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Have this milk and go to sleep! (Go To Top) London:
A farm in Somerset has come up with a type of milk it claims can
help people sleep better, reports Ananova. Scientists have further lent
credence to the findings by discovering that younger cows produce higher
levels of melatonin if milked before dawn. Melatonin is a chemical that
causes drowsiness in humans. Research processors at Cricketer Farm in
Bridgwater have also come up with Night Time Milk which contains twice
the normal levels of melatonin. Anti-epilepsy drug helps prevent migraines: Study (Go To Top) Washington: The anti-epileptic drug topiramate appears effective in preventing migraine attacks and reduces the use of rescue medication, says a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Migraine headache is a neurologic disorder associated with significant disability and impaired quality of life, adversely affecting daily activity and work-related productivity for many persons. The authors, Dr Jan Lewis Brandes from the Nashville Neuroscience Group and colleagues, evaluated the efficacy and safety of topiramate for migraine prevention during a 26-week study conducted at 52 North American outpatient clinical centres. In the study, 483 patients were randomized to four treatment groups: placebo or topiramate at 50 milligrams/day (mg/d), 100 mg/d, or 200 mg/d. From that group, 468 (87 percent women) were included in the analysis after some participants dropped out of the study, most often because of adverse side-effects from the medication, including tingling sensations, fatigue, and nausea. "The average monthly migraine frequency decreased significantly for patients receiving topiramate at 100 mg/d and topiramate at 200 mg/d compared to placebo," the authors report. "Statistically significant reductions occurred within the first month with topiramate at 100 and 200 mg/d." The researchers found that the participants in the 100 mg/d and 200 mg/d had reductions in the number of days with migraines per month, and were also able to reduce their rescue medication use for headaches, such as aspirin, acetaminophen, triptans, and opioids. Feb 25, 2004 Fish oil halves heart attack risk: Study (Go To Top) Sydney:
Well, those who still don't eat fish may change their mind after
reading this. Australian researchers have found that omega-3 fish oil
is as effective as many expensive medications in preventing heart attacks.
According to an agency report, a study on 11,000 heart attack survivors
found that the omega-3 fish oil, DHA, dramatically reduced the risk
of a second heart attack by as much as 45 percent. In addition, not
only did DHA improve the functioning of a diseased heart, it also helped
make a healthy heart function better. "Fish oils improve the energy
production in the heart and they particularly have an effect in elderly
people," said Prof Franklin Rosenfeldt from Melbourne's Heart Transplant
Unit in the journal Private Hospitals. One-to-three meals a week of
salmon, tuna or trout, all of which are rich in omega-3 oil, would help
to protect against heart disease. Beware, your blow dryer can blow your brain! (Go To Top) Washington: Prolonged exposure to low-level magnetic fields similar to those emitted by such common household devices as blow dryers, electric blankets and razors can damage brain cell DNA, a new study has found. Researchers at the University of Washington's Department of Bioengineering have further found that damage from brief exposures can build up over time. The new study is to be published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a journal of the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences. In the study, the researchers discovered that rats exposed to a 60-hertz field for 24 hours showed significant DNA damage, while rats exposed for 48 hours showed even more breaks in brain cell DNA strands.
The exposure also resulted in a marked increase in brain cell apoptosis,
or "cell suicide," a process in which a cell self- destructs because
it can't repair itself. "In real life, people get this kind of exposure
in brief doses - three minutes of exposure to a blow dryer, five minutes
of exposure to an electric razor. We found that this could add up over
time and could eventually lead to some health effect", Lai said. Since
Lai first reported findings of magnetic field-induced DNA damage in
1995, several laboratories in Europe and India have reported similar
effects. Traditionally, scientists have held that low-level electromagnetic
fields couldn't be harmful because they weren't potent enough to break
chemical bonds in a living organism. Lai doesn't disagree - he simply
suspects a more subtle mechanism is at work. He believes that the fields,
rather than causing harm directly, initiate a process within the cells
that leads to the damage. Lai and Singh hypothesize that exposure to
magnetic fields affects the balance of iron in certain cells, leading
to an increase in free iron within the cell. That free iron undergoes
a chemical reaction, which releases "free radicals," or charged atoms
that attack cell structures, including DNA, lipids and proteins. Umbilical cord stem cells help repair, halt damaged heart tissues (Go To Top) Washington: For the first time scientists at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Centrer have scientifically validated that stem cells in umbilical cord blood can infiltrate damaged heart tissue and transform themselves into the kind of heart cells needed to halt further damage. Clinical proof of this principle has existed for a decade, as Duke physicians have used cord blood to correct heart, brain and liver defects in children with rare metabolic diseases. But until now they lacked the molecular evidence to prove that cord blood stem cells were the root of a cure. Now, the Duke team has dissected heart tissue to confirm the presence of donor stem cells in heart tissue. Moreover, they showed that donor stem cells had differentiated into heart muscle cells called myocytes, which then produced the critical enzyme needed to halt the progressive heart damage, said Kirsten Crapnell, a research fellow at Duke. "We've had convincing clinical evidence that stem cells from umbilical cord blood extended much farther than the blood-forming and immune systems, and that they can differentiate themselves into brain, heart, liver and bone cells," said Joanne Kurtzberg, director of the Duke Pediatric Bone Marrow and Stem Cell Transplant Programme. "But now we have examined heart tissue on a cellular level and proven that donor cells are not only present in heart tissue, but they have become heart muscle cells." To validate the stem cells' activities, Crapnell dissected and analyzed heart tissue from a four-year old boy whose transplant was successful, but who later died of an infection before his immune system was strong enough to fight it. The boy had suffered from a rare metabolic disease called Sanfilippo Syndrome B, in which the body is missing a critical enzyme needed to break down complex sugars in various cells. As sugar byproducts accumulate in vital organs such as the liver, heart and brain, cells become damaged and die. Duke
physicians had observed that children with these rare metabolic diseases
tended to regain organ function more rapidly when given cord blood rather
than traditional bone marrow. They theorized that cord blood stem cells,
being less mature than stem cells in adult bone marrow, could more easily
adapt to their new surroundings and respond to signals that differentiate
them into the needed kind of cell. Indeed, it appears that donor stem
cells inexplicably home in on defective tissue and establish themselves
there, as though they are missionaries recruited to rescue cells in
need, the scientists said. Proof of this principle has come from various
imaging studies which demonstrate that certain organs regain function
after cord blood transplants. But no one had shown that cord blood cells
were actually present in these organs and the reason behind the improvements
- until now. Comets could have 'infected' 10000 mln planets with Earth life! (Go To Top) Washington: Scientists from the Cardiff University Centre for Astrobiology have suggested that a "splash-back" from a large comet impact could throw material containing micro- organisms out of the planet's atmosphere. Although some of this outflowing material might become sterilised by heat and radiation, the scientists believe that a significant fraction would survive. As the Earth and the Solar system go round the centre of the galaxy every 240 million years, this viable bacterial outflow would infect hundreds of millions of nascent planetary systems on the way. Hence, they suggest, the transfer of Earth life across the galaxy is inevitable. These ideas are discussed in detail in two papers appearing in the current issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The authors of the two papers are Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and Dr Max Wallis of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology and Professor Bill Napier, an astronomer at Armagh Observatory and an Honorary Professor at Cardiff University. Inter-stellar routes for transmission of micro-organisms supports the view that life may not have originated on Earth, but arrived from elsewhere, strengthening the "panspermia theory" that Professor Wickramasinghe and the late Sir Fred Hoyle had been developing since 1974. The solar system could, therefore, be surrounded by an expanding 'biodisc', 30 or more light years across, of dormant microbes preserved inside tiny rock fragments. In the course of Earth's evolution, there may have been a few dozen close encounters with star-forming nebulae, during which microbes might be injected directly into young planetary systems. If planets capable of sustaining life are sufficiently common in the Galaxy, the Cardiff-based scientists conclude that this mechanism could have infected over 10,000 million of them during the lifetime of our Galaxy. Dr
Wallis and Prof Wickramasinghe have also identified another potential
delivery route. They point out that fertile Earth ejecta would, on impact,
bury themselves in the radiation- shielded surface layers of frozen
comets. A belt of such comets, the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, lies beyond
the planetary system. This belt gradually leaks comets into inter-stellar
space, some of which will eventually reach proto- planetary discs and
star-forming nebulae. There they are destroyed by collisions and erosion,
releasing any trapped micro- organisms and seeding the formative planetary
systems. Popular cardiac drug causes long-term damage: Study (Go To Top) Washington: New research conducted by a German group and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators at Duke University Medical Centre reveals the cellular mechanism underlying Nitroglycerin's lost efficacy and raises additional concern about its potential to cause long-term injury. Nitroglycerin is a drug commonly prescribed for the treatment of chest pain in patients with heart conditions and has been known to have short-term benefits. The findings published in the February 1 issue of the 'Journal of Clinical Investigation' reported that rats treated with nitroglycerin for a period of three days showed a decline in the activity of key enzyme mitochondria in the cellular powerhouses. The research team found that mitochondria lacking the enzyme activity due to prolonged use of the heart drug began producing free radicals, which were molecules capable of damaging heart cells and blood vessel walls. According to Jonathan Stamler, investigator and professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Duke, such cellular damage has been linked to further heart disease, suggesting that use of the drug may lead to increases in mortality.
The broad cellular damage caused by nitroglycerin also explains why,
in addition to nitroglycerin tolerance, patients receiving the drug
for sustained periods sometimes become unresponsive to other heart drugs
as well. While nitroglycerin alleviates acute symptoms of heart disease,
the current study suggests that cellular damage inflicted by chronic
use of the drug might ultimately increase patients' cardiovascular risk.
Therefore, the drug should be prescribed judiciously and particularly,
patients with mitochondrial damage due to other medical conditions,
such as diabetes, should be treated with extra caution, Stamler added.
Vampire saliva offers hope for stroke patients! (Go To Top) Washington:
Vampire bats come to the rescue of stoke patients! The findings
of a new international study has observed that the use of a synthetic
drug derived from the saliva of vampire bats appears to extend the time
window for treatment of acute ischemic strokes from the current three
to nine hours after symptoms first appear. The results of the Desmoteplase
in Acute Ischemic Stroke (DIAS trial), presented February 5 at the International
Stroke Conference in San Diego, show that the drug desmoteplase is effective
in preventing brain damage from stroke, if administered between three
and nine hours after symptoms begin. The University of Wisconsin Medical
School, which is one of the test sites for the ongoing twin US study
DEDAS (Dose Escalation study of Desmoteplase in Acute ischemic Stroke),
has been designed to identify the appropriate dosage and effectiveness
of the drug. Desmoteplase is a genetically engineered version of a blood
clot- dissolving protein from the saliva of the vampire bat, Desmodus
rotundus. Desmoteplase is able to dissolve a blood clot without affecting
the rest of the body's clotting system and without increasing the risk
of intracranial bleeding. Stroke is the third leading cause of death
in Europe and the United States - behind heart disease and cancer. The
treatment of acute stroke and its serious long-term disabilities is
now possible with an approved agent (t-PA, tissue plasminogen activator)
that must be administered within three hours after the onset of stroke
symptoms. Scientists engineer GM plants as an antidote to cancer (Go To Top) Washington: A Purdue University researcher has successfully engineered plants that may not only lead to the production of anti-carcinogenic nutritional supplements, but can also be used to remove excess selenium from agricultural fields. David Salt, professor of plant molecular physiology, introduced a gene that makes plants tolerate selenium and developed plants capable of building up in their tissues unusually high levels of a selenium compound. Recent research conducted by the National Institutes of Health and published in the current issue of 'BMC Plant Biology' showed that selenium can reduce the risk of developing prostate cancer by 60 percent. "We now know how to genetically modify plants so they will make this anti-carcinogenic selenium compound. This research gives us the genetic means to manipulate the amount of this material that's produced in any plant," Salt said. The mineral selenium occurs naturally in the soil in some parts of the world and is an essential micronutrient for animals, including humans. However, it is toxic to animals and most plants at high levels. But, a few plant species have the ability to build up high levels of selenium in their tissues with no ill-effects. These plants, called selenium hyper-accumulators, convert selenium taken up from the soil into a non-toxic form called methylselenocysteine, or MSC. By inserting the gene responsible for this conversion into Arabidopsis thaliana, a model lab plant that does not tolerate selenium, Salt and his colleagues produced plants that not only thrive in a selenium-enriched environment but also amass high levels of the selenium-containing MSC in their tissues. "We now know that this gene works. If you put it into another plant, it will make MSC, and we didn't know that before. So now we're in a comfortable position to say, 'okay, let's put this gene into a plant that we can use to make into a nutritional supplement, knowing that we have a very, very high likelihood of it working and producing this compound," Salt said. The plants that naturally hyper-accumulate selenium would not be good choice for use as a supplement, because they often produce other compounds that may have toxic effects in humans, Salt said. Salt and his colleagues used two different methods to verify the production of MSC in the engineered Arabidopsis. The first method, called mass spectroscopy, relies on extracting compounds from the plant tissue using a variety of solvents, then running those compounds through a type of machine that identifies their chemical nature. The other method they used is called x-ray absorbance spectroscopy, or XAS. This technique identifies the various forms of selenium in living plant tissue and can also provide a spatial map of where in the plant these selenium compounds are located. Both techniques confirmed the presence of MSC in the engineered plants, while other lab studies involving selenium have shown MSC to be the most effective selenium-containing compound in reducing cancer risk in animal models. However, he said the effectiveness of MSC in humans has not yet been tested, because to date there hasn't been a good commercial source of it that could be used in human trials. Feb 4, 2004 Increased Aspirin dose reduces colorectal cancer risk- Study (Go To Top) Washington: A new study conducted by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital has found that regular intake of aspirin does appear to be associated with a reduced risk of the type of colon polyps that can develop into cancer. However, since risk reduction was strongest with aspirin doses higher than those used to prevent cardiovascular disease, the researchers say further study is needed to determine for whom the benefits of such treatment would outweigh any potential risks. The report from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Brigham and Women's Hospital and affiliated institutions appears in the February issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. "We would love to have a simple, daily tablet that could reduce the risk of colorectal cancer for everyone, but right now we don't have that," says Andrew Chan, MD, of the MGH Gastrointestinal Unit, the paper's lead author. Earlier studies at a number of centres suggested that aspirin could reduce the risk of colorectal polyps but had not established the most effective dose. People who reported taking aspirin regularly had a 25 percent lower risk of adenoma than did women who took no aspirin, with the lowest risk seen among those who took more than two standard aspirin tablets per day. Feb 3, 2004 Fatty fish intake may lower mental decline (Go To Top) London: A new study has found that fat intake may play a role in brain functioning in middle age. According to a report in Health Scout, the study of 1,613 men and women between the ages of 45 and 70 in the Netherlands, which has a high diet in fish, found the type7 of fat consumed plays a role in a person's mental flexibility, speed and overall functioning. Researchers from University Medical Centre Utrecht found people who ate lots of foods rich in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and consumed lots of fatty fish generally had a lower risk for impaired brain functioning (19 percent less) and speed (28 percent less), compared to those who didn't follow a similar diet. Fatty fish include mackerel, salmon and herring, which are found in the icy waters off the northern European coastline. Conversely, those with diets high in cholesterol were found at a "significantly" increased risk of impaired memory (27 percent higher) and flexibility (26 higher). The findings appear in the latest issue of Neurology. Because a decline in mental skills can appear decades before the onset of Alzheimer's disease, the study says it's important to examine the effect of diet on cognitive functioning in middle age. New antioxidants 100 times more effective than vitamin E (Go To Top) Washington: An international team of chemists has developed a new family of antioxidants that are up to 100 times more effective than Vitamin E. "Vitamin E is nature's antioxidant and people have been trying to improve upon it for more than 20 years with only marginal success. We have taken a very big step in the right direction," said Ned A. Porter, the Stevenson Chair of Chemistry at Vanderbilt. He supervised the development, which was published in the European journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, according to a report in Exploration. Antioxidants are molecules that can counteract the damaging effects of oxygen in tissues and other materials. So far, the new antioxidants have been tested "in vitro" - in the test tube. But studies with biological molecules, such as cholesterol, suggest that the new compounds have properties that could make them suitable for dietary supplements. Shortly, Vanderbilt researchers expect to begin the lengthy process of determining how effective the new compounds are in living animals and whether they have any harmful side effects. Even if the compounds do not prove suitable as dietary supplements or neutraceuticals, they could still have practical value. Many materials used for commerce can be damaged by oxygen and so are routinely treated with antioxidants. These materials include plastics, rubber, fuels and lubricants, agricultural feed and cosmetics. The approach that led to the new antioxidants was the idea of Vanderbilt graduate student Derek Pratt.
Vitamin E, whose chemical name is a - tocopherol, is a phenol: It contains
a ring made of six carbon atoms with a hydroxyl group (OH) attached.
Ingold, among others, had tried to make better antioxidants by attaching
a nitrogen atom to the carbon ring. Theoretically, these molecules should
be stronger antioxidants but they proved to be impractical because they
were unstable in air. In addition to attaching a nitrogen atom to the
ring, Pratt's idea was to substitute a nitrogen atom for one of the
carbon atoms in the ring itself. With both substitutions he predicted
that the resulting molecules, called pyridinols, should be more stable
in air. Next Pratt had to address the question of whether the resulting
molecules would be effective antioxidants. He did so by analyzing the
properties of existing antioxidants to determine what made them effective.
Once he had done this, he performed a theoretical analysis to determine
whether pyridinols should also have these properties. When his analysis
confirmed that they should "the pace really picked up," he noted. In
order to assess their effectiveness as antioxidants, the Vanderbilt
chemists sent samples to Luca Valgimigli in Professor. G. F. Pedulli's
lab at the University of Bologna. Valgimigli determined that the best
pyridinols the Vanderbilt chemists had created are as much as 100 times
more effective than vitamin E. |
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