Blood sugar

Blood sugar loss may trigger Alzheimer's

Researchers said, a slow, chronic reduction of blood sugar to the brain could trigger some forms of Alzheimer's disease. The study of human & mice brains suggests a reduction of blood flow deprives energy to the brain, setting off a process that ultimately produces the sticky clumps of protein researchers believe is a cause of the disease.

The finding could lead to strategies such as exercise, reducing cholesterol and managing blood pressure to keep Alzheimer's at bay.

This finding is significant because it suggests that improving blood flow to the brain might be an effective therapeutic approach to prevent or treat Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's disease is incurable and is the most common form of dementia among older people. It affects the regions of the brain involving thought, memory and language. While the most advanced drugs have focused on removing clumps of beta amyloid protein that forms plaques in the brain, researchers also are looking at therapies to address the toxic tangles caused by an abnormal build-up of the
protein tau.

"Vassar and colleagues analyzed human and mice brains to discover that a protein called elF2alpha is altered when the brain does not get enough energy. This boosts production of an enzyme that in turn flips a switch to produce the sticky protein clumps."

The finding published in the journal Neuron could lead to drugs designed to block the elF2alpha production that begins the formation of the protein clumps, also known as amyloid plaques, Vassar added.

Facebook

Facebook ban of breast-feeding photos sparks protests

Most favorite social networking site "Facebook" is bad of breast feeding photos. it was took a long debate and the issues was concerned with manes expertise after removing after removing photos that expose too much of a mother's breast.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in a statement "the website takes no action over most breast-feeding photos because they follow the site's terms of use but others are removed to ensure the site remains safe and secure for all users, including children, photos containing a fully exposed breast (as defined by showing the nipple or areola) do violate those terms (on obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit material) and may be removed."
But Facebook's decision to ban some breast feeding photos has angered some users, including U.S. mother Kelli Roman whose photograph of her feeding her daughter was removed by Facebook.
Roman is one of the administrators of an online petition called "Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!" which has picked up speed in the past week after protesters organized a virtual "nurse-in" on Facebook and held a small demonstration outside Facebook's office in Palo Alto, California.
The petition has now attracted more than 80,000 names & over 10,000 comments, reigniting the old debate about the rights or wrongs of breast feeding in public. The matter is broadly concerned by all the mother and as a result they forced to remove the picture.
Organizers of the petition said some women had been warned not to repost photographs that had been removed from their pages or they would face being kicked off Facebook.
One breast-feeding mother, called Rebekah, said Facebook removed a photograph of her feeding her child.

"I find it offensive that (Facebook) can remove my photo but not the close up picture of a thonged
backside I (have) seen on a friend's page or remove the "what kama sutra position are you?" quiz application," she wrote.
Facebook, which has more than 120 million members, is standing by its decision.
Schnitt said the company had called many U.S. media groups during the course of the protest to ask to place an advert related to breast-feeding that showed a woman breast-feeding her child with a fully exposed breast. None agreed. Obviously, a newspaper and Facebook are different things but the underlying motivation for the content policies are the same.

Researchers unlock secrets of 1918 flu pandemic

Researchers discovered the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly a group of 3 genes that lets the virus invade the lungs & cause pneumonia. The researcher actually mixed the samples of 1918 influenza strain with modern seasonal flu viruses to find the 3 genes that might help in the development of new flu drugs. The discovery could also point to mutations that might turn ordinary flu into a dangerous pandemic strain.

Usually flu causes an upper respiratory infection affecting the nose and throat, and so called systemic illness causing fever, muscle aches & weakness. But some people become seriously ill and develop pneumonia. Sometimes bacteria cause the pneumonia and sometimes flu does it directly. During pandemics, such as in 1918, a new and more dangerous flu strain emerges. The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most devastating outbreak of infectious disease in human history, accounting for about 50 million deaths worldwide but It killed 2.5% of victims, compared to fewer than 1% during most annual flu epidemics. Autopsies showed many of the victims, often otherwise healthy young adults, died of severe pneumonia. They painstakingly substituted single genes from the 1918 virus into modern flu viruses and, one after another, they acted like garden-variety flu, infecting only the upper respiratory tract. But a complex of 3 genes helped to make the virus live and reproduce deep in the lungs. The 3 genes called PA, PB1, and PB2 along with a 1918 version of the nucleoprotein or NP gene, made modern seasonal flu kill ferrets in much the same way as the original 1918 flu. Most flu experts agree that a pandemic of influenza will almost certainly strike again. No one knows when or what strain it will be but one big suspect now is the H5N1 avian influenza virus.

H5N1 is circulating among poultry in Asia, Europe and parts of Africa. It rarely affects humans but has killed 247 of the 391 people infected since 2003. A few mutations would make it into a pandemic strain that could kill millions globally within a few months. Four licensed drugs can fight flu but the viruses regularly mutate into resistant forms just as bacteria evolve into forms that evade antibiotics.

HIV/TB infection

Dual HIV/TB infection common in S. African infants

Picture: HIV virus----------------------------&---------------HIV life cycle

Researchers from South Africa report in the current issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases said that, HIV-positive infants are over 20 times more likely to develop tuberculosis than their HIV-negative counterparts.

Dr. Anneke Hesseling from Cape Town told Reuters Health: "The current status of TB amongst HIV-infected children is still very high,this burden is not always accurately assessed because it can be difficult to confirm the diagnosis of TB in young children." In their study, the prevalence of tuberculosis and HIV among infants attending their hospital in Western Cape province between 2004 and 2006. During the study, 245 infants were confirmed as having tuberculosis, the investigators report. of these, 53 (21.6 percent) infants were HIV positive, 122 (49.8%) HIV negative, while the others were untested.

The incidence of tuberculosis was 1,596 per 100,000 population among HIV-positive infants and 65.9 per 100,000 among HIV-negative infants, the researchers estimated. HIV-infected infants were at a 24.1-fold higher risk of pulmonary tuberculosis and a 17.1-fold higher risk of disseminated tuberculosis. Increased exposure to tuberculosis, HIV-associated immunosuppression & reduced efficacy of the BCG vaccine could explain the increased risk of tuberculosis among these infants, Hesseling suggested.


"A very important strategy to reduce the TB burden amongst infants born to HIV- infected women is to implement TB screening amongst pregnant women."

In addition, routine HIV testing of infants with tuberculosis, prophylactic treatment for TB, improved access to HIV treatment and newer vaccines could help reduce the burden.

blood pressure

Key gene linked to high blood pressure identified


Researchers said, a gene that affects how the kidneys process salt may help determine a person's risk of high blood pressure, and it could lead to better ways to treat the condition.

University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers found that people with a general variant of the gene STK39 tend to have higher blood pressure levels & are likely to develop full blown high blood pressure, also called hypertension . They identified the gene's role in high blood pressure susceptibility by analyzing 560 people in the insular old Order Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Researchers confirmed that the genes of another group of Amish peopleand 4 other groups of white people in the United States and Europe. About 20% of the people studied had either one or two copies of this particular variant.

The researchers said, the gene produces a protein involved in regulating the way the kidneys process salt in the body-a key factor in determining blood pressure.

Note: Yen-Pei Christy Chang, who led the study appearing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said the findings could lead to the development of new high blood pressure drugs targeting the activity of STK39.

People with high blood pressure are more likely to develop heart attacks, heart failure, strokes and kidney disease. While STK39 may play a pivotal role in some people, Chang said numerous other genes also may be involved. Many factors are involved in high blood pressure such as being overweight, lack of exercise, smoking and too much salt in the diet.

Several different types of medications are used to treat high blood pressure, including diuretics, beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, calcium channel blockers and others.

Chang said the researchers want to determine how people with different versions of this gene respond to the various drugs and to lifestyle interventions such as cutting the amount of salt in the diet. The Lancaster Amish are seen as ideal for genetic research because they are a genetically homogenous people whose ancestry can be traced to a small group who arrived from Europe in the 1700s.

cancer

Pain pills may cut risk of bowel cancer

Study finds, use of a non-steroidal anti inflammatory drug (NSAID) for over 5 years may lessen a person's risk of developing cancer of the lower portion of the large bowel.

Dr. Sangmi Kim, of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and colleagues found that the risk reduction appears more robust among whites than among African Americans. The investigators evaluated use of NSAIDs among 1,057 white & American men and women with cancer of the lower bowel and rectum and 1,019 individuals who were cancer-free. The participants with cancer included 790 whites and 267 Americans, of whom 76% reported ever using NSAIDs during the 5 years prior to diagnosis. Of the cancer-free group, 83% reported NSAID use during the 5 years prior to study participation.

Compared with those never using NSAIDs, NSAID use was associated with about 40% reduced risk for cancer in the lower portion of the large bowel overall, after allowing for age, gender, race, body mass, physical activity, and other factors potentially associated with distal large bowel cancers. In analyses that factored for race, the investigators found a "strongly protective" association between NSAIDs and large bowel cancer in whites, according to a report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Risk reduction was slightly stronger with prescription, rather than non-prescription NSAID use, but again this association was stronger among whites than among African Americans.

The apparent protective effect between NSAID use and cancer of the lower portion of the large bowel noted in this study is similar to that previously reported between NSAIDs and colon cancer.