DISEASE NEWS

DISEASE NEWS of Pre-03

Dec 23, 02: Israeli scientists said they had successfully grown human kidneys in mice. They had transplanted stem cells from human and pig fetuses into mice. The kidneys grew into functional mouse-sized organs, filtering the blood and producing urine, they reported in Nature Medicine journal. In the U.S. alone, 50,000/year need a new kidney.
. . Donating organs from one species to another, a field known as xeno-transplantation, has long been held back because the human immune system often recognizes the animal organ as foreign and rejects it. In this case, there was no dangerous immune reaction, possibly because the transplanted stem cells had not yet developed their own identity badge.

Dec 20, 02: Stem cells from a person's own bone marrow can be used to generate brain cells and other nervous system cells that, when put back into the body, may be a way to treat diseases like brain cancer or Alzheimer's, researchers said.
. . Neural stem cells have a lot of characteristics that make them an attractive means of treating neurological disorders. Most adult tissue and blood contain small numbers of stem cells but the more controversial source is from very early embryos, whose cells can become any kind of cell. It would one day be possible to take a small plug of skin from a patient and grow new brain cells, new heart muscle or even a new organ such as a kidney. It would do away with the need for organ donations and be a way to treat now-incurable diseases.
. . The team injected genetically engineered neural stem cells into the arteries of rats with stroke-related brain lesions. Forty-eight hours later, they found transplanted cells distributed throughout the damaged part of the brain.
. . One trial of fetal stem cells as a treatment for Parkinson's disease "worked too well," Yu said, explaining that the therapy created too much dopamine, the neurotransmitter that patients with the disease are short of.

Depression not only affects and complicates existing disorders like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, even osteoporosis; it might also trigger them. Nearly 25 percent of all women and 10 percent of all men will be clinically depressed at some point. Under stress, the blood-clotting system --especially sticky cells called platelets-- goes on high alert to slow down bleeding, should there be a wound. However, both heart attacks and strokes are caused by the formation of clots in arteries. Stress also activates cytokines, chemical messengers from the immune system. Additionally, research has pointed to elevated cytokine levels triggering inflammation in the heart.
. . "Studies have shown that if you are depressed, you have twice the likelihood of being diabetic, and if you are diabetic you have twice the likelihood of being depressed." And diabetes is more likely to rage uncontrolled when it's accompanied by depression.
. . Several studies have demonstrated that an earlier history of depression was also associated with marked osteoporosis.

Dec 11, 02: British scientists have found the remains of a man who died of tuberculosis more than 2,200 years ago, shattering theories the deadly disease was brought to England by the conquering armies of ancient Rome.

Dec 10, 02: In one of the first studies of the effects of substances known as phthalates on humans, Harvard University researchers found signs of correlation between exposure to a common type of the chemical and damage to the DNA of human sperm. There are three types of these phthalates in perfumes and beauty products. They're are also used to make fragrances last longer and to soften plastics like baby toys.

Dec 10, 02: Sophisticated scanning techniques can detect changes in areas of the brain that may occur before or while a severe mental disorder --such as schizophrenia-- is developing, a new study showed. This would allow doctors to treat the patient before symptoms begin and may help to prevent the illness.

Dec 4, 02: Stem cell research, which many scientists say will someday transform medicine and free patients of incurable diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson's, has been moved to a slow track by U.S. politics, experts said.
. . It will probably take a breakthrough in another country to change the minds of U.S. politicians who now associate the research with the debate over abortion, researchers glumly predicted. "It will be the successful treatment of a disease like Parkinson's abroad."
. . Most adult tissue and blood contain small numbers of stem cells but the more controversial source is from very early embryos.
. . Researchers who pursue embryonic stem cell work believe it would one day be possible to take a small plug of skin from a patient and grow new brain cells, new heart muscle or even a new organ such as a kidney. It would do away with the need for organ donations and be a way to treat now-incurable diseases.

Dec 3, 02: Swedish researchers have found a gene they believe plays a key role in the development of the crippling disease rheumatoid arthritis. Tests on rats had successfully blocked the onset of arthritis, but added it was too early to say when the method could be applied to people. Rheumatoid arthritis, affecting up to 1 percent of the world's population.

Dec 4, 02: Eating too much refined bread and cereal, rather than chocolate and greasy foods, could be the cause of teenage acne and pimples. refined carbohydrates unleash a series of reactions in the body which increase the production of bacteria that cause acne. Such diets have also been blamed for causing short-sightedness and contributing to adult-onset diabetes.
. . They're planning to test the theory and will be putting 60 teenage boys on low-carbohydrate diets for three months to see if it has an impact.
. . It is almost unknown in some societies such as the Kitava Islanders in Papua New Guinea, where processed foods are at a minimum.

Nov 28, 02: "C-reactive protein", a logical indicator for the condition that turns arteries into plaque-filled death traps? So it seems. An eight-year study of nearly 28,000 women, published in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (news - web sites), found that CRP foretold heart attacks and strokes better than levels of "bad" cholesterol (LDLs, or low-density lipoproteins) did.
. . At least 25 percent of heart attacks happen to individuals with no major risk factors. Aspirin may lower inflammation in heart disease the way it does for sore joints.

Nov, 02: Hundreds of millions of years ago, an ancestor of the malaria parasite engulfed a tiny plant chemical factory, an organelle called a chloroplast, and put it to work. Handed down over generations, this enslaved organelle became crucial to the parasite's metabolism. Now it may prove to be the parasite's Achilles' heel. Scientists have just decoded the malaria parasite's genome, and some believe that the little organelle may provide them with the means to create new drugs in the fight against malaria which kills almost 3 million people each year.
. . Sequencing results show that 10 percent of the entire Plasmodium genome is dedicated to producing proteins for the apicoplast. Some are necessary for the parasite to grow and function, and others help it break food down into energy.

Nov 19, 02: A study suggests 5 percent of sudden infant death syndrome cases may be due to an electrical problem in which the heart recharges itself too slowly, researchers said.
. . About 3,000 infants die each year in the United States alone of SIDS, defined as the sudden and unexplained death of an infant less than 1 year old. Previous research has also suggested sleeping on the stomach, nervous system problems related to breathing, abnormal metabolism in the liver and flaws in the heart's electrical channels could be among the causes.
. . In about one out of 20 cases of SIDS, the baby has a problem similar to a heart condition called long Q-T syndrome that sometimes causes sudden death in young people and adults. With long Q-T syndrome, the heart electrically recharges itself too slowly or in a disorganized way, ahead of the next heartbeat, and can sometimes cause the heart to stop pumping. An estimated one in 5,000 people may suffer from the syndrome.

Nov 19, 02: Some open heart surgery using four small holes instead of a long incision splitting the breastbone appears to work, researchers reported Tuesday..The technique, which employs tiny camera-equipped robotic arms to work inside the closed chest, is expensive but will be a part of the surgical future.

Nov 19, 02: A genetic test that finds tiny changes in the DNA of cancer patients may offer a useful way to find ovarian cancer before symptoms appear, U.S. researchers said. The test is too expensive to use as a general screening tool but may work to reassure or get quick treatment for women who have a high risk of the cancer. An estimated 23,000 U.S. women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer this year and 14,000 will die of it.

A 15-year study of 3,142 young adults found those who admitted Type A behavior patterns such as a perpetual sense of urgency, competitiveness, tenseness or hostility were twice as likely to develop high blood pressure more than a decade later as those who did not display such traits. "In general, the stronger the feelings of impatience and time pressure, the higher the risk of developing hypertension in the long term."
. . People with higher (Time Urgency/Impatience) scores were more likely to be white, female and better educated. White men with the highest scores on the personality scale were three times more likely to become hypertensive compared to the lowest-scoring white men.

Vaccinations have prevented millions of deaths around the world, but children in wealthy nations are getting the lion's share of the shots --and the benefits, the United Nations said. Drug companies find they have little incentive to invest in vaccines for diseases that attack mostly the poor, such as Shigella Dysentery, Dengue, Japanese Encephalitis, Leishmaniasis, Schistosomiasis and Cholera, the report said.
. . It called on pharmaceutical firms --with help from wealthy governments-- to redouble their efforts to develop vaccines against Malaria, which kills about a million people a year, most of them African children, and Tuberculosis, which killed 1.7 million people in 2000 --mostly in the poor nations.

Nov 20, 02: U.S. researchers have produced an effective vaccine for genital herpes for the first time, offering hope that the spread of the incurable disease can be limited. Eight to 14 percent of Americans have some type of papillomavirus infection.
. . GlaxoSmithKline Plc., which developed the vaccine and paid for the study, said the results were so promising it was launching a new final-stage study of the vaccine that will involve 7,550 women aged 18 to 30 around the United States. If the new tests bear out the existing study results, the vaccine could be available in about five years.
. . The vaccine prevented infection in 74 percent of women exposed for the first time to the genital herpes virus, known as herpes simplex virus type 2. But the vaccine didn't work at all in men --they were not sure why.
. . Most of the 45 million infected Americans have no symptoms. The illness is particularly serious for infants, who get the virus from their mothers during birth. Half of the babies infected in this way die unless treated aggressively with an antiviral drug.
. . The researchers discovered the vaccine didn't work well in women who had been infected by a related virus, the herpes simplex virus type 1, which is responsible for cold sores or fever blisters. Only when women had never been exposed to type 1 or type 2 herpes did the effectiveness of the vaccine reach 74 percent.
. . "If you did universal vaccination of 11 and 12-year-old women, you would eventually see an impact on the spread of herpes in both men and women", he said.
. . The vaccine, made by Merck & Co. Inc. and given in three doses, is designed to block infection by papillomavirus type 16, the sexually transmitted virus that is believed responsible for about half of all tumors that arise in the cervix. Cervical cancer appears in 450,000 women worldwide each year, causing about 250,000 deaths. In the United States, about 13,000 cases are diagnosed each year, with 4,100 deaths. "The vaccine not only prevents the disease from developing, but also prevents its causative agent from residing in the genital tract where it can infect new sexual partners."

Nov 22, 02: The U.S. government is looking for a rare population of women for a new vaccine trial --women who have never been infected with genital herpes or its cousin, the cold sore virus. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said it is working with drug giant GlaxoSmithKline to find 7,500 women to test the vaccine.
. . Researchers also announced success this week with another vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease --this one against the human wart virus blamed for most cases of cervical cancer. The trial of Merck and Co.'s. human papilloma virus vaccine showed it protected 100 percent of women who got it from the HPV-16 virus -- one of five wart viruses that cause cervical cancer. HPV-16 is another very common virus, infecting up to 20 percent of U.S. adults. Like herpes, it is often symptomless and thus easily transmitted. And like herpes, it is incurable, affecting victims for life. Between 50 and 80 percent of Americans are infected with HSV-1, which causes cold sores. Up to 20 percent of those over 12 are infected with HSV-2, the cause of genital herpes.
. . They hope the Herpes vaccine will also prevent HSV-1, thus saving many women from the inconvenience and discomfort of cold sores.

Nov 18, 02: Researchers said that the children of people who live to be 100 have strikingly lower problems with heart disease and other health troubles than those whose parents die in their 70s. "Exceptional longevity runs in families but at this point it's difficult to predict how much of this effect is genetic and how much is related to environment and lifestyle," said Dellara Terry of the Boston University Medical Center.

Nov 16, 02: An expert at the annual convention of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology said a rise in asthma cases may be linked, in part, to cleanliness and abundance.
. . "In the best countries in the world, the ones that have the cleanest air, the best food, the best vaccinations, the incidence of allergy and asthma is at its highest," said physician Bob Lanier, the organization's president. "And in fact, the places in the world that have the lowest quality of life issues --dirty air, pollution, unvaccinated, not enough calories, poor-- they have the lowest incidence."

Chagas disease is found mostly in South America. It's caused by single-celled protozoan that can get in and disrupt the nerves of the intestinal tract, so that a person stops eliminating. There are mummies with masses the size of soccer balls in their guts, which eventually ruptures, releasing a massive amount of bacteria in the system. It takes weeks, and it's a horrible way to go. We didn't have that parasite until we started building adobe houses, which that little bug loves.

Oct 29, 02: The amount of food a boy eats in the years before puberty influences his grandchildren's risk of diabetes, a small Swedish study suggests. They found that males in areas with a surfeit of food were four times more likely to have grandchildren who died of diabetes mellitus than those who suffered famine in childhood.

Nov 6, 02: Motherhood may make women smarter and may help prevent dementia in old age by bathing the brain in protective hormones, U.S. researchers reported. Tests on rats show that those who raise two or more litters of pups do significantly better in tests of memory and skills than rats who have no babies, and their brains show changes that suggest they may be protected against diseases such as Alzheimer's.

Nov 7, 02: The cup that helps millions of people get started in the morning, and several more cups throughout the day, may reduce the risk of diabetes, Dutch researchers said.
. . Whether it's filter, cappuccino, latte or espresso, coffee contains minerals such as magnesium, potassium and other micronutrients that have health benefits. Van Dam and his team don't know which of the compounds in coffee are involved or how they work against diabetes, but when they compared coffee consumption with the risk of type 2, or adult onset diabetes, they found the more people drank, the lower their risk. Individuals who drank seven or more cups of coffee a day, were 50 percent less likely to develop the disease. Fewer cups a day had less of an impact.

In 1999, a whopping 721,693 US homes lacked indoor plumbing!

Nov 8, 02: Britain's Royal College of Physicians said it would be urging the government to set up a body to regulate nicotine in a new chapter in the organization's 40-year war on smoking.
. . An estimated 5.4 million people have died of smoking in Britain since 1962 when the RCP first issued a report warning the government about the dangers of tobacco-related death and disease. Experts reckon the death toll would have been much higher had the college not sounded the alarm.

Oct 25, 02: Tiny coils inserted into the brain through blood vessels can reduce the risk of death and improve the quality of life of people who have suffered a brain hemorrhage, researchers said. Bleeding from a cerebral aneurysm, an abnormal ballooning of an artery wall in the brain, is fatal in many cases and those that survive are often disabled.

Oct 22, 02: Bangladesh has around 40,000 blind children of which specialists say nearly a third of cases are due to Vitamin A deficiency. A congenital infection often causes childhood cataracts to form over their eyes. Such cases are quite common. Bangladeshi doctors say about 120,000 people go blind every year in Bangladesh due to cataracts. Nearly 70,000 operations are carried out annually, leaving a growing backlog of cases. A private operation costs from around 1,800 taka ($31), a large sum for Bangladeshi people whose annual income averages only around $340.
. . An aging and growing world population means that the number of blind people could double to 80-90 million by 2020.

Oct 17, 02: Researchers do not know the cause of Parkinson's, but believe it targets mitochondria, the energy powerhouses within cells. Neurons then die in a region known as the substantia nigra, which releases the biochemical dopamine. This is critical to normal, smooth body movements. The disease causes progressive brain degeneration in about four million people worldwide, causing loss of muscle control.

The new treatment is based on a small molecule called coenzyme Q10. Some coenzymes act as vitamins by assisting enzymes in the body, and Q10 helps mitochondria shuffle electrons around. Neurologist Clifford Shults of the University of California at San Diego and colleagues found Q10 levels were significantly lower in Parkinson's patients. Q10 is available to buy as a dietary supplement, but the scientists urge patients not to medicate themselves, saying the amount of Q10 in the compounds sold in stores is uncertain.

Oct 16, 02: Parents of teenagers can breathe a sigh of relief because scientists believe they have discovered the cause of teenage angst. The good news is that the surly, snappy moods and temper tantrums are caused by a temporary increase in nerve activity in the brain that makes it difficult for adolescents to process information and read social situations. The bad news is that it lasts until about 18 years old.
. . A team of neuroscientists found that as children enter puberty, their ability to quickly recognize other people's emotion nosedives, New Scientist magazine.

Oct 24, 02: Surgeons have relieved a 75-year-old woman of what she thought was a long-standing tumor, but turned out to be the remains of a 46-year-old fetus, Moroccan newspapers said.

Oct 16, 02: Children of women who drank while pregnant show the effects as long as 14 years later in the form of stunted growth, U.S. researchers said. Even as little as one drink a day -- once believed to be relatively safe -- could cost a child into the teen-age years and even into adulthood.
. . The message is clear -- pregnant women cannot risk drinking at all, she said. "There is no safe level."

Oct 16, 02: More than a year ago, President Bush ordered all federally funded scientists to restrict their stem-cell research to 78 existing stem-cell lines. But California now welcomes state and privately funded researchers who step outside that rule. State senator Ortiz, who lost her mother to ovarian cancer three years ago, says she felt perfectly confident about her position. Other states appear to be following California's lead and are writing their own laws supporting stem-cell research, with an eye toward finding cures.

Oct 15, 02: A test that can detect ovarian cancer using a single drop of blood can also catch prostate cancer, potentially saving many men the embarrassment and discomfort of a biopsy, researchers said. It found prostate cancer in 95 percent of men whose cancer was confirmed by more conventional means, and also screened out men suspected of having cancer, the researchers reported. Prostate cancer is the second-biggest cancer killer of men in the United States.

Oct, 02: Patients who take aspirin within two days of heart bypass surgery dramatically reduce their health risks, researchers said in a finding that could save 25,000 lives worldwide each year.
. . The study's authors found that giving heart bypass patients aspirin within 48 hours of surgery cut the death rate by 68 percent during the study period. The chances of stroke decreased by 62 percent, the likelihood of kidney problems fell by 60 percent, and the risk of developing a heart attack was nearly cut in half.
. . Regular use of aspirin, even a small daily dose, is already known to reduce the risk of heart attack by 34 percent and stroke by 25 percent.

Oct 24, 02: Faced with an alarming and unexplained rise in new breast cancer cases, California officials called for a pilot program to monitor breast milk for signs that environmental contamination plays in a role in the spread of the deadly disease.
. . "When women in America today are getting breast cancer at a rate that is three times the rate of 50 years ago, something is seriously wrong", state Assemblyman Dario Frommer said at a special joint meeting of the legislature's health committees.
. . The risk of a woman contracting the disease at some point during her life now at 1-in-8, against 1-in-22 just 50 years ago. Breast milk is regarded as a good "biomarker" for exposure to toxins because chemicals can accumulate in the breast's fatty tissue for a number of years, like canaries in mines.
. . (and this is the quote that made me copy this news item:)
"When breast milk speaks, people listen."

~Sept 1, 02: Scientists in the United States have made a breakthrough that could revolutionize heart surgery by replacing electronic pacemakers with a biological equivalent. The heart has natural pacemaker cells that emit an electrical impulse that prompt it to beat. If these die, they can be replaced by surgically implanted electronic equivalents that do much the same job but have nothing like the adaptability of their biological brethren. But the Johns Hopkins' scientists discovered that by altering the potassium balance in ordinary heart cells in guinea pigs, they could trick them into behaving like pacemaker cells.

Sept 19, 02: Researchers at Sandia National Labs have developed the Multiple-unit Artificial Retinal Chipset, which sits inside the eye. It is aimed at those suffering from macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, where the light-sensitive cells on the retina stop working but the nerves survive.
. . "They won't be able to drive cars, at least in the near future, because instead of millions of pixels, they'll see approximately a thousand. The images will come a little slowly and appear yellow. But people who are blind will see."
. . The system involves multiple components mounted both inside and outside the eye. A spectacle-mounted camera takes video that is then processed and transmitted into the eye by radio. There, a chip made from micro-machined silicon and protective coatings receives the signal and extracts data with which to stimulate the retinal nerves. Like a crystal radio set, it also extracts the power it needs to run from the radio signal, removing the need for any external wires or internal power pack.
. . The research project is due to be finished in 2004, by which time they hope the picture will be sharp enough to distinguish text and faces, and could be available as a treatment for blindness.

Sept 19, 02: Clean living isn't always a good thing for young children, researchers said. A study of over 800 kids, age 6 to 13, has found that the ones living in the dustiest environments were less likely to suffer from asthma and hay fever.

Sept 19, 02: Acetaminophen, a pain reliever found in dozens of over-the-counter products, needs to have a warning label to keep people from taking excessive doses that can damage the liver and in rare cases kill. "Death is not an acceptable side effect," a researcher said.

For years, doctors thought a gradual build-up of fatty deposits in heart arteries caused heart attacks. Now, most doctors blame pools of fat embedded deep in the vessel wall that can erupt without warning, forming a clot that chokes off blood flow to the heart. Current imaging technology does not allow doctors to identify patients whose arteries are about to erupt, leaving patients with little warning of a deadly heart attack. "Current diagnostic technology used in hospitals is not useful in finding it."
. . But doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston next week will release results of a Guidant-sponsored clinical trial using a new imaging technology that may help spot dangerous lesions in blood vessels before they cause a heart attack.
. . Doctors in the trial evaluated 63 patients using optical coherence tomography, a technology that provides a cross- sectional map of the vessel with 10 times the resolution of standard ultrasounds performed inside the vessel.

Sept 6, 02: Swedish scientists have found that older men face a much greater risk of fathering schizophrenic children than younger men. Schizophrenia is a widespread and debilitating form of mental disease with symptoms ranging from delusions and an altered sense of self to apathy and social withdrawal.
. . Scientists at Sweden's Karolinska Institute found that children fathered by men aged 45 or older were three times as likely to develop schizophrenia as offspring of men aged 20-24. "We already knew there was an increased risk when older *women have children." As most older men tended to have older wives, the cumulative risk was three times greater.

Sept 3, 02: Swiss scientists said on they had found a gene that appears to play a key role in determining a patient's chances of surviving bowel cancer. The team of researchers said patients were three times more likely to benefit from chemotherapy if their tumors tested positive for the gene. Detecting the gene -- called SMAD4 -- could help doctors to predict whether chemotherapy will work, allowing them to tailor treatments to the individual needs of patients.

Sept 3, 02: A diet high in white bread, white rice and potatoes puts women at much higher risk of pancreatic cancer --especially if they are overweight and do not exercise much, researchers reported in this week's Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Aug 30, 02: Teen-agers whose parents smoked were about 50 percent more likely to have had sex by the time they were 15, the researchers reported. "They are also more likely to smoke, drink, associate with substance-using peers and participate in delinquent activity." About 31 percent of parents were smokers and that was the strongest predictor of risky behavior among their teen-age children, Wilder said. Wilder and Watt found that boys were more likely to have sex if their parents failed to use seatbelts -- but not girls.

Aug 29, 02: A flower that causes birth defects in grazing sheep has offered valuable clues about treating brain tumors in children, researchers said. The corn lily, whose white, flowery spikes appear in fields across the U.S. West, produces a chemical that, when eaten by pregnant sheep, causes their lambs to be born with one eye. But the same process that disrupts development of the eye in lambs seems to disrupt the growth of a highly aggressive brain tumor called medulloblastoma, the researchers report.

Aug 29, 02: The anthrax bacteria first tricks the body's immune cells into attacking it, then quietly kills them before they can call for help, researchers reported. The researchers have singled out the mechanism the bacteria uses to do this, opening the possibility of designing an antitoxin to combat it.
. . In the journal Science, Michael Karin and Jin Mo Park of the UC San Diego said two potent compounds produced by anthrax, known as "lethal factor" and "protective antigen", team up to deactivate immune system cells called macrophages. Antibiotics kill the bacteria, but do not affect the toxins that the bacteria have produced.

Aug 27, 02: One in three of all Americans has a condition called insulin resistance syndrome, putting them at high risk of diabetes and heart disease, a panel of doctors said. But diet and exercise can take care of the condition in many if not most cases, and a few simple tests can tell doctors and patients who is at most risk.
. . Insulin resistance syndrome, also known as metabolic syndrome or syndrome X, refers to people whose bodies do not manage insulin well. More and more people are developing the condition as the population eats more and exercises less.
. . The prevalence of insulin resistance syndrome has skyrocketed 61 percent in the last decade. Pediatricians are complaining that seven- to ten-year-old children were developing metabolic syndrome, type-II diabetes --once only seen in adults-- and obesity. "We never saw this before," Einhorn said. "Pediatricians are having to learn about adult medications."
. . No single test can show who has insulin resistance syndrome but measurements of weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose tolerance can. One quick check that people can make at home is waist circumference, the experts said -- men with 40-inch waists and women with 35-inch waists have a higher risk.

Aug 27, 02: Researchers for German ecology magazine Oeko-Test discovered acrylamide, which can cause cancer in animals, in all 24 brands of ground coffee and seven brands of espresso they tested. Preliminary scientific studies have found that acrylamide --a substance found in french fries, potato chips, water and carbohydrate rich foods such as bread that are fried or baked -- can cause cancer in animals. (including humans) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has also said the information currently available about acrylamide is not sufficient to assess the impact of the substance on public health.

Aug 21, 02: In a finding that could lead to new treatments for arthritis, U.S. researchers said that naturally occurring carbohydrates may be the elusive cause of the debilitating illness. The carbohydrates, known as glycosaminoglycans, appear to activate cells that are part of the body's immune system."This study shows that rheumatoid arthritis may result from the body's mishandling of its own carbohydrates that, under normal circumstances, would not be interpreted as a threat," said Julia Wang, the study's lead researcher.
. . Wang, who presented her research at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society, said her finding has come under heavy attack because it challenged the conventional thinking that peptides -- little pieces of protein -- are responsible for auto-immune diseases like arthritis. "The concept that carbohydrates can be responsible for auto-immune diseases is completely new," she told Reuters. "People simply don't want to recognize it. They've been taught peptides are responsible, which is understood."

Aug 19, 02: In one of the largest studies to date examining the idea that germs may help cause heart disease, researchers said that heart patients who took antibiotics were less likely to suffer heart attacks or severe chest pain a year later. But, to their surprise, the British researchers who conducted the study said the bacteria they thought might be responsible for heart disease did not seem to be the culprits. Scientists have recently honed in on the idea that infection and the inflammation it causes may be responsible for many cases of heart disease.

Aug 13, 02: Infertile men who have normal-looking sperm may in fact have unseen DNA damage that can not only interfere with their attempts to conceive a child but could affect the child's future health, researchers said. They said their study fits in with others that suggest some artificial fertilization techniques may pass on genetic damage to any resulting children.
. . As might be expected, 62 percent of the infertile men with abnormal-appearing sperm had high levels of DNA damage in their sperm. But just under a quarter of the infertile men, 21 of them, had normal-looking sperm. Of these, nine of the men, or 43 percent, had high levels of DNA damage.
. .They said 30,000 babies were born in 1999 as the result of assisted reproductive technology. If such sperm was used to fertilize an egg, the result could be anything from a failure to conceive, to a miscarriage, to a child with cancer.

Aug 13, 02: Eating more calories may raise the risk of Alzheimer's in people already genetically prone to the disease, researchers said. A study of people older than 65 found those who ate the most, and who carried a gene believed to raise the risk of Alzheimer's, had a 2.3 times greater chance of developing the disease than those who ate the fewest calories.

Aug 7, 02: A drug normally used to treat an adult form of leukemia may be able to restore color to gray hair, a team of puzzled French doctors reported. Of the 133 people they treated with the drug, sold under the brand name Gleevec by Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG, five men and four women who started out with gray hair ended up with their old color back. It's difficult to determine how many might have experienced the change.
. . The process of color restoration usually took about five months, although in one patient the hair color returned after 14 months of therapy. Mahon said people should not be taking the drug to restore hair color but added that laboratory studies are under way to explore the surprising side effect.

Aug 7, 02: Botox, the injected toxin already used to reduce the wrinkles of old age, can help relieve the muscle tightening and twitching seen in some stroke patients, researchers said. The research appears to offer a new hope to the almost 750,000 people in the United States who suffer strokes each year and particularly the many stroke victims who are left with disabling spasticity.

Aug 12, 02: [as I suspected...) NOT treating fever with aspirin or other anti-inflammatory drugs could be key to helping patients recover from attacks of malaria, researchers said. The parasite that causes malaria seems to do more damage when patients have fevers than when they have normal body temperatures, the team of scientists in Thailand and Britain reported. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is in contrast to studies of other diseases that suggest fever is the body's natural mechanism for fighting infection.
. . Malaria is marked by a high fever, and doctors often treat this symptom first. But some recent studies had suggested that lowering a patient's temperature might interfere with the body's ability to clear out the tiny parasites that cause the disease.

July 31, 02: In an achievement that may one day help young cancer patients become mothers, Japanese scientists have grown immature mice eggs in the laboratory and used them to create healthy animals. If the results can be duplicated in larger animals and humans, which is still a long way off, ovaries from young girls diagnosed with cancer could be removed before they undergo cancer treatment to preserve their fertility and create babies through in-vitro fertilization.
. . The scientists nurtured the mice eggs in culture for 28 days. To continue their development, they transferred the genetic material to mature eggs taken from an adult mouse by using the same technique used to create Dolly the cloned sheep. When the eggs were mature enough, they fertilized them and transferred the embryos to a surrogate mother.

Aug 6, 02: A tiny organism blamed for killing billions of fish off the U.S. East Coast and for making some fishermen sick may not be toxic, but may simply weaken fish by nibbling holes in their skin, researchers said. The scientists said they found no evidence that Pfiesteria, blamed for high-profile fish kills over the past decade, secretes a deadly toxin, as had been previously believed. In fact, the strange one-celled organisms do not produce any known poison.

Aug 6, 02: Scientists now know brains show signs of aging as early as the 20s and 30s. The process may be speeded up a bit by a genetic risk and pushed even faster by unhealthy lifestyle choices. "Genetics is only about a third of what predicts brain aging. The other two thirds has to do with our environment and lifestyle choices that we make," said Small. "Alzheimer's disease, or vascular dementia, are the end result of this process of brain aging." Scientists think it will be easier to protect the brain, than to repair it.
. . An estimated 12 million people around the globe suffer from Alzheimer's. By 2050, the number of sufferers could hit 45 million.

Aug 6, 02: U.S. cities and suburbs made strides fighting infectious diseases like tuberculosis and syphilis over the past decade while underweight births became more common, according to a new study.
. . The incidence of babies born with a low birth weight actually rose over the past decade, from 7.0 percent in 1990 to 7.9 percent in 1999. As doctors were able to save more premature births and fertility drugs lead women to have twins and triplets. He said as these babies grow older, they may place unexpected strains on school systems and society as a whole.
. . Syphilis became much less common, with rates in cities declining by 86 percent to 10.8 per 100,000 people.

Aug 5, 02: Scientists have discovered how a key protein helps cancerous cells spread through the body in a finding that could pave the way for new drugs to slow down the progression of the disease. The molecule, called Src, loosens the tissue around a tumor and allows cancerous cells to metastasize, or grow in other organs. Scientists believe drugs designed to block the action of the molecule could prevent cancer from spreading.

Aug 1, 02: An internal furnace can burn off excess calories, theoretically allowing you to stuff your face and stay thin, scientists said. But there's a catch --so far they've only found it in mice. But they believe humans have a similar mechanism, and if so, it may offer a route to developing diet drugs that actually work and may lead to ways to help people genetically disposed to become extremely obese.

July 23, 02: Cholesterol-busting drugs, widely used to reduce the risk of heart attack, may also help cut the incidence of Alzheimer's disease, scientists said. Individuals taking statins to lower cholesterol reduced their risk of developing Alzheimer's by 29 percent. The reason for the connection is not immediately clear, but they found that statins dramatically lowered the production of beta-amyloid, the protein "plaque" that clumps together in the brains of Alzheimer's sufferers.
. . An estimated 12 million people suffer from Alzheimer's worldwide --a figure that could balloon to 45 million by 2050, as people live longer.

July 23, 02: Doctors are giving infants and babies the anti-impotence drug Viagra to save them from a life-threatening lung condition even though it has not been tested on children. Pulmonary hypertension affects 28,000 children and 250,000 adults in the United States alone. It's a blood vessel disorder of the lung. In babies with the problem, a bypass vessel used for fetal circulation fails to close after birth, depriving the child of oxygen.

July 23, 02: Using sophisticated scanning techniques, scientists have detected abnormalities in the brains of young people with a genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease, decades before symptoms are likely to appear. People with ApoE-4, a gene associated with high cholesterol and Alzheimer's disease, have an increased risk of developing the illness but it is not a certainty, the researchers said.

July 23, 02: Women who have an identical twin with breast cancer have four times the normal chance of developing the disease themselves, American scientists said.

Acquired Antibiotic Resistance.
. . This is an example of why scientists are worried about the public use of anti-biotics in frivolous trips to the doctor, livestock "preventatives", & even in household detergents!
. . An experiment selected out those bacteria with some natural resistance to common pine oil disinfectant. After isolating the resistant strains, the team then exposed the E. coli to several widely used antibiotics, such as tetracycline, ampicillin, and chloramphenicol. The group found that the pine-oil resistant germs were equally resistant to these other drugs!

July 17, 02: The number of infants dying from whooping cough, once a major killer of children in the United States, is rising despite record high vaccination levels in the nation, federal health officials said. Infant whooping cough deaths rose steadily in the 1980s and 1990s. It's caused by a bacteria.

Jul 17, 02: Creating a vaccine to rid the world of malaria may prove more difficult than scientists had expected because the parasite is very diverse and much older than previously thought, researchers said.
. . A malaria vaccine is a top priority for public health officials because the disease kills up to two million people, mainly children, each year and 300 million are infected. Effective drugs are available but the malaria parasite has developed resistance to treatments, so a vaccine is thought to offer the best hope of bringing the disease under control.
. . Evolutionary biologists had suggested the parasite was about 3,000 to 5,000 years old and that regardless of where it was found in the world different types would be genetically similar, which would have made it relatively easy to control. But when the NIH scientists compared the same 204 genes in five geographically distinct parasites, they found unexpected diversity, which they said suggested the earliest common ancestor would have originated about 100,000 to 180,000 years ago -- about the time early humans are thought to have expanded out of Africa.
. . Scientists are also working on a genetically modified malaria mosquito in what they hope will be the first step in controlling transmission of the disease by manipulating mosquito genes. Malaria is transmitted by the bite of an infected female mosquito. It causes fever, muscle stiffness and shaking and sweating.

June 23, 02: Eating a handful of nuts twice or more a week may cut one's risk of deadly heart disease, based on a study of male doctors. Nuts and fish are plentiful in the Mediterranean diet, which is known to be heart-friendly, and many types of nuts are also a healthy source of unsaturated fats, magnesium and vitamin E. They found a 47 percent lower risk of sudden cardiac death among those who consumed an ounce of nuts at least twice a week compared to those who did not eat nuts at all. She also found a 30 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease death among the nut eaters. The correlation did not apply for nonfatal heart attacks.

June 23, 02: The same estrogen hormone elderly women take to fend off symptoms of menopause such as brittle bones likely helps them keep their teeth as well, researchers reported. Roughly 40 percent of American women over age 65 do not have any of their natural teeth.

June 23, 02: Scientists said they have found a biological marker that can spot pregnant women at risk of depression after childbirth. Up to 15 per cent of women are believed to suffer from post-childbirth depression, more serious than baby blues, so the team believes that having a reliable early warning test would be helpful.
. . Professor Victor Pop, of the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, said a study showed that women with certain thyroid antibodies during pregnancy were nearly three times more likely to become depressed after childbirth.

June 27, 02: International food safety experts, meeting in emergency session at the World Health Organization, said fatty, fried foods may cause cancer but a final verdict needed more research. Researchers in Sweden found high levels of acrylamide, a cancer-causing substance in animals, in carbohydrate-rich foods such as potato chips. Scientists are unclear exactly how acrylamide is formed. It seems to be produced when starchy foods like potatoes, rice and cereals are fried or baked. Stockholm University researchers found that an ordinary bag of potato chips may contain up to 500 times more acrylamide than the maximum concentration the WHO allows in drinking water.

June 13, 02: Drops used to treat high pressure in the eye can delay and may even prevent glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness, U.S. researchers said. Patients who got the drops were less than half as likely to develop glaucoma as those who did not, the national team of researchers found. An estimated 3 million to 6 million people in the United States alone have high eye pressure and more than 66 million worldwide have glaucoma.
. . As the optic nerve is pressed, vision is gradually and almost imperceptibly lost. The eye drops only decreased pressure in the patients' eyes by 20 percent, but this translated into a big drop in the rate of glaucoma. Only 4.4 percent of the study patients who received the eye drops developed glaucoma," said Mae Gordon of the Washington University School of Medicine said. By comparison, 9.5 percent of the others did.

June 18, 02: Scientists have discovered a "small population of cells that can generate a complete and functional thymus." The thymus, a small lymphoid organ situated in the neck, is critical in generating cells vital to the immune system, including infection-fighting T-cells. But the thymus' ability to generate T-cells is dramatically reduced by aging, viruses, chemotherapy or genetic abnormalities. By the age of 20, the thymus, the only organ which produces T-cells, is down to one percent functionality.
. . "You can use gene therapy to make the whole thing resistant to HIV infection, we may even be able to make a thymus that is resistant to chemotherapy." Boyd said the thymus, about the size of a fingernail or pea, was grown in mice by simply injecting the epithelium stem cells under the skin. Once a thymus was grown, it could be transplanted into position. To date, there had been limited success with thymus transplants, as they are invariably rejected by the recipient.

May 18, 02: An experimental cancer drug shrinks the tumors in advanced lung cancer patients and improves their symptoms, offering them perhaps the first shred of hope, doctors said. The drug, called Iressa, can be taken as a pill -- a huge boon to patients used to being hooked up to intravenous infusions for chemotherapy. And it has very few side-effects --none of the nausea and hair loss that often makes chemotherapy patients so miserable.
. . It takes a new approach, targeting proteins that are produced only by cancer cells, so it does not attack hair follicles and intestinal cells the way other cancer drugs do. It's not on the market yet, but is being tested in clinical trials pending approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The subjects weren't cured, but 43 percent felt better. And in 12 percent, the tumors shrank 50 percent or more. Average survival was about six months, so Iressa is no wonder drug, experts said.

May 18, 02: A cousin of vitamin A may be able to reverse some of the damage that can lead to lung cancer in smokers -- offering the hope of actually preventing the disease, researchers said.
. . Lung cancer is by far the biggest cancer killer in the United States and the world, expected to kill 125,000 Americans this year. It is almost always caused by smoking, or by exposure to tobacco smoke. People who quit smoking reduce their risk, but the precancerous damage caused by tobacco smoke does not immediately stop. Doctors have hoped to find a way to stop the damage from getting worse. A cousin of vitamin A known as 9-cis retinoic acid significantly decreased or reversed the precancerous state.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=585&e=3&cid=585&u=/nm/20020520/sc_nm/health_cancer_gleevec_dc_3 Gleevec, a cancer pill making headlines in recent years because of its success against advanced leukemia, also may stop the disease from progressing to a deadly late stage, doctors said. Gleevec, made by Swiss drug company Novartis AG, is the first drug on the market that employs a new approach to fighting cancer called targeted molecular therapy.

The number of Americans diagnosed with high blood pressure increased almost 10 percent in the 1990s, according to a study released on Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

May 15, 02: A new drug that eliminates a natural protein in the body could pave the way for better treatments for Alzheimer's disease and type II diabetes, scientists said. Illnesses such as Alzheimer's develop when normal proteins fold in an unusual way and form clumps called amyloid deposits that damage tissue and organs. It is also not clear whether the amyloid deposits cause the loss of brain cells and the dementia that Alzheimer's patients experience.

May 15, 02: Military technology designed to counter biological weapons is being adapted to speed up the detection of chlamydia, a common sexually transmitted infection that is a leading cause of infertility. Instead of waiting up to two weeks, the new machine will produce screening results in 40 minutes.
. . Researchers at Britain's Defense Science and Technology Laboratory will receive 4.6 million pounds ($6.6 million) from the government to develop a portable machine to improve the diagnosis and treatment of the illness. The machine rapidly analyzes DNA sequences to detect the presence of biological agents.
. . "Earlier treatment and detection of chlamydia should benefit the general population by reducing the risk of the damaging consequences of infection and also reduce National Health Service (NHS) costs," said Ruth Stanier of the Department of Health.

While the world has pledged some $2 billion to a global campaign to battle HIV-AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, just a fraction of this could help to make significant headway against such horrors as Buruli ulcer, elephantiasis, dengue fever and the main villain, intestinal parasites. The diseases are rife in tropical parts of Africa and India.
. . Buruli ulcer, which is roaming unchecked across more than two dozen African countries, is caused by a bacterium that seems to have sprung right out of a Hollywood horror film. It eats through skin, muscle and bone to leave gaping craters in its victims' bodies.
. . Nobody is sure where the bacterium that causes Buruli ulcers lives, how it enters the body and how it succeeds in disabling the immune system, preventing it from giving the normal warning signals for infection -- fever and pain.
. . Lymphatic filariasis, more commonly known as elephantiasis, which affects more than 40 million people in Africa, India and across south Asia and the Americas, can be prevented by just taking two pills once a year. It can lead to massive swelling of the limbs, genitals and breasts, turning victims into social outcasts unable to work.
. . Like the often fatal dengue fever, elephantiasis is transmitted by mosquitoes which thrive in areas of rapid and unplanned urban growth.
. . "More than 50 percent of the cases are in children under 15 years of age, and yet we know more about most veterinary diseases than we do about Buruli ulcer," said Kingsley Asiedu, responsible for the WHO's Buruli Ulcer Program.

early May, 02: Women who inherit genes that put them at high risk of breast and ovarian cancer can prevent both by having their ovaries removed, doctors said. "The risk for breast and ovarian cancer decreased 75 percent in the surgery group."
. . A new study gave a new option to women with faulty BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, whose lifetime risk of cancer is much higher than the average woman's.The anti-cancer drug tamoxifen has been shown to reduce the risk of cancer by close to 50 percent in high-risk women who take it for five years, but research shows that does not work for women with BRCA1 mutations.

5/6/02: Just a little bit of secondhand smoke can cause measurable damage to a child's learning ability, affecting reading, math and reasoning, researchers said. More than 13 million children breathe in enough secondhand smoke to be affected in this way, said the researchers from the Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

Mar 02: In India, the number of new AIDS cases has risen sharply and now only trails South Africa in total people infected.

March 20, 02: U.S. scientists reported they had developed an oral drug that holds promise for treating smallpox, the deadly and highly contagious virus that experts fear could be used in a bioterror attack. There is no treatment, although giving a vaccine shortly after exposure can prevent illness. The vaccine, however, can have serious side effects. Scientists said it would take up to two years to determine whether the oral drug might help people exposed to smallpox.

March 20, 02: Tamoxifen, a drug used successfully for years to treat breast cancer, can also prevent the disease in healthy women who have a high risk of developing it, cancer experts said.
. . The drug reduces the incidence of breast cancer by a third. But there was still no conclusive evidence that the benefits outweighed the risks for preventing the cancer in healthy, high-risk women who have a family history of breast cancer. Studies have shown that it is effective in treating early and advanced breast cancer, particularly in women over 50 who are most likely to develop the disease. But the drug can also increase the risk of a cancer of the uterus.

March 21, 02: A new breast cancer drug is better than the gold standard (best currently available) treatment, tamoxifen, in preventing women with early disease from developing a new tumor in the other breast. It's called Anastrozole is produced by AstraZeneca PLC under the brand name Arimidex. Tamoxifen works by neutralizing the action of oestrogen, which stimulates breast cancer growth.

Some restaurants in Britain are forcing customers who like their meat rare to sign a disclaimer form before eating due to fears of the risk of E-coli and salmonella poisoning.

In research published in the journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, he said medical insurance records showed that spouses of World Bank employees who traveled frequently filed 16 percent more insurance claims for psychological disorders than partners of people who traveled less. Claims were three times higher for spouses of employees who had four or more overseas trips per year, compared to workers who did not travel. The number of claims by women were double those of men.

March 8, 02: Babies who live with two or more smokers are 30 percent more likely to need hospital treatment than those who grow up in smoke-free homes, according to a university study. Babies whose mothers were exposed to tobacco smoke during pregnancy were 18 percent more likely to be admitted to a hospital and 26 percent more likely to be taken to outpatient clinics.

More than half of all Americans breathe polluted air that can damage their health because the government doesn't fully enforce clean air laws, the American Lung Association said. Standards are in place to cut back pollution, but since they are not being enforced, nearly 400 counties in the United States have smog levels above the legal limits, the group said. Most are in California, and all are near cities.

March 8, 02: Brushing and flossing may also help stave off diabetes, according to new studies. Gum disease may even be more important than obesity or age as a factor in the onset of diabetes in adults. More than 16 million Americans have it. Adult-onset diabetes, or Type 2 diabetes, accounts for 90 percent of the estimated diabetes cases in the United States and is almost always caused by lifestyle. "The study shows that in this group of severe diabetics, we were able to increase glucose control with repeated treatment of their periodontal infection."
. . The inflammatory markers area associated with the development of atherosclerosis and other chronic diseases. "This is an important finding because we have come to understand that heart disease has a substantial inflammatory component."

Human cytomegaloviruses (CMV) are members of the family that cause cold sores and herpes infections. Aspirin-like drugs can stop CMV from replicating in infected cells. Aspirin was originally developed to numb pain. But it also helps prevent heart attacks and strokes by inhibiting blood clot formation, and even shrinks polyps that otherwise develop into colon cancer. Now, Thomas Shenk and his team at Princeton University in New Jersey, US, have shown that close relatives of aspirin can block common viruses.

Feb 28, 02: At least 15,000 cancer deaths in the United States were probably caused by radioactive fallout from Cold War nuclear weapons tests worldwide, according to portions of a government study made public by USA Today. The Health and Human Services Department study, which has not been published yet, also suggested 20,000 nonfatal cancers among U.S. residents born after 1951 could be linked to fallout from aboveground weapons tests.

Nov 27, 01: Injecting flesh-eating bugs into people with cancer may sound crazy --but initial studies suggest the only danger is that they destroy tumours so fast that the body might not be able to cope with the remains. The trick is to pick anaerobic bacteria that thrive in the oxygen-poor interior of fast-growing tumours, but die as they reach oxygen-rich healthy tissue.
. . "The exciting thing is we can combine this approach with chemotherapy and hit the tumour from both the inside and the outside," says Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine."

March 1, 02: Experts have found a way to repair a defective gene that encourages cancer and to make it kill off tumors, paving the way for a drug to combat virtually any form of the disease, a Swedish scientist said. More than half of all cancer tumors have a mutated gene called p53. In a healthy state the gene helps repair the DNA damage that leads to cancer in the first place. Without that function, tumors may grow uncontrollably.

Diabetes could spread in the current generation of fat couch potato adolescents, putting more pressure on ailing health-care system. Fast food, too much time in front of the television and computer and a lack of exercise are causing a rise in childhood obesity which could bring with it an increase in children of a type of diabetes normally found in adults.

Feb 19, 02: The U.N. nuclear watchdog said it would use nuclear technology to help rid Africa of the deadly tsetse fly. Half a million people in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to have been infected with sleeping sickness by the tsetse fly and 80 percent of them will likely die, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Annual economic losses are put at $4.5 billion, including killing three million livestock animals every year.
. . The method is simple. Millions of Tsetse flies are bred in special centers and the males are exposed to a short burst of radiation, rendering them sterile. After pesticides have sharply reduced the population, the sterilized males are released.

FEB 15, 02: A suspected outbreak of the plague in the Himalayan foothills of northwest India has killed at least three people and 14 more have been hospitalized, doctors said.

Jan 30, 02: International health experts said they will wipe out leprosy by 2005 in the final push of a World Health Organization program that saw the disease retreat rapidly across the globe in the 1990s.
. . WHO helped cure around 11 million sufferers of leprosy -- a disease that can permanently disfigure skin if left untreated --with multi-drug therapy in the 1990s, but an estimated 600,000 people still have it in countries like India and Brazil.
. . India has the world's highest rate of leprosy with some 380,000 cases, or 60 percent of the total, while Brazil accounts for 13 percent with 78,000. Madagascar, Mozambique, Myanmar and Nepal also have high rates.
. . It can incubate in the body for up to 20 years before telltale insensitive patches appear on the skin.

Jan (early), 02: Chronic heartburn may keep millions reaching for antacids but taking them may actually make the stomach more hospitable to the bacteria the body is trying to kill and an antibiotic may be a better choice, researchers said.
. . Two reports suggest that a variety of bacteria may be responsible for the inflammation that causes ulcers and stomach cancer. The bacteria Helicobacter pylori is behind most cases of stomach cancer.

Jan 7, 02: Graphic images of lung tumors and bloody, diseased gums emblazoned on Canadian cigarette packs have made smokers more likely to try to quit, said a government-funded study.

Jan 7, 02: A new imaging agent that homes in on the gummy plaques and tangles that jam up the brains of Alzheimer's patients has allowed doctors to see the disease in a living person for the first time, researchers said.
. . The finding means that Alzheimer's, which affects 4 million Americans and millions more around the world, may be diagnosed in the early stages, when treatments might be useful in testing whether treatments for Alzheimer's are working.
. . By the time symptoms of Alzheimer's show up --memory loss, confusion and other problems-- a patient already has considerable brain damage. But studies show the disease starts years before.
. . Studies have also shown that people who take aspirin-related drugs such as naproxen and ibuprofen regularly have a lower risk of Alzheimer's. Barrio said his team used their FDDNP-PET scan to show that these two drugs also home in on and attack the plaques, which may explain why they seem to prevent Alzheimer's.
. . [I haven't heard the recommended dose. Probably less than a tablet. JKH]

Jan 1, 02: A gene that prevents cancer when it works properly can cause premature aging symptoms when it goes into overdrive, researchers said. Mice genetically engineered to have an overactive version of the gene, called p53, got fewer tumors, but they also died younger than normal mice, the researchers said. "Aging and tumor suppression may be opposite sides of the same coin."

Dec 19, 01: Ibuprofen can cripple aspirin's ability to protect against a heart attack, researchers report.

Greater success and wealth may follow, but screenwriters who win the coveted Oscar have a life expectancy 3.6 years shorter than the nominees who lose.
. . By contrast, Academy Award-winning actors and actresses live longer than nominees, but their behavior is under greater public scrutiny, which may account for the difference.

Dec 20, 01: People who eat a meat-laden diet have more than triple the average risk of esophageal cancer and double the risk of stomach cancer, U.S. researchers reported.
. . The report adds to several studies that link eating meat, especially "red" meat such as beef, with certain cancers. Colon cancer has been the most strongly linked with a high-meat diet. The study of people living in Nebraska found that those who ate the most meat had 3.6 times the risk of esophageal cancer and double the risk of stomach cancer when compared to people eating what the researchers considered a healthy diet. People who ate a lot of dairy products, who tended also to eat a lot of meat, had double the risk of both cancers.

Dec 18, 01: Scientists said they have deciphered the third human chromosome which contains a treasure trove of information about diseases ranging from obesity and eczema to dementia and cataracts. With more than 727 genes and nearly 60 million DNA letters, chromosome 20 is the largest human chromosome to be finished so far.
. . Thirty-two of the genes are linked to genetic illnesses including the brain wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (news - web sites), severe immune disorders and illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes and dermatitis.
. . Each chromosome is made up of a molecule of DNA in the shape of a double helix which is composed of four chemical bases represented by the letters A (adenine), T (thymine), G (guanine) and C (cytosine).
. . Chromosome 20 comprises about two percent of the three billion letters that make up the human genetic code. Chromosome 22, the second smallest human chromosome, was sequenced in 2000. It has genetic components linked to 35 diseases and syndromes.
. . One of the interesting aspects of chromosome 20 is that scientists found an extra chunk of DNA containing at least one gene. They estimate 37 percent of Caucasians have the additional DNA chunk.
. . Chromosome 20 also contains 30,000 SNPs --single nucleotide polymorphisms-- which are the variations in human DNA that make people unique. Any two humans are 99.9 percent similar. The 0.1 percent difference in DNA is what makes an individual unique.

Dec 10, 01: - The distance food travels to reach British plates has increased by 50 percent over the last decade, choking the atmosphere, losing nutrients from fresh produce and spreading disease, a report said. Transporting food internationally spread diseases such as foot-and-mouth, & caused loss of nutrients in food.
. . "In 1997, the UK imported 126 million liters of milk and exported 270 million liters", the report said. "For every calorie of carrot, flown in from South Africa, we use 66 calories of fuel."

Oct 22, 01: Chernobyl, the world's worst nuclear accident, is linked to nearly 2,000 thyroid cancer cases, the largest number of cancers associated with a known cause on a specific date, scientists said. Although it is 15 years since a cloud of radioactive dust spewed from the explosion of Chernobyl's number four reactor in 1986, new cases of cancer associated with the accident are still being reported.

Nov 28, 01: The AIDS epidemic gripping millions worldwide spread at lightning speed in 2001, with countries of the former Soviet bloc now facing the fastest growing infection rate, a U.N. report said. An estimated one million people in the former Soviet Union and ex-communist Eastern Europe now carry HIV. Around the globe, AIDS has become the fourth biggest killer --with heart disease the first -- the report said, adding that 40 million people now carry the virus. "About one-third of those living with AIDS are aged 15-24", the annual UNAIDS report said. "Most of them do not know." Africans account for almost three-quarters of all those infected with HIV or AIDS.

Nov 19, 01; The Center for Science in the Public Interest said government data shows rate in raw turkey is higher than for other raw meat: about 13 percent, vs 3 percent for ground beef and 9 percent for chicken.
. . Salmonella is one of the most common U.S. foodborne diseases, causing an estimated 1.3 million illnesses annually. While most healthy adults recover in a few days from the diarrhea and vomiting that typically accompany salmonella poisoning, the elderly and those with chronic diseases can suffer more serious effects. About 500 Americans die each year from salmonella, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
. . Three years ago, a USDA survey of turkey plants found 19.4 percent of raw birds carried the bacteria.
. . The World Health Organization estimates 40 percent of the world's population does not have access to adequate sanitation.

Oct 30, 01: Scientists at a Reykavik-based company studying the medical records of the Icelandic population said they had mapped the first gene linked to the main form of Parkinson's disease.
. . Chief Executive Kari Stefansson said the discovery confounded the commonly held belief that there was no identifiable genetic component behind the disease.
. . Although rival researchers have found genetic factors for rarer forms of Parkinson's, this is the first time a gene has been linked to the most common late-onset form. The new gene, which has been mapped to a small region on Chromosome 1, was found after studying data from 51 Icelandic families.
. . Parkinson's --characterized by shaking and muscular rigidity-- affects from between one and three people per thousand worldwide, and is most common in those over 50.

New Scientist magazine: Pre-historic people living in Asia 8,000 years ago may have used stone-tipped drills to repair teeth.

Doctors have surgically implanted genetically modified tissue into the brain of a 60-year-old woman in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease in a complicated 11-hour operation aimed at preventing cell death associated with the devastating illness, officials said on Tuesday.
. . They used gene therapy to deliver a natural brain-survival molecule called nerve growth factor (NGF) to the dying cells in the brain.
. . Four million Americans have it --one in 10 people over age 65 and nearly half of those over 85.

April 9, 01: Bits of genetic code resembling viral genes were found in the cerebrospinal fluid and brain tissue of schizophrenics in a study released on Monday that provides compelling evidence a virus may contribute to some cases of the devastating mental illness.
. . A group of 35 Germans who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia were tested. The researchers found the molecular "footprint" of a retrovirus in the cerebrospinal fluid of 29 percent of subjects with newly diagnosed acute schizophrenia. It also was found in 7 percent of those with a chronic form of the disease.
. . Schizophrenia affects about 1 percent of people in the world.

April, 01: Children fathered by older men run a much higher risk of developing schizophrenia, researchers said in a finding that provides strong evidence that men, like women, have a ``biological clock'' when it comes to having children.
. . Men between the ages of 45 and 49 are twice as likely as those under 25 to have children who develop schizophrenia. Men 50 or older ran three times the risk of the fathers under 25. The study said 26.6 percent of the schizophrenia cases could be attributed to the father's age, while the age of the mother appeared to play no role. It afflicts 1 percent of people worldwide.
. . Physical illnesses previously linked to advancing paternal age include: prostate cancer, nervous system cancer, neurofibromatosis (fleshy growths of abnormal nerve tissue), the most common type of dwarfism, Apert syndrome (malformation of the skulls, hands and feet), and Marfan syndrome, which involves defects of the eyes, bones, heart and blood vessels.

Sweden's overall suicide rate is 11 percent higher for men and over 40 percent higher for women than the average in other European Union (news - web sites) countries. 1.3 percent of all deaths.

Oct 10, 01: The spread of AIDS in Asia risks rising exponentially unless renewed prevention efforts are undertaken in the next few years, health experts told a regional conference.
. . Some health experts have said the potential maximum infection rates are around 2-3 percent of Asian populations, well below the rates of around 10 percent seen in sub-Saharan Africa.
. . But Brown said this could rise much higher given that men who visited sex workers were the largest group at risk, and studies have shown 5-20 percent of men across Asia go to prostitutes.
. . Around seven million people in Asia live with HIV/AIDS, while an estimated 500,000 people die of the disease each year. This is estimated to rise to 800,000 by 2005, according to figures from UNAIDS, the coordinating UN body.
. . Cambodia at 2.7 percent of the general population, Myanmar at 2.0 percent, and Thailand at 1.8 percent.
. . Surveys have found 15 percent of married men and 21 percent of unmarried men in Cambodia had sex with prostitutes in 2000, compared with a total of 11 percent in Japan and 10 percent in Thailand.

Sept 18, 01: A vaccine against meningitis C has cut cases of the deadly brain disease among British youngsters by 80 percent. The vaccine is only effective against meningitis C, which accounts for 40 percent of all cases. They stressed that there is still no vaccine against meningitis B. They're working on it, but the PHLS spokesman said it will be years before it is available.

Oct 1, 01: Amid heightened concern over attacks involving anthrax, scientists said they had made important headway in understanding the molecular events triggered by the bacterium's lethal toxin and developing an antidote for it.
. . Anthrax produces a toxin that kills white blood cells called macrophages that are responsible for fighting off bodily intruders. It's virtually untreatable once symptoms develop. Initial flu-like symptoms develop two to three days after the bacteria is inhaled. This is followed by high fever, vomiting, joint ache, labored breathing, internal and external bleeding, lesions and usually death.

Oct 1, 01: A team of scientists at Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Center in Cambridge have discovered how the Black Plague bacterium turned itself from a bothersome tummy bug into the Black Death that killed 200 million people, or a third of Europe, in the 14th century. It evolved into a lethal agent by gaining and losing bits of DNA around 1,500 years ago. Up to 3,000 cases of bubonic plague are reported each year to the World Health Organization.

Oct 3, 01: Scientists studying highly inbred families from North Africa and the Middle East said they had found a second gene for an inherited form of Lou Gehrig's disease in a key step toward finding a treatment for the incurable ailment. The first gene was found in 1993.
. . While only 5-10 percent of ALS cases are thought to be inherited, the findings could point the way to treatments for all forms of the disease, the researchers said.
. . About 30,000 Americans have the disease, according to the ALS Association. People with ALS generally die within two to five years after being diagnosed. Most cases of ALS are diagnosed in middle to late life in people with no family history of the disease. A less common form that typically manifests itself before age 25 occurs within families.
. . "A good parallel is Alzheimer's disease, where they have multiple genes and all of them start to link into a common mechanism."

Oct 4, 01: Medical researchers have pinpointed a strain of antibiotic-resistant E. coli bacteria responsible for a large share of urinary tract infections, the New England Journal of Medicine reported. The previously unrecognized strain is very common. Each year, about 11 percent of U.S. women are diagnosed with the condition, and 60 percent of women will have at least one such infection in their lifetime.

Sept 10, 01: 1.1 million people suffer heart attacks annually in the United States, with 40 percent of them dying. Most could be prevented if they were treated quickly. Heart attacks usually start slowly, only with mild pain and discomfort. People don't even realize.
. . A heart attack is caused by a blood clot that blocks off an artery to the heart. The portion of the heart muscle that gets no blood dies over the next few hours. reopening the artery can be achieved using "clot-busting" medications that dissolve the clot or, more aggressively, by inserting a tiny balloon into the artery.

Sept 13, 01: The bacteria that cause stomach ulcers are responsible for virtually all cases of stomach cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the world, medical researchers reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
. . The bacterium, Heliobacter pylori, is extremely common and usually causes no symptoms. In some countries, 90 percent of the population has been infected by it by age 9. In the United States, 30 percent to 40 percent of the population carries the bacteria.
. . The cancer rate was highest --4.7 percent-- in patients with simple indigestion, but no ulcer. "So the big conundrum is what to do with the asymptomatic person who harbors the infection", Wang said.

CDC researchers noted that the new HIV infection rates it found among young gay and bisexual black males were comparable to rates recorded in parts of Africa, considered the continent hardest hit by AIDS.
. . It's the leading cause of death in Africa and the fourth leading cause of death globally. About 1 million Americans have been infected since the virus began United States at a rate of about 40,000 new infections per year, down from a peak of 160,000.

May 21, 01: Scientists on both sides of the Atlantic said they have independently identified a gene linked to Crohn's disease, a digestive disorder that attacks mainly young adults. The illness strikes about one in every 1,000 people in western countries. Many sufferers are under the age of 30. The cause of the chronic inflammatory illness is unknown but scientists suspect is it due to genetic as well as environmental factors.
. . There is no cure, but treatments can suppress the symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea, fever and weight loss.
. . Scientists had suspected there was a link between the genes . . and bacteria residing in the gut, that leads to the development of the disease.

May 21, 01: A hybrid of the virus that causes polio and the virus that causes the common cold could eliminate the most common type of brain cancer, researchers said on Monday in a finding that might offer new hope for the growing number of patients with the fatal disease.
. . Injecting the hybrid virus into mice with malignant glioma, the most common kind of brain tumor, resulted in complete recovery after one dose, researchers said.
. . "You have to make sure that this virus can no longer cause disease." To do that, Gromeier said, his team inserted a genetic piece of rhinovirus, a relative of poliovirus and the cause of the common cold.
. . Each year, 17,000 people are diagnosed with the disease and another 13,000 die from it. But it'll be years before they expect human trials to begin.

May 21, 01: A key aspect of brain development continues until nearly age 50, scientists said, in a finding that contradicts the current view that such maturation ends before 20 and may shed light on brain ailments such as Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia.
. . "It takes 20 to 30 years to actually manifest Alzheimer's, even though it's eating up your brain because you have reserve capacity", Bartzokis said. "If you can measure that with imaging when you are 50 and you do an intervention when you are 50 and you change the trajectory (of the disease) even by a little bit, all of a sudden instead of getting Alzheimer's when you are 70, you get it when you are 110. And then it's no longer a problem."

May 17, 01: A drug now used to address the symptoms of Parkinson's disease may slow the ailment's progression, marking a potential breakthrough in treating the degenerative brain illness, researchers said.
. . In preliminary laboratory tests, researchers found that the drug pramipexole may protect brain cells from dying. Parkinson's disease is caused when these nerve cells die. It affects approximately one out of every 500 people, and most often develops after the age of 50.

May 9th, 01: More than 500,000 tons of aging pesticide waste are seriously threatening the health of millions of people and the environment in nearly all developing countries, the United Nations world food body said.
. . The Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a new report that the build-up of toxic pesticides that have been banned or expired is dramatically higher than previous estimates of around 100,000 tons.
. . According to FAO, the quantities of these obsolete pesticides in Africa and the Near East are estimated at over 100,000 tons, in Asia at over 200,000 tons and in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union at more than 200,000 tons.
. . The waste sites contain some of the most dangerous insecticides like the Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin and heptachlor that have been banned in most countries, and organophosphates.
. . As pesticides deteriorate, they form by-products which may be more toxic than the original substance.
. . They may have to ship them to Finland for incineration.

May 10, 01: A potentially deadly parasite lurking in the water supply of a small Canadian prairie town has undoubtedly affected hundreds of people across the country, top medical experts said.
. . On Sunday there were 36 confirmed cases of a flu-like illness caused by water tainted with the parasite cryptosporidium in North Battleford, a community of 15,000 located in west-central Saskatchewan.
. . Seven people died and more than 2,000 people fell seriously ill last year after E. coli bacteria contaminated drinking water in Walkerton, a small Ontario farming town.

SPECIFIC DISEASE DATA

Anthrax, unlike smallpox, does not transmit from person to person. But it kills roughly 80 percent of the people it infects, and may not produce symptoms until 8 weeks after exposure.

One immediate effect of heavy rains and flooding is an increase in waterborne diseases, such as cholera, hepatitis, and dysentery.
. . Rift Valley Fever: This mosquito-borne disease causes a severe, flu-like illness in humans.

Mar 20, 01: A team of scientists announced the discovery of a gene associated with a form of schizophrenia (Catatonic) in a breakthrough that may shed new light on a devastating mental malady that leaves people divorced from reality and inhabiting a world of delusions. It affects about one person in every hundred around the world, usually striking between the ages of 15 and 30. It's expected that there are at least 10 to 20 more genes related to schizophrenia.

March 20, 01: A clever cure for strep throat and other infections? Researchers at Rockefeller University said they found a way to kill streptococci bacteria on contact using enzymes produced by tiny viruses, or bacteriophages, that infect bacterial cells. The technique may not cause the bacteria to evolve resistant strains as antibiotics do and could have applications for many other bacterial diseases.
. . Some 30 percent of children develop strep throat infections annually. There are applications beyond strep throat: controlling common ear infections, staph infections and flesh-eating disease.
. . Every type of bacteria has a corresponding bacteriophage that infects it.

March 20, 01: A chemical the body produces to defend itself (galanin) against Alzheimer's may actually attack the brain and help cause the memory loss associated with the disease, U.S. scientists said. The human body produces more of the chemical when damaged nerves need repairing.

Mar 22, 01: In a finding that could lead to a cure for Huntington's disease, scientists said they have determined how the gene responsible for the fatal hereditary disease kills nerve cells in a key part of the brain. It's a progressive brain-wasting disorder, affecting about one in 10,000 people, including 25,000 to 30,000 Americans. It's caused by a single faulty gene on human chromosome No. 4. The gene was discovered in 1993.
. . In laboratory cultures of human cells containing the mutant Huntington's disease gene, researchers were able to reverse impending cell death. They hope to make it something more like in diabetes where this will be (merely) a chronic disease.

Saudi Arabia said [Oct 8th, '00] the death toll from Rift Valley Fever has climbed to 64 people (out of 291), raising to 101 the official toll from the disease in the kingdom and neighboring Yemen. That's thought to be far lower than unofficial counts from medical sources. It's transmitted from infected livestock to humans through contact or by mosquitoes.
. . More than 1,000 children in Singapore have contracted the sometimes deadly hand, foot and mouth disease since an outbreak was reported on September 12, The Sunday Times said.
. . The disease may have caused the deaths of four children in the city-state last month and is suspected of killing a three-year-old in the neighboring south Malaysian state of Johor last week.
. . Some 857 cases had been reported since October 1ST. It's highly-contagious, spread through contact with nasal discharges, saliva, feces and fluid from blisters, and indirect contact with items used by an infected individual.
. . The disease is caused by any virus in a family of over 80. Symptoms are usually mild, but one strain, enterovirus 71, can be lethal. It killed over 70 children in Taiwan in 1998 and several in Malaysia in 1997.

People infected with herpes simplex, the virus that causes cold sores, were twice as likely to have a heart attack or die from heart disease as uninfected people, one study found.
. . A second study found that bacteria linked with heart disease ride into the circulatory system in immune-system cells. A third found that patients with symptoms of infection had poorer blood flow and were more likely to suffer the blood clots that cause heart attacks and strokes.

Kenya is building Africa's first condom factory, opening later this year. On top of that, President Moi has reversed his earlier position, and now calls AIDS a national disaster, and does not now oppose the use of condoms. 2M of Kenya's 30M people have the HIV virus. 500 die per day.

Probably due to the increased wetness of El Nino, there have been more U.S. cases of HantaVirus than ever (hemorragic symptoms, like Ebola). This will probably hold true for all the tropical diseases, particularly Cholera and Dengue Fever. A man in New Jersey got Malaria! Crops will get diseases too. Much of this year's corn was beset with a toxic mold.
With the extra heat, obviously, the "tropic" and "sub-tropic" areas move north. Northern treelines and altitude treelines will move too. The environments of all plants (moss to grasses to trees) will move, and they must also or go extinct, and dependent animals will move or die with them. The U.S. Forest Service has a lot of planning in motion and changes made already.

April, 00 - A 57-year-old Nigerian man has died of the highly infectious tropical disease Lassa Fever in the west German city of Wiesbaden, health authorities in the state of Hesse said. The fatality rate is about 15 to 20 percent. In January, a 23-year-old student died in the Bavarian town of Wuerzburg after contracting Lassa fever during a two-month tour of West Africa.

The CDC sez Asthma is now triple the rate we had twenty years ago. 17.3 million Americans. Cited as contributors: dirty air, exposure to more mold and cockroaches.

Influenza is still the most ominous. It's probably killed more than AIDS (I'll get the numbers).

90% of infectious disease deaths are of these six: Pneumonia, TB, Diarrheal diseases, Malaria, Measles, &... AIDS. Together, they cause 1500 deaths per hour--13 million a year.

[could this have been SARS?] Recently, a lethal influenza variant surfaced in Hong Kong. In 1997, 18 people came down with the virus, and six died from it! One-third! The source? Chickens, ducks and geese. Authorities in the region acted quickly and destroyed millions of poultry. If the Hong Kong strain had become pandemic, it is estimated that as many as 30 percent of the earth's population could have died from the virus itself or from secondary bacterial infections, like bronchitis.

France's Pasteur Institute said Thursday it had for the first time found traces of the lethal and mysterious Ebola virus in small, non-primate mammals -- an important step in discovering its source.

LEPROSY. The WHO (World Health Org) recorded 800,000 new leprosy patients around the world during the year 1998-99, of which 634,901 were found in India, while the Indian government's figure for April 1998 to March 1999 was 700,000. You thot it was extinct?

1-24-00: Worms may be the reason that poorer people living in developing countries have fewer bouts with certain diseases, researchers say.
Joel Weinstock of the University of Iowa suspects that a response triggered in the human immune system by the presence of worms may help guard people against inflammatory bowel syndrome and ulcerative colitis. In a recent study, after sufferers of these diseases agreed to quaff a cocktail of worm eggs, five out of six went into remission and remained symptom-free for up to five months.
Weinstock believes that the absence of worms in the gut may explain why ulcerative colitis and certain other colon diseases are, almost exclusively, diseases of the affluent. [Loss of an organism that we evolved with is tantamount to loss of an organ. Scientific tenet: "A successful parasite confers upon its host some survival advantage." If not, they kill the goose that lays the golden egg. ed.]

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