Acne drug may help prevent HIV breakout

Good morning friends. A cheap acne drug that's been used for decades effectively targets infected immune cells in which HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, lies dormant and prevents them from reactivating and replicating, claim Johns Hopkins researchers.

The drug, minocycline, likely will improve on the current treatment regimens of HIV-infected patients if used in combination with a standard drug cocktail known as HAART (Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy), according to research published now online and appearing in print April 15 in The Journal of Infectious Diseas es.

“The powerful advantage to using minocycline is that the virus appears less able to develop drug resistance because minocycline targets cellular pathways not viral proteins,” says Janice Clements, Ph.D., Mary Wallace Stanton Professor of Faculty Affairs, vice dean for faculty, and professor of molecular and comparative pathobiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

“The big challenge clinicians deal with now in this country when treating HIV patients is keeping the virus locked in a dormant state,” Clements adds. “While HAART is really effective in keeping down active replication, minocycline is another arm of defense against the virus.”

Unlike the drugs used in HAART which target the virus, minocycline homes in on, and adjusts T cells, major immune system agents and targets of HIV infection. According to Clements, minocycline reduces the ability of T cells to activate and proliferate, both steps crucial to HIV production and progression toward full blown AIDS.

If taken daily for life, HAART usually can protect people from becoming ill, but it’s not a cure. The HIV virus is kept at a low level but isn’t ever entirely purged; it stays quietly hidden in some immune cells. If a person stops HAART or misses a dose, the virus can reactivate out of those immune cells and begin to spread.

The idea for using minocycline as an adjunct to HAART resulted when the Hopkins team learned of research by others on rheumatoid arthritis patients showing the anti-inflammatory effects of minocycline on T cells. The Hopkins group connected the dots between that study with previous research of their own showing that minocycline treatment had multiple beneficial effects in monkeys infected with SIV, the primate version of HIV. In monkeys treated with minocycline, the virus load in the cerebrospinal fluid, the viral RNA in the brain and the severity of central nervous system disease were significantly decreased. The drug was also shown to affect T cell activation and proliferation.

“Since minocycline reduced T cell activation, you might think it would have impaired the immune systems in the macaques, which are very similar to humans, but we didn’t see any deleterious effect,” says Gregory Szeto, a graduate student in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine working in the Retrovirus Laboratory at Hopkins. “This drug strikes a good balance and is ideal for HIV because it targets very specific aspects of immune activation.” The Times of India

Scabies pill also works against resistant lice

Good morning friends. Scabies pill also works against resistant lice. Ivermectin, a pill prescribed for the skin disease known as scabies, also gets rid of hair lice that are resistant to conventional lotions, a study published on Thursday says.

Lice affects over 100 million people worldwide each year, especially children of primary school age, according to the paper, appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine. The main treatments are diluted forms of an insecticide called permethrin and malathion, but since the 1990s lice have becoming more and more resistant to these chemicals.

That has left parents with little choice other than to be, literally, nit-pickers -- to go through their children's hair with a fine comb to haul out the parasites. Ivermectin is a promising alternative, say French researchers who led the study. They tested it in a trial involving 812 adults and children in 376 households in Britain, France, Ireland and Israel.

Half of the patients were treated with malathion and half with ivermectin, which was administered twice, seven days apart, at a dose of 400 microgrammes per kilo (2.2 pounds). After two weeks, 95.2 per cent of the ivermectin group were lice-free, compared with 85 per cent in the malathion group.

"Ivermectin is more effective than the best anti-lice lotion, but it should be reserved for difficult, resistant cases," said the study's coordinator, Olivier Chosidow of France's National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM). Over-using the drug could make it succumb to resistance, following the same path as the lotions, he said. – The Times of India

High-fat diets raise stroke risk in women, study

Good morning friends. Women should listen to this … High-fat diets raise stroke risk in women, Eating a lot of fat, especially the kind that's in cookies and pastries, can significantly raise the risk of stroke for women over 50, a large new study finds.

The new study is the largest to look at stroke risk in women and across all types of fat.

It showed a clear trend: Those who ate the most fat had a 44 per cent higher risk of the most common type of stroke compared to those who ate the least.

"It's a tremendous increase that is potentially avoidable," said Dr Emil Matarese, stroke chief at St Mary Medical Center in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. "What's bad for the heart is bad for the brain."

He reviewed but did not help conduct the research, which was presented yesterday at an American Stroke Association conference.

It involved 87,230 participants in the Women's Health Initiative , a federally funded study best known for revealing health risks from taking hormone pills for menopause symptoms.

Before menopause, women traditionally have had less risk of stroke than similarly aged men, although this is changing as women increasingly battle obesity and other health problems

After menopause, the risk rises and the gender advantage disappears, said Dr Ka He, a nutrition specialist and senior author of the study from the University of North Carolina.

He and another researcher, Sirin Yaemsiri, wanted to see whether dietary fat affected the odds. – The Times of India

Strokes can happen to children too

Good morning friends. Don’t be relax parents, not only older people acquire stroke. Also children can acquire the disease. Parents should be aware of that. Strokes can happen to children too as we least expected.

Children can have strokes too that can be recurrent, according to pediatric researchers.

Unfortunately, boffins said, the strokes often go unrecognized the first time, and the child does not receive treatment before the recurrence.

Pediatric neurologist Rebecca Ichord, MD, director of the Pediatric Stroke Program at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, reported the study of arterial ischemic stroke in children at the International Stroke Conference 2010 in San Antonio, Texas.

An arterial ischemic stroke results from a blockage or constriction in an artery in or leading to the brain.

To come up with the findings, Ichord and colleagues at Children's Hospital followed 90 children with a median age of about 6 years old, treated for stroke between 2003 and 2009. Twelve patients (13 per cent) had a recurrent stroke during the study period, most of them within a month of the first stroke. In six of the 12 children with recurrent strokes, no one diagnosed the initial stroke until a recurrent stroke occurred.

"Strokes don't occur only in the elderly," said Ichord. "They can also affect children as young as infants. Our findings reinforce how important it is to diagnose stroke in children as quickly as possible so that medical caregivers can provide emergency treatment and take measures to prevent recurrence."

Strokes can arise in children as a complication of other illnesses, such as sickle cell disease, which obstructs blood circulation, or from an undetected heart condition. A whiplash injury to a child's neck may damage an artery and leave it vulnerable to a blood clot that causes a stroke. Signs of a stroke are the same as in adults—a sudden loss of neurologic functions such as vision or speech, unsteady gait, or weakness on one side of the face or in limbs. What is different in children, said Ichord, is that symptoms may be subtle, examination is difficult and children are less able to describe their symptoms.

Emergency treatment for a stroke typically involves assuring adequate breathing and circulation, supplying intravenous fluids and improving blood supply to the brain.

Medications such as aspirin or blood thinners are given to lower the risk of a recurrent stroke. In the aftermath of a stroke, rehabilitation is critical to promote recovery.

"Because a stroke can recur, we need improved awareness of pediatric stroke among primary health care providers, and more research on the best ways to prevent a recurrence after a child suffers a first stroke," added Ichord. – The Times of India

Early eczema can affect mental health later

Good morning friends. Early eczema can affect mental health later. A new study has discovered an association between eczema in early childhood and psychological problems in children at ten years of age.

Eczema is a non-infectious skin disease characterized by scaling itchy skin rashes. It is the most common skin disease in children and adolescents. Children who suffer from eczema are known to have an increased predisposition for hay fever and allergic asthma. Eczema symptoms are accompanied by a broad spectrum of secondary symptoms, such as sleep disorders.

The prospective birth cohort study was done by scientists of Helmholtz Zentrum München and colleagues of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Technische Universität München (TUM) and Marien-Hospital in Wesel, North Rhine-Westphalia.

The research, which followed 5,991 children born between 1995 and 1998, has appeared in the current issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 125 (2010); 404-410.

Researchers led by Assistant Professor Jochen Schmitt of Dresden University Hospital, Dr. Christian Apfelbacher (Heidelberg University Hospital) and Dr. Joachim Heinrich of the Institute of Epidemiology of Helmholtz Zentrum München, found that children who suffered from eczema during the first two years of life were more likely to demonstrate psychological abnormalities, in particular emotional problems, at ten years of age than children of the same age who had not suffered from the disease.

Dr. Heinrich said, “This indicates that eczema can precede and lead to behavioral and psychological problems in children.”

Children whose eczema persisted beyond the first two years of life were more likely to have mental health problems than children who had eczema only in infancy.

Within the framework of the GINIplus study, scientists tracked the family history of the children, collected data on their physical health and emotional condition at age 10 years and gathered information on their daily lives. Questions were asked about the course of disease – also in early childhood – with special focus on diseases such as eczema, asthma, allergic rhinitis, stress tolerance and behavioral abnormalities.

Joachim Heinrich said, “We suspect that it is mainly the secondary symptoms that have a long-term effect on the emotions of the affected children.”

The authors of the study therefore recommend documenting the occurrence of eczema as potential risk factor for later psychological problems in the children’s medical records, even if the actual primary disease abates and disappears during the course of childhood. – The Times of India

Childhood stress may lead to brain damage

Good morning friends. Childhood stress such as abuse or emotional neglect can result in structural brain changes, a new study has shown.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), researchers have shown that childhood stress such as abuse or emotional neglect, in particular when combined with genetic factors, can result in structural brain changes, rendering these people more vulnerable to developing depression.

Commenting on the significance of the findings, Trinity''s Professor Thomas Frodl at the School of Medicine and Trinity Institute for Neuroscience said: "This improved neurobiological understanding shows how stress and genetic variants interact and affect brain structure and function. In turn it demonstrates how it could affect a person''s propensity for depression. These structural alterations of the brain are associated with a higher vulnerability to depression and a more chronic course of the depression might be associated with further structural changes".

"Therefore, early intervention in the case of major depression is necessary to increase the chance of a good disease outcome. Fortunately, depression can be treated very well by psychotherapy and antidepressant medication. Moreover, prevention strategies for childhood neglect and misuse are highly important to increase public health and to avoid in later life for these individuals, the burden of major depression."

The study was conducted on a total of 24 patients (aged 18-65 years) being treated as inpatients for major depression. They were investigated with high-resolution structural MRI and childhood stress asessments. Special analysis programmes were used to measure brain regions. These patients were compared with 27 healthy control subjects from the local community who were matched for age and gender. Further research is needed in a larger number of patients and controls to identify the underlying causes of depression and stress-gene interaction on brains structure as well as function.

The study led by scientists at Trinity College Dublin has just been published in the international scientific journal, Neuropsychopharmacology . – The Times of India

New breast cancer screening technology

Good morning friends. Breast cancers is one of the problem of women. Not only older women acquire this illness. Anyone can have it, even you are still in the peak of you teenage days. There is a New breast cancer screening technology. As early as possible women should have to go to the doctor and have a checked up. They said that prevention is better than cure.

With the number of breast cancer cases on the increase, a new screening technology has been introduced by Siemens Healthcare .

"For the first time in India, Siemens Healthcare introduced a breakthrough innovation called Automated Breast Volume Scanner (ABVS) at Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre, Mumbai," D Ragavan, the company's Sector CEO for Healthcare, South Asia, told the media here.

ABVS automatically acquires volume images of the breast, helping in comprehensive screening using ultrasound, he said. "This new technology comfortably images patients with dense breast tissue or with a history of breast disease."

The machine is equipped to ensure accurate and consistent diagnosis, Ragavan said. The one-button locking mechanism simplifies and expedites volume acquisition and addresses the common problem of repetitive stress injuries, he said.

With this technology, images can be acquired in less than 10 minutes, as compared to half an hour in the conventional systems, Ragavan said. – The Times of India