It can take years of exposure to arsenic before clear symptoms may appear, such as pigmentation changes, yperkeratosis'(patches of thickening skin), neurological side effects and signs of possible cancers in major organs (skin
By this time, the chronic disease arsenicosis has set in. Prevention is the only way to stop it, the experts lament.
#Cell phones and risk of brain tumor The ordinance, called the Right to Know law, will start to require retailers to give customers a handout,
Although Moskowitz said that it is"highly probable"that long-term cell phone use causes brain tumors,
In 2011, the World health organization classified the kind of low energy radiation that cell phones emit as"possibly carcinogenic"because of a link between cell phone use and a type of malignant brain tumor called glioma and a benign brain tumor called acoustic neuroma.
Both types of brain tumors are rare. About 5 in 10,000 adults are diagnosed with glioma in the United states every year,
whereas about 10 in a million people develop acoustic neuromas every year. Although THE WHO classification sounds ominous, it puts cell phones on the same level of cancer risk as caffeine and pickled vegetables.
The position of numerous health organizations, including the American Cancer Society and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is measured even more,
stating that current evidence is not conclusive and more research is needed."("Since 2011), I don't think any evidence has come along that would necessarily move from this uncertain designation to something on one side or the other...
In reality we are in a very gray zone with the evidence, "said Jonathan M. Samet,
Many large studies have failed to detect an association between cell phone use and brain tumors. One study of nearly 360,000 adults in Denmark did not find an increase in the number of brain tumors even among those who had been using a cell phone for at least 13 years.
However, as Samet said, THE WHO panel took into account studies that suggested that those who used cell phones did have higher rates of certain brain tumors.
The Interphone study is the largest study to date looking at cell phones and brain tumors. It involves 13 countries,
including Canada, the United kingdom, Denmark and Japan. Researchers asked more than 7, 000 people who had been diagnosed with a brain tumor
and 14,000 healthy people about their previous cell phone use. The study found no association between cell phone use
and glioma rates except in the group of participants who reported using their cell phone for at least 1, 640 hours in their lifetime without a headset.
Those participants were 40%more likely than those who never used a cell phone to have a glioma.
However authors of the Interphone study stated that people with brain tumors might be more likely than healthy people to exaggerate their cell phone use
and brain tumor risk in the study might not be real.""It's quite plausible that there would be excess reporting in people who suffered a life-threatening disease.
They are looking for an explanation for this tragic circumstance, "said David A. Savitz, professor of epidemiology at Brown University,
Another set of studies by researchers in Sweden also looked at reported cell phone use among people diagnosed with glioma
A recent analysis found that people who used a mobile phone were 30%more likely to have a glioma,
had 40%to 70%higher glioma risk.""There are individual studies and findings that do produce a risk,
Another argument against the possibility that cell phones cause cancer is that there has not been an increase in the incidence of brain tumors in the United states,
Although there has been an increase in brain tumors among 20 to 29-year-old females in the United states,
In addition to the lack of strong evidence showing a link between cell phone use and brain tumors,
000 people who were diagnosed with brain tumors at 10 to 24 years of age with 2, 000 healthy young people.
to treat glaucoma and corneal neovascularization two of the world s leading eye diseases. The microneedles range in length from 400 to 700 microns
and could provide a new way to deliver drugs to specific areas within the eye relevant to these diseases.
Glaucoma affects about 2. 2 million people in the United states and is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide.
The goal is to develop time-release drugs that could replace daily administration of eye drops.
In the second disease corneal neovascularization corneal injury results in the growth of unwanted blood vessels that impair vision.
##The power of microneedles for treating eye conditions is the ability to target delivery of the drug within the eye##says Mark Prausnitz professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular engineering at the Georgia Institute of technology.##
##and could become the first treatment technique to use microneedles for delivering drugs to treat diseases in the front of the eye.
Glaucoma results from elevated pressure inside the eye that can be treated by reducing production of the aqueous humor fluid in the eye increasing flow of the fluid from the eye or both.
Glaucoma is controlled now by the use of eye drops which must be applied daily. Studies show that as few as 56 percent of glaucoma patients follow the therapy protocol.
The first study shows that the microneedle therapy would inject drugs into space between two layers of the eye near the ciliary body
##The ultimate goal for us would be for glaucoma patients visiting the doctor to get an injection that would last for the next six months until the next time the patient needed to see the doctor##Prausnitz says.##
##If we can do away with the need for patients to use eye drops we could potentially have better control of intraocular pressure and better treatment of glaucoma.##
and then inserted the coated needles near the point of an injury keeping them in place for approximately one minute until the drug dissolved into the cornea.
For the glaucoma drug for instance the needle is only about half a millimeter long which is long enough to penetrate through the sclera the outer layer of the eye to the supraciliary space.
##Noroviruses are intestinal viruses that cause violent vomiting and diarrhea. People ill with the virus remain contagious up to three days after they seem to recover.
In the United states alone human noroviruses cause 19 million to 21 million cases of illness everyâ#year
and protect it from pathogens. But the new study published in the journal Science demonstrates that the virus targets B cells a type of white blood cell common in the intestine.##
and that this interaction stimulates viral infection of the B cell##Karst says.####This is a really exciting emerging theme.
These viral infections are enhanced by the presence of bacteria in the gut.####Ultimately this system should open up new avenues for norovirus vaccine
#Chip lets scientists see how cancer spreads Johns hopkins university rightoriginal Studyposted by Phil Sneiderman-JHU on November 12 2014a new lab chip is giving researchers an unprecedented look at the complex process that spreads cancer from its birthplace
By showing scientists precisely how tumor cells travel the tool may help them plot new strategies for preventing metastasis
which leads to more than 90 percent of cancer deaths. The work is published in the journal Cancer Research.
There s still so much we don t know about exactly how tumor cells migrate through the body partly
because even using our best imaging technology we haven t been able to see precisely how these individual cells move into blood vessels says lead researcher Andrew D. Wong a graduate student in materials science and engineering at Johns hopkins university.
The material resembles the human tissue that surrounds tumors when cancer cells break away and try to relocate elsewhere.
and begin to form deadly new tumors. Wong then replicated the processes in a small transparent chip that incorporates the artificial blood vessel and the surrounding simulated tissue material.
Cancer researchers should now have a much clearer look at the complex physical and biochemical interplay involved in leaving a tumor moving through surrounding tissue and approaching a blood vessel.
Cancer cells would have a tough time leaving the original tumor site if it weren t for their ability to enter our bloodstream
So it s actually the entry of cancer cells into the bloodstream that allows the cancer to spread very quickly.
or even stop the spread of cancer. Next the researchers plan to use the device to try out various cancer-fighting drugs within this device to get a better look at how the medications perform
and how they might be improved. The device is protected by a provisional patent. A grant from Johns Hopkins Institute for Nanobiotechnology and a National Cancer Institute grant supported the work.
Source: Johns Hopkins Universit t
#Paper circuit might diagnose Ebola in the field The first case of the Ebola outbreak currently ravaging West Africa appeared in Guinea in December 2013.
and scan for infection for exampleâ##synthetic gene circuits are especially useful for detecting things like contaminants pesticides heavy metals and counterfeit drugs.##
bandages that signal when a wound is infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria; or smart clothing that tells a runner she s getting dehydrated.##
Copsin belongs to the group of defensins a class of small proteins produced by many organisms to combat microorganisms that cause disease.
The human body also produces defensins to protect itself against infections. They have been found for example on the skin and in the mucous membranes.
This is because copsin kills many pathogens including Listeria a type of bacteria that can cause severe food poisoning
Diets rich in fruit and vegetables have been linked to important health outcomes including reductions in cardiovascular disease type 2 diabetes and some forms of cancer.
and has been shown to cause cancer. Because biochar can be produced from various waste biomass including agricultural residues this new technology provides an alternative
unless you have an animal model that mimics the Ebola virus disease spectra##says study coauthor Ralph Baric professor of epidemiology at the University of North carolina at Chapel hill.
Typical laboratory mice usually do not develop humanlike Ebola disease including the severe symptoms that can prove fatal in humans.
and if some are susceptible could they harness the power of mouse genetics to figure out what genes make someone susceptible to the disease.
when infected with the virus. The team was able to show that a combination of genes were involved in producing a range of disease symptoms such that the genetic variation of the mice directly led to the variety of symptoms that the disease produced.
##A basic understanding of how our genetics influence susceptibility to viral infections and affect disease development is absolutely critical to creating much needed therapeutic interventions.##
##says William Fischer an assistant professor of medicine who has treated Ebola patients in Africa.####We can decrease Ebola fatality rates with intensive critical care
##Public perception of Ebola infection typically focuses on the high mortality rate following hemorrhagic fever but Ebola actually produces a range of disease symptoms.##
##During an outbreak it is often difficult to assess the role that genetic variation plays in determining disease severity in people.
And if we re going to develop treatments then we need to know about this genetic variation.##
or blood test that measures an enzyme shown to be a marker of life-threatening bacterial infections and sepsis in critically ill patients.
The current way to diagnose infection is a culture but those results take 48 to 72 hours.
The ability to better understand the difference between normal and pathological activity within the brain may lead to the ability to predict
They are affected the primary cells in Huntington s disease an inherited genetic disorder that causes involuntary muscle movements and cognitive decline usually beginning in middle-adulthood.
To study the cellular properties associated with the disease the investigators now are taking skin cells from patients with Huntington s disease
A new study shows the girls with a family history of depression respond to stress by releasing much higher levels of the hormone cortisol.
Telomeres also shorten as a result of exposure to stress. Previous studies have uncovered links in adults between shorter telomeres and premature death more frequent infections and chronic diseases.
I did not think that these girls would have shorter telomeres than their low-risk counterparts they'e too young says Ian Gotlib professor of psychology at Stanford university.
so girls at high-risk girls should learn stress reduction techniques Gotlib says. Other studies show that neurofeedback
or two fist-size servings of these nonstarchy vegetables reduced their risk for liver problems Type 2 diabetes and other complications of obesity.
and Sierra Leona could be infected with Ebola by late January according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
and difficulty of diagnosing the disease when a patient is seen first. Conventional fluorescent label-based virus detection methods require expensive lab equipment significant sample preparation transport and processing times and extensive training to use.
The device could be used to diagnose Ebola and other hemorrhagic fever diseases in resource-limited countries.
and hemorrhagic fever diseases our collaborative research effort has produced a highly sensitive device with the potential to perform rapid diagnostics in clinical settings.##
and handling our system can reduce potential exposure to health care workers##says Connor a researcher at Boston University s National Emerging Infectious diseases Laboratories (NEIDL).#
##The shoebox-sized prototype diagnostic device known as the single particle interferometric reflectance imaging sensor (SP-IRIS) detects pathogens by shining light from multicolor LED sources on viral nanoparticles bound to the sensor
If cancer markers are found in a cell the circuit could for example activate a cellular suicide program.
Healthy cells without cancer markers would remain unaffected by this process. Biocomputers differ significantly from their counterparts made of silicon
and programs that identify emerging pathogens##researchers write in the journal Peerj. The research does not address the age of the modern-day Ebola virus.
Taylor and coauthor Jeremy Bruenn professor of biological sciences research viral##fossil genes##â##chunks of genetic material that animals and other organisms acquire from viruses during infection.
Knowing more about filoviruses in general could provide insight into which host species might serve as##reservoirs##that harbor undiscovered pathogens related to Ebola
#Diabetes may raise risk for heart valve disease Rice university right Original Studyposted by Mike Williams-Rice on October 21 2014 There appears to be a link between high blood sugar and heart valve hardening.
That results in patients with diabetes having problems with vision and with their nerves and kidneys as well.
The results that high glucose concentration can also cause pathologic remodeling by the aortic-valve cells could suggest that diabetes is also directly a cause of aortic-valve disease he adds.
We know that calcific aortic-valve disease is associated heavily with metabolic syndrome which can lead to type 2 diabetes.
It s not as common as the link between atherosclerosis and diabetes but it s definitely an appreciable strong subset.
To understand any heart valve-related disease we need to understand the mechanism of how the cells interact with excess lipids
and sugars and we re just starting to scratch the surface she says. So work like this is pretty fundamental.
#Therapy cures hearing loss from loud noises University of Michigan rightoriginal Studyposted by Kara Gavin-U. Michigan on October 21 2014scientists restoredâ#hearing to mice that were deafened partly by noise.
The work reported in the journal elife suggests the protein might be a target for treating people who have suffered hearing loss due to noise or aging.
##It has become apparent that hearing loss due to damaged ribbon synapses is a very common and challenging problem
He also notes that the research may have implications for neurodegenerative diseases. Researcher from Harvard university collaborated on the project
which was funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Hearing Health Foundation.
One way that Staphylococcus aureus and other pathogens can become resistant to antibiotics is to change the way they generate energy
and become small and weak colony variantssays Eric Skaar professor of pathology microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt University.
and grow poorly in the laboratory cause such persistent infections in humans? Current studies support the notion that antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria including methicillin-resistant (MRSA) strains can exchange nutrients with each other
and even with other bacterial species including the normal microbes of the microbiome to increase their virulence during an infection.
& Microbe challenge infectious disease dogma Skaar says. The thinking has been that if an infection becomes resistant to antibiotics then the resistant organisms appeared clonally meaning they're all genetically the same.
Skaar and colleagues wondered if perhaps instead there are a bunch of organisms that became resistant in different ways
Next they tested the idea in a mouse model of the bone infection osteomyelitis. Antibiotic-resistant small colony variant S. aureus is the cause of chronic and difficult to treat osteomyelitis and also of lung infections in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF.
-or menaquinone-deficient) caused only minimal bone infection but mixed together they caused a fully virulent and bone-destroying infection.
In bone these bacteria are trading molecules Skaar says. Researchers then isolated samples of staph small colony variants and normal bacteria from the lungs of CF patients.
The microbiome of a cystic fibrosis patient s lungs can provide nutrients to these small colony variants
Our findings show that these antibiotic-resistant infections are not what we thought they were they're not a single strain of bacteria with a single lesion leading to the small colony variant phenotype.
Instead they re a mixed population of organisms that are sharing nutrients. They act like a big group of bullies until you hit them with drugs then they stop sharing resources
We're now a little bit smarter about how these organisms are behaving in an infection which
#Drug flips cells to limit damage after heart attack University of North carolina at Chapel hill rightoriginal Studyposted by Mark Derewicz-UNC on October 16 2014a new way to generate more blood vessels after a heart attack can reduce damage
This switch is driven by p53 the well-documented tumor-suppressing protein. Researchers showed that increasing the level of p53 in scar-forming cells significantly reduced scarring
and improved heart function after heart attack. The finding published in the journal Nature shows that it is possible to limit the damage wrought by heart attacks which strike nearly one million people in the United states each year.
Heart disease accounts for one in four deaths every year.####Scientists have thought that fibroblasts are differentiated terminally meaning they can t adopt the fate of other kinds of cells;
##It appears that injury itself can induce fibroblasts to change into endothelial cells so the heart heals better.
##After a heart attack fibroblasts replace damaged heart muscle with scar tissue. This scarring can harden the walls of the heart
To explore this idea they induced heart attacks in mice and then studied the fibroblasts to see if the cells expressed markers characteristic of endothelial cells.
To their surprise almost a third of the fibroblasts in the area of the cardiac injury expressed these endothelial markers.
Because a heart attack is such a stressful event Ubil created a list of genes that were known to be involved in cellular responses to stress.
or apoptosis which reduces the likelihood that they will go on to form tumors.####As luck would have it that was the first gene
##or overexpressed in the fibroblasts after heart injury and this seemed to regulate fibroblasts becoming endothelial cells.
and used it to treat mice for a few days after cardiac injury. The drug had dramatic results doubling the number of fibroblasts that turned into endothelial cells.
They had more blood vessels at the site of injury and their heart function was better.##
##By increasing the number of blood vessels in the injury region we were able to greatly reduce the effects of the heart attack.##
##Ubil says his study shows that this could be a novel strategy for treating heart attacks.
and this could potentially benefit people who have heart attacks.####Deb adds:####We are also currently investigating
whether such an approach could be applied for treating scarring in other organs after injury.####The American Heart Association and the National institutes of health funded the work.
and treating the symptoms of Parkinson's disease.""Tiny wireless nodes such as these have the potential to become a key tool for addressing neurological disorders"says Florian Solzbacher professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of Utah and director of its Center for Engineering Innovation.
#Brain surgery robot would go through the cheek Vanderbilt University Posted by David Salisbury-VU on October 16 2014for people with severe epilepsy treatment can mean drilling through the skull deep into the brain
if it was possible to address epileptic seizures in a less invasive way? They decided it would be possible.
The engineers identified epilepsy surgery as an ideal high-impact application through discussions with Joseph Neimat associate professor of neurological surgery.
and identify the location where the epileptic fits originate. But the straight needles they use can t reach the source region
#Can mom s age help predict mitochondrial disease? The discovery of a aternal age effectfor mitochondrial diseases could be a valuable tool for genetic counseling, report researchers.
Their findings could be used to predict the accumulation of MITOCHONDRIAL DNA mutations in maternal egg cells, as well as the transmission of these mutations to children.
These mutations cause more than 200 diseases and contribute to others such as diabetes, cancer, Parkinson disease,
and Alzheimer disease. The study found greater rates of the MITOCHONDRIAL DNA variants in children born to older mothers,
and that contain their own DNA. any mitochondrial diseases affect more than one system in the human body,
They are devastating diseases and there is no cure, so our findings about their transmission are very important.
Studying healthy individuals gave the researchers a baseline for future studies of disease-causing mutations.
This finding is especially important for mothers who have a mitochondrial disease. For many mitochondrial diseases, 70 to 80 percent of molecules need to have the disease-causing variant for the disease to manifest itself.
But for others, only 10 percent of the mtdna molecules with the variant are needed to cause disease. f the bottleneck is very small,
as wee found in our study, these percentages can change dramatically, Makova says. nowing the size of the bottleneck allows us to predict, within a range,
the percentage of disease-carrying molecules that will be passed on to the child. Knowledge about both the maternal age effect and the bottleneck size is useful in family planning. e have some predictive power now
and can assist genetic counselors in advising couples about the chances of mitochondrial diseases being passed to the next generation,
Makova says. veryone is concerned about Down syndrome because that is a common genetic problem. We have added now another set of genetic disorders that also might be affected by the age of the mother.
It is good for couples to have this knowledge as they make family-planning decisions. The research appears in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
#Why cancer researchers are excited about this amoeba A type of amoeba that lives in soil has a gene that is very similar to a tumor-fighting gene found in humans.
When it s healthy it stops tumors from growing. But the gene is prone to mutations
when researchers from the University of Iowa conducted a literature review they found that PTEN mutations show up in 40 percent of breast cancer cases up to 70 percent of prostate cancer cases and nearly half of all leukemia cases.
If you look at tumors across the boardâ and that doesn t mean just breast cancer or prostate cancerâ you find that PTEN is the most generally mutated gene.
And when you mutate PTEN in mice you cause tumors says David Soll biology professor
If the hypothesis holds true for human cells it could lead to a new way to treat cancer.
Once a patient is diagnosed with cancer caused by a PTEN mutation the patient could take the drug over-express the PTEN bench player gene
and potentially stop cancer in its tracks Soll says. That could save many cancer patients from undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatment for breast and other common cancers.
The finding has led the team to study other human genes that may be able to step in for the mutated PTEN gene
and perform the same tumor-suppressing role. There are at least two close relatives of PTEN the researchers are currently studying.
Somewhere there may be a backup system what we call redundancy that might be the basis for better identifying tumors
and possibly creating cancer-fighting drugs. You have another gene which might be able to step in for the broken gene to keep things normal and that s
#Topical antibiotics may raise pneumonia risk University of Melbourne rightoriginal Studyposted by David Scott-Melbourne on October 13 2014patients in hospital intensive care units have a higher risk of developing pneumonia
The findings contradict previously published research that topical antibioticsâ##medication applied to the patient s airwayâ##would decrease pneumonia rates.
Ventilator-associated pneumonia develops in approximately 20 percent of patients in intensive care units (ICUS) who are receiving prolonged medical ventilation.
However in the control groups of these published clinical trials of topical antibiotics in this patient group the pneumonia rates were as high as 40 percent.
For a new study published in the journal CHEST researchers analyzed 206 international publications evaluating pneumonia prevention methods in ICUÂ##s from the last 30 years.
The new findings will help improve understanding of how to evaluate pneumonia prevention methods in the ICU says associate professor James Hurley from the University of Melbourne.
Use of topical antibiotics increases the pneumonia risk in ICU patients by disrupting the balance of bacteria
##This changed flora is spread around the ICU environment to other patients through cross-infection##Hurley says.##
##This surprising finding is not apparent in any one study examined in isolationâ##it requires a meta-analysis of the control group pneumonia rates in all 206 studies to demonstrate these findings.
Pneumonia is acquired commonly by ICU patients leads to longer stays in intensive care and can also increase mortality risk.##
###Therefore it appears topical antibiotics used in an effort to prevent pneumonia in the ICU are a hazard
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