Category Archives: Health Care

Energy Efficiency of Digestion

The complex digestion process ensures that almost no useful energy goes unused. The average bowel movement is three parts water to one part solid matter. Bacteria make up 30 percent of the solid stuff. The same goes for indigestible foods like cellulose and extra fiber. The remaining 40 percent contains various inorganic wastes, fats and used-up body substances like red blood cells

Scientists Examine 100 Trillion Microbes in Human Feces:

Aiding the large intestine in this task are trillions of microbes that reside in the gut, where they help digest foods we would otherwise have to avoid. In this way the bugs contribute to our overall health.

Some of these tiny settlers are with us from birth, imparted from our mothers, while others gradually colonize our bodies as we grow. This microbial community is as diverse as any found in Earth’s seas or soils, numbering up to 100 trillion individuals and representing more than 1,000 different species.

Virus may be eating your brain

Forgetful? Virus may be eating your brain

Viruses that cause a range of ills from the common cold to polio may be able to infect the brain and cause steady damage, a team at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota reports.

“Our study suggests that virus-induced memory loss could accumulate over the lifetime of an individual and eventually lead to clinical cognitive memory deficits,” says Dr Charles Howe, who reports the findings in the latest issue of the journal Neurobiology of Disease.

The viruses are called picornaviruses and infect more than 1 billion people worldwide each year.

They include the virus that causes polio, as well as colds and diarrhoea. People contract an average of two or three such infections a year.

Related: Viruses as Nanomachines (webcast) (excellent, John) – What Are Viruses? – More info on Picornaviruses from Tulane – Microbes

Bacteria in Food Increasingly Dangerous

Food-borne bacteria evolving, becoming more dangerous by Elizabeth Weise:

The evolution of ultra-dangerous versions of common food pathogens with which humans have coexisted for millennia. E. coli lives in the guts of most mammals. Almost all forms are harmless; some are actually necessary for health. It wasn’t until the 1970s that a deadly version — O157:H7 — emerged that causes kidney damage and death.

Two forms of the salmonella bacteria,Salmonella typhimurium and Salmonella newport, have evolved to resist most of the antibiotics that doctors are comfortable giving to children, says Patricia Griffin, who studies food-borne and diarrheal illnesses at the CDC.

Both are most common in cattle and other farm animals but are also turning up in fresh produce.

MRSA Vaccine Shows Promise

Superbug vaccine ‘shows promise’

A vaccine to guard against hospital superbug MRSA is a step closer, according to scientists. US researchers have developed a vaccine that protected mice from four potentially deadly strains of MRSA.
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The team looked for a vaccine using a technique called “reverse vaccinology”, which builds on recent genetics advances.

It involved sifting through the genome of Staphylococcus aureus to hunt for proteins on the microbe that might spark the body’s immune system into action, producing protection against the bacteria.

The team identified four proteins that prompted a strong immune response, making them good targets for vaccines.

More information on MRSA is available from the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Educating Scientists and Engineers

Business Week has an articles discussing what business would like to see from graduates, Biotech’s Beef:

The problem is a disconnect between what universities are teaching and what biotech wants. “The focus of academia is getting basic and theoretical knowledge in place,”
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There are several weaknesses. First, recent grads lack the technical knowledge to carry out applied research in areas that straddle engineering, math, and computers. Second, job candidates have little awareness of what the Food & Drug Administration is looking for when it considers whether or not to approve a drug. Recent grads simply aren’t familiar with issues such as quality control and regulatory affairs.

This general idea is not new. But, as always (and probably more so if the nature of what is needed is changing faster today than in the past) the changing environment does require universities (and students, at least those that want to work in industry) to adapt.

But with H-1B quotas filling up earlier every year, Invitrogen has chosen to do more drug development in Japan, China, and India. It may also open facilities in Korea and Singapore, says Rodney Moses, Invitrogen’s vice-president of talent acquisition. Compensation in China and India is lower than in the U.S., but that’s not what motivates the move offshore, says Moses. “If the talent is located in Singapore, it’s just easier for us to go there.”

U.S. colleges take the problem seriously. State university systems in California, Wisconsin, and elsewhere are adding more industry-oriented classes.

Sick spinach: Meet the killer E coli

Sick spinach: Meet the killer E coli:

O157 is unusually infectious, adds B. Brett Finlay, professor of microbiology at the University of British Columbia, who has studied the devious bug’s genetics and tactics. “Ten organisms can make you sick, while salmonella takes 10 million. And E. coli O157:H7 is resistant to acid in the stomach that normally kills most things.”

Read more in this detailed articles from the why files.

Lab on a Chip Blood Tests

Portable ‘lab on a chip’ could speed blood tests:

Within the lab on a chip, biological fluids such as blood are pumped through channels about 10 microns, or millionths of a meter, wide. (A red blood cell is about 8 microns in diameter.) Each channel has its own pumps, which direct the fluids to certain areas of the chip so they can be tested for the presence of specific molecules.

Until now, scientists have been limited to two approaches to designing labs on a chip, neither of which offer portability. The first is to mechanically force fluid through microchannels, but this requires bulky external plumbing and scales poorly with miniaturization.

The second approach is capillary electro-osmosis, where flow is driven by an electric field across the chip. Current electro-osmotic pumps require more than 100 volts of electricity, but the MIT researchers have now developed a micropump which requires only battery power (a few volts) to achieve similar flow speeds and also provides a greater degree of flow control.

Antibiotic Research

anti-microbial ‘grammar’ posits new language of healing

“In the last 40 years, there have been only two new classes of antibiotic drugs discovered and brought to the market,” said graduate student Christopher Loose, lead author of a paper on the work that appears in the Oct. 19 issue of Nature. “There is an incredible need to come up with new medicines.”
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focusing their attention on antimicrobial peptides, or short strings of amino acids. Such peptides are naturally found in multicellular organisms, where they play a role in defense against infectious bacteria.

See previous post on the paucity of new antibiotic discoveries

Cancer-Killing Virus

Scientists Say Cancer-Killing Virus Developed (site broke the link so I removed it)

South Korean scientists have said they have developed a new genetically altered strain of virus which is highly efficient in targeting and killing cancer cells. The new therapy developed by the team from Yonsei University uses a genetically-engineered form of the adenovirus, which normally causes colds.

The adenovirus was implanted with a human gene that is related to the production of relaxin, a hormone associated with pregnancy. When injected into cancerous tumors, the virus quickly multiplies in the cancer cells and kills them, the team said.

There are many more wonderful announcements than wonderful treatments. Still this is one in the long line of potentially wonderful treatments. If it turns out to be successful the whole world will benefit. That we all will benefit from such breakthroughs is why I am glad so many countries are investing in science and engineering (also see: Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data).

CDC Urges Increased Effort to Reduce Drug-Resistant Infections

The US Center for Disease Control has again urged hospitals to increase efforts to reduce drug-resistant infections. In 1972, only 2 percent of these types of bacteria were drug resistant. By 2004, 63 percent of these types of bacteria had become resistant to the antibiotics commonly used to treat them, and methicillin-resistant “staph” infections, often referred to as MRSA, are a growing problem. The CDC press release. This press release is focused on reducing the transmission of such dangers bacteria to patients. Other CDC efforts focus on improving the system to reduce the production of such virulent bacteria.

I know the Pittsburgh area has done a fair amount of work in the reduction of MRSA transmission. Several white papers on their efforts are available. A great PBS documentary covers this and other health care improvements.