Soil And Food Crops Being Contaminated by Nanomaterials

A study says that man-made nanomaterials (MNMs), used in popular cosmetic products such as shampoos, gels, hair dyes and sunscreens, may also be contaminating the quality and yield of food crops. 
Nanomaterials (NMS) are synthesized by manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Their effects on human health and the environment are the subject of much scientific study.
"As MNMs are used more and more in consumer products, there is a higher likelihood that they will end up in wastewater treatment facilities," said John Priester, environmental scientist at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara. 
Conventionally-treated wastewater is a primary source of normally nutrient-rich organic materials applied to agricultural soil, and farmers beneficially use this treated water and the bio-solids from it as fertilizer, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported. 
Priester and his research team reasoned that no single study had before examined the full implications of environmental build up of MNMs for a soil-based food crop, according to a Bren School statement. 

They sought to fill the knowledge gap by fully growing soybean plants through the seed production stage in soil amended with high-production nanomaterials. 
They found that the two MNMs -- a cerium oxide powder (nano-CeO2) and zinc oxide (nano-ZnO)-- could profoundly alter soil-based food crop quality and yield. 
Priester and colleagues monitored plant growth by measuring stem length, leaf count and leaf cover. Leaf cover estimates total leaf area, which is affected by water stress and metal exposure and can indicate plant health. 
Most surprising to Priester was the high level of zinc in the leaves and beans of plants exposed to ZnO nanoparticles; the component metal was taken up and distributed throughout edible plant tissues. 
"Also, the shutdown of nitrogen fixation in root nodules at high CeO2 concentrations," Priester said, noting that nano-CeO2 diminished plant growth and yield. 
In the case of the nano-ZnO treatment, the food quality was affected. In the case of the nano-CeO2, soil fertility was compromised. 
Soybeans are the fifth-largest crop in global agricultural production and second-largest crop in the US. Moreover in 2009, the US exported enough of the crop to create a $29.6 billion domestic soybean economy, making it a good candidate for study. 
"These results indicate broader risks to the food supply," the researchers write. The environment could be affected even more since increased synthetic fertilizer would be required to offset lost nitrogen fixation, a process that soybeans and other legumes use to convert atmospheric nitrogen into natural fertilizer.
Source-IANS

 

Yoga Tips for the Common Cold

Everyone suffers from the common cold from time to time. While there is no cure for this bothersome illness, there are things that can be done to ease the symptoms, such as taking over the counter medications and yoga poses (asanas). Yoga is a great solution for the cold because it is all natural and does not have side effects that come along with some medicines. One of the many reasons I enjoy and appreciate yoga is that it can benefit the body and mind in so many ways. Continue reading to find out how asanas can help prevent you from becoming sick and tame symptoms of the common cold once you are already sick.

Signs and symptoms of the common cold may include the following:

A nose that is either runny and/or stuffy

Throat pain

Coughing

Mild body aches, including a headache

Sneezing

Eyes that water

Tiredness

Slight fever

Yoga may prevent sickness and improve the immune system

Some studies have shown that yoga strengthens the immune system, and this may be because performing this exercise has the ability to reduce the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone. Those with a strong immune system usually suffer less illnesses than those with weaker ones, especially those with auto immune disorders and the like.

Yoga practices that can aid in easing symptoms of the common cold

Several yoga practices can help calm symptoms of the common cold. The following are some actions that can be taken:

Use a neti pot: A neti pot cleanses the nasal passages with a solution of warm water and salt. This helps one to breathe easier since it removes mucus build up. To use a neti pot you should fill it up with a solution of 8-ounces of warm water and a quarter teaspoon of non-iodized salt. As you place the tip of the pot in one nostril, lean your head to the other side so the liquid comes out the other nostril. Be sure to use it in both the left and right nostril, one at a time. Those with high blood pressure or others conditions that limit salt consumption should use the neti pot without the use of salt. If you have any questions, be sure to contact your healthcare provider.

Chant: A study done in Sweden concluded that humming is a very powerful way to open the sinus passages. In addition, chanting helps to calm the body and mind, and it is an excellent way to begin a yoga session. To learn how to chant, watch an instructional video of a woman chanting om, which is a word means the sound of the universe.

Practice restorative yoga poses: Open the chest up by practicing the reclining bound angle pose and supported bridge pose.

Remember to rest when you are sick and drink plenty of fluids, such as water. Allow your body time to heal, and don't engage in high impact activities, such as jogging with a fever.

By: Rebecca Bardelli 
Source:Yahoonews

India Inc prefers Ayurvedic medicine

Demanding work hours and high stress levels are prompting more and more employees of India Inc to seek ayurvedic treatments like naturopathy, massages, acupuncture and acupressure instead of allopathic solutions, a survey says.

At least 72 per cent of surveyed that comprised corporate employees in cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kochi, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Pune, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Dehradun favoured ayurvedic methods to treat their ailments. Delhi ranked first, followed by Mumbai, Kochi, and Bangalore as those leading the trend.About 200 employees each were selected for the survey by business chamber ASSOCHAM from 18 sectors, majority of them being from the IT and BPO industries.The exercise revealed that youngsters are putting their faith on the alternative Indian system of medicines such as Panchkarma treatments, homeopathic and ayurvedic medicines, largely due to their lack of side effects.DN Sharma, a naturopathic expert, said: "The change in lifestyle we are witnessing has also changed the trend of diseases, both major and minor, including mental disorders. Since so far there are no allopath-based drugs to treat these lifestyle ailments, ayurvedic treatments are better options as they pose no side-effects."Such treatments are also useful for treating micro-wave exposure such as radiation emitted from cell phones, TVs and electronic items like microwave ovens, the member (naturopathy) from the Open University Health Science, Uttarakhand said.Some of the major treatments in ayurveda and spa centres are rejuvenation programmes and therapy (rasayana chikitsa), body immunisation and longevity treatment, body sudation (sweda karma), panchakarma treatment, and shirodhara treatment. But, the basic panchakarma treatment can help treat all kinds of illness, when accompanied with proper food intake.Little wonder then that over 65% of the respondents said that ayurveda medicines can treat them effectively and after seeing the amount of duplicate medicines and their side effects in allopathic treatments, they consider ayurveda a safer option.Over 68% people were found to be satisfied with efficacy of herbal drugs, as per the survey. In case of medical emergencies, 79% people opted for allopathic treatment, 20% favoured ayurvedic and only 1% people preferred homeopathy. In case of common ailments, 15% people backed allopathic treatment, 48% ayurvedic and 17% found solution in homeopathic medicines. About 10-12 % people knew use of house hold remedies, it added."With ayurveda, yoga, meditation, homeopathy and other such Indian systems of medicines, combined with the cultural tilt, India offers a range of services, which is unparalleled in comparison to any other country," pointed out DS Rawat, secretary general at the ASSOCHAM.

Source:The Pioneer

 

Indian companies get US FDA approval for generic versions of four blockbuster drugs: Jena

During the last two years, the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) has given approval to the generic versions of four blockbuster drugs to Indian companies, the Parliament was informed. “A blockbuster drug is one which has at least drug sale of US$ 1 bn and such drugs becoming off-patent in US market is a continuous process. US drug Authority (US FDA) regularly approves generic versions of such off-patented drugs. As informed by Pharmaceutical Export Promotion Council of India (Pharmexcil), generic version approvals have been given to Indian Companies by US FDA during 2010 and 2011 for four blockbuster drugs,”  Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Srikant Kumar Jena told Lok Sabha recently. The molecules approved thus are Lipitor (Atorvastatin), Plavix (clopidogrel), Seroquel (Quetiapine fumarate), and Zyprexa (olanzapine). “Though the price value of blockbuster drugs significantly decreases as a generic version, there is good opportunity for all generic companies who obtain product approvals and market the product in the US,” the Minister said. In another reply, he said the draft National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy (NPPP) 2011 was still under the review of the empowered Group of Ministers (GoM). “The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) has prepared a draft NPPP-2011 based on the criteria of essentiality and requirements as stipulated by the Ministry of Health & Family welfare. The draft NPPP, 2011 was circulated among the concerned Ministries/Stakeholders. The draft policy was also available for comments of any other interested person on the Department’s website www.pharmaceuticals.gov.in till 30.11.2011. The view/inputs received on the draft NPPP, 2011 were examined and the matter was placed before the Group of Ministers (GoM) which met on 25.4.2012. Subsequent to this two meeting have been held by the GoM,” he said. Source:Pharmabiz

Rice University's nanoparticles reboot blood flow in brain-injury victims

A nanoparticle developed at Rice University and it tested in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) may bring great benefits to the emergency treatment of brain-injury victims, even those with mild injuries. Combined polyethylene glycol-hydrophilic carbon clusters (PEG-HCC), already being tested to enhance cancer treatment, are also adept antioxidants. In animal studies, injections of PEG-HCC during initial treatment after an injury helped restore balance to the brain’s vascular system. The results were reported this month in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano. A PEG-HCC infusion that quickly stabilizes blood flow in the brain would be a significant advance for emergency care workers and battlefield medics, said Rice chemist and co-author James Tour. “This might be a first line of defense against reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are always overstimulated during a medical trauma, whether that be to an accident victim or an injured soldier,” said Tour, Rice’s T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. “They’re certainly exacerbated when there’s trauma with massive blood loss.” In a traumatic brain injury, cells release an excessive amount of an ROS known as superoxide (SO) into the blood. Superoxides are toxic free radicals, molecules with one unpaired electron, that the immune system normally uses to kill invading microorganisms. Healthy organisms balance SO with superoxide dismutase (SOD), an enzyme that neutralizes it. But even mild brain trauma can release superoxides at levels that overwhelm the brain’s natural defenses. “Superoxide is the most deleterious of the reactive oxygen species, as it’s the progenitor of many of the others,” Tour said. “If you don’t deal with SO, it forms peroxynitrite and hydrogen peroxide. SO is the upstream precursor to many of the downstream problems.” SO affects the autoregulatory mechanism that manages the sensitive circulation system in the brain. Normally, vessels dilate when blood pressure is low and constrict when high to maintain an equilibrium, but a lack of regulation can lead to brain damage beyond what may have been caused by the initial trauma. “There are many facets of brain injury that ultimately determine how much damage there will be,” said Thomas Kent, the paper’s co-author, a BCM professor of neurology and chief of neurology at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. “One is the initial injury, and that’s pretty much done in minutes. But a number of things that happen later often make things worse, and that’s when we can intervene.” Kent cited as an example the second burst of free radicals that can occur after post-injury resuscitation. “That’s what we can treat: the further injury that happens because of the necessity of restoring somebody’s blood pressure, which provides oxygen that leads to more damaging free radicals.” In tests, the researchers found PEG-HCC nanoparticles immediately and completely quenched superoxide activity and allowed the autoregulatory system to quickly regain its balance. Tour said ROS molecules readily combine with PEG-HCCs, generating “an innocuous carbon double bond, so it’s really radical annihilation. There’s no such mechanism in biology.” While an SOD enzyme can alter only one superoxide molecule at a time, a single PEG-HCC about the size of a large protein at 2-3 nanometers wide and 30-40 nanometers long can quench hundreds or thousands. “This is an occasion where a nano-sized package is doing something that no small drug or protein could do, underscoring the efficacy of active nano-based drugs.” “This is the most remarkably effective thing I’ve ever seen,” Kent said. “Literally within minutes of injecting it, the cerebral blood flow is back to normal, and we can keep it there with just a simple second injection. In the end, we’ve normalized the free radicals while preserving nitric oxide (which is essential to autoregulation). These particles showed the antioxidant mechanism we had previously identified as predictive of effectiveness.” The first clues to PEG-HCC’s antioxidant powers came during nanoparticle toxicity studies with the MD Anderson Cancer Center. “We noticed they lowered alkaline phosphatase in the liver,” Tour said. “One of our Baylor colleagues saw this and said, ‘Hey, this looks like it’s actually causing the liver cells to live longer than normal.’ “Oxidative destruction of liver cells is normal, so that got us to thinking these might be really good radical scavengers,” Tour said. Kent said the nanoparticles as tested showed no signs of toxicity, but any remaining concerns should be answered by further tests. The researchers found the half-life of PEG-HCCs in the blood – the amount of time it takes for half the particles to leave the body – to be between two and three hours. Tests with different cell types in vitro showed no toxicity, he said. The research has implications for stroke victims and organ transplant patients as well, Tour said. Source:Pharmabiz

Can Forgiveness Make You Physically Healthier?

Forgiving your enemies may be good for your soul, but a series of recent studies are proving that the act has quantifiable physical benefits as well.GOOD reports that medical research into the psychological benefits of forgiveness only dates back to the 1980s, but in recent years the subject has been the focus of studies investigating its physiological impact on health.Kathleen Lawler-Row, head of psychology at East Carolina University, has completed several studies on forgiveness,  and found that when people forgive those who have betrayed them, they exhibit a marked decrease in blood pressure. Conversely, participants who refuse to forgive others’ transgressions experience blood pressure spikes surrounding  "acute, stress-induced, cardiovascular reactivity"―which is associated with hypertension and coronary heart disease.Other studies seem to confirm decreased stress levels in forgiving people. In addition to lower blood pressure, studies like the one from the John Templeton Foundation, found forgiving people exhibited decreased levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. And researchers at NYU found that cardiac patients’ who were forgiving demonstrated not only less anxiety and depression, but were found to have a lowered risk of  repeat cardiac episodes.Finally, it’s not just the human heart and nervous system that can benefit from letting things go. Forgiveness may boost immune systems as well. According to Duke University researchers, patients living with HIV who chose to forgive others’ past betrayals exhibited positive changes in their immune status, despite experiencing no changes in their antiretroviral drug regimens.

Source:Yahoonews

Making Friends Easier for Women

A survey seems to have given better points to women at making long-lasting friends and forging life bonds. 
One out of three women said their best friends were those they met during school. Only one out of six men is best friends with a school friend, the survey revealed. 
Men mostly made friends at university or at work. 
As time goes by, the number of friendships dropped and most people had only three close friends on average by the age of 60. 
  

Condition Associated With Aging Found to be a Disease Altering Brain Function

Leukoaraiosis, a condition associated with aging in which oxygen deprived regions of brain show up as white dots on MRI scans, is in fact a disease affecting the elderly which alters their brain function, according to a new study conducted by researchers at Mayo Clinic. Results of their study are published online in the journal Radiology. 
"There has been a lot of controversy over these commonly identified abnormalities on MRI scans and their clinical impact," said Kirk M. Welker, M.D., assistant professor of radiology in the College of Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "In the past, leukoaraiosis has been considered a benign part of the aging process, like gray hair and wrinkles." 
Leukoaraiosis, also called small vessel ischemia and often referred to as unidentified bright objects or "UBOs" on brain scans, is a condition in which diseased blood vessels lead to small areas of damage in the white matter of the brain. The lesions are common in the brains of people over the age of 60, although the amount of disease varies among individuals. 
"We know that aging is a risk factor for leukoaraiosis, and we suspect that high blood pressure may also play a role," Dr. Welker said. 
Dr. Welker's team performed functional MRI (fMRI) scans on cognitively normal elderly participants recruited from the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging between 2006 and 2010. In 18 participants, the amount of leukoaraiosis was a moderate 25 milliliters, and in 18 age-matched control participants, the amount of disease was less than five milliliters. 
The patients were imaged in an MRI scanner as they performed a semantic decision task by identifying word pairs and a visual perception task that involved differentiating straight from diagonal lines. fMRI is a special type of magnetic resonance imaging that measures metabolic changes in an active part of the brain. 
Although both groups performed the tasks with similar success, the fMRI scans revealed different brain activation patterns between the two groups. Compared to members of the control group, patients with moderate levels of leukoaraiosis had atypical activation patterns, including decreased activation in areas of the brain involved in language processing during the semantic decision task and increased activation in the visual-spatial areas of the brain during the visual perception task. 
"Different systems of the brain respond differently to disease," Dr. Welker explained. "White matter damage affects connections within the brain's language network, which leads to an overall reduction in network activity." 
He pointed out that identifying leukoaraiosis in the brain is important, both for individual patients undergoing brain mapping for surgery or other treatments and for research studies. 
For improved neurological health, Dr. Welker said efforts should be taken to prevent leukoaraiosis from occurring. 
"Our results add to a growing body of evidence that this is a disease we need to pay attention to," he said. "Leukoaraiosis is not a benign manifestation of aging but an important pathologic condition that alters brain function." 
Source-Eurekalert

 

Pregnant Women Warned Against Taking Ayurvedic Rasa Medicine Pills in US

A study by US researchers have warned pregnant women against taking Ayurvedic medicine, after they found high levels of lead in some of the traditional pills. 
New York City health authorities probed six cases since last year of women -- all but one born in India -- found to be at high risk of lead poisoning due to Ayurvedic medicine, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. 
Ayurveda, or long-life science, is a system of traditional medicine developed over thousands of years in India. 
The pills -- none made in the United States -- are occasionally contaminated during manufacturing but some are "rasa shastra," the Indian practice of intentionally adding metals, minerals or gems to medicine. 
The medicines are advertised as helping with pregnancy and at least one boasted that it would boost the chances of having a boy instead of a girl, said the report by the US government health organization. 
While the six women have not shown symptoms, authorities found them to be at high risk of lead poisoning, which can damage the brain, kidneys and nervous and reproductive systems. 
"Pregnant women present a unique concern, because lead exposure can adversely affect the health of both mother and child. Fetal lead exposure increases the risks for low birth weight, developmental delay, reduced intelligence and behavioral problems," it said. 
The products contained up to 2.4 percent lead and some also contained mercury and arsenic, which are also considered dangerous for consumption. 
The US Food and Drug Administration warned in 2008 to use caution when taking Ayurvedic medicines -- especially those sold over the Internet -- as they are generally not approved by regulators. 
The researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that health care providers should ask patients about their use of foreign-made medicine and consider administering tests for metal exposure. 
"The cases of lead poisoning among the six pregnant women underscore the importance of risk assessment for lead exposure and blood lead testing in at-risk populations," the report said. 
Source-AFP

 

Egg yolk consumption almost as bad as smoking when it comes to atherosclerosis

Newly published research led by Dr. David Spence of Western University, Canada, shows that eating egg yolks accelerates atherosclerosis in a manner similar to smoking cigarettes. Surveying more than 1200 patients, Dr. Spence found regular consumption of egg yolks is about two-thirds as bad as smoking when it comes to increased build-up of carotid plaque, a risk factor for stroke and heart attack. The research is published online in the journalAtherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis, also called coronary artery disease, is a disorder of the arteries where plaques, aggravated by cholesterol, form on the inner arterial wall. Plaque rupture is the usual cause of most heart attacks and many strokes. The study looked at data from 1231 men and women, with a mean age of 61.5, who were patients attending vascular prevention clinics at London Health Sciences Centre's University Hospital. Ultrasound was used to establish a measurement of total plaque area and questionnaires were filled out regarding their lifestyle and medications including pack-years of smoking (number of packs per day of cigarettes times the number of years), and the number of egg yolks consumed per week times the number of years consumed (egg yolk-years).

The researchers found carotid plaque area increased linearly with age after age 40, but increased exponentially with pack-years of smoking and egg yolk-years. In other words, compared to age, both tobacco smoking and egg yolk consumption accelerate atherosclerosis. The study also found those eating three or more yolks a week had significantly more plaque area than those who ate two or fewer yolks per week.

"The mantra 'eggs can be part of a healthy diet for healthy people' has confused the issue. It has been known for a long time that a high cholesterol intake increases the risk of cardiovascular events, and egg yolks have a very high cholesterol content. In diabetics, an egg a day increases coronary risk by two to five-fold," says Dr. Spence, a Professor of Neurology at Western's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and the Director of its Stroke Prevention and Atherosclerosis Research Centre (SPARC) at the Robarts Research Institute. "What we have shown is that with aging, plaque builds up gradually in the arteries of Canadians, and egg yolks make it build up faster - about two-thirds as much as smoking. In the long haul, egg yolks are not okay for most Canadians."

Dr. Spence adds the effect of egg yolk consumption over time on increasing the amount of plaque in the arteries was independent of sex, cholesterol, blood pressure, smoking, body mass index and diabetes. And while he says more research should be done to take in possible confounders such as exercise and waist circumference, he stresses that regular consumption of egg yolk should be avoided by persons at risk of cardiovascular disease.

Source:University of Western Ontario 

For mitochondria, bigger may not be better

Researchers find that optimal length of mitochondria in neurons is essential to preventing onset of Alzheimer's and other tau-related diseases

Goldilocks was on to something when she preferred everything "just right." Harvard Medical School researchers have found that when it comes to the length of mitochondria, the power-producing organelles, applying the fairy tale's mantra is crucial to the health of a cell. More specifically, abnormalities in mitochondrial length promote the development of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.

"There had been a fair amount of interest in mitochondria in Alzheimer's and tau-related diseases, but causality was unknown," said Brian DuBoff, first author of the study and a post-doctoral research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital.

"Ultimately, a deeper understanding of the relationship between mitochondrial function and Alzheimer's may guide us to develop more targeted therapies in the future," said Mel Feany, HMS professor of pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and senior author of the paper.

The findings will be published online in the August 23 issue of Neuron.

Tau-related diseases are caused when tau, a protein most commonly found in neurons, malfunctions. Tau binds to microtubules in cells, a process known as stabilization. This binding is necessary so the microtubules can help maintain cell structure and aid in intracellular processes such as transporting molecules. When tau is defective, most often due to changes introduced during protein synthesis, it can accumulate in neurofibrillary tangles, one of the primary markers of Alzheimer's.

In this particular study, conducted in fruit flies with defective tau protein, DuBoff found that the mitochondria in the brain cells of these flies were elongated compared with the mitochondria in flies with normal tau. The elongation, he observed, adversely affected mitochondrial function.

"Normally, one mitochondrion will split into two, two mitochondria will join into one, and that's a critical process for the health and stability of the mitochondria," said DuBoff. "This mitochondrial dynamic happens continuously in almost all cells. Interruption of this process leads to cell death, and loss of nerve cells in the brain results in loss of function—memory loss and difficulty in comprehension and coordination." The presence of defective tau, then, interrupts the functioning of mitochondria and contributes to neurodegeneration.

To further observe how mitochondrial dynamics were affected by the presence of defective tau, the researchers modified two sets of genes in human-tau-expressing flies, one that controls how mitochondria divide and another that guides how they come together. When the expression of the gene that causes mitochondrial lengthening, or fusion, was increased, the level of neurodegeneration in the flies increased and the flies were sicker. Conversely, when the expression of the gene that causes mitochondrial division, or fission, was increased, the defect reversed and the flies' condition improved.

The study also showed that, in addition to tau, two other key proteins influenced the neurodegenerative process: DRP1, which helps in the fission of mitochondria, and actin, which is essential to maintaining cell structure and movement. A previous study in Feany's lab had shown that the presence of defective tau hampers the activity of actin. With this knowledge, the researchers were able to piece together the relationship among the three proteins. DRP1 and actin are interdependent: the regulatory state of actin is essential for DRP1 and mitochondria to come together, thus preserving mitochondrial dynamics. But the presence of defective tau harms this relationship, rendering DRP1 incapable of maintaining mitochondrial dynamics, which ultimately leads to neurodegeneration.

"We have a good idea now of where the process starts. We know it ends with neurodegeneration, and with this study, we know some milestones along the way," said Feany. "But we still have to fill in the gaps and learn more about DRP1 and its role in this process."

"Many studies begin by looking at a normal biological process and then finding ways it goes wrong," said DuBoff. "We did the opposite. We started with the disease model, identified this phenomenon of DRP1 and mitochondrial dysfunction, and then followed it back to the basic biological regulation of this process."

Astrocytes control the generation of new neurons from neural stem cells

Astrocytes are cells that have many functions in the central nervous system, such as the control of neuronal synapses, blood flow, or the brain's response to neurotrauma or stroke.

Reduces brain tissue damage

Prof. Pekny's laboratory together with collaborators have earlier demonstrated that astrocytes reduce the brain tissue damage after stroke and that the integration of transplanted neural stem cells can be largely improved by modulating the activity of astrocytes.

Generation of new neurons

In their current study, the Sahlgrenska Academy researchers show how astrocytes control the generation of new neurons in the brain. An important contribution to this project came from Åbo Academy, one of Sahlgrenska's traditional collaborative partners.

"In the brain, astrocytes control how many new neurons are formed from neural stem cells and survive to integrate into the existing neuronal networks. Astrocytes do this by secreting specific molecules but also by much less understood direct cell-cell interactions with stem cells", says Prof. Milos Pekny.

Important regulator

"Astrocytes are in physical contact with neural stem cells and we have shown that they signal through the Notch pathway to stem cells to keep the birth rate of new neurons low. We have also shown that the intermediate filament system of astrocytes is an important regulator of this process. It seems that astrocyte intermediate filaments can be used as a target to increase the birthrate of new neurons."

Target for future therapies

"We are starting to understand some of the cellular and molecular mechanisms behind the control of neurogenesis. Neurogenesis is one of the components of brain plasticity, which plays a role in the learning process as well as in the recovery after brain injury or stroke. This work helps us to understand how plasticity and regenerative response can be therapeutically promoted in the future", says Prof. Milos Pekny.

Source:University of Gothenburg 

University of Minnesota engineering researchers discover new non-invasive method for diagnosing epilepsy

A team of University of Minnesota biomedical engineers and researchers from Mayo Clinic published a groundbreaking study today that outlines how a new type of non-invasive brain scan taken immediately after a seizure gives additional insight into possible causes and treatments for epilepsy patients. The new findings could specifically benefit millions of people who are unable to control their epilepsy with medication.The research was published online today in Brain, a leading international journal of neurology.

The study’s findings include:

• Important data about brain function can be gathered through non-invasive methods, not only during a seizure, but immediately after a seizure.
• The frontal lobe of the brain is most involved in severe seizures.
• Seizures in the temporal lobe are most common among adults. The new technique used in the study will help determine the side of the brain where the seizures originate.

“This is the first-ever study where new non-invasive methods were used to study patients after a seizure instead of during a seizure,” said Bin He, a biomedical engineering professor in the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering and senior author of the study. “It’s really a paradigm shift for research in epilepsy.”
Epilepsy affects nearly 3 million Americans and 50 million people worldwide. While medications and other treatments help many people of all ages who live with epilepsy, about 1 million people in the U.S. and 17 million people worldwide continue to have seizures that can severely limit their lives.
The biggest challenge for medical researchers is to locate the part of the brain responsible for the seizures to determine possible treatments. In the past, most research has focused on studying patients while they were having a seizure, or what is technically known as the “ictal” phase of a seizure. Some of these studies involved invasive methods such as surgery to collect data.
In the new study, researchers from the University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic used a novel approach by studying the brains of 28 patients immediately after seizures, or what is technically know as the “postictal” phase of a seizure. They used a specialized type of non-invasive EEG with 76 electrodes attached to the scalp for gathering data in contrast to most previous research that used 32 electrodes. The researchers used specialized imaging technology to gather data about the patient. The findings may lead to innovative means of locating the brain regions responsible for seizures in individual patients using non-invasive strategies.
“The imaging technology that we developed here at the University of Minnesota allowed us to tackle this research and gather several thousand data points that helped us determine our findings,” He said. “The technical innovation was a big part of what helped us make this discovery.”
He, who was recently appointed the director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Engineering in Medicine, said this study was also a good example of a true partnership between engineering and medicine to further medical research.
“The innovations in engineering combined with collaborations with clinicians at Mayo Clinic made this research a reality,” He said.
In addition to He, members of the research team included University of Minnesota biomedical engineering Ph.D. student Lin Yang; Gregory A. Worrell, Mayo Clinic, Neurology and Division of Epilepsy; Cindy Nelson, Mayo Clinic, Neurology; and Benjamin Brinkmann, Mayo Clinic, Neurology. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Source:University of Minnesota

Stem Cells - New Findings

The role of a protein called Mof in preserving the 'stem-ness' of stem cells has been discovered by scientists. 
Their results show that Mof plays a key role in the "epigenetics" of stem cells -- that is, helping stem cells read and use their DNA. One of the key questions in stem cell research is what keeps stem cells in a kind of eternal youth, and then allows them to start "growing up" to be a specific type of tissue. 
Dou, an associate professor of pathology and biological chemistry, has studied Mof for several years, puzzling over the intricacies of its role in stem cell biology. 
She and her team have zeroed in on the factors that add temporary tags to DNA when it's coiled around tiny spools called histones. In order to read their DNA, cells have to unwind it a bit from those spools, allowing the gene-reading mechanisms to get access to the genetic code and transcribe it. The temporary tags added by Mof act as tiny beacons, guiding the "reader" mechanism to the right place. 
"Simply put, Mof regulates the core transcription mechanism – without it you can't be a stem cell," says Dou. "There are many such proteins, called histone acetyltransferases, in cells – but only MOF is important in undifferentiated cells." 
Dou and her team also have published on another protein involved in DNA transcription, called WDR5, that places tags that are important during transcription. But Mof appears to control the process that actually allows cells to determine which genes it wants to read – a crucial function for stem-ness. "Without Mof, embryonic stem cells lost their self-renewal capability and started to differentiate," she explains. 
The new findings may have particular importance for work on induced pluripotent stem cells – the kind of stem cells that don't come from an embryo, but are made from "adult" tissue. 
IPCS research holds great promise for disease treatment because it could allow a patient to be treated with stem cells made from their own tissue. But the current way of making IPSCs from tissue involves a process that uses a cancer-causing gene – a step that might give doctors and patients pause. 
Dou says that further work on Mof might make it possible to stop using that potentially harmful approach. But further research will be needed. 
What they will focus on is how Mof marks the DNA structures called chromatin to keep parts of the genome readily accessible. In stem cells, scientists have shown, many areas of DNA are kept open for access – probably because stem cells need to use their DNA to make many proteins that keep them from 'growing up.' 
Once a stem cell starts to differentiate, or become a certain specialized type of cell, parts of the DNA close up and aren't as accessible. Many scientific teams have studied this "selective silencing" and the factors that cause stem cells to start specializing by reading only certain genes. But few have looked at the factors that facilitate broad-range DNA transcription to preserve stem-ness. 
"Mof marks the areas that need to stay open and maintains the potential to become anything," Dou explains. Its crucial role in many species is hinted at by the fact that the gene to make Mof has the same sequence in fruit flies and mice. 
"If you think about stem cell biology, the self-renewal is one aspect that makes stem cells unique and powerful, and the differentiation is another," says Dou. "People have looked a lot at differentiation to make cells useful for therapy in the future – but the stem cell itself is actually pretty fascinating. So far, Mof is the only histone acetyltransferase found to support the stemness of embryonic stem cells." 
Source-Eurekalert

 

Recent Research on Sexual activity

A new study has unveiled the health benefits for women who indulge in oral sex. The study claims that the "mood-altering chemicals" in the semen is good for women's health and makes women feel happier. 
The State University of New York study, which scientists carried out via survey rather than through practical experiment, compared the sex lives of 293 females to their mental health. 
It follows research, which shows that seminal fluid contains chemicals that elevates mood, increases affection, induces sleep and also contains at least three anti-depressants. 
The researchers also claimed that women who have regular unprotected sex are less depressed and perform better on cognitive tests. 
Semen contains another of chemicals along with spermatozoa, including cortisol, which is known to increase affection, estrone, which elevates mood and oxytocin, which also elevates mood, the Daily Mail reported. 
It also contains thyrotropin-releasing hormone (another antidepressant), melatonin (a sleep-inducing agent), and even serotonin (perhaps the best-known antidepressant neurotransmitter). 
Given these ingredients - and this is just a small sample of the mind-altering "drugs" found in human semen - Researchers Gallup and Burch, along with the psychologist Steven Platek, hypothesised that women having unprotected sex should be less depressed than suitable control participants. 
To investigate whether semen has antidepressant effects, the authors rounded up 293 college females from the university's Albany campus, who agreed to fill out an anonymous questionnaire about various aspects of their sex lives. 
Recent sexual activity without condoms was used as an indirect measure of seminal plasma circulating in the woman's body. 
Each participant also completed the Beck Depression Inventory, a commonly used clinical measure of depressive symptoms. 
The most significant findings from this study were that, even after adjusting for frequency of sexual intercourse, women who engaged in sex and "never" used condoms showed significantly fewer depressive symptoms than did those who "usually" or "always" used condoms. 
Importantly, these chronically condom-less, sexually active women also evidenced fewer depressive symptoms than did those who abstained from sex altogether. 
By contrast, sexually active heterosexual women, including self-described "promiscuous" women, who used condoms were just as depressed as those practicing total abstinence. 
The research suggests it is not just that women who are having sex are simply happier, but happiness appears to be a function of the seminal fluid pulsing through one's veins. 
The study is published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Source-ANI

 

Allopaths’ bitter pill: Maharashtra has more homeopaths and ayurveds

The state government's recent proposal seeking to allow non-allopathy doctors to practise modern medicine after a one-year course in pharmacology has stirred a hornet's nest. The proposal comes at a time when Maharashtra has the dubious distinction of having the highest number of ayurveda and homeopathy colleges in the country. For every doctor practising allopathy in the state, there are two practising ayurveda and homeopathy.Experts say the state's move is intended to attract more students towards private ayurveda and homeopathy colleges, most of which are running courses with empty classrooms and negligible jobs to offer. Else, the state may have very little to explain why the urgent need to boost modern medicine and produce more allopathy doctors was conveniently overlooked. These numbers could probably put things into perspective. There are roughly 90,000 registered practitioners of modern medicine in the state, but 80,000 ayurveda, 58,000 homeopathy and over 5,000 unani doctors. In short, every third doctor in the state has graduated in one of the alternative systems of medicine.

Source:TNN

Prostate cancer survival rates improved since introduction of PSA testing

The routine use of prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing for screening and monitoring prostate cancer has led to early and more sensitive detection of the disease. A new study published in The Journal of Urology® reports that in the "PSA era," survival has improved for patients with newly diagnosed prostate cancer that has spread to the bones or other parts of the body and the disparity between African American and Caucasian men has been resolved.

"Our analysis indicates an overall improvement in risk adjusted survival rates for non-African American and African American men. Of note is the resolution of disparity in survival between the races found in earlier studies," says lead investigator Ian M. Thompson, Jr., MD, Director of the Cancer Therapy and Research Center, a National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Center, and Professor in the Department of Urology at the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, TX.

The Southwest Oncology Group, a National Cancer Institute (NCI) sponsored organization that conducts clinical trials in adult cancers, has performed a series of clinical trials over the last three decades that evaluated patient survival after androgen deprivation treatment (ADT) for prostate cancer. Two of the trials took place before, and one took place after the introduction of PSA screening. "These sequential trials provide an opportunity to address the question of whether survival has improved since the advent of widespread PSA screening and follow-up testing," says Dr. Thompson. Patient populations and eligibility criteria were comparable across the three studies, which enrolled patients from cancer centers around the country. Patients in all three trials received similar ADT treatments.

Median survival in trial S8494, which enrolled patients from 1985 to 1986, was 30 months, and median survival in trial S8894, which enrolled patients from 1989 to 1994, was 33 months. In contrast, median survival in trial S9346, which enrolled patients from 1995 to 2009, was 49 months. A 30% decreased risk of death was found in the most recent trial (S9346) from the previous trial (S8894).

The interaction of various risk factors, such as extensive versus minimal disease, older age, race, and body mass index was assessed. In S8494 the median survival for African American men was 27 months, while in S9346, the survival rate was 48 months, which is very close to that of white men.

Dr. Thompson notes that African American men had poorer results in the earlier studies despite receiving treatment in a carefully overseen clinical trial. "When we evaluated ZIP code summary information regarding income and education, there was no shift in socioeconomic status over time. We hypothesize that this improvement is based on greater awareness of prostate cancer and improved health seeking behavior in African American men." However, African American men have a two- to three-fold greater incidence of newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer compared to white men, which contributes to a similarly increased mortality rate. "A greater effort is needed to eliminate disparities in prostate cancer," he says.

Dr. Thompson concludes, "While not all of these welcome improvements can be attributed strictly to PSA testing, without a doubt it has played a role in extending many lives,"

Source:Elsevier Health Sciences 

New insights into salt transport in the kidney

Sodium chloride, better known as salt, is vital for the organism, and the kidneys play a crucial role in the regulation of sodium balance. However, the underlying mechanisms of sodium balance are not yet completely understood. Researchers of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the University of Kiel have now deciphered the function of a gene in the kidney and have thus gained new insights into this complex regulation process (PNAS Early Edition, doi/10.1073/pnas.1203834109)*.

In humans, the kidneys filter around 1700 liters of blood every day, of which 180 liters are collected as primary urine and ultimately one to two liters of urine are excreted. The kidneys thus wash toxic waste products out of the body, but retain some useful substances and reintroduce them into the body, thus simultaneously regulating the salt and water balance.

Molecular velcro

In the study just published by Dr. Tilman Breiderhoff, Prof. Thomas Willnow (both MDC), as well as Dr. Nina Himmerkus and Prof. Markus Bleich (both of the University of Kiel) and Dr. Dominik Müller (Charité) the focus is on the claudin-10 gene, which is expressed in a specific segment of the kidney, in Henle's loop. In the thick ascending limb of this loop, , a large part of the filtered sodium chloride, as well as calcium and magnesium are reabsorbed. The gene product under investigation, the claudin 10 protein, belongs to a family of proteins that connect the epithelial cells which cover the inner and outer surfaces of the body and stick them together like velcro. Claudins, however, also form pores, through which ions and substances are transported between the cells.

"If these transport processes are disturbed, this can lead to serious loss of function of the kidneys," Dr. Breiderhoff explained. As example he cited various human hereditary diseases in which either absorption of table salt (Bartter syndrome) or of calcium and magnesium (familial hypomagnesemia with hypercalciuria and nephrocalcinosis – FHHNC) is disturbed. The second disease is characterized by a lack of magnesium in the blood and an excess of calcium in the urine, which leads to calcification of the kidneys. It is caused by mutations in one of two genes (claudin 16 or claudin 19), which also belong to the gene family of the claudins.

The researchers have now demonstrated in mice that the claudin-10 gene is involved in the reabsorption of salt in the kidney. If the gene in the kidney is deactivated, the reabsorption of sodium is impaired, but the reabsorption of calcium and magnesium is increased. The consequence is that the mice have elevated magnesium levels in the blood, and excess calcium is deposited in the kidney. Simultaneously, the urine volume is increased because the kidneys of the mice cannot reabsorb enough water, a sign that the recovery of salt is disturbed.

Source:Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers 

Study helps pancreatic cancer patients make hard choices

Every year, nearly 45,000 Americans are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The odds against those stricken by the disease are truly dismal; pancreatic cancer almost always kills within two years after diagnosis, no matter how it is treated. Even aggressive intervention with chemotherapy, radiation or surgery rarely yields more than an extra month to a year of survival, depending on the stage of the disease.

This raises a tough question: should patients who know they are going to die soon spend a substantial amount of what little time they have left undergoing aggressive and difficult treatment — treatment likely to bring them only a brief period of additional life?

"It's about balancing quality and quantity of life, really," said Dr. Casey Boyd, a University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston surgery resident and lead author of a paper analyzing the problem in the current issue ofAnnals of Surgical Oncology. "For pancreatic cancer we know the quantity of life is short, so maximizing the quality of life is important — and the best way we can do that is to give patients concrete data that they can look at and use in their treatment decisions."

Boyd and her colleagues approached the issue by drawing on the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database, examining SEER records for 25,476 pancreatic cancer patients and focusing on two factors that directly affect patients' lives: hospital days and days spent in medical care. (Hospital days were days spent as hospital inpatients, while medical care days included days in the hospital as well as other days on which the patient visited a physician, underwent a diagnostic test, or received a treatment).

"This study is the first to bring together hospital and medical care days in pancreatic cancer patients with stage, treatment and survival, and it gives us a quantitative look at the whole experience of a patient with pancreatic cancer," Boyd said. "We hope that physicians can use the information in this paper to give patients what they need to make critical decisions."

For example, Boyd said, a doctor could draw on the paper to counsel a patient with metastatic pancreatic cancer — the most common and deadly type. "The physician could say, if you have chemotherapy you may live four to six weeks longer, but a lot of that time you're going to be in the hospital, or getting a test, or getting a needle poked in your arm for your chemotherapy," she said. "Some patients may say, I want that, I want the most life that you can give me."

Others, she noted, might make a different choice if given an accurate picture of the treatment experience.

"They might say, it's not really worth it to me — it's a few extra weeks, but they may be miserable weeks," Boyd said. "They may decide not to have any treatment and maybe just have hospice, or just spend time with their family."

The ability to help patients make such difficult decisions was the main goal of the study, according to Boyd.

"Really, this paper is about empowering the patient," she said. "We want to provide them with the information they need to make their own personalized treatment decisions."

Source:University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston 

 

Nanoparticles reboot blood flow in brain

A nanoparticle developed at Rice University and tested in collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) may bring great benefits to the emergency treatment of brain-injury victims, even those with mild injuries.Combined polyethylene glycol-hydrophilic carbon clusters (PEG-HCC), already being tested to enhance cancer treatment, are also adept antioxidants. In animal studies, injections of PEG-HCC during initial treatment after an injury helped restore balance to the brain’s vascular system.The results were reported this month in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano.A PEG-HCC infusion that quickly stabilizes blood flow in the brain would be a significant advance for emergency care workers and battlefield medics, said Rice chemist and co-author James Tour.“This might be a first line of defense against reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are always overstimulated during a medical trauma, whether that be to an accident victim or an injured soldier,” said Tour, Rice’s T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. “They’re certainly exacerbated when there’s trauma with massive blood loss.”In a traumatic brain injury, cells release an excessive amount of an ROS known as superoxide (SO) into the blood. Superoxides are toxic free radicals, molecules with one unpaired electron, that the immune system normally uses to kill invading microorganisms. Healthy organisms balance SO with superoxide dismutase (SOD), an enzyme that neutralizes it. But even mild brain trauma can release superoxides at levels that overwhelm the brain’s natural defenses.“Superoxide is the most deleterious of the reactive oxygen species, as it’s the progenitor of many of the others,” Tour said. “If you don’t deal with SO, it forms peroxynitrite and hydrogen peroxide. SO is the upstream precursor to many of the downstream problems.”SO affects the autoregulatory mechanism that manages the sensitive circulation system in the brain. Normally, vessels dilate when blood pressure is low and constrict when high to maintain an equilibrium, but a lack of regulation can lead to brain damage beyond what may have been caused by the initial trauma.“There are many facets of brain injury that ultimately determine how much damage there will be,” said Thomas Kent, the paper’s co-author, a BCM professor of neurology and chief of neurology at the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston. “One is the initial injury, and that’s pretty much done in minutes. But a number of things that happen later often make things worse, and that’s when we can intervene.”Kent cited as an example the second burst of free radicals that can occur after post-injury resuscitation. “That’s what we can treat: the further injury that happens because of the necessity of restoring somebody’s blood pressure, which provides oxygen that leads to more damaging free radicals.”In tests, the researchers found PEG-HCC nanoparticles immediately and completely quenched superoxide activity and allowed the autoregulatory system to quickly regain its balance. Tour said ROS molecules readily combine with PEG-HCCs, generating “an innocuous carbon double bond, so it’s really radical annihilation. There’s no such mechanism in biology.” While an SOD enzyme can alter only one superoxide molecule at a time, a single PEG-HCC about the size of a large protein at 2-3 nanometers wide and 30-40 nanometers long can quench hundreds or thousands. “This is an occasion where a nano-sized package is doing something that no small drug or protein could do, underscoring the efficacy of active nano-based drugs.”“This is the most remarkably effective thing I’ve ever seen,” Kent said. “Literally within minutes of injecting it, the cerebral blood flow is back to normal, and we can keep it there with just a simple second injection. In the end, we’ve normalized the free radicals while preserving nitric oxide (which is essential to autoregulation). These particles showed the antioxidant mechanism we had previously identified as predictive of effectiveness.”The first clues to PEG-HCC’s antioxidant powers came during nanoparticle toxicity studies with the MD Anderson Cancer Center. “We noticed they lowered alkaline phosphatase in the liver,” Tour said. “One of our Baylor colleagues saw this and said, ‘Hey, this looks like it’s actually causing the liver cells to live longer than normal.’“Oxidative destruction of liver cells is normal, so that got us to thinking these might be really good radical scavengers,” Tour said.Kent said the nanoparticles as tested showed no signs of toxicity, but any remaining concerns should be answered by further tests. The researchers found the half-life of PEG-HCCs in the blood – the amount of time it takes for half the particles to leave the body – to be between two and three hours. Tests with different cell types in vitro showed no toxicity, he said.The research has implications for stroke victims and organ transplant patients as well, Tour said.Next, the team hopes to have another lab replicate its positive results. “We’ve repeated it now three times, and we got the same results, so we’re sure this works in our hands,” Kent said.First authors of the paper are BCM graduate student Brittany Bitner, Rice graduate student Daniela Marcano and former Rice postdoctoral researcher Jacob Berlin, now an assistant professor of molecular medicine at the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope, Duarte, Calif. Co-authors are all at BCM: Roderic Fabian, associate professor of neurology; Claudia Robertson, professor of neurosurgery; Leela Cherian, research instructor of neurosurgery; Mary Dickinson, associate professor of molecular physiology; Robia Pautler, associate professor of molecular physiology; and James Culver, a graduate student in molecular physiology.The research was funded by the Department of Defense’s Mission Connect Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Consortium, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Source:RICE UNIVERSITY NEWS & MEDIA

Specific Toxic Byproduct of Heat-processed Food may Lead to Increased Body Weight and Diabetes: Study

A common compound identified in the modern food by the researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine that could lead to abdominal obesity, insulin resistance and and type 2 diabetes.The findings are published in the August 20, 2012 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 
The research team, led by Helen Vlassara, MD, Professor and Director of the Division of Experimental Diabetes and Aging, found that mice with sustained exposure to the compound, methyl-glyoxal (MG), developed significant abdominal weight gain, early insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes. MG is a type of advanced glycation endproduct (AGEs), which is produced when food is cooked with dry heat. AGEs have been found to lower the body's protective mechanisms that control inflammation. 
In the study, one group of mice was fed a diet high in MG over four generations, while the control group was fed a diet without MG. Both diets had normal calories and fat. Over four generations, the mice that ate the MG started to develop early insulin resistance and increased body fat, whereas the control group did not have either of these conditions. The researchers found that MG caused a marked deficiency in protective mechanisms, such as the survival factor SIRT1 that is present in fat and controls inflammation, while enhancing the metabolism of glucose and insulin. The ingestion of MG also adversely affected the activity of an important anti-AGE receptor called AGER1, which protects SIRT1 and fights insulin resistance. 
"This was a prolonged but rewarding study showing that a specific AGE compound abundant in foods, within only a few generations in mouse terms, contributes to the increase in weight gain, insulin resistance, and, diabetes, reproducing the pattern seen increasingly in humans over the last decades ," said Dr. Vlassara. "These key findings should inform how we understand and prevent the human epidemic of obesity and diabetes." 
The abdominal fat of the MG-fed mice was transformed into a repository of fat cells producing highly inflammatory molecules called cytokines, which impaired glucose metabolism and slowed down fat turnover, and resulted in insulin resistance and diabetes. Mice that were fed the low-in-MG diet displayed high levels of SIRT1, AGER1 and no diabetes. 
"The study demonstrates how the prolonged ingestion of seemingly innocuous substances common in human food, such as MG, can reduce defenses and compromise native resistance to metabolic and other diseases," said Dr. Vlassara. "The mouse findings are also quite exciting because they provide us with new tools, not only to study, but to begin taking measures to prevent diabetes, either by suppressing their formation or by blocking their absorption with our food." 
Recent clinical research by Dr. Vlassara's team demonstrated that a modest cut in foods high in AGEs improved insulin resistance in adults with type 2 diabetes, without reducing fat or carbohydrate consumption. In other promising studies, the team has used an oral agent that binds AGEs in the intestine, blocking their absorption. 
"For more than 30 years we have been studying the potential of eliminating harmful AGEs from the body, and now from food, as one way to curb the diabetes epidemic," said Dr. Vlassara. "Thus far, our findings reflect the need for a dramatic departure from standard clinical recommendations, which should now include a reduction in the amount of dry heat and processed foods in the diet." 
The research team recommends that clinical guidelines be revised to eliminate foods cooked using dry heat and replace them with methods that use lower heat or lots of moisture (water) as in stewing, poaching or steaming. Examples from the AGE-less diet include stewed beef, chicken and fish instead of grilled meats. 
Source-Eurekalert

 

Herbal Tea can Fight Breast Cancer

Traditional herbal tea could help combat breast cancer, say scientists. 
Extracts from the plant known as virgin's mantle, which is used as a medicinal tea in some countries, can kill cancerous cells in the test tube, the Daily Mail reported. 
The plant-based tea is already drunk by women in rural Pakistan who have breast cancer, but until now its use as a treatment has been regarded as folklore. 
Research by scientists at Aston University, Birmingham, and Russells Hall Hospital, Dudley, suggests it contains potent anti-cancer agents that act singly or in combination against the proliferation of cancer cells. 
Laboratory tests showed they arrested the growth of cells within five hours of application and caused them to die within 24 hours. 
The plant, which has the botanical name Fagonia cretica, is found in arid, desert regions of Pakistan, India, Africa and parts of Europe. 
Professor Helen Griffiths and Professor Amtul R Carmichael, who headed the study, found herbal tea made from the extract of the plant destroys cancer cells but, unlike conventional chemotherapy, treatment does not damage normal breast cells, thus reducing side effects. 
Reports from breast cancer sufferers in Pakistan suggest that the plant extract does not trigger any serious side effects such as loss of hair, drop in blood count or diarrhoea. 
The research found the plant extract had a novel mechanism which could remedy defects in cell DNA that would normally resist tumour growth. 
An impaired DNA response not only allows the cancer to flourish, it also inhibits the way chemotherapy works which reduces its effectiveness. 
Professor Carmichael said a small hospital 100 miles north of Lahore in Pakistan started using the herbal tea 40 years ago to treat breast cancer patients. 
"It appears to keep them in remission, although we can't use the word cure at this stage," she said. 
"However, they live for a long time without losing their hair or putting on a large amount of weight, or experiencing other toxic side effects associated with chemotherapy, so we are confident this extract has something to contribute." 
She said stringent safety tests would be needed in developing a drug based on the extract. 
At present the herbal tea is being used to treat Asians but there might be different effects in Caucasian patients, she added. 
The study is published in the science journal PloS One.
Source-ANI

 

Children of older men have more gene abnormalities: study

Do older fathers doom their children to genetic disease? This is the question raised by a new study that says older men produce more gene mutations in the children they sire, boosting their risk ofschizophrenia and autism and possibly other diseases.A father's age is by far the biggest factor determining the rate of new, uninherited genetic mutations in his offspring, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature.From a man's peak reproductive years in adolescence, the rate of new or "de novo" gene mutations triggered at conception in his children rises by about two per year, the study found.The rate doubles every 16 years, meaning that the baby of a 36-year-old father would have twice as many new mutations than that of a 20-year-old."The age of the father is the most important factor to determine the number of new mutations that happen when a child is conceived," study co-author Kari Stefansson from Iceland's DeCODE genetics company told AFP.Though de novo mutations are not necessarily harmful, it can take only one change in a key gene to cause some types of disease -- and the more mutations the higher the risk.The results from what is claimed to be the biggest-ever study of its kind suggest that disproportionate attention has been paid to the age at which women give birth."We have in a very unjust manner been pointing the finger at the old mother when we should have been careful when it comes to the old father. It is clearly dangerous to have an old father," said Stefansson.Maternal age is linked to Down's syndrome and other chromosomal diseases that develop through a process that is different to the type of genetic mutation described in this study.The mutations in the Nature report are caused by cell division during processes like sperm production.Stefansson and a team in Iceland, Denmark and Britain sequenced the genomes of 78 parent-child trios, as well as hundreds of control subjects, looking for variants in the sequence of a child's genetic code that did not exist in the parents.They found that the rate of increase in de novo mutations could be ascribed to the tune of 97.1 percent, "maybe entirely", to the age of the father -- an outcome that "surprised" the researchers.The remaining 2.9 percent was ascribed to environmental factors and other random influences, Stefansson said, adding there was "no connection" between the mother and age-related increase in the rate of mutations.The average newborn today has about 60 new small-scale mutations -- ranging from 25 in the child of a 20-year-old man to 65 in that of a 40-year-old, Alexey Kondrashov of the University of Michigan's department of ecology and evolutionary biology wrote in an analysis of the study.The number of de novo mutations ascribed to the mother always remains roughly 15, regardless of her age.Previous research has shown a link between de novo mutations and autism and schizophrenia, and also a statistical link between the diseases and paternal age."Our contention is that a part of the increase in the diagnosis of autism that is being made these days is accounted for by increase in the age of the father," said Stefansson.And he added further research is likely to show a similar link to other genetic illnesses, especially diseases of the brain.In a comment also carried by Nature, Kondrashov said the study suggested a rethink of the advisable age to have children. It might be a "wise individual decision" for young men to cold-store their sperm for later use.The age of new fathers in the Western world has been climbing in recent decades, and the number of first-time dads over 40 is growing. Official statistics show that in Iceland, the average age of fathers at conception rose from 27.9 in 1980 to 33 in 2011.Contrary to de novo mutations which occur during cell division, inherited gene mutations are transferred at an equal rate by the father and mother, are more common and thus more commonly responsible for disease.Scientists believe that both inherited and new mutations are responsible for diseases like autism and schizophrenia, but have not worked out the ratio of blame.On the positive side, de novo gene mutations are a necessary element of human evolution, allowing us to adapt to our changing environment.

Source:AFP