Health and Medicine – Page 29

Eradicating polio

Researchers hope to revise the vaccine strategy for inocculating people in certain parts of the world against the crippling disease polio. Their approach could eradicate this endemic disease once and for all, they report, in this week’s Science magazine.

The new study, by researchers from Imperial College London and
international collaborators explains why the disease continues to afflict people in northern India. Poor sanitation and overcrowded living
conditions in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar pose a dual challenge to the
eradication effort because they encourage poliovirus to spread via infected faeces contaminating drinking water, they explain. This coupled with other infections and diarrhoea interfere with the efficacy of the
oral polio vaccine.

The researchers argue that the simple measure of using a ‘monovalent’
form of the polio vaccine alongside the standard ‘trivalent’ form in
these areas could sufficiently increase the effectiveness of vaccination
programmes to wipe out the poliovirus where it persists.

The trivalent vaccine currently in use contains weakened strains of all
three types of poliovirus, unlike monovalent vaccines, which are
strain-specific. The trivalent vaccine is typically used when more than
one strain of the poliovirus is at large in the population. The problem
with trivalent vaccines is that the three strains can interfere with
each other inside the body, producing immunity to one strain but not
another.

The researchers argue that as the type 1 strain of the virus is now the
dominant one in India, it would be more effective to focus on the
monovalent form of the vaccine.

Lead author Nick Grassly says, “The global polio eradication programme has achieved a great deal. As expected, the last remaining pockets of transmission are the biggest challenge. These pockets of transmission act as sources for all the outbreaks we see around the world today. Our research shows that in northern India the efficacy of the trivalent vaccine is compromised.”

Painkiller in saliva

A natural analgesic (painkiller) that is six times stronger than the opiate morphine has been found in human saliva.

In 2003, Catherine Rougeot and her colleagues at the Pasteur Institute identified a potent pain sensation inhibitor in rats they called sialorphin. The present work confirms the presence of a related compound in humans. The compound inhibits the same class of proteins as sialorphin.

The analgesic, termed opiorphin (someone not related to the research team registered domain name opiorphin.com yesterday!) is a peptide with the amino acid sequence: tyrosine glutamine arginine phenylalanine serine arginine.

In rat studies, injections of opiorphin suppressed pain sensation for both chemical-induced inflammation and acute physical pain. In both cases, the administered dose of 1 mg/kg opiorphin provided the same painkilling power as 3-6 mg/kg of morphine.

The authors hope to next identify which physiological conditions trigger the natural release of opiorphin, but also note that the strong analgesic properties of opiorphin warrants potential exploration for clinical pain management. However, Rougeot cautions that it might not be developable as a conventional painkiller as the compound may also have anti-depressant activity.

I’m curious though, if spit has this potent painkiller why does it hurt so much when you accidentally bite your tongue?

The work is reported in this week’s issue of PNAS.

Performance enhancing steroids

Most sports stars know that injecting steroids to boost performance is plain stupid. But, some do it anyway, because the potential gains, they reason, outweigh the risks to health and the chances of being stripped of glory are much smaller than their chances of winning the medal without them.

Not all steroids are purely about enhancement. Another group of steroids, known as corticosteroids, are used to reduce inflammation and pain following injury. Alarmingly high doses are often used to speed up the recovery process but with potentially serious side effects on the tissues into which they are injected. As such corticosteroids injections are also banned in sports.

However, there is a drug produect available to errant sports people that can stimulate the body’s own production of corticosteroids, it’s a protein known by the tradename of Synacthen. It was essentially undetectable as only tiny quantities are needed to cause the desired stimulation and such small concentrations are easily lost in the background noise of other more abundant proteins in a blood sample.

Now, researchers writing in the journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry have developed an analytical separation and detection technique, based on chromatography and mass spec, that can pin down this elusive drug and render the cheats visible even if the compound is present only in incredibly low concentrations in a blood sample; even at 10,000,000 times lower concentration than other proteins in the blood plasma.

‘If the drug testing authorities adopt this new test it will close a gap in the current drug testing system, and mean that athletes will no longer be able to get away with this form of cheating,’ says lead author Mario Thevis, who works in the Center for Preventive Doping Research — Institute of Biochemistry, at the German Sport University Cologne in Germany.

Looks like a few well known sports celebs will have to start using RICE for their injuries again…

Bird flu FAQ

Now is as good a time as any to remind readers of the Sciencebase bird flu faq.

And, if you’re worried about good old-fashioned colds and flu as opposed to emerging viral infections, check out our tips page on how to avoid catching colds and flu.

First ever useful chain letter

I usually don’t, you know, read chain-letters, but this one hit my inbox and caught my eye, not least because it appeared to be from someone I know and trust…although closer inspection of the email headers revealed that they were simply one of dozens of people to have been cc’ed when the messages was forward for the umpteenth time.

Anyway, this is what it said:

“Warm Water After a Meal — It is nice to have a cold drink after a meal. However, could it be that the cold water will solidify the oily stuff that you have just consumed. It will slow down digestion and once this “sludge” reacts with the acid, it will break down and be absorbed by the intestine faster than the solid food. It will line the intestine. Very soon, this will turn into fats and can lead to cancer. It is best to drink hot soup or warm tea/water after a meal.

The Chinese and Japanese drink hot tea with their meals…not cold water.. maybe it is time we adopt their drinking habit while eating!”

Now, that part sounds fairly reasonable but for the fact that it was couched in a rather unscientific manner, but I think there might just be something in the idea that any warm fats your ingest could indeed become solid once they have cold water poured on to them. Although they don’t say anything about the churning and warming of food by the stomach itself. Moreover, whether that leads to digestive problems, coating of the intestine with fat, and ultimately cancer, is a different matter. It may or it may not. I’d like to see some test results on that before forwarding this chain letter.

Meanwhile, on a totally different theme, albeit still health related, the chain letter goes on to say:

“A serious note about heart attacks — Women should know that not every heart attack symptom is going to be the left arm hurting. Be aware of intense pain in the jaw line as well. You may never have the first chest pain during the course of a heart attack. Nausea and intense sweating are also common symptoms. 60% of people who have a heart attack while they are asleep do not wake up. A pain in the jaw can wake some from a sound sleep. Let’s be careful and be aware The more we know, the better chance we could survive.”

Apparently, some anonymous cardiologist says that if everyone who receives the email forwards it to 10 people, you can be sure that we’ll save at least one life. I suppose statistically that number could be even higher if you have even a 105 marketing hit rate in sending the message on to friends and family. But, I prefer to blog about these things and not simply forward emails. Do any cardiologist readers have any comment on this method of nocturnal myocardial infarction prevention, I wonder?

Male pill

Despite Carl Djerassi’s prediction (some years ago) that we would never see a “male pill”, it looks like just such a contraceptive treat is coming at last.

The new drug, Adjudin, is currently in early clinical trials and is a long way from human use. However, the very fact that drug companies are taking a male oral contraceptive seriously suggests a sea change iin attitudes. It’s not ten years ago that I heard Djerassi speak on this very subject and point out how the likelihood of a chemical contraceptive for men would never arrive.

Apparently, Adjudin triggers re-absorption of immature sperm cells so that they never reach the seminal point of no return infamously faced by Woody Allen in his notorious tale of sex. Chuen-yan Cheng of the Population Council’s Center for Biomedical Research in New York has tested the drug on lab rats and found there to be no obvious side effects other than that the males became infertile. Imporantly, the process is entirely temporary and just 20 weeks off the pill gets the sperm fighting fit once more.

Already, the concept of such a contraceptive has those opposed to any form of contraception chomping at the bit and arguing as to whether such a form of contraceptive contravenes religious doctrine or not. When one considers every sperm as sacred, biblically speaking, then are these immature fledgling sperm being “wasted” or not?

Of course, there are much more serious issues to consider, such as sexual health.

Over on Digg, a comment from “mizzack” in response to the CBS News article on this drug announcement goes like this:

Guy: “Hey, wanna go back to my place?”
Girl: “Sure”
[back at the house]
Girl: “Do you have condoms?”
Guy: “Oh, no, don’t need ’em. I’m on the pill”
Girl: “Riggggggght. Do you have condoms?”

Perhaps even more important than putative problems couples may face in the distant future should this male pill ever reach market is the fact that Cheng’s team previously reported that animal tests had shown Adjudin, to be toxic when given orally, causing liver problems and muscle wasting. Not exactly two happy things to happen to a guy. In the current trial, Adjudin has been conjugated with follicle-stimulating hormone to purportedly preclude such toxicity. It worked but only when the conjugate was administered intravenously.

So, the choice would be muscle wasting, which may or may not reduce your chance of a date, liver damage or regular injections into the belly to keep babies at bay, the need for a hormone adjuvant, and no intrinsic protection from HIV, chlamydia, syphyllis, gonnorhea, and any of several other STDs.

So, perhaps Djerassi was right after all and we may never see a marketable male pill. Caps off to the father of the pill.

Halloween pumpkin seeds health benefits

Wondering what to do with all those seeds hacked from the orange flesh of your halloween pumpkin? You could try eating them, especially if you’re on a low-protein diet or likely to be exposed to the organic solcent carbon tetrachloride (tetrachloromethane)!

According to researchers in South Africa, pumpkin seeds can protect the liver from the harmful effects of protein deficiency and exposure to hepatotoxins such as carbon tet.

The seeds of the pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo) contain a protein that is a potent antioxidant according to SE Terblanche and colleagues at the University of Zululand in KwaDlangezwa.

The researchers tested the effects of protein isolate on blood plasma levels of certain enzymes including catalase, superoxide dismutase, and glutathione peroxidase, and on total antioxidant capacity in the liver of rats fed a low protein diet that were exposed to carbon tetrachloride.

They report that, “From the results of the present study it is concluded that pumpkin seed protein isolate administration was effective in alleviating the detrimental effects associated with protein malnutrition and carbon tetrachloride intoxication.” Terblanche and colleagues explain that this indicates that pumpkin seed protein isolate has powerful antiperoxidative properties.

Details of the research appears in the November issue of the journal Phytotherapy Research, 2006, 20(11), 935-940.

Of course, swallowing a handful of pumpkin seeds is not really going to provide adequate protection against ingestion of carbon tetrachloride, so please don’t make it a Halloween chaser.

Parkinson symptoms

The common perception of Parkinson’s disease is of a disorder that leads to problems with movement, tremors, involuntary spasms, and a shuffling gait. However, functional MRI has now confirmed that the disease can also cause widespread abnormalities in the sense of touch and vision for sufferers. An international team from the US and China presented their findings at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Atlanta on October 17.

Research into Parkinson’s disease has previously focused mainly on the brain’s motor and premotor cortex, sidestepping the somatosensory and the visual cortex because the most prominent symptoms are associated with movement and not the senses. However, neurologist Krish Sathian of Emory University and colleagues discovered through tests of tactile ability, that PD patients also have sensory problems with touch. The researchers recently designed a study using fMRI to investigate this earlier finding and to ascertain whether or not changes in the brain underly these sensory abnormalities.

Read on…

Australian Produce Banned by US

Vegemite ban And you thought Brussels was crazy for banning bananas that were too curved, for forcing manufacturers to relabel brandy butter as “modified distilled wine spreadable fat product”, and for limiting pizzas to an eleven-inch standardised diameter only! Now, the US is searching Aussies coming into the country to make sure they’re not bringing that most infamous of products with them – Vegemite!

According to News.com.au, the iconic spreadable brown stuff in a jar is faithfully carried around the world by travellers from down under. But, a legal technicality in the US means that only breads and cereals are allowed to contain added folic acid (aka folate or vitamin B9), so Vegemite has become hot outlaw property.

A spokeswoman for the manfacturer Kraft, Joanna Scott said: “The (US) Food and Drug Administration doesn’t allow the import of Vegemite simply because the recipe does have the addition of folic acid.” She added that the US is actually only “a minor market” for Vegemite.

Presumably, the reason the folate law exists is to prevent manufacturers of other products from cashing in on folate health publicity surrounding folic acid and campaigns aimed at women hoping to get pregnant but reduce the risk of their child having spina bifida. But, Vegemite, Australians will tell you, is almost as old as toast itself. Its certainly something most will be very reluctant to give up in the final count. If the “ban” persists one can anticipate a rather rapid decline in quality bar staff across the US, especially among those who can mix a Singapore sling and play the digeridoo. Or, maybe the whole story is simply a PR campaign in itself aimed at boosting the Vegemite share price and Aussie bar staff will be able to cope just fine!

Resistance is not futile

Platensimycin antibiotic As antibiotics fall to bacterial resistance one by one, it is essential that medicinal chemists keep ahead of the game by finding compounds with new modes of attack. Recently a new antibiotic, platensimycin has been found to act potently through a novel mechanism. Now, US chemists have devised a total synthesis for this unique compound and tracked their progress using mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy.

You can read the full story on how Scripps chemist KC Nicolaou and his colleagues have devised a total synthesis of this molecule that could be used as the starting point for manufacturing a new class of antibiotics.

More…