Category Archives: Health Care

Hacking Your Body’s Bacteria

Hacking Your Body’s Bacteria for Better Health by Brandon Keim

In sheer numbers, bacterial cells in the body outnumber our own by a factor of 10, with 50 trillion bacteria living in the digestive system alone, where they’ve remained largely unstudied until the last decade. As scientists learn more about them, they’re beginning to chart the complex symbiosis between the tiny bugs and our health.

“The microbes that live in the human body are quite ancient,” says NYU Medical Center microbiologist Dr. Martin Blaser, a pioneer in gut microbe research. “They’ve been selected (through evolution) because they help us.” And it now appears that our daily antibacterial regimens are disrupting a balance that once protected humans from health problems, especially allergies and malfunctioning immune responses.

Fruit Better Than Vitamins

Fruit proves better than vitamin C alone. Tests show that it isn’t just the vitamin that protects the body.

Other nutrition researchers have suggested that sugars in juice interact with vitamin C to generate the antioxidant effect2. But Guarnieri suspects that the phytochemicals found in oranges (cyanidin-3-glucoside, flavanones and carotenoids) are the substances that need further study. “But how they are interacting is still anyone’s guess,” she adds.

Eat Less Salt – Save Your Heart

Reducing salt cuts cardiovascular disease risk:

Cutting back on salt intake could lower the risk of developing heart disease by 25 per cent, in addition to lower blood pressure benefits, say researchers who studied people with borderline high blood pressure. Researchers in the U.S. looked at more than 3,000 people in two trials with pre-hypertension who reduced their sodium intake by 25 per cent to 35 per cent, compared with control groups that did not.

Cut Heart Risk by Eating Less Salt:

Last summer, the American Medical Association (AMA) called for a minimum 50% reduction in sodium in processed foods, fast foods, and non-fast-food restaurant meals within a decade. The group also called on the FDA to work harder to educate consumers about the health risks associated with a high-sodium diet.

“The average American is eating three times as much salt as is healthy every day — the equivalent of 2 to 3 teaspoons instead of no more than 1,” he says. “The assumption tends to be, ‘If I don’t use my salt shaker much, I’m probably OK,’ but that just isn’t true.”

$600 Million for Basic Biomedical Research

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) will hold a national competition for investigators that will result in an investment of at least $600 million in basic biomedical research. Up to 50 new researchers will be selected by spring 2008. HHMI Announces New Open Competition:

HHMI seeks applications from outstanding scientists studying biomedical problems in a broad array of disciplines, including not only biology and medicine, but related areas of chemistry, physics, engineering and computational biology. This competition is open to early career stage scientists at approximately 200 eligible institutions.
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HHMI values innovation and encourages its investigators to extend the boundaries of science. By appointing scientists as Hughes investigators — rather than awarding research grants — HHMI is guided by the principle of “people, not projects.” HHMI investigators have the freedom to explore and, if necessary, to change direction in their research. Moreover, they have support to follow their ideas through to fruition — even if that process takes many years.
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This new competition represents the first time that HHMI has opened up a general competition to the direct application process. In the past, faculty members had to be nominated by their institutions for HHMI investigator positions.

More details and apply via: 2008 HHMI Investigator Competition.

Universal Blood

Universal Blood by Katherine Bourzac:

Red blood cells have complex sugars on their surfaces; it is these sugars that determine whether the blood is type A, B, O, or both A and B. People with type A red blood cells carry antibodies against type B blood cells. If they are given a transfusion of type B red blood cells, their body will attack and kill the cells. Similarly, people with type B blood will mount an immune attack against a transfusion of type A blood.

Researchers led by Henrik Clausen of the University of Copenhagen have discovered two enzymes that efficiently chop the A and B sugars off of red blood cells, making them universal. The company ZymeQuest, based in Beverly, MA, has licensed the enzymes and developed a machine that can simultaneously treat eight units of blood with the enzymes in 90 minutes.

$500 Million to Reduce Childhood Obesity in USA

$500-Million Commitment to Reverse Childhood Obesity in U.S.:

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) today announced it will commit at least $500 million over the next five years to tackle one of the most urgent public health threats facing our nation: childhood obesity. This is the largest commitment by any foundation to this issue. The Foundation’s goal is to reverse the epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States by 2015.

During the past four decades, obesity rates have soared among all age groups, more than quadrupling among children ages 6 to 11. Today, more than 33 percent of children and adolescents—approximately 25 million kids—are overweight or obese.
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In addition to the toll on our nation’s health, obesity also poses a tremendous financial threat to our economy and our health care system. It’s estimated that the obesity epidemic costs our nation $117 billion per year in direct health care costs and lost productivity. Childhood obesity alone carries a huge price tag-up to $14 billion per year in direct health care costs to treat kids.
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The Foundation will focus on improving access to affordable healthy foods and opportunities for safe physical activity in schools and communities.

Drug-resistant Flu Virus

Drug-resistant flu virus emerges in untreated patients:

The emergence of drug-resistant influenza was documented in a study of Japanese patients. It is a clear early warning that flu viruses may be beginning to outwit what are now highly effective drugs, says Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a University of Wisconsin-Madison virologist and the senior author of the new JAMA study.

“There is urgent need to develop new kinds of antivirals,” says Kawaoka, an internationally recognized authority on influenza. “This is the first report that drug-resistant influenza B virus may be transmitting in the community.”

Neuroengineers Use Light to Silence Overactive Neurons

MIT neuroengineers’ pulsing light silences overactive neurons:

The work takes advantage of a gene called halorhodopsin found in a bacterium that grows in extremely salty water, such as the Great Salt Lake in Utah. In the bacterium, Natronomas pharaonis, the gene codes for a protein that serves as a light-activated chloride pump, which helps the bacterium make energy.

When neurons are engineered to express the halorhodopsin gene, the researchers can inhibit their activity by shining yellow light on them. Light activates the chloride pumps, which drive chloride ions into the neurons, lowering their voltage and silencing their firing.
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The group also plans to use the new method to study neural circuits. Last year, Boyden devised a technique to stimulate neurons by shining blue light on them, so with blue and yellow light the researchers can now exert exquisite control over the stimulation and inhibition of individual neurons. Learning more about the neural circuits involved in epilepsy could help scientists develop devices that can predict when a seizure is about to occur, allowing treatment (either shock or light) to be administered only when necessary, Boyden said.

Navigating Through The Bloodstream

Can you guess if this is a journal article or press report based on the title: Automatic navigation of an untethered device in the artery of a living animal using a conventional clinical magnetic resonance imaging system? Yes it is a journal article:

The feasibility for in vivo navigation of untethered devices or robots is demonstrated with the control and tracking of a 1.5 mm diameter ferromagnetic bead in the carotid artery of a living swine using a clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) platform. Navigation is achieved by inducing displacement forces from the three orthogonal slice selection and signal encoding gradient coils of a standard MRI system. The proposed method performs automatic tracking, propulsion, and computer control sequences at a sufficient rate to allow navigation along preplanned paths in the blood circulatory system.

Pretty cool. See more interesting papers and information from the NanoRobotics Laboratory including online videos and more info online.

Deadly TB Strain is Spreading, WHO Warns

Deadly TB strain is spreading, WHO warns:

Africa’s large AIDS population is at special risk from the particularly virulent strain, known as XDR-TB (extremely drug resistant), which had been documented in 35 countries worldwide, 16 of them in this year. “This is the most urgent thing I have seen in my 15 years of working on tuberculosis,” said Mario Raviglione, director of the STOP TB program at the World Health Organization. He introduced WHO’s TB report, which coincides with the 125th anniversary of the discovery of the microbe that causes TB.
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Some 2 billion people worldwide live with TB, an airborne illness that is normally treatable through inexpensive medication. But if the disease is not diagnosed and treated, it can mutate into drug-resistant strains. In 2005, nearly 9 million people became infected with tuberculosis and 1.6 million died of it, about the same as the year before, which showed that containment efforts were working, Raviglione said. The epidemic is centered primarily in Asia and in Africa, which accounted for 84 percent of the total.

“The good news is that the global incidence may have peaked,” particularly in China, India, and Indonesia, he said. “The bad news is that although the incidence has declined [there] is resistance to most powerful first-line drugs and a form of TB that is resistant to second-line drugs.”