Monthly Archives: January 2009

First combined heart-lung transplant

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The first combined transplantation of a heart and lungs in Japan is planned at Osaka University Hospital on Saturday from a man in his 30’s

who has been certified as brain dead, the Tokyo-based Japan Organ Transplant Network said.

The heart and lungs of the man, who was pronounced brain dead yesterday at Hyogo Emergency Medical Center in Kobe where he was being treated for head injuries, is scheduled to be transplanted to a man, also in his 30s, at the hospital in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, the network said.

In addition, the donor’s liver will be transplanted to a man in his 50s in Fukuoka, the pancreas and one kidney to a woman in her 40s in Tokyo, and the other kidney to a man in his 50s in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture.

The donor had indicated his willingness to provide his small intestine as well, but the network said it could not match the organ with a prospective recipient.

It is the 79th case in Japan in which a brain-dead person’s organs will be transplanted based on the Organ Transplant Law, which came into effect in October 1997.

According to the network, the combined transplantation of the heart and lungs can be carried out only when it is determined that each of the donor’s organs is suitable for a patient chosen from a waiting list for the multiple-organ transplant.

Registration for patients wanting to undergo a heart-lung transplant began in 2003, but the network has had to give up on arranging such an operation in the past as suitability could not be confirmed.

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Salt cuts offer cardioprotective effects

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Reducing salt intake not only helps reduce blood pressure, but also cuts risk of cardiovascular disease, according to a new study.

The study led by Kacie Dickinson of Flinders University, South Australia showed that salt reduction might offer cardioprotective effects.

“Reducing your salt intake provides more benefit than a decrease in blood pressure,” said ASN Spokesperson Mary Ann Johnson, PhD.

The study provides “further evidence of the importance of decreasing sodium intake to improve blood vessel health and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

“These researchers showed that sodium reduction is beneficial for people who have normal blood pressure and those who are overweight or obese, and the benefits start in just a few weeks,” Johnson said.

“Regardless of one’s body weight or blood pressure, sodium reduction offers many health benefits,” she added.

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Faulty gene condemns millions in India to heart disease: study

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Tens of millions of people from the Indian subcontinent are destined to suffer heart disease due to a single genetic mutation, according to a study published on Sunday.

The wayward gene, found almost exclusively among the more than 1.5 billion people in or from South Asia, is almost guaranteed to lead to heart trouble, usually later in life, the researchers reported.

Four percent of the region’s population — some 60 million people — carry the mutation, the study concludes.

Scientists have long suspected that India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and probably Bangladesh carry an outsized share of the global burden of health disease.

One recent study predicts that by the end of this year India alone will account for 60 percent of the world’s heart-related problems, which can have both lifestyle and genetic origins.

The new research by an international team of 25 scientists and doctors from four countries provides a partial answer as to why this is so: an unexpectedly common defect in a gene, MYBPC3, that provides the blueprint for a certain kind of heart protein.

“The mutation leads to the formation of an abnormal protein,” said the study’s main architect, Kumarasamy Thangaraj of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderbad, India.

“Young people can degrade the abnormal protein and remain healthy, but as they get older it builds up and eventually results in the symptoms that we see.”

These include severe hypertension, an inflammation and weakening of the heart called cardiomyopathy, and death due to sudden cardiac arrest.

Thangaraj and colleagues first discovered the mutation — the deletion of 25 bits of genetic code — five years ago in two Indian families. But its significance only came to light with the new research.

In two separate clinical tests, researchers checked for the presence of the variant in 800 heart patients and 699 healthy individuals across India. The link between the symptoms and the genetic defect “were almost off the scale,” leaving no doubt that the mutation played a key role in causing heart disease. Further tests in different parts of the country of 28 unrelated families carrying the mutation showed that more than 90 percent of the oldest members in each family had heart problems.

While virtually absent among peoples from other parts of the world, the deadly genetic variant is equally spread across most of India’s regions, its social castes, as well as its language and religious groups.

In a follow-up sampling of more than 2,000 indigenous individuals from 26 countries across five continents, the telltale mutation showed up in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, with some presence in Malaysia and Indonesia, but nowhere else. The findings raise a perplexing question: if the bit of missing genetic code is so harmful, how did it become so common? Why did it not die out over the course of evolution, as usually happens to maladapted genes?

“The harmful effects are felt mainly late in life after people have had their children, so the mutation is essentially invisible to natural selection,” explained co-author Chris Tyler-Smith, a researcher at The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, England.

“When carriers have children, the genes remain in the population,” he told AFP by phone.

While many diseases hit in old age, very few are caused by a single mutation.

“The only other example I can think of is Alzheimer’s, where there is a variant that affects the very late-onset form of the disease,” Tyler-Smith said.

The MYBPC3 variant, he added, probably accounts for no more than five percent of heart disease in India, but still affects tens of millions of people.

“The bad news is that many of these mutation carriers have no warning that they are in danger,” said Perundurai Dhandapany of Madurai Kamaraj University in Madurai, India.

“But the good news is that we now know the impact of the mutation.”

The researchers said the findings should lead to better screening to identify those at risk, and may ultimately pave the way for the development of new treatments.

An estimated 17 million people around the world die of cardiovascular diseases every year, particularly heart attacks and strokes.

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More evidence of life on Mars

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Scientists have raised fresh hopes of finding evidence of life on Mars with the detection of ‘plumes’ of methane gas on the red planet, which has gripped the public imagination for more than a century as a possible home for aliens.

In the strongest indicator yet of life on Mars, the ‘plumes’ of methane gas belched in vast quantities in our world by cows, was detected by orbiting spacecraft and from Earth using giant telescopes, the Sun reported today.

According to the British tabloid, alien microbes living just below the Martian soil are responsible for a haze of methane around the red planet, Nasa scientists believe.

Furthermore, Nasa has found the gas in the same regions as clouds of water vapour, the vital “drink” needed to support life.

UK Mars expert Professor Colin Pillinger, who masterminded the unsuccessful Beagle 2 mission to Mars in 2003, believes the methane can only point to the presence of life on the planet.

“Methane is a product of biology. For methane to be in Mars’ atmosphere, there has to be a replenishable source,” he told paper.

“The most obvious source of methane is organisms. So if you find methane in an atmosphere, you can suspect there is life. It’s not proof, but it makes it worth a much closer look,” he stressed.

John Murray — a member of the Mars Express European space probe team — believes the mini-Martians may be in a form of suspended animation and could even be revived.

He has found overwhelming evidence of a vast frozen ocean beneath the dust near the Martian equator where simple life could have thrived as microbes.

Brad Bebout, a NASA microbiologist, said if methane is present in the atmosphere of Mars, then something must be producing it on the planet now, because the gas is broken down by sunlight within 300 years.

Most methane on Earth is created by primitive microbes, although some is produced by reactions between water and hot, carbon-bearing rocks. It has not yet been established if either of these are the cause for methane on the Red Planet.

Britain’s top space expert Nick Pope hailed the new evidence of life as “the most important discovery of all time”. He said: “What could be more profound than to know it’s not just us out there?

The red planet resembles Earth in many ways. It is made of rock, it has an atmosphere and weather systems.

Proof that water is still on Mars came in 2007 when Mars Express used ground-piercing radar to study the region around the planet’s South Pole.

Nasa’s latest lander Phoenix dug up chunks of Martian ice last year. It swiftly evaporated into the thin atmosphere.

“If there is life on Mars then the logical conclusion is that there must be life elsewhere too,” Pope said.

An announcement is expected to confirm NASA has found the strongest evidence yet of organisms just below the Martian soil.

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Venus moves closer to Sun

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The silvery planet, Venus, following its elliptical orbit will now move closer to the Sun which will make it brighter in the night sky.

Venus, also known as the planet of love, was at its maximum elongation on Wednesday on the day of Makar Sankranti, and now will move closer to the Sun, Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE), President Chander Bhushan Devgun said.

Elongation is an astronomical term which refers to the angle between the Sun and a planet as viewed from Earth. When a planet is visible after sunset, it is near its greatest eastern elongation. When it is visible before sunrise, it is near its greatest western elongation.

The value of the greatest elongation for Venus is between 45 and 47, he said, adding the value varies because the orbits of the planets are elliptical, rather than perfect circles.

Also, the variation can be attributed to the inconsistency in orbital inclination, that is, each planet’s orbit is in a slightly different plane.

The silvery planet is “up” for more than three hours after sunset now-a-days, he added.

To view the planet of love, he said a person can just go outside after dark, face south, and take a long look. The planet can be seen through naked eyes as it is so bright that it outshines city lights and even pierces thin clouds.

In 2008, Venus did not had the greatest elongation either eastern or western. The planet instead moved from a greatest western elongation on October 26, 2007 to a greatest eastern elongation on January 14 this year.

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Genetic testing: Do you really want to know?

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Once impenetrable, the individual genetic code is becoming an open book thanks to kits that scan for genes linked to scores of traits and diseases, from cancer and baldness to infertility and memory loss.

A couple of hundred dollars, a few drops of saliva and a stamped envelope is all it takes to get a rundown on your inherited risk of around a hundred more-or-less common conditions. You can place your order by Internet.

Business is booming even as some experts raise red flags about the tests, challenging their accuracy and questioning the wisdom of satisfying the growing hunger for intimate genetic knowledge.

Leading the pack of start-ups is California-based 23andMe, which offers “to help others take a bold, informed step toward self-knowledge”.

Rival deCODEme, a subsidiary of Iceland firm deCODE, promises “the discovery of your genetic propensity for developing specific diseases and conditions”.

Navigenics in Redwood Shores, California says it can “help you live healthier, longer”.

The business is called personalised genomics, and it is only now starting to deliver on a long-heralded promise.

Within a decade, say its supporters, mapping one’s complete genetic landscape will be as quick and common as a blood test for cholesterol.

Already today, women can check for a faulty variant of two genes, BRCA 1 or 2, that boosts the chance of getting breast cancer by 50-80 percent.

Other tests scan for the likelihood of sexual dysfunction brought on by certain anti-depressants, or heightened odds of becoming obese, schizophrenic or diabetic.

Parents can scan for diseases in their children — even when they are barely-fertilised embryos.

Last week saw the birth of the first baby in Britain grown from an embryo screened to ensure it did not contain the same breast cancer-causing gene inherited by her mother.

Another test is designed to spot athletic potential, and help figure out if junior could be the next Usain Bolt or just an also-ran.

The kit, marketed in the US by Atlas Sports Genetics, checks for either of two variants of the ACTN3 gene.

One gives rise to so-called “fast-twitch muscles” common among world-class sprinters, while the other produces the slow-twitch version found among endurance athletes.

Not all the genetic secrets waiting to be unlocked are critical — or even secret.

A sweet tooth, wet ear wax, heightened sensitivity to bitter greens or a slightly porous memory are hardly life-altering discoveries.

Why now? The science behind gene testing is not new. What has changed, and rapidly, is the cost of technology.

– All these tests have a high degree of uncertainty –

Since the three-billion-dollar Human Genome Project was completed in 2001, sequencing an individual’s genome “has become an order of magnitude cheaper and faster” every couple of years, Lynda Chin, a researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said in an interview.

The price tag today is about 100,000 dollars, and at least one company, Pacific Biosciences in Menlo Park, California, says it will be able, by 2013, to map all three billion base-pairs of a person’s DNA in a quarter of an hour for a few hundred dollars.

But not everyone is ecstatic.

To start with, the tests available to date are only snap shots of a DNA snippet, not the whole shebang. More critically, the data they yield is subject to interpretation.

“All of these tests carry a high degree of uncertainty,” said Arnold Munnich, a researcher at the Centre for Genetic Medicine at Necker Hospital in Paris.

French genetics expert Segolene Ayme says “many of the kits currently on offer are simply scams”.

Most diseases or conditions are caused by a complex web of genetic and environmental factors that are hard to tease apart, these scientists explain.

Only a handful — so-called Mendelian diseases, such as muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis — are caused by mutations in a single gene.

By contrast, nearly 20 genes have been linked in studies to Type 2 diabetes, and at least as many can play a role in different forms of cancer. More are likely to be added.

So even if the tests in question are accurate, the real problem is how to interpret the data they yield.

There is another danger: if it falls into the wrong hands, the same data that might lead to early diagnosis or targeted treatment of a disease could become a reason to refuse employment, insurance or a bank loan.

Last year US President George W. Bush signed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act to outlaw such abuses, but enforcement remains a concern. Other countries have yet to follow suit.

Finally, the most vexing question may be this: do we really want to know everything that our genome has to say? That we have a 20 percent greater chance of falling into dementia by the time we are 70, or that we are prone to alcohol or drug abuse?

“I have chosen not to learn whether I have a gene that increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease,” Steven Pinker, a professor at Harvard University and a leading proponent of evolutionary psychology, wrote recently in The New York Times.

Pinker is among the first 10 individuals whose genomes are to be sequenced and posted on the Internet as part of the Personal Genome Project, a public database for researchers that aims to compile complete genetic profiles of 100,000 people.

“Personal genomics is here to stay,” argues Pinker. “People who have grown up with the democratisation of information will not tolerate paternalistic regulations that keep them from their own genomes.”

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US, Chinese researchers engineer invisible cloak: study

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In a breakthrough that could signal a new era for human technology, US and Chinese researchers announced Thursday they are a step closer to creating an invisibility shield.

In a development made possible by advances in designing complex mathematical commands known as algorithms, engineers at Duke University, North Carolina were able to create what they call “metamaterials.”

These materials can “guide electromagnetic waves around an object, only to have them emerge on the other side as if they had passed through an empty volume of space,” according to the team, whose work was published in the January 16 edition of the journal Science.

The cloaking phenomenon is similar to mirages seen at a distance on a hot day, according to senior researcher David R. Smith.

“You see what looks like water hovering over the road, but it is in reality a reflection from the sky,” Smith said.

“In that example, the mirage you see is cloaking the road below. In effect, we are creating an engineered mirage with this latest cloak design.”

The team, who were backed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation of China among others, worked off their 2006 prototype that proved the project’s feasibility.

But Smith said their latest cloak is far superior to the original design, Smith said.

“The new device can cloak a much wider spectrum of waves — nearly limitless — and will scale far more easily to infrared and visible light,” he said.

“The approach we used should help us expand and improve our abilities to cloak different types of waves.”

The breakthrough has the potential of advancing numerous technologies that already exist, and ideas that have yet to be devised.

“By eliminating the effects of obstructions, cloaking devices could improve wireless communications, or acoustic cloaks could serve as protective shields, preventing the penetration of vibrations, sound or seismic waves,” said the team.

The cloak, measuring 20 inches (50.8 centimeters) by four inches (10 centimeters) and less than an inch (2.5 centimeter) high, is constructed with 10,000 fiberglass pieces arranged in parallel rows, 6,000 of which are unique.

The unique algorithms that can affect electromagnetic waves determined the shape and placement of each piece, the team indicated.

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Diabetes considered 3rd major cause of death in the world

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Diabetes is considered third major cause of death in the world and around 3.2 million people die every year from diabetic disorders around the world.

This was stated by the scientists at an international symposium on molecular medicine held at Karachi University on Wednesday.

They pointed out that diabetes is considered the third major cause of death in the world as currently 3.2 million people die every year from diabetic disorders over the globe.

The natural products are playing an important role in global health and economy and that the medicinal plants have more potential against cancer than any therapy.

Epilepsy is among the leading neurological disorders in the world, they further stated.

The scientists were speaking during the four-day Second International Symposium-Cum-Training Course on Molecular Medicine and Drug Research being held at International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS) Karachi University.

As many as 100 scientists from 30 countries of the world are participating in the international event being organised by Dr Panjwani Center for Molecular Medicine and Drug Research (PCMD).

According to the organizers, the aim of the event is to develop understanding and appreciation of this emerging field (Molecular Medicine and Drug Research) in Pakistan to bring together the leading experts in the field of molecular medicine from all around the world and forge global partnership for the common benefits of humanity and rapid development of the countries in the South.

Director ICCBS Prof Dr Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary said that diabetes was an old disease which posed a new challenge to the human well being.

Unfortunately, till today no successful treatment of this age-old disease exists, challenging human ingenuity and technological progress, he said and added that it was characterized by hyperglycemia and associated complications; diabetes was the third major cause of death, after cancers and heart diseases in the world.

“The need for new, more effective and safer therapies for existing or emerging diseases, increasing global demand of healthcare products for bulging populations, and the high prices of conventional mainly synthetic pharmaceuticals as well as the fact that modem medicines are often out of reach of a large segment of human population are reasons for a robust health food and alternate medicine market,” he said.

George G Chen, a scientist from Hong Kong, said that it was proven in the laboratories that medicinal flora has more potential to cancerous tumor than other therapeutics.

A former Vice Chancellor of Karachi University, Prof Dr Zafar Saied Saifi, and Dr Fatima Shad pointed out that they have prepared some special chemicals that have potential to help taking out drug addicts from drug addiction.

Such chemicals also prevent the drug addicts from other infectious diseases, they said.

“Respiratory allergies are affecting various countries of the world and unfortunately Pakistan is one of them. Studies have revealed that emergence of new risk factors like change in climate conditions, variable environmental biological particles and loss of protective traditional life styles are linked with the rise in allergic rhinitis and asthma prevalence in the world,” Prof Dr Anwar Waqar of PCMD said.

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Brushing teeth prevents preterm birth

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Preterm births are easier prevented than thought. Researchers in the United States have found that brushing your teeth properly and maintaining proper oral hygiene reduces the chance of early labour by a large extent.

Researchers from Case Western Reserve and Yale Universities Previously undiscovered bacteria usually found in the mouth could be responsible for up to 80% of early preterm labours.

The research could help doctors prevent preterm births by encouraging oral hygiene or stop early labour from developing by prescribing targeted antibiotics, Discovery News reported on its website on Wednesday.

“The earlier the woman goes into preterm labor, the higher the chance that she will be infected,” said Yiping Han, a doctor at Case Western University and the first author on the study.

Most human pregnancies last about 40 weeks. A birth prior to 37 weeks is classified as preterm. Babies born preterm can face many hurdles: vision and hearing loss, cerebral palsy, mental retardation, even death.

Labour itself is still somewhat of a mystery to science, which makes puzzling out preterm labour even more difficult. Anything from socioeconomic status and race to bacterial infection and genetics has been linked to preterm births, but a definitive cause is still elusive.

Han and her colleagues think they have found a major cause, at least in mice. By infecting the rodents with Bergeyella, previously unknown bacteria found in the mice, the researchers caused preterm births.

In humans, the scientists showed a strong correlation between infection and preterm births. Doctors removed amniotic fluid from 46 different women with potentially higher risk pregnancies. Of that group, 21 delivered an early preterm baby (32 weeks or earlier). Nineteen of those women, or about 85%, were positive for previously undetected bacteria.

The bacteria normally live in the mouth, but if a cut, cavity or other wound allows the bacteria to enter the blood stream, they can travel and eventually colonize the uterus. That triggers an immune response, which can inflame the uterus and eventually cause a mother to go into labour prematurely.

To identify bacteria behind preterm labour, doctors used polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Using PCR, the scientists identified the Bergeyella bacterium, as well as DNA belonging to 10 or 11 different strains of newly identified bacteria. Now that doctors know about another link to preterm labour, the next step is to treat it. Antibiotics that specifically target these new bacteria are currently being tested.

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A pill ‘to curb smoking damage’ soon

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Finding it hard to quit fags? Fret not, for researchers are close to developing a pill which they claim could mitigate some of the negative health effects of smoking.

According to a report in the ‘New Scientist’, a team at Boston University School of Medicine has already identified 28 molecules known as microRNAs, that are produced in abnormal amounts in cells lining the airways of smokers.

And, if the levels of these molecules could be restored to that of non-smokers it might allow chronic smokers to improve their health prospects as well as enable people to puff without any significant damage to their health.

“These microRNAs serve to regulate the gene expression changes occurring in people who smoke and who get smoking rel- ated diseases, including cancer,” lead researcher Avrum Spira was quoted as saying.

In fact, in their study involving ten smokers and ten non-smokers, the researchers have found one of the microRNAs, called mir-218, controls a group of genes that usually protect lung and airway cells from oxidative damage caused by smoke.

“We think the level of activity of mir-218 is crucial in how a smoker defends his or herself against any injury and potential development of lung disease,” Spira said.

And, giving supplements of mir-218 to smokers, or developing a drug that restores levels of disrupted microRNAs to normal could help mitigate some of the damaging effects of smoking, the researchers believe.

“We might be able to alter the host’s response to tobacco smoke so that it is a protective one,” Spira said.

The findings of the study have been published in the latest edition of the ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Science’ journal.

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