Category Archives: Health Care

Silk E.coli Sensors

Scientists at Tufts University’s School of Engineering have demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to design such “living” optical elements that could enable an entirely new class of sensors. These sensors would combine sophisticated nanoscale optics with biological readout functions, be biocompatible and biodegradable, and be manufactured and stored at room temperatures without use of toxic chemicals. The Tufts team used fibers from silkworms to develop the platform devices.
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The possibility of integrating optical readout and biological function in a single biocompatible device unconstrained by these limitations is tantalizing. Silk optics has captured the interest of the Defense Department, which has funded and been instrumental in enabling rapid progress on the topic. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Tufts a research contract in 2007 and is funding Tufts and others on groundbreaking projects that could someday result in biodegradable optical sensing communications technology.
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To form the devices, Tufts scientists boiled cocoons of the Bombyx mori silkworm in a water solution and extracted the glue-like sericin proteins. The purified silk protein solution was ultimately poured onto negative molds of ruled and holographic diffraction gratings with spacing as fine as 3600 grooves/mm.
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The Tufts team embedded three very different biological agents in the silk solution: a protein (hemoglobin), an enzyme (horseradish peroxidase) and an organic pH indicator (phenol red). In the hardened silk optical element, all three agents maintained their activity for long periods when simply stored on a shelf. “We have optical devices embedded with enzymes that are still active after almost a year of storage at room temperature.

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2008

photos of Harald zur Hausen, FranÃ§oise BarrÃ©-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2008 with one half to Harald zur Hausen for his discovery of “human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer” and the other half jointly to FranÃ§oise BarrÃ©-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for their discovery of “human immunodeficiency virus.”

Harald zur Hausen went against current dogma and postulated that oncogenic human papilloma virus (HPV) caused cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women. He realized that HPV-DNA could exist in a non-productive state in the tumours, and should be detectable by specific searches for viral DNA. He found HPV to be a heterogeneous family of viruses. Only some HPV types cause cancer. His discovery has led to characterization of the natural history of HPV infection, an understanding of mechanisms of HPV-induced carcinogenesis and the development of prophylactic vaccines against HPV acquisition.

FranÃ§oise BarrÃ©-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier discovered human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Virus production was identified in lymphocytes from patients with enlarged lymph nodes in early stages of acquired immunodeficiency, and in blood from patients with late stage disease. They characterized this retrovirus as the first known human lentivirus based on its morphological, biochemical and immunological properties. HIV impaired the immune system because of massive virus replication and cell damage to lymphocytes. The discovery was one prerequisite for the current understanding of the biology of the disease and its antiretroviral treatment.

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Foreign Cells Outnumber Human Cells in Our Bodies

This is one of those area I find very interesting: People Have More Bacterial Cells than Human Cells. Colin Nickerson has written an interesting article on the topic: Of microbes and men

Scientists estimate that 90 percent of the cells contained in the human body belong to nonhuman organisms – mostly bacteria, but also a smattering of fungi and other eensy entities. Some 100 trillion microbes nestle in niches from our teeth to our toes.

But what’s setting science on its heels these days is not the boggling numbers of bugs so much as the budding recognition that they are much more than casual hitchhikers capable of causing disease. They may be so essential to well-being that humans couldn’t live without them.

In this emerging view, humans and their microbes – or, as some biologists playfully put it, microbes and their attached humans – have evolved together to form an extraordinarily complex ecosystem.

The understanding of the complex interaction is something I came to through reading on the overuse of antibiotics. And the more I read the more interesting it gets.

“We can’t take nutrition properly without bacteria. We can’t fight bad germs without good germs,” he said. “It may turn out that secretions from bacteria affect not only long-term health, but hour-by-hour moods – could a person’s happiness depend on his or her bugs? It’s possible. Our existences are so incredibly intertwined.”

However, in the opinion of some researchers, this strange union may be headed for trouble because of profligate use of antibiotics and antiseptic lifestyles that deter the transfer of vital strains of bacteria that have swarmed in our systems at least since early humans ventured out of Africa.

Move over MRSA, C.diff is Here

Clostridium difficile (C.diff), a bacteria, is increasingly posing health risk. Rising Foe Defies Hospitals’ War On ‘Superbugs’

Even as hospitals begin to get control of other drug-resistant infections such as MRSA, a form of staph, rates of C. diff are rising sharply, and a recent, more virulent strain of the bug is causing more severe complications. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there are 500,000 cases of C. diff infection annually in the U.S., contributing to between 15,000 and 30,000 deaths. That’s up from roughly 150,000 cases in 2001.
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Many patients get C. diff infections as an unintended consequence of taking antibiotics for other illnesses. That’s because bacteria normally found in a person’s intestines help keep C. diff under control, allowing the bug to live in the gut without necessarily causing illness. But when a person takes antibiotics, both bad and good bacteria are suppressed, allowing drug-resistant C. diff to grow out of control.
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Only 3% to 5% of healthy, non-hospitalized adults carry C. diff in their gut, but that rate is much higher in hospitals and nursing homes, where carriers can spread the bacteria to others. Studies at several hospitals in recent years have shown that 20% or more of inpatients were colonized with C. diff, and a 2007 study of 73 long-term-care residents showed 55% were positive for C. diff. Even though the majority had no symptoms of disease, spores on the skin of asymptomatic patients were easily transferred to the investigators’ hands.

New Antipsychotics Old Results

Risks Found for Youths in New Antipsychotics

A new government study published Monday has found that the medicines most often prescribed for schizophrenia in children and adolescents are no more effective than older, less expensive drugs and are more likely to cause some harmful side effects. The standards for treating the disorder should be changed to include some older medications that have fallen out of use, the study’s authors said.
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“I think the reason the use of these newer drugs has gone up so fast is that there was this widespread assumption that they were safer and more effective than what we had before,” Dr. McClellan said. “Well, we’re seeing now that that’s not the whole story.”

Active Amish Avoid Obesity

Lessons from the Amish: We’re not doomed to obesity

Four years ago we discovered that the Amish maintained super-low obesity levels despite eating a diet high in fat, calories and refined sugar. They key was their level of physical activity — men averaged 18,000 steps a day, women 14,000. That’s monumental compared to the paltry couple of thousand or so most of us eke out in a day.
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A recent study revealed even more about the Old Order Amish: They maintain low obesity levels despite having a gene variation that makes them susceptible to obesity. The secret here? You guessed it — lots of physical activity.

Study Conclusions: “Our results strongly suggest that the increased risk of obesity owing to genetic susceptibility by FTO variants can be blunted through physical activity. These findings emphasize the important role of physical activity in public health efforts to combat obesity, particularly in genetically susceptible individuals.”

Sometimes the simple explanation is worth paying attention to. Add lack of activity to eating more (Obesity Epidemic Explained – Kind Of: 1970 Americans ate an average of 2170 calories per day in 2000 they ate an average of 2700) and it seems like it is logical we would gain weight due to these two factors.

Best Research University Rankings – 2008

The annual ranking of research Universities are available from Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University. The methodology values publications and faculty awards which provides a better ranking of research (rather than teaching). Results from the 2008 rankings of Top 500 Universities worldwide, country representation of the top schools:

location	Top 100	% of World Population	% of World GDP	% of top 500
USA	54	4.6%	27.2%	31.6%
United Kingdom	11	0.9	4.9	8.3
Germany	6	1.3	6.0	8.0
Japan	4	2.0	9.0	6.2
Canada	4	0.5	2.6	4.2
Sweden	4	0.1	0.8	2.2
France	3	0.8	4.6	4.6
Switzerland	3	0.1	0.8	1.6
Australia	3	0.3	1.6	3.0
Netherlands	2	0.2	1.4	2.4
Denmark	2	0.1	0.6	0.8
Finland	1	0.1	0.4	1.2
Norway	1	0.1	0.7	0.8
Israel	1	0.1	0.3	1.2
Russia	1	2.2	2.0	0.4
China		20.5	6.6	6.0
India		17.0	1.9	0.4

There is little change in most of the data from last year, which I think is a good sign, it wouldn’t make much sense to have radical shifts over a year in these rankings. Japan lost 2 schools in the top 100, France lost 1. Denmark (Aarhus University) and Australia (University of Sydney) gained 1. Last year there was a tie so there were 101 schools in the top 100.

The most dramatic data I noticed is China’s number of top 500 schools went from 14 to 30, which made me a bit skeptical of what caused that quick change. Looking more closely last year they reported the China top 500 totals as (China 14, China-Taiwan 6 and China-Hong Kong 5). That still gives them an impressive gain of 5 schools.

Singapore has 1 in the 102-151 range. Taiwan has 1 ranked in the 152-200 range, as do Mexico, Korea and Brazil. China has 9 in the 201-302 range (including 3 in Hong Kong). India has 2 in the 303-401 range.

University of Wisconsin – Madison is 17th again 🙂 My father taught there while I grew up.
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Study Finds No Measurable Benefit to Flu Shots

Do Flu Shots For The Elderly Save Lives? Just Washing Hands Works Better, Says Study

The widely-held perception that the influenza vaccination reduces overall mortality risk in the elderly does not withstand careful scrutiny, according to researchers in Alberta. The vaccine does confer protection against specific strains of influenza, but its overall benefit appears to have been exaggerated by a number of observational studies that found a very large reduction in all-cause mortality among elderly patients who had been vaccinated.

The study included more than 700 matched elderly subjects, half of whom had taken the vaccine and half of whom had not. After controlling for a wealth of variables that were largely not considered or simply not available in previous studies that reported the mortality benefit, the researchers concluded that any such benefit “if present at all, was very small and statistically non-significant and may simply be a healthy-user artifact that they were unable to identify.”
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“Over the last two decades in the United Sates, even while vaccination rates among the elderly have increased from 15 to 65 percent, there has been no commensurate decrease in hospital admissions or all-cause mortality

Black Raspberries Alter Hundreds of Genes Slowing Cancer

Black Raspberries Slow Cancer by Alter Hundreds of Genes

Researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center examined the effect of freeze-dried black raspberries on genes altered by a chemical carcinogen in an animal model of esophageal cancer
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“We have clearly shown that berries, which contain a variety of anticancer compounds, have a genome-wide effect on the expression of genes involved in cancer development,” says principal investigator Gary D. Stoner
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Stoner notes that black raspberries have vitamins, minerals, phenols and phytosterols, many of which individually are known to prevent cancer in animals. “Freeze drying the berries concentrates these elements about ten times, giving us a power pack of chemoprevention agents that can influence the different signaling pathways that are deregulated in cancer,” he says.
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Their analyses included measuring the activity, or expression levels, of 41,000 genes. In the carcinogen-treated animals, 2,261 of these genes showed changes in activity of 50 percent or higher.

Pretty cool stuff.

Patent Gridlock is Blocking Developing Lifesaving Drugs

How patent gridlock is blocking the development of lifesaving drugs by Michael Heller, Forbes

Since a 1980 Supreme Court decision allowing patents on living organisms, 40,000 dna-related patents have been granted. Now picture a drug developer walking into an auditorium filled with dozens of owners of the biotech patents needed to create a potential lifesaving cure. Unless the drugmaker can strike a deal with every person in the room, the new drug won’t be developed.
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Nicholas Naclerio, who used to head the BioChip Division at Motorola , told Scientific American, “If we want to make a medical diagnostic with 40 genes on it, and 20 companies hold patents on those genes, we may have a big problem.”
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And it’s not just drugs we’re losing. Today anything high tech–banking, semiconductors, software, telecom–demands the assembly of innumerable patents. Innovation has moved on, but we’re stuck with old-style ownership that’s easy to fragment and hard to put together. This debacle’s only upside is that assembling fragmented property is one of the great entrepreneurial and political opportunities of our era.

This is a critical problem I have written about before. The broken patent system is a serious problem that needs to be fixed.