Similarly a condition called liver cirrhosis can cause lactation by disrupting the organ's normal hormone-metabolizing function.
For example a 2010 study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal documented lactation in a man with a pituitary tumor.
and beta-carotene has been linked to anti-aging benefits cancer prevention and helping maintain good eyesight. While the orange variety is the most common in the United states sweet potatoes also come in white yellow pink and purple varieties.
It also means that sweet potatoes could be helpful in regulating blood sugar in people with TYPE II DIABETES (scientists are currently looking into it.
which are useful for overall health as well as inflammatory disorders such as arthritis. Skin and hair Vitamin a can help protect against sun damage
which aids in maintaining a healthy digestive tract and helps keep you regular. Cancer prevention The NIH reports that some studies have suggested that beta-carotene may reduce the risk of breast cancer in premenopausal women ovarian cancer in postmenopausal women.
If eaten in moderation and prepared in a healthy way (that means not just indulging in sweet potato fries) sweet potatoes are a nutritious delicious food that should pose no significant health risks.
People with a history of kidney stones may want to avoid eating too many sweet potatoes as the vegetable contains oxalate
which contributes to the forming of calcium-oxalate kidney stones. Furthermore sweet potatoes contain potassium and phosphorus which is something that those with chronic kidney disease may want to avoid.
Given that sweet potatoes are in general very nutritious you don t need to cut them out of your diet
Though morning sickness doesn't usually begin for a few weeks some women may experience nausea or vomiting at this stage.
and avoid birth defects. Citrus foods are also naturally high in folate so a calcium-enriched orange juice is a great addition to any breakfast.
Though morning sickness doesn't usually begin for a few weeks some women may experience nausea or vomiting at this stage.
and avoiding birth defects. Citrus foods are also naturally high in folate so a calcium-enriched orange juice is a great addition to any breakfast.
being unprepared to contain an infectious disease may even turn the health care setting into a hub for further spread of the disease he said.
or other pathogens are not usually in the vicinity of humans but rather deep in the forests with little chance of coming into contact with people.
Nature Newsa plague of crop-eating caterpillars has struck Liberia and a second wave could spread across West Africa in the next few weeks,
Last week, a joint mission of 22 international health and veterinary experts returned from investigating the outbreak with more questions than answers about the virus's pathology and epidemiology.
as the avian influenza virus is thought to have done. And we still don't know what it might do to someone who is immunocompromised by HIV or by drugs,
Rollin adds. But there seems to be little threat to human health from the current form of the virus. It is destroyed by cooking,
if they have developed antibodies to the virus. The investigation into the Ebola Reston infections began after farmers in the Philippines reported high mortality rates in their pigs in 2008.
samples from 28 dead pigs were sent to the Plum Island Animal disease Center in New york, where researchers found evidence of the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus, also known as blue-ear pig disease,
This virulent, biosafety-level-4 pathogen requires special laboratory facilities, so the pig samples were rushed to the CDC labs in Atlanta for further analysis
. Despite the presence of other diseases in the samples including swine fever, and the porcine circovirus type II Rollin thinks that Ebola Reston is to blame for the pigs'deaths
Further pathology tests are due to begin in spring at the Australian Animal health Laboratory in Geelong, Victoria.
the infections resulted from contact with a reservoir of the virus, rather than spreading from animal to animal.
and the threat of infection could be reduced by moving fruit trees, where the bats roost, away from pig farms,
and doing them does not create some kind of greater harm. Lenton thinks that more such ideas,
Wheat genes could help fight fungal epidemics: Nature Newsas farmers around the world anxiously monitor the march of a deadly orange fungus across their wheat fields,
The results are welcome news as plant pathologists race to arm themselves against an ongoing epidemic of stem rust (P. graminis) caused by a recently emerged fungus called Ug99 (see'Wheat fungus spreads out of Africa'.
'The epidemic was isolated first in Uganda and has since spread eastwards into Iran. From there, pathologists believe wind currents may sweep Ug99 spores into India and, eventually, China.
Meanwhile, new types of stripe rust that can overcome the defences bred into commercial varieties have sparked a separate epidemic in the United states. It is amazing that we are still fighting this battle,
The team speculates that the proteins work by transporting metabolites that impede fungal growth to the site of the infection.
which requires a live host less time to establish an infection, the researchers say. Dubcovsky discovered the second fungi-fighting gene several years ago
he noticed that it was more resistant to rust infection than strains with normal protein content.
Neither Yr36 nor Lr34 can fully protect wheat against infection. In one study, infected wheat carrying only Lr34 had stripe rust covering 60%of its uppermost leaf
Zinc-finger nucleases have recently been used to create human immune cells that are resistant to HIV (see'Designer protein tackles HIV'.
Swine flu: Nature Newsa new strain of swine flu-influenza A (H1n1)- is spreading around the globe.
This timeline will be updated continually with key dates, drawing on authoritative information from the World health organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other sources.
For more on the situation see the Nature News swine flu special, and read updates on The Great Beyond blog.
The influenza pandemic policies and responses recommended and taken by WHO were influenced not improperly by the pharmaceutical industry,
and (Tamiflu) for preventing influenza complications. An accompanying editorial says, The review and a linked investigation undertaken jointly by the BMJ
Ministry of Health of Ukraine 1103/en/index. html>reports it has recorded over 250,000 cases of influenza-like illness, with 70 deaths.
Australia begins mass swine flu vaccinations. 25 september 2009: European Medicines Agency recommends approval of two H1n1 vaccines, from Novartis and Glaxosmithkline.
Healthy victims of swine flu should not routinely be given antiviral drugs, the World health organization useantivirals 20090820/en/index. html>warns.
Researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn that pregnant women might be increased at risk for complications from pandemic H1n1 in a research paper in eventid=login>The Lancet (hithardbyswi. html>more on this story.
Two Australian companies say they have started human trials of their swine flu vaccines. 16 july 2009: WHO changes reporting requirements for H1n1
At this time, there is no evidence to indicate the development of widespread antiviral resistance among pandemic H1n1 viruses.
The UK moves its swine flu response from'containment'to'treatment'.'Our national focus should be on treating the increasing numbers affected by swine flu,
says health minister Andy Burnham. 29 june 2009: The first case of Tamiflu resistant swine flu has been reported in Denmark 24 june 2009:
Argentinian authorities report that a pig at a pig farm in Buenos aires province has tested positive for the novel H1n1 strain,
making it only the second known swine infection outside of Canada. 22 june 2009: Chinese state news source Xinhua reports tests have begun on the first H1n1 vaccine developed in the country.
South africa confirms its first case of swine flu-offically marking the disease's spread into Sub-saharan africa.
The first swine flu death in Europe has been reported. A woman in Scotland who died with H1n1 had underlying health conditions, according to the Scottish government.
The world is in a full-blown influenza pandemic for the first time in 41 years. 9 june 2009: THE WHO reports that Inuit communities in Canada may be particularly hard-hit.
It continues to face questions as to why a full-blown pandemic has not been declared. 8 june 2009:
THE WHO says it is 6swineflupandemic get. html>inching closer to moving its pandemic alert status to phase 6,
which would denote official global pandemic status. 1 june 2009: June opens with 17,410 cases reported in 62 countries,
and declaring a pandemic, that the global extent of a pandemic should be described objectively and should be just one factor in decisions about how to respond.
22 may 2009: Australia raises its alert level to'Contain, 'even as the Mexican government relaxes its restrictions in Mexico city.
However the pandemic alert level is still at five today, one level below a full pandemic.
THE WHO has 0511/en/index. html>confirmed swine flu deaths in Canada and Costa rica, bringing the total number of countries where fatalities have occurred to four.
A modeling study in Science suggests that the virus spreads at a rate comparable to that of previous influenza pandemics.
WHO 0506d/en/index. html>confirms swine flu cases in Sweden and Guatemala. 5 may 2009: Mexico's H1n1 shutdown should begin to ease tomorrow,
The agency also announces it will refer to the virus not as swine flu but as influenza A (H1n1.
THE WHO raises pandemic level alert to phase 5, a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent.
First swine-flu death outside Mexico reported as a baby dies in Texas. 161/nn200120/DE/Content/Service/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2009/082009. html>Germany joins European countries with H1n1
and confirms three swine flu cases. THE WHO confirms 7 more cases in Canada, bringing the total number there to 13.28 April 2009:
Seven countries are now reporting 0428/en/index. html>confirmed cases of H1n1 swine flu: the United states, Mexico, Canada, New zealand, the United kingdom, Israel and Spain.
27 april 2009: Canada reports six cases of swine flu and Spain reports one. In the United states 40 people have confirmed flu.
In Mexico 26 cases are confirmed, with 7 deaths resulting. Estimates for the true number of deaths hover around 80.
THE WHO 0427/en/index. html>raises pandemic alert level to 4 having confirmed human-to-human transmission able to cause'community-level outbreaks'.
'Phase 4 indicates a significant increase in risk of a pandemic but does not necessarily mean that a pandemic is a forgone conclusion,
says the organisation. 25 april 2009: WHO director-general, Margaret Chan calls the flu problem a public health emergency of 0425/en/index. html>international concern.
23 april 2009: Officials issue orders to close schools in Mexico city, beginning a process of limiting public crowds.
Three major soccer futbol games around Mexico city close stadium gates to all fans the weekend of April 25-26, with games broadcast on television.
Earliest onset date of swine flu reaching the United states, according to the CDC. 18 march 2009: Federal district of Mexico 0424/en/index. html>begins to pick up cases of swine flu.
California in clean-fuel drive: Nature Newsthe state of California has adopted regulations to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from transportation fuels,
With your background of clinical research on malaria and other tropical diseases, what do you think you will bring to the job?
for example malaria, every case could be cured with existing drugs, yet most people don't get them.
There's a researchable question in why 70%of the people who need the drugs for malaria don't get them.
How does a clinical malaria researcher oversee social-policy research? I think one of the reasons that DFID asked me to do this job is that
but could also pose an infection risk. Researchers have used also the genome sequence to assemble a collection of more than 37,000 locations in the genome that contain frequent single-base changes in DNA sequence2.
In the past, work on cattle led to the development of the smallpox vaccine and in vitro fertilization techniques.
and collide, the crust fractures and these clathrates release gases, which carry up ice particles with them to form the icy plumes.
Patchy pig monitoring may hide flu threat: Nature Newspublic-health experts are warning that a lack of surveillance may be allowing the 2009 pandemic H1n1 flu virus to go undetected in pigs.
This raises the risk that the virus could circulate freely between humans and pigs, making it more likely to reassort into a deadlier strain,
Their main concern tends to be that any reports of the pandemic virus in pigs might provoke overreactions such as the mass culling of pigs that took place in Egypt
Within minutes of the World health organization (WHO) announcement on 11 june that swine flu had become a pandemic, Bernard Vallat, director-general of an intergovernmental trade body,
But some experts say that is an artefact of patchy to nonexistent flu surveillance in pigs.
2009), Gavin Smith, a flu geneticist at the University of Hong kong, and his colleagues concluded that the lack of systematic swine surveillance allowed for the undetected persistence and evolution of this potentially pandemic strain for many years.
The virus originated from a mixture of swine flu strains, and pigs are an obvious part of the epidemiology of the new virus,
says Smith. Yet the number of swine-flu sequences in the international Genbank database is about a tenth of that for avian flu viruses.
Circulation of the virus between pigs and humans is definitely a possibility he adds. The pandemic virus has so far been found in pigs from just one farm, in Alberta, Canada,
where it spread throughout the herd. But noone has been able to pin down how the herd became infected.
Past pandemic viruses have gone also on to become endemic in pig populations. It's absolutely surprising that a virus this contagious in both humans and swine
and a member of the organization's flu task force. It is highly likely that more pigs are infected in more places.
Absence of evidence of the pandemic virus in pig populations is not evidence of absence,
concedes Steve Edwards, chairman of the OIE-FAO Network of Expertise on Animal Influenza (OFFLU),
which coordinates work done by animal-flu surveillance labs worldwide, and former chief executive of the Veterinary Laboratories Agency.
Whereas flu surveillance has improved over the past six years in poultry and wild birds, pigs have been below the radar,
says Ilaria Capua, an animal-flu expert at the Experimental Animal health Care Institute of Venice in Legnaro, Italy.
The avian H5n1 flu virus leads to serious disease in poultry and causes huge economic losses,
flu viruses, although common, tend to cause only mild disease, so there is no obligation to report cases of swine flu,
much less take samples for genetic and antigenic analysis. The OIE has asked, however its member states to voluntarily report any occurrences of the 2009 pandemic virus in pigs.
Surveillance for swine flu is not something that has been high on the agenda of government services,
says Edwards. It is seen as a farming-industry problem. Most flu surveillance in pigs is passive,
relying on farmers or vets sending material to government labs. Active targeted surveillance with diagnostic tests is rarer,
OFFLU has called on labs worldwide to share what information they have on swine flu, and to sequence any samples they have obtained recently.
and THE WHO on 21 may the conclusions of which were made public last week recommended scaling up flu surveillance efforts in pigs,
The European Surveillance Network for Influenza in Pigs, which was created in 2001, comprises nine European labs and one in Hong kong.
Network members hope that with the pandemic highlighting the need for better pig surveillance new funding will be forthcoming.
-and public-health communities underestimated the potential for pigs to generate a pandemic virus . Although pigs can be infected with many subtypes of flu,
the three most common endemic strains are H1n1, H1n2 and H3n2. Most expected that any new pandemic would involve the introduction of a viral subtype not previously seen in humans,
such as the avian H5 subtype, explains Capua. The consensus was that a pandemic could not be caused by H1,
H2 or H3 because the current human population would have antibodies against them, she says.
The emergence of the reassorted H1n1 pandemic virus which current research indicates noone has any immunity to, apart, perhaps,
In the presentation, the results of which are in press at the journal PLOS Pathogens, Capua showed that serum samples from people vaccinated against seasonal flu strains showed little or no cross reactivity against H1,
H2 and H3 bird viruses, meaning that they would have no immunity. This shows that the world needs a comprehensive surveillance system of all influenza subtypes
and their evolution across many animal species, says Capua: We should be looking at the bigger picture.
Pandemic flu viruses brew for years before going global: Nature Newsfamily trees for pandemic influenza have revealed that components of deadly flu viruses probably lurk in humans
and other animals for years before they emerge as a worldwide threat to human health.
The work suggests that a more thorough characterization of circulating flu viruses could provide clues to an emerging pandemic before it hits.
According to results published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, two genes from the 1918 influenza virus,
would have been present in human and swine flu viruses at least 6 years earlier. During the intervening years
swine and human flu viruses would have swapped genes with avian viruses, ultimately giving rise to the dangerous assortment of genes carried by the 1918 virus. This work suggests that the generation of pandemic strains
and the adaptation to humans could be involved much more than was thought previously, says Raul Rabadan, a biomedical informatician at Columbia University college of Physicians and Surgeons in New york,
is key to identifying possible pandemic strains and their future evolution. Yi Guan of the University of Hong kong, Robert Webster of St jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee,
swine and human flu viruses and created family trees based on DNA sequence information. By estimating the amount of time it would take to accumulate the differences in DNA sequences found in human and swine viruses,
the researchers determined that a precursor to at least one 1918 flu gene was present in mammals before 1911.
The results run counter to previous hypotheses that the human 1918 flu strain had evolved directly from a bird flu virus2.
and then swapped genes with mammalian flu viruses before becoming a pandemic. Meanwhile, elements of the 1957 pandemic flu virus also thought to be a mosaic of human
and avian flu genes were introduced probably into human populations two to six years before the pandemic, the researchers found.
These analyses were completed before the current pandemic swine flu strain made its mark, but the researchers argue that their results have implications for future pandemics.
Results from 1918 and 1957 pandemic flu suggest that public-health authorities should track the sequences of all influenza virus genes in emerging strains
the authors argue, rather than focusing largely on the gene that encodes the haemagglutinin'protein,
which is critical for vaccine production, as is the current practice. Nevertheless, reliance upon patchy data from historical flu viruses has its limitations.
Michael Worobey, who studies pathogen evolution at the University of Arizona in Tucson, says that his own analyses have suggested also that human
and swine forms of H1n1 shared a common ancestor years before 1918. But he remains unconvinced by the series of genetic swaps proposed by the paper.
Swine flu shares some features with 1918 pandemic: Nature Newsas far as your immune system is concerned, the pandemic H1n1 (swine flu virus currently circling the globe bears an uncanny resemblance to an influenza virus that wreaked havoc nearly a century ago,
researchers have found. For months, it has been apparent that swine flu strikes the young more often than the old an unusual pattern that suggests older patients could have been exposed to similar viruses in the past.
A new study released today By nature suggests that people alive during the infamous 1918 influenza outbreak have the greatest protection against the current swine flu1.
The study also included experiments in a veritable menagerie of animals including mice, miniature pigs, ferrets and macaques.
In all but the pig, the virus yields an infection in the lungs that is more severe than would be expected from an average seasonal flu, according to Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his colleagues,
are effective against the new pandemic virus in human cells grown in the lab. These drugs are already being used to treat some infected patients.
which reported that swine flu reproduces more aggressively and produces more severe disease in ferrets than seasonal flu (see Swine flu reaches into the lungs and gut).
Kawaoka's team observed this virulence in mice and macaques as well, but pigs showed no outward signs of disease
Nevertheless, one alarming feature of the macaque results was the development of severe pneumonia that extended throughout the lungs, notes Earl Brown, a virologist at the University of Ottawa.
Pneumonias are localized normally more he says. When you start to hit all areas of the lungs severely,
and found that those born before 1918 were more likely to produce antibodies capable of neutralizing the swine flu virus. That protection is somewhat counterintuitive:
But it is still possible that the immune response elicited by one virus can offer protection against the other (see Old seasonal flu antibodies target swine flu virus). Oddly,
exposure to similar viruses that circulated from the 1920s to 1950s was not enough to elicit these antibodies a result that doesn't mesh with the lower infection rates among those who are over the age of 60
nevertheless offer some protection against infection, Brown says. At present, most swine flu infections are mild, and the severity of the present pandemic does not come close to the 1918 flu,
but experts worry that the new virus could become more virulent over time. Meanwhile, the virulence seen in the animal studies is disquieting,
says Brown. We're trying not to push the panic buttons, but we're trying to be realistic,
Pandemic flu: People infected with the H1n1 swine flu virus who are otherwise healthy should not routinely be given antiviral drugs,
the World health organization (WHO) warned last week. Its recommendations are at odds with current practice in many countries,
Although those with uncomplicated illness should not get oseltamivir or zanamivir (Relenza), THE WHO did recommend giving drugs to those presenting with severe illness,
to children under five and to pregnant women (see http://tiny. cc/WHOH1N1). Renewable energy:
The product's manufacturer, Geron in Menlo Park, California, had hoped to start human testing of its potential treatment for spinal-cord injury this summer (see Nature 457,516;
Eli lilly abandoned development of its osteoporosis drug arzoxifene, after results from an advanced clinical trial suggested it did not offer sufficient benefit over currently available treatments.
Indiana, had hoped arzoxifene would be a successor to its blockbuster osteoporosis treatment raloxifene (Evista), which will lose its patent protections by 2014.
Meanwhile, Amgen, of Thousand Oaks, California, has received more positive news for its new-mode-of-action osteoporosis treatment, denosumab.
He has led also research on allergy and infectious diseases at the National institutes of health. The FDA won powers to regulate tobacco for the first time in its 103-year history under legislation passed by Congress in June (see Nature 459,901;
) Environment Mercury contamination: A quarter of fish sampled from 291 streams across the United states between 1998 and 2005 contained levels of mercury higher than those deemed safe for human consumption,
and fend off fungal infections. Having these genes in more vulnerable rice varieties could save billions of dollars and feed millions more people.
Japan, has found a gene that helps some types of rice fight off fungal infection and successfully isolated it from a linked stretch of DNA responsible for the terrible flavour of the wild varieties.
and showed that plants with two rare deletions had around 10 times fewer blast lesions than wild-type rice,
leading to more malnutrition. The report calls for additional investments of at least US$7 billion per year for research, to increase agricultural productivity,
Research HIV vaccine: An experimental HIV vaccine has shown moderate success at preventing infection by the virus. A US$119-million study involving more than 16,000 HIV-negative men
and women from Thailand found that a combination of two older drugs, which had failed to work individually, together reduced the risk of contracting HIV by nearly a third.
It's the largest step forward that's ever occurred in the HIV-vaccine field, says Dan Barouch of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center in Boston, Massachusetts.
Click here for a longer version of this story. Mars delay: The launch of Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission to study Mars
and Regenerative Medicine Congress Asia. http://www. terrapinn. com/2009/stemcellsasia 8-11 october The American Association for Cancer Research holds its'Frontiers in basic cancer research'conference in Boston,
It's really getting to a systems-level understanding of the mountain pine beetle epidemic, says study co-author JÃ rg Bohlmann, a chemical ecologist at the University of British columbia in Vancouver, Canada,
including malaria, and a few symbiotic ecological relationships such as leaf-cutter ants and their microbial partners, but the approach has never before been applied on this scale for an outbreaking forest nuisance.
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