberculosis bacteria in human saliva with the help
of a grant from the World Bank. The World Health
Organization estimates that deaths from tuberculosis will
rise from 2 million this year to 8 million by 2015.
. . The rat, whose Latin name is Cricetomys
gambianus, can sniff 120-150 human saliva samples in lab
dishes in 30 minutes compared to the day's work it takes
for a human technician to analyze 20 samples. The rat stops
in front of samples that smell like TB and waits to be
rewarded but walks past samples where TB is not present.
. . The first batch of 12 rats trained to detect land
mines are now at work in neighboring Mozambique and so far have sniffed out 20.
Nov 20, 03: The European Parliament voted today to fund
research using stem cells taken from human embryos, a
controversial procedure opposed by anti-abortion activists.
British Labor deputy David Bowe, who backs the research
because of its potential to fight diseases like Alzheimer's
and Parkinson's, was delighted.
Nov 25, 03: A woman in Sweden has received six new
organs in a rare transplant operation in Sweden in which
all the organs came from a single donor. She received a new
liver, stomach, duodenum, pancreas, intestine and kidney in
the 18-hour operation. It has been done only a few times in the United States.
Nov 17, 03: Psoriasis sufferers may later develop lymphoma
cancers at nearly three times the rate of people who do not
have the red and scaly skin condition, a study said. The
reason for the greater risk is not clear.
Nov 13, 03: US researchers said they have created an
artificial bacteria-eating virus --in just 14 days and from
synthetic genes. The breakthrough could be the first step
on a long path toward helping fight certain incurable
diseases or gobbling up toxic waste, according to the
experts. It could also help create organisms that can live
in extreme conditions such as radioactivity and intense pollution.
. . The virus is not capable of attacking human
cells, scientists were quick to point out.
. . "With this advance, it is easier to imagine --in
the not-too-distant future-- a colony of specially designed
microbes living within the emission-control system of a
coal-fired plant, consuming its pollution and its carbon
dioxide, or employing microbes to radically reduce water
pollution or to reduce the toxic effects of radioactive waste."
Nov 10, 03: A patient's own cells might some day be used
to rebuild a heart damaged by heart attack or long-term
heart disease such as heart failure, researchers reported
German researchers showed that cells taken from the bone
marrow and washed into the heart soon after heart attack
helped patients recover better than patients given standard care.
. . In a second study, they found that the patients
given stem cells seemed to regenerate new heart tissue. The
damaged area shrank, and the heart's pumping ability
improved. Five patients who were waiting for heart
transplants are now off the transplant list.
. . The researchers believe, but are not sure, that
the work is being done by stem cells --immature cells that
can give rise to several different cell types. Bone marrow
is rich in them. They believe the cells go directly to the
damaged area, which, right after a heart attack, would have
still been sending out distress signals.
. . The researchers do not believe any of the
approaches will be expensive --perhaps double the cost of
getting a standard angioplasty to stretch open a clogged
artery. "Our own cells are free". Perin said. "It is not a very expensive procedure."
Nov 5, 03: After more than 20 years of research,
scientists believe they have a solution that could save
peanuts and corn from aflatoxin, a destructive mold that
can destroy millions in crops. They've developed a control
for aflatoxin that could reduce the mold by 70 percent to
90 percent in peanuts and help protect corn and other
vulnerable crops. It has $20-per-acre application costs.
Afla-Guard can also protect peanuts stored in warehouses.
. . Aflatoxin is produced by two types of molds. Pure
aflatoxin can be lethal and prolonged exposure to foods
contaminated with lesser amounts can cause liver cancer.
Oct 22, 03: In what may be an important step toward
preventing blindness in old age, scientists have identified
a gene believed to be responsible for a degenerative eye
disease that could strike millions of baby boomers as they
grow older. It typically affects people 65 and older. About
6 million Americans suffer from AMD, a number that is
predicted to double by the year 2030 as the baby boomer generation ages.
. . The gene is suspected of being the main cause of
some cases of age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, a
complex disease triggered by various factors.If the gene
proves to be the source, it is possible gene therapy could be used to delay or even prevent the disease. "But I think that's still quite a way off."
Oct 2, 03: Using the computing power of 2.5 million PCs
donated by volunteers from around the world, researchers
have narrowed the search for a new treatment for smallpox,
now seen as a possible terrorist weapon, to 44 drug
molecules that may render the smallpox protein inactive.
. . The project screened 35 million potential drug
molecules against nine models of the smallpox protein to
determine if any of the molecules were able to make the
smallpox protein inactive. From those 35 million molecules,
the project, using PCs from volunteers in 190 nations,
narrowed the list to 44 that looked most promising and
could be used in further smallpox research.
Sept 30, 03: Great! The French government has slapped on
new taxes that will inflate the price of a packet of
cigarettes by 40 percent over the coming year.
Sept 27, 03: A team tested 112 nonalcoholics, 45 of whom
had a family history of alcoholism. The subjects tasted
different concentrations of sodium chloride (table salt)
and citric acid and then recorded the perceived intensity
and pleasantness of each sample. People tagged as high-risk
due to their family histories reported a stronger dislike
of the salty solutions and a sensitivity to the sour ones.
Sept 21, 03: U.S. researchers said on Sunday they had used
cloned cells to treat a Parkinson-like disease in mice and
said it provided a good experimental basis for testing
whether so-called therapeutic cloning will work.
. . Cloning is highly controversial but many
scientists believe therapeutic cloning can revolutionize
medicine. The idea is for a patient to provide a single
cell that could be manipulated and grown into new tissue or even organs.
. . Theoretically, it could cure juvenile diabetes,
severe injuries and diseases such as Parkinson's, which is
caused when the body mistakenly destroys healthy brain
cells. The cells were directed to become several different
types of brain cell --including the dopamine-producing
cells that are destroyed in Parkinson's. The mice had
healthy colonies of the transplanted cells in their brains.
Sept 16, 03: Botox injections, already hugely popular for
removing wrinkles, can also give long-term relief from
migraine, according to results of a clinical study. "Botox
is unlike other available migraine therapies, in that it
appears to positively modify the course of the disorder --
that is, even after treatment stopped, the intensity and
frequency of the patients' migraines did not return to
baseline", Mathew said. Patients also experienced half the
number of headache days they had at the start of the trial
three months later and needed only one-quarter of their
previously monthly doses of headache pills.
. . Mathew's research was sponsored by
Allergan Inc., the maker of Botox.
The exact mechanism of action is not fully understood but
Mathew said Botox appeared to alter the working of pain-
carrying neurotransmitters as well as relaxing muscles.
Sept 15, 03: Recent U.S. figures showed that one in 150
people there suffered from autism --a disease that
effectively cuts the victim off from their social
surroundings-- and the incidence of the illness has been
rising at over 10 percent a year.
. . Ten times more males than females suffer from
autism, and males have an X and a Y chromosome while
females have two Xs. Women suffering from Turner Syndrome
in which they have only one X chromosome had also been
found to suffer far higher rates of autism than their
double X counterparts.
. . X may mark the spot in the search for the cause
of autism, a brain disorder affecting millions of people
across the globe, a leading research scientist said. He
said women with both Xs functioning normally had a fully
operational amygdala, while those with only one X or with
only one functioning as it should had poor expression recognition.
Sept 8, 03: British scientists are developing vaccines to
reprogram the body's natural defenses against autoimmune
diseases such as arthritis, diabetes and multiple
sclerosis. They hope to begin human safety trials of the
vaccine early next year. Autoimmune disorders affect about
five percent of the population.
. . "The vaccines we are working on are able to re-
educate the immune system to reset the balances and put the
controls back in place."
. . They also told the meeting about its vaccines
which are designed to reduce addiction to nicotine and
cocaine by producing antibodies that prevent the compounds
from getting into the brain, which is the key to addiction.
Sept 8, 03: The European Commission has started the hunt
for images of rotting lungs and dying cancer patients to be
printed on cigarette packets across the European Union.
Sept 1, 03: Four out of a group of five seriously sick
Brazilian heart-failure patients no longer needed a heart
transplant after being treated with their own stem
cells, the doctor in charge of the research said. Such
"regenerative medicine", in which stem cells extracted from
patients' own bone marrow are used to rebuild tissue, may
one day become commonplace for patients with damaged or diseased hearts.
. . "This is the first approach where you have an
opportunity to actually heal a heart", said Dr Michael
Rosen of Columbia University, New York. "It's going to be a
very long road, but it is the most exciting thing I've seen
in my 40 years as a doctor in this field."
. . Rosen and his team are working on a technique to
use cell therapy to deliver genes to the heart that would
improve its electrical pulse, effectively creating a
biological pacemaker to replace today's mechanical ones.
Sept 1, 03: Air pollution may have been the cause of death
for thousands of French people who died in a heatwave that
struck Europe this August, an environmental official said.
Hit by the hottest weather in some 60 years, France
recorded around 11,400 more deaths than usual in the first two weeks of August.
. . A recent study suggests that pollution may also
have been a key cause of death, as searing temperatures and
a lack of wind left a cloud of smog hanging over Paris.
"It's the first year since this form of data collection
began in 1991 that we've seen such high ozone values over such a long period."
AUG 25, 03:Finnish researchers said they had found a gene
they believe could be important in causing dyslexia, the
most common learning disorder among children.
. . Pinpointing the genetic changes that underlie
dyslexia could help scientists understand what causes it.
Dyslexia affects anywhere between 3 percent and 10 percent
of the population. Some evidence shows they use the right
side of the brain for reading instead of the left side,
which is better set up for processing words. Dyslexia is known to have a genetic component --it runs in families. {That, in itself, is not proof!]
Aug 14, 03: U.S.-based researchers said they had found a
key genetic defect that causes Hirschsprung disease, a
common disorder that can leave babies unable to digest
food. The defect starts long before birth, but it may be possible to correct it.
. . Babies born with Hirschsprung disease lack
ganglion cells, which are specialized nerve cells in the
gut that trigger the contractions to push through food and
waste. They develop chronic constipation and intestinal
obstructions requiring surgery, sometimes immediately after
birth. One in 5,000 babies born is affected.
. . "Perhaps we can bypass that migratory defect by
taking stem cells from the foregut, expanding them in
culture, and then transplanting them into the hindgut",
Morrison said. First, the equivalent cells will have to be
identified in humans, although people and mice are very
similar genetically and biologically.
Aug 6, 03: Vitamin C may help prevent the damage caused by
second-hand tobacco smoke, offering a way for people to
protect themselves from smokers in their lives, U.S.
researchers said. A small study of 67 nonsmokers exposed to
environmental smoke showed those who took 500 mg of vitamin
C daily had lower levels of a compound linked to the damage
done by tobacco smoke. The study did not last long enough
to tell whether the vitamin takers were less likely to have
cancer or heart disease. Oxidative damage has been compared
to rust damaging metal. It is caused by charged particles
known as free radicals, and can be counteracted by
antioxidants including vitamin C.
Aug 13, 03: In an unexpected development, a new gene
therapy technique has significantly prolonged the lives of
lab animals suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, a fatal
paralysis that afflicts 25,000 Americans. Researchers say
the results are so promising that they hope to begin a
human trial next year.
. . amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), causes the
brain cells that operate the muscles to progressively die off.
Aug 1, 03: Jolting tumors with a low dose of electricity
may make them more susceptible to chemotherapy, Israeli
researchers said. They said they had cured up to 80 percent
of laboratory mice of cancer using their low-voltage field,
depending on the type of cancer. They hope to begin human tests later this year.
July 29, 03: U.N. health chiefs said they could eradicate
polio on target by 2005, if governments in four key
countries gave full backing to extensive immunization
campaigns. The officials, from the U.N.'s World Health
Organization (WHO), told reporters the disease might never
be conquered unless a window of opportunity offered by a
new flow of funds was used now.
. . "Polio eradication is a top priority," said new
WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook. "We have eliminated it
from almost every country in the world.
. . The disease, which once paralyzed and killed
thousands of children annually in dozens of countries, has
claimed 235 victims so far this year. In its wild virus
form, it is now concentrated in India, Nigeria, Pakistan,
and Egypt --which account for 99 percent of all new cases.
July 26, 03: The widely used PSA blood test, designed to
look for early signs of prostate cancer, misses 82 percent
of tumors in men under 60, according to a new study. The
prostate-specific antigen test missed 65 percent of cancers
in older males. They found that men under 60 with prostate
cancer had a "healthy" PSA reading 82 percent of the time. (false negatives)
. . Prostate cancer is usually a slow-growing cancer
and often does not require any treatment. However, prostate
cancer kills about 29,000 Americans each year and is the
second most common cancer killer of U.S. men, after lung cancer.
July 14, 03: Researchers in Scotland said they can tell
who has the highest risk of heart disease and diabetes
based on three of five measurements of obesity,
cholesterol, blood pressure and glucose. They said the
tests might offer an easier way to tell which men are most
in danger and most in need of drugs, weight loss and exercise.
. . The five measurements are used to define metabolic
syndrome, or "syndrome x." They are a measurement of
unhealthy fat, usually done with a simple waist
circumference check, high triglycerides --a component of
cholesterol-- low levels of LDL or "good" cholesterol, high
glucose and high blood pressure.
. . Using their new definition, 26 percent of the men
had metabolic syndrome. Over five years, these men had 1.7
times the risk of a coronary heart event such as heart
attack or severe chest pain, and 3.5 times the risk of
developing diabetes. Men with four or five features of
metabolic syndrome had 3.7 times the risk of coronary heart
disease and 24.5 times the risk of diabetes.
July 11, 03: Researchers said they were starting to find
clues left by cancer when it begins to spread, and hoped to
develop them into tests that may save the lives of future
patients. They found several of the genetic and protein
markers in the blood and tissue of patients. They
identified 48 genes and their protein products that seem to help tumor cells spread.
. . "People don't die because they got cancer. People
die because they got cancer and we didn't detect it at a
point where we could do something about it."
July 10, 03: A new biodetector made with the body's own
immune system cells literally lights up when it encounters
anthrax, plague or other deadly germs, U.S. researchers
said. The sensor could be a quicker and more
straightforward way to detect a biological attack than
current methods. It uses mouse B cells that have been
genetically engineered in two ways.
. . First, they contain a gene from jellyfish that
lights up. Sensitive light sensors pick up the telltale glow.
. . Second, the B cells were also engineered to recognize specific pathogens. They also developed cells to detect a few non-military pathogens such as the foot and mouth disease virus, so it will be useful for agriculture.
. . It found a toxic form of E. coli bacteria in
vegetables, fruit and meat in less than five minutes, they
reported -- which could make it useful for screening food
samples for the increasingly common cause of food poisoning.
The team is working on a system that would make the
detector useful for testing airborne pathogens too.
July 10, 03: Italian researchers said they were combining
two new and experimental therapies --using stem cells and
gene therapy-- to try to treat muscular dystrophy. Their
early work has shown some success in mice but they warned
any real progress is years away. There are nine forms of
muscular dystrophy, which affect 300,000 people in the
United States alone.
July 6, 03: European researchers said they had identified
a new gene that, when mutated, results in 1.8 times the
risk of developing ALS --amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,
also known as motor neuron disease or Lou Gehrig's disease, they found.
. . Carmeliet's team had found that mice with a
defective version of VEGF, which caused their bodies to
produce less VEGF protein than normal, developed a disorder
similar to ALS. When they gave VEGF to mice with
artificially induced ALS symptoms, the mice got better.
. . ALS usually develops after age 50, causing gradual
weakness, then paralysis and death. There is no cure,
although some people progress more quickly than others.
July 2, 03: U.S. researchers using the newly published
human gene map said they have identified 19 different
genetic regions linked with depression. The findings could
eventually lead to better treatments and screening for
depression and related conditions, such as addiction. They
also noticed that people in families with these genetic
changes tend to live shorter lives. People who had died in
the 81 families were eight years younger when they died
than the average for the general population.
. . They found a five-fold increase in the proportion
of babies who died in the first year of life and several-
fold increases in deaths by suicide, murder and liver disease.
July 3, 03: Diseases that kill millions of poor people
every year are ignored by Western firms because drugs to
combat them make no money, a new research body said as it
was launched.
. . The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative
(DNDi) links the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors
Without Borders) with public health bodies from developing
countries in a bid to plug a gaping hole between health
research and global illness. "A mere 10 percent of the
world's health research efforts go into diseases that
account for 90 percent of the global disease burden", DNDi said.
. . The initiative, backed by research institutes in
Brazil, France, India, Kenya and Malaysia, plans to spend
$250 million over the next 12 years to develop drugs to
fight illnesses such as sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis
and Chagas disease. Sleeping sickness has made a massive
comeback in sub-Saharan Africa and left untreated, can be fatal.
. . Leishmaniasis, which destroys the immune system,
is rife in rural areas of the Indian subcontinent and
Chagas disease, found in south America, is caused by a
blood-sucking bug that slowly eats away at the internal organs.
. . Together, they threaten 350 million people, but
existing therapies are often painful and toxic --and decades old.
July 1, 03: Forget anthrax and smallpox. Influenza could
easily be turned into the next weapon of mass destruction,
scientists said. They sounded their warning as researchers
come close to completing the blueprint for the virus of the
1918 'flu epidemic that killed up to 40 million people globally. This opens the door to unscrupulous scientists to build an even more potent virus.
June 31, 03: Caring for a loved one who is ill can make
the caregiver sick, too --possibly by aging the immune
system, U.S. researchers said. They found evidence that the
stress of nursing a family member --in this case, patients
with Alzheimer's disease-- can damage the immune system,
leading to disease and early death. In particular, a
chemical called interleukin-6 goes into overdrive in
stressed-out caregivers, the team reports. "Stress and
depression can permanently alter the responsiveness of the immune system."
. . Other research has shown that people who nurse a
loved one for long periods of time have a 63 percent higher
mortality rate over the same period of time than people not
taking care of a disabled family member.
June 27, 03: Injections of stem cells --the body's master
cells-- helped paralyzed rats, but not in the expected way,
U.S. scientists said. The team said their findings shed new
light on the potential of stem cells.
. . Early stem cells have the power to morph into
virtually any type of tissue, and scientists assumed that
they directly gave rise to whatever cells were needed --in
this case, to new nerve cells. But in fact, the injected
human stem cells bathed the damaged rat nerve cells in
nourishing compounds, helping them survive. They could not find many new nerves.
. . "Some of the tens of thousands of implanted
primitive human stem cells did become nerve cells or the
like, but not enough to account for the physical
improvements." "Instead, these human embryonic germ cells
create an environment that protects and helps existing rat
neurons --teetering on the brink of death-- to survive."
. . When nerve cells die, they send out signals that,
for reasons not yet understood, often cause neighboring,
healthy, cells to die. This cascade of cell death accounts
for much of the brain damage cause by a stroke, for
example. The fetal stem cells produced two proteins that
seemed to protect the healthy nerve cells from this cascade.
June 25, 03: Scientists in the United States have
discovered how to produce peanuts which do not trigger life-
threatening allergic reactions --but they may not taste as
good. It kills about 10 people with a food allergy each
year in Britain and around 100 in the United States. Peanut
allergy usually begins early in life --perhaps prenatal-- and rarely goes away.
June 25, 03: Pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms
of the disease, may be caused by cells mistakenly returning
to embryonic form, U.S. researchers said.
The findings may offer a new approach to treating the
cancer, which kills virtually all of the 31,000 Americans
it affects every year, the researchers said.
. . The team at Johns Hopkins University said they
found a growth signal normally turned off in adult tissues
is mistakenly turned back on after injury to or
inflammation of the pancreas. The cells mistakenly began
the rapid growth and differentiation seen in an embryo and deadly to an adult.
. . "Using drugs to deactivate the Notch pathway could
prevent these cancer-causing events from occurring."
June 24, 03: A popular baldness drug that works by
lowering male hormone levels also seems to prevent prostate
cancer, a major killer of men, U.S. researchers said.
The drug, finasteride, worked so well that the researchers
stopped their trial so that all the men could take the
drug. It seemed to reduce prostate cancer by 25 percent.
They found that 18 percent of the men who took finasteride,
or 803 men, developed prostate cancer. About 24 percent of
men who took placebo, or 1,147 men, developed prostate cancer.
. . The drug used in the study is sold as Proscar, made by Merck & Co.
June 24, 03: The most common hormone replacement drug
therapy not only increases the risk of breast cancer in
post-menopausal women but also makes cancer harder to
detect with mammography, a report said. The finding is the
latest in a continuing stream of bad news for preparations
that combine estrogen and progestin.
. . The hormones have been shown to halt or reverse
osteoporosis, lessen the risk of hip fractures and prevent
uterine cancer. But a major government study on long-term
use was halted in the summer of 2002 after it showed the
estrogen-progestin combination sold as Wyeth's Prempro
carried an increased risk of ovarian cancer, heart attack and stroke.
Monkeypox is a rare viral disease that is found mainly in
central and West African rain forests where primates
flourish. Animals susceptible to the disease also include
rabbits and some rodents. The symptoms in people are
similar to smallpox although monkeypox is less infectious
and is seldom fatal, the CDC said. Doctors should look for
rashes, fever, enlarged lymph nodes and other symptoms in
people who have been in contact with prairie dogs or
Gambian giant rats in the last three weeks, it said.
June 18, 03: Want to ward off Alzheimer's disease? Play
some mental games or go dancing.
. . Elderly people who frequently read, do crossword
puzzles, practice a musical instrument or play board games
cut their risk of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia
by nearly two-thirds compared to people who seldom do such
activities, researchers said. Previous attempts to test the
theory met with controversy because researchers had no way
to tell if people who avoided mentally challenging
activities were doing so because they were already in the
early stages of Alzheimer's. But neurologist Joe Verghese
and his colleagues at the Albert Einstein College of
Medicine in the Bronx, New York, adjusted for that potential complication by following hundreds of elderly volunteers for more than 20 years.
June 14, 03: An experimental vaccine may be able to stop
the progression of Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes, according
to results from a mid-stage clinical trial of the injected
drug. "The vaccine prolonged what little ability people
with advanced diabetes had to make insulin. We are
optimistic of better efficacy in younger people, who don't
have full-blown disease." The trial showed no safety concerns.
. . In Type 1 diabetes, the body's immune system
attacks cells in the insulin-making parts of the pancreas.
The body is then unable to control blood sugar levels and
insulin must be injected daily. Juvenile diabetes affects
about one in 300 people, with the average onset age of 12.
. . Type 2 diabetes, which is more common, arises when
the body becomes resistant to insulin, often as a result of
obesity.
. . The UCLA researchers discovered the autoimmune
response that causes Type 1 diabetes may be due to the
immune system attacking a protein called GAD in the insulin-
producing cells in the pancreas. They then developed a
diagnostic test for identifying individuals who were
developing Type 1 diabetes based on antibodies to that protein in their blood.
. . Diamyd expects the vaccine to first be used to
prevent diabetes patients being treated with oral drugs
from becoming dependent on insulin injections.
June 2, 03: Scientists said they were closer to finding a
cure for people paralyzed by spinal cord damage, following
the successful healing of an adult rat.
. . The trials will involve transplanting cells from
other areas of the body into the spinal cord so they can
provide a bridge over the spinal cord blockage and provide
it with a channel to repair itself. Scientists healed the
injured spinal cord of a rat by growing a bridge of
olfactory nerve cells across scar tissue, which acted as a
guide so the severed nerve fibres were able to find their
way to the right targets in the rat's brain.
. . If the human pilot trials are successful, patients
will be able to make important movements like reaching for
and picking things up. The trials will take at least three years to be carried out.
May 28, 03: Scientists have adapted a standard
psychological test that detects underlying prejudices to
delve into the minds of psychopathic murderers.
Serial killers can be adept at lying and deception, and
may turn on the charm to confuse their interrogators but
researchers at Cardiff University in Wales said that their
test reveals implicit beliefs.
. . "It is the first time we have really been able to
gain access to the minds of violent offenders and see what
their beliefs of violence are without using measures that
can be faked." The test, which requires people to perform
tasks and answer questions by computer, shows that
psychopathic murderers have more positive reactions to
violence than other offenders, which may underpin their
actions and help to expose those most likely to kill.
. . The scientists hope to use their test to evaluate
people who have been charged with a crime but who protest
their innocence and during parole hearings to determine if
the criminals are likely to re-offend.
May 29, 03: Novartis AG said a large-scale study showed
its drug Femara helped breast cancer patients live longer
than tamoxifen. Femara belongs to a new class of breast
cancer drug known as aromatase inhibitors.
May 18, 03: The United States said it would fully support
a global anti-smoking treaty at this week's world health
meeting, startling observers by dropping its objections to
the pact. Despite having some of the world's toughest anti-
smoking rules, the United States, along with Germany, had
opposed a clause to ban advertising saying it went against
constitutional guarantees to free speech.
. . However, Thompson stopped short of saying the
United States would ratify the pact, which aims to wean the
world off a habit that kills almost five million people a year.
May 14, 03: Autism cases in California nearly doubled over
the past four years to more than 20,000 --a phenomenon
whose cause may be difficult to pinpoint because it is not
related to population increases or the way the disorder is
diagnosed, a state study said. It went from 10,360 in
December 1998 to 20,337 four years later.
. . The validity of the diagnosis has not changed and
the kids are not moving to California for the services",
the study's author, Dr. Marian Sigman, said. "That still
leaves us with the puzzle." There also were rises of 35
percent to 49 percent for new cases of mental retardation,
cerebral palsy and epilepsy in California.
May 13, 03: Preliminary results of a study commissioned by
the Department of Developmental Services found high levels
of a naturally occurring protein in the blood of newborns
who later developed autism, Huff said. That study's
conclusions are due in about three years, he said.
May 13, 03: A plant used in Africa to make glue and herbal
remedies may be an important cause of the most common
childhood cancer in Africa, scientists said. Illness rates
are higher in areas of Africa where the milkbush is more common.
That's a critical clue to what might be driving the high
frequency of Burkitt's lymphoma in Africa.
. . Children use the sap from the milkbush plant to
make toys, but researchers believe exposure to the sticky
liquid may make them more susceptible to the effects of a
virus that causes Burkitt's lymphoma, a tumor of the immune
system. Adults can also develop it.
Pneumonic plague is also easily dealt with --if diagnosed
in time. A seven-day course of antibiotics should prevent
patients from ever developing symptoms -- unlike anthrax,
for example, which requires weeks of medication.
May 12, 03: Scientists have discovered the same genetic
mutation in 11 types of West Nile- and malaria-spreading
mosquitoes — a mutation that may explain their growing
immunity to insecticides. The findings could give chemical
companies a molecular target for new insecticides to combat
mosquitoes no longer kept in check by existing chemicals.
. . They also found it in resistant populations of the
Anopheles gambiae mosquito —-which transmits the malaria
parasite. The same mutation may also be present in other
insect pests, including those that eat crops.
. . Although malaria is primarily a problem in Africa
and the developing world, a wild reservoir of the parasite
was found last year in Virginia.
May 12, 03: Children with "lazy eye" or amblyopia can be
cured of the problem by wearing an eye patch just two hours
a day instead of the current six hours, U.S. doctors said.
They'll be more likely to actually wear the patches. It's
estimated that as many as three percent of children in the
U.S. have some degree of vision impairment due to amblyopia.
May 9, 03: A bionic retina can restore some eyesight in
people blinded by degenerative eye diseases, and may some
day bring vision to children born blind, according to new
research. Three patients have so far been implanted with
the device, a sliver of silicone and platinum studded with
16 electrodes --one-third the size of a contact lens-- that
sits atop the retina. It works by electrically stimulating
remaining healthy retinal cells, which pass on the visual
information to the brain through the optic nerve.
. . It does not process light directly. Patients are
fitted with a pair of glasses mounted with a video camera,
which transmits images to a wireless receiver. The receiver relays the signal to the bionic chip, where the pattern of the original image is recreated
by lighting up appropriate electrodes.
. . It can merely distinguish between objects such as
a cup or plate. Eventually, a version with up to 1,000
electrodes will be used to produce sharper images and a
wider field of vision. The human eye has millions.
May 8, 03: Scientists who combed the newly published map
of the human genome said they had found a collection of new
genes involved in colon cancer and that new cancer drugs
may be able to counteract them. The family of genes, when
mutated, could be involved in 30 percent of colon cancer.
. . 'Tumors of the colon are a major health problem.
More than half the population of the United States will
develop at least one such tumor, and in one-tenth of these,
the tumors progress to malignancy.
May 7, 03: A cold virus genetically engineered to help it
sneak into cancer cells can kill inoperable brain tumors in
mice, U.S. scientists reported. The effects were so
stunning that the National Cancer Institute and the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration are rushing
to test the approach in people with brain tumors.
If it works, it will be the first treatment for malignant
glioma, the deadliest form of brain cancer.
. . Brain tumors affect about 18,000 people in the
United States every year, killing 13,000. Gliomas are
responsible for about half of all the cases.
May 7, 03: University of Rome scientists have pioneered an
electronic nose that, they say, may one day give an early
warning to people with lung cancer. The experimental device
works in the same way as hi-tech hygiene "sniffers" that
are already in use the food industry, which analyze air on
the production line for the tell-tale chemicals released by
rotting ingredients, New Scientist says.
. . In the case of lung cancer, the e-nose responds to
a signature cocktail of alkanes and derivatives of benzene
exhaled by someone with the disease. It takes little more than a minute.
. . The eight-sensor nose proved to be 100-percent
accurate in a test at a Rome hospital. The next step is to
boost its sensitivity so that it can detect tumors at a
much earlier stage. It could be used in routine checkups to
screen smokers and other high-risk groups.
May 7, 03: Scientists have pinpointed a protein that plays
a critical role in muscle repair and could be linked to two
types of muscular dystrophy, in a finding that could
improve understanding of the illness. The study reveals a
novel mechanism of muscular dystrophy in which the membrane
repair mechanism is defective.
. . Muscular dystrophy includes a group of diseases
that weaken and wither muscles, mainly in the arms and
legs. Muscles of the heart are also involved in some forms
of the disease, which can affect people of all ages.
May 2, 03: Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern
nursing who said God called her to her work, "heard voices"
and suffered from a bipolar disorder, a mental health
expert said. Dr. Kathy Wisner, a professor of psychiatry at
the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, cited the note
as evidence that Nightingale suffered from a bipolar
disorder that caused long periods of depression and
remarkable bursts of productivity.
. . Since 1995, the University of Maryland School of
Medicine has had a conference to diagnose the ills of historic figures.
May 1, 03: Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton [& Michael
Servetus?} were geniuses but British scientists believe
they may have suffered from Asperger syndrome --a form of
autism. The condition, first described by Viennese
physician Hans Asperger in 1944, is a disorder that causes
deficiencies in social and communication skills and
obsessive interests. But it does not affect learning or
intellect and many people with AS have exceptional talents or skills.
. . It is impossible to make a definitive diagnosis in people who are dead.
. . "Newton seems a classic case. He hardly spoke, was
so engrossed in his work that he often forgot to eat, and
was lukewarm or bad-tempered with the few friends he had",
New Scientist magazine said.
. . Baron-Cohen said Einstein was also a loner and as
a child he repeated sentences obsessively. Although
Einstein made friends and spoke out on political issues,
Baron-Cohen suspects he showed signs of Asperger syndrome.
. . "Passion, falling in love and standing up for
justice are all perfectly compatible with Asperger
syndrome." . "What most people with AS find difficult is
casual chatting --they can't do small talk." . "Impatience
with the intellectual slowness of others, narcissism and
passion for one's mission in life might combine to make
such an individual isolative and difficult."
. . But Glen Elliott, a psychiatrist at the
University of California at San Francisco, said geniuses
can be socially inept and impatient with other people without being autistic.
Apr 25, 03: The global campaign to eradicate polio
suffered a setback last year as the number of cases of the
disease increased fourfold with India.
. . The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention said 1,920 confirmed cases of polio were
reported by laboratories in 2002, up from 483 the previous
year. The agency attributed most of the rise to a large
outbreak in India, one of seven countries where the virus is still endemic.
Mar 22, 03: New Scientist mag: The prion proteins that
spread BSE [Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, a.k.a. Mad Cow
Disease] in animal feed can be destroyed in 30 minutes by
an enzyme extracted from actinomycete bacteria, say
Japanese biochemists. Tatsuzo Oka of Kagoshima University
says the enzyme could be used to sterilize animal feed to
block transmission of prions to livestock.
Apr 17, 03: New experimental compounds may be able to help
the body fight off hepatitis C --a incurable virus that
infects millions around the world and causes liver failure and cancer.
. . Hepatitis C was identified only in 1989. It is
spread through blood transfusions and the reuse of needles -
-including those used for drugs and tattoos.. It infects an
estimated 175 million people around the world, about 4
million in the United States, many of whom do not know they
are infected. About 8,000 die every year from hepatitis C
in the United States alone. Hepatitis C can stay in the
body forever, eluding the various weapons of the immune system.
Apr 16, 03: Two teams of scientists reported that they
found a genetic mutation that causes children to die of old
age, and said their research offered both a way to find a
cure and insights into normal aging.
. . Children with Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria age at a
rate five to 10 times faster than normal. They lose their
hair, the skin wrinkles and they die of atherosclerosis, or
hardening of the arteries by their early teens. It strikes
about one in 4 million.
. . Now, French and U.S. teams have traced the defect
to a gene that controls the structure of the nucleus --the
part of the cell that holds most of the genes and chromosomes.
Apr 16, 03: Italian scientists say they have cured mice
suffering from a form of multiple sclerosis with a novel
stem cell therapy that could offer new hope for patients
with the auto-immune disease. One month after the
treatment, 30 percent of the mice treated with the
technique recovered completely from the paralysis and 70
percent showed an improvement. The illness occurs when
immune system cells attack and destroy the myelin sheath
that protects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. There is no cure.
. . The study found that stem cells injected into the
mice gravitated to damaged brain and nerve tissue and helped to repair it.
. . MS affects a million people worldwide --twice as
many women as men. It can be difficult to diagnose because symptoms such as tingling, fatigue, loss of balance and slurred speech are intermittent.
Apr 6, 03: Five patients who developed skin cancer after
an organ transplant may have received cancer seed cells
from the donor, researchers report. The cancer, Kaposi's
sarcoma, is caused by a virus that the body usually can eliminate.
. . It appears in about one out of every 200
transplant recipients —-400 to 500 times the rate of the
general population. It had been thought the virus was able
to take hold in these patients because their immune systems
were suppressed to prevent rejection of the new organ.
. . But a European research team has found evidence
that, at least in some transplant patients, seed cells for
the cancer tumors seem to have originated in the organ donor.
Apr 3, 03: Global rates of cancer could rise 50 percent to
15 million new cases a year by 2020 but a third can be
cured and a third prevented by curbing infections and
through lifestyle changes, experts said. It kills six
million people worldwide each year.
. . Tobacco consumption is the most important
avoidable cancer risk worldwide. An estimated 100 million
people died of tobacco-related diseases in the 20th
century. Smokers have a 20 to 30 times greater risk of lung
cancer and more likelihood of developing bladder, renal,
stomach liver, kidney and oral cavity cancers.
Mar 26, 03: Nicotine in cigarettes not only causes cancer,
it may also speed up the growth of existing tumors.
Research by scientists at the Oregon National Primate
Research Center in Beaverton suggests that nicotine
stimulates the production of a molecule (acetylcholine)
which can make lung cancer cells more aggressive and
encourages them to divide and grow.
. . They found that some cancerous cells have
receptors, or molecular doorways into cells, for the
molecule. They also discovered that fast-growing cells make
large amounts of the molecule and have a feedback loop so
that the acetylcholine they make encourages them to divide
and grow. But when the scientists cut the loop by blocking
the receptors with the nerve gas antidote atropine the cells stopped growing.
. . He believes it may be possible, though not easy,
to adapt drugs such as atropine to treat lung cancer but
added that the correct dose and making sure it doesn't
affect the nervous system would be crucial.
Mar 19, 03: Elderly people who drink moderately are less
likely to suffer dementia than teetotalers, though seniors
who drink too much add to their risk, researchers said.
Seeking to explain their findings, the researchers said
consuming moderate amounts of alcohol prevents hardening of
the arteries that leads to damaging strokes, lessens the
risk of brain lesions and helps blood vessels to function.
Better blood flow generally lessens the risks of vascular-
related dementia, usually caused by strokes.
. . The lowest rates of dementia were among subjects
who drank between one and six alcoholic drinks a week, who
had half the risk of teetotalers. People who abstained from
alcohol and those who consumed between seven and 13 drinks
a week were at about equal risk of developing dementia,
while those who drank more than 13 drinks a week had a
significant 22 percent higher risk.
Mar 12, 03: Scientists have developed the first artificial
region of the brain -- a silicon chip that mimics an area
that controls memory, mood and awareness. Devised by
researchers at the University of Southern California in Los
Angeles, the chip is designed to carry on the functions of
the region known as the hippocampus and could one day be
used to help people with brain damage.
. . It will first be tested on tissue from rats'
brains, and then on live animals.
If all goes well, it will then be tested in a way to help
people who have suffered brain damage due to stroke,
epilepsy or Alzheimer's disease. "If you lose your
hippocampus you only lose the ability to store new memories", Berger said.
. . But the magazine warned that because the device
would affect memory and mood, which are fundamental to
identity, it raises ethical and consent issues. "If someone can't form new memories, then to what extent can they give consent to have this implant?"
Mar 12, 03: Children subjected to environmental cigarette
smoke developed higher blood levels of cotinine, a
byproduct of nicotine, and those children tended to have
more cavities in their deciduous, or primary, teeth.
"Exposure to tobacco smoke nearly doubles a child's risk of
having cavities," said study author and pediatrician Andrew
Aligne. They concluded one-quarter of them would not have
developed cavities in their primary teeth if environmental smoke was eliminated.
. . Contrary to the common belief that too many sweets
cause tooth decay in children, a type of bacteria
introduced into the mouth --sometimes by a mother's kisses--
produces a lactic acid that causes tooth decay. Saliva in
the mouth can counteract the lactic acid, but passive
smoking also causes throat inflammation, which leads to
mouth breathing, which dries out the mouth.
. . Exposure to cigarette smoke inhibits their body's
ability to fight off infection, making those children who
inhale smoke more susceptible to illnesses ranging from
colds and earaches to tooth decay, the report said.
Mar 10, 03: Zapping tumors with high-heat microwaves
before a lumpectomy may sharply reduce the chance that a
woman with early-stage breast cancer will need disfiguring
surgery, according to preliminary research.
Mar 6, 03: Polio cases in India rose more than five-fold
in 2002 as vaccination programs failed to reach many
children in high-risk areas, federal health officials said.
In 2002, 1,556 cases of wild polio virus were detected in
India, up from 268 cases a year earlier, the Atlanta-based
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The uptick in
India dealt a setback to World Health Organization efforts
to eradicate polio worldwide by 2005. Of the new cases detected, 1,337, or 86 percent, were in the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Mar 4, 03: Taking low-dose aspirin regularly could cut the
risk of developing cancers of the mouth, throat and
esophagus, Italian researchers said. Millions of people
already take the painkiller to relieve headaches and
arthritis and to prevent heart attacks and stroke. Studies
have also suggested the century-old drug could have a
protective effect against bowel and lung cancer. They also
suspect aspirin may play an important role in preventing
stomach, prostate and breast cancer.
. . Researchers at the Institute of Pharmacological
Research in Milan have now shown that aspirin can slash the
risk of mouth and throat cancer by two-thirds.
because of its impact on an enzyme called cyclooxegenase-
2, which is involved in inflammation and is thought to be
linked to the development of cancer.
Feb 26, 03: Scientists have identified a molecule they
believe could improve cancer treatments and help protect
people from the lethal effects of high levels of radiation
in a nuclear attack. The molecule, MDC1, acts like an
emergency service in cells to detect and repair damage to
DNA caused by radiation. Scientists believe its discovery
will improve understanding of how cells respond to
radiation and how defects in those responses lead to mutations that cause cancer.
Feb 25, 03: Tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs prematurely
kill about 7 million people worldwide each year and the
number is rising, according to a study released in Australia.
. . He said tobacco was the number one killer
addiction in 2000, responsible for 4.9 million deaths
or 71 percent of the total drug-related deaths.
. .
About 1.8 million deaths were attributable to the use of
alcohol, about 26 percent of all drug-related deaths, with
the proportion greatest in the Americas and Europe.
Russia's alcohol problem was particularly pronounced.
. . Illicit drugs caused about 223,000 deaths, or
three percent of all drug-related deaths.
Feb 24, 03: Hundreds of heart attack victims will be given
infusions of their own stem cells as part of a European
trial to find out if the therapy can restore cardiac
function. The stem cells are extracted from the patients' own bone marrow.
Feb 21, 03: A nutrient produced naturally in the body and
found in some foods could be a potential new treatment for
malaria, scientists said. A team of international
researchers who studied 75 children in Africa discovered
that those with the lowest levels of the nutrient arginine
suffered the most severe effects of malaria.
. . Arginine, an amino acid, is found in nuts and
rice. It boosts nitric oxide, a chemical that relaxes blood
vessels and promotes blood flow by keeping arteries
flexible and which can kill also parasites. Too little of
the chemical nitric oxide was also linked to the most serious cases of malaria.
. . Malaria is caused by a tiny parasite that is
transmitted by the bite of a female mosquito. It afflicts
about 300 million people each year and kills more than 1
million, mostly young children in Africa. Along with
HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, it is one of the biggest infectious killers in the world.
Feb 19, 03: A new screening technique being developed by
scientists in England may help turn the tables on breast
cancer by identifying tumors far earlier. Breast cancer is
one of the biggest killers of women across the world,
accounting for more than 43,000 deaths a year in the United
States and 13,000 in Britain alone.
. . Currently, mammograms can only detect tumors when
they have grown to between 10 and 12 millimeters across,
but New Scientist magazine reported that a technique being
developed at University College London can spot them as small as four millimeters.
. . The system relies on the discovery that tumor
cells reflect X-rays in a unique manner, leaving a
detectable signature in a new technique dubbed DEBI
(Diffraction Enhanced Breast Imaging). A second detector is added to the machine to capture those defracted through a telltale nine degrees from the main beam.
Feb 17, 03: Women suffering from rheumatoid arthritis may
face up to double the heart attack risks of women without
the condition, according to a new study. About 2.1 million
Americans have rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease
characterized by joint inflammation. Heart disease is the
leading cause of death among American women.
. . The Brigham and Women's study found women with
rheumatoid arthritis had twice the risk of heart attack
compared to those without it. Those who had the joint
condition for at least 10 years faced triple the heart
attack risks of non-sufferers.
. . The study cited no link between arthritis and
stroke risk. The findings suggested inflammation could be a
common catalyst for the two conditions.
Feb 9, 03: Scientists said they had, for the first time,
genetically manipulated human stem cells --a step toward
making the body's so-called master cells into a useful
tool. Using the method that made the laboratory mouse so
valuable to genetic researchers, the team at the University
of Wisconsin deleted a disease gene from human embryonic stem cells.
. . They now have a way to help control how the cells
develop, so they can direct them to become brain tissue, or
perhaps heart cells or pancreatic cells, said Dr. Thomas
Zwaka. Extracted when the fertilized egg has divided just a
few times, each cell still "remembers" how to become any
kind of cell in the body. Once they get older, cells are
programmed and cannot easily change direction in development.
. . The hope is that these cells can be used to
replace the brain cells destroyed in Parkinson's disease,
the cells that die in type-I diabetes or damaged spinal cords.
With this method, the genes can be manipulated so as to
control the kind of tissue the cells form. His team is
already trying this with the dopamine-producing brain cells
that die off on Parkinson's, an incurable and fatal brain
disease that eventually paralyzes victims.
. . The method could also be used, Zwaka said, to
create "universal" donor batches, or cell lines, of cells.
The genes that cause the body's immune system to reject
foreign tissue could be removed. "You could transplant this line into any patient."
Feb 7, 03: Deaths from food poisoning caused by bacteria
such as Salmonella kill more people than previously
thought, Danish scientists said. Salmonella in poultry
products and eggs and Campylobacter, which is found in
chicken, are leading causes of food poisoning.
. . Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen believe
deaths from food poisoning could be twice as high as
current estimates and can occur up to a year after
infection. Deaths within the first year after infection
were 2.2 percent in the people who had had food poisoning,
compared to 0.7 percent in a control group of 3,636 people.
He added that the overuse of antibiotics can lead to the
development of strains of bacteria resistant to the drugs.
Feb 6, 03: an international team of researchers reported:
they used magnetic resonance imaging --MRI-- to chart a 5
percent annual loss of brain cells in Alzheimer's patients -
-up to 10 percent in key memory areas. Initiially confined
to memory areas, this loss moved across the brain like a
lava flow. In contrast, healthy volunteers monitored in the
study lost less than 1 percent of their brain cells a year.
Feb 7, 03: Using a new method that separates patients by
their symptoms, U.S. researchers said on Friday they found
a new genetic link to autism and suggested the approach
might be used to pinpoint the genetic causes of other
diseases as well. The research also suggests that several
different causes may be behind autism, a disturbing and
increasingly common behavioral disorder that baffles parents and doctors alike.
. . The new study, published in the American Journal
of Human Genetics, links certain types of autism to a place
on chromosome 15 linked with several other disorders. It
had been suspected in autism for some time, but researchers
had been unable to show that people with certain versions
of genes on chromosome 15 were more likely to have autism.
. . The study may help scientists find a way to treat
autism, which is now incurable. If a precise genetic cause
of one behavior is found, it might be possible to design a
drug that will correct it. Alzheimer's has different forms -
- some are seen earlier in life than others,, and Pericak-
Vance hopes the method might find a genetic difference
among them. That would not be a cure --autism is too complex for that-- but it may be possible to moderate some of the symptoms, Cuccaro said.
Jan 29, 03: Scientists at a Northern Ireland biotech
company are developed a new non-invasive technique that has
been used to destroy cancer cells in mice. Instead of
surgery, drugs or radiation treatment, researchers at
Gendel used an electric field and ultrasound to kill
cancerous cells in the laboratory and tumors in 50 mice, a
science magazine said. Although it is in early stages of
development, the company believes the technique could one day be used to treat head and neck tumors and hopes to begin human trials in two years.
. . The new procedure is based on a drug delivery
technique that Gendel hopes to test in human trials later
this year. It involves transporting drugs to hard-to-reach
areas of the body by using the patient's own red blood
cells. The blood cells are sensitized outside the body with
the electric field, which makes them permeable, and then
filled with a drug and put back into the patient. Ultrasound is then directed to the tumor site and the cells with the drug, which burst open.
. . The ultrasound fields used in the cancer treatment
are stronger than those used to monitor the growth of
babies in the womb and similar to the strength applied to muscles in sports medicine.
Jan 24, 03: A review of the results of several breast
cancer prevention trials showed that the drug, tamoxifen,
reduced the incidence of the illness by 38 percent.
"In our analysis we combined all the available evidence
from studies using tamoxifen for breast cancer prevention
collectively involving over 40,000 women --and it is clear
to us now that the drug can reduce the chance of high-risk women developing the disease", Professor Jack Cuzick, of the charity Cancer Research UK, said.
. . Tamoxifen, which neutralizes the action of
estrogen which stimulates breast cancer growth, is
ineffective against tumors that are not sensitive to the hormone.
In a cancer prevention trial of 7,700 high-risk women,
another drug called raloxifene reduced the incidence of
breast cancer by 64 percent compared to a placebo, or dummy drug.
Jan 15, 03: The World Health Organization (WHO) reports
1,000 to 3,000 cases of plague globally every year. In the
United States, plague is reported in between 10 and 15
people every year, killing a small percentage.
. . There are three forms --bubonic plague, which
caused the terrifying black swellings or buboes that gave
the Black death its name; pneumonic plague, which is far
deadlier and caused when the same bacteria are inhaled, and
septicemic plague, which is a rare blood infection.
. . The last urban plague epidemic was in Los Angeles in 1924 and 1925.
Jan 10, 03: In a finding that may reduce the need for
mastectomy, scientists have discovered that women with a
benign breast disease have a raised risk of developing
cancer, but it usually occurs in one breast, not both.
Until now, it was assumed that the chances of getting
cancer were equal in both breasts in women suffering from
atypical lobular hyperplasia (ALH), or abnormal cells,
which supported arguments for a double mastectomy to prevent the disease.
Jan 9, 03: An enzyme that lets vampire bats freely slurp
blood from their prey may help stroke victims survive, and
do it more safely than the only currently approved
treatment, Australian researchers reported.
. . The compound stops blood from clotting and is
similar to a commercial clot-dissolving drug, the
researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Stroke.
Desmoteplase destroys fibrin, the structural scaffold of blood clots.
But the bat saliva enzyme --called Desmodus rotundus salivary plasminogen activator, or desmoteplase-- is hundreds of times more powerful than current drugs.
. . "It needs to be understood that this study is
limited to mice without stroke and focused only on toxicity," he added. Whether it actually helps stroke victims remains to be seen, he added.
Jan 8, 03: People born with fewer microscopic filters in
their kidneys may face a greater risk of high blood
pressure when they get older, researchers said.
The findings, based on a study in Germany, may explain why
people who receive a kidney transplant often develop the
same pattern of blood pressure as the donor -- and they
also may give pregnant women an added reason to watch their
diets. The kidney, which cleanses the blood, is composed of
hundreds of thousands of tiny filters called glomeruli.
Jan 9, 03: Iceland's deCODE genetics Inc said it had
identified variations within a single gene that increase
the risk of osteoporosis, paving the way for a diagnostic
test for the brittle bone disorder. It's within a gene on
chromosome 20. People with these genetic variations are
several times more likely to develop osteoporosis.
. . Scientists at the firm who analyze disease-gene
links in an Icelandic population, whose genetic make-up has
changed little since the time of the Vikings, identified
the gene by studying 1,000 patients and unaffected relatives in 139 families.
. . deCODE's chief executive, said he believed a test
could be brought to market rapidly, allowing doctors to
check for a pre-disposition to osteoporosis in much the
same way that people already have their blood pressure tested.
.