Thailand battles major botulism outbreak
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Thailand flew 17 people with severe botulism to Bangkok on Thursday, while dozens more were being treated in rural hospitals after one of the world’s worst outbreaks of the muscle-paralyzing disease.
The 17, including 12 women and a young girl, were among 160 villagers who fell ill after eating contaminated bamboo shoots during a festival in the northern province of Nan.
Treatment for Deadly Brain Tumors and Infections Discovered by Researchers
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In a study published in the March 15 issue of The Journal of Immunology, researchers at Board of Governors’ Gene Therapeutics Research Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center have developed a way to overcome immune privilege in the brain to eradicate potentially deadly brain tumors such as glioblastoma multiforme and other types of brain infections.
Brain tumors account for 85 to 90 percent of all primary central nervous system tumors. Of those tumors, almost 40 percent are either the deadly glioblastoma multiforme or anaplastic astrocytomas. Each year about 19,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with primary brain cancers, and close to 70 percent of those diagnosed will not survive more than five years. In addition, approximately 150,000 Americans a year are diagnosed with metastatic brain tumors, cancer that has spread into the brain from another part of the body.
New discovery explains how a common gene variant may increase cancer risks
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Roughly 15 percent of the population carries a gene variant that may increase the risk of developing cancer. The cause of this increased risk has been unknown until now. But now a research team at Stockholm University in Sweden can explain why.
“The variant makes the cell motor sputter and mutate, so cancer can arise,” says Associate Professor Thomas Helleday, who leads the research team at the Department of Genetics, Microbiology, and Toxicology, Stockholm University.
Even though it is easy to identify the some 15 percent of the population who have the harmful gene, which is called XRCC3 T241M, it is not meaningful to examine them since there are also other unknown factors that influence if this variant increases risk of cancer.
Environmental chemicals implicated in cancer
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New research at the University of Liverpool suggests that environmental contaminants, such as pesticides, are more influential in causing cancer than previously thought.
Previous studies in cancer causation have often concluded that exposure to carcinogenic or endocrine-disrupting chemicals, for example, organochlorines (OC) - found in pesticides and plastics - occurs at concentrations that are too low to be considered a major factor in cancerous disease. Now new research at the University of Liverpool, published in the Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine, has found that exposure even to small amounts of these chemicals may result in an increased risk of developing cancer - particularly for infants and young adults.
The research consisted of systematic reviewing of recent studies and literature concerning the environment and cancer, and was supported by the Cancer Prevention and Education Society.
Americans are eating safer!
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The number of people who reported eating one or more foods associated with an increased risk of foodborne disease declined by a third from 1998 to 2002, according to survey results released at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases.
“Overall we are seeing a decline in risky food consumption and that may be attributable to published media reports of foodborne outbreaks and outreach efforts by the public health community,” says Erica Weis of the California Department of Health Services, the lead author on the study.
Swedish scientists move closer to a cancer vaccine
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Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have helped to identify a molecule that can be used as a vaccination agent against growing cancer tumours. Although the results are so far based on animal experiments, they point to new methods of treating metastases.
The results are presented in the online edition of the prestigious scientific journal Nature Medicine, and represent the collaborative efforts of researchers at KI and Leiden University Medical Centre in Holland.
The study analysed an immunological cell, a T cell, which recognises other cells with defects common to metastasing ones. These defects (which are found in MHC class 1 molecules) allow the tumour cell to evade the “conventional” T cell-mediated immune defence.
Tip Sheet: Stroke Awareness Month
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Stroke experts are studying deadly snake venom and vampire bat saliva to dissolve blood clots in stroke victims. One of the trials involves Desmoteplase, a genetically engineered version of a clot-busting agent found in the saliva of a vampire bat that can be given to stroke patients up to nine hours after symptoms appear. The other trial involves Viprinex, an investigational drug derived from a compound found in Malaysian Pit Viper snake venom, called ancrod, which acts as an anti-coagulant in blood. This study may help determine if acute ischemic stroke patients treated with a one-time dose within six hours of the onset of stroke symptoms will have improved neurological function.
“The goal of both experimental drugs is to reduce a naturally occurring substance in the blood that is involved in blood clotting,” said Dr. David Chiu, medical director of the Eddy Scurlock Stroke Center at the Methodist Neurological Institute (NI).
Crucial breakthrough in pectin biosynthesis
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Most people know pectin as a common household gelling agent in making jams and jellies, but its uses are vast. It has anticancer properties, for instance, and may have a role in important biological functions including plant growth and development and defense against disease.
Despite the importance of pectin as a major component in the primary walls of plants, scientists have known relatively little about how this family of complex polysaccharides is made. Especially perplexing has been how the synthesis of the three different classes of pectic polysaccharides is coordinated to produce the pectin matrix in cell walls.
Could global warming be contributing to the resurgence of malaria?
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A widely-cited study published a few years ago said no, but new research by an international team that includes University of Michigan theoretical ecologist Mercedes Pascual finds that, while other factors such as drug and pesticide resistance, changing land use patterns and human migration also may play roles, climate change cannot be ruled out.
“Our results do not mean that temperature is the only or the main factor driving the increase in malaria, but that it is one of many factors that should be considered,” Pascual said. The new study is slated to be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
After being nearly or completely eradicated in many parts of the world, malaria still affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide and has been on the rise in some highland regions and desert fringes.
Test seen unlikely to crimp defibrillator sales
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Medicare’s decision to pay for a test that determines whether someone needs an implantable heart defibrillator will likely have little immediate impact on the $10 billion market for the devices, analysts said.
Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, Tuesday agreed to pay for the test, developed by Cambridge Heart Inc., a tiny company based in Bedford, Massachusetts.
X-ray doesn’t raise cancer risk in BRCA carriers
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Exposure to the among of radiation produced by mammography does not substantially increase the risk of breast cancer in women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations, even when screening begins at an early age, investigators report in The Lancet Oncology, published online on March 22.
Because BRCA mutations disrupt the repair of DNA damage, it was feared that DNA-damaging radiation from mammography would increase these patients’ risk.
Dr. Steven A. Narod, from the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, and colleagues in North America, Europe and Israel conducted a study with 1,600 patients diagnosed with breast cancer between 1952 and 2005, and another 1,600 women with the same age, BRCA mutation status and country of residence. There was no difference in the family histories of women in either group.
Tinnitus may interfere with tough mental tasks
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People who suffer from chronic, moderate tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, may have more trouble performing demanding cognitive tasks than individuals without tinnitus, Australian investigators report.
“Our results are good news in that there is no difference between groups on everyday, familiar tasks,” co-investigator Dr. Catherine Stevens told Reuters Health. “The differences observed in this controlled experimental setting would not affect people with tinnitus in their daily lives.”
In fact, “it may not be the tinnitus per se that is related to distress but negative reactions and negative thoughts associated with tinnitus,” she added.
German doctors rebuild Chinese teenager’s face
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A Chinese teenager whose face was scorched beyond recognition as she lay unconscious on a heater has had it rebuilt by German surgeons.
In December 2001, Xiao Liewen collapsed face down on to the heater while showering, burning a hole in her skull. By the time her father found her half an hour later, she was almost dead. Doctors said it was not clear what had caused her to pass out.
Chinese doctors saved the girl’s life, but she was left with no nose and only one eye, as well as open wounds on her face, which would not close properly, putting her at serious risk from infection.
U.N., Africa to fight bird flu together
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United Nations agencies and 45 African countries agreed on Wednesday to expand health and veterinary surveillance in a coordinated offensive against bird flu on the world’s poorest continent.
A joint declaration at the end of the continent’s biggest bird flu summit to date in Gabon’s capital Libreville said each country needed to implement internationally approved measures to fight the disease in birds and in the event of a human pandemic.
Ecstasy-related memory impairment can be permanent
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Taking the drug Ecstasy can impair memory and learning, but giving up the drug can stop the slide in mental capacity, a new study shows. However, researchers also found evidence that in heavy Ecstasy users, the effects on memory may persist even after they quit.
“The message should be loud and clear that if you’re using a lot, you’re not going to recover learning and memory,” Dr. Konstantine K. Zakzanis of the University of Toronto at Scarborough, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health.
