Why are Indians at higher risk of
diabetes?
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), India will
have 80 million people with diabetes by 2030.
Based on their results that eating a 'normal' diet can make animals overweight, if their ancestors had been undernourished for several generations, the researcher from University of Sydney in Australia, the National Centre for Cell Science and the DYP Medical College in Pune, India said that diabetes is linked to the nutrition endured by ancestors.
"People in developing countries have faced multi-generational undernutrition and are currently undergoing major lifestyle changes, contributing to an epidemic of metabolic diseases, though the underlying mechanisms remain unclear," the study said.
Increasing prosperity in developing countries has been accompanied by a sudden increase in caloric intake.
However their populations' epigenetic makeup, whereby changing environmental factors alter how people's genes are expressed, has not compensated for these dietary changes.
This means their bodies are still designed to cope with undernourishment; so they store fat in a manner that makes them more prone to obesity and its resulting diseases than populations accustomed to several generations of a 'normal' diet.
This scenario was recreated in a 12-year study of two groups of rats by associated professor Anandwardhan Hardikar's team at the University of Sydney and colleagues overseas.
The first group was undernourished for 50 generations and then put on a normal diet for two generations.
The second (control) group maintained a normal diet for 52 generations. At the end of the study it was found that when the descendants of the first group were exposed to a normal diet, these rats were eight times more likely to develop diabetes and multiple metabolic defects when compared to the control group.
"Their adverse metabolic state was not reversed by two generations of nutrient recuperation through a normal diet," Hardikar said.
Source: www.timesofindia.com
13.07.2015
Chemotherapy
equipment found to be dangerous!
The anti-bacterial silver coating
used in chemotherapy catheters actually breaks down the drugs and thus reduces
the efficacy of the treatment, a study says.
Chemotherapy treatment usually involves the
patient receiving medicine through an intravenous catheter. These catheters, as
well as the equipment attached to them, are treated with a silver coating which
is antibacterial, preventing bacterial growth and unwanted infections during a
treatment.
The study found that the chemotherapy drugs' reaction with silver not only breaks down the drugs, but it also creates hydrogen fluoride, a gas that can be harmful both to the patients and to the medical equipment.
The study found that the chemotherapy drugs' reaction with silver not only breaks down the drugs, but it also creates hydrogen fluoride, a gas that can be harmful both to the patients and to the medical equipment.
Researchers at the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology's (NTNU) are now studying what happens when different
drugs come in contact with this silver coating.
"Chemotherapy drugs are active substances,
so it is not hard to imagine that the medicine could react with the
silver," said Justin Wells, an associate professor of physics at Norwegian
University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Wells and his students looked at the surface
chemistry of one of the most commonly used chemotherapy drugs, 5-Fluorouracil
(5-Fu), and the interaction between it and the type of silver coating found in
medical equipment.
"Reactions between chemotherapy drugs and
other substances that the drugs come in contact with have never been studied
like this before. It has always been assumed that the drugs reach the body
fully intact," Wells said.
The researchers found that Graphene can be a good
substitute for silver as the drugs do not react with graphene.
Graphene has already been suggested as a coating
for medical equipment and it should be possible to create thin layers of
graphene designed for this use.
"We hope that our work will contribute to
making cancer treatment more effective," Wells said.
Source: www.timesofindia.com
13.07.2015
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