Body of Wealth

HPV infection alone is not sufficient to cause cervical cancer! May be it’s right. However, in women with stress, it could prove fatal! It has been confirmed by a new study published in ‘Annals of Behavioral Medicine’. It’s worth mentioning that HPV also known as Human papilloma virus, is quite a common virus that can cause warts on many different body parts. However, what’s interesting about HPV is that out of these different types of HPV, around 70 are considered quite harmless.

Before coming up with such assumption, Dr. Fang and her colleagues engaged around 74 women with precancerous cervical lesions to answer questionnaires about their perceived stress-related issues and surprisingly found stress a sort of booster enhancing the vulnerability to cervical cancer. The study also found that Moreover, in women with stronger immune system, HPV infections disappear spontaneously over time, leaving quite rare chances of precancerous cervical lesions or cancer. However, women with weaker immune system are comparatively more vulnerable to cervical cancer. Moreover, experts are of the opinion that stress could lead to alterations in the immune system, thereby making the body less scrupulous. Speaking on the issue Dr. Carolyn Fang of the Fox Chase Cancer Centre in Philadelphia said:

...some women are less able to mount an effective immune response to HPV.

Each new day is likely to enhance the inextricability of flu, as vaccines available to noose the deadly virus are fast loosing their potentials, claims the World Health Organization.

Is it victory of H5N1 virus over medical science or was their lack of determination in our strategy that it couldn’t embank the gushing inundation of this deadly virus. Indeed, the question is as confounding as the disease itself! The global spread of H5N1 in 2006 that splashed on the globe reeling off a woeful series of pandemics, which seems to flow out farther and farther with its end, still, not round the corner. In such a situation, WHO’s remark confirms that in fight between bird-flu and medical science, of course, it’s deadly bird-flu that has been taking the lead since it jumped into the sphere. Notably, WHO’s this statement comes at a time when, according to CDC, forty-four states have reported widespread influenza and around 10 American kids have died of flu so far, in the current season.

According to a recent report published in the Lancet medical journal, obesity can cause the risk of several cancers like those of the bowel, kidney, and breast to almost double up. Risk of numerous blood cancers such as adult leukemia, multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma also increases with increase in body fat.

Andrew Renehan, a cancer specialist at the University of Manchester led the study. Renehan made his analysis after looking into the results of about 282,000 men and women, of what happened to people whose body mass index (BMI) increased from the normal range (18 to 25) to overweight ( more than 25) or from overweight to obese (above 30).

Viruses are responsible for a large number of diseases many of which are life threatening. In most cases, it is difficult to treat viral infections with common medicines. It is more than often left to the body’s immune system to develop antibodies capable of combating the deathly viruses. Often the repressor genes obstruct the proper functioning of the body’s immune system. Interferon is a protein that enhances the body’s immunity but often its functionality is suppressed by certain genes.

Researchers at I’Institut de Recherches Cliniques de Montreal and the Ottawa Health Research Institute have been able to remove 4E-BP1 and 4E-BP2, the two repressor genes, in mice and enabling interferon to function smoothly creating an anti-viral state in the cell.

Bats use their ears as radars to receive sonic waves that help them navigate in the dark. The same method of echolocation has been pioneered to help blind children and adults to maneuver their movements. Visually impaired people are believed to be gifted with stronger hearing faculty. Visually challenged children are being trained in Glasgow to emit sound waves by clicking their tongues and form detailed images of objects in their minds by analyzing the sound of the echo.

The technique of echolocation has become very popular among the visually impaired people. Despite of lack of any scientific evidence the efficacy of the method can be gauged by the ease it has given to blind men like Dan Kish of USA, who runs a nonprofit organization, World Access for the Blind. Kish can ride a bicycle on a busy road and can distinguish between different types of fruits hanging on the trees by clicking his tongue.

Sociologists and Philanthropists need not worry about the population explosion any more; the tobacco epidemic is doing its job. If the governments across the globe do not take appropriate action, over 500 million people could die who have all the right to live and enjoy a healthy life. The WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 2008, that examines the tobacco policies of over 179 countries for the first time ever, recommends use of a six tobacco control policies, strategically named MPOWER, that includes raising taxes and prices of tobacco, ban of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship; warn people about dangers of tobacco and secondhand smoke, monitoring tobacco use to understand and reverse the epidemic.

Warning issued in the report claims tobacco to be the cause for death of over 100 million people in the past century and if left untamed could end up taking 8 million lives by 2030. Most of tobacco users belong to developing countries in the low and middle income groups; easy commercial targets that they are, a major income of their poor households smokes away in tobacco and they die as a result. 10 such countries have been identified, which are home to nearly two thirds of the world’s smoking population; China with 30%(over 100 million Chinese men under 30 could die due to Tobacco use), India with 10%(one fourths of the total middle aged men die because of tobacco use), followed by Indonesia, Russia, US, Japan, Brazil, Bangladesh, Germany and Turkey.

Technology is making all efforts to ‘create’ healthy babies. From animals to humans, more discoveries are coming out in the open. Even in the formation of a human being, science is intervening to prevent deformities in fetuses. To remedy thousands of hereditary diseases that are transmitted to new borns, British scientists are looking into the possibility of creating a human embryo with three parents as a mean to correct genetic deformities within five years.

Newcastle researchers in northern England used in vitro fertilization (IVF) or test tube embryos from a male and two other females using a combined DNA and their findings were recently presented at a medical conference in Medical Research Council Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases conference in London.

If everything goes well, then days are not far away when the tool to fight Bird-flu would be there in experts’ hands. This hope sparked up after researchers at Griffith University Institute for Glycomics, in the leadership of Professor Mark Von Itzstein developed a technique to ‘crack the code’ of the deadly H5N1 avian influenza virus.

The problem with most prosthetic hands commonly available is lack of dexterity being of no real help to the amputees other than being ornamental in nature. This was until Touch Bionics introduced its bionic hand. This advanced prosthetic arm, dubbed i-LIMB has each individual finger of the artificial limb powered by its own motor increasing dexterity of the hand with advanced grip patterns similar to that of a natural hand.

After it was introduced in July last year, i-LIMB is expected to reach its 100 fitting by end of February this year. European countries have also expressed their interest to team up with Touch Bionics to produces prosthetic hands in their respective countries. The $18,000 i-LIMB will have many takers in America and Europe but for the amputees in developing countries especially the war ravaged Iraq, Afghanistan and African nations despite of the huge demand for prosthetics the high price will be a disadvantage.

Source & image:gizmag

When the neurologists were thinking that they had deciphered the functioning of the different parts of brain, a new discovery has now forced them to review their research. The doctors have accidentally stumbled upon a new area in brain responsible for storing memory while operating upon an obese individual, to suppress his hunger through the technique of deep brain-stimulation.

The technique of deep brain-stimulation makes use of electrodes to stimulate certain parts of the brain, thus regulating behavior. In the case of this obese patient who weighed 190 kilograms, the technique was used when all other means to suppress his hunger failed. However, when the doctors were operating upon the patient by stimulating his hypothalamus - the area responsible for hunger, different responses were shown by the patient. Though there was no change in his eating patterns which was intended, he reported having a unique experience wherein memories from the past livened up. According to him, he could see the intricate details of a scene in some park where he had been thirty years previously.