Health and Medicine – Page 26

Does Traditional Chinese Medicine work

Gingko biloba Many of the health claims of herbal medicine bear fruit for the pharmaceutical industry, leading to new drugs that are more potent and more targeted than the original remedy. In Traditional Chinese medicine there are many health claims for the likes of Ginkgo biloba and many other remedies that might bear closer scrutiny. Now, pharmaceutical chemist David Barlow and colleagues Peter Hylands and Thomas Ehrman at King’s College London have undertaken the biggest study yet of the active ingredients in TCM and used an analytical system known as a multiple decision tree technique, called Random Forest, to unearth the root of the activity of the natural products in TCM.

Their study seems to vindicate many of the claims of TCM as well revealing several compounds that might be indicated for diseases and symptoms not treated with in the traditional system.

The team built a database containing well over 8000 compounds from 240 of the most commonly used TCM herbs and used a second database of almost 2600 known active plant chemicals and other natural products as a training set for the Random Forest computer algorithm. The team found that about 62% of the herbs they tested in silico against various drug targets (mostly enzymes associated with pathogens or problems in the body) contained candidate drug compounds that might be isolated for treating a single disease without the associated issues of a TCM approach. They also found that more than half of these compounds worked against at least two diseases and so might have multiple applications.

You can read more about this research today on SpectroscopyNOW news round up from David Bradley. I asked Barlow about the wider application of this research and he said it might be applied equally well to other databases. “The same methodology might also be applied in screening other similar databases, constructed, for example, with reference to herbs used in Ayurvedic medicine,” he said.

How to Sneeze

How to sneeze Kleenex is out, disposable arm bands are not yet de rigeur, so what’s the alternative when you just have to sneeze or cough? Use your sleeve, that’s what. It’s the most effective way to reduce the spread of cold and flu viruses. Coughing into the open air without covering your mouth simply releases a myriad of viral and bacterial particles into the air around you. If there’s no one else around that’s not so bad, but just picture those droplets of spittle and snot flying in the video we’re going to show you here and you’ll think again.

Perhaps worse than open-air sneezing is inappropriate Kleenex use. If you don’t cover your nose and mouth properly then you might as well not bother. Coughing or sneezing into your hand is worse still. Germs will contaminate your hands, you touch a door knob or handle food and those germs get transferred to the next person who touches said objects. The video, which comes from the Maine Medical Association suggests your sleeve is the way forward. Cough or sneeze on to your sleeve and the germs will simply dry out and die.

It’s not just a matter of avoiding the sniffles, if we’re heading for a major viral epidemic from bird flu or something worse then the advice in this video could save lives. Listen to what the panel of experts – Polly Morph, Graham Stain, Blood Hagar – have to say. There’s a useful science fair project that can help you answer the question, “Does covering your mouth stop germs spreading?” and if you’re after more advice on how to avoid colds and flu check out the Sciencebase FAQ on the subject.

For advice on how to stop a sneeze, check out this site.

H5N1 in the UK

UK government vets have confirmed infection with the H5N1 strain of avian influenza in 2600 turkeys that died on a Suffolk farm owned by the Bernard Matthews company. The 159,000 turkey flock will have to be culled with all the risks that entails to prevent the disease spreading further.

According to a statement from the European Commission a protection zone of 3 km radius and a 10 km surveillance zone will be established around Holton, a village about 25 km south-west of Lowestoft.

This is the first time H5N1 has been identified in the UK on a commercial property. A previous outbreak of avian influenza was H7 that required a cull of 50000 fowl to be culled.

There are fifteen known variants of avian influenza. The most virulent, and usually fatal in birds, are H5 and H7 strains. There are then nine variants of the H5 strain and the type of most concern because of the risk to human health is H5N1. While H5N1 can be fatal in humans it has not yet mutated into a form that can be transmitted from person to person.

According to virologist John Oxford of the Queen Mary College, University of London, “I don’t think it has made any difference as a threat to the human population.”

Meanwhile, Channelnewsasia.com today reports yet another outbreak of H5N1 in Japan, the fourth this year.

Music and exercise

Workout music Over on Alex King’s blog, they’re offering suggestions for his workout playlist. Dozens of comments have rolled in with music ranging from Eye of the Tiger to Linkin Park to Pussycat Dolls and everything in between.

One suggestion I don’t think I saw in the comments was simply not to listen to music at all while working out, or watch TV screens, or read or do anything else distracting, but simply to do your workout.

There has been a lot of sports science research done to suggest that distractions while working out inherently lower the intensity and so efficacy of exercise, even though they might help you keep going or feel like you’re punching harder or whatever. e.g. J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2006 Sep;46(3):425-30.

In that paper, the researchers conclude that “music evokes a ”distraction effect” during low intensity exercise”. They suggest that when jogging or walking at comparatively low exercise intensity, “listening to a favorite piece of music might decrease the influence of stress caused by fatigue” but that it does not affect the autonomic nervous system. As such, music can increase the ”comfort” level of performing the exercise and allow you to keep going longer (or until you’re bored with the music).

However, in my trawl for the original paper I wanted to cite, I found some very recent research in the journal Ergonomics that suggests the exact opposite of my claim that no music is good for your workout (Ergonomics. 2006 Dec 15;49(15):1597-610). In this paper, the researchers attempted to assess the effects of loudness and tempo on peoples’ workout intensity. They found that “Significant effects and interactions were found for running speed and heart rate across the different music tempo and loudness levels.” But more critically from the point of view of disproving my hypothesis, they found that a “More positive affect was observed during the music condition in comparison to the ‘no music’ condition.” So, I guess I’m wrong. That said, the latter study only had 30 volunteers so whether that’s truly statistically significant or enough to prove anything I cannot say.

It’s a complicated issue that might take a little more research to come down on one side or the other. Personally, I don’t mind a bit of talk radio in the background when I’m at the gym, but the young persons’ music that’s often playing I cannot abide, puts me right off my stride. Now, a bit of Zeppelin or Floyd would be a different matter.

As with most things in life though, there’s probably a balance point that you need to find to get the best out of your workout. So, keep taking those mp3 players to the gym. But, make sure you’ve got Wish You Were Here or Led Zep II on there.

Viruses Versus Bacteria

In 1919, long before antibiotics were commonplace and long before the notion of drug resistance had emerged, a doctor in the east European state of what is now Georgia, Felix d’Herelle, gave a patient suffering from severe dysentery a seemingly lethal concoction of viruses. You might think such a drink would kill the patient, but these were no ordinary viruses, they were bacteriophages, the nemesis of bacteria.

The patient was well again within a week.

Thus was heralded in the age of phage therapy. Different viral strains were selected for almost every bacterial infection. Diseases were cured. What’s more, because bacteriophages are themselves in some sense alive, they can evolve to keep up with any resistance efforts mounted by the bacteria.

So what happened to bacteriophages? Why are the news headlines filled with stories of new deadly bacteria, such as MRSA, and the newly re-emerged forms of tuberculosis? Why are we so worried about outbreaks of E coli, salmonella, and other bacteria. Surely, we have a whole armoury of trusty phages to turn to that can wipe out the rank and file of resistance microbes quickly?

Well, we don’t, somewhere between the discovery of penicillin and the second world war, chemical antibiotics fell in to pharmaceutical line as the treatment of choice to deal with bacterial infections. Never mind the fact that within months of the first dose of penicillin being given doctors were already seeing resistance. Today, there are thousands of antibiotics on the market, some are even available over-the-counter in southern Europe. Moreover, in countries that cannot really afford to use them, individuals receive short dose regimens that don’t cure their illness and provide new opportunities for bacteria to develop resistant genes.

Swiss science editor Thomas HÃ¤usler tells the story of bacteriophages and phage therapy from its humble roots to its dimly recalled heyday of the 1920s and 1930s in his book Viruses vs. Superbugs. He tells a tale of rancidity and disease that were all but eradicated by bacteriophages but that is gradually returning as hospital wards succumb to the resistant hoards and various sectors of society, such as drug users and the homeless are dealt a deadly blow as TB and other “old” diseases crawl the streets.

In the USA alone some 90000 people die each year from these so-called superbugs. The likes of the World Health Organization and other official bodies agree that things can only get worse. Perhaps a discovery from the middle of the Great War of 1914-1918 could take the place of the dozens of obsolete antibiotics stacked on pharmacy shelves and provide a final cure for the bacterial infections that until the 1960s the medical profession had all but consigned to the history books.

Sex and diabetes

Approximately half of men with diabetes suffer at least one episode of erectile dysfunction and there are several strategies available to overcome what is in those cases usually a problem of body chemistry. According to a report in the Cochrane Review of clinical trials, the well-known drugs for treating erectile dysfunction really do improve sexual satisfaction for sufferers. The report covers the three main phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE-5) inhibitors, sildenafil (Viagra), vardenafil (Levitra) and tadalafil (Cialis).

According to the study side-effects, such as headache and flushing, are common, but not sufficiently adverse as to dissuade users from abandoning the drug.

The Cochrane Review draws data from eight clinical trials (totalling almost 1800 participants) in which 976 men had been given a PDE-5 inhibitor, and 741 a placebo.

‘If taken as prescribed and when no contra-indications exist, PDE-5 inhibitors provide a useful option for men with diabetes who suffer from erectile dysfunction,’ says report author Moshe Vardi of the Carmel Medical Center, in Haifa, Israel.

You can read the abstract from the report at the Cochrane Library site. For more on the origins of Viagra and the other PDE-5 that followed in its wake, check out the Sciencebase archives.

Mobile Phones and Cancer

Mobile phones and health The UK Times paper reported on Saturday that a leading cancer researcher Professor Lawrie Challis chairman of the government-funded mobile telecommunications health research programme believes it is time that a large-scale study into the long-term risks associated with cellphone use.

Intriguingly, health and medicine writer Caroline Richmond pointed out that just such a study was actually published just three days prior to The Times article appearing.

The abstract for this paper by STUK, Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, Helsinki, Finland says:

“We conducted a population-based case-control study to investigate the relationship between mobile phone use and risk of glioma among 1,522 glioma patients and 3,301 controls. We found no evidence of increased risk of glioma related to regular mobile phone use (odds ratio, OR = 0.78, 95% confidence interval, CI: 0.68, 0.91).” The study encompasses digital and analog mobile phone use lasting ten years.

More than 200,000 volunteers and Â£3 million ($6m) of government and phone industry money will be needed to assess long-term risks of five years or so for cancer and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Challis is currently negotiating for the necessary funding.

It is odd that this news story broke so close to the publication online in International Journal of Cancer. It also makes one wonder why there seems to be such a continued “hope” among certain segments of the media to find a correlation between mobile phone use and brain cancer. Surely, there isn’t an expectation that if such a correlation were ever demonstrated that the industry would cough up compensation to the literally millions upon millions of regular, long-term mobile phone users. Moreover, if such a demonstration were published might not a similar investigation raise concerns about other electromagnetic radiation sources again, such as powerlines, computer screens, microwave ovens and most recently wireless internet connections?

What do Sciencebase readers think? Would this be Â£3m well spent, or shouldn’t The Times simply publish a front page story about the STUK study, so similar to the one that Challis is after, that has already been carried out, peer reviewed and published.

Antibiotics from green tea

Green tea antibiotic Researchers from Slovenia have used spectroscopy to home in on the active site of an essential bacterial enzyme, DNA gyrase. They say they now understand more clearly how a compound found in green tea, EGCG, which is a health-boosting antioxidant, works to kill bacteria.

The findings should allow researchers to design new, synthetic versions of EGCG that improve on its activity without side effects.

“I think that this direction is worth pursuing,” team leader Roman Jerala told me, “EGCG besides being unpatentable is not very stable in the body and has low bioavailability but this could be improved.” In their paper, the researchers discuss several possible research directions, however Jerala concedes that he and his colleagues lack the synthetic capabilities to pursue them. “We could only go in this direction with support from other labs,” he says, “Hopefully pharmaceutical companies will consider it.”

More…

Parkinson and statins

New research points to a possible link between the LDL cholesterol-lowering statin drugs (HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors) and Parkinson’s disease. Such is the concern that a study involving thousands of people is planned to assess the risk, according to a report in Chemistry & Industry today.

Earlier research had hinted at a putative link between Parkinson’s disease and statins, but the latest results from a study linking low LDL cholesterol itself to PD provides the strongest evidence to date that the link could be real.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina say that patients with low LDL cholesterol levels are more than three and a half times as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease as those with higher LDL levels.

Study leader Xuemei Huang told C&I: “I am very concerned by these findings, which is why I am planning a 16000-patient prospective study to examine the possible role of statins.” Huang was quick to point out, however, that a causal link with statins had not yet been proven. Huang adds that the well-established link between PD and apoE2, a gene associated with lower LDL cholesterol, supports her theory that low LDL is the culprit in many cases of PD.

Yoav Ben-Shlomo, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol suggests a contrary explanation. It could be that low LDL cholesterol levels are a consequence rather than a cause of PD, he says.

Nevertheless, statins have been in common use for more than a decade and Huang worries that if proved right we will see a big surge in the number of diagnoses of PD during the next five years.

Pfizer’s statin Lipitor is the world’s best-selling drug with $12.2 billion in sales in 2005.

Solvent abuse

Adolescent drug use has fallen overall since the late 1990s, but the “recreational” use of solvents is on the increase. Solvent, or inhalant, abuse is now the fourth most abused drug among US teens according to NIDA.

Inhalants, which include volatile organic compounds such as butane and aromatic hydrocarbons (like toluene) activate the same areas of the brain as do other drugs of abuse. However, understanding their precise mode of action has not been clarified until now.

Toluene is found in paint thinners, varnishes and even nail polish remover and is commonly abused and new research shows that it stimulates dopamine release in specific regions of the brain known as drug reward pathways. The results, obtained by Arthur Riegel and colleagues at the Vollom Institute, in Portland, Oregon, suggest that the brain interprets inhalation of toluene as a rewarding experience which can result in continued abuse and re-abuse.The findings could help in developing strategies to prevent and treat addiction to substances containing toluene.

Surprisingly, researchers also found that toluene-containing substances are most effective at low concentrations. Since toluene is rapidly absorbed by the brain, this might explain why the preferred mode of delivery is by “huffing” or “sniffing”. Sniffing is frequently considered a harmless recreational or party drug but unlike other drugs, even a single session of inhaling the compound can disrupt heart rhythms enough to cause cardiac arrest and lower oxygen levels enough to cause suffocation. Not a good thing.

The research is published today in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.