Day: 09/24/2013

Alzheimer’s brain scan advances

Posted by

0


Pioneering brain imaging that can detect the build-up of destructive proteins linked to Alzheimer’s has been developed by Japanese scientists.

_69921570_m1080569-alzheimer_s_disease-spl

It could lead to new ways of diagnosing the condition and of testing the effectiveness of new drugs.

The technology, reported in the journal Neuron, can identify inside a living brain clumps of a protein called tau that is closely linked to the disease.

Alzheimer’s Research UK said it was promising work.

Alzheimer’s disease is a problem for researchers trying to come up with a cure. The brain starts to die years before any symptoms are detected, which means drugs are probably given too late.

A diagnosis of Alzheimer’s cannot be made with absolute certainty until a patient has died and their brain is examined. It is also not 100% clear what is the cause of the dementia and what are just symptoms.

One protein, called tau, is very closely linked to the disease, with tangles of tau thought to be one way in which brain cells are killed.

The team, lead by the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba, used positron emission tomography to build a 3D picture of tau in the brain.

They developed a chemical that could bind to tau and then be detected during a brain scan.

Brain scan Finding tau in the brain

Tests on mice and people with suspected Alzheimer’s showed the technology could detect tau.

Dr Makoto Higuchi, from the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Japan, said: “Positron emission tomography images of tau accumulation… provide robust information on brain regions developing or at risk for tau-induced neuronal death.”

The research is at an early stage, but it could eventually lead to an actual test for Alzheimer’s disease.

It might also allow researchers to closely follow the impact drugs that affect tau have on the brain.

Another protein – beta amyloid – is also linked to Alzheimer’s and can be detected in similar tests.

Dr Eric Karran, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “This promising early study highlights a potential new method for detecting tau – a key player in both Alzheimer’s and frontotemporal dementia – in the living brain.

“With new drugs in development designed to target tau, scans capable of visualising the protein inside the brain could be important for assessing whether treatments in clinical trials are hitting their target.

“If this method is shown to be effective, such a scan could also be a useful aid for providing people with an accurate diagnosis, as well as for monitoring disease progression.”

Warning of three-person IVF ‘risks’

Posted by

0


Concerns about the safety of a pioneering therapy that would create babies with DNA from three people have been raised by researchers.

_69959209_c0104965-ivf_embryo,_light_

The advanced form of IVF could eliminate debilitating and potentially fatal mitochondrial diseases.

Writing in the journal Science, the group warned that the mix of DNA could lead to damaging side-effects.

The expert panel that reviewed the safety of the technique said the risks described would be “trivial”.

The UK is leading the world in the field of “mitochondrial replacement”. Draft regulations to allow the procedure on a case-by-case basis will be produced this year and some estimate that therapies could be offered within two years.

“Start Quote

One of our prime interests is about the safety of these techniques.”

Prof Doug Turnbull Mitochondrial replacement researcher

Mitochondria are the tiny, biological “power stations” that provide nearly every cell, which make up the body, with energy. They are passed from a mother, through the egg, to her child.

But if the mother has defective mitochondria then it leaves the child starved of energy, resulting in muscle weakness, blindness and heart failure. In the most severe cases it is fatal and some families have lost multiple children to the condition.

The proposed therapy aims to replace the defective mitochondria with those from a donor egg.

Continue reading the main story

Method one: Embryo repair 1) Two eggs are fertilised with sperm, creating an embryo from the intended parents and another from the donors 2) The pronuclei, which contain genetic information, are removed from both embryos but only the parents’ is kept 3) A healthy embryo is created by adding the parents’ pronuclei to the donor embryo, which is finally implanted into the womb

Continue reading the main story

1/2

But mitochondria have their own DNA, albeit a tiny fraction of the total. It means a baby would have genetic information from mum, dad and a second woman’s mitochondria.

The concerns raised – by scientists at the University of Sheffield, the University of Sussex and Monash University in Australia – are about a poor match between the mitochondrial DNA and that from the parents.

The woman who lost all her children

Sharon Bernardi and her son Edward, who died last year aged 21

Every time Sharon Bernardi became pregnant, she hoped for a healthy child.

But all seven of her children died from a rare genetic disease that affects the central nervous system – three of them just hours after birth.

When her fourth child, Edward, was born, doctors discovered the disease was caused by a defect in Sharon’s mitochondria.

Edward was given drugs and blood transfusions to prevent the lactic acidosis (a kind of blood poisoning) that had killed his siblings.

Five weeks later Sharon and her husband, Neil, were allowed to take Edward to their home in Sunderland for Christmas – but his health slowly began to deteriorate.

Edward survived into adulthood, dying in 2011 at the age of 21.

Now Sharon is supporting medical research that would allow defective mitochondria to be replaced by DNA from another woman.

They said there was an interaction between the DNA in the mitochondria and the rest which is packaged in a cell’s nucleus.

Their studies on fruit flies suggested that a poor match of genetic information between the nucleus and mitochondria could affect fertility, learning and behaviour.

“Describing it as like changing the batteries in a camera is too simplistic,” Dr Klaus Reinhardt from the University of Sheffield told the BBC.

He added : “It is not at all our intention to be a roadblock, we think it is fantastic that for women affected there could be a cure.

“We have pointed out one or two points which need to be looked at.”

‘Trivial’

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which regulates fertility treatment in the UK, commissioned a review into the safety of the technique.

Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, who was on the review panel, disagreed. He said humans had diverse mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, so any consequences of poor matches would have already become apparent.

He told the BBC news website: “Humans are breeding between races and producing healthy children all the time. If there is an effect then it must be very trivial as it’s not been noticed.”

He has called for further safety testing, such as research into the risks posed by any defective mitochondria which might still be passed onto a child.

Prof Doug Turnbull, who is developing the mitochondrial replacement therapy at Newcastle University, insisted: “One of our prime interests is about the safety of these techniques.

“It’s perfectly reasonable to draw some of these concerns, I just don’t share the same concerns.

“Mismatch between the mitochondrial and nuclear genome is a potential risk, but I don’t think it’s personally as big a risk as they’re saying.”

Mitochondrion
Hundreds of mitochondria in every cell provide energy

The idea has also raised ethical concerns from groups concerned about the impact of altering human genetic inheritance.

In a statement, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said: “The panel of experts convened by the HFEA to examine the safety and efficacy of mitochondria replacement carefully considered the interaction between nuclear and mitochondrial DNA and concluded that the evidence did not show cause for concern.

“As in every area of medicine, moving from research into clinical practice always involves a degree of uncertainty. Experts should be satisfied that the results of further safety checks are reassuring and long term follow-up studies are crucial.

“Even then patients will need to carefully weigh up the risk and benefits for them.”

Universal flu vaccine ‘blueprint’

Posted by

0


Universal flu vaccine ‘blueprint’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24175030

Skin drug may treat type 1 diabetes

Posted by

0


A drug that was used to treat a skin disorder has shown signs of being able to treat aspects of type 1 diabetes.

A small trial on US patients suggests that alefacept helps the body produce its own insulin, which is key for people with type 1 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes affects around 400,000 people in the UK.

Researchers said the drug could be better than other treatments because it protects the immune system – but more research was needed.

The findings are published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

Alefacept (sold as Amevive) was used to treat the skin disorder psoriasis in the US before it was withdrawn by its manufacturer in 2011. The drug was never approved for the European drug market.

_70021681_diabetes_in_a_woman-spl

“Start Quote

Type 1 diabetes will one day be cured. It’s a matter of time, money and excellent research”

Karen Addington Chief executive of JDRF

Psoriasis, like type 1 diabetes, is an autoimmune disorder that occurs when the immune system attacks healthy skin cells.

In clinical trials of the drug on psoriasis, the drug was found to attack specific types of T-cells that were also involved in attacking insulin-producing cells in type 1 diabetes.

So researchers, led by a team at Indiana University, Indianapolis, decided to investigate if it could have any effect on newly diagnosed type 1 patients.

Preserve insulin

In the trial, which is continuing, 33 patients received weekly injections of alefacept for 12 weeks, followed by a break of 12 weeks, and then another 12 weekly doses.

Another 16 participants were given placebo injections following the same schedule.

The researchers found no difference in how well the pancreas produced insulin two hours after eating food, but they did find “significant differences” between the two groups four hours after eating.

At this point, the group who received the drug showed they were able to preserve insulin while the placebo group‘s insulin levels decreased.

What is type 1 diabetes?

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition, where the immune system attacks the cells of the pancreas that produce insulin.

This results in insulin deficiency and the body being unable to regulate blood sugar.

Scientists suspect the condition often follows a trigger such as a viral infection.

After 12 months, the same group showed no significant increase in insulin use, yet those in the placebo group did.

The first group also had fewer episodes of hypoglycaemia, low blood glucose levels. which are common in people with type 1 diabetes.

‘Small successes’

Lead researcher Prof Mark Rigby, of Indiana University, said the first 12 months of the trial were encouraging.

“Although the primary endpoint was not met, several key secondary endpoints were significantly different between treatment groups, suggesting that alefacept might preserve pancreas cell function during the first 12 months after diagnosis.”

He said the initial findings meant that in the future the drug “could be used to stabilise type 1 diabetes and prevent its progression” – but it was unlikely to be a cure.

He added that the trial would continue and further measurements would be taken after 18 months and 24 months.

Writing about the study in The Lancet, Dr Kevan Herold, of Yale University, said: “It is important to underscore these small successes since, as in other fields such as oncology and infectious diseases, the small achievements acquire greater significance when they are combined.”

Karen Addington, chief executive of JDRF, the type 1 diabetes charity that helped fund the study, said the outcome was promising.

“The results of this study appear worthy of further exploration. Small steps forward such as this take us closer to a world without type 1 diabetes.

“It is a challenging and complex condition. But type 1 diabetes will one day be cured. It’s a matter of time, money and excellent research.”

‘Needle risk’ over beauty treatments.

Posted by

0


_70075836_botox_facelift_injection-spl-1

‘

A health watchdog is concerned that people having beauty treatments like Botox could be at risk of infection from dirty needles.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence says growing numbers of people are injecting tanning agents, dermal fillers and Botox at home and in salons, and some are lax about hygiene.

Sharing needles can spread blood-borne diseases like HIV and hepatitis C.

Nice is updating its advice for England and Wales accordingly.

The guidelines, which are out for public consultation, aim to encourage people to use sterile needle and syringe programmes to stem the spread of infections.

Sharps bins

Most blood-borne diseases occur among people who inject drugs like heroin and anabolic steroids.

But NICE says people seeking out cosmetic fixes are also at risk.

“Start Quote

The dangers of sharing needles in cosmetic injectables are so great that any practitioner who does this should be considered guilty of a criminal offence and nothing less”

President of BAAPS Rajiv Grover

A spokeswoman said: “We are seeing an increasing issue with drugs that are used for vanity purposes.”

This includes the anti-wrinkle treatment Botox, dermal fillers and tanning agents.

Prof Mike Kelly, Director of the NICE Centre for Public Health Excellence, said: “Since we last published our guidance on needle and syringe programmes in 2009, we’ve seen an increase in the use of performance-and-image-enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids, Botox, tanning agents and the use of dermal fillers like collagen.

“We’ve also heard anecdotal evidence that more teenagers are injecting these performance-and-image-enhancing drugs too.

“We’re updating our guidance – and our public consultation on the draft update is an important part of this process – to make sure all of these groups of people are considered in the planning and delivery of needle and syringe programmes.”

One of the recommendations proposed in the new guidelines is that local councils consider providing sharps boxes for people to dispose of used needles and syringes.

Rajiv Grover, consultant plastic surgeon and president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), said: “Due to the lack of regulation in the cosmetic sector it is impossible to know how many patients could be at risk of blood borne diseases from needle sharing with either Botox or fillers.

“These should be considered medical procedures and BAAPS has campaigned for over a decade to have this field of non-surgical cosmetic treatments tightly regulated. The dangers of sharing needles in cosmetic injectables are so great that any practitioner who does this should be considered guilty of a criminal offence and nothing less.”

Allergan, a healthcare company that provides Botox, said that Botox is a prescription-only medicine which should only be administered by a trained and qualified medical healthcare professional.

“These treatments should be carried out by appropriately trained and qualified medical practitioners, who have high levels of expertise in full-face anatomy and can provide sufficient aftercare and redress for the patient in the event of an adverse event,” said a spokesman.

‘Dramatic’ drop in global HIV infections

Posted by

0


The number of HIV infections and Aids-related deaths has fallen dramatically, according to a UN report.

Death rates fell from 2.3 million during its peak in 2005 to 1.6 million last year, says UNAIDS.

_70076607_viral_blood_cell_culture_in_tube-spl-1

The number of new HIV infections fell by a third since 2001 to 2.3 million.

Among children, the drop was even steeper. In 2001 there were more than half a million new infections. By 2012 the figure had halved to just over a quarter of a million.

The authors put the fall in deaths and infection rates in children down to better access to antiretroviral drugs which help suppress the virus.

Without treatment, people with HIV can go on to develop Aids which makes simple infections deadly.

By the end of 2012 almost 10m people in low and middle income countries, including South Africa, Uganda and India, were accessing antiretroviral therapy, according to the report.

The improved access is being attributed to drugs being more affordable and available in communities, as well as more people coming forward for help.

Way to go

According to UNAIDS, the world is “closing in” on its Millennium Development Goals to stop and reverse the Aids epidemic by 2015.

But it says the world can go beyond its target of getting 15m people on HIV treatment by 2015. The World Health Organization has now revised its guidelines making even more people eligible for treatment.

The report also found that progress has been slow in providing HIV services to people who are most at risk of infection, like those who inject drugs.

And it highlights the need to do more to deal with sexual violence against women and girls. They make up a key group of people vulnerable to infection.

Bev Collins, Health Policy Advisor at Doctors without Borders said: “Huge leaps forward have been made to make sure that millions of people – especially in the developing world – can access lifesaving HIV treatment at an affordable price.

“But this is no time for complacency. We need to keep on rolling out access to better treatment strategies, expanding access to accurate, cost-effective testing, and to care”

Norway uses waste as eco-friendly fuel

Posted by

0


Forget coal, oil, shale gas, even nuclear. The bin bag – full of your household waste – is becoming one of Norway’s fuels of choice.

Try to imagine the smell when a bin lorry passes you on the street on a hot summer’s day. Breathe it in through your nostrils. Stinks, doesn’t it? Now multiply it by a thousand.

That’s what it is like inside the largest energy recovery facility in Norway, the Klemetsrud plant. A vast concrete hall of waste. Tens of thousands of tonnes of rubbish piled up. The conveyor belts clunk and clank as more pours in. Bin lorries reverse towards the chutes and tip out more plastic bags of waste.

A huge industrial claw swoops down, its pincers reaching round a tonne of rubbish, picking it up and transporting it to the other end of the hall, where it is dropped. A cloud of white dust builds, and soon fills the hall. It is not good to stay in here too long.

This is where the waste thrown out by millions of households from Norway, Britain and elsewhere is turned into heat and electricity for the city of Oslo.

Cheap heating

The rubbish is pre-sorted. Everything that can be recycled is meant to have been taken out, but even then they are still left with more than 300,000 tonnes a year.

They do not see it as waste here – they see it as energy.

“Four tonnes of waste has the same energy content as one tonne of fuel oil,” says the director of the waste-to-energy agency in Oslo, Pal Mikkelsen.

“That means a lot of energy, and we use very little energy to transport it.”

One tonne of fuel oil, Mr Mikkelsen says, could heat a house for half a year. In other words, take just part of an English bin lorry’s maximum load picked up on the streets of Leeds or Bristol, turn it into energy here – and you can heat a home in Oslo for half a year.

The process is simple. The waste, tonne by tonne of it, is dropped into an incinerator. It soars to 850 degrees. Peeking through a small porthole of toughened glass, the fire burns bright orange with a fierce roar of flames.

Bags of waste delivered to Klemetsrud
 
Most of the waste is burned, but some can be recycled

Greener schools

Not everything is burned. Old tin cans and some mattress springs are left. At the end of the process they are left with ash, metal -which is recycled – and a lot of heat.

The heat boils water. The steam drives a turbine, which produces electricity. And the scalding water is piped off from the plant, to houses and public schools across Oslo.

Which means at Bjoernholt School the technical manager, Agnar Andersen, does not have to worry about fuel deliveries during the harsh Norwegian winter any more.

“We don’t have to think about fuel oils or fossil fuels. They are phasing out the last school this year with fossil fuels.”

At full capacity the plant will provide all the heat and electricity for Oslo’s schools and heat for 56,000 homes.

An environmentalist’s dream, you might have thought. Not necessarily, cautions the chair of Friends of the Earth Norway, Lars Haltbrekken.

“The overall goal from an environmental perspective should be to reduce the amount of waste, reuse what we can reuse, recycle, and then the fourth option is to burn it and use the energy.

“We have created such an overcapacity in these power plants in Norway and Sweden. We have made ourselves dependent on producing more and more garbage.”

Send us your rubbish

Norway waste-to-energy plant at Klemetsrud
 
Norway burns rubbish to get energy – and avoids resorting to landfill

Supporters disagree, and point out that, used together, all of Europe’s current waste-to-energy plants could only consume about 5% of the continent’s total annual landfill. Norway – they say – is actually helping to dispose of some of that waste in the best way possible.

That is certainly true in the case of the English cities Leeds and Bristol. Both export waste to Oslo. Rather than pay for it to go into landfill after the recyclable bits have been removed, they actually pay Oslo to take it off their hands.

So, Oslo is paid to dispose of the rubbish, and gets energy out of it as well.

The waste-to-energy revolution can also be heard on the streets of the Norwegian capital, as the number 144 bus rumbles past.

It is powered by biogas, created from the city’s decaying organic matter. One kilogramme of food waste produces half a litre of fuel. Use all of the organic waste they have and they will be able to power 135 buses year-round in Oslo.

If this whole project were repeated across Europe, Pal Mikkelsen believes it would make a huge difference.

“I think it would mean we get a lot better level of self-sustainability when it comes to energy. If it’s done properly it would also mean a lot more materials recovery. And a sharp decrease in the landfill.”

With tight controls to clean up the gases from the burning, Oslo believes converting waste into energy will help it to halve its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions within 20 years – making a city, whose wealth was built on oil, one of the greenest on the planet.

Daytime naps ‘can boost learning’

Posted by

0


Getting young children to take an hour-long nap after lunch could help them with their learning by boosting brain power, a small study suggests.

A nap appeared to help three-to-five-year-olds better remember pre-school lessons, US researchers said.

University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers studied 40 youngsters and report their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The benefit persisted in the afternoon after a nap and into the next day.

The study authors say their results suggest naps are critical for memory consolidation and early learning.

_70067996_girl_sleeping_with_a_cuddly_toy-spl-1

“Start Quote

This is important, because pre-school nurseries are divided on whether they should allow their children a nap”

Paediatrician Dr Robert Scott-Jupp

When the children were allowed a siesta after lunch they performed significantly better on a visual-spatial tasks in the afternoon and the next day than when they were denied a midday snooze.

Following a nap, children recalled 10% more of the information they were being tested on than they did when they had been kept awake.

Close monitoring of 14 additional youngsters who came to the researchers’ sleep lab revealed the processes at work in the brain during asleep.

As the children napped, they experienced increased activity in brain regions linked with learning and integrating new information.

Memory aid

Lead investigator Rebecca Spencer said: “Essentially we are the first to report evidence that naps are important for preschool children.

“Our study shows that naps help the kids better remember what they are learning in preschool.”

She said while older children would naturally drop their daytime sleep, younger children should be encouraged to nap.

Dr Robert Scott-Jupp, of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said: “It’s been known for years that having a short sleep can improve the mental performance of adults, for example doctors working night shifts. Up until now, no-one has looked at the same thing in toddlers. This is important, because pre-school nurseries are divided on whether they should allow their children a nap.

“Toddlers soak up a huge amount of information everyday as they become increasingly inquisitive about the world around them and begin to gain independence.

“To be at their most alert toddlers need about 11-13 hours of sleep a day, giving their active minds a chance to wind down and re-charge, ready for the day ahead. We now know that a daytime sleep could be as important as a nighttime one. Without it, they would be tired, grumpy, forgetful and would struggle to concentrate.”

Why do people lie about their age?

Posted by

0


British TV and radio host Nicholas Parsons says he has been covering up his real age for years. Why are some people reluctant to say how old they are, asks Kathryn Westcott.

Parsons, who is coming up to his 90th birthday, says that he was worried that disclosing his real age would make him unemployable.

_70088044_joancrawford

Celebrities have been holding back the years since the dawn of celluloid. Joan Crawford, for one, was evasive about her date of birth. Depending on who you read, it was 1904, 1905 or 1906. Her gravestone says 1908.

My own mother took a more devil-may-care approach.

Nicholas Parsons Parsons – approaching a big birthday

In the days when the personal details on passports were filled in by a civil servant with a Biro, my mother would subsequently alter her DOB from 1931 to 1937 with a similar-coloured pen.

It worked until the 1970s, when an official at Amsterdam‘s Schiphol airport spotted the deceit. A fine and threat of deportation knocked that on the head. Then she carried photographs of her three children flushed with the youth of primary school, long after those same children had completed their university applications. She used to joke that it made her appear younger, when she was asked if she had children.

We honoured her secret by omitting her DOB on her funeral memorial card.

Nowadays, men and women lie about their age on online dating sites – desperate to appear younger. Teenagers lie, desperate to appear older – unless they happen to be certain Nigerian footballers. The country will be without key players for the Under-17 World Cup after scans showed them to be over the age limit.

“It used to be that we shouldn’t ask a women her age but nowadays we shouldn’t ask anyone,” says William Hanson, an etiquette and protocol consultant.

“I get asked it all the time. But it’s not socially relevant – age really is just a number. I’m young but I have a mind of a 50-year-old.”

Hanson blames the media. A recent story in a tabloid about Joanna Lumley and National Service went for just four paragraphs before it referred to the “67-year-old”.

F-16 jet takes off with empty cockpit

Posted by

0


Boeing has revealed that it has retrofitted retired fighter jets to turn them into drones.

It said that one of the Lockheed Martin F-16 made a first flight with an empty cockpit last week.

Two US Air Force pilots controlled the plane from the ground as it flew from a Florida base to the Gulf of Mexico.

Boeing suggested that the innovation could ultimately be used to help train pilots, providing an adversary they could practise firing on.

The jet – which had previously sat mothballed at an Arizona site for 15 years – flew at an altitude of 40,000ft (12.2km) and a speed of Mach 1.47 (1,119mph/1,800km/h).

It carried out a series of manoeuvres including a barrel roll and a “split S” – a move in which the aircraft turns upside down before making a half loop so that it flies the right-way-up in the opposite direction. This can be used in combat to evade missile lock-ons.

Boeing said the unmanned F16 was followed by two chase planes to ensure it stayed in sight, and also contained equipment that would have allowed it to self-destruct if necessary.

The firm added that the flight attained 7Gs of acceleration but was capable of carrying out manoeuvres at 9Gs – something that might cause physical problems for a pilot.

“It flew great, everything worked great, [it] made a beautiful landing – probably one of the best landings I’ve ever seen,” said Paul Cejas, the project’s chief engineer.

Lt Col Ryan Inman, Commander of the US Air Force’s 82nd Aerial Targets Squadron, also had praise for how the test had gone.

QF-16 jet
The jet flew over the Gulf of Mexico on the test carried out on 19 September

“It was a little different to see it without anyone in it, but it was a great flight all the way around,” he said.

Boeing said that it had a total of six modified F-16s, which have been renamed QF-16s, and that the US military now planned to use some of them in live fire tests.

However, a spokesman for the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots warned of the temptation to use them in warfare.

“I’m very concerned these could be used to target people on the ground,” said Prof Noel Sharkey.

“I’m particularly worried about the high speed at which they can travel because they might not be able to distinguish their targets very clearly.

“There is every reason to believe that these so-called ‘targets’ could become a test bed for drone warfare, moving us closer and closer to automated killing.”