Day: 09/06/2012

People can be fat yet fit, research suggests.

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People can be obese yet physically healthy and fit and at no greater risk of heart disease or cancer than normal weight people, say researchers.

The key is being “metabolically fit”, meaning no high blood pressure, cholesterol or raised blood sugar, and exercising, according to experts.

Looking at data from over 43,000 US people they found that being overweight per se did not pose a big health risk.

The results are published in the European Heart Journal.

In the study at the University of South Carolina, more than a third of the participants were obese.

Of these 18,500, half were assessed as metabolically healthy after a physical examination and lab tests.

This subset of metabolically healthy obese people who did not suffer from conditions such as diabetes, high cholesterol or high blood pressure, were generally fitter and exercised more than the other obese people.

And their risk of developing or dying from cardiovascular disease or cancer was identical to people of ideal weight and was half that of “metabolically less fit” obese people.

These studies remind us that it is not always your weight that’s important, but where you carry fat and also how it affects your health and fitness”

Amy Thompson British Heart Foundation

Lead researcher Dr Francisco Ortega, who currently works at the University of Granada in Spain, said the findings show that getting more exercise can keep you healthier, even if you still carry a bit of extra weight.

“This research highlights once again the important role of physical fitness as a health marker.”

Most of the men and women in the study came from a similar background, meaning the results may not apply to everyone. They were mostly Caucasian, well educated, and worked in executive or professional positions.

Amy Thompson, of the British Heart Foundation, said: “In the majority of cases, obesity is an undeniable risk factor for developing coronary heart disease. However, these studies remind us that it is not always your weight that’s important, but where you carry fat and also how it affects your health and fitness.

“It is particularly important to be aware of your weight if you are carrying excess fat around your middle. The fat cells here are really active, producing toxic substances that cause damage which can lead to heart disease.

“Maintaining a healthy diet with lots of physical activity can help to slim you down as well as reduce your risk of heart health problems.

“But don’t get too caught up on the numbers on the scale. Calculating your body mass index and measuring your waist are great ways to keep on track. If you are concerned about your weight and want to make changes to your lifestyle, make an appointment with your GP to talk it through.”

  • Source: BBC.

West Nile virus death toll in US jumps by a third.

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The death toll from US cases of West Nile virus, which has killed scores of people, has risen by nearly a third in a week, according to health officials.

Eighty-seven people have now died from the mosquito-borne illness, up from 66 the week before, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The number of cases in 2012 has meanwhile risen by a quarter in the last week, to 1,993 from 1,590.

It is the largest outbreak since the virus first appeared in the US in 1999.

At least 40 of the deaths have been in Texas, the state’s health department said on Wednesday.

Texas has also recorded at least 495 cases of the most serious, neuro-invasive form of the illness.

West Nile virus peaked in 2002 and 2003, when severe cases of the disease reached nearly 3,000.

Only about one in five people infected with West Nile gets sick, and one in 150 of those will develop severe symptoms, including neck stiffness, disorientation, coma and paralysis.

This year there have been reports of the virus in 47 states, although about 75% of the cases are from five states: Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Dakota and Oklahoma.

Health officials think a mild winter and early spring fostered the breeding of mosquitoes that bite infected birds.

  • Source: BBC.

 

 

Detailed map of genome function.

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Scientists have published the most detailed analysis to date of the human genome.

They’ve discovered a far larger chunk of our genetic code is biologically active than previously thought.

The researchers hope the findings will lead to a deeper understanding of numerous diseases, which could lead to better treatments.

More than 400 scientists in 32 laboratories in the UK, US, Spain, Singapore and Japan were involved.

Their findings are published in 30 connected open-access papers appearing in three journals, Nature, Genome Biology and Genome Research.

The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (Encode) was launched in 2003 with the goal of identifying all the functional elements within the human genome.

A pilot project looking at 1% of the genome was published in 2007.

Now the Encode project has analysed all three billion pairs of genetic code that make up our DNA.

“Start Quote

This will give researchers a whole new world to explore and ultimately, it’s hoped, will lead to new treatments.”

Dr Ewan Birney Encode

They have found 80% of our genome is performing a specific function.

Up to now, most attention has been focused on protein-coding genes, which make up just 2% of the genome.

Genes are small sections of DNA that contain instructions for which chemicals – proteins – they should produce.

The Encode team analysed the vast area of the genome sometimes called “junk DNA” because it seemed to have little function and was poorly understood.

Dr Ewan Birney, of the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge, who led the analysis, told me: “The term junk DNA must now be junked.

“It’s clear from this research that a far bigger part of the genome is biologically active than was previously thought.”

Switches

The scientists also identified four million gene “switches”. These are sections of DNA that control when genes are switched on or off in cells.

They said the switches were often a long way along the genome from the gene they controlled.

Dr Birney said: “This will help in our understanding of human biology. Many of the switches we have identified are linked to changes in risk for conditions from heart disease to diabetes or mental illness. This will give researchers a whole new world to explore and ultimately, it’s hoped, will lead to new treatments.”

Scientists acknowledge that it is likely to be many years before patients see tangible benefits from the project.

But another of the Encode team, Dr Ian Dunham said the data could ultimately be of help in every area of disease research.

“Encode gives us a set of very valuable leads to follow to discover key mechanisms at play in health and disease. Those can be exploited to create entirely new medicines, or to repurpose existing treatments.”

Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute director Prof Mike Stratton said the results were “remarkable” and would “stand as a foundation stone for human biology for many years”.

He added: “The Encode project will change the way many researchers conduct their science and give those who seek to understand disease a much better grasp of where genetic variation can affect our genome for ill.”

Source: BBC

 

Is drinking extra water good for your skin?

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If you yearn for smooth skin that glows with youth, the chances are that at some point you will have heard the exhortation to drink lots of water in order to flush out those evil toxins and keep your skin healthy.

The exact amount people suggest varies. US-based advice tends to recommend eight glasses a day, while in hotter climates people are advised to drink more to compensate for higher rates of sweating. But regardless of the exact volume of water suggested, the principle behind the advice remains the same – taking extra water on board will keep your skin hydrated. In other words, water acts like a moisturiser, but from the inside out.

This is such a common idea you might be surprised at the lack of evidence to back this up. You might expect there to be countless studies where people are separated into two groups, one assigned to sip water all day, the other to drink a normal amount. Then the smoothness of the skin could be assessed a month or so later to establish whether sipping more led to smoother skin.

In fact such studies are rare, partly because water can’t be patented, so it is hard to find anyone to fund such research when there will be no new medication or cosmetic to sell that could repay the costs.  A review by the dermatologist Ronni Wolf at the Kaplan Medical Centre in Israel found just one study looking at the effect of long-term water intake on the skin. But the results were contradictory. After four weeks, the group who drank extra mineral water showed a decrease in skin density, which some believe suggests the skin is retaining more moisture, while those who drank tap water showed an increase in skin density. But regardless of the type of water they drank, it made no difference to their wrinkles or to the smoothness of their skin.

That’s not to say that dehydration has no effect on skin. We can measure some effect through the assessment of skin turgor. This is a measure of how fast it takes the skin to return to normal if you pinch some skin and lift it up. If you are dehydrated your skin will take longer to get its shape back.

But it doesn’t follow that because drinking too little water is bad for the skin, drinking above average quantities is good. It would be like saying that because a lack of food leads to malnutrition, overeating must be good for us. Or as Wolf puts it, it’s like saying a car needs petrol, therefore the more petrol the better.

Mystery advice

Another common belief is that if you drink extra water the body will somehow store it. But it depends on how fast you drink it. Drink several glasses within a fifteen-minute period and you will just pass extra urine. If you spend more than two hours sipping the same amount, more liquid is retained.

There is one study suggesting that drinking 500ml of water increases the blood flow through the capillaries in the skin. But the skin was only evaluated thirty minutes after drinking the water, and what we don’t know is whether this in turn improves skin tone.

One counterargument is that skin contains up to 30% water, and this helps it to look plump. This may be true, but the skin’s youthful appearance is affected more by factors such as genetics, exposure to the sun and damage from smoking.

So the mystery is where the eight-glasses-a-day recommendation for good skin comes from. Few of the official guidelines even refer to the skin. Water is undoubtedly the most important nutrient for the body. Without it we die in a matter of days, and there are of course other health benefits from staying hydrated. A review in 2010 found good evidence that it reduces the recurrence of kidney stones in those who have already had them, but evidence for other specific benefits is weaker.

 

Rural communities across Africa may soon benefit from improved water supplies thanks to mobile phone technology.

Arguments rage over the eight glasses a day rule, with disputes over how much is needed to clear the kidneys of toxins and whether or not water helps curb the appetite. It depends on how high the ambient temperature is and how much you are exerting yourself. It’s also a myth that other liquids don’t count. It doesn’t have to be water. Even food contains more liquid than you might expect.  Pizza is 40-49% water, for instance. The percentage of water we derive from food in the diet depends on where you live. In the US it’s 22%. In Greece, where people eat more fruit and vegetables it is much higher.

So the problem is a general lack of evidence that drinking more water makes any difference to your skin. We can’t say it definitely doesn’t work, but there’s no evidence that it does. Which leaves the question of how much water you should drink. Since it depends on the weather and what you are doing, then there is a very good internal guideline we all have that can help. And that’s thirst.

Source: BBC.

Printing a human kidney.

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Surgeon Anthony Atala demonstrates an early-stage experiment that could someday solve the organ-donor problem: a 3D printer that uses living cells to output a transplantable kidney. Using similar technology, Dr. Atala’s young patient Luke Massella received an engineered bladder 10 years ago; we meet him onstage. Talk recorded 3 March 2011.

About the Speaker

Anthony Atala asks, “Can we grow organs instead of transplanting them?” His lab at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is doing just that – engineering over 30 tissues and whole organs. Anthony Atala is the director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, where his work focuses on growing and regenerating tissues and organs. His team engineered the first lab-grown organ to be implanted into a human – a bladder – and is developing experimental fabrication technology that can “print” human tissue on demand.

In 2007, Atala and a team of Harvard University researchers showed that stem cells can be harvested from the amniotic fluid of pregnant women. This and other breakthroughs in the development of smart bio-materials and tissue fabrication technology promises to revolutionize the practice of medicine.

Source: BBC.

NASA’s SDO Sees Massive Filament Erupt On Sun.

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On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT.

The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, with a glancing blow. causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3.

What is a solar prominence?

A solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disk) is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun‘s surface. Prominences are anchored to the Sun’s surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun’s hot outer atmosphere, called the corona. A prominence forms over timescales of about a day, and stable prominences may persist in the corona for several months, looping hundreds of thousands of miles into space. Scientists are still researching how and why prominences are formed.

The red-glowing looped material is plasma, a hot gas composed of electrically charged hydrogen and helium. The prominence plasma flows along a tangled and twisted structure of magnetic fields generated by the sun’s internal dynamo. An erupting prominence occurs when such a structure becomes unstable and bursts outward, releasing the plasma.

What is a coronal mass ejection or CME?

The outer solar atmosphere, the corona, is structured by strong magnetic fields. Where these fields are closed, often above sunspot groups, the confined solar atmosphere can suddenly and violently release bubbles of gas and magnetic fields called coronal mass ejections. A large CME can contain a billion tons of matter that can be accelerated to several million miles per hour in a spectacular explosion. Solar material streams out through the interplanetary medium, impacting any planet or spacecraft in its path. CMEs are sometimes associated with flares but can occur independently.

For more information, visit NASA’s Spaceweather Frequently Asked Questions page (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/spaceweather/index.html).

Source: Science Daily