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Too many men could destabilize society
In the paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Dr Therese Hesketh of the UCL Institute of Child Health and Dr Zhu Wei Xing from the Zhejiang Normal University in China warn that measures to reduce sex selection and change cultural attitudes are urgently needed. Dr Therese Hesketh, of the UCL Institute of Child Health, says: "The ratio of men to women in most populations is remarkably constant if left untouched. The tradition of son preference, however, has distorted these natural sex ratios in large parts of Asia and North Africa. Sex-selective abortion and discrimination in care practices for girls have led to higher female mortality. Although health care for women is generally improving, these advances have been offset by a huge increase in the use of sex-selective abortion, and there are now an estimated 80 million missing females in India and China alone......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Brisbane teens receive first cancer vaccine shots
Rochedale sisters Emma and Rachel McMillan were the first teenage recipients of the Australian-made vaccine which Professor Frazer and his late research partner Dr Jian Zhou. helped create. The vaccine prevents four of dozens of strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) which cause genital warts and cervical cancer. The prescription-only vaccine is distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Melbourne based pharmaceutical manufacturer CSL and distributed worldwide by US drugmaker Merck & Co. It sells for $465 for a three-dose shot but there are plans to have it considered for subsidy under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and eventually added to the national. vaccination program for girls aged 12. Professor Frazer, the immunologist named 2006 Australian of the Year for his team's work on the vaccine, is the Director of UQ's Centre for Immunology and Cancer Research. Queensland Treasurer Anna Bligh announced a new Senior Smart State Fellowship at the vaccine launch in honour of Dr Zhou. Ms Bligh said the three-year, $450,000 Jian Zhou Fellowship would be offered to a Queenslander to advance research and development in immunology and cancer research......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source How The Body's T Cells React To Parasitic Diseases
While scientists understood how T cells worked in certain kinds of diseases, one area has remained murky: disorders caused by protozoan parasites. Now, because of a study just published and led by scientists at the University of Georgia, researchers are closer than ever to understanding how T cells respond to parasitic diseases that kill millions each year. "We have needed to really know what happens in these infections," said Rick Tarleton, research professor of cellular biology and a faculty member in UGA's Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases (CTEGD). "What is the body's response? This study is the first to show that one parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes Chagas Disease, elicits a T cell response focused on a few peptides, despite having some 12,000 genes capable of generating hundreds of thousands of potential targets for T cells". The study was just published in the online journal PLOS Pathogens, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science. Other authors of the paper include: Diana Martin, the lead author and postdoctoral fellow at UGA; former UGA undergraduates Melissa Cabinian and Matthew Crim; computational biologist Brent Weatherly of the CTEGD; former UGA postdoctoral fellow Susan Sullivan; doctoral students Matt Collins, Charles Rosenberg and Sarah Craven; Alessandro Sette of the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology in San Diego, Ca.; and Susana Laucella and Miriam Postan of the Nacional de Laboratorios e Institutos de Salud in Buenos Aires, Argentina......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Mind over matter
Researchers at Kent State University and Case Western University, led by Kent State nursing professor Wendy Lewandowski, tracked the experience of 44 patients being treated for chronic pain. Patients in one group listened to a seven-minute audio tape that helped them to relax, focus on the sensory images their pain evoked, and then guided them to change the sensory images. This technique, known as "guided imagery," is an effective supplement to medicine therapy. Unlike those in the control group, the guided imagery patients in the study described their pain as ultimately more tolerable or easier to control......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Exposure To Lead May Lead To Brain Cancer
Lead paint
More than 18,000 brain and spinal cord tumors will be diagnosed in the United States this year. Yet little is known about what causes brain cancer; the only established risk factor is radiation, as per the American Cancer Society. Results of other studies attempting to show a clear link between lead and cancer have been inconclusive. The new data, based on information from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Death Index, may be the largest study ever to find a lead-cancer link. In doing so it provides further evidence that widespread environmental risk factors such as lead must be explored, said study author Edwin van Wijngaarden, Ph.D. "If we are able to help explain the cause of even 1 or 2 percent of the total number of cases, that's important," said van Wijngaarden, an assistant professor and epidemiologist in the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at the University of Rochester. Reported in the Sept. 1, 2006, issue of the International Journal of Cancer, the study computed the risk estimates for lead exposure and brain cancer from a census sample of 317,968 people who reported their occupations between 1979 and 1981. Van Wijngaarden was looking for evidence of an exposure-response trend, or a rise in cancer incidence or mortality linked to an exposure to a toxic substance. The goal among scientists who do this type of investigation is to identify preventable, environmental risk factors that might cause the gene mutations that lead to cancer......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source New Drug For Fatal Pediatric Disorder
Researchers working with a mouse model for Niemann-Pick type C (NPC) disease showed that experimental therapys appear to be acting through the pregnane X receptor (PXR). Found in the cell nucleus, PXR regulates the activity of a cluster of genes that helps the body get rid of toxins. NPC affects approximately one in every 100,000 children. Affected individuals typically present in early childhood with gait disturbance and progressive impairment of motor and intellectual function and commonly die during adolescence. At present there are no effective therapy options. Drugs already known to activate PXR include the anti-seizure drug dilantin, the antibiotic rifampicin and the herbal compound St. John's Wort. Additional experiments are underway in mice to firmly determine if the successful laboratory therapys are acting through PXR. If this proves to be the case, new clinical trials may soon follow, as per senior author Daniel S. Ory, M.D., associate professor of medicine and of cell biology and physiology......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Identifying People Most At Risk For Alcoholism
"Tools such as pooled data genome scanning give us a completely new way of looking at complex biological processes, such as addiction," says Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health. "The ability to pinpoint genes in the human genome responsible for disease has the potential to revolutionize our ability to treat and even prevent diseases." "Previous studies established that alcoholism runs in families, but this research has given us the most extensive catalogue yet of the genetic variations that may contribute to the hereditary nature of this disease," says NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow. "We now have new tools that will allow us to better understand the physiological foundation of addiction"......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Resolving Neurocognitive Deficits Associated With Alcoholism
Results are published in the recent issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research "Previous research has shown some but not total recovery with abstinence from alcohol," said George Fein, president of and senior scientist at Neurobehavioral Research, as well as the corresponding author for the study. "The continuing presence of deficits is not a trivial issue as it may interfere with day-to-day functioning". "The nature of alcoholism as a dynamic condition is largely underappreciated by most people, including clinicians," added Edith Sullivan, a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. "Alcoholics may have periods of abstinence, during which time they give their nervous system time for repair. Thus, longitudinal studies of alcoholics are critical for identifying functional areas that are targeted by alcoholism, those that are relatively spared, and those that can recover with sobriety"......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source How does brain cells process images?
New research from Harvard Medical School (HMS) scientists has identified an area of the brain where such memories are found. They report in the advanced online Nature that they have identified neurons that assist in categorizing visual stimuli. They found that the activity of neurons in a part of the brain called the parietal cortex encode the category, or meaning, of familiar visual images and that brain activity patterns changed dramatically as a result of learning. Their results suggest that categories are encoded by the activity of individual neurons (brain cells) and that the parietal cortex is a part of the brain circuitry that learns and recognizes the meaning of the things that we see. "It was previously unknown that parietal cortex activity would show such dramatic changes as a result of learning new categories," says lead author David Freedman, PhD, HMS postdoctoral research fellow in neurobiology. "Some areas of the brain, particularly the frontal and temporal lobes, have been associated with visual categorization. Since these brain areas are all interconnected, an important next step will be to determine their relative roles in the categorization process"......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Waterborne infectious diseases could soon be history
Professor Fenwick, from Imperial College London, argues that up to seven neglected tropical diseases including river blindness could be brought under control, with infection by some eliminated entirely, if existing programmes increase their coverage. In Africa some 500 million people need treatment to control diseases such as disfiguring elephantiasis (lymphatic filariasis), river blindness (onchocerciasis), schistosomiasis, intestinal worms and the blinding eye infection trachoma. The donation of drugs by pharmaceutical companies, together with financial donations from foundations, is already having a sizeable impact, with numbers given treatment for these diseases increasing from virtually zero in 1986 to between 20 and 80 million individuals annually in 2006. More funding is required to convince decision makers of the benefits of treatment, to improve health education material and to deliver the drugs to those who need them. The cost can be as low as 25 pence per person per year, and the impact would be rapid......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source |
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