With only about 10% of the population being left hander, lefties are a serious minority. Today, many left handed people are proud of their unusual handedness. And why not? After all, they have to survive and thrive in a world designed for those who are right handed. There are plenty of advantages of being left-handed as well
http://www.speakingtree.in/slideshow/amazing-facts-about-left-handed-people
A new study following 657 people who took the HIV prevention drug Truvada for 2.5 years has found that 100 percent of them remain HIV-free – even those in high-risk environments. The pill, which has to be taken every day without fail, has been on the market in the US since 2012, and trials are currently underway all over the world, across Africa, Asia, South America, and in several Australian states.
But despite promising results, researchers are hesitant to overstate the potential of the drug in combatting the spread of HIV because of how fast its efficacy falls when a pill is skipped, and the persistent stigma that’s followed its use in the US.
The pill is known as a pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, and according to lead author and epidemiologist Jonathan Volk from Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Medical Centre in the US, this study is “the first to extend the understanding of the use of PrEP in a real-world setting and suggests that the treatment may prevent new HIV infections even in a high-risk setting”.
Previous studies have resulted in similar – but less ‘perfect’ results – with a clinical trial working with 2,499 gay male participants from six countries (Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, South Africa, Thailand and United States) in 2012 finding that it was 99 percent effective in preventing infection. The study led to US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approving the pill for use by anyone who wants it, rather than just people who were already HIV positive as a result.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that the pill has been shown to reduce the risk of HIV infection by up to 92 percent – but only when taken consistently every day. And therein lies the problem.
“What proportion of the population vulnerable to HIV will take a pill a day to prevent it? How will costs of the medication and clinic visits be paid for?” University of California-San Francisco researchers Kimberly A. Koester and Robert M. Grant asked in a commentary published with the study in Clinical Infectious Diseases. “Assuming people are willing to use PrEP and can access PrEP, will they take the medication as directed? Will uptake and use be higher or lower among those at higher risk? Will people place themselves at higher risk or HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) as a consequence of using PrEP?”
The problem with the most recent study is that its results are contingent on people taking the pill religiously every day for the rest of their life, which isn’t exactly practical, and the CDC says it’s “much less effective” if not taken consistently. Even studies where high-risk people were paid to take the pill consistently failed, as The New York Times reported earlier this year:
“Paying patients in the Bronx and in Washington – where infection rates are high among poor blacks and Hispanics – up to $280 a year to take their pills daily improved overall adherence rates very little, the study’s authors said. …
The failure of the cash-incentives trial – known as HPTN 065 for H.I.V. Prevention Trials Network – was a surprise and a disappointment to scientists and advocates. It had paid out $2.8 million to 9,000 patients in 39 clinics over three years, but the clinics where money was distributed did only 5 percent better than those that did not – a statistically insignificant difference.”
Not only does the drug pose a risk to those who don’t take it consistently, it’s been criticised in the US because of the temptation to forgo condoms, which brings with it an increased risk of catching other sexually transmitted diseases. The hashtag #Truvadawhore went viral soon after its FDA approval, despite the fact that studies have found that taking the pill doesn’t actually result in a reduction in safe sex practices.
“The problem lies in a generational dispute between older gay men, who lived through the worst of the AIDS crisis, and younger ones, who often see HIV as little more than a chronic but manageable disease,” Mark Joseph Stern writes for Slate.
Right now, researchers recommend taking the pill every day alongside a separate regime for keeping other STIs at bay. There are also studies underway now to see how effective the pill could be when taken before and after sex rather than daily, The Washington Post reports.
There is a medicinal spice so timelessly interwoven with the origins of human culture and metabolism, so thoroughly supported by modern scientific inquiry, as to be unparalleled in its proven value to human health and well-being.
Indeed, turmeric turns the entire drug-based medical model on its head. Instead of causing far more side effects than therapeutic ones, as is the case for most patented pharmaceutical medications, turmeric possesses hundreds of potential side benefits, having been empirically demonstrated to positively modulate over 160 different physiological pathways in the mammalian body.
While no food or herb is right for everyone, and everything has the potential for unintended, adverse side effects, turmeric is truly unique in its exceptionally high margin of safety vis-à -vis the drugs it has been compared with, e.g. hydrocortisone, ibuprofen, chemotherapy agents. Furthermore, nothing within the modern-day pharmaceutical armamentarium comes even remotely close to turmeric’s 6,000 year track record of safe use in Ayurvedic medicine.[1]
Truth be told, the FDA’s “gold standard” for proving the value of a prospective medicinal substance betrays the age old aphorism: “he who owns the gold makes the rules,” and unless an investor is willing to risk losing the 800+ million dollars that must be spent upfront, the FDA-required multi-phased double-blind, randomized clinical trials will not occur.
At GreenMedInfo.com, we have reviewed over 5,000 study abstracts from the National Library of Medicine’s bibliographic database known as MEDLINE and have discovered over 600 potential health benefits of turmeric, and/or its primary polyphenol known as curcumin. These can be viewed on GreenMedInfo’s turmeric research page which is dedicated to disseminating the research on the topic to a larger audience.
Some of the most amazing demonstrated properties include:
Again, what is so amazing is not that turmeric may have value in dozens of health conditions simultaneously, or that it may improve conditions that are completely resistant to conventional treatment, but that there are over six hundred additional health conditions it may also be valuable in preventing and/or treating. Consider also the fact that turmeric grows freely on the Earth, and you will understand why its very existence threatens billions of dollars in pharmaceutical industry revenue.
Learn more about this research in the video below – keeping in mind that it is several years old and needing some updating – and please spread the information to others who may benefit from learning more on the topic.
Watch the video. URL: https://youtu.be/s2AZOMu0bVA
Australian researchers are developing a new type of nanofibre mesh bandage that attracts bacteria, and will hopefully help to speed up the healing process.
The mesh has already been successfully tested on bacterial colonies and engineered skin models in the lab, and the results suggest that bacteria will choose to move out of a wound and onto the material. In other words, it may be able to help draw infections out of human tissue.
“For most people, wounds heal quickly. But for some people, the repair process gets stuck and so wounds take much longer to heal. This makes them vulnerable to infection,” lead researcher Martina Abrigo, from Swinburne University of Technology, said in a press release.
“We hope this work will lead to smart wound dressings that could prevent infections. Doctors could put a nanomesh dressing on a wound and simply peel it off to get rid of the germs.”
The nanofibre mesh is created using a technique called electrospinning, in which polymer filaments 100 times thinner than a human hair are squeezed out of an electrified nozzle.
The resulting fibre is then coated in compound called allylamine, which Abrigo has found makes a range of different bacteria quickly attach to it.
So far, Abrigo and her team have tested the mesh over the top of films ofStaphylococcus aureus, which is often involved in chronic wound infection, as well as E. coli, and showed that the bacteria quickly transferred onto the fibres.
The researchers have since tested the mesh on tissue-engineered skin models, and although the results have not yet been published, they suggest that the bandage also works on real tissue.
The results have been published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces and Biointerphases.
The next step will be to test out whether the bandages can have the same effect in real-life wounds, and to find out how much of a difference this has on healing time. If all goes to plan, the material could be incorporated into bandages, which could be a huge benefit to people living in remote areas, or those who have chronic medical conditions, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, severe burns, cancer or AIDS, who are at a higher risk of having their wounds become infected.
And it could help us all heal a little quicker and more painlessly, which is something we’re pretty excited about.
ARYAN'S BLOG 