Technique developed at the University of Calgary

An innovative method is being used to repair the breastbone after it is intentionally broken to provide access to the heart during open-heart surgery. The technique uses a state-of-the-art adhesive that rapidly bonds to bone and accelerates the recovery process.

“We can now heal the breastbone in hours instead of weeks after open-heart surgery. Patients can make a full recovery after surgery and get back to full physical activities in days instead of months,” reports Dr. Paul W.M. Fedak, MD PhD FRCSC, a cardiac surgeon at Foothills Medical Centre and scientist at the Faculty of Medicine who pioneered the new procedure.

Over 20 patients have received the new technique in Calgary as part of a pilot study. Fedak and Kathryn King, RN PhD are the co-principal investigators on the study. King, a cardiovascular nurse scientist, is an expert in post-operative recovery after open-heart surgery. “We know that recovery from sternotomy is a multi-faceted process that includes not only healing of the breastbone but the ability to return to normal activities,” she says. “Being able to resume normal activities is a hallmark of a good recovery; this surgical innovation should enable that.”

The patients report substantially less pain and discomfort after surgery and the use of strong pain medication, such as narcotics, is profoundly reduced if not completely eliminated with use of the procedure. The ability to deep breathe, known to play a key role in recovery, is also substantially improved.

Richard Cuming’s chest was repaired in June KryptoniteTM adhesive, a biocompatible polymer (manufactured by Doctors Research Group Inc., (Connecticut USA). Two years earlier he had open-heart surgery repaired the traditional way ““ sewing his breastbone back together with wire. That wire broke, his breastbone opened, and Cuming had a difficult time.

“I couldn’t accomplish simple tasks like squeezing toothpaste, turning the steering wheel in my car or pulling open a heavy door without discomfort and pain. Anytime I coughed or sneezed there was movement in my chest and significant pain, I think the worst part of the ordeal was that I stopped doing things ‘in case they would hurt'” says Cuming.

After his chest was ‘glued’ back together using KryptoniteTM adhesive and wires he had an entirely different experience. “I had a little bit of pain, but this was a walk in the park compared to my earlier recovery. I can do anything I could do prior to the original surgery. I feel wonderful.”

The encouraging results of this pilot study have prompted the Calgary researchers to establish a worldwide study to further investigate its benefits. The STICK Trial (STernal Innovative Closure with KryptoniteTM) aims to apply the technique in over 500 patients across the globe over the next 12 ““ 24 months.

“We are proud of the innovative work being done at Foothills Medical Centre,” says Dr. L. Brent Mitchell, Director of the Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta and Head of the Clinical Department of Cardiac Sciences at Alberta Health Services, “I used to warn my open-heart surgery patients that they would feel like they had been hit by a truck during a long recovery period; I’m glad I don’t have to say that anymore.”

More than one million open-heart surgeries are performed in the world each year by splitting the breastbone. Until this recent discovery, wire closure of the breastbone had been standard practice since routine heart surgery was established a half century ago.

The investigators believe that this improved method of chest closure will become a new standard of care for patients undergoing open-heart surgery. Fedak has started training surgeons in other Canadian and European hospitals where it is rapidly gaining popularity.

KryptoniteTM is approved for use in Canada (Health Canada), USA (FDA), and Europe (CE Mark). This pilot study has been supported in part by Doctor’s Research Group Inc.

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Image Caption: Dr. Paul Fedak from the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine has developed an innovative method to repair the breastbone after it is intentionally broken to provide access to the heart during open-heart surgery. The technique uses a state-of-the-art adhesive that rapidly bonds to bone and accelerates the recovery process. Credit: Paul Rotzinger

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On the Net:

• University of Calgary

A new study indicates that there may be a link between good oral care and aging adults retaining their mental sharpness, reported Reuters.

Researchers found during the study that adults aged 60 and older with the highest versus the lowest levels of the gum disease-causing pathogen Porphyromonas gingivalis were three times more likely to have a hard time remembering a three-word sequence after a period of time.

Dr. James M. Noble of Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City and his team also found that adults with the highest levels of this pathogen were twice as likely to fail three-digit reverse subtraction tests.

The researcher’s findings are published in this month’s edition of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. They are based on over 2300 men and women who were tested for periodontitis and completed many thinking skills tests as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III conducted between 1991 and 1994.

The researchers  reported that overall, 5.7 percent of the adults had difficulty finishing certain memory tasks and 6.5 percent failed reverse subtraction tests. The subjects with the highest (greater than 119 units) versus the lowest (57 units or lower) pathogen levels were most likely to do poorly in these tests.

Previous research has already made a strong connection between poor oral health and heart disease, stroke and diabetes, as well as Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers said that gum disease could have an adverse affect on brain function in several different ways. For example, gum disease is known to cause inflammation throughout the body, a contributing risk factor for the loss of mental function.

Dr. Robert Stewart, of King’s College in London, United Kingdom, made the comment that this study builds on a “quietly accumulating” body of evidence linking oral and dental health with brain function.

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On the Net:

• Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons
• Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry

A research team of the University of Granada (Spain) has confirmed a higher presence of the parasite Anisakis spp in anchovies of the Atlantic South East coast and the Mediterranean North West coast, and they insist on freezing or cooking fish before consuming it.

Although restaurants are required by the European Union and the Spanish law to freeze the hours at -20 ºC”, say the UGR scientists, who have also detected Anisakis spp larvae and another similar parasite, the Hysterothylacium aduncum, in anchovies at the West of the Mediterranean Sea and the East of the Atlantic Ocean.

“The risk of contracting anisakiasis by ingestion of anchovies (Engraulis encrasicolus), may be influenced by the geographic area of catching, as there is a great variation in the parasites (average prevalence and intensity) of anchovies of different areas”, explains to the platform SINC Adela Valero, main author and researcher of the Department of Parasitology of the UGR.

The study, which has been recently published in the International Journal of Food Microbiology, has analyzed 792 anchovies caught between October 1998 and September 1999 in the fish market of Granada. Half of them came from the East of the Atlantic Ocean (Gulf of Cadiz and Strait of Gibraltar) and the other 396 of the West of the Mediterranean Sea (Alboran Sea, Mar Catalán, Gulf of Lion and Mar de Liguria).

According to the researchers, the parasite Hysterothylacium aduncum was more frequent in the anchovies of the Mediterranean Northeast, specifically the Gulf of Lion and the Ligurian Sea. In the anchovies caught in the Atlantic area of the Strait of Gibraltar (Gulf of Cadiz and the Strait), Anisakis is more frequent than in those coming from the Mediterranean area (Alboran Sea), “apparently due to the presence of cetaceans”, points out Valero. “This connection is especially obvious in the anchovies coming from the Ligurian Sea, where the presence of Anisakis and cetaceans is higher than in the rest of the areas studied”, says Francisco Javier Adroher, other of the authors and researcher of the UGR. This involves a higher hazard for consumers, if they do not freeze fish.

Fish muscles, habitat of the larvae

Another factor that increases the probability of infection for the parasite is the migration of the larva to the fish muscle. According to the scientists, “the higher presence of the parasite in the muscle increases the risk of contracting anisakiasis with the consumption of pickled anchovies”. The scientists of Granada have also proved that the presence of the parasite in fishes increases depending on the fish size. “As pickled anchovies are prepared with bigger ones, the risk also increases”, adds Adroher.

Valero and his team point out that more studies are required to identify the marine areas with a higher presence of parasites which can affect human health. This way it will be possible to determine if the abundance of the parasite in certain areas varies with time, “which would allow to design and apply measures to limit human exposure to such parasites”.

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Image Caption: This is an Anisakis spp parasite in a hake slice. Credit: University of Granada

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On the Net:

• University of Granada
• International Journal of Food Microbiology

GlaxoSmithKline announced on Tuesday that they are giving 50 million doses of the swine flu vaccine to the World Health Organization, who will then give the medicines to developing countries in need.

The British pharmaceutical company has partnered with WHO and other health establishments to get the shipments of the H1N1 vaccine into the mail before December, they said in a statement.

“GSK is committed to supporting governments and health authorities around the world in their efforts to protect their populations against this pandemic,” said GSK chief executive Andrew Witty stated.

WHO director Margaret Chan added that this gift of vaccines is considered a “very generous donation.”

“This is a real gesture of global solidarity towards those who would not otherwise be able to have access to the vaccine. WHO will now work to see that these vaccines are distributed to those who need them,” she added.

GSK is also going to market the vaccine to poorer countries at a much cheaper price, the drugs company said, and is discussing with WHO about contributing their antiviral drug, Relenza, to their donation.

5,700 people have passed away around the world since the A(H1N1) virus emerged in April, says WHO statistics.

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On the Net:

• GlaxoSmithKline
• WHO

American and Australian scientists say they are working on a new breed of software which could turn your cell phone into a Star Trek-like device capable of diagnosing what ails you simply by coughing into the microphone.

Researchers at the research firm STAR Analytical Services say that if medical experts are able to tell whether a patient has pneumonia or just a cold, or whether an infection is viral or bacterial just by the sound of a cough, then there’s no reason why a computer program shouldn’t be able to do it as well.

And they claim that they are developing a program that can do just that, potentially saving patients and insurers millions in expensive and unnecessary trips to the hospital, while at the same time alerting seriously ill patients to their possibly hazardous health condition.

In the medical field, where diagnostic devices and treatments for specific diseases have been growing ever more high-tech in recent years, Suzanne Smith of STAR posed the question: “Why haven’t we been measuring coughs?”

“It’s the most common symptom which a patient presents, and we are relying on doctors and nurses with good old technology from the 19th century,” explained Smith.

A cough can generally be described as a defensive reflex used by the body to help clear the respiratory passage of mucous, foreign particles and microorganisms.  The anatomy of a cough consists of three phases: inhalation of air to the lungs, forced exhalation against a closed glottis, and finally a forceful release of air from the lungs following a reopening of the glottis which is accompanied by a complex burst of sounds.  On average, the whole process lasts only about quarter of a second.

Despite the basic similarity of all coughs, however, significant variations exist between coughs and are typically dependent on the kind of illness from which the patient is suffering.  A voluntary cough, for example, is usually louder and more vigorous than the involuntary coughs of a sick person.  The degree to which the vocal cords vibrate after the initial outburst of the cough sound can also give clues as to what type of irritant is present in the respiratory tract.

STAR researchers say that their software will attempt to analyze a patient’s cough by comparing it with a pre-recorded digital library of various cough sounds, all of which will be labeled and classified according to sex, age, weight and type of illness.

At the moment, company researchers say that their database consists of coughs from several dozen patients, but they estimate that they will have to use nearly 1,000 before the program can be considered reliable and accurate.

While the nascent program is currently being tested and developed on a standard computer, engineers say it will likely not be a problem to convert the software into a smartphone-friendly application.

Cough specialist Dr. Jaclyn Smith at the University of Manchester, expressed enthusiasm over the project.

“If they can find certain parameters to use coughs to diagnose disease that could be fabulous.  It could really improve disease diagnosis and help improve people’s access to health care,” Smith told Discovery News.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world-renowned philanthropic organization, has donated $100,000 to STAR to pursue their digital cough-detecting research, which they hope could potentially become an effective and inexpensive early diagnostic tool in third-world countries where pneumonia kills millions of children every year.

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On the Net:

• STAR Analytical Services

More than 199 countries and overseas territories have reported lab-confirmed cases of A(H1N1) influenza as of November 1, resulting in more than 6000 deaths, according to figures released Friday by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“As many countries have stopped counting individual cases, particularly of milder illness, the case count is likely to be significantly lower than the actual number of cases that have occurred,” said the WHO in its weekly update of the A(H1N1) influenza outbreak.

The pandemic is currently being driven by broad transmission throughout North America, coupled with an early start to winter flu season in Europe and parts of Asia, the U.N. health agency said.

“Intense and persistent influenza transmission continues to be reported in North America without evidence of a peak in activity,” the WHO said.

“Significantly more cases of pandemic H1N1 have been recorded in Mexico since September than were observed during the initial springtime epidemic,” the UN body said in its weekly update.

As of November 1, the official global death toll from A (H1N1) stood at 6,071, the WHO said.  Of those, 4,399 deaths, or nearly three-quarters, occurred in the Americas region — an increase of 224 in just one week.

There are also signs of “increasing and active transmission” of pandemic flu virus across Northern and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine and Belarus and eastern Russia, the WHO said.

The pandemic is also gaining strength in Mongolia, Oman, Afghanistan and Japan, but is waning in tropical areas of Central and South America and parts of south Asia.

The WHO also called on Friday for stricter monitoring of farm workers and animals for influenza A viruses, following a string of recent cases in a wider range of animals than pigs.

Although these cases were isolated and did not impact how the A(H1N1) pandemic evolved in humans, recent findings may indicate broader potential for flu viruses to mix and mutate, the WHO said.

“While most influenza A viruses circulating in mammals preferentially infect a single species, cross-species transmission is known to occur,” said the WHO in a briefing note.

Pigs have historically acted as “mixing vessels” for different types of flu viruses, allowing them to mutate into new forms that could be transmitted to humans.

“These recent findings further suggest that influenza A viruses in animals and humans increasingly behave like a pool of genes circulating among multiple hosts, and that the potential exists for novel influenza viruses to be generated in animals other than swine,” said the WHO.

“This situation reinforces the need for close monitoring and close collaboration between public health and veterinary authorities,” it added.

“When influenza infections are detected in farmed animals, WHO recommends monitoring of farm workers for signs of respiratory illness, and testing for H1N1 infection should such signs appear.”

Currently, nations are only required to notify international authorities of avian influenza cases, although some nations have additional domestic rules that apply to other animals, such as pigs.

However, since the rules also require reporting of “any emerging disease” in animals to the World Animal Health Organization (OIE), “this would include infections with the pandemic H1N1 virus or other novel influenza viruses,” the WHO said.

The agency stressed that lab tests had not detected signs that the virus had mutated to a more virulent form.

“These isolated events have had no impact on the dynamics of the pandemic, which is spreading readily via human-to-human transmission,” it said.

The recent cases involving animals have included swine flu in pigs.

“As human infections become increasingly widespread, transmission of the virus from humans to swine is likely to occur with greater frequency,” the Geneva-based health agency added.

Other A(H1N1) infections have been reported in turkeys in Chile and Canada, and in domestic pets, including a cat in the United States. The UN health agency also noted the progress of highly virulent H5N1 bird flu in recent years. 

Another case involved a “novel H3N2 influenza virus” recently found in mink in Denmark.  The virus is a combination of human and swine genes that had not been previously identified in circulating flu viruses, the WHO said.  However, testing of workers at the mink farms detected no spread to humans.

“However, the incident demonstrates the constantly evolving ecology of influenza viruses, the potential for surprising changes, and the need for constant vigilance, also in animals,” the WHO said.

The AFP news agency cited the Paris-based OIE as saying on Wednesday that there was no evidence that animals had played “any particular role in the epidemiology or the spread” of the pandemic virus.

“It does not come as a surprise that notifications of infection in new animals species are received; on the contrary it demonstrates animal disease surveillance is efficient and functioning to the benefit of all,” said OIE Director General Bernard Vallat in a statement.

As the pandemic continues to spread throughout the United States, many are having trouble gaining access to the swine flu vaccine.

A new telephone poll conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health found than just one-in-three adults who have attempted to get a swine flu vaccine have been able to do so. The figures held true even among those at heightened risk for severe complications and among parents who had tried to obtain the vaccine for their high-risk children.

The vaccine has been available in the U.S. for about a month, but supplies have been limited due to  manufacturing delays.

At this point, the shots are only supposed to be given to those at high risk of complications.

The Harvard poll, which surveyed 1,000 adults last weekend, also showed that half of those who tried could not find information about where to obtain the swine flu vaccine.

Swine flu is widespread in 48 states, according to comments made Friday by officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  Many millions of Americans have been infected with the virus, though most suffered only mild illness.  CDC officials said that 129 children have died from swine flu complications since April, when the virus was first identified.  

The WHO’s full November 6 weekly update can be viewed at http://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_11_06/en/index.html.

Finding could lead to new understanding of substance harmful in kidney disease and other human diseases

What life form can use materials as nutrients that we, and most other animals, would consider waste products?

None other than the giant cockroaches that infest sewer systems and erupt from people’s bathtub drains, according to scientists Nancy Moran and Zakee Sabree of the University of Arizona, and Srinivas Kambhampati of Kansas State University.

The researchers published their results in last week’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Uric acid and urea are nitrogenous waste products not useful to animals as food. But by teaming up with a bacterium, cockroaches can use them as sources for making their own proteins.

“It’s an example of a symbiosis,” says Moran, “that allows a whole new way of life.”

One day, it might help us better understand how animals successfully store excess uric acid, a problem in human kidney disease and other diseases.

Insects are the most abundant and diverse animals on Earth, says Matt Kane, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s division of environmental biology, which funded the research.

“Through genome sequencing like that used in this study,” says Kane, “we’re increasingly finding that this success can be attributed to the relationships insects have forged with microorganisms.”

Cockroaches are one of the most widely recognized insects. “While the common response to the mention of these creatures is revulsion,” says Moran, “their maligned reputation is largely due to the actions of a few cockroach species.”

Fewer than one percent of known cockroaches has any association with humans.

The American cockroach (Periplaneta americana), however, is a common pest that happily resides in the shadows of human life.

Like many cockroaches, P. americana is primarily herbivorous and feeds on decaying plant matter. But it can also be an opportunistic carnivore that feeds on dead animals and animal wastes.

“Having enough nitrogen in their diets is a primary requirement for cockroaches,” says Moran. “While many insects excrete waste nitrogen in the form of uric acid, instead cockroaches internally store it that way.”

Cockroaches can take advantage of nitrogen windfalls by stockpiling nitrogen in uric acid, then drawing upon these reserves when other sources of nitrogen are lacking.

The scientists observed uric acid stored in cockroaches’ bodies. A bacterial endosymbiont, or partner, was also seen residing within specialized cells, called bacteriocytes, in the cockroaches.

Named Blattabacterium, this bacterial endosymbiont was observed not only in the American cockroach, but in various other cockroach species.

“We estimate that it’s been associated with cockroaches for more than 140 million years,” says Sabree.

“Its role is likely two-fold: providing nutrients and, given its close proximity to uric acids in the host insect’s bodies, degradation of uric acid so levels don’t get too high and kill the cockroaches.”

Moran, Sabree and colleagues sequenced the genome of the P. americana-associated Blattabacterium species, hoping to better understand the nature of this insect-bacterial relationship. They found that the bacterium is capable of producing all essential amino acids, many non-essential amino acids, and various vitamins.

Surprisingly, no genes known to encode enzymes involved in degradation of uric acid were found in the bacterium’s genome, but it can use urea and ammonia, both uric acid degradation products, to generate nutrients.

Blattabacterium can recycle waste nitrogen, “but it’s still unclear what exact role it plays in degrading uric acid,” says Moran.

“However,” she says, “for eons, it likely has allowed cockroaches to subsist on nitrogen-poor diets and to exploit nitrogenous wastes, capabilities that are critical to the ecological range and global distribution of cockroach species.”

By Cheryl Dybas, NSF

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Image 1: The American cockroach may point the way to a new understanding of uric acid metabolism. Credit: Zakee Sabree

Image 2: A microscope photograph shows the bacterium in cockroaches that helps them store uric acid. Credit: Zakee Sabree

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On the Net:

• National Science Foundation
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• University of Arizona
• Kansas State University

Correlation between mountain growth and climate

The Alps are growing just as quickly in height, as they are shrinking. This paradoxical result could be proven by a group of German and Swiss geoscientists. Due to glaciers and rivers about exactly the same amount of material is eroded from the Alp slopes as is regenerated from the deep Earth’s crust. The climatic cycles of the glacial period in Europe over the past 2.5 million years have accelerated this erosion process. In the latest volume of the science magazine “Tectonophysics” ( No. 474, S.236-249) the scientists prove that today’s uplifting of the Alps is driven by these strong climatic variations.

The formation of the Alps through the collision of the two continents Africa and Europe began about approximately 55 million years ago. This led to the upthrusting of the highest European mountains, which probably already achieved its greatest height some millions of years ago. At present, however, the Swiss Alps are no longer growing as a result of this tectonic process.

Swiss geodesists, who have already been measuring the Alps with highest accuracy for decades, have observed, however, that the Alp summits, as compared to low land, rise up to one millimeter per year. Over millions of years a considerable height would have to result. But why then are the Alps not as high as the Himalayas? Researchers from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences were able to calculate that mountains eroded concurrently at almost exactly the same speed.

“This mountain erosion cannot even be determined using the highly precise methods of modern geodesy” explains Professor Friedhelm v. Blanckenburg from the GFZ. “We use the rare isotope Beryllium-10, which develops in the land surface via cosmic radiation. The quicker a surface erodes, the fewer isotopes of this type are present therein”. Therefore, von Blanckenburg, and the GFZ geoscientist, Dr. Hella Wittmann, have analyzed this “cosmogenic” isotope in the sand of the Swiss Alps rivers and, thus, in the direct products of erosion.

How does it come about now that the Alps erode at the same speed that they rise? “Here pure upthrusting forces are at work. It is similar to an iceberg in the sea. If the top melts, the iceberg surfaces out of the water by almost the same share” explains von Blanckenburg. Thus this paradoxical situation with the Alps that through wind, water, glaciers and rock fall, they are being constantly finely eroded from the top but on the other hand, regenerated from the Earth’s mantle. This phenomenon, even if already postulated theoretically has now been proven for a complete mountain range for the first time.

Thus, the Alps are constantly rising, although they have been deemed “dead” in a tectonic sense. Instead of plate forces it is the strong climatic variations since the beginning of the so-called quaternary glacial before approximately 2.5 million years, to which mountain slopes in particular have been reacting so sensitively. This holds the Alps in motion.

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Image 1: The high sediment load of the river shows the effect of the erosion at the Bernina Glacier in Switzerland. © GFZ

Image 2: Concept of the cosmic rays and nuclide production (Background: Forno glacier in Switzerland). © GFZ

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On the Net:

• Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers
• Tectonophysics

As the use of leeches in a variety of medical therapies is beginning to increase in popularity, an institution in Russia is hoping to cash in.

The International Medical Leech Center in Udelnaya refers to itself as the world’s largest leech-growing facility.

Many experts and leading institutions have begun approving the use of leeches for medical procedures.

Earlier this year, the American Journal of Nursing confirmed a resurgence of leech therapy, primarily among patients who underwent plastic and reconstructive surgery.

In 2004, the US government approved the use of leeches for medical purposes.

Actress Demi Moore announced last year that she had undergone leech therapy in Austria in an effort to detoxify her blood.

“Now this is a scientifically proven form of healing,” Gennady Nikonov, director of the International Medical Leech Center, told AFP.

“The leech is revealing more and more of its secrets to us,” Nikonov said.

Nikonov’s center is filled with glass jars containing leeches that are being grown for medical purposes.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the center had trouble paying employees, and Nikonov told AFP that “the building was falling apart.”

But the use of leeches for medical purposes has since seen a resurgence, which has helped the center increase production tenfold since the Soviet Union collapse.

“Leech cosmetics, unlike the ordinary kind, heal the skin from within instead of just plastering over it,” said Yelena Titova, lab director at the center.

“Here you have a whole factory of medicines, more than 30 components, and all created by nature,” Titova said.

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On the Net:

• International Medical Leech Center
• American Journal of Nursing
• Image Courtesy Karl Ragnar Gjertsen – Wikimedia Commons

With the present recession in tow, the number of children on food stamps is expected to increase. 

According to researchers, current statistics suggest that approximately half of the children in the U.S., including 90 percent of children who grow up in single-parent households and 90 percent of black children, will be on food stamps at some point between the ages of 1 and 20.

Performed by researchers at Cornell University, the study is based on an analysis of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which followed about 4,800 households in the U.S. over the course of 32 years.

The authors of the study wrote background information for the article saying, “Research has repeatedly demonstrated that two of the most detrimental economic conditions affecting a child’s health are poverty and food insecurity.”

Food stamps are part of a Department of Agriculture program for low-income individuals and families, covering most foods. A family of four is eligible if the annual take-home pay does not exceed around $22,000.

“Understanding the degree to which American children are exposed to the risks of poverty and food insecurity across the length of childhood would appear to be an essential component of pediatric knowledge, particularly in light of the growing emphasis on the importance of community pediatrics,” they wrote.

Poverty is estimated to result in rising costs on children’s health care by approximately $22 billion per year.

“Children in poverty are significantly more likely to experience a range of health problems, including low birth weight, lead poisoning, asthma, mental health disorders, delayed immunization, dental problems and accidental death,” wrote Hirschl and co-author Mark R. Rank of Washington University in St. Louis.

“Poverty during childhood is also associated with a host of health, economic and social problems later in life.”

“Such events have the potential to seriously jeopardize a child’s overall health,” the authors added.

However, the chances of living in families using food stamps is not equally shared across all people groups.

Ninety percent of black children live in households receiving food stamps (as opposed to 37 percent of white children), 90 percent of children who live with single parents receive them (contrasted with 37 percent who live in married and other two-parent households),  and 62 percent of those whose head of household did not graduate from high school (contrasted with 31 percent where the head has more than 12 years of school) “encounter spells of food stamp use,” the authors wrote.

With these risk factors put together, the study found that 97 percent of black children living in non-married families where the head of the household did not complete 12 years of education will have received food stamps, compared with 21 percent of white children living in married families whose head of household has 12 or more years of education.

“The situation is likely bad for children,” wrote Hirschl, “because families eligible for food stamps who participate tend to be worse off nutritionally than eligible families who don’t participate.”

Hirschl went on to say that only about 60 percent of families eligible for food stamps actually utilize the program because of the shame and stigma associated with depending on government assistance.

The study was published Nov. 2 in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

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On the Net:

• Cornell University
• Panel Study of Income Dynamics
• Department of Agriculture
• Washington University in St. Louis
• Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine

A research team from the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM) has analyzed the presence of heavy metals in 12 species of mushroom collected from non-contaminated natural areas, and has found that the levels vary depending on the type of mushroom. The results of the study, which appears this month in the journal Biometals, show that the largest quantities of lead and neodymium are found in chanterelles.

“The aim was to find out if there is a connection between the concentrations of specific heavy metals detected in the mushrooms, based on three factors: the type of substrate, the study area and the species of mushroom. The third was the determining factor”, explains Juan Antonio Campos, principal author of the study and researcher at the Department of Crop Production and Agricultural Technology at UCLM.

The researchers have analyzed the presence of lead (Pb), neodymium (Nd), thorium (Th) and uranium (U) in a hundred samples of 12 different species of common mushroom, both edible and non-edible, collected from non-contaminated zones in the Ciudad Real province. They were collected from wooded areas comprising Holm oak, Kermes oak, Pyrenean oak, Pine and Cistus.

The results of the study, published this month in the journal Biometals, reveal that there are ‘considerable’ quantities of the four metals in all the species examined, as well as significant differences in the capacity for accumulation of these elements depending on the species.

The analysis of these heavy metals ““ which can be toxic to humans ““ was carried out using X-ray fluorescence spectometry, a technique that enables a sample’s composition to be detected and quantified using X-rays.

The highest levels of neodymium (7.1 micrograms/gram) and lead (4.86 µg/g) were found in the chanterelle (Cantharellus cibarius), a mushroom widely used in European cuisine. This mushroom grows in the shadow of Holm oaks, Cork oaks and oaks, and is ectomycorrhizal (it clings to the external roots of plants to exchange nutrients), thereby it has direct contact with the mineral particles of the soil.

For their part, thorium and uranium accumulated mostly in Hypholoma fasciculare, with concentrations of 3.63 and 4.13 µg/g, respectively, “despite being a species that lives on fallen tree trunks and is isolated from the mineral substances of the soil”.

The scientists found no significant differences in the metal levels when comparing mushrooms collected from different substrates, habitats and localizations. The only exception was with thorium, which accumulates more in mushrooms which grow on wood (such as Hypholoma fasciculare or Gymnopilus spectabilis) than in those which have contact with the organic material of the soil (Tricoloma ustaloides and Pisolithus arrhizus).

New lines of research

To confirm that the type of substrate can take on a more important role than reflected in the study, the researchers have embarked on a new project in which they will analyze the presence of 19 chemical elements (toxic and non-toxic) in 15 species of edible mushroom.

“The real issue is that those mushrooms that form ectomycorrhizae are specially adapted to absorb chemical elements from the mineral particles of the soil, and give them to the plant. This is their contribution to symbiosis, and, the more effective they are in providing nutritional elements to the plant, the closer their connection to it, and the more sugars from photosynthesis they can access, which is what they are ultimately looking for”, explains Juan Antonio Campos.

This type of mushroom carries out an indiscriminate acid attack on the mineral particles of the soil and absorbs elements in quantities relative to the mineralogical composition of the soil. “In some contaminated soils, or those with particular mineralogical characteristics, the mushrooms collected can reach such high concentrations of toxic elements that their consumption would be unadvisable”, reveals the researcher.

* Juan A. Campos, Noel A. Tejera y Carlos J. Sánchez. “Substrate role in the accumulation of heavy metals in sporocarps of wild fungi”. Biometals 22 (5): 835-841, octubre de 2009.

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Image Caption: Heavy metals accumulate more in some mushrooms than in others. Credit: SINC

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On the Net:

• FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology
• Biometals

Like yoga for office drones, cells do have coping strategies for stress. Heat, lack of nutrients, oxygen radicals ““ all can wreak havoc on the delicate internal components of a cell, potentially damaging it beyond repair. Proteins called HSPs (heat shock proteins) allow cells to survive stress-induced damage. Scientists have long studied how HSPs work in order to harness their therapeutic potential.

Donna George, PhD, Associate Professor of Genetics, and Julie Leu, PhD, Assistant Professor of Genetics, both at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, in collaboration with the lab of Maureen Murphy, PhD at Fox Chase Cancer Center, identified a small molecule that inhibits the heat shock protein HSP70. They also showed that the HSP inhibitor could stop tumor formation and significantly extend survival of mice. They describe their findings in this month’s issue of Molecular Cell.

HSP70 is an intracellular quality control officer, refolding misfolded proteins and preventing protein aggregation, which among other disorders, is associated with neurodegenerative diseases. HSP70 also ferries proteins to their proper intracellular locations. Tumor cells, which face an abundance of cellular stresses, typically overexpress HSP70, making it a potentially interesting anticancer target.

The cancer microenvironment exposes malignant cells to a variety of stressful conditions that promote protein misfolding. HSP70 helps cancer cells deal with this stress. Unlike normal cells, which typically express little, if any, of HSP70, cancer cells contain high levels of this protein all of the time. Indeed, HSP70 has been termed a cancer-critical survival factor, since cancer cells probably require the actions of this protein to survive the protein-altering adverse conditions. The inhibitor, called PES, interferes with the HSP70 activities that the cancer cell needs to survive, so by targeting HSP70, one can target the cancer cell.

The investigators showed that PES interacts with HSP70 by blocking its stress-relieving functions. It also induces HSP70-dependent cell death by disrupting the cell’s ability to remove damaged components. Paradoxically for a compound first identified for blocking the cell-death pathway of apoptosis, PES does kill cells, but by a different mechanism.

PES seems to be specifically targeting HSP70, a protein that is differentially expressed in normal versus cancerous cells, and “one that the cancer cell seems to require to survive” says George. “It’s still early days ““ we don’t know what it will do in a human. But, the exciting part is that this is a pathway and a protein target that clearly is important for cancer cells.”

Given the extreme heterogeneity of cancer cells, simultaneously disabling networks of signaling pathways may be important. Indeed, PES was more or less equally effective in every type of cancer cell tested, she says, “which is unusual and supports the idea that it is targeting a protein that is required for the functioning of multiple pathways.”

To figure out just what PES was doing Leu chemically tagged it to see what proteins it interacted with. They were surprised and excited to have pulled out HSP70.

Next, the team investigated the consequences of PES binding. Like many proteins, HSP70 doesn’t act alone; it functions through a cadre of interacting proteins, which augment its activity. So, the team systematically scanned these proteins, to see if PES blocked their interactions with HSP70. “We found several known HSP70-interacting proteins that were no longer interacting properly when the cells were exposed to the small molecule,” Leu notes.

Among those were proteins that help HSP70 refold misfolded proteins and proteins that abet its protein trafficking functions.

When they then studied the effect that loss of those functions had on the cell, the team discovered that PES blocks the cell’s ability to get rid of the proteins damaged by cellular stress in a process called autophagy, a process in which cells were basically eating themselves to death. In mice, Murphy and her students Julia Pimkina and Amanda Frank found that PES could inhibit tumor formation and significantly extend survival.

“That was one of the highlights from our perspective, because PES has potential to be developed as a therapeutic,” says Murphy.

PES should also be a boon to researchers trying to untangle the biology of HSP70, say the researchers. Other HSP70 inhibitors exist but they are neither generally available, nor sufficiently specific. It also provides a novel platform for anticancer therapeutics, either directly as a treatment, or as a starting point for further development.

The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute and National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

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Image Caption: This image shows an accumulation of holes, called vacuoles, inside a cell, which are associated with protein aggregation and disrupted regulation of normal protein degradation processes following exposure of cells to the HSP70 inhibitor. Credit: Donna George, PhD, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

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On the Net:

• University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
• Molecular Cell

The UK government’s top drug advisors said on Thursday that alcohol and cigarettes pose a greater risk to one’s health than hard drugs like cannabis, LSD and ecstasy.

Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London is requesting a new system for classifying drugs so that the public can have a greater understanding of the relative harm of legal and illegal substances, reported AFP.

In a briefing paper for the Center for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College at London, he reported that alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone.

Tobacco came in ninth on the list and cannabis, LSD and ecstasy “while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively”.

The ranking is based on physical harm, dependence and social harm.

“No one is suggesting that drugs are not harmful. The critical question is one of scale and degree,” said Nutt, the chairman of the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

“We have to accept young people like to experiment, with drugs and other potentially harmful activities, and what we should be doing in all of this is to protect them from harm at this stage of their lives,” he added.

“We therefore have to provide more accurate and credible information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong.”

Nutt disagreed with the ministers’ decision to bump the classification of cannabis in January from class C, which includes tranquillizers and some painkillers, to the higher class B alongside amphetamines.

This went against scientific advice and came only five years after cannabis was dropped from class B to C. Under this decision, penalties would be increased to a maximum 14 years in jail for dealing and five years for possession.

According to Nutt, such policies “distort” and “devalue” research evidence and give contradicting messages to the public.

He admitted that cannabis was “harmful”, and that its use does not lead to major health issues. Cannabis users had a “relatively small risk” of psychotic illness when compared to the risks of smokers contracting lung cancer.

Nutt had already stirred up talk earlier this year when he claimed that taking ecstasy was no more dangerous than horseriding, which he reiterated in his paper.

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On the Net:

• Imperial College London
• Center for Crime and Justice Studies
• Estimating drug harms: a risky business?

Australian researchers say they may have found yet another reason why we ought to be packing our diets full of fresh fruits and vegetables.  According to a new study released by Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research, dietary fiber isn’t just important for keeping your grandmother regular, but may in fact play a significant role in staving off chronic illnesses like arthritis, diabetes and asthma.

Researchers have for some time known that fiber-rich foods such as legumes, whole grain breads and fresh fruits and vegetables are processed by intestinal bacteria to produce byproducts known as short chain fatty acids “” biomolecules that naturally treat various inflammatory diseases of the bowels.

According to Professor Charles Mackay of the Garvan Institute, his group “” which collaborated with research labs in the U.S. and Brazil “” was able to more closely elucidate the nature of the effects of fiber on intestinal disorders, which they believe may have much broader implications for our understanding of the relationship between diet and immune response.

In short, Professor Mackay and PhD student Kendle Maslowski were able to show that a molecule known as GPR43 “” known to be present in immune cells and used to bind short chain fatty acids “” also doubles as an anti-inflammatory receptor.

“The important point about our work is that we provide the molecular explanation that links fiber in the diet to the micro-organisms in our gut to the affect on the immune response,” Professor Mackay told AFP.

The team’s work, published in the current edition of Nature, points to a potential link between diet and immune responses that has hitherto been the subject of guesswork.

“The notion that diet might have profound effects on immune responses or inflammatory diseases has never been taken that seriously,” explained Professor Mackay.

“We believe that changes in diet, associated with western lifestyles, contribute to the increasing incidences of asthma, Type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases. Now we have a new molecular mechanism that might explain how diet is affecting our immune systems.”

According to Maslowski, taking care of the friendly bacteria that make their homes in our gut may be much more important to lifelong health than people realize.

“We’re […] beginning to understand that from the moment you’re born, it’s incredibly important to be colonized by the right kinds of gut bacteria,” she explained.

“The kinds of foods you eat directly determine the levels of certain bacteria in your gut [and] changing diets are changing the kinds of gut bacteria we have, as well as their by-products, particularly short chain fatty acids.”

“If we have low amounts of dietary fiber, then we’re going to have low levels of short chain fatty acids, which we have demonstrated are very important in the immune systems of mice.”

In lab studies, the team demonstrated that mice lacking the gene for GPR43 experienced a significantly increased incidence of intestinal inflammation and a diminished ability to fight off existing inflammation, presumably because their immune cells were unable to bind to short chain fatty acids.

The group’s work is corroborated by a 2006 study published in Nature that compared bacteria colonies in the intestines of obese people with those found in leaner subjects.  The obese people were then put on a diet, and scientists observed that as they began to shed pounds the constitution of their bacteria colonies progressively came to look more and more like that seen in the leaner people.

Mackay expressed enthusiasm over the potential that his team’s researcher could help to shed light on this little-understood branch of immunology.

“The role of nutrition and gut intestinal bacteria in immune responses is an exciting new topic in immunology, and recent findings including our own open up new possibilities to explore causes as well as new treatments for inflammatory diseases such as asthma,” said Professor Mackay.

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On the Net:

• The Cooperative Research Centre for Asthma and Airways (CRCAA)
• Garvan Institute of Medical Research
• Nature

Scientists said on Wednesday that a molecule found in a curry ingredient kills esophageal cancer cells in the laboratory, suggesting it might be developed as an anti-cancer treatment, Reuters reported.

Curcumin, a chemical found in the spice turmeric, gives curries a distinctive yellow color, but researchers at the Cork Cancer Research Center in Ireland used it to treat esophageal cancer cells and found it started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours.

According to the study published in the British Journal of Cancer, those cells also began to digest themselves.

Studies in the past suggested curcumin can suppress tumors and that people who eat lots of curry may be less prone to the disease.

However, when ingested, curcumin quickly loses its anti-cancer attributes.

But the study suggested a potential for scientists to develop curcumin as an anti-cancer drug to treat esophageal cancer, according to the lead author of the Irish study, Dr. Sharon McKenna.

Over 500,000 people across the world die each year from cancers of the esophagus and only 12 to 31 percent of sufferers receive five-year survival rate.

The new study showed curcumin caused the cancer cells to die “using an unexpected system of cell messages,” McKenna said.

The researchers said that in most cases the faulty cells die by committing programmed suicide, or apoptosis, which occurs when proteins called caspases are ‘switched on’ in cells.

However, these cells showed no evidence of suicide, and the addition of a molecule that inhibits caspases and stops this “switch being flicked’ made no difference to the number of cells that died, suggesting curcumin attacked the cancer cells using an alternative cell signaling system.

In 2007, U.S. researchers said they had found curcumin might help stimulate immune system cells in the Alzheimer’s disease.

“This is interesting research which opens up the possibility that natural chemicals found in turmeric could be developed into new treatments for esophageal cancer,” said Dr. Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK.

Walker said that rates of esophageal cancer have gone up by more than a half since the 70s.

“This is thought to be linked to rising rates of obesity, alcohol intake and reflux disease so finding ways to prevent this disease is important too.”

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On the Net:

• British Journal of Cancer
• Cancer Research UK

Global life expectancy could be raised nearly five years by addressing just five health factors ““ unsafe sex, alcohol consumption, poor child nutrition, high blood pressure and lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene ““ according to a new report released Tuesday by the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO).

These five factors are responsible for nearly one-quarter of the estimated 60 million global deaths each year, said the WHO’s Global Health Risks report, which highlights various environmental, behavioral and physiological factors affecting health.

The report is based on extensive data from the WHO and other studies, and estimates the health effects of 24 risk factors by region, age, sex and country income for the year 2004, the most recent year in which data is available.

These health factors raised the risk of chronic diseases and deaths within “countries across all income groups — high, middle and low,” read the report.

The U.N. health agency listed the world’s top mortality risks as high blood pressure (responsible for 13 percent of deaths), tobacco use (9 percent), high blood glucose (6 percent), physical inactivity (6 percent), and obesity or being overweight (5 percent).

“The world faces some large, widespread and certain risks to health,” read the report.

Identifying and assessing these risks will help policy makers devise strategies to improve health in the most comprehensive and cost-effective ways, said Colin Mathers, the WHO’s Coordinator for Mortality and Burden of Disease.

“Understanding the relative importance of health risk factors helps governments figure out which health policies they want to pursue, ” he said.

“In many countries there is a complex mix of risk factors. Countries can combine this type of evidence along with information about policies and their costs to decide how to set their health agenda.”

“Health risks are in transition: populations are aging owing to successes against infectious diseases; at the same time, patterns of physical activity and food, alcohol and tobacco consumption are changing,” the WHO said.

“As health improves, gains can multiply,” said the Geneva-based agency in its report.

“Reducing the burden of disease in the poor may raise income levels, which in turn will further help to reduce health inequalities.”

Many deaths and diseases are caused by more than one risk factor, the report said, and could be prevented by reducing any of the individual factors.

The report found that eight risk factors account for over three-quarters of deaths from coronary heart disease, the world’s leading killer. These factors include high blood glucose, alcohol consumption, tobacco use, high blood pressure, high body mass index, high cholesterol, low fruit and vegetable intake and lack of physical activity. Most of these deaths occur in developing nations, the WHO said. 

The report also found that nearly half of all cancer deaths worldwide are attributable to nine environmental and behavioral risks and seven infectious causes. 

Meanwhile, “more than one-third of global child deaths can be attributed to a few nutritional risk factors such as childhood underweight, inadequate breastfeeding and zinc deficiency,” said Mathers.

While poor nutrition is a significant health risk among poorer countries, obesity and being overweight are even greater risks in wealthier nations, and are responsible for more deaths globally than being underweight.

The WHO said its study showed that health was becoming “globalized”, and warned that developing countries face a double burden of health risks.

For instance, while some risk factors such as smoking and obesity are typically associated with rich countries, more than three-quarters of the total global burden of diseases they cause take place in poor and developing nations.

“The poorest countries still face a high and concentrated burden from poverty, undernutrition, unsafe sex, unsafe water and sanitation,” it said.

“At the same time, dietary risk factors for high blood pressure, cholesterol and obesity, coupled with insufficient physical activity, are responsible for an increasing proportion of the total disease burden.”

If the risks outlined in the report had not existed, average global life expectancy in 2004 would have been nearly a decade longer, the WHO said.

The WHO’s full Global Health Risks report can be viewed at http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHealthRisks_report_full.pdf .

Many people perceive gambling to be a harmless recreational activity. However, it is estimated that six to eight million people in the United States personally suffer from a gambling related problem. This problem seems to grow tentacles, extending out to wreak havoc and can profoundly impact the physical, emotional, and financial health of the family (spouses, children, extended).

As stated in this month’s issue of the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, the most common treatment models for problem gambling are focused on meeting the needs of gamblers but do not address the needs of couples and families whose lives have been negatively impacted by someone else’s gambling. In the paper, the authors provide a detailed description of how problem gambling impacts families, they explain, “Our hope in writing this paper is to raise awareness about problem gambling and the importance of developing treatment programs that meet the needs of the families of problem gamblers.”

As noted by the authors, many of the people who access problem gambling treatment services are family members. It is clear that the impact of gambling on families can no longer be allowed to slip “under the radar”. Marriage and family therapists are well positioned to help families cope with the impact of problem gambling on their lives.

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On the Net:

• Journal of Marital and Family Therapy (abstract)

Having children improves married peoples’ life satisfaction and the more they have, the happier they are.  For unmarried individuals, raising children has little or no positive effect on their happiness. These findings by Dr. Luis Angeles from the University of Glasgow in the UK have just been published online in Springer’s Journal of Happiness Studies.

Previous research suggests that increasing numbers of children do not make people any happier, and in some cases the more children people have, the less satisfied they are with their lives. Rather bleakly, this has been attributed to the fact that raising children involves a lot of hard work for only a few occasional rewards.

Dr. Angeles believes that this explanation is too simplistic. When asked about the most important things in their lives, most people place their children near or even at the top of their list. Contrary to previous work, Dr. Angeles’ analysis of the relationship between having children and life satisfaction takes into account the role of individual characteristics, including marital status, gender, age, income and education.

For married individuals of all ages and married women in particular, children increase life satisfaction and life satisfaction goes up with the number of children in the household. Negative experiences in raising children are reported by people who are separated, living as a couple, or single, having never been married. Children take their toll on their parents’ satisfaction with social life, and amount and use of leisure time.

Dr. Angeles concludes: “One is tempted to advance that children make people better off under the “Ëœright conditions’ – a time in life when people feel that they are ready, or at least willing, to enter parenthood. This time can come at very different moments for different individuals, but a likely signal of its approach may well be the act of marriage.”

* Angeles L (2009). Children and life satisfaction. Journal of Happiness Studies; DOI 10.1007/s10902-009-9168-z

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On the Net:

• Journal of Happiness Studies

Naked Mole Rat, the Only Known Cancerless Animal, Has Two-Tier Defense Against Cancer

Despite a 30-year lifespan that gives ample time for cells to grow cancerous, a small rodent species called a naked mole rat has never been found with tumors of any kind””and now biologists at the University of Rochester think they know why.

The findings, presented in today’s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that the mole rat’s cells express a gene called p16 that makes the cells “claustrophobic,” stopping the cells’ proliferation when too many of them crowd together, cutting off runaway growth before it can start. The effect of p16 is so pronounced that when researchers mutated the cells to induce a tumor, the cells’ growth barely changed, whereas regular mouse cells became fully cancerous.

“We think we’ve found the reason these mole rats don’t get cancer, and it’s a bit of a surprise,” says Vera Gorbunova, associate professor of biology at the University of Rochester and lead investigator on the discovery. “It’s very early to speculate about the implications, but if the effect of p16 can be simulated in humans we might have a way to halt cancer before it starts.”

Naked mole rats are strange, ugly, nearly hairless mouse-like creatures that live in underground communities. Unlike any other mammal, these communities consist of queens and workers more reminiscent of bees than rodents. Naked mole rats can live up to 30 years, which is exceptionally long for a small rodent. Despite large numbers of naked mole-rats under observation, there has never been a single recorded case of a mole rat contracting cancer, says Gorbunova. Adding to their mystery is the fact that mole rats appear to age very little until the very end of their lives.

Over the last three years, Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov, research professor of biology at the University of Rochester, have worked an unusual angle on the quest to understand cancer: Investigating rodents from across the globe to get an idea of the similarities and differences of how varied but closely related species deal with cancer.

In 2006, Gorbunova discovered that telomerase””an enzyme that can lengthen the lives of cells, but can also increase the rate of cancer””is highly active in small rodents, but not in large ones.

Until Gorbunova and Seluanov’s research, the prevailing wisdom had assumed that an animal that lived as long as we humans do needed to suppress telomerase activity to guard against cancer. Telomerase helps cells reproduce, and cancer is essentially runaway cellular reproduction, so an animal living for 70 years has a lot of chances for its cells to mutate into cancer, says Gorbunova. A mouse’s life expectancy is shortened by other factors in nature, such as predation, so it was thought the mouse could afford the slim cancer risk to benefit from telomerase’s ability to speed healing.

While the findings were a surprise, they revealed another question: What about small animals like the common grey squirrel that live for 24 years or more? With telomerase fully active over such a long period, why isn’t cancer rampant in these creatures?

Gorbunova sought to answer that question, and in 2008 confirmed that small-bodied rodents with long lifespans had evolved a previously unknown anti-cancer mechanism that appears to be different from any anticancer mechanisms employed by humans or other large mammals.

At the time she was not able to identify just what the mechanism might be, saying: “We haven’t come across this anticancer mechanism before because it doesn’t exist in the two species most often used for cancer research: mice and humans. Mice are short-lived and humans are large-bodied. But this mechanism appears to exist only in small, long-lived animals.”

Now, Gorbunova believes she has found the primary reason these small animals are staying cancer-free, and it appears to be a kind of overcrowding early-warning gene that the naked mole rat expresses in its cells.

When Gorbunova and her team began specifically investigating mole rat cells, they were surprised at how difficult it was to grow the cells in the lab for study. The cells simply refused to replicate once a certain number of them occupied a space. Other cells, such as human cells, also cease replication when their populations become too dense, but the mole rat cells were reaching their limit much earlier than other animals’ cells.

“Since cancer is basically runaway cell replication, we realized that whatever was doing this was probably the same thing that prevented cancer from ever getting started in the mole rats,” says Gorbunova.

Like many animals, including humans, the mole rats have a gene called p27 that prevents cellular overcrowding, but the mole rats use another, earlier defense in gene p16. Cancer cells tend to find ways around p27, but mole rats have a double barrier that a cell must overcome before it can grow uncontrollably.

“We believe the additional layer of protection conferred by this two-tiered contact inhibition contributes to the remarkable tumor resistance of the naked mole rat,” says Gorbunova in the PNAS paper.

Gorbunova and Seluanov are now planning to delve deeper into the mole rat’s genetics to see if their cancer resistance might be applicable to humans.

This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Ellison Medical Foundation.

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Image 1: Naked Mole Rats (Credit University of Rochester)

Image 2: ‘The naked mole rats’ p16 gene kicks in early to stop cell overcrowding’

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On the Net:

• University of Rochester
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Medical clinics the world over could benefit from new software* created at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where a team of scientists has found a way to improve the efficiency of a pneumonia vaccine testing method developed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

Pneumonia is the world’s leading cause of death in children under five years of age and poses a serious risk to elderly adults. The leading cause of pneumonia worldwide is the pneumococcus bacterium, which also causes meningitis, sepsis and other complications. Pneumococcus has more than 90 strains that vary by geographic region and change over time. Consequently, ongoing testing is necessary to monitor existing vaccines and advance new ones.

One novel, high-throughput testing method involves culturing the bacteria along with a vaccinated person’s blood serum and human white blood cells. If the vaccine is effective, the white cells kill the pneumococci and very few of the bacteria survive. Scientists can determine the vaccine’s effectiveness by counting the number of surviving pneumococcus colonies, so rapid, accurate and standardized counting of these colonies is critical to this testing method.

At present, the most commonly used counting process is manual counting, which is both time-consuming and exhausting. “Automated counting devices do exist, but they require customized image acquisition methods, are very expensive and are not accessible in impoverished or developing regions of the world. These limiting factors can mean the difference between life and death,” says NIST biophysicist Jeeseong Hwang. “So we created software that can be tweaked to work on any common imaging device.”

The open-source software, called NIST’s Integrated Colony Enumerator (NICE), takes a digital image that has been loaded into a computer and counts colonies grown from single pneumococcal cells. The Microsoft Windows-based software works on images from both digital cameras and flatbed scanners, which are widely available and inexpensive, costing less than $1,000 each. “NICE obtains results that agree well with manual counting, the current gold standard,” says Matthew Clarke, who developed the program algorithm and code in Hwang’s group. “There’s a mean difference of only 3 percent between the two methods.”

The project grew from informal talks between NIST and UAB, where researcher Moon H. Nahm developed the testing method. Nahm has been working with vaccine testing methods to support projects by the National Institutes of Health and PATH, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health in poor communities around the world. As NIST scientists have been developing ways to standardize counting particles, PATH provided funding and worked with NIST. After 18 months of effort, NICE is now ready.

“We have already identified several clinics in Asia, where we feel many of the potential users are,” Hwang says. “We’re hoping to get feedback from them so we can improve the software in the future.”

* The two software files required to run NICE, along with additional images demonstrating their use, can be downloaded at ftp://ftp.nist.gov/pub/physics/mlclarke/NICE. The files, written in the language MATLAB R2008B, are MCRInstaller.exe (MATLAB compiler engine 7.9) and NICE_B1r.exe (launches NICE). Further information is available from the programmer at [email protected].

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Image 1: Pneumococcus colonies (as seen here) ordinarily must be counted manually to determine whether pneumonia vaccine is effective on a patient. The NICE software from NIST automates the process. Credit: NIST

Image 2: Pneumococcus colonies ordinarily must be counted manually to determine whether pneumonia vaccine is effective on a patient, but freely available NICE software developed at NIST will help automate the process, potentially saving many lives in the world’s developing regions. Credit: NIST

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On the Net:

• National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Scientists have discovered that our internal body clocks are shaped by the weather and the different seasons, BBC News reported.

A team of researchers from Edinburgh University used computers to model the workings of internal biological clocks in human test subjects.

The study helped determine that the internal clock mechanism is very complicated because it is able to deal with varying amounts of light from hour to hour, as well as changing seasons.

The team hopes that their findings may benefit research studies attempting to solve sleep problems caused by jet lag and shift working.

The discoveries also offer a better understanding of what drives the internal rhythms of people, animals and plants.

Experts also determined that environmental signals, such as hours of daylight, affect the daily rhythms that many plants use to control the flowering and ripening process.

Scientists might even be able to develop crops that can cope with climate change in the future.

The study also involved researchers from the California Institute of Technology and the University of Warwick.

“By better understanding why biological clocks are so complex, we stand a better chance of controlling them,” said Dr Carl Troein of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Biological Sciences.

He added that the study goes some way to explaining how and why these in-built rhythms have developed over time.

“We hope it will be useful in informing treatments for sleep disorders as well as helping scientists develop crops that can survive in the long term,” he said.

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On the Net:

• Edinburgh University