Scientists Discover New Therapeutic Target To Combat Inflammation

Posted on May 17, 2012 by admin

Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London have found a new therapeutic target to combat inflammation. The research, published in the journal Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, revealed tiny organelles called primary cilia are important for regulating inflammation. The findings could lead to potential therapies for millions of people who suffer from arthritis.

Dr Martin Knight who led the research at Queen Mary’s School of Engineering and Materials Science said: “Although primary cilia were discovered more than a century ago, we’re only beginning to realise the importance they play in different diseases and conditions, and the potential therapeutic benefits that could be developed from manipulating cilia structure and function.”

The researchers investigated the role of primary cilia in inflammation. They took cartilage cells and exposed them to a group of inflammatory proteins called cytokines, specifically interleukin-1 (IL-1), to see whether there were any changes to the primary cilia.

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Leaders Seek Improvements in Antimicrobial Use in Foods

Posted on May 16, 2012 by admin

Today, May 7, U.S. regulators and representatives from national food production industries will meet to discuss “Improving Antimicrobial Use in Food Animal Production: Alternatives, Options and Incentives,” in Washington, DC. The National Stakeholder meeting convened by the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics is intended to identify concrete approaches to promote judicious use of antibiotics, in order to preserve their efficacy to treat disease in humans and animals, while ensuring a safe, stable and affordable food supply. Participants will evaluate feasible alternatives to current, non-therapeutic/ preventive antimicrobial use in food animal production and incentives.

Stuart Levy, professor at Tufts Univ. School of Medicine and Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics president, and Joann Lindenmayer, associate professor of Public Health at Tufts Univ., Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, will co-chair the meeting. Participants include representatives from government, agriculture, food and animal health.

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New Liquid ready-to-use Tumour Marker Control available now from Randox

Posted on May 15, 2012 by admin

The new Randox Acusera multi-analyte Liquid Tumour Marker Control covers a total of 15 commonly tested and esoteric cancer antigens and tumour markers.  The addition of assayed target values enables laboratories to effectively monitor both accuracy and precision.

As a liquid ready-to-use control the material is highly convenient and easy for laboratory staff to use.  The liquid stable nature not only eliminates the need for reconstitution but reduces the amount of human handling necessary and allows the material to be shipped and stored conveniently at 2-8oC.

Like all Randox immunoassay controls the serum is 100% human in origin providing a matrix similar to the patient sample but also reducing antibody interference and the possibility of control values shifting after changing reagent batch. Three distinct and clinically significant levels of control are available with analytes present at desirable levels.  The convenient 6 x 3ml pack size and refrigerated open vial stability of 30 days for all analytes helps to increase laboratory efficiency while keeping waste and costs to a minimum.

As a true third party control laboratories can use the Acusera liquid tumour marker control to independently assess the performance of their tumour marker testing.  Fully assayed, instrument specific target values are generated via a number of external laboratories and are provided for many common clinical chemistry and immunoassay systems.

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Diagnostic Breathalyzer reveals signs of disease

Posted on May 15, 2012 by admin

This invention could give new meaning to the term “bad breath!” It’s the Single Breath Disease Diagnostics Breathalyzer, and when you blow into it, you get tested for a biomarker—a sign of disease. As amazing as that sounds, the process is actually very simple thanks to ceramics nanotechnology. All it takes is a single exhale.

You blow into a small valve attached to a box that is about half the size of your typical shoebox and weighs less than one pound. Once you blow into it, the lights on top of the box will give you an instant readout. A green light means you pass (and your bad breath is not indicative of an underlying disease; perhaps it’s just a result of the raw onions you ingested recently); however, a red light means you might need to take a trip to the doctor’s office to check if something more serious is an issue.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Professor Perena Gouma and her team at Stony Brook University in New York developed a sensor chip that you might say is the “brain” of the breathalyzer. It’s coated with tiny nanowires that look like microscopic spaghetti and are able to detect minute amounts of chemical compounds in the breath. “These nanowires enable the sensor to detect just a few molecules of the disease marker gas in a ‘sea’ of billions of molecules of other compounds that the breath consists of,” Gouma explains. This is what nanotechnology is all about.

You can’t buy this in the stores just yet—individual tests such as an acetone-detecting breathalyzer for monitoring diabetes and an ammonia-detecting breathalyzer to determine when to end a home-based hemodialysis treatment—are still being evaluated clinically. However, researchers envision developing the technology such that a number of these tests can be performed with a single device. Within a couple of years, you might be able to self-detect a whole range of diseases and disorders, including lung cancer, by just exhaling into a handheld breathalyzer.

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‘One in six cancers worldwide are caused by infection’

Posted on May 14, 2012 by admin

One in six cancers – two million a year globally – are caused by largely treatable or preventable infections, new estimates suggest.
The Lancet Oncology review, which looked at incidence rates for 27 cancers in 184 countries, found four main infections are responsible.

These four – human papillomaviruses, Helicobacter pylori and hepatitis B and C viruses – account for 1.9m cases of cervical, gut and liver cancers.

Most cases are in the developing world.

The team from the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France, part of the World Health Organization, says more efforts are needed to tackle these avoidable cases and recognise cancer as a communicable disease.

‘Preventable’

The proportion of cancers related to infection is about three times higher in parts of the developing world, such as east Asia, than in developed countries like the UK – 22.9% versus 7.4%, respectively.
Nearly a third of cases occur in people younger than 50 years.
Among women, cancer of the cervix accounted for about half of the infection-related cancers. In men, more than 80% were liver and gastric cancers.

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Some HDL, or ‘Good’ Cholesterol, May Not Protect Against Heart Disease

Posted on May 11, 2012 by admin

A new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers has found that a subclass of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, the so-called “good” cholesterol, may not protect against coronary heart disease (CHD) and in fact may be harmful.

This is the first study to show that a small protein, apolipoprotein C-III (apoC-III), that sometimes resides on the surface of HDL cholesterol may increase the risk of heart disease and that HDL cholesterol without this protein may be especially heart protective.

The study was published online in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

“This finding, if confirmed in ongoing studies, could lead to better evaluation of risk of heart disease in individuals and to more precise targeting of treatments to raise the protective HDL or lower the unfavorable HDL with apoC-III,” said Frank Sacks, professor of cardiovascular disease prevention at HSPH and senior author of the study.

A high level of HDL cholesterol is strongly predictive of a low incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD). But trials of drugs that increase HDL cholesterol have not consistently shown decreases in CHD, leading to the hypothesis that HDL cholesterol may contain both protective and non-protective components.

ApoC-III, a proinflammatory protein, resides on the surface of some lipoproteins—both HDL and low-density lipoproteins, or LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. The researchers, led by Sacks and Majken Jensen, research associate in the Department of Nutrition at HSPH, examined whether the existence or absence of apoC-III on HDL cholesterol affected the “good” cholesterol’s heart-protective qualities, and whether its existence could differentiate HDL cholesterol into two subclasses—those which protect against the risk of future heart disease and those which do not.

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Arthritis cases ‘set to double to over 17m by 2030′

Posted on May 10, 2012 by admin

Cases of osteoarthritis in Britain look set to double to over 17 million by 2030, according to experts.

A report by the charity Arthritis Care says the predicted rise is down to the UK’s ageing population and growing obesity problem.

Experts estimate that by 2030 over half of the UK population will be aged 50 or older and nearly the same proportion will be obese.

The charity is urging government to plan ahead for this “tsunami of pain”.

Its report – OANation 2012 – says 8.5 million people in the UK have osteoarthritis and 71% of them – 6m – are in constant pain.

Osteoarthritis (OA), the most common form of arthritis affects the joints, causing pain and stiffness and often reduced mobility. It usually develops in people aged over 50, but some are younger. The exact cause is not known, but anything that puts stress and strain on the joints – including obesity – can play a part.

Although not life-threatening, OA can have a significant impact on quality of life.

The report, which include the results of a YouGov poll of 2,000 OA patients, suggests one in five give up work or retire early because of their condition.

Each year, 2m adults visit their GP because of OA. The NHS in England and Wales performs over 140,000 hip and knee replacement operations every year.

Judith Brodie, CEO of Arthritis Care, said: “The individual, economic and societal burden of OA is already enormous, but with an ageing and increasingly obese population the future is looking bleak.

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Dopamine Levels May Determine Work Ethic

Posted on May 9, 2012 by admin

Whether someone is a “go-getter” or a “slacker” may depend on individual differences in the brain chemical dopamine, according to new research in today’s, May 2, issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings suggest that dopamine affects cost-benefit analyses.

The study found that people who chose to put in more effort — even in the face of long odds — showed greater dopamine response in the striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, areas of the brain important in reward and motivation. In contrast, those who were least likely to expend effort showed increased dopamine response in the insula, a brain region involved in perception, social behavior, and self-awareness.

Researchers led by Michael Treadway, a graduate student working with David Zald, at Vanderbilt Univ., asked participants to rapidly press a button in order to earn varying amounts of money. Participants got to decide how hard they were willing to work depending on the odds of a payout and the amount of money they could win. Some accepted harder challenges for more money even against long odds, whereas less motivated subjects would forgo an attempt if it cost them too much effort.

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Scientists Develop Large-scale Simulation of Human Blood

Posted on May 7, 2012 by admin

Having a virtual copy of a patient’s blood in a computer would be a boon to researchers and doctors. They could examine a simulated heart attack caused by blood clotting in a diseased coronary artery and see if a drug like aspirin would be effective in reducing the size of such a clot.

Now, a team of biomedical engineers and hematologists at the University of Pennsylvania has made large-scale, patient-specific simulations of blood function under the flow conditions found in blood vessels, using robots to run hundreds of tests on human platelets responding to combinations of activating agents that cause clotting.

Their work was published in the journal Blood.

Patient-specific information on how platelets form blood clots can be a vital part of care. Normally, clots prevent bleeding, but they can also cause heart attacks when they form in plaque-laden coronary arteries. Several drugs, including aspirin, are used to reduce the size of such clots and prevent heart attacks, but, as platelets differ from person to person, the efficacy of such drugs differs as well.

“Blood platelets are like computers in that they integrate many signals and make a complex decision of what to do,” said senior author Scott Diamond, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. “We were interested to learn if we could make enough measurements in the lab to detect the small differences that make each of us unique. It would be impossible to do this with the cells of the liver, heart or brain. But we can easily obtain a tube of blood from each donor and run tests of platelet calcium release.”

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Protein Protects Against Cancer, Heals Wounds

Posted on May 4, 2012 by admin

Hans Vogel, a professor in Univ. of Calgary’s biological sciences department, is the guest editor of a special issue of the journal Biochemistry and Cell Biology that focuses on lactoferrin, an important iron-binding protein with many health benefits.

“Some people describe this protein as the ‘Swiss army knife’ of the human host defense system,” says Vogel. “We now know that lactoferrin has many functions in innate immunity and that it plays a role in protecting us from bacterial, viral, fungal, and protozoal infections. It can even protect us from some forms of cancer.”

Lactoferrin—which is secreted into human milk, blood and other biofluids—has attracted a lot of interest from academics and industry. Furthermore, Vogel says it’s likely the only protein that garners its own regular scientific conference. Researchers are starting to use lactoferrin as a potential therapeutic protein, one that can be taken orally instead of injected like other proteins.

“Lactoferrin is quite an unusual protein that has many effects on health,” Vogel says. “It is also used as a general health-promoting substance, and in Japan it is added to infant formula.”

The June issue of the journal includes 27 peer reviewed papers from leading international researchers on topics including the role of lactoferrin on small intestinal growth and development during early life, use of bovine lactoferrin to inhibit influenza and how the protein may prevent some preterm deliveries.

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