27 February, 2019

Tobacco plant may aid in treating diabetes, arthritis

A team from the University of Western Ontario and Lawson Health Research Institute in Canada used tobacco plants to produce large quantities of a human protein called Interleukin 37, or IL-37 — naturally produced in the human kidney in very small quantities. “This protein is a master regulator of inflammation in the body, and has been shown in pre-clinical models to be effective in treating a whole host of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases,” said Tony Jevnikar, Professor at Western.

“The human kidney produces IL-37, but not nearly enough to get us out of an inflammation injury.” While IL-37 has shown promise in animal models, it’s use clinically has been limited because of the inability to produce it in large quantities at a price that is feasible clinically. Currently, it can be made in very small amounts using the bacteria E. coli, but at a very high cost. That’s where the tobacco plants come in and pave the way to provide treatments that are effective and affordable, according to the study published in the journal Plant Cell Reports.

“The plants offer the potential to produce pharmaceuticals in a way that is much more affordable than current methods,” said Shengwu Ma, a scientist at Lawson. “Tobacco is high-yield, and we can temporarily transform the plant so that we can begin making the protein of interest within two weeks.” The team is now investigating the effect that IL-37 has for preventing organ injury during transplantation. When an organ is removed for transplantation and then transferred to a recipient, inflammation occurs when the blood flow is restored to the organ.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

28.02.2019

Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible

Frank L.Gaines

25 February, 2019

Vitamin D deficiency can be measured in human hair, reveals study

Researchers have found that vitamin D can now be measured by human hair, paving the way for improved diagnosis of deficiency of the sunshine vitamin.

With over a billion people estimated to be affected, vitamin D deficiency — a risk factor for depression, cardiovascular disease, inflammation, diabetes and cancer — has reached epidemic proportions worldwide.

While traditional blood analysis captures the levels at a single time point, in contrast, hair, which grow at approximately one centimetre per month, could reflect vitamin D status over several months, capturing the large seasonal differences in the levels.

“The study presents the idea that vitamin D is being deposited continuously in the hair as it grows, more might be deposited at times when vitamin D concentration in the blood is high, and less when it’s low,” said lead author Lina Zgaga, Associate Professor at Trinity College Dublin.

“Therefore, a test based on the hair sample might be able to give doctors a measure of vitamin D status over time — if hair is long enough, this even might be over a few years,” Zgaga added.

The findings were published in the journal Nutrients.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

25.02.2019

Be tough but look soft, be tense but look cool, be a beginner but look winner

21 February, 2019

Frequent jet lags can damage your health in these 4 ways

 The study published in the Journal of Physiology could prove useful especially to those people who travel frequently across various time zones.  While exercising can prove useful in alleviating the symptoms of jet lag, it is also important to know how jet lag can affect you and have detrimental effects on you.

Liver cancer and liver disease: Did you know that repeated jet lag can increase obesity-related liver disease and the risk of liver cancer?  The study by Baylor College of Medicine in the US found that when we constantly travel through different time zones, work night shifts, or push ourselves to stay awake at the regular sleep time, our central circadian clock in the brain becomes chronically disrupted, the researchers said.

Obesity: A study by the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel found that when there is disruption of the circadian clock during jet lag, it alters the rhythms and composition of the microbial community in the gut, leading to obesity and metabolic problems.

Cancer: A report on the Daily Mail said that frequent travelling and jet lag could increase your risk of cancer because it tends to disturb our body clocks that are controlled by the same mechanism that causes tumours.

Skin problems: Dry skin devoid of moisture and hence accelerated ageing can be a result of frequent jet lags. This is because many who suffer from jet lag usually don’t take care of their skin’s health and ignore beauty regimen like moisturising which is a must to delay ageing and the appearance of wrinkles.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

21.02.2019

No amount of guilt can change

 the PAST and no amount of worrying can change the FUTURE

18 February, 2019

New technique to measure blood clot developed

The technique, led by the University of Exeter researchers, investigates a part of the blood clotting process which focuses on the ways in which platelets from blood samples clump together.

“This method may be useful for future studies looking into new anti-platelet treatments for diseases such as diabetes, where clotting is disturbed and increases the risk of heart attack or stroke,” according to the study detailed in the Haematologica journal.

The researchers discovered that the enzyme NADPH Oxidase is critically important for the generation of free radicals, the stimulation of blood clotting and the promotion of blood vessel damage in patients.

They successfully used the technique in mice and human cells. Their aim is to better understand how blood cells function, which will help to develop new drugs against blood clotting diseases or to test the risk of clotting diseases in patients.

“We’re really excited to discover this new technique and its potential to understand how blood vessel diseases develop. For the first time, we can now simultaneously measure blood clotting and the formation of free radicals,” said lead author Giordano Pula, from the Exeter Medical School.

“We know they play a key role in blood vessel damage caused by aging, diabetes, obesity and chronic inflammation. We’re currently using this technique in our efforts to develop a new treatment to protect the blood vessels in diseases such as heart diseases, stroke, obesity, and vascular dementia,” Pula added.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

18.02.2019

A moment of patience in a moment of anger saves a thousand moments of regret….

15 February, 2019

Higher education can lessen impact of mild hearing loss, reveals study

Hearing impairment is associated with accelerated cognitive decline with age, though the impact of mild hearing loss may be lessened by higher education, researchers say. The findings suggest that those with more serious hearing impairment had worse performance at the initial visit on a pair of commonly used cognitive assessment tests. However, the association of mild hearing impairment with rate of cognitive decline was modified by education, said the researchers at University of California, San Diego.

“We surmise that higher education may provide sufficient cognitive reserve to counter the effects of mild hearing loss, but not enough to overcome effects of more severe hearing impairment,” said senior author Linda K. McEvoy, Professor at the varsity. For the study, published in the Journal of Gerontology: Series A Medical Sciences, the research team tracked 1,164 participants with a mean age 73.5 years of whom 64 percent were women.

All had undergone assessments for hearing accuracy and cognitive function between 1992 and 1996 and had up to five subsequent cognitive assessments at approximately four-year intervals. None used a hearing aid. They found that almost half of the participants had mild hearing impairment, with 16.8 percent suffering moderate-to-severe hearing loss. The team said that mild hearing impairment was associated with steeper decline among study participants without a college education, but not among those with higher education.

Mild hearing impairment was associated with steeper decline among study participants without a college education, but not among those with higher education. Moderate-to-severe hearing impairment was associated with steeper cognitive decline regardless of education level, the researchers said.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

15.02.2019

We build too many walls and not enough bridges

Isaac Newton

11 February, 2019

A gene identified that can treat and prevent alcoholism, find researchers

Researchers have identified a gene that could provide a new target for developing medication to prevent and treat alcoholism, according to a new study on mice.

Researchers at Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) in the US discovered a gene that had lower expression in the brains of non-human primates which voluntarily consumed heavy amounts of alcohol compared to those that drank less.

Furthermore, the team unravelled a link between alcohol and how it modulates the levels of activity of this particular gene. Researchers discovered that when they increased the levels of the gene encoded a protein in mice, they reduced alcohol consumption by almost 50 per cent without affecting the total amount of fluid consumed or their overall well-being.

The study modified the levels of the protein encoded by a single gene known as GPR39.

The prevalence rates of co-occurring mood and alcohol use disorders are high, with individuals with alcohol use disorder being 3.7 times more likely to have major depression than those who do not abuse alcohol.

Using a commercially available substance that mimics the activity of the GPR39 protein, the researchers found that targeting this gene dramatically reduced alcohol consumption in mice, showed the findings of the study published in the journal, Neuropsychopharmacology.

“The study highlights the importance of using cross-species approaches to identify and test relevant drugs for the treatment of alcohol use disorder,” noted senior author Rita Cervera-Juanes, Research Assistant Professor at ONPRC.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

11.02.2019

The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, but in what direction you are moving

Oliver Wendell Holmes

7 February, 2019

Did you know? Men’s brains diminish faster than women’s

The study noted that the brain’s metabolism slows as people grow older, but it may differ between men and women. The findings, led by researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, showed that women’s brains appear to be about three years younger than men of the same chronological age, metabolically speaking.

“It’s not that men’s brains age faster — they start adulthood about three years older than women, and that persists throughout life,” said Manu Goyal, Assistant Professor of radiology at the university’s Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology. “What we don’t know is what it means. I think this could mean that the reason women don’t experience as much cognitive decline in later years is because their brains are effectively younger, and we’re currently working on a study to confirm that,” he explained.

Older women tend to score better than men of the same age on tests of reason, memory and problem solving. The results were published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The brain runs on sugar, but how the brain uses sugar changes as people age. To figure out how brains use sugar differently between men and women, the team analysed 121 women and 84 men, ranging in age from 20 to 82 years.

The researchers trained a machine-learning algorithm on men’s age and their brain metabolism, taken from PET scans by measuring the flow of oxygen and glucose in their brains, and applied it to women’s. The algorithm yielded brain ages an average of 3.8 years younger than the women’s chronological ages. The researchers also performed the analysis in reverse. This time, the algorithm reported that men’s brains were 2.4 years older than their true ages.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

07.02.2019

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly

 John F. Kennedy

4 February, 2019

Here is the direct link between illness and you feeling sleepy

Researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have found a gene that acts as a direct link between illness and the need for more sleep. In a study of over 12,000 lines of fruit flies, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania in the US found the single gene, called nemuri, that increases the need for sleep. The nemuri protein fights germs with its inherent antimicrobial activity and it is secreted by cells in the brain to drive prolonged, deep sleep after an infection.

“While it’s a common notion that sleep and healing are tightly related, our study directly links sleep to the immune system and provides a potential explanation for how sleep increases during sickness,” said Amita Sehgal, Professor at the varsity. Without the nemuri gene, flies were more easily aroused during daily sleep, and their acute need for an increase in sleep — induced by sleep deprivation or infection — was reduced. On the other hand, sleep deprivation, which increases the need for sleep, and to some extent infection, stimulated nemuri to be expressed in a small set of fly neurons nestled close to a known sleep-promoting structure in the brain.

Over expression of nemuri increased sleep in bacteria-infected flies and led to their increased survival compared to non-infected control flies. In response to infection, nemuri appears to kill microbes, most likely in the peripheral parts of the fruit fly body and increases sleep through its action in the brain. Moreover, the researchers, in the study published in the journal Science, noted that an immune cell molecule — interleukin-1 (IL-1) — is implicated in human sleep.

IL-1 accumulates after prolonged wakefulness and appears to promote sleep, suggesting that nemuri is a working link between immune function and sleep.

Source: www.thehealthsite.com

04.02.2019

If you win, you need not have to explain...If you lose, you should not be there to explain

Adolf Hitler