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Washington:
There is some hope for sufferers of glaucoma and spinal cord injuries,
as scientists at Schepens Eye Research Institute, have regenerated a
damaged optic nerve from the eye to the brain. This achievement, which
occurred in laboratory mice and is described in the March 1, 2005 issue
of the Journal of Cell Science, holds great promise for victims of diseases
that destroy the optic nerve, and for sufferers of central nervous system
injuries. "For us, this is a dream becoming reality," says Dr. Dong
Feng Chen, lead author of the study, assistant scientist at Schepens
Eye Research Institute and an assistant professor of ophthalmology at
Harvard Medical School. "This is the closest science has come to regenerating
so many nerve fibres over a long distance to reach their targets and
to repair a nerve previously considered irreparably damaged," he added.
This work has important implications. "The possibility of restoring
sight following optic nerve injuries is tremendous. Fifteen percent
of all wartime injuries include the eye and those with optic nerve trauma
are the most grave. Today's medicine has little effective treatment
to offer and blindness is often the end result," says Retired Lieutenant
Colonel Robert C. Read of the Clinical Applications Division at the
Department of Defense's Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research
Center. Regular exercise can save you from Parkinson's (Go To Top) Washington:
A research of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) says that
men who have exercised regularly in their adult life run lesser risk
of developing Parkinson's disease compared to men who did not. Parkinson's
disease is a nervous disease generally afflicting people in their fifties.
It kills the brain cells that produces. It is marked by muscular tremor,
slowing of movement, rigidity and postural instability. The study published
in the February 22, 2005 issue of the journal Neurology claims, men
who were the most physically active at the start of the study slashed
their risk of developing Parkinson's disease by 50 percent compared
to those who did not. Also men who regularly engaged themselves in rigourous
physical activity in early adult life slashed the risk for the disease
by 60 percent compared to those who did not. While with women in the
study, strenuous activity in the early adult years also meant lower
risk of Parkinson's. However there was no defined relationship between
physical activity later in life and Parkinson's risk. "These are intriguing
and promising findings that suggest that physical activity may contribute
to the prevention of Parkinson's. A protective effect of physical activity
has been recently found in an animal model of Parkinson's disease. Future
studies should also address the possibility that physical activity slows
the progression of Parkinson's.", said Alberto Ascherio, senior author
and associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard
School of Public Health. Gene therapy transforms dead bone to living tissue (Go To Top) Washington:
In a new procedure developed at the University of Rochester Medical
Center researchers have created a way to transform the dead bone of
a transplanted skeletal graft into living tissue in an experiment involving
mice. It uses gene therapy to stimulate the body into treating the foreign
splint as living bone. The team led by Edward M. Schwarz replaced sections
of bones in dozens of mice, using both healthy and dead segments, then
scanned the surrounding inflammatory tissue for differences in the levels
of the active genes. They then discovered that the genes that create
two key proteins in living bone were barely expressed around the dead
bone. He then modified a harmless virus to carry these genes, devised
a method of freeze-drying a paste containing the virus so it could be
easily handled, and painted it directly onto a bone graft during surgery.
Numerous tests in mice confirmed that the virus permeated the inflammatory
tissue around the dead bone and turned on the genes. The mouse body
then began to treat the implanted bone as if it were its own tissue
instead of a foreign object, which would normally trigger the body to
wrap the "invader" in scar tissue. "That recognition is the key. It's
at that point that the body actually begins changing the dead, foreign
bone splint, into the body's own, whole, living bone," Schwarz added.
Schwarz's studies with mice showed their dead splints were quickly converted
to new, healthy bone. He projects that the bone would be completely
converted in just a year, and that a human bone might be completely
converted in as little as five years. Green tea cures fatty liver (Go To Top) Charlston: Transplant using fatty livers can be safe if they are rinsed with solution of green tea extract. A report in the March 2005 issue of Liver Transplantation, the journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and the International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS) says so. Approximately one-fifth of the U.S. population has a fatty liver. The condition is called hepatic steatosis and its primary cause is obesity. Fatty livers are more sensitive than lean livers to I/R injury. They are vulnerable to a greater risk of disease causing death. As a result there are very few healthy livers for donation and transplant. "In fact, nearly one-third of all donated livers are afflicted with fatty changes, but longer waiting lists are forcing practitioners to consider using these organs", mentions the journal report. Earlier on a study found that livers rinse with a solution of green tea extract prevented failures in transplants using fatty livers. The current study examined whether EGCG, the major flavonoid component in green tea, protected fatty livers from cell damage after I/R injury. Kenneth D. Chavi of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston along with his team experimented with mice.They administered EGCG orally or through injections and performed surgery to induce I/R injury in mice. The control groups did not receive the EGCG. Mice receiving EGCG by either method showed a survival rate of 100 percent as against 65 percent for the controls. So the EGCG mice had decreased cell death demonstrating that the flavonoid protected the liver from I/R injury. The researchers then measured fatty acid ; the levels of palmitic and linoleic acid, two fatty acids that are present in large amounts in fatty livers, decreased considerably in EGCG mice. Further tests showed a rise in hepatic energy stores (as the liver stores energy in the form of glycogen) in EGCG mice. Another interesting inferencece drawn was that EGCG was also acting as an antioxidant protecting fatty livers from I/R injury. In addition, the study showed that EGCG reduced liver fat content by approximately 55 percent. The report by the researchers added that ECGC might act as a therapeutic agent for fatty livers used in liver transplants. Feb 20, 2005 Thoughts used to move a robotic arm (Go To Top) Washington:
A new research conducted by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh
suggests that a person could direct a robotic arm - a neural prosthesis
- to reach and manipulate a desired object through his thoughts alone.
A monkey outfitted with a child-sized robotic arm controlled directly
by its own brain signals is able to feed itself chunks of fruits and
vegetables. The researchers trained the monkey to feed itself by using
signals from its brain that are passed through tiny electrodes, thinner
than a human hair, and fed into a specially designed algorithm that
tells the arm how to move. "The beneficiaries of such technology will
be patients with spinal cord injuries or nervous system disorders such
as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS," lead researcher Andrew Schwartz,
said. The neural prosthesis moves much like a natural arm, with a fully
mobile shoulder and elbow and a simple gripper that allows the monkey
to grasp and hold food while its own arms are restrained. Computer software
interprets signals picked up by tiny probes inserted into neuronal pathways
in the motor cortex, a brain region where voluntary movement originates
as electrical impulses. The neurons' collective activity is then fed
through the algorithm and sent to the arm, which carries out the actions
the monkey intended to perform with its own limb. The primary motor
cortex, a part of the brain that controls movement, has thousands of
nerve cells, called neurons, that fire like Geiger counters. These neurons
are sensitive to movement in different directions. They developed a
special algorithm that uses the limited information from relatively
few neurons to fill in the missing signals. The algorithm decodes the
cortical signals like a voting machine by using each cell's preferred
direction as a label and taking a continuous tally of the population
throughout the intended movement. Monkeys were trained to reach for
targets. Then, with electrodes placed in the brain, the algorithm was
adjusted to assume the animal was intending to reach for those targets.
"When the monkey wants to move its arm, cells are activated in the motor
cortex. Each of those cells activates at a different intensity depending
on the direction the monkey intends to move its arm. The direction that
produces the greatest intensity is that cell's preferred direction.
The average of the preferred directions of all of the activated cells
is called the population vector. We can use the population vector to
accurately predict the velocity and direction of normal arm movement,
and in the case of this prosthetic, it serves as the control signal
to convey the monkey's intention to the prosthetic arm," Schwartz said.
Antidepressants drugs may lead to suicidal behaviour: BMJ (Go To Top) London: Three studies published in the British Medical Journal claim that use of antidepressant drugs, especially in early stages of treatment, may increase risk of suicidal behaviour. According to researchers, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the most commonly used antidepressant drugs, but they may induce or worsen suicidal feelings in susceptible patients. In the first study, researchers analysed 702 trials involving over 87,000 patients with depression and other clinical conditions to find out association between use of SSRIs and suicide attempts. They found that patients taking these drugs were twice as likely to attempt suicide compared with patients taking placebo. They also didn't find any difference between patients taking SSRIs and those taking other drugs, known as tricyclic antidepressants. The researchers say that the absolute risk of suicide is low, but the widespread use of SSRIs makes this a health concern. The second study reviewed 477 trials submitted by drug companies to the safety review of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). These trials compared SSRIs with placebo in adults with depression and other clinical conditions. Although weak evidence of an increased risk of self-harm was found in patients taking SSRIs, no evidence of an increased risk of suicidal thoughts was found in those taking placebo. The final study was based on information from the General Practice Research Database. The research team analysed the risk of self harm and suicide in over 146,000 patients taking SSRIs and tricyclic antidepressants for the first time. It was found that risks of self-harm and suicide were no different in patients prescribed SSRIs compared with those taking tricyclics. However, under 18s prescribed SSRIs seemed to be at increased risk of self harm. The researchers point out that increased risks of suicide and self harm caused by SSRIs cannot be ruled out, but larger trials with longer monitoring periods are needed to assess the balance of risks and benefits fully. "The debate is not yet done, but these papers crystallise arguments that have been drifting in the ether these past months. How many people who turned to 'happy pills' would not have done so if they had been fully aware of the potential harms?" said Kamran Abbasi, BMJ Acting Editor. They recommend that patients should be warned of the potential hazard and monitored closely in the early weeks of treatment. They also discouraged the routine prescribing of antidepressant drugs in children and adolescents. Aussie scientists clone world's first cow (Go To Top) Sydney: Australian scientists have cloned the world's first cow produced using a technique known as serial nuclear transfer. According to Sydney Morning Herald, Brandy, a healthy Holstein- Fresian calf, was born just before Christmas and created by researchers from Monash Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne and the Genetics Australia Co-operative. The technique, along with artificial insemination, could be used by farmers to develop the best quality herds. Researcher Vanessa Hall said: "The long term gain is gearing up for a way to disseminate genetics to herds." She said the technique was low-cost and produced more vigorous embryos, with a much lower attrition rate than normal cloning. Feb 17, 2005 Indian ayurvedic herb for diabetes (Go To Top) London: A new study conducted by researchers at Ohio State University suggests that the Indian herb Salacia oblonga lowers blood sugar and insulin levels in a manner similar to prescription drugs. The researchers led by Steve Hertzler subjected thirty-nine healthy adults to four separate meal tolerance tests. These meals, which were given in beverage form, were spaced three to 14 days apart. Each participant fasted for at least 10 hours before consuming the test beverage. Participants were asked to drink about two cups' worth of the chilled beverage, which contained zero, 500, 700 or 1,000 milligrams of Salacia oblonga extract. They then took blood samples from each person every 15 to 30 minutes for three hours. These blood samples were used to determine insulin and blood glucose concentrations. The beverage with "1,000 milligrams" of extract lowered insulin levels by 29 percent and blood glucose levels by 23 percent as compared to the control drink, which contained no herbal extract. Feb 9, 2005 Red wine is a tonic for the heart (Go To Top) London: According to latest resarch, a daily dose of red wine could reduce the amount of fibrinogen, the compound responsible for clotting and boost up good cholestrol or HDL content in the blood. During the research carried out at the Institute of Preventive Medicine in Copenhagen, men and women between age group 30 to 74, were either given 300 ml of red wine, or red grape juice or water everyday,and at the end of the month the cholestrol and fibrinogen content in their blood was measured. It was found that the levels of good cholestrol went up by between 11 and 16 per cent in the wine drinkers, and the amount of fibrinogen went down by eight to 15 per cent. "Moderate wine consumption for four weeks is associated with desirable changes in HDL and fibrinogen compared with drinking water with or without red grape extract", the researchers said. High levels of HDL is known to prevent heart problems as it carries cholestrol away from the arteries and back to liver, according to scientists. Feb 4, 2005 Rare plant may hold breast cancer cure (Go To Top) Washington:
Scientists at the University of Virginia Health System have identified
a new compound derived from a rare South American plant, that could
inhibit the growth of breast cancer cells. The compound, called SL0101,
is obtained from the plant Forsteronia refracta, and it inhibits the
action of a cancer- linked protein called RSK, which the researchers
discovered is important for controlling the growth of breast cancer
cells. Interestingly, SL0101 does not alter the growth of normal breast
cells. "By preventing RSK from working, we completely stopped the growth
of breast cancer cells but did not affect the growth of normal breast
cells," said Deborah Lannigan, an assistant professor of Microbiology. References: Optic nervel, Parkinson's exercise, gene therapy dead bone, liver green tea, robotic thoughts, antidepressant suicidal, clone cow, diabetes ayurvedic herb, red wine heart, breast cancer, Science, Research, Science News, India, India News, Newspaper, Indian, News, Travel News, India Travel Times, Travel,Tourism, Tour, Tourist, India, Times, News, Hotels, Airlines, Ayurveda, Yoga, Hindu, Taj Mahal, Cuisine, Festival, Temple, Trekking, Hindu, Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Odissi, Dance, Shimla,Varanasi, Kullu, Manali, Dehra Dun, Mussourie, Mussoorie, Haridwar, Hardwar, Rishikesh, Nainital, Delhi, Goa, Kovalam, Darjeeling, Bodh Gaya, Kancheepuram, Kanchipuram, Thekkady, Badrinath, Amar Nath,Vaishno Devi, Tirupati, Sabarimala, Guruvayoor, Kanyakumari, Kodaikanal, Ooty, Chennai, |
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