Month: October 2008

A Shot for All

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A vaccine in the making — equally effective for birds, men and other mammals — offers a shield against another outbreak of bird flu.

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Of all the viruses that can cause a devastating pandemic (worldwide outbreak), the influenza virus is the most likely to cause one. Influenza is a tricky disease to control. The world has already seen several outbreaks, of which the influenza pandemic in 1918 was the most serious: at least 20 million people died all over the world then. There were pandemics in 1957, 1968 and 1977, but of much less severity.

Recently, avian influenza (or bird flu) has emerged as a candidate that can cause a serious pandemic. Experts warn that another outbreak is imminent and we have only limited ability to control it if one breaks out. However, several vaccines — now in the laboratory stage — offer hope.

One of the problems of bird flu is that it affects birds as well as humans and other mammals. The virus may be slightly different in each of the animals, and it is difficult to give different vaccines for different animals during a pandemic. At the Department of Veterinary Medicine in the University of Maryland in the US, Daniel Perez and his colleagues have developed a vaccine that can control the disease in birds, humans and rodents. It is based on a region of the virus gene that is common to all the strains. “We have shown that the vaccine works in rodents and does not cause the disease,” says Perez.

This vaccine has been tested in rats but not yet in humans. Meanwhile, at the University of Pittsburgh medical college, scientists are testing a vaccine against the deadliest of all avian flu viruses, the H5N1. This is a genetically engineered vaccine that takes only 10 weeks to manufacture. The other vaccines now in the market are made using chicken eggs, and take several months to manufacture, apart from not being able to provide enough immunity. Two months ago, the institution received a $3.6 million grant to test the vaccine in non-human primates.

Currently, three companies manufacture vaccines against the avian flu virus H5N1, all of them approved in different countries in the last year and a half. Sanofi Pasteur’s vaccine was approved in the US in 2007, GlaxoSmithkline’s vaccine was approved in Europe in May this year. Australia approved a vaccine from CSL Limited. All of them are live attenuated virus — which have been so altered that they can’t cause disease — raised on chicken eggs. While all of them provide some protection, none of them can prevent a pandemic. This is because the virus mutates fast, and we do not know what strain of the virus would be involved in a pandemic.

One of the known — and fortunate — facts about the bird flu virus is its specificity. The virus that infects birds does not easily infect humans. This is why many outbreaks in birds have not resulted in human infections. Which is probably also why human to human transmission has not happened in large numbers so far.

However, such a transmission is not scientifically impossible. Since the virus mutates fast, strains of broader range can emerge. They can infect humans, pigs, rats, birds and other animals. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for us to make different vaccines for different animals. The Maryland University team has shown that it is possible to make a single vaccine effective in many animal species.

This vaccine is based on a DNA backbone that is common to all the strains. This backbone lies inside the virus and not outside. The scientists have a strain of the virus called WF10 with this backbone. They have isolated other influenza viruses that are related to this strain, including the human influenza virus. They had earlier shown that by tweaking the gene of this strain they could make a vaccine effective in birds. Now they have shown that, by further modification, this strain can protect many species against the influenza infection. In particular, they have shown that it provides protection in rats against H5N1, the most lethal strain against which human vaccines are made. Says Perez: “We have done animal trials, but we are yet to do human trials.”

There are other developments that could help in preventing a major pandemic. A series of DNA vaccines against H5N1 are also under development in several institutions. They are the Virology Research Institute in Maryland, which began clinical trials last year, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and the Rockefeller University. A DNA vaccine is a piece of DNA that can directly make the protein that produces an immune response. It is safe, because it cannot by itself cause the disease. The vaccines can be made rapidly, which is invaluable in case of an epidemic.

However, there are technical issues, which all these teams claim to have solved. If they work, we could soon have a vaccine that can be rapidly made when there is an epidemic. Let us wait and watch their progress.

Sources: The Telegraph (Kolkata, India)

Tags Avian influenza, British Columbia, Canada, Canadians, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, China, Conditions and Diseases, CSL Limited, Health, Influenza A virus subtype H5N1, Influenza A virus subtype H5N8, Influenza pandemic, Maryland University, North America, Poultry, Public Health Agency of Canada, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

News on Health & Science

Purple Tomato that Fights Cancer

Post author By Mukul
Post date October 28, 2008
No Comments on Purple Tomato that Fights Cancer

A purple tomato genetically engineered to contain nutrients more commonly seen in dark berries helped prevent cancer in mice, British researchers said on Sunday.

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The finding, published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, bolsters the idea that plants can be genetically modified to make people healthier.

Cancer-prone mice fed the modified fruit lived significantly longer than animals fed a standard diet with and without regular tomatoes, Cathie Martin and colleagues at the government-funded John Innes Centre in Britain reported.

“The effect was much bigger than we had expected,” said Martin, a plant biologist.

The study focused on anthocyanins, a type of antioxidant found in berries such as blackberries and blackcurrants that have been shown to lower risk of cancer, heart disease and some neurological diseases.

While an easy health boost, many people do not eat enough of these fruits, the researchers said.

Using genes that help colour the snapdragon flower, the researchers discovered they could get the tomatoes to make anthocyanins — turning the tomato purple in the process.

Mice genetically engineered to develop cancer lived an average of 182 days when they were fed the purple tomatoes, compared to 142 days for animals on the standard diet.

“It is enormously encouraging to believe that by changing diet, or specific components in the diet, you can improve health in animals and possibly humans,” Martin said in a telephone interview.

The researchers cautioned that trials in humans are a long way off and the next step is to investigate how the antioxidants actually affect the tumours to promote better health.

But the findings do bolster research suggesting that people can significantly improve their health by making simple changes to the daily diet, other researchers said.

“It’s exciting to see new techniques that could potentially make healthy foods even better for us,” said Dr. Lara Bennett, science information officer at Cancer Research UK.

“But it’s too early to say whether anthocyanins obtained through diet could help to reduce the risk of cancer.”

Click to see :->Pomegranates: the fruity panacea

Berries ‘help prevent dementia’

Darker fruits could fight cancer

Purple tomato ‘may boost health’

Sources: The Times Of India

Tags Britain, Cancer, Cancer Research UK, Conditions and Diseases, DNA, Flavr Savr, Food and Drug Administration, Genetic engineering, Genetically modified crops, Genetically modified food, Genetically modified organism, Grocery store, Health, Monsanto, Nature Biotechnology, Times Of India, United Kingdom, United States

Featured Healthy Tips

Beating Jet Lag With the Right Diet

Post author By Mukul
Post date October 28, 2008
No Comments on Beating Jet Lag With the Right Diet

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The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory shared some exciting news that the frequent, and perhaps even the not-so-frequent, flyer will appreciate: Biologists at the laboratory have developed a comprehensive free source of information about how to use the famous Anti-Jet-Lag Diet — which helps travelers fend off jet lag.

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The free online information provides a full frequently-asked-questions page that includes information about food choices, caffeine use and the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet’s origin and history.

And for a small fee, travelers can use Argonne-developed software to compute an individualized Anti-Jet-Lag Diet customized to their specific itinerary.

How Does the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet Work?

Anyone traveling across three or more time zones can use the Anti-Jet-Lag plan to eliminate or reduce jet lag (i.e. feelings of irritability, insomnia, indigestion and general disorientation) that occur when the body’s inner clock is out of sync with the time cues it receives from the environment. Such time cues include meal times, sunrise and sunset and daily cycles of rest and activity.

In other words, the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet uses nature’s time cues to help your body quickly adjust to a new time zone.

But Does the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet Really Work?

It certainly sounds promising; according to researchers, travelers who use the diet are:

Seven times less likely to experience jet lag when traveling west.

Sixteen times less likely when traveling east.

In fact, over the last two decades, the Anti-Jet-Lag Diet has helped hundreds of thousands of travelers — such as government agencies, athletes, musicians and service agencies — avoid jet lag.

Sources:http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2005/06/25/jet-lag-part-two.aspx

Tags Anti Jetlag Diet, Argonne National Laboratory, Associated Press, Barack Obama, Catalysis, Dick Durbin, JetLag, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Nano Letters, Nanowire, Office of Science, Recreation, Time zone, Transportation, U.S. Department of Energy, United States Department of Energy

Positive thinking

Finding Answers Within

You Have All the Answers
Many of us seek the answers to life’s questions by looking outside of ourselves and trying to glean advice from the people around us. But as each of us is unique, with our own personal histories, our own sense of right and wrong, and our own way of experiencing the world that defines our realities, looking to others for our answers is only partially helpful. The answers to our personal questions can be most often found by looking within. When you realize that you always have access to the part of you that always knows what you need and is meant to act as your inner compass, you can stop searching outside of yourself. If you can learn to hear, trust, and embrace the wisdom that lives within you, you will be able to confidently navigate your life.

Trusting your inner wisdom may be awkward at first, particularly if you grew up around people who taught you to look to others for answers. We each have exclusive access to our inner knowing. All we have to do is remember how to listen. Remember to be patient as you relearn how to hear, receive, and follow your own guidance. If you are unsure about whether following your inner wisdom will prove reliable, you may want to think of a time when you did trust your own knowing and everything worked out. Recall how the answers came to you, how they felt in your body as you considered them, and what happened when you acted upon this guidance. Now, recall a time when you didn’t trust yourself and the results didn’t work out as you had hoped. Trusting your own guidance can help you avoid going against what you instinctively know is right for you.

When you second guess yourself and go against what you know to be your truth, you can easily go off course because you are no longer following your inner compass. By looking inside yourself for the answers to your life’s questions, you are consulting your best guide. Only you can know the how’s and why’s of your life. The answers that you seek can be found when you start answering your own questions.

Sources: Daily Om

Dishonesty, Distrust and Depression

Tags Advice, Ask an Expert, Ethics, Knowledge, Question, Question Answering, Religion and Spirituality, Trust

News on Health & Science

Steps on Enlarged Heart ‘Uncovered’

Post author By Mukul
Post date October 28, 2008
3 Comments on Steps on Enlarged Heart ‘Uncovered’

Researchers in the US claim to have got new insight into the mechanisms that underlie an enlarged heart — a finding that could lead to development of new treatment for managing this common cardiac ailment.

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An enlarged heart can lead to heart failure (Image: CNRI, Science Photo Library)

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According to them, high blood pressure, heart valve disease and heart attacks can lead to a abnormal thickening of the heart muscle, called myocardial hypertrophy, which plays a role in the pathological increase in the heart size.

At the molecular level, signals driving myocardial hypertrophy, like elevated levels of catecholamine hormones, activate the Myocyte Enhancer Factor (MEF) proteins. This alters gene expression in heart muscle cells and induces an adverse developmental paradigm known as “fetal gene response”.

“Previous research has shown that the signalling pathways leading to MEF2 are altered during pathological cardiac hypertrophy. Although we know that enzymes called histone deacetylases (HDACs) control MEF2 activity, it was not clear that HDACs and MEF2 were integrated into a larger signalling unit,” lead author John D Scott said.

To further identify the molecular mechanisms associated with cardiac hypertrophy, Scott and colleagues at the University of Washington studied cardiac A-Kinase Anchoring Proteins (AKAPs), which are known to play a critical role in organising signalling complexes in response to catecholamine hormones and transmitted signals within cells.

The researchers found that AKAP-Lbc functions as a scaffolding protein that selectively directs catecholamine signals to the transcriptional machinery to potentiate the hypertrophic response, the ‘Cell Press‘ journal reported.

“Our study supports a model where AKAP-Lbc facilitates activation of protein kinase D, which in turn phosphorylates the histone deacetylase HDAC5 to promote its export from the nucleus. The reduction in nuclear HDAC5 favoured MEF2 transcription and onset of cardiac hypertrophy,” Scott said.

Sources: The Times Of India