Researchers studied roughlyâ#80000 households from 600 villages and found a 64 percent drop in mortality from diseases covered by insurance.
##The free insurance covered specific high-impact medical conditionsâ##such as heart disease and cancerâ ##which poor residents often die from
##Rates of early death and illness from chronic conditionsâ##such as heart disease and cancerâ##have increased dramatically in India in the past few decades putting the poor at high risk of not having access to services they need
#Drug for parasitic worms fights diabetes in mice Rutgers rightoriginal Studyposted by Rob Forman-Rutgers on October 7 2014a modified form of a drug commonly used to eliminate intestinal parasites may hold the key to battling type
2 diabetes at its source. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects that 40 percent of all Americans now alive will develop type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 is the form of diabetes once known as##adult onset##in which the body produces insulin that ordinarily would keep blood sugar under control
but either it does not produce enough insulin or the body s ability to use that insulin is degraded.
Researchers say it s important to find a suitable medication to correct the cause of the disease as quickly as possible
With nowhere else to go much of the excess glucose remains in the bloodstream where in high concentrations it can damage tissues throughout the bodyâ##potentially leading to blindness kidney damage cardiovascular diseases and other severe health problems.##
and ultimately reverse the diabetes entirely. That outcome is far from certain but Jin says the positive changes he saw in the mice are encouraging.
people of normal weight can develop fatty livers and type 2 diabetes. This kind of medication if shown to be effective could safely treat patients of all weights.
#These ignored cells might prevent osteoporosis Johns hopkins university rightoriginal Studyposted by Catherine Kolf-Johns Hopkins on October 7 2014a type of cell overlooked by scientists appears to play a critical role in preventing osteoporosis a condition that affects an estimated
It also explains the success of an experimental osteoporosis drug that has had promising results in clinical trials.
A summary of the new research conducted using mice with a bone condition similar to osteoporosis has been published in the journal Nature Medicine.##
##Now drug companies hoping to reverse osteoporosis can look for even more drugs that make use of and target these interesting cells.##
But in women who have entered menopause decreases in estrogen can cause bone resorption to outpace bone rebuilding leading to osteoporosis and frequent bone breaks.##
##Most osteoporosis drugs on the market slow down bone resorption but do nothing to encourage bone rebuilding##Cao says.
##The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disorders the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin diseases China s National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scientists and Merck
#Stop cancer from spreading without chemo Stanford university rightoriginal Studyposted by Tom Abate-Stanford on October 6 2014 Researchers are testing a protein therapy that stops breast
and ovarian cancer from metastasizing in mice. The majority of patients who succumb to cancer fall prey to metastatic forms of the disease says Jennifer Cochran an associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford university.
Today doctors try to use chemotherapy to slow or stop cancer from spreading from the original tumor site to other parts of the body
but these treatments are unfortunately not very effective and have severe side effects. The new therapy doesn't have side effects.
and Gas6 rom interacting to initiate the spread of cancer. Axl proteins stand like bristles on the surface of cancer cells poised to receive biochemical signals from Gas6 proteins.
When two Gas6 proteins link with two Axls the signals that are generated enable cancer cells to leave the original tumor site migrate to other parts of the body and form new cancer nodules.
In collaboration with Amato Giaccia professor of radiation oncology the researchers gave intravenous treatments of this bioengineered decoy protein to mice with aggressive breast and ovarian cancers.
Mice with ovarian cancer had a 90 percent reduction in metastatic nodules when treated with the engineered decoy protein.
It could open up a new approach to cancer treatment. Giaccia and Cochran are scientific advisors to Ruga Corp. a biotech startup in Palo alto that has licensed this technology from Stanford.
#Why a deadly drug didn t hurt lab rat livers Scientists believe they ve solved the mystery of why a diabetes drug introduced in 1997 caused fatal liver failure in 63 patients.
In 1997 troglitazone was approved for use in the United states as one of the first drugs designed to treat type 2 diabetes.
and the human trials weren t large enough for the true risk of liver injury to become apparent says Paul Watkins coauthor of the study and professor of medicine and pharmacy at University of North carolina.
In a simulated population the model successfully predicted that rare patients would develop life-threatening liver injury
The study shows that a computer model could accurately forecast the occurrence of troglitazone-induced liver injury.
Before DILISYM no one had been able to completely explain troglitazone liver injury or suggest improved approaches
It turns out that animals do a poor job predicting human drug-induced liver injury.
Drug-induced liver injury is the most common reason drug-development programs are terminated. It is also the leading cause of regulatory actions that lead to failed
#Autism diagnosis catches up for kids in Tanzania Brown University rightoriginal Studyposted by David Orenstein-Brown on October 2 2014to diagnose autism in Tanzania researchers adapted several techniques
There is no autism diagnostic measure validated for use in Swahili a major language of the region.##
##Historically in Tanzania parents that have sought autism diagnoses had to go to other countries to receive those diagnoses##says Ashley Johnson Harrison a former postdoctoral fellow at Brown University who is now an assistant professor at University of Georgia. Researchers used the new
Using the diagnostic panel researchers were able to make diagnoses that consistently distinguished kids with autism spectrum disorder from those with other similar disorders.
because distinguishing between autism spectrum disorders and other conditions can ensure that children receive proper education
##Initially we only identified the most severe cases of autism##says Johnson Harrison who works under the mentorship of Eric Morrow in the department of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown.##
and Developmental Disabilities and was presented at a meeting of the International Meeting for Autism Research.
They used the Childhood Autism Rating Scale-Second Edition (CARS-2) to help rate child behavior because of the instrument s flexible usage guidelines.
or guardians information about autism and guidance on using behavioral strategies to improve child skills.
Of the children she tested 30 were diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorders and 11 as having other##global delay##conditions such as suspected intellectual disabilities Down syndrome or other disorders.
After returning to the United states Johnson Harrison tallied precise quantifications of the CARS-2 score
if her diagnostic assessment had produced reliable statistically significant differences between the autism and non-autism groups.
The average CARS-2 score for the autism group was 28 percent higher (at 37.75) than the average for the global delays group (at 27.15) a statistically significant difference.
In addition Tanzanian children diagnosed with autism scored in similar ranges on the CARS-2 as compared to children with autism in the United states. The autism group also had significantly more DSM-V autism symptoms than the global delays group suggesting that the assessment measures
were helpful in reliably eliciting the information needed to assess autism spectrum disorders. Johnson Harrison says she hopes that the assessment protocol
and humans a phase transition at the temperature of infection allows the DNA to change from a rigid crystalline structure into a fluid-like structure that facilitates infection.
and wouldn't be prone to developing resistance The exciting part of this is that the physical properties of packaged DNA play a very important role in the spread of a viral infection
In the HSV-1 study which was published in Nature Chemical Biology Evilevitch set out to see what physical conditions lead to successful viral infection.
and mobility of the DNA inside a virus. The VIRAL DNA was much more fluid at temperatures close to that of infection (37 degrees Celsius)
They found that at the temperature of infection the phage s DNA underwent a solid-to-fluid-like disordering
which resulted in increased DNA mobility and subsequent cell infection. The Swedish Research Council the National Science Foundation the National institutes of health and the Mcwilliams Fellowship at Carnegie mellon supported the research published in Nature Chemical Biology.
The findings which appear in PLOS Pathogens provide knowledge that could help researchers treat the disease more effectively.
For years the conventional approach to target the dengue virus was through control of the vectorâ the mosquito that carries the disease from one host to another.
In 30 years of dengue-related research this new mechanism was discovered never according to senior author Professor Mariano Garcia-Blanco of the Program in Emerging Infectious diseases.
We not only found a new way in which the pathogen (dengue virus) interferes with the host response (human immune system) we also uncovered the first mechanistic insight into how this non-coding RNA works says Garcia-Blanco.
and for dengue how the virus has managed to evade these defenses. The work also highlights the differences between the four dengue strains
and how more research is necessary to understand this highly complex virus. Source: National University of Singaporeyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license n
#DNA test could diagnose TB without the wait University of Warwick right Original Studyposted by Kelly Parkes-Harrison-Warwick on September 24 2014 A new approach quickly diagnoses tuberculosis by relying on direct sequencing of DNA
It is exciting to be involved in the development of new diagnostic approaches for this deadly disease says Martin Antonio head of the TB diagnostics laboratory at the Medical Research Council Unit in The gambia.
The researches have used shotgun metagenomics before to detect bacterial pathogens in contemporary and historical human material.
which causes an infection called brucellosis in livestock and humans from a 700-year-old skeleton from Sardinia Italy.
and hope it will help detect mixed infections caused by more than one kind of bacterium. But metagenomics is still some way from routine diagnostic use Pallen says.
and respond in a graduated way##says Wilbur Lam assistant professor in the pediatrics department at Emory University School of medicine and a physician in the Aflac Cancer and Blood disorders Center at Children s Healthcare of Atlanta.
which are prescribed to millions to reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke. The team was able to separate physical and biochemical effects on platelet behavior by forming polymer gels with different degrees of stiffness
#At home test diagnoses anemia in 60 seconds A device that uses a single drop of blood can quickly diagnose anemia
The disposable self-testing device uses a chemical reagent that produces visible color changes corresponding to different levels of anemia.
and more convenient monitoring of patients with chronic anemia the device could help patients receive treatment before the disease becomes severe potentially heading off emergency room visits and hospitalizations.
Anemia which affects two billion people worldwide is diagnosed now and monitored using blood tests done with costly test equipment maintained in hospitals clinics or commercial laboratories.
and monitor anemia themselves says Wilbur Lam a physician in the Aflac Cancer and Blood disorders Center at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and the department of pediatrics at Emory University School of medicine.
Patients could use this device in a way that's very similar to how diabetics use glucose-monitoring devices
A patient sticks a finger with a lance similar to those used by diabetics to produce a droplet of blood.
what is required by other anemia tests says Erika Tyburski the paper's first author and leader of the undergraduate team that developed the device.
and the patient sees a color ranging from green-blue to red indicating the degree of anemia.
The team also plans to study how the test may be applied to specific diseases such as sickle cell anemia.
We believe that the development of this model in the mouse is important for making progress in the field of skeletal repair where an acute clinical need is present for ameliorating skeletal injury chronic osteoarthritis
#Cells press down to make wounds heal faster National University of Singapore rightoriginal Studyposted by Karen Loh-NUS on September 12 2014scientists have uncovered more details about how our bodies repair wounds.
Earlier studies identified two processes at play in mending injury in the body. One involves the"purse-string"mechanism where a ring of proteins forms at the edge of a wound
and tightens like the strings of a purse. The second is"cell crawling"where cells move across the gap using armlike projections to close the gap.
At the early stages traction forces point away from the wound which suggests wound closure is driven initially by cell crawling.
At later stages the team observed forces pointing toward the wound. The investigators discovered a new mechanism
The contractions enable the cells to close the wound by cooperatively pressing down on the underlying tissue thus quickening the healing.
#Fake platelets could keep you from bleeding to death Emory University Georgia Institute of technology rightoriginal Studyposted by John Toon-Georgia Tech on September 9 2014a new class of synthetic platelet
-like particles could give doctors a new option for curbing surgical bleeding and addressing certain blood clotting disorders without the need for transfusions of natural platelets.
or by medics in the military we expect this technology could reduce the number of deaths from excessive bleeding##says Ashley Brown a research scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technologyâ
and then go specifically to the site of a serious injury they could help decrease the number of deaths associated with serious injuries.##
When they receive the right signals from a protein known as thrombin these precursors polymerize at the site of the bleeding.
Finally safety testing was done on blood from hemophiliac patients. Because that blood lacks the triggers needed to cause fibrin formation the particles had no effect.
##For a patient with insufficient platelets due to bleeding or an inherited disorder physicians often have to resort to platelet transfusions
which can be difficult to obtain##says Wilbur Lam another coauthor and a physician in the Aflac Cancer and Blood disorders Center at Children s Healthcare of Atlanta and the Department of Pediatrics at the Emory University School of medicine.##
Mounting evidence suggests that these microscopic teeming communities play a role in human health and disease treatment and transmission.
and in our environmentâ but it only causes disease when our immune systems are disrupted otherwise. Home microbiome studies also could potentially serve as a forensic tool Gilbert says.
#Heart disease could be written on your face University of Rochester rightoriginal Studyposted by Mark Michaud-Rochester on September 2 2014new technology that uses software algorithms
and diagnose cardiac disease using contactless video monitoring##says Jean-Philippe Couderc from the University of Rochester Medical center s Heart Research Follow-up Program.
Â#More than three million Americans suffer from the disease. While the condition can be diagnosed readily it often goes undetectedâ
The blood levels of certain fats that are predictors of heart disease risk also improved more in the low-carb group.
##Yet we found those on a low-carb diet had significantly greater decreases in estimated 10-year risk for heart disease after six and 12 months than the low-fat group.##
Women could use this method to protect against the spread of sexually transmitted infections during unprotected heterosexual intercourse the researchers say.
Because carrageenan is plant-based it is acceptable to vegetarians there is no risk of animal-acquired infections
Condoms have been successful in preventing transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. However effectiveness depends on correct and consistent use by the male partner she says.
Due to socioeconomic and gender inequities women in some countries and cultures are not always in a position to negotiate regular condom use so a drug-dispersing suppository can protect against transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections during heterosexual intercourse
whose infection status may or may not be known to the woman. As part of the research Zaveri who earned her doctorate in biomedical engineering at the University of Florida conducted extensive sensory-perception testing to assess acceptability of the suppositories among women.
A National institutes of health grant to Hayes and Ziegler through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases supported this work
#Drug combo heals wounds fast with less scarring Johns hopkins university rightoriginal Studyposted by Vanessa Mcmains-Johns Hopkins on August 28 2014doctors have stumbled onto a potential new use for two approved medications.
When used in combination they heal wounds more quickly with less scar tissue. In mice and rats injecting the two drugs in combination speeds the healing of surgical woundsâ#by about one-quarter
If the findings published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology hold up in future human studies the treatment might also speed skin healing in people with skin ulcers extensive burns and battlefield injuries.##
##The wound healing potential of the two drugs was discovered incidentally while the researchers were working to prevent rejection of liver transplants.
and stored for patients recovering from cancer chemotherapy. The other tacrolimus tamps down immune response. Researchers noticed that
Focusing on just the wound healing##side effect##the scientists launched the rodent study to determine what the mechanism behind its therapeutic effects might be.
Additionally they found that the wounds in animals that received the drug combination healed with less scar tissue and regrew skinâ##s hair follicles.
Though the study tested the drug combination only on surgical excisions the researchers say the beneficial effects also apply to burn injuries
and excisions in diabetic rats in studies that are now under way. Researchers from Johns Hopkins and the National Institute on Alcohol abuse and Alcoholism participated in the study.
#Simple alerts can cut infections from catheters University of Pennsylvania rightoriginal Studyposted by Lee-Ann Landis Donegan-Penn on August 26 2014simpler automatic alerts in electronic health
records can cut the number of urinary tract infections in patients with urinary catheters report researchers. The alerts help physicians decide
Approximately 75 percent of urinary tract infections acquired in the hospital are associated with a urinary catheterâ##a tube inserted into the bladder through the urethra to drain urine.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 15 to 25 percent of hospitalized patients receive urinary catheters during their hospital stay.
As many as 70 percent of urinary tract infections in these patients may be preventable using infection control measures such as removing no longer needed catheters resulting in up to 380000 fewer infections and 9000 fewer deaths each year.##
##First electronic alerts do result in fewer catheter-associated urinary tract infections. Second the design of the alerts is very important.
##Fewer catheters means fewer infections fewer days in the hospital and even fewer deaths. Not to mention the dollars saved by the health system in general.##
The study also found that catheter associated urinary tract infections decreased from an initial rate of. 84 per 1000 patient days to. 70 per 1000 patient-days following implementation of the first alert and. 50 per 1000
The study appears in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. Source: University of Pennsylvaniayou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license t
what diseases and when additional booster shots are needed. The new electronic registry system will help overcome the lack and loss of information
#X-rays show live changes in cystic fibrosis New X-ray technology is allowing doctors to see almost instantly
if treatments for cystic fibrosis are working. Cystic fibrosis affects many of the body s systems but most severely the lungs and currently it can take several months to measure how effective treatment is for the early-fatal lung disease.
Lead researcher Kaye Morgan from Monash University says the imaging method allows doctors to look at soft tissue structures for example the brain airways
and lungs which are effectively invisible in conventional x-ray images. At the moment we typically need to wait for a cystic fibrosis treatment to have an effect on lung health measured by either a lung CT SCAN
or breath measurement to see how effective that treatment is Morgan says. However the new imaging method allows us for the first time to non-invasively see how the treatment is working live on the airway surface.
and help better treat people with cystic fibrosis Morgan says. The new imaging method which was developed using a synchrotron x-ray source may also open up possibilities in assessing how effective treatments were for other lung heart and brain diseases.
The research appears in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Source: Monash University You are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license e
##We ve known for a long time that infection with Ebola obstructs an important arm in our immune system that is activated by molecules called interferons##says senior author Gaya Amarasinghe assistant professor of pathology
##It makes a variety of responses to viral infection possible including the self-destruction of infected cells and the blockage of supplies necessary for viral reproduction.##
& Microbe Amarasinghe and Daisy Leung assistant professor of pathology and immunology show that VP24 tightly binds to a nuclear transporter a protein that takes molecules into
Leukemia patients have been treated successfully using HSC transplants but medical experts believe blood stem cells have the potential to be used more widely.
and diseases but only if we can figure out how they are generated in the first place. Our study brings this possibility a step closer##he says.
and development immune function resistance to infection and predisposition to inflammatory and metabolic disordersâ##yet until now little has been known about how the microbes get there.
##Armed with the knowledge of what occurs in the digestive systems of preemies in a controlled environment the researchers next aim to discern what happens in the systems of preemies who don t fare as well particularly those suffering from necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). NEC is a devastating disorder in premature infants that causes tissue death in the lining
The syndrome occurs in up to 10 percent of premature infants and is fatal 25 to 35 percent of the time.
Scientists believe gut microbes play a part in the disease.####Research has made not an impact in either prevention
#Coated cells act like camo for deadly brain tumors Brain tumors are able to go undetected by the immune system
The discovery, made in mice and rats, shows the key role the protein galectin-1 plays in some of the most dangerous brain tumors, called high grade malignant gliomas.
They had actually been trying to study how the extra production of galectin-1 by tumor cells affects cancer ability to grow
the tumors were eradicated. That because the irst respondersof the body immune systemalled natural killer or NK cellspotted the tumor cells almost immediately and killed them.
But when the tumor cells made their usual amounts of galectin-1, the immune cells couldn recognize the cancerous cells as dangerous.
That meant that the immune system couldn trigger the body second line of defensealled T cellsntil the tumors had grown too large for the body to beat.
Published online in the journal, Cancer Research, the findings open the door to research on the effect of blocking galectin-1 in patients with gliomas,
says team leader Pedro Lowenstein, professor of neurosurgery at University of Michigan. his is an incredibly novel and exciting development,
and shows that in science we must always be open-minded and go where the science takes us;
TUMOR TENDRILS n this case, we found that over-expression of galectin-1 inhibits the innate immune system,
and this allows the tumor to grow enough to evade any possible effective T cell response.
because glioma researchers everywhere had assumed the extra protein had more to do with the insidious ability of gliomas to invade the brain,
Gliomas which make up about 80 percent of all malignant brain tumors, include anaplastic oligodendrogliomas, anaplastic astrocytomas,
and glioblastoma multiforme. More than 24,000 people in the US are diagnosed with a primary malignant brain tumor each year.
The tiny tendrils of tumor that extend into brain tissue from a glioma are what make them so dangerous.
Even when a neurosurgeon removes the bulk of the tumor, small invasive areas escape detection and keep growing, unchecked by the body.
Helping the innate immune system to recognize early stages of cancer growth, and sound the alarm for the body defense system to act
while the remaining cancer is still small enough for them to kill, could potentially help patients.
EARLY WARNING SENTINELS While the new discovery opens the door to that kind of approach, much work needs to be done before the mouse-based research could help human patients,
Galectin-1 may help other types of tumor evade the innate NK cells, too. The new research suggests that in the brain unique environment,
galectin-1 creates an immunosuppressive effect immediately around tumor cells. The brain cancer cells seem to have evolved the ability to express their galectin-1 genes far more than normal
to allow the tumor to keep growing. Most brain tumor immune research has focused on triggering the action of the adaptive immune systemhose cells control the process that allows the body to kill invaders from outside or within.
But that system take days or even weeks to reach full forcenough time for incipient tumors to grow too large for immune cells to eliminate solid tumor growth.
The new research suggests the importance of enhancing the ability of the innate immune system arly warningsentinels to spot glioma cells as early as possible.
Maria Castro is a co-team leader of the study. Graduate student Gregory J. Baker is the first author.
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