Month: October 2013

Sputum test may not hold key to TB eradication: study

Sputum test for tuberculosis works better than the commonly-used, 125-year-old microscope method, but did not reduce illness in a southern African trial, a study said today.

While the new test, dubbed Xpert MTB/RIF, diagnosed tuberculosis (TB) quicker and got people onto treatment sooner, it did not seem to change their long-term prognosis, said the study in The Lancet medical journal.

“Earlier diagnosis by the Xpert test did not reduce overall severity of TB-related illness,” study leader Keertan Dheda from the University of Cape Town’s department of medicine said in a statement.

Xpert was put to the test in a trial in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania — countries with high rates of TB — from April 2011 to March 2012.

A total of 744 people with suspected TB symptoms were randomly assigned to undergo the Xpert test and another 758 the traditional method of using a microscope to examine lung matter for TB bacteria.

Called smear microscopy, this method is often combined with a chest x-ray, and is estimated to miss about 40 to 60 per cent of TB cases.

On top of this, about 40 per cent of people who do test positive never return to the clinic for their test results and treatment — hence the need for a faster diagnostic test like Xpert, which can show a result within two hours.

Xpert was endorsed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2011 for people with suspected multi-drug-resistant TB, and TB complicated by simultaneous HIV infection.

In the southern African trial, 185 of the subjects tested positive in the Xpert test and 182 in the other.

They were examined again at two months and six months after starting treatment, using a scoring system that measured their quality of life and signs and symptoms of TB, said the study authors.

“Despite a longer delay to treatment in the microscopy group, no difference in the severity of TB-related illness, which correlates well with longer term prognosis, was noted after two months and six months between the two groups,” the authors said.

By the end of the study, eight per cent of patients in both groups had died.

“The potential long-term effect of this test is probably overestimated,” concluded the study.

The findings would be of major interest to policymakers “because the costs of rolling out Xpert MTB/RIF are very high”, Christian Wejse from the public health department of Denmark’s Aarhus University wrote in a comment also carried by The Lancet.

Reversing the incidence of TB is one of the UN Millennium Development Goals for 2015, but the disease remains a major cause of illness and death.

Untreated, TB kills about half the people it infects.

In 2012, 8.6 million people fell ill with the lung disease and 1.3 million died from it, according to the WHO.

Over 95 per cent of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, and it is among the top three causes of death for women aged 15 to 44.

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Fermented drink: new super remedy for gut health

Kombucha, an alcohol-free fermented beverage made from tea, might just be the next big thing in pro-biotics.

 Eric and Jessica Childs, who brought it forward, said that it has amazing benefits for gastrointestinal health and also has energizing properties.

In an attempt to promote the healthy drink, they started Kombucha Brooklyn, claiming that the drink is the perfect beverage for New Yorkers, the New York Daily News reported.

The husband-wife team has already experienced the benefits of Kombucha, which is a combo of tea, sugar, yeast and bacteria, said that the drink will boost immunity, improve digestion and relieve skin problems.

Eric said that when someone drinks Kombucha, they reap benefits from multiple microorganisms plus health benefits and flavour from the ingredients.

Jessica, a microbiologist with a certificate from the National Gourmet Institute, said that Kombucha can also be used in cooking as it has a large flavor profile.

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DIY sperm test: Male fertility kit on sale in UK for the first time

Sperm Check, an over-the-counter male fertility test, will force men to shoulder more of the burden when problems arise in conceiving naturally, experts say

A merchandise which makes it possible for guys to examine their sperm depend at house in ten minutes has long gone on sale in Britain for the 1st time. The male fertility test, called Sperm Check and developed to seem like a pregnancy test, can be acquired over-the-counter and expenses &pound30.

Some who work in reproductive well being and partnership therapy have welcomed the launch, stating it will power men and women to recognize that male infertility is a key explanation why some partners are not able to conceive in a natural way.

But other individuals have recommended Sperm Check could direct to friction in interactions, with males feeling emasculated if their companion asks them to carry out the test.

Ray Lopez, main executive of Sperm Check, instructed The Mail on Sunday:

With this test we can really assist couples struggling from infertility. A lot of the time, the female is the 1 who is burdened with discovering out what is mistaken, but the actuality of the scenario is that in 40 to sixty for every cent of situations, male aspect infertility is to blame.

Consumers of Sperm Check blend semen with a specific answer and area six drops of the liquid on a reader gadget, which assessments for SP-10, a protein only located in experienced sperm. If there are far more than twenty million sperm for each millimeter in the sample the Entire world Globe Overall health Organization benchmark for fertility, which an estimated ninety for every cent of men are above the test will show two red lines.

If the sperm depend is reduce, only one particular line will be displayed. Males who uncover they have a minimal sperm count are suggested to seek advice from their doctor. A minimal rely in alone does not rule out the likelihood of conceiving kids normally but will influence a few chances of carrying out so.

 

 

 

Mr Lopez stated the solution, which is to be shown in Boots alongside being pregnant and ovulation checks and is presently on sale in the US and Canada, is as good as a lab examination and precise in 98 for every cent of instances. But Alison Campbell, head of embryology at Care Fertility, a single of Britain’s most significant IVF clinics, stated the new merchandise could not inform end users how wholesome their sperm is and would nonetheless return a positive result for lifeless sperm.

She defined that an entire semen examination would have to be undertaken to check out regardless of whether sperm have been moving properly and the right condition to fertilize an egg. She included that the check gave no indicator if a males sperm depend was nearer to 20 million for each milliliter or zero if it arrived beneath the fertility benchmark.

There is no option to viewing a skilled, Ms Campbell explained. Silva Neves, a psychosexual and associations therapist primarily based in London, said he welcomed the items launch but stated its use could also introduce problems into a connection.

These times females still have a enormous volume of pressure in conditions of fertility and there is the assumption that if it doesn’t perform out it’s due to the fact of the female fairly than the couple, Mr Neves said.

I truly hope men do acquire this – but with new items, particularly items linked to sexuality, it sometimes will take a while for interest to decide up. It’s anything I can imagine recommending to partners if they did have fertility issues.

But he additional that men could really feel emasculated if they felt they ended up currently being blamed for a pair’s incapability to conceive a child in a natural way. Men will find all sorts of excuses if it arrives back with a minimal sperm count: it’s a new product, it’s not working effectively,” the therapist stated. Finding you’re infertile is like currently being castrated in standard psychological conditions.

When men and women listen to some thing they don’t want to hear, they become intense with themselves and frequently that aggression is projected onto somebody close to them, in this scenario their associate.  They may possibly say, you made me do this.

The typical sperm count per milliliter for a gentleman in his mid-30s is at present 50m, down from 74m in 1989. Medical experts recommend enhancements in diet plan, physical exercise and dropping excess weight for men making an attempt to improve their sperm depend. Keeping away from saunas and hot baths, and swapping restricted underwear for boxer shorts could also enjoy a position. Couples in which the male has severe fertility problems have a assortment of alternatives open to them, like synthetic insemination, which costs around &pound1,000, and IVF, which fees about &pound4,000 for every cycle.

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Coffee consumption cuts liver cancer risk

Good news for coffee drinkers: researchers from Italy have shown that coffee consumption reduces the risk of liver cancer by about 40%. And some of the results indicate that if you drink three cups a day, the risks are reduced by more than 50%.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states liver cancer is the ninth leading cause of cancer deaths in the US and the third leading cause of death from cancer in the world.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common form of this cancer and men are approximately three times more likely to develop the disease than women.

The results of the study, published in Clinical Gastronenterology and Hepatology, reaffirm previous findings that coffee drinking does have health benefits.

In just this year, Medical News Today has covered reports that coffee may protect againstwomb cancer, prostate cancer, and even how drinking Greek coffee may be the key to longevity.

A cup of hot coffee may not just get you going in the morning; it may actually help prevent liver cancer.

And as The National Coffee Association’s 2010 National coffee drinking survey reveals, 56% of American adults may have something to celebrate as they sip their morning cup.

Dr. Carlo La Vecchia, from Milan’s Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri and lead author of the study, says:

“Our research confirms past claims that coffee is good for your health and particularly the liver.”

For this study, researchers performed a meta-analysis using data collected from articles published between 1996 and 2012. From this, researchers selected 16 high-quality studies involving a total of 3,153 cases.

Even though the results across studies, time periods and populations have returned consistent results, researchers cannot “prove” a cause and effect relation between drinking coffee and HCC. This may be because patients suffering liver or digestive diseases often reduce their coffee intake, and this may be partially attributable to the relationship.

Coffee drinking has been shown to reduce the risks of diabetes, as a report from the National Center for Biotechnology Information shows.

And diabetes is a known risk factor of liver cancer – indeed; the National Cancer Institute cites it as the most common risk factor.

The researchers also say that more than 90% of primary liver cancers worldwide can be avoided through hepatitis B virus vaccination, control of hepatitis C virus transmission and reduction of alcohol drinking.

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Men slow down for their ladies when walking as a couple: Study

Taking a stroll with a loved one? A study shows that men take their pace down a notch to keep up with their leading ladies.

A person’s walking speed is influenced by various factors, including body mass and lower limb length, the study author’s note. This is why men tend to walk faster than women.

The researchers looked at the walking speeds of 11 couples, as well as some male and female friends of the pair. Participants were asked to walk around a track alone and in various pairings.

When men walked alone they walked about 1.53 meters per second, and women walked at a rate of 1.44 meters per second.

When walking with their significant other, men slowed their walking speed down about 7 percent.

“It’s really men who do all the compromising,” study lead Cara Wall-Scheffler, a biologist at Seattle Pacific University, said to USA Today.

There may be biological reasons behind this, Wall-Scheffler told the Los Angeles Times. When men slow down, they may be doing so to give themselves the ability to protect their partners, especially their reproductive abilities.

And, Wall-Scheffler pointed out that studies have shown that when women are able to reduce their energy expenditure during walking, they are able to have more children. This could be another evolutionary reason why women don’t walk as fast.

“I definitely think there is an evolutionary outcome,” Wall-Scheffler said to the Times. “Whether or not selection has acted on this behavior so that we still see it among men today — I don’t know if I could go that far.”

Interestingly, when men walked with their non-romantic women friends, they did not slow down at all. When men walked with their male friends, they actually sped up.

When women walked with female friends, both women slowed their pace down. The researchers said that might signify how intimate female bonds are.

“In indigenous, hunter-gatherer populations — groups who are walking huge amounts — we see females walking together with other females and we see men tending to walk by themselves or maybe with one other individual,” Wall-Scheffler said to the Los Angeles Times. “That’s typical, cross-culturally.”

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“Fat letters” outrage some California parents

Some California parents are outraged because they say their children are being sent home with “fat letters,” or notes explaining that their children are considered obese.

California students are required by the California Department of Education to take a Physical Fitness Test that looks at six areas of fitness during grades five, seven and nine.

California happens to be one of 19 states that require schools to screen for obesity, and they do so through a body mass index test (BMI) reading, a height-to-weight ratio measurement that is used by doctors to designate if a person is underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese. This BMI screening is done at the same time as the Physical Fitness Test.

The department also requires that students are notified of their test results, normally via a letter, an information officer from the California Department of Education told CBSNews.com. However, individual local school districts can make the choice to let parents know the results as well. These letters include the BMI of each student.

The National Eating Disorders Association showed the Sacramento Bee one letter sent to a 12-year-old seventh grader. She was rated in the “Healthy Fitness Zone” in all categories except for aerobic (the ability to run one mile) and body mass index. The letter said she received a “needs improvement — health risk” grade in these two areas.

The Association told the Bee that it feared that students who read this letter may be influenced into developing eating disorder behaviors like skipping meals, vomiting or taking laxatives. The group previously found that 42 percent of first through third grade girls have said they want to be thinner, and 81 percent of 10-year-olds are afraid of being fat.

Some other California school districts, including those in the San Fernando Valley, go a little further and specifically send letters just addressing a child’s obesity issue to their parents — not just their test results.

“We let the parents know in a gentle fashion, but we also send out a ton of handouts to try to help that family,” Lauren Schmitt, a registered dietitian who works with preschoolers in the San Fernando Valley, told CBS Los Angeles.

Schmitt said that they use growth charts and percentiles to make their obesity judgments. If a child is in the 95th percentile for their age and weight or height and weight, they are considered to be obese. She said out of the 900 two to five-year-olds she works with, about 200 are obese.

“It shouldn’t be a stigma. It’s not a way to categorize someone. It’s just showing that this child has increased risk to be obese as an adult, which then could lead to quite a few chronic diseases,” said Schmitt.

Massachusetts was another state that mandated BMI screening for students and required parents to be notified if the child was overweight or obese. However, the state reversed its decision on the “fat letters” in October because of concerns over bullying and self esteem.

I think it just hits home, that it’s very common sense. Why are we doing this?,” Tracy Watson, whose son Cam was sent home with a letter than he was obese, told CBS Boston. “These letters were doing more harm than good to kids out there.”

However, Harold Cox, a member of the Massachusetts Public Health Council, voted that the letters are necessary because they teach parents about healthy lifestyles, diets and exercise.

Childhood obesity rates have more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents over the last three decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now, more than one-third of children and adolescents were overweight and obese.

“Just because you don’t like the information that you’re getting doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get the information,” Cox said to CBS Boston. “Obesity is not going away. A third of our children in our state have some weight problem.”

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FDA proposes strict rules for animal food

Food produced for domestic pets and other animals will have to follow strict new standards under a proposed rule issued Friday by the Food and Drug Administration.

The new regulation, part of the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act, would require for the first time that companies that make pet food and animal feed follow good manufacturing practices that encompass basic issues such as sanitation and hazard analysis.

“We have been pushing feed safety for a number of years,” said Daniel McChesney, director of the office of surveillance and compliance at the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine. “It’s not, ‘Oh, we’re just making food for animals.’ They’re the first part of the food chain. We’re a part of the overall food industry.”

The new rules will be open for public comment for 120 days, and would be adopted as law within 60 days after the comment period closes.

They would apply to all domestic and imported animal food, including pet food, pet treats, animal feed, and the raw ingredients that make those products.

That means, for instance, that the producers of chicken, corn and sweet potato jerky treats made in China and blamed for the deaths of 600 pets and illnesses in about 3,600, will have to meet strict new requirements before their products can be sold, officials said.

FDA has always had rules in place that prohibit adulterants in pet food. That’s why the agency has issued company-initiated recalls for salmonella-tainted bird food, for instance, or dog food contaminated with aflatoxin, a naturally occurring mold by-product.

But, until now, there’s been no requirement that companies analyze the potential food safety hazards of their products or that they follow current good manufacturing practices, or CGMPs, that specifically address animal food.

“We’re not starting completely from scratch,” said Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine. “What’s important is that FDA take a comprehensive approach to food safety that covers the food supply comprehensively.”

The challenge for firms that produce animal foods and pet products will be in meeting the deadlines for compliance, McChesney said. Times will vary according to the size of an operation, with small and very small businesses being allowed more leeway.

The FDA will hold three public meetings in November and December to seek input on the proposed rule.

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A cure for baldness – First hair-restoration method

A cure for baldness has long eluded scientists, but a group of researchers say they have created a first-of-its-kind hair-restoration method that may actually get a person to grow new hair. This could be especially helpful for women, burn victims and other hair-loss patients who can’t be helped with traditional hair-loss methods.

“It’s really amazing because, right now, the transplantation of hair is really just a relocation,” said LaPook. “You take hair, generally from the back of the scalp to the front, but you’re limited by the number of follicles. Well, what a very clever group at Columbia University Medical Center did … is that they went to the cells at the base of the hair, and they took them outside, put them in a petri dish and multiplied them and created a lot more of the cells that then make the follicles, and then they were able to put them back into human, bald skin that was grafted onto the back of mice; four to six weeks later – hair.”

The hair was like “baby hair,” LaPook said. “But they think over time they’ll figure out a way to get it. They also don’t know after the first hair falls out, will another one grow back, but it’s really fascinating.”

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New insight into why each human face is unique

The human face is as unique as a finger print, no one else looks exactly like you. But what is it that makes facial morphology so distinct? Certainly genetics play a major role as evident in the similarities between parents and their children, but what is it in our DNA that fine-tunes the genetics so that siblings – especially identical twins – resemble one another but look different from unrelated individuals? A new study by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has now shown that gene enhancers – regulatory sequences of DNA that act to turn-on or amplify the expression of a specific gene – are major players in craniofacial development.

“Our results suggest it is likely there are thousands of enhancers in the human genome that are somehow involved in craniofacial,” says Axel Visel, a geneticist with Berkeley Lab’s Genomics Division who led this study. “We don’t know yet what all of these enhancers do, but we do know that they are out there and they are important for craniofacial development.”

Visel is the corresponding author of a paper in the journal Science that describes this research. The paper is titled “Fine Tuning of Craniofacial Morphology by Distant-Acting Enhancers.”

While some genetic defects responsible for craniofacial pathologies such as clefts of the lip or palate have been identified, the genetic drivers of normal craniofacial variation have been poorly understood. Previous work by Visel and his collaborators, in which they mapped gene enhancers in the heart, the brain and other organ systems, demonstrated that gene enhancers can regulate their targets from across distances of hundreds of thousands of base pairs. To learn whether gene enhancers can also have the same long-distance impact on craniofacial development, Visel and a multinational team of collaborators studied transgenic mice.

“We used a combination of epigenomic profiling, in vivo characterization of candidate enhancer sequences, and targeted deletion experiments to examine the role of distant-acting enhancers in the craniofacial development of our mice,” says Catia Attanasio, the lead author on the Science paper. “This enabled us to identify complex regulatory landscapes, consisting of enhancers that drive spatially complex developmental expression patterns. Analysis of mouse lines in which individual craniofacial enhancers had been deleted revealed significant alterations of craniofacial shape, demonstrating the functional importance of enhancers in defining face and skull morphology.”

In all, Visel, Attanasio and their colleagues identified more than 4,000 candidate enhancer sequences predicted to be active in fine-tuning the expression of genes involved in craniofacial development, and created genome-wide maps of these enhancers by pin-pointing their location in the mouse genome. The researchers also characterized in detail the activity of some 200 of these gene enhancers and deleted three of them. A majority of the enhancer sequences identified and mapped are at least partially conserved between humans and mice, and many are located in human chromosomal regions associated with normal facial morphology or craniofacial birth defects.

Knowing about the existence of these enhancers, which are inherited from parents to their children just like genes, knowing their exact location in the human genome, and knowing their general activity pattern in craniofacial development should facilitate a better understanding of the connection between genetics and human craniofacial morphology,” Visel says. “Our results also offer an opportunity for human geneticists to look for mutations specifically in enhancers that may play a role in birth defects, which in turn may help to develop better diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.”

Visel says he and his collaborators are now in the process of refining their genome-wide maps to gain additional information about the activity patterns of these enhancer sequences. They are also working with human geneticists to perform targeted searches for mutations of these enhancer sequences in human patients who have craniofacial birth defects.

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11 Factors for Alzheimer’s Disease Discovered after a Large Study

The largest international study ever conducted on Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the I-GAP (International Genomics Alzheimer’s Project) consortium has identified 11 new regions of the genome involved in the onset of this neurodegenerative disease.

This study gives an overview of the molecular mechanisms underlying the disease, opening up to a better understanding of the pathophysiology of AD. These results detailed currently in Nature Genetics, could not have been obtained without this unique worldwide collaborative effort.

Since 2009, 10 genes for Alzheimer’s disease have been identified. However, much of the individual susceptibility to develop the disease remains unexplained. So in February 2011, the leaders of the four largest international research consortia on the genetics of AD joined forces to accelerate the discovery of new genes. Supported in part by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and other components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), in less than three years, the IGAP program identified more genes than had been identified over the previous 20 years. They collected genetic data on 74,076 patients and controls from 15 countries and were able to discover 11 new genes in addition to those already known, and identify 13 other genes, yet to be validated.

These 11 new confirmed genes may open new avenues to understanding the causes of AD. For example, one of the most significant associations was found in the region HLA-DRB5/DRB1 major histocompatibility complex. This finding is interesting in several ways. First, it strongly suggests the involvement of the immune system in AD. In addition, this same region has also been associated with two other neurodegenerative diseases, one known to have an immune mechanism, multiple sclerosis and another not previously thought to have a major immune component, Parkinson’s disease.

Some of the newly associated genes confirm biological pathways known to be involved in AD, including the amyloid (SORL1, CASS4 ) and tau (CASS4 , FERMT2 ) pathways. The role of the immune response and inflammation (HLA-DRB5/DRB1 , INPP5D , MEF2C ) already implied by previous work (CR1, TREM2) is reinforced, as are the importance of cell migration (PTK2B), lipid transport and endocytosis (SORL1 ). New hypotheses have also emerged related to hippocampal synaptic function (MEF2C , PTK2B), the cytoskeleton and axonal transport (CELF1 , NME8, CASS4) as well as myeloid and microglial cell functions (INPP5D).

Finally, this work demonstrates that, given the complexity of such a disease, only a global collaboration of research efforts will quickly find solutions to tackle this major threat.

The four founding partners in this international consortium are, in alphabetical order, the Alzheimer’s Disease Genetics Consortium (ADGC), the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE), the European Alzheimer Disease Initiative (EADI) and the Genetic and Environmental Research in Alzheimer Disease (GERAD) consortium.

Boston University and the Framingham Heart Study are well-represented in this landmark international effort. The neurology working group of the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology is led by Sudha Seshadri, MD, professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), who is a senior investigator in the Framingham Heart Study and also one of the senior authors on this manuscript. Several other senior investigators, notably Anita L. DeStefano , PhD, professor of biostatistics Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) on behalf of CHARGE, and Lindsay A. Farrer, PhD, Chief of Biomedical Genetics and professor of medicine, neurology, ophthalmology, genetics & genomics, epidemiology, and biostatistics at BUSM and BUSPH on behalf of the ADGC, were key investigators in this effort. Farrer co-directs the data analysis effort for the ADGC which includes nearly all of the nation’s researchers working on the genetics of AD as well as many investigators and resources of the 29 NIA funded Alzheimer Disease Centers.

“This study clearly demonstrates that there really is strength in numbers to identify genes that individually have a small effect on risk of Alzheimer’s,” said Farrer. “But it’s not the magnitude of the odds ratio that’s really important. Each gene we implicate in the disease process adds new knowledge to our understanding of disease mechanism and provides insight into developing new therapeutic approaches, and ultimately these approaches may be more effective in halting the disease since genes are expressed long before clinical symptoms appear and brain damage occurs,” he added.

“This landmark international effort has uncovered new pathways and new genes in old pathways that are definitely associated with Alzheimer dementia, but we need to do much work to better understand how exactly these genes work in health and disease, and to perhaps make drugs from these genes and molecules,” said Seshadri. “We will continue to mine these results for new insights, even as we include more patients and use new technologies like whole genome sequencing to find more new pathways and genes,” she added.

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