This is really an encouraging development. So much hoopla and fighting and backstabbing going on about stem cell and in vitro and on and on, it’s a relief at last to see that the powers that be are putting some money where the arguments are.
If the northeast Ohio region were looking for any further proof of its viability as a center for energizing biomedical progress, this high honor from the highest powers in the United States medical world should be all it–and potential investors–need.
Low birth weight has always been considered a potential risk for babies. Southampton researchers identify significant link between susceptibility to respiratory disease and weight gain in early infancy “Somewhat surprisingly, the findings did not appear to reflect either whether the baby was breast or bottle-fed, or the known harmful effects of smoking during and after pregnancy.”
They don’t know the reasons for this yet, but the statistics are significant, and researchers are positing that these babies are making up for lost developmental time in utero.
Your immune system can go crazy fighting against invaders and end up hurting you worse with the inflammation it creates. Now scientists have discovered an enzyme A20 that powerfully deters overproduction of inflammation. “‘Finding one enzyme that can rein in two potent pathways of inflammation increases the potential benefits of developing drugs to enhance or restore A20’ s effectiveness.”
Inflammation is a factor in so many diseases that this seems like a very exciting discovery. Now for the early-morning, alpha-wave brain children on how to use this knowledge from our bioscience practitioners…
I couldn’t resist this one. Cardiologists have been saying for a long time that red wine is good for your heart. Now here’s proof in the form of animal studies that it also reduces the damage after you’ve had a heart attack. Newswise: “In subjects that were treated with the alcohol, the tissue affected by the low blood flow was much healthier and stronger than the untreated tissue.”
The way it works is that once blood flow is restored to your damaged heart, that blood is carrying a bunch of white blood cells with it–we’re used to thinking of them as the good guys. But in this case they cling to the sides of your damaged vessels and release toxic chemicals that kill more cells. Alcohol smooths out the surfaces so these nasty little carriers can’t stick. And here’s another article that describes how the white blood cells become enemies, producing inflammation when it’s not needed–and make you even more susceptible to heart attacks.
So strange how many ways the good and the bad coexist in single elements in our bodies.
Okay, they don’t say this means you should start drinking. They see a similar effect in capsaicin, the ingredient that makes Tabasco sting your throat and heat up your head.
A recent study says that 9 easily measurable factors are sure predictors of risk of heart attack. They are:“abnormal cholesterol, current smoking, abdominal obesity, depression and stress, high blood pressure and diabetes”, surprise, surprise. But I had to keep looking because this business of “abdominal obesity” keeps coming up, as opposed to general obesity. Further research led me to see that abdominal weight is associated with insulin resistance, which is the precursor to diabetes. I keep wondering why one person gets it in the middle and another gets it all over. Then I saw another report that tried to demonstrate a link between early childhood weight and later insulin resistance (which seems to be the trigger for the heavy middle). So then I found a report from Tufts University that said danger levels of middle-area fat (which they think may metabolize differently than other fat) can be predicted by the waist-hip ratio (divide your waist by your hip measurement). For men anything over 1.0 is risky and for women it’s .8. And another study showed that the insulin-resistance involved in middle fat contributes to greater risks of breast cancer in older women. Happily, in case you needed another reason to start exercising, a further study indicates that exercise, all by itself, can reduce the negative effects of that middle part, even if you don’t lose much or even any weight.
It’s not just Americans who are suffering increased rates of diabetes–a life-threatening disease that can also dramatically change the quality of a person’s life. Attendees at the recent European Society of Cardiology meeting heard about a study that uncovered it in a significant percentage of people chosen to test a heart drug. “Of 43,500 people screened for inclusion into a major heart drug trial — of whom only 20 percent already had cardiovascular disease — approximately 1 in 5 had previously undiagnosed type 2 diabetes… Diabetes is linked not only to eye, kidney and nerve damage but also with much worse outcomes from heart problems and clogged arteries.”
Why is this frightening disease apparently spreading so rapidly? Could corn have something to do with it? A local holistic healer in northeast Ohio is telling his patients that the corn industry is always successfully lobbying to keep corn syrup as an ingredient in nearly every processed food we buy–thus providing us with a hidden source of sugary calories that we’re generally not even aware of consuming. Naturally, this can contribute to obesity, which is strongly linked to diabetes and its pre-cursor, impaired glucose tolerance.
Now that I think of it, don’t they feed corn to cattle to make them fat?
Across-the-counter availability for a simple, quick test for some of the most lethal diseases in the world. It’s a good idea. The story says Medical Services has started receiving orders and shipping VScan HIV test kits to Vietnam. “The VScan rapid test kit is a single use, easy to use, test for the screening of HIV1&2, Hepatitis B&C, Tuberculosis (TB), Dengue Fever, and West Nile.” The kits have demonstrated in two tests the ability to accurately detect the presence of a disease by 99.7% and 100%. Vietnam and Singapore recently started experiencing severe outbreaks of Dengue Fever so the test, which takes ony 15 minutes, comes at an important time for those countries and will allow physicians to immediately begin fluid replacement therapy that will help minimize the damage the disease does.
The kits have undergone testing in the US, and application for approval will be filed in the fall. But they can’t be sold in Canada. The Canadian process is so long and bureaucratic, according to Bill Whitehead, a Medical Services spokesperson, that the company (which is located in Canada) is not even thinking about trying to go through it at this time. “A market of 32 million people,” he says. “So what?” is the attitude of the government. Whitehead says the approval process in the US is simpler than for a drug but not in Canada.
The Canadian government even refused to accept a test as a gift for a soldier in Afghanistan who was eventually diagnosed with Dengue Fever. “Thank God he was alright,” Whitehead says, but the test could have detected the disease much earlier and the proper treament could have prevented the serious weight loss the soldier experienced.
What in the world would make a government so overly cautious in a case where a company can provide, with no demonstrated risk, early and possibly life-saving help to millions of people?
And we thought we had it tough…
Neurology
This is really complicated, but it looks like the researcher has the right idea for getting the point across. His comparison to a garbage dump truck is irresistible: New genetic research demonstrates possible cause of inherited form of Parkinson’s disease. : The situation is like “a garbage truck stalling at the entrance to the town dump. ‘If the truck breaks down right in front of the dump, not only does it fail to deliver its own garbage to the dump, but it blocks all the other garbage trucks and the town fills up with garbage.’ ”
Backing up at the protein disposal site–we seem to be hearing more and more about proteins, right along with genes. Maybe I’m crazy, but there seem to be some trends developing…
Researchers wanted to know why an existing drug isoniazid works so well against tuberculosis. They found that nitric oxide–the same substance involved in inflammation (asthma, liver disease, etc.), pain and cardiac events is created when the drug is used to treat TB. “An enzyme only found inside the TB bacteria makes nitric oxide from the isoniazid that is taken inside the cell.”
The University of Mexico College of Pharmacy and School of Medicine discovered the mechanism by which the nitric oxide is energized. They expect to use this piece of the puzzle to develop even better drugs.
Antibiotics often cause diarrhea and colitis, especially in hospitals and nursing homes where the culprit bacterium (C. difficile) is common–and so is antibiotic therapy. The FDA has approved Meridian Bioscience’s new ImmunoCard Toxins A&B, a rapid test for the diagnosis of a major cause of antibiotic-associated colitis”
Seems that as we learn to cure one thing, we contribute to the occurrence of other things. By the time we wipe out disease, some of us will be dying from the cures. This is one of the reasons bioscience is such a bursting source of new energy and economic growth.
It ain’t never gonna go out of style.