Category Archives: Health Care

New Questions on Treating Cholesterol

For decades, the theory that lowering cholesterol is always beneficial has been a core principle of cardiology. It has been accepted by doctors and used by drug makers to win quick approval for new medicines to reduce cholesterol.

But now some prominent cardiologists say the results of two recent clinical trials have raised serious questions about that theory — and the value of two widely used cholesterol-lowering medicines, Zetia and its sister drug, Vytorin.
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“The idea that you’re just going to lower LDL and people are going to get better, that’s too simplistic, much too simplistic,” said Dr. Eric J. Topol

via: The Cholesterol Mystery

Bacteria Race Ahead of Drugs

Bacteria race ahead of drugs

Dr. Jeff Brooks has been director of the UCSF lab for 29 years, and has watched with a mixture of fascination and dread how bacteria once tamed by antibiotics evolve rapidly into forms that practically no drug can treat.
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“We are on the verge of losing control of the situation, particularly in the hospitals,” said Dr. Chip Chambers, chief of infectious disease at San Francisco General Hospital. The reasons for increasing drug resistance are well known:
– Overuse of antibiotics, which speeds the natural evolution of bacteria, promoting new mutant strains resistant to those drugs.
– Careless prescribing of antibiotics that aren’t effective for the malady in question, such as a viral infection.
– Patient demand for antibiotics when they aren’t needed.
– Heavy use of antibiotics in poultry and livestock feed, which can breed resistance to similar drugs for people.
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Terry Hazen, senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and director of its ecology program, is not at all surprised by the tenacity of our bacterial foes. “We are talking about 3.5 billion years of evolution,” he said. “They are the dominant life on Earth.”

Bacteria have invaded virtually every ecological niche on the planet. Human explorers of extreme environments such as deep wells and mines are still finding new bacterial species. “As you go deeper into the subsurface, thousands and thousands of feet, you find bacteria that have been isolated for millions of years – and you find multiple antibiotic resistance,” Hazen said.

In his view, when bacteria develop resistance to modern antibiotics, they are merely rolling out old tricks they mastered eons ago in their struggle to live in harsh environments in competition with similarly resilient species.

We have written often about the misuse of anti-biotics. This is a serious problem. And it is sad to see yet another example of well know scientific facts being ignored and by so doing threatening the healthy lives of others. i just finished a great book on bacteria and human health – Good Germs, Bad Germs.

Robot Nurse

Robot nurse under development at Sask. university

In two years, a robot nurse could be trolling hospital hallways, handing out pills or visiting quarantined patients. At least that according to its creator, Reza Fotouhi, who says his robot could well be the answer to worker shortages in the health-care, mining and agriculture fields.
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With a video camera on the front end, he could see what was ahead of the machine. The $215,000 project is funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the government of Saskatchewan.

Discussing Medical Study Results

Brazilian berry destroys cancer cells in lab, UF study shows:

“Acai berries are already considered one of the richest fruit sources of antioxidants,” Talcott said. “This study was an important step toward learning what people may gain from using beverages, dietary supplements or other products made with the berries.” He cautioned that the study, funded by UF sources, was not intended to show whether compounds found in acai berries could prevent leukemia in people.

“This was only a cell-culture model and we don’t want to give anyone false hope,” Talcott said. “We are encouraged by the findings, however. Compounds that show good activity against cancer cells in a model system are most likely to have beneficial effects in our bodies.”

Other fruits, including grapes, guavas and mangoes, contain antioxidants shown to kill cancer cells in similar studies, he said. Experts are uncertain how much effect antioxidants have on cancer cells in the human body, because factors such as nutrient absorption, metabolism and the influence of other biochemical processes may influence the antioxidants’ chemical activity.

The title the University of Florida gives the press release is misleading I think (even though true). But at least the text provides reasonable caution. We really need to make sure press releases (especially from Universities) don’t focus on hype. Universities need to be held their missions of education which includes helping the public understand science not confusing the public. Dr. Talcott’s page on the AÃ§ai berry. Universities are obviously more and more focusing on revenue instead of education – I am sure they will claim to support education… but they need to show that is true.

The Science of Happiness

Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness

People with happy brains have their parents to thank, to a certain extent, not only for happy genes, but also for loving childhoods. Studies have shown that angry or critical parents can actually alter a child’s happiness level until it’s set around age 16.
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Scientists have known for decades that a large part of our temperament is genetically pre-determined; by studying the personalities of identical twins they’ve found that about 50 percent of our happiness — or unhappiness — can be traced to our genes. Adding the 40 percent that we can control with our daily thoughts and actions still leaves about 10 percent unaccounted for. This remaining 10 percent is related to our life circumstances, such as where we live, how much money we have, our marital status, and how we look.

This is a very interesting article. Like many social science claims I find these claims more open to question than most other studies – but interesting none-the-less.

New Drug Targets May Fight Tuberculosis in Novel Way

New Drug Targets May Fight Tuberculosis and Other Bacterial Infections in Novel Way

“We have developed the first inhibitor of a key small molecule from Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium leprae (which causes leprosy) utilized to subvert human host’s defenses and damage and invade human host’s cells during infection,” explains study senior author Dr. Luis Quadri, Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Weill Cornell.
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“We are moving beyond antimicrobials such as antibiotics, which kill the bacterium directly, to anti-infectives, that may have no effect against the pathogen in the test tube but which do compromise its ability to infect and spread in the host,” he explains. “We believe that the expansion of the drug armamentarium to include such anti-infective drugs could help the fight against multi-drug resistant infection that has become such a challenge today.”
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“I believe that drugs targeting virulence factors are just one component of the paradigm shift in the antimicrobial drug discovery for the 21st century—one that will offer patients more options in the fight against truly global killers,” he says.

Scientists Cure Mice Of Sickle Cell Using Stem Cell Technique

Using a recently developed technique for turning skin cells into stem cells, scientists have cured mice of sickle cell anemia — the first direct proof that the easily obtained cells can reverse an inherited, potentially fatal disease.
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researchers also cautioned that aspects of the new approach will have to be changed before it can be tried in human patients. Most important, the technique depends on the use of gene-altered viruses that have the potential to trigger tumor growth. “The big issue is how to replace these viruses,” said Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., who led the new work with co-worker Jacob Hanna and Tim M. Townes of the University of Alabama Schools of Medicine and Dentistry in Birmingham.
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The researchers converted those skin cells into iPS cells by infecting them with viruses engineered to change the cells’ gene activity so they would resemble embryonic cells. Using DNA splicing techniques in those cells, the researchers then snipped out the small mutated stretches of DNA that cause sickle cell disease and filled those gaps with bits of DNA bearing the proper genetic code.

Next, the researchers treated the corrected iPS cells with another kind of virus — this time one designed to induce a genetic change that encouraged the cells to mature into bone marrow cells.

Finally, each mouse that gave up a few skin cells at the beginning of the experiment was given an infusion with the corrected marrow cells created from its own skin cells. Those cells set up permanent residence in the animals’ bones and began producing blood cells — the major function of marrow cells — and releasing them by the millions into the circulatory system.

But now the blood cells being produced were free of the sickle cell mutation.

Antibacterial Chemical Disrupts Hormone Activities

Antibacterial Chemical Disrupts Hormone Activities:

A new UC Davis study shows that a common antibacterial chemical added to bath soaps can alter hormonal activity in rats and in human cells in the laboratory — and does so by a previously unreported mechanism.

The findings come as an increasing number of studies — of both lab animals and humans — are revealing that some synthetic chemicals in household products can cause health problems by interfering with normal hormone action. Called endocrine disruptors, or endocrine disrupting substances (EDS), such chemicals have been linked in animal studies to a variety of problems, including cancer, reproductive failure and developmental anomalies.

The researchers found two key effects: In human cells in the laboratory, triclocarban increased gene expression that is normally regulated by testosterone. And when male rats were fed triclocarban, testosterone-dependent organs such as the prostate gland grew abnormally large. Also, the authors said their discovery that triclocarban increased hormone effects was new. All previous studies of endocrine disruptors had found that they generally act by blocking or decreasing hormone effects.

In their disclosure statement, the authors report that six of them have taken steps to patent their findings through the University of California.

Research paper Triclocarban enhances testosterone action: A new type of endocrine disruptor?.

Ebola Outbreak in Uganda

Ebola is a truly scary virus. Read more on Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever at the CDC and WHO:

Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EHF) is one of the most virulent viral diseases known to humankind, causing death in 50-90% of all clinically ill cases. Several different species of Ebola virus have been identified. The Ebola virus is transmitted by direct contact with the blood, body fluids and tissues of infected persons. Transmission of the Ebola virus has also occurred by handling ill or dead infected chimpanzees.

Panic spreads as Uganda reports 101 Ebola cases:

Uganda has 101 suspected cases of Ebola fever and hundreds more people being closely monitored, officials said on Friday, as fear grew in Uganda and neighboring countries that the deadly virus might spread. Twenty two people have so far died of the fever
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The outbreak, which started in August, has sparked panic amongst officials, health workers and the public, with the medical union calling on staff to refuse looking after patients unless they are issued proper protective gear. The affected region borders Democratic Republic of the Congo, whose Ebola river gave the virus its name after some of the first cases were recorded in its valley in 1976. The independent Daily Monitor said Congo had sealed its border with the district. Congolese officials denied this.
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The last Ebola outbreak in Uganda was in 2000, when 425 people caught it and more than half died. Meanwhile, north of the Ebola-hit district, a separate epidemic of bubonic plague has infected 160 people and killed 19 since July, Health Ministry spokesman Paul Kabwa said.

I happen to be reading The Hot Zone right now. It is a non-fiction book which explores several Ebola virus outbreaks from 1967 to 1993 including one at surburban Washington, DC laboratory in 1989.

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter

Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter:

The answer, they say, has to do with the virus itself. It is more stable and stays in the air longer when air is cold and dry, the exact conditions for much of the flu season.

“Influenza virus is more likely to be transmitted during winter on the way to the subway than in a warm room,” said Peter Palese, a flu researcher who is professor and chairman of the microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the lead author of the flu study. Dr. Palese published details of his findings in the Oct. 19 issue of PLoS Pathogens.

Reading a paper published in 1919 in the Journal of the American Medical Association on the flu epidemic at Camp Cody in New Mexico, he came upon a key passage: “It is interesting to note that very soon after the epidemic of influenza reached this camp, our laboratory guinea pigs began to die.”
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Dr. Palese bought some guinea pigs and exposed them to the flu virus. Just as the paper suggested, they got the flu and spread it among themselves. So Dr. Palese and his colleagues began their experiments. By varying air temperature and humidity in the guinea pigs’ quarters, they discovered that transmission was excellent at 41 degrees. It declined as the temperature rose until, by 86 degrees, the virus was not transmitted at all.

The virus was transmitted best at a low humidity, 20 percent, and not transmitted at all when the humidity reached 80 percent. The animals also released viruses nearly two days longer at 41 degrees than at a typical room temperature of 68 degrees.

Very interesting and you can read the actual paper since it is open access: Influenza Virus Transmission Is Dependent on Relative Humidity and Temperature.