Body of Wealth

Things are definitely looking down for the Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre, Canada, where 326 cancer patients were exposed to wrong dose of radiations for a long span of 3 years! Apparently, the patients afflicted by basal and squamous cell carcinomas were administered radiations as low as 17 percent from the prescribed intensity between November 2004 and November 2007. A permissible variation is somewhere around 5 to 7 percent, in this case 17 percent sounds rather drastic and it’s believed that patients with aggressive melanoma skin cancer were not even close to being cured with such an exposure.

A new clue to the cause of Alzheimer’s disease (brain disorder named for German physician Alois Alzheimer in 1906) seems to have been discovered by a team led by Dr. Ganesh M. Shankar and Dr. Dennis J. Selkoe of Harvard Medical School. Scientists long have been of the opinion that the brains of people inflicted with this memory-robbing form of dementia are jumbled with a plaque (these build up between nerve cells) made up of beta-amyloid and with tau (tangles are twisted fibers of a protein called tau).

Vitamin D which has made its importance felt in our lives by the role it plays in strengthening our bones has now, according to a research, been credited as being the key to longer life. A research conducted has linked low Vitamin D levels with deaths from heart attacks and other diseases, thus making the significance of Vitamin D more evident in our lives. Patients with lowest levels of Vitamin D are found to be two times more likely to die from any cause within eight years than those with highest levels.

The link between low vitamin levels and diseases is strongest in the case of heart related ailments. But this doesn’t mean you put up your glares and go sunbathing or start popping Vitamin D pills. Huge doses of Vitamin D are dangerous and being in the sunshine for too long can cause skin cancer. Besides, daily exposure to sunshine provides enough doses of the vitamin. In some cases like ageing, extreme physical activity and other lifestyle factors can cause Vitamin D levels in the body to decrease.

I don’t usually prefer taking medicines for minor ailments because I fear their side-effects. But things may get better with Roy Curtiss and his fellow researchers of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, who are developing a new type of self-destructible vaccine that leaves none of its spin-off once it slinks into human body. It was a unique experiment as when they made Salmonella bacteria lug a little piece of Streptococcus pneumonia into the bodies of mice, the bacteria broke open and died, though with an antigen. While it has been a success with bacteria, it’s still to be tested on viruses, fungal contagions and parasites. Well, further experiments would tell if it’s safe and doesn’t cause any diseases or problems. Certainly, we need to wait to see when they would offer it for humans.

Source: Reuters

Rember, a new trial drug, is the biggest breakthrough for treating Alzheimer patients with declining memory. The UK scientists hail this achievement as the biggest ever in last 100 years. The drug is still on trial run. Nearly 321 patients with mild and moderate Alzheimer’s were put on Rember for 50 weeks and 80% reported no further decline in cognitive abilities compared to those who were on placebo drugs. Images of brain scan show rember treated the parts of brain directly linked with memory.

Has the time arrived for us to move back to the old glass containers as new studies are showing that plastic bottles can cause immense harm to our body? Bisphenol A or BPA, a polycarbonate plastic material that is used in making plastic bottles can cause neural and behavioral problems in fetuses, infants and children. BPA exposure may also lead to early puberty and prostate and breast cancer. The US environmental group, Center for Health, Environment and Justice and the National Toxicology Program, that is part of the U.S. government’s National Institute of Health along with a number of health activist groups have expressed their concern over the use of BPA plastic bottles.

American researchers have developed a new Bird Flu vaccine designed to last longer and which could offer more protection against the deadly strain of Avian influenza. This vaccine, developed by study author Suresh Mittal and his team at Purdue university uses a modified common cold virus to act as the carrier. The vaccine has been successfully tested on mice and has a number of advantages. The vaccine can be stored for longer periods of time and will not make its users sick as the adeno-virus in the vaccine is incapable of multiplying. It can be made without using eggs which usually are in severe shortage during every outbreak of the dreaded flu. Dosage too can be lowered as the vaccine stimulates the immune system of the human body. All this make the new vaccine very promising and if everything goes according to plan, we should see the new bird flu vaccine hitting medical stores in the near future.

Via: Yahoo News

Everything we eat, do and think about has an impact on our health. As we look for ways to fight a wide range of diseases, the American Association for Cancer Research 2008 Annual Meeting suggested that continuous engaging in bad habits like drinking and eating fatty foods may lead to cancer, melanoma or other diseases.

The group is emphasizing the need to control our thirst for liquor and beer, especially among women, and food that may eventually post health hazards in the future. It was found that women consuming moderate amounts of alcohol may increase their risk of breast cancer. Comparing a heavy drinker woman consuming three or more glasses each day from a nondrinker, the former has a 51-percent increased risk of ER+/PR+ breast cancer.

The drug and medical devices companies, in order to expand the market for their products, have been influencing doctors with consulting fees, free foreign trips and sponsoring educational conferences. The financial ties between the companies and the doctors had always remained a closely guarded secret but things are going to change soon. Threatened with regulation from the US Congress, the drugs and medical devices companies have promised to reveal the details of their grants to outside groups.

The United States of America has kept a goal of completely eradicating the mumps virus from USA by 2010 but sudden rise in the number of mumps cases since 2006 has raised doubts whether the target could ever be met. There have been 6,584 cases of mumps since 2006 with 85 hospitalizations. To make matters worse for the Federal health officials, 84 percent of the patients between the ages of 18 and 24 have received the second recommended dose of the mumps vaccine produced by Merck. According to a study by researchers of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, complete eradication of the viral infection would require development of more effective mumps vaccine or changes in the vaccination policy.

However, despite the efforts to curb the viral disease complete eradication of mumps is not possible because 43 percent nations do not vaccinate against mumps, retaining the wild virus in the environment. The reasons for the rise in mumps cases in US are manifold. Many parents heeding to the false propaganda of certain advocacy groups do not give MMR vaccine to children as they fear that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is not safe for children. Declining immunity, high population density and contact rates in colleges and incomplete vaccine-induced immunity to wild virus are other factors responsible for the rising incidence of mumps in US.

The painful tennis elbow that has crippled the likes of Sachin Tendulkar for days restricting their hand movements for days together has finally found its cure. Tennis elbow, known as lateral epicondylitis in medical terms, is actually a degenerative condition caused due to the fraying of the tendon that joins the forearm muscle to that of the upper arm.

The possibility of cure of diseases like cancer depends on the extent of the development of the malignant tumors in the body. The earlier the diagnosis of the disease, the brighter is the possibility of cure. Traditional identification of the malignant tumor based on radiological exams diagnoses the disease only after the tumor has appeared. A new discovery by researchers at the University of Florida has found biomarkers to be effective to identify the disease at the molecular stage. Identification of cancer cells at the earliest stage of development could make treatment of the disease easier and cost effective.

The worldwide projects on scanning the human DNA are leading to the conclusion that a large number of diseases are actually linked to the genetic composition of an individual. With the advancement of gene-scanning technique, since 2005, studies have linked as many as 40 common chronic diseases, such as, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, blindness, heart attack, multiple sclerosis, gallstones, etc to nearly 100 DNA variants. New discoveries on genetic variants and their association with diseases are evolving nearly everyday.

The new studies are not benefiting the common person for the time being as there has been no startling therapy that could prevent genetic diseases for the time being. Nonetheless, genome-wide association (GWA) uses genotyping technology to assay hundreds of thousands of single-nucleotide polymorphisms and relate them to clinical conditions. However, the GWA studies have some important limitations that include possibility for false-positive and false-negative results, biases related to selection of study participants and genotyping errors.

Schizophrenia is characterized by impairment in perception or losing touch with reality. This is manifested as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, disorganized speech and thinking. There are various theories of development of schizophrenia that attribute genes, early environment, neurobiology and psychological and social processes as factors responsible for this state of mind.

Although Alzheimer’s disease appears in old age but early signs of possibility of development of dementia in the future might appear in the middle age. According to researchers at Kaiser Permanente, people with large waistlines in the middle age are three times more susceptible to dementia in old age. The study published in the journal Neurology has found that obesity and bulging stomach was the most dangerous combination for developing dementia.