Nature Newsrinderpest, the world's most devastating cattle disease, will be declared eradicated within 18 months, according to world health bodies.
The effort will make it only the second disease to be wiped from the globe the first was eradicated smallpox
Rinderpest tops the list of killer diseases in animals, says Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer for the Food and Agricultural organization of the United nations (FAO) in Rome.
Eradication of the disease would be a massive achievement for the veterinary community, says Chris Oura, head of the Non-Vesicular Disease Reference Laboratory Group at the Institute for Animal health in Pirbright, UK.
Rinderpest, otherwise known as cattle plague, has killed many millions of cattle and other wildlife around the world since it first spread from Asia to Europe in the herds of the invading tribes, causing outbreaks during the Roman empire in 376-386.
Since then, the disease has spread throughout Europe and on to Africa, the Middle east and the Indian subcontinent.
Outbreaks in Nigeria during the 1980s cost around $2 billion according to the FAO. The disease is caused by a virus called a morbillivirus a group that also includes the measles virus. Clinical signs include fever, discharges from the eyes and nose,
diarrhoea and dehydration and the disease kills 80-90%of infected cattle in just 7-10 days.
The last outbreak in Asia was in 2000 and the last known cases of the disease were in Kenya in 2001.
The FAO and the World organisation for Animal health (OIE), based in Paris, headed up an international effort to eradicate the disease,
which began in 1994 with the launch of the Global Rinderpest Eradication Programme. The programme's success depended on widespread vaccination programmes and long-term monitoring of cattle and wildlife.
A breakthrough in controlling the disease came in the 1980's when a heat-stable vaccine was developed that contained the attenuated virus,
allowing the vaccine to be stored and transported over long distances. Oura says that the biggest scientific challenges in eradicating the virus is the large-scale monitoring
Lubroth says he is confident that the world is already free of the disease but that the FAO and the OIE expect to make an official declaration that rinderpest has been eradicated in 18 months.
Bernard Vallat director-general of the OIE, says that the holdup is because 12 countries have not yet submitted their final test and surveillance results to the organization.
Dirty pigs beat disease: Nature Newsliving like a pig could be good for you, according to research showing that dirty piglets pick up'friendly'bacteria that help them to develop robust immune systems later in life.
which suggests that a lack of exposure to microbes in early life can affect development of the immune system and increase susceptibility to certain disorders, such as allergies and inflammatory bowel disease.
and how it influences immune function and susceptibility to diseases and allergies. Although many researchers now accept the hygiene hypothesis,
and how infection helps to protect against disease. This paper shows that the first days of life are very important,
a family of bacteria known for their ability to limit intestinal pathogens such as Escherichia coli and Salmonella species. By contrast,
whereas genes linked with infection-fighting T cells were expressed in the outdoor-bred pigs. Glenn Gibson, a food microbiologist at the University of Reading, UK, says that previous studies have suggested that immune responses are linked to organisms in the gut.
Jonathan Rhodes, a gastroenterologist at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital in Liverpool, UK, points out that people with chronic inflammation of the digestive tract, known as Crohn's disease, have reduced numbers of Firmicutes,
similar to the outdoor pigs, suggesting that the results might not extrapolate directly to human disease.
Drug-maker Glaxosmithkline (GSK) was aware of cardiac risks associated with its diabetes drug Avandia (rosiglitazone) years before they became public
The research challenges where funding will be focused include studies into chronic diseases and the effects of ageing on cell function,
Anthrax case closed: Federal authorities in the United states announced on 19 february the conclusion of their investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks,
which killed five people. They determined that biodefence researcher Bruce Ivins was the sole perpetrator;
such as analysis tracing mailed Bacillus anthracis spores back to a single-spore batch in Ivins's lab at the US ARMY Medical Research Institute of Infectious diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland.
Pollution and other environmental issues in China have caused widespread health problems such as cancer and birth defects and have led to much social unrest.
Many observers think that the publicizing of such huge pollution levels by a country that is often secretive about bad news is a sign that China is taking the issues seriously.
and open a new research arm dedicated to finding treatments for rare diseases. Lay offs related to the change in strategy would hit research centres in Harlow, UK,
Biologist Axel Ullrich took the medicine prize for his research in cancer (he co-developed trastuzumab,
or Herceptin, used to treat breast cancer); and geneticist and plant scientist David Baulcombe got the agriculture prize for his discovery of small interfering RNA in plants,
1998) that began the scare over a purported link between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
(or male) and that the other side would have a some kind of chromosomal anomaly. Instead, they found the chickens to be almost perfectly split between male and female.
pathogen resistance and hormone signalling. Annotation of the Arabidopsis genome the linking of biological data to sequence information is considered now among the highest quality of all sequenced genomes.
to treat multiply drug-resistant tuberculosis simply isn't a good idea. The reason the problem arises at all is
Tough lessons from Dutch Q fever outbreak: Nature Newsthe chief veterinary officer of The netherlands has defended the country's decision to cull thousands of goats in an effort to control an unprecedented outbreak of Q fever.
The netherlands can't take a chance, Christianne Bruschke told Nature after a meeting in Breda a city near the heart of the outbreak.
But Bruschke said that in other countries the authorities have been able to ignore the disease
however, epidemiological studies pinpointed goats as the source of the disease in an area increasingly densely populated by humans and dairy farms over the past decade,
Q fever, caused by Coxiella burnetii bacteria, is harboured in mammals, birds and even insects. It can trigger abortions in goats and sheep and causes flu-like symptoms and sometimes pneumonia in humans.
After more than 2, 200 confirmed human cases of the disease last year, the Dutch government slaughtered over 50,000 dairy goats on 55 of the country's nearly 400 farms in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading further.
But the Dutch government's approach to controlling the disease remains controversial. Some researchers argue that the mass cull was not necessary
and less extreme measures such as vaccinating the animals may have been enough. I've never encountered anything like that before,
project leader on Q fever in goats for the Central Veterinary Institute (CVI) in Wageningen, The netherlands.
whether one fast-spreading strain of the bacteria is causing human cases of the disease.
if this bug is the one responsible for human infections. With the Dutch Institute for Public health and the Environment, Roest's team is carrying out genome sequencing and comparisons of different strains.
But Cbnl01's omnipresence makes it difficult to be sure it's the source of the human disease,
from understanding how the bacteria are distributed at such a large scale to correlating measurements of BACTERIAL DNA levels in bulk milk tank samples with infection rates.
In Canada, we've been dealing with small outbreaks of disease in animals, but we've never done a prevalence survey,
that's because animals don't always exhibit symptoms of disease and detecting infected animals using blood tests something Dutch researchers have improved radically is difficult.
The CVI said that starting this year they will also monitor the incidence of the disease in pets and horses.
We need to know a lot more about the disease to understand why it's so different in The netherlands than the rest of the world,
Soil bacteria could yield drug to treat roundworm: Nature Newsa bacterial protein used in a common pesticide kills intestinal parasitic roundworms in mice
and may become a treatment option for humans, researchers say. Intestinal roundworms, including hookworms and whipworms, infect well over one billion people, lowering immune systems for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis and debilitating both physically and cognitively.
The new approach, published today in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases1, uses crystal proteins from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt.
Organic farmers have used Bt to kill insects for decades, and plants have been modified genetically with Bt genes
and is a common laboratory model organism for studying human diseases caused by roundworms, such as river blindness and elephantiasis.
Aroian's previous study2 using a type of human intestinal roundworm parasite to infect hamsters showed a 90%reduction in three doses of Bt.
Nearly all of the current drugs to treat nematode diseases were invented for veterinary purposes, he says,
This is the only disease I can think of when that's what we do. According to Aroian, this treatment can be grown cheaply in large quantities.
The Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program, funded by the National Cancer Institute, enrols 25,000 patients in cancer trials run by 14,000 researchers at 3, 100 institutions each year.
because there are a lot of health problems in developing countries that have been linked to the spraying of pesticides. Public funding of agricultural research in rich countries has declined,
The genes cause plant cells around the infection site to die, stopping the fungus from further infecting the plant.
The concern is that other wheat-growing countries will become vulnerable to infection. Eventually it will reach North america
and the wheat plants have fewer defences against infection, says Pretorius. Pretorius and his team analysed the genomes of the new stem rust variants
making it able to overcome the Sr24 wheat gene that usually confers resistance to the pathogen.
is developing new tools to help defeat the pathogen. Sarah Davidson, associate director of the project, says that it will have isolated eight new resistance genes by the end of the year.
Phones and cancer: There is no clear link between mobile-phone use and the risk of brain cancer,
according to a major study published this week (The INTERPHONE Study Group Int. J. Epidemiol. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyq079;
) The study, run by the World health organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, interviewed thousands of adults with and without cancer in 13 countries about their mobile-phone usage.
See go. nature. com/uzph7a for more. India defence research: India's largest military technology research body is set for a management revamp under government measures announced on 13 may.
Cancer acquisition: Astellas Pharma, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, said on 16 may that it had agreed to pay US$4 billion to purchase OSI Pharmaceuticals,
Nobel laureate Harold Varmus is to be the next director of the US National Cancer Institute at the National institutes of health (NIH), replacing John Niederhuber.
The $5. 1-billion cancer institute is the largest of the NIH's 27 institutes and centres.
and then became president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New york, before advising Barack Obama during his run for the presidency.
and it could cause cancer, nerve damage or fetal-development problems among workers and people living near fumigated fields.
where the aim is to reduce mosquito numbers for human comfort rather than for disease control.
Mosquito saliva may signal infection outbreaks: Nature Newsbaiting mosquito traps with cards soaked in honey,
may be a way of tracking the spread of some diseases. To assess whether mosquito populations are harbouring dangerous viruses,
such as chickens and pigs, for antibodies that signal the presence of pathogens. Both methods put people at risk of exposure to the viruses.
which spreads dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever viruses, prefers blood meals over honey. The kinds of mosquitoes they trapped with this method are not necessarily the most important vectors for some viruses,
says Scott Weaver, who studies virus-mosquito interactions at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
As a result, it would be nearly impossible to quantify the risk of infection on the basis of the amount of VIRAL RNA on the cards
and to calculate the infection rate in mosquitoes and assess the potential threat. Next, van den Hurk will compare the sensitivity of the approach with those of other standard methods,
including one used to treat thyroid cancer. But there was also good news for the beleaguered company:
on 25 may, after years of struggle, Genzyme won FDA approval to market Lumizyme (alglucosidase-Ã Â) for patients with late-onset Pompe disease, a muscle-weakening illness.
the California-based drug company's treatment for osteoporosis. The monoclonal antibody will be used to treat postmenopausal women who have increased an risk of fractures,
and men experiencing the side effects of prostate-cancer treatment. Last year, a US Food and Drug Administration committee recommended that the drug be approved for certain patients,
27 may News maker William Bishaithe tuberculosis expert will head South africa's Kwazulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV,
and he developed health problems. Eventually, he couldn't find anything to catch because fish were dying
Pandemic over: The World health organization (WHO) announced on 10 august that the world is no longer experiencing an H1n1 influenza virus pandemic.
An emergency committee, which convened that day, said that countries were generally not reporting out-of-season outbreaks of the flu strain,
and that H1n1 would probably take on the behaviour of a seasonal flu virus. Margaret Chan,
director-general of THE WHO, said the pandemic had turned out better than feared because the virus hadn't mutated into a more lethal form
and drug resistance hadn't developed. We have been aided by pure good luck she said. Research Student gene-testing dropped:
Events Disease follows deluge in Pakistan As nearly three weeks of floods in Pakistan displaced tens of millions of people
500, the United nations this week warned of the spread of acute diarrhoea and waterborne diseases such as dysentery and cholera.
and can cause cirrhosis and liver cancer, affects about 3%of the world's population.
Currently, half of the patients with HCV are cured by a course of an immune-boosting protein and a general antiviral,
with the theme of chemistry for combating disease. ¢go. nature. com/AD8G6E 22 28 august The 28th International Ornithological Congress discusses all things bird-related in Campos do Jord ae'£o, S ae'£o
Cancer-gene testing ramps up: Nature Newsin an approach that many doctors and scientists hope will form the medical care of the future,
and a half been offering people with cancer a novel diagnostic test. Instead of assessing tumours for a single mutation that will indicate
whether a drug is likely to work or not, the hospital tests patients for some 150 mutations in more than a dozen cancer-causing genes,
with the results being used to guide novel treatments, clinical trials and basic research. This form of personalized medicine tailors treatments on the basis of the molecular and genetic characteristics of a patient's cancer cells
Plans were unveiled this week to deploy broad genetic testing for selected cancer patients in Britain's government-run health-care provider, the National Health Service (NHS.
who heads the programme for Cancer Research UK, the charity that is leading the effort. As the NHS treats millions of people each year,
000 NHS cancer patients over two years, beginning in early 2011. By contrast, Massachusetts General has tested about 1, 600 patients,
which will look for several dozen mutations in about a dozen genes linked to cancer, will be carried out on people with lung, breast, colorectal, prostate or ovarian cancers,
or metastatic melanoma, who are being treated at six NHS hospitals. Therapies that target specific tumour-causing mutations have already been approved,
or are on the verge of approval, for most of these conditions, says Peach. Testing a clinical sample for so many mutations at once is a challenge in itself.
Because most existing clinical tests probe individual genes the NHS programme is working with the Technology Strategy Board, a government agency that supports technology development,
By genotyping patients for a broad array of cancer-causing mutations, the new tests will make it easier to assign subjects to clinical trials,
a geneticist who helps lead the hospital's cancer testing programme. For example, its broad genetic test detects a mutation in a gene called BRAF that is already known to be mutated commonly in metastatic melanoma.
Finding such mutations in people with lung and colon cancer made it possible to put them in a trial of an experimental treatment targeting that gene,
Ellisen explains. Basic research should also benefit from the NHS programme, says Peach. Researchers will have access to consenting patients'genetic data as well as to medical records of the outcomes of the treatment.
says Andy Futreal, a cancer geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK,
Peach hopes that the first phase of the cancer programme will pave the way for expanding genetic testing to more patients and other conditions, such as diabetes, AIDS and even psychiatric disorders.
Cancer offers a good testing ground for personalized medicine, because numerous targeted therapies already exist, but there's no reason why this should be restricted to cancer,
says Peach. Fabrice Andrã, who runs a similar cancer diagnostic programme that has so far been offered to about 100 patients at the Gustave Roussy Institute in Villejuif
France, says the NHS programme could point the way to implementing personalized medicine across an entire population. It can really change the landscape of how molecular testing is being done for cancer,
he says. If they succeed, then it's going to be a major step forward.
GM maize offers windfall for conventional farms: Nature Newsgenetically modified (GM CROPS can save farmers using conventional seeds even more money than those using the transgenic varieties,
Nature Newsscientists in Uganda will next week start field trials of a banana variety genetically engineered to resist a bacterial disease that has been decimating crops across Central africa.
The disease was originally found in Ethiopia, but was discovered in Uganda in 2001 and has rapidly spread to the Democratic Republic of congo, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi.
where it has been shown to improve the disease resistance of vegetables including as broccoli, tomatoes and potatoes.
The field trials will also screen GM banana varieties with resistance to BXW for resistance to fungal diseases
and iron to help to combat blindness and anaemia in rural areas. But the future of Uganda's biotechnology advances remains uncertain.
preventing contamination that could otherwise cast doubt on the analysis. Boaretto explains that she is on site
such as finding the cause of the bumblebee disease thought to be behind the population crashes.
Some researchers have pinned the die off of native bumblebees on a fungal pathogen, Nosema bombi, which could have been introduced into the United states
The researchers suggested organizing efforts to determine the pathogen's transmission rate and identify any other diseases possibly infecting the bumblebees.
Other attendees concentrated on climate-change impacts that could be exacerbating the decline. For instance, flowers may bloom one
Dengue control The release of male mosquitoes genetically engineered to be sterile can control dengue fever by suppressing the population of the insects that carry the disease, scientists at Oxitec,
Events Cholera in Haiti The escalating cholera epidemic in Haiti had claimed more than 900 lives and caused close to 15,000 infections by the start of this week, according to the Haitian Ministry of Public health and Population.
The cholera strain is most closely related to one from south Asia the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, has said,
although it has pinpointed not the source. Business Genome market Complete Genomics, one of the handful of young US companies offering fast, cheap genome sequencing,
completed its initial public offering (IPO) on 11 november 墉 raising US$54 million at $9 per share, short of the $86-million target it set when first filing for an IPO in July.
Growth factor makes a comeback in cystic fibrosis: Nature Newsthe stunted development common to cystic fibrosis begins at birth
and could be a direct consequence of a growth-hormone deficiency caused by the disease. In both people and pigs, newborns with cystic fibrosis tend to have abnormally low levels of a hormone called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1),
according to a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.
Unlike in healthy controls, in mutant pigs IGF1 levels do not increase over time. The blood concentration of IGF1 could one day be used as a marker to predict
whether a patient with cystic fibrosis will have growth problems later in life, says David Stoltz, a physician in the Department of Internal medicine at the University of Iowa, Iowa City,
Cystic fibrosis is a deadly genetic disease: many patients don't live past the age of 30. Scientists identified the culprit gene some two decades ago (see'Human genetics:
'But the field is still struggling to understand how this glitch causes the disease's range of symptoms,
which include scarring and mucus in the lungs and pancreas, diabetes, infertility, weak bones and impeded growth.
In the 1990s, researchers found that individuals with cystic fibrosis have low levels of IGF1 in their blood2,
and growth problems are caused not directly by the cystic fibrosis gene, but rather are by-products of malnutrition and lung inflammation.
The new study challenges that idea by showing signatures of underdevelopment even at birth. Stoltz and his collaborators took advantage of a pig model of cystic fibrosis that they debuted in 20084.
The model has been the subject of much excitement among researchers because unlike the mouse version, it develops symptoms similar to those seen in humans with the disease, such as infection and inflammation in the lungs.
Compared with controls, the team found that newborn mutant pigs had significantly less IGF1 in their blood at birth.
The researchers then screened for IGF1 in samples of dried blood from 23 human newborns with cystic fibrosis.
The cystic fibrosis gene CFTR codes for a protein called the cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator, which helps to move chloride ions across cell membranes.
that problems with insulin secretion associated with cystic fibrosis are stalled responsible for the IGF1 production in newborns insulin regulates the production of IGF1 in the liver in utero and throughout life.
In any case, the findings point to IGF1 as a potential therapy for cystic fibrosis particularly because regulators in the United states and Europe have approved already synthetic IGF1 for the treatment of severely short stature.
which IGF1 is being administered to adults with cystic fibrosis. But before rushing to treat infants with the hormone,
The factory treated the moths with just enough radiation to damage the chromosomes in their reproductive cells without causing injuries that would prevent their survival in the wild.
but from the scientific community's responses to them much as deaths from virulent flu come not from the virus but from the immune system's violent overreaction.
is engaging in classic black sheep syndrome: members of a group may be annoyed by public criticism from outsiders,
it is susceptible to disease and its yields are not the best. In plantations, people are using a hybrid between this Criollo variety
The paper also highlights genes potentially involved in disease resistance. These may eventually allow breeders to improve the quality and yields of the cocoa varieties.
Breeding disease-resistant varieties is one of the major goals of our group's breeding team.
potentially making it a good candidate for further study in the lab. This could open the way to studies on flavour and disease resistance in the cultivated strawberry Fragaria x ananassa,
and when they contract life-threatening diseases (see'Profile: The field medic'.'His lifelong dream has been to create an institute where scientists preparing for far-flung expeditions can talk to doctors.
He also examined a scientist just home from years in Myanmar who was told that he had lung cancer.
but harmless Asian worm that imitates lung cancer by triggering an immune reaction that produces tumour-like growths.
Sure enough, on closer inspection, the scientist has now been found to be cancer-free. It's one of the most valuable things
including several drug candidates and a dipstick test for schistosomiasis. Scientists have no incentive to commercialize results,
Anthrax report The US National Academy of Sciences has delayed releasing a long-awaited report on the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, after a request by the Federal bureau of investigation (FBI.
TB diagnosis The World health organization (WHO) said on 8 december that a test that can rapidly diagnose tuberculosis (TB) was a'major milestone'for disease control.
It's also possible that sleep deprivation could exacerbate colony collapse disorder, he adds, referring to recent alarming declines in bee populations worldwide,
Evolution of potato blight pathogen traced: Nature Newsresearchers have traced the key genetic changes that enabled the plant pathogen responsible for the 1845 Irish potato famine (Phytophthora infestans) to jump from wild plant hosts to cultivated potatoes.
These genetic clues could aid the development of fungicides and disease-resistant varieties of potato that the pathogen will find much more difficult to adapt to and overcome.
We looked at how this pathogen evolved and found which genes we should focus on to tackle it,
says study author Sophien Kamoun, a plant pathologist and head of the Sainsbury Laboratory, a not-for-profit plant science company in Norwich,
Epidemics are currently raging in the United kingdom and United states, and the oomycete annually destroys more than US$6 billion worth of crops worldwide.
The researchers identified the key genes by comparing the genetic make-up of the potato blight pathogen and several of its sister species. To do so,
They discovered that the pathogens shared many'housekeeping'genes, including that for spore generation, but that they also had made numerous regions up of non-coding repeated DNA sequences.
and the variation between the sister species suggests that these regions are involved in the evolution and adaption of the pathogen to new hosts.
will make it more difficult for the pathogen to evolve resistance to the controls. The genetically conserved part of the genome could be the potato blight pathogen's Achilles heel,
adds Kamoun. The study's findings are bolstered by similar discoveries reported in a second paper in Science2,
and his team found that B. graminis genes responsible for infection and pathogenicity are located also in areas of the genome that are enriched with non-coding DNA repeats.
and enable the pathogens to run faster in an arms race. As a result of climate change and the loss of habitats from where important crops originated,
Developing a better grip on the molecular make-up and evolution of plant pathogens, current control methods can be targeted better slowing the chances that they evolve resistance,
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011