Anti-inflammatory mechanism of dieting and fasting revealed

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found that a compound produced by the body when dieting or fasting can block a part of the immune system involved in several inflammatory disorders such as type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, and Alzheimer's disease.

In their study, published in the Feb. 16 online issue of Nature Medicine, the researchers described how the compound β-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) directly inhibits NLRP3, which is part of a complex set of proteins called the inflammasome. The inflammasome drives the inflammatory response in several disorders including autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, atherosclerosis, and autoinflammatory disorders.

"These findings are important because endogenous metabolites like BHB that block the NLRP3 inflammasome could be relevant against many inflammatory diseases, including those where there are mutations in the NLRP3 genes," said Vishwa Deep Dixit, professor in the Section of Comparative Medicine at Yale School of Medicine.

BHB is a metabolite produced by the body in response to fasting, high-intensity exercise, caloric restriction, or consumption of the low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet. Dixit said it is well known that fasting and calorie restriction reduces inflammation in the body, but it was unclear how immune cells adapt to reduced availability of glucose and if they can respond to metabolites produced from fat oxidation.

Working with mice and human immune cells, Dixit and colleagues focused on how macrophages -- specialized immune cells that produce inflammation -- respond when exposed to ketone bodies and whether that impacts the inflammasone complex.

The team introduced BHB to mouse models of inflammatory diseases caused by NLP3. They found that this reduced inflammation, and that inflammation was also reduced when the mice were given a ketogenic diet, which elevates the levels of BHB in the bloodstream.

"Our results suggest that the endogenous metabolites like BHB that are produced during low-carb dieting, fasting, or high-intensity exercise can lower the NLRP3 inflammasome," said Dixit.

Source:YALE UNIVERSITY

Certain Foods can Ease Hyperactivity in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder f

Many researchers suggest that modifying your diet may alleviate some of the symptoms of Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The role of diet and nutrition in an effort to help lessen the symptoms of hyperactivity in ADHD is under analysis.ADHD is a brain-based medical disorder caused by faulty connections between nerve cells that regulate attention. CDC reports that the rates of ADHD diagnosis have increased an average of 5 percent per year from 2003 to 2011. As of 2011, 11 percent of children were diagnosed with ADHD and about two-thirds of those kids are on some form of prescription medication. 

Diet rich in protein, omega-3 fatty acids and complex carbohydrates can help to ease hyperactivity although more studies are needed to make definitive claims. 

The production and reception of dopamine and other neurotransmitters in the brain is supplied by amino acids. Protein breaks down into amino acids that promote cell growth and repair. Other than animal products, the best ways to get convenient and inexpensive protein is through quinoa, nuts, beans and seeds. 

Omega-3 fatty acids are needed for cell growth and repair and can be found in halibut, salmon, trout, tuna, nuts and seeds. Complex carbohydrates are made up of a long complex chain of sugar molecules and can be found in beans, whole grains, fruits and vegetables. 

Artificial dyes and sweeteners, preservatives, sugars and allergens in foods may aggravate the symptoms of ADHD and should be avoided. Sodium benzoate, a popular preservative, can be found in many acidic foods (think salad dressings and condiments), medicines and cosmetics has been linked to increased hyperactivity. 

The top eight food allergens are wheat, milk, peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, soy, fish 
 Source:Desk

 

First Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Medicine

Integrated study, research and patient care in Allopathy, Ayurveda and Yoga will be done in the center of interdisciplinary study of medicine for the first time in Kochi, Kerala under Amrita University.

The Amrita Institute of Integrated Medicine and Research Centre is planned as a centre to integrate the holistic vision and therapeutic range of Indian systems of healthcare with the analytical, diagnostic and prognostic proficiency of modern medical sciences. 

Amrita School of Ayurveda and Hospital, Amrita School of Biotechnology both in Kollam, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, Amrita Centre for Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine and Amrita School of Pharmacy - all under the Amrita University will be part of the integrated Centre, which will come up in Kochi. 

"There is considerable room for studying interdisciplinary avenues between the modern and ayurvedic treatment strategies, which will help the common man in India to seek a better and more holistic approach to health," explained Dr. Prem Nair, Medical Director of Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi. 

He further stated, "The purpose is to bring Ayurveda and Yoga into the mainstream healthcare in India." 

The Centre will bring out replicable guidelines for introducing and practicing integrated healthcare at various levels besides facilities for study and research. It will utilise non-pharmacological and non-technological healing spectrum, including psycho-physiological interventions, behavioural therapeutic measures and spiritual inputs to improve well-being; record and present the experimental knowledge in scientific forums to create awareness and network with physicians from Modern Medicine, Ayurveda, Yoga and other systems of Indian medicines, who are in alignment with the concept. 

"We have already set up an integrated clinical programme at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences that combines Ayurvedic and Allopathic care with some cross-referral system in place," said Dr. Prem Nair 

The research areas will mainly focus on validation and development of formulations for diseases and clinical conditions known to have effective treatments in Indian systems of medicine, medicinal plant research, drug standardization research, pharmacology research - pre-clinical safety, toxicity and biological activity studies, literary research and documentation, nanotechnology and Ayurveda research, tribal healthcare research, healthcare services, information, education and communication, and clinical research. 

The Centre will also have facilities for pharmacognosy of raw drugs, phytochemical studies of drugs, physic-chemical constants of single drugs and formulations. It will also endeavor to revive and retrieve texts from ancient manuscripts/rare books, collection and compilation of references relating to drugs and diseases from classical treatises, lexicographic work, contemporary literature and publications related to Ayurveda and other medical systems. 

It also seeks to develop appropriate training modules and guidelines and research on integrative oncology. 

The Centre envisages introducing modules or short courses on principles of Ayurveda into MBBS, MSc Biotech, MTech (Nanomedical Science), MTech (Molecular Medicine), offering PhD programme in Ayurveda and interdisciplinary PhD programmes; international training and teaching programme in Ayurveda, etc. 

The Centre has a component to make available ayurvedic medicines at low cost. It will also contribute to enhancing the Ayurvedic Biodiversity of India through farming of rare species, organic farming to improve the quality of ayurvedic plants, encourage farmers to cultivate ayurvedic plants; training villagers to manufacture Ayurvedic formulations through low-cost pharmaceutical engineering in a small-scale set up.
 Source:Amrita School of Ayurveda and Hospital

 

Climate Change may be the Root Cause of Infectious Diseases

Climate change has resulted in the emergence of infectious diseases in new places and new hosts, such as West Nile virus and Ebola, reports zoologist affiliated with the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In an article published online today in conjunction with a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Daniel Brooks warns that humans can expect more such illnesses to emerge in the future, as climate change shifts habitats and brings wildlife, crops, livestock, and humans into contact with pathogens to which they are susceptible but to which they have never been exposed before. 

Referring to the 1971 science fiction film about a deadly pathogen, Brooks said, "It's not that there's going to be one 'Andromeda Strain' that will wipe everybody out on the planet. There are going to be a lot of localized outbreaks putting pressure on medical and veterinary health systems. It will be the death of a thousand cuts." 

Brooks and his co-author, Eric Hoberg, a zoologist with the U.S. National Parasite Collection of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, have personally observed how climate change has affected very different ecosystems. During his career, Brooks has focused primarily on parasites in the tropics, while Hoberg has worked primarily in Arctic regions. 

Each has observed the arrival of species that hadn't previously lived in that area and the departure of others, Brooks said. "Over the last 30 years, the places we've been working have been heavily impacted by climate change," Brooks said in an interview last week. "Even though I was in the tropics and he was in the Arctic, we could see something was happening." 

Changes in habitat mean animals are exposed to new parasites and pathogens. For example, Brooks said, after humans hunted capuchin and spider monkeys out of existence in some regions of Costa Rica, their parasites immediately switched to howler monkeys, where they persist today. Some lungworms in recent years have moved northward and shifted hosts from caribou to musk oxen in the Canadian Arctic. 

But for more than 100 years, scientists have assumed parasites don't quickly jump from one species to another because of the way parasites and hosts co-evolve. Brooks calls it the "parasite paradox." Over time, hosts and pathogens become more tightly adapted to one another. According to previous theories, this should make emerging diseases rare, because they have to wait for the right random mutation to occur. 

However, such jumps happen more quickly than anticipated. Even pathogens that are highly adapted to one host are able to shift to new ones under the right circumstances. Brooks and Hoberg call for a "fundamental conceptual shift" recognizing that pathogens retain ancestral genetic capabilities allowing them to acquire new hosts quickly. 

"Even though a parasite might have a very specialized relationship with one particular host in one particular place, there are other hosts that may be as susceptible," Brooks said. In fact, the new hosts are more susceptible to infection and get sicker from it, Brooks said, because they haven't yet developed resistance. Though resistance can evolve fairly rapidly, this only changes the emergent pathogen from an acute to a chronic disease problem, Brooks adds. "West Nile Virus is a good example - no longer an acute problem for humans or wildlife in North America, it nonetheless is here to stay," he said. 

The answer, is for greater collaboration between the public and veterinary health communities and the "museum" community - the biologists who study and classify life forms and how they evolve. In addition to treating human cases of an emerging disease and developing a vaccine for it, he said, scientists need to learn which non-human species carry the pathogen. 

Knowing the geographic distribution and the behavior of the non-human reservoirs of the pathogen could lead to public health strategies based on reducing risk of infection by minimizing human contact with infected animals, much like those that reduced the incidence of malaria and yellow fever by reducing human contact with mosquitoes. 

Museum scientists versed in understanding the evolutionary relationships among species could use this knowledge to anticipate the risk of the pathogen becoming established outside of its native range. 
 Source: USDA's Agricultural Research Service

How Cancer Tumors Use Meat To Fuel Their Growth

The rate of instances of diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, autism, and many more continues to increase at an alarming rate. Since we first began recording statistics on disease we have seen a skyrocketing upward trend which has many scientists and researchers looking for answers, most notably towards our environment. We are surrounded by toxins on a daily basis, and we are also ingesting them constantly. Scientists have been examining the many common habits of modern humans, and one of those habits clearly includes eating a tremendous amount of meat.

How Meat Fuels Tumor Growth

The association between meat consumption and diseases like cancer is no secret. Ever since researchers started studying the links between diet and cancer, one thing has stood out above the rest: people who avoided eating meat were much less likely to develop cancer.  Many studies have shown that there is a significantly decreased risk of cancer associated with veganism. 

The American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) published their second review of the major studies that have taken place with regards to diet and cancer prevention. They determined that, for multiple cancers, red meat (beef, pork, or lamb) as well as processed meat consumption increases cancer risk.  

Studies have also shown that specific chemicals formed when meat is cooked (specifically HCAs and PAHs) can also be linked to cancer, and when I say “linked,” I mean there is a serious cause for concern. There is a great deal of evidence to support the claim that high meat consumption leads to cancer. One such example involves a recent case-control study conducted at the University of Utah. The study included 952 subjects with rectal cancer and 1205 controls, and found that men and women with the highest consumption of processed or well-cooked meat showed an increased risk for developing rectal cancer.  

Cooking meat produces (as mentioned above) what are called Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. These are widely believed to play a significant role in human cancers.  This is  to be one (out of many) remarkable examples of how there is plenty of strong evidence, yet mainstream medical literature considers the link between meat consumption and cancer inconclusive.

Keep in mind, when looking at this type of science it’s important to use the Bradford Hill Criteria when doing your research.

In another study, researchers followed and analyzed the diets of more than 525,000 participants to determine whether there might be a link between the consumption of fats from red meat and dairy, and pancreatic cancer. They found that the more people ate these particular fats, the higher the risk of pancreatic cancer. Interestingly, this same study found no association between plant-food fat and pancreatic cancer.  

The list goes on and on. Another recent study published in the British Journal of Cancer found that vegetarians are 12 percent less likely to develop cancer than meat-eaters overall. They followed 61,000 meat-eaters and vegetarians for over 12 years, and also discovered that cancers of the blood, such as leukemia, multiple myeloma, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, were significantly (“drastically” as they say in the study) reduced by as much as 45 percent for those following a vegetarian diet.  Although this study points to an overall reduced risk, this may well be an underestimate of the benefits of vegetarianism. Previous studies have shown as much as a 40 percent reduced risk for all cancers. 

On the flip side, one could certainly point out the fact that many people go their whole lives eating cooked meat and live long healthy lives. That might hold true for some, but definitely not all. No one can deny that cancer rates are pretty ridiculous today, and it would be wise to start to take a closer look at our human experience. All of us need to help turn things around, and this is one area of our lives that we can easily control.

It’s also noteworthy to  mention the fact that the meat available to us today is laden with drugs and other contaminants, and that GMO feed is causing a great deal of damage to the animals consuming it, and us in turn.

There are plenty of studies to choose from, though I am aware that studies do have their limitations. At the same time, think of the Bradford Hill criteria – when you have so much consistency and so many links, it is highly logical to make certain conclusions.

Whenever you have some time to think, whenever you pause for a moment during your day, consider taking a step back and really observing what we are doing to our planet and how we rationalize it. There is much to see, including, of course, the fact that an enormous amount of people consume meat on a daily basis. I don’t mean to say that this is inherently wrong, or to lay judgement down, but merely to question why we do this knowing it’s detrimental to our health and to the environment.

Sometimes bringing up topics like this can rub people the wrong way, but facts are facts; we currently live in a society where so many people have closed their minds to new possibilities, new explanations, and in many cases, new evidence. For example, many people still believe that consuming meat on a daily basis is a completely natural, and that throughout different stages in our evolution we have always eaten meat. This simply isn’t true. In fact, most of our ancestors were completely vegetarian, and the ones that ate meat appear to have had a much higher percentage of plant food than meat in their diet. Pointing to the “cave man diet” (a completely false idea) is not really a valid justification for eating meat, and it doesn’t mean that we are “designed” to eat meat at all.  

If you are truly curious about meat and its association with human disease, hopefully this article is a good kick start for you to start doing some research about it.

Sources:

(1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8610089

(2) http://www.birdflubook.org/resources/Barnard_1995_PM_24_646.pdf 

(3)http://www.pnas.org/content/105/48/18936.full.pdf+html

(4)http://www.dietandcancerreport.org/cancer_resource_center/downloads/summary/english.pdf

(5) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1753-4887.2001.tb06974.x/pdf

(6)  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1753-4887.2001.tb06974.x/pdf

(7) http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2009/06/26/jnci.djp168.short

(8) http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v101/n1/full/6605098a.html

What is successful aging? Gerontologists strive to build consensus

Scholars have long debated what successful aging is, how to measure it, and how to promote it. But the latest issue of The Gerontologist lays the groundwork for building consensus on the topic -- while pointing out that the answer may differ among academics and the general public, as well as across populations and demographic groups.

"With an enhanced understanding of what successful aging is, we will be in a stronger position to develop interventions that will enable more people to age successfully," stated The Gerontologist Editor Rachel Pruchno, PhD, in the issue's opening editorial. "The sheer number of people comprising the baby boom generation transformed academic interest in successful aging to a public policy imperative. Now more than ever, it is critical to develop science that empowers people to experience the best old age possible."

The topic of successful aging reached new heights of popularity following a 1987 study by John W. Rowe, MD, and Robert L. Kahn, PhD, titled "Human Aging: Usual and Successful," which appeared in Science. They followed up with a subsequent article in The Gerontologist(and later book) titled "Successful Aging."

Their work helped the field of gerontology evolve from one arguably fixated on loss to one characterized by heterogeneity and the potential for growth. In the latter piece, they wrote that "successful aging is multidimensional, encompassing the avoidance of disease and disability, the maintenance of high physical and cognitive function, and sustained engagement in social and productive activities."

Now, through a series of 16 articles in The Gerontologist, top researchers in the field have looked back at the progress made over the past 28 years -- and whether or not Rowe and Kahn's analysis is still relevant. Some of the journal's authors even suggest that the concept of successful aging should be abandoned, pointing to social inequalities and the problems associated with labeling a person as an "unsuccessful ager."

The issue includes a number of groundbreaking studies involving several segments of the U.S. population. For example, one of the articles reports on the first study to examine physical and mental health quality of life among the older LGBT population. Another entry uses queer theory to explore the experiences of transgender persons who contemplate or pursue a gender transition later in life. A further article addresses the growing body of literature suggesting that black women experience a number of social challenges that may present as barrier to aging successfully. Together, they demonstrate the necessity for gerontological theory to address how social, cultural, behavioral, and environmental constructs affect physical health and psychological well-being while guiding policy, health care services, and research among diverse race and gendered populations.

The Gerontologist also contains articles examining successful aging across cultures. It reports that young, middle-aged, and older lay persons from the U.S. and Germany have quite similar concepts of successful aging, which they view in far more multidimensional terms than do established scientific theories. This demonstrates that laypersons' views of successful aging pose scientific challenges because they include a much wider variety of factors than are considered in most theoretical models. A separate study examines labor force participation rates and life expectancy among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Countries -- and finds that member nations with older adults who remain active in a paid work capacity tend to have elders who live longer.

"Nearly three decades after Rowe and Kahn's initial article was published, it is incumbent on gerontologists to use the conceptual and empirical knowledge base that now exists to develop consensus about what successful aging is and how it should be measured," Pruchno wrote. "We should approach this goal knowing that our measures will not be perfect, but at least our findings will be comparable. Advancing this work will help us learn how individuals can experience successful aging regardless of their social or health conditions."

Source:THE GERONTOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

Cannabis: World-renowned researchers discuss a new frontier in therapeutics

While debate about recreational marijuana use continues, researchers are investigating the effectiveness of cannabis for treating pain, spasticity, and a host of other medical problems. In a symposium organized by the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) as part of the 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting held this week in San Jose, California, world-renowned experts from North America and the U.K. share their perspectives on the therapeutic potential of medical cannabis and explore the emerging science behind it.

"We need to advance our understanding of the role of cannabinoids in health and disease through research and education for patients, physicians and policy-makers," says Dr. Mark Ware, director of clinical research at the Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit at the MUHC, in Canada. 

As a pain specialist Dr. Ware regularly sees patients with severe chronic pain at his clinic in Montreal, and for some of them, marijuana appears to be a credible option. "I don't think that every physician should prescribe medical cannabis, or that every patient can benefit but it's time to enhance our scientific knowledge base and have informed discussions with patients." 

Increasing numbers of jurisdictions worldwide are allowing access to herbal cannabis, and a range of policy initiatives are emerging to regulate its production, distribution, and authorization. It is widely believed that there is little evidence to support the consideration of cannabis as a therapeutic agent. However, several medicines based on tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient of cannabis, have been approved as pharmaceutical drugs. 

Leading British cannabis researcher Professor Roger Pertwee, who co-discovered the presence of tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV) in cannabis in the 70's, recently published with collaborators some findings of potential therapeutic relevance in the British Journal of Pharmacology. "We observed that THCV, the non-psychoactive component of cannabis, produces anti-schizophrenic effects in a preclinical model of schizophrenia," says Pertwee, professor of Neuropharmacology at Aberdeen University. "This finding has revealed a new potential therapeutic use for this compound."

Neuropsychiatrist and Director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR) at the University of California, San Diego Dr. Igor Grant is interested in the short and long-term neuropsychiatric effects of marijuana use. The CMCR has overseen some of the most extensive research on the therapeutic effects of medical marijuana in the U.S. "Despite a commonly held view that cannabis use results in brain damage, meta analyses of extensive neurocognitive studies fail to demonstrate meaningful cognitive declines among recreational users," says Dr. Grant. "Bain imaging has produced variable results, with the best designed studies showing null findings."

Dr. Grant adds that while it is plausible to hypothesize that cannabis exposure in children and adolescents could impair brain development or predispose to mental illness, data from properly designed prospective studies is lacking.

Source:McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) 

Watch this Video on Cannabis:

UNL researcher: More infectious diseases emerging because of climate change

The appearance of infectious diseases in new places and new hosts, such as West Nile virus and Ebola, is a predictable result of climate change, says a noted zoologist affiliated with the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

In an article published online today in conjunction with a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Daniel Brooks warns that humans can expect more such illnesses to emerge in the future, as climate change shifts habitats and brings wildlife, crops, livestock, and humans into contact with pathogens to which they are susceptible but to which they have never been exposed before.

"It's not that there's going to be one 'Andromeda Strain' that will wipe everybody out on the planet," Brooks said, referring to the 1971 science fiction film about a deadly pathogen. "There are going to be a lot of localized outbreaks putting pressure on medical and veterinary health systems. It will be the death of a thousand cuts."

Brooks and his co-author, Eric Hoberg, a zoologist with the U.S. National Parasite Collection of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, have personally observed how climate change has affected very different ecosystems. During his career, Brooks has focused primarily on parasites in the tropics, while Hoberg has worked primarily in Arctic regions.

Each has observed the arrival of species that hadn't previously lived in that area and the departure of others, Brooks said.

"Over the last 30 years, the places we've been working have been heavily impacted by climate change," Brooks said in an interview last week. "Even though I was in the tropics and he was in the Arctic, we could see something was happening." Changes in habitat mean animals are exposed to new parasites and pathogens.

For example, Brooks said, after humans hunted capuchin and spider monkeys out of existence in some regions of Costa Rica, their parasites immediately switched to howler monkeys, where they persist today. Some lungworms in recent years have moved northward and shifted hosts from caribou to muskoxen in the Canadian Arctic.

But for more than 100 years, scientists have assumed parasites don't quickly jump from one species to another because of the way parasites and hosts co-evolve.

Brooks calls it the "parasite paradox." Over time, hosts and pathogens become more tightly adapted to one another. According to previous theories, this should make emerging diseases rare, because they have to wait for the right random mutation to occur.

However, such jumps happen more quickly than anticipated. Even pathogens that are highly adapted to one host are able to shift to new ones under the right circumstances.

Brooks and Hoberg call for a "fundamental conceptual shift" recognizing that pathogens retain ancestral genetic capabilities allowing them to acquire new hosts quickly.

"Even though a parasite might have a very specialized relationship with one particular host in one particular place, there are other hosts that may be as susceptible," Brooks said.

In fact, the new hosts are more susceptible to infection and get sicker from it, Brooks said, because they haven't yet developed resistance.

Though resistance can evolve fairly rapidly, this only changes the emergent pathogen from an acute to a chronic disease problem, Brooks adds.

"West Nile Virus is a good example - no longer an acute problem for humans or wildlife in North America, it nonetheless is hhere to stay," he said.

The answer, Brooks said, is for greater collaboration between the public and veterinary health communities and the "museum" community - the biologists who study and classify life forms and how they evolve.

In addition to treating human cases of an emerging disease and developing a vaccine for it, he said, scientists need to learn which non-human species carry the pathogen.

Knowing the geographic distribution and the behavior of the non-human reservoirs of the pathogen could lead to public health strategies based on reducing risk of infection by minimizing human contact with infected animals, much likethose that reduced the incidence of malaria and yellow fever by reducing human contact with mosquitos.

Museum scientists versed in understanding the evolutionary relationships among species could use this knowledge to anticipate the risk of the pathogen becoming established outside of its native range.

Brooks, who earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was a zoology professor at the University of Toronto for 30 years until he retired early in 2011 to devote more time to his study of emerging infectious disease. In addition to being a senior research fellow with UNL's Manter Laboratory, he is a visiting senior fellow at the Universidade Federal do Parana, Brazil, funded by the Ciencias sem Fronteiras (Sciences without Borders) of the Brazilian government, and a visiting scholar with Debrecen University in Hungary.

Brooks' and Hoberg's article, "Evolution in action: climate change, biodiversity dynamics and emerging infectious disease," is part of a Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B issue on "Climate change and vector-borne diseases of humans," edited by Paul Parham, a specialist in infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College in London.

"We have to admit we're not winning the war against emerging diseases," Brooks said. "We're not anticipating them. We're not paying attention to their basic biology, where they might come from and the potential for new pathogens to be introduced."

Source::UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN