Reported HIV
cases down 56 percent in India
Minister of State for Health S. Gandhiselvan said that based
on HIV estimations 2010, it is estimated that India had approximately 1.2 lakh
new infections in 2009, as against 2.7 lakh in 2000. The number of new annual
HIV infections has declined by around 56 percent during the last decade in the
country, the Lok Sabha was informed Friday.
“Similar reduction in HIV incidence has been noted in all
the high prevalence states in the southern and northeastern region. However,
some low prevalence states have shown a slight increase in the number of new
infections over the past two years,” he said.
Of the 1.2 lakh estimated new infections in 2009, the six
high prevalence states account for only 39 percent of the cases, while the
states of Odisha, Bihar, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh
and Gujarat account for 41 percent of new infections.
“In regard to number of reported HIV/AIDS cases registered
in ART (anti-retroviral therapy) centres for HIV care, during the year 2010-11,
320,114 HIV/AIDS cases were registered against 246,627 in 2009-10. However,
during 2011-12, the same number has been decreased to 275,377 cases,”
Gandhiselvan said.
The minister said that there was significant decline in HIV
prevalence among female sex workers and young women (15-24 years) seeking
antenatal care in the high-prevalence southern states.
Source: http://health.india.com
25.08.2012
No
more pinpricks – glucose can now be detected in saliva, tears and urine!
If you are a diabetic who has to routinely undergo blood
glucose monitoring, you’d probably be overjoyed with this news. Minute traces
of glucose in saliva, tears and urine, can now be detected with a new
bio-sensor doing away with pinpricks for diabetes testing.
“It’s an inherently non-invasive way to estimate glucose
content in the body,” said Jonathan Claussen, former Purdue University doctoral
student and now a research scientist at the US Naval Research Lab. ”Because it
can detect glucose in the saliva and tears, it is a platform that might
eventually help to eliminate or reduce the frequency of using pinpricks for
diabetes testing,” said Claussen, the journal Advanced Functional Materials
reports.
Claussen and Purdue doctoral student Anurag Kumar led the
project, working with Timothy Fisher, Purdue professor of mechanical
engineering; D. Marshall Porterfield, professor of agricultural and biological
engineering; and other researchers at the university’s Birck Nanotechnology
Centre, according to a Naval Lab statement.
“Most sensors typically measure glucose in blood,” Claussen
said. “Many in the literature aren’t able to detect glucose in tears and the
saliva. What’s unique is that we can sense in all four different human serums:
the saliva, blood, tears and urine. And that hasn’t been shown before.”
The sensor has three main parts: layers of nanosheets
resembling tiny rose petals made of a material called graphene, which is a
single-atom-thick film of carbon; platinum nanoparticles; and the enzyme
glucose oxidase. Besides diabetes testing, the technology might be used for
sensing a variety of chemical compounds to test for other medical conditions. “Because
we used the enzyme glucose oxidase in this work, it’s geared for diabetes,”
Claussen said.
“But we could just swap out that enzyme with, for example,
glutemate oxidase, to measure the neurotransmitter glutamate to test for
Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, or ethanol oxidase to monitor alcohol levels for a
breathalyzer. It’s very versatile, fast and portable.”
The technology is able to detect glucose in concentrations
as low as 0.3 micromolar, far more sensitive than other electrochemical
biosensors based on graphene or graphite, carbon nanotubes and metallic
nanoparticles, Claussen said.
Source:
http://health.india.com 25.08.2012
Once you choose
hope, anything's possible
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