Category: Health

{A clever new tuberculosis vaccine has shown promise in trials in mice. If it succeeds, it will be the first new TB vaccine in a century. With the rise of multidrug resistant tuberculosis, the difficulty of curing the disease, and the large annual death toll, a successful vaccine could be a huge benefit to public health — especially in low- and middle income countries. The research is published January 13th in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.}

The vaccine uses “biobeads” as a platform to present the antigens from the tuberculosis bacterium to the immune system. These biobeads are natural polyesters that certain non-tuberculosis bacteria assemble into tiny spheres. Researchers have engineered them to display antigens from tuberculosis bacteria, Mycobacterium tuberculosis or Mycobacterium bovis.

In earlier research, these investigators found that mycobacterial antigens displayed on the biobeads could induce cell-mediated immune responses in mice. Those biobeads were assembled by E. coli. “During these experiments the team observed that along with the tuberculosis antigens, E. coli proteins were attached to the surfaces of the crude biobeads,” said principal investigator Axel Heiser, PhD, Senior Scientist, AgResearch Ltd., Palmerston North, New Zealand.

“From these observations, we developed the hypothesis that these proteins could also function as antigens,” said Heiser. “If produced in Mycobacteria instead of E. coli, such biobeads should carry mycobacterial antigens on their surface, including many as yet undiscovered antigens which would have the potential to induce protective immunity.” And that, in addition to antigens from M. tuberculosis and M. bovis that they would deliberately engineer onto the biobeads, would boost immune response to the vaccine, he said.

But unlike E. coli, Mycobacteria lack the enzymes necessary to assemble biobeads, said Heiser. So they developed new cloning strategies that enabled expression of those enzymes in M. smegmatis, a mycobacterium that does not cause tuberculosis. Using M. smegmatis instead of tuberculosis-causing bacteria would avoid the possibility of the vaccine’s causing tuberculosis infection.

Following production of the biobeads, “We killed and broke up the bacteria, and purified the biobeads,” said Heiser. “They are completely natural, and have been shown to be biodegradable.”

“We then used these mycobacterial biobeads to vaccinate mice and tested the mice for immune responses,” said Heiser. “We saw evidence of cell-mediated immunity with the potential to be protective against TB. Future studies will include a vaccination followed by challenge with TB to show protection, and also the development of more efficient production and purification methods for the vaccine.”

Thus, said Heiser, mycobacterial biobeads would provide a new platform for combining a large antigenic repertoire, comparable to that of live vaccines, with high safety through the use of non-infectious material in the vaccine, including absence of any genetic material. Heiser also said that production would be cost-efficient.

In 2015, 10.4 million people contracted tuberculosis, and 1.8 million died, worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Nearly half a million of the new cases were multidrug-resistant. 95 percent of the deaths occur in middle- and low-income countries. TB is a leading killer of people with HIV. The only existing vaccine was first used in 1921, and has a variety of shortcomings, including that it can cause the disease in immuno-compromised people.

{Can your smart watch detect when you are becoming sick? A new study from Stanford, publishing January 12th, 2017 in PLOS Biology, indicates that this is possible.}

By following 60 people through their everyday lives, Stanford researchers found that smart watches and other personal biosensor devices can help flag when people have colds and even signal the onset of complex conditions like Lyme disease and diabetes. “We want to tell when people are healthy and also catch illnesses at their earliest stages,” said Michael Snyder, PhD, Professor and Chair of Genetics at Stanford and senior author of the study. Postdoctoral scholars Xiao Li, PhD, and Jessilyn Dunn, PhD, and researcher Denis Salins share lead authorship.

Smart watches and similar portable devices are commonly used for measuring steps and physiological parameters, but have not generally been used to detect illness. Snyder’s team took advantage of the portability and ease of using wearable devices to collect a myriad of measurements from participants for up to two years to detect deviations from their normal baseline for measurements such as heart rate and skin temperature. Because the devices continuously follow these measures, they potentially provide rapid means to detect the onset of diseases that change your physiology.

Many of these deviations coincided with times when people became ill. Heart rate and skin temperature tends to rise when people become ill, said Snyder. His team wrote a software program for data from a smart watch called ‘Change of Heart’ to detect these deviations and sense when people are becoming sick. The devices were able to detect common colds and in one case helped detect Lyme disease — in Snyder, who participated in the study.

“I had elevated heart rate and decreased oxygen at the start of my vacation and knew something was not quite right,” said Snyder. After running a low-grade fever for several days, Snyder visited a physician who confirmed the illness. Snyder took the antibiotic doxycycline and the symptoms disappeared. Subsequent tests confirmed the presence of Lyme. The smart watch and an oxygen sensor were useful in detecting the earliest signs of illness.

This research paves the way for the smart phone to serve as a health dashboard, monitoring health and sensing early signs of illness, likely even before the person wearing it does.

In addition to detecting illness, the study had several other interesting findings. Individuals with indications of insulin resistance and who are therefore are at high risk for Type 2 diabetes are often unaware that they have this risk factor. Personal biosensors could potentially be developed into a simple test for those at risk for Type 2 diabetes by detecting variations in heart rate patterns, which tend to differ from those not at risk.

Another interesting finding of the study is an effect that impacts many of us. The authors found that blood oxygenation decreases during airplane flights. Although this is a known effect, the authors were able to characterize it in greater detail than has been previously reported. Snyder’s team found that reduced blood oxygenation typically occurs for a large fraction of a flight and further demonstrated that this is associated with fatigue. “Many of us have had the experience of feeling tired on airplane flights,” Snyder said. “Sometimes people may attribute this to staying up late, a hectic work schedule, or the stress of travel. However, it is likely that cabin pressure and reduced oxygen also are contributors.”

“The information collected could aid your physician, although we can expect some initial challenges in how to integrate the data into clinical practice,” said Snyder. For example, patients may want to protect the privacy of their physiologic data or may want to share only some of it.

“Physicians and third-party payers will demand robust research to help guide how this comprehensive longitudinal personal data should be used in clinical care,” Snyder said. “However, in the long-term I am very optimistic that personal biosensors will help us maintain healthier lives.”

{The brain is one of the most valuable organs in the human body. It controls a lot of things, and lack of care for it can lead to adverse effects. The better you are at caring for your mental health, the healthier your brain is likely to be. This is why we’re bringing you this information on how to care for the grey matter upstairs.}
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Don’t skip breakfast }}

Skipping breakfast is a habit for quite a number of people, but it’s not healthy for the brain. When you skip breakfast, your blood sugar level reduces, thereby causing an insufficient supply of nutrients to the brain. This often causes brain degeneration.

{{Anger and overreacting }}

It’s human to get angry and overreact, but you have to avoid those as much as possible. When you overreact, your brain arteries harden, and that usually leads to a reduction in mental power or ability.

{{Watch how you smoke }}

People often think that cancer is the only problem associated with smoking, but that’s not true. Smoking affects the brain negatively too. Smoking can cause the brain to shrink, and eventually lead to Alzheimer’s.

{{Excessive sugar intake }}

The brain needs nutrients to function well. It’s not healthy for the brain when your body has too much sugar. It usually interrupts the absorption of proteins and useful nutrients, thereby causing malnutrition and bad functioning of the brain.

{{Avoid polluted air }}

The brain thrives with oxygen. It needs a lot of oxygen to work well. When you inhale polluted air, you prevent the brain from having access to oxygen, which usually leads to a decrease in its efficiency.

{{Lack of sleep }}

The reason you need a lot of sleep is so you wake up fresher, and your brain resets too. When you deprive yourself of sleep, you deny the brain its rest too, and that can cause accelerated death of brain cells.

{{Don’t cover your head when you sleep }}

As I stated before now, the brain needs lots of oxygen to work well. Covering your head during sleep only increases carbon dioxide, as it decreases oxygen. It’s unhealthy for your brain’s well being.

{{Rest during illness}}

It’s bad habit to work or stress your head in any way while you’re sick. It could lead to an under -performing brain.

{{Exercise your brain }}

The more you work your brain, the better it gets. One sure way of exercising your brain is by engaging it in stimulating thoughts. It’ll help it be sharper.

Care for your brain today!

{According to the American Academy of Otolaryngology, you should stop using cotton buds, your finger or any other tool to get rid of earwax in your ear, reports Fox News Magazine.}

According to academy’s guidelines for dealing with earwax, earwax should be left alone as much as possible because the wax is as beneficial as nose mucus or eye lashes.

The earwax is important to the ear because it traps dirt, dust and other stuff that might get into your ears.

There’s no reason to get rid of earwax with cotton buds or any other tool because the wax is slowly pushed outward by new skin growth and jaw movement and washed away with normal bathing.

According to Dr Seth Schwartz, wiping away any excess wax when it comes to the outside of the ear is enough to keep it clean.

{New research from The George Institute for Global Health has revealed the weather plays no part in the symptoms associated with either back pain or osteoarthritis.}

It’s long been thought episodes of both back pain and arthritis can be triggered by changes in the weather, including temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind direction and precipitation.

Professor Chris Maher, of The George Institute for Global Health, said: “The belief that pain and inclement weather are linked dates back to Roman times. But our research suggests this belief may be based on the fact that people recall events that confirm their pre-existing views.

“Human beings are very susceptible so it’s easy to see why we might only take note of pain on the days when it’s cold and rainy outside, but discount the days when they have symptoms but the weather is mild and sunny.”

Almost 1000 people with lower back pain, and around 350 with knee osteoarthritis were recruited for the Australian-based studies. Weather data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology were sourced for the duration of the study period. Researchers compared the weather at the time patients first noticed pain with weather conditions one week and one month before the onset of pain as a control measure.

Results showed no association between back pain and temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind direction or precipitation. However, higher temperatures did slightly increase the chances of lower back pain, but the amount of the increase was not clinically important.

The findings reinforce earlier research on back pain and inclement weather from The George Institute which received widespread criticism from the public on social media.

Professor Maher, who led the back pain study, added: “People were adamant that adverse weather conditions worsened their symptoms so we decided to go ahead with a new study based on data from new patients with both lower back pain and osteoarthritis. The results though were almost exactly the same — there is absolutely no link between pain and the weather in these conditions.”

Back pain affects up to a third of the world’s population at any one time, (1) whilst almost 10 per cent of men and 18 percent of women over the age of 60 have osteoarthritis (2).

Associate Professor Manuela Ferreira, who led the osteoarthritis research at The George Institute, said: “People who suffer from either of these conditions should not focus on the weather as it does not have an important influence on your symptoms and it is outside your control.”

A/Prof Ferreira, Senior Research Fellow at The George Institute and at the Institute of Bone and Joint Research, added: “What’s more important is to focus on things you can control in regards to managing pain and prevention.”

The studies were carried out across Australia with average daily temperatures ranging from 5.4C to 32.8C.

{Even before they are born, premature babies may display alterations in the circuitry of their developing brains, according to a first-of-its kind research study by Yale School of Medicine researchers and their colleagues at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Wayne State University.}

The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports, a Nature Publishing Group Journal.

According to the authors, 10% to 11% percent of American babies are born prematurely. This new study suggest that factors contributing to early birth might also impact the brain’s development in the womb, leading to significant neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and cerebral palsy.

In the study, Yale School of Medicine researchers Laura Ment, M.D., Dustin Scheinost, and R. Todd Constable collaborated closely with principal investigator Moriah Thomason of Wayne State University, and Roberto Romero, M.D., chief of the Perinatology Research Branch and Program Director for Obstetrics and Maternal-Fetal Medicine of NICHD/NIH.

The research team used fetal resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain connectivity in utero in 32 human fetuses with normal brain anatomy, 14 of which were subsequently delivered preterm (between 24 and 35 weeks).

Patients were studied at Wayne State and Scheinost, assistant professor in the Magnetic Resonance Research Center at Yale School of Medicine, spearheaded the analysis using novel functional magnetic resonance imaging strategies to detect differences in neural networks between study groups.

The team found that systems-level neural connectivity was weaker in fetuses that would subsequently be born preterm. The findings were localized in left-hemisphere, pre-language regions of the brain.

“It was striking to see brain differences associated with preterm birth many weeks before the infants were prematurely-born,” said Scheinost. “Preterm infants are known to have brain changes in language regions, and we were particularly surprised that the fetal differences we detected were in these same language regions.”

Co-author Ment said these findings suggest that some prematurely born infants show changes in neural systems prior to birth. “Impaired connectivity in language regions in infants born long before their due dates needs further study, but is important for future research into both the causes and outcomes of preterm birth,” said Ment, professor of pediatrics and neurology at Yale School of Medicine.

The team’s future research will focus on potential causes of prematurity, such as infection and inflammation, to determine whether and how those conditions influence brain development in utero. They also will follow the study participants’ children to establish long-term outcomes.

{A study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that taking an hour-long nap after lunch can keep the brain five years younger.}

The researchers however found that taking a longer or shorter nap after lunch will have no effect at all.

The researchers came to this conclusion after observing 3000 Chinese adults over the age of 65 with 60 per cent reporting that they had a nap after lunch ranging from 30 to 90 minutes.

Dr Junxin Li, who led the research said: “Cognitive function was significantly associated with napping. Comparisons showed that moderate nappers had better overall cognition than non-nappers or extended nappers.

“Non-nappers also had significantly poorer cognition than short nappers.”

{Girls from low-income families in the U.S. are unprepared for puberty and have largely negative experiences of this transition, according to researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their latest paper on the puberty experiences of African-American, Caucasian, and Hispanic girls living mostly in urban areas of the Northeastern U.S. shows that the majority of low-income girls feel they lack the information and readiness to cope with the onset of menstruation. The research is one of the first comprehensive systematic reviews of the literature on puberty experiences of low-income girls in the U.S.}

The findings are published online in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

“Puberty is the cornerstone of reproductive development,” said Marni Sommer, DrPH, MSN, RN, associate professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health. “Therefore, the transition through puberty is a critical period of development that provides an important opportunity to build a healthy foundation for sexual and reproductive health. Given the importance of this transition, the research is striking in its lack of quantity and quality to date.”

The investigators used Qualitative Research guidelines to review the data from peer-reviewed articles with a qualitative study design published between 2000 and 2014. They used a quality assessment form as a further check of the data.

The age of breast development and menarche has declined steadily in the U.S. during the last 25 years, with 48 percent of African-American girls experiencing signs of physical development by age 8. “This trend may mean that increasing numbers of African-American girls are not receiving adequately timed puberty education¬, leaving them uninformed and ill-prepared for this transition,” said Ann Herbert, doctoral candidate at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Although many of the girls reported being exposed to puberty topics from at least one source — mothers, sisters, or teachers — most felt that the information was inaccurate, insufficient, or provided too late. Girls also reported being disappointed in the information they received from mothers; meanwhile many mothers said they were unable to fully address their daughters’ needs. Mothers were uncertain about the right time to initiate conversations, uncomfortable with the topic, and uninformed about the physiology of menstruation. The timing of puberty also influenced girls’ puberty experiences.

The researchers noted that despite a strong focus on adolescent sexual health outcomes, such as sexually transmitted infections and teen pregnancy, clinicians and public health practitioners in the U.S. have yet to capitalize on the issues of puberty onset and menstruation as a window of opportunity to improve adolescent sexual and reproductive health. In addition, the current body of research leaves out many topics entirely. “For example, missing are the voices of adolescents with non-conforming gender role and sexual orientation,” Herbert said.

Earlier research showed that irrespective of race, higher-income girls had more knowledge about puberty, were more prepared for menarche, and had more positive attitudes about menstruation, strongly suggesting socioeconomic disparities related to preparation for puberty.

“Findings from the current review suggest that low-income girls today expressed a sentiment similar to girls studied in the 1980s and 1990s — a feeling that they were largely unprepared for puberty and menarche,” noted Herbert.

“Our review makes it clear that there is a need for new more robust interventions to support and provide information about puberty for low-income girls, something we are considering for the coming years,” said Sommer.

More people are dying from eating disorders than any other psychiatric disorder, and one Cornell College professor has discovered a way to help women by significantly reducing eating disorder symptoms in those who are struggling.

Professor of Psychology Melinda Green and her team recently examined 47 women in Eastern Iowa who suffered from eating disorder symptoms, recruiting women through social media, fliers posted in practitioners’ offices, local schools, and announcements in local media. The researchers used what’s called a dissonance-based eating disorder program.

“Our intervention encourages women to criticize media messages which teach women and girls that we must be thin to be considered beautiful,” said Green. “We also teach women and girls how to combat societal messages which teach us to define our worth in terms of our appearances.”

The results from the four-week program reveal the importance of this type of treatment to help women.

“Women who took part in the program showed fewer eating disorder symptoms. Women also showed lower levels of anxiety and fewer negative emotions,” Green said. “Women showed higher self-esteem and greater satisfaction with their bodies. They were less likely to idealize a thin body-type and less likely to define their self worth in terms of their appearance. They were also less likely to show several cardiac risk factors associated with eating disorders.”

Green has worked for nearly a decade to research eating disorders. In her work, she has discovered a connection between eating disorders and cardiac risks, identifying markers of cardiac risk which worsen with eating disorder symptoms and improve with treatment. Her research has important implications for learning how to prevent and treat cardiac-related deaths in eating disorder patients. The results of this new study go even further to improve treatment and prevention options.

“Our work has a direct impact on the lives of women in Eastern Iowa since the program improves the lives of women who are struggling,” Green said. “On a national and an international level, our results help to inform the best practices in eating disorder treatment and prevention. We are working alongside leading scientists across the world to improve this treatment and prevention paradigm to make it as effective as possible.”

The psychology professor is currently conducting a treatment and prevention study and plans to pursue funding for another project to begin in the summer of 2017 to continue to refine this program. She consistently works with undergraduate students at Cornell College, who are involved in all phases of the research from revising the treatment programs to co-authoring manuscripts.

The Cornell College professor is also putting her own work into practice as she treats patients through a new online eating disorder prevention and treatment program.

Green is working with Tanager Place in nearby Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to continue her work. The group is currently fundraising to create a new, much-needed eating disorder treatment center for patients.

{What you see is not always what you get. And that, researchers at The Rockefeller University have discovered, is a good thing.}

“Every time you move your eye, the whole world moves on your retina,” says Gaby Maimon, head of the Laboratory of Integrative Brain Function. “But you don’t perceive an earthquake happening several times a second.”

That’s because the brain can tell if visual motion is self-generated, canceling out information that would otherwise make us feel — and act — as if the world was whirling around us. It’s an astonishing bit of neural computation — one that Maimon and his team are attempting to decode in fruit flies. And the results of their most recent investigations, published in Cell on January 5, provide fresh insights into how the brain processes visual information to control behavior.

Each time you shift your gaze (and you do so several times a second), the brain sends a command to the eyes to move. But a copy of that command is issued internally to the brain’s own visual system, as well.

This allows the brain to predict that it is about to receive a flood of visual information resulting from the body’s own movement — and to compensate for it by suppressing or enhancing the activity of particular neurons.

The human brain contains approximately 80 billion neurons, however, complicating the task of determining precisely how it makes such predictions and alters our perception at the cellular level.

Fortunately, the common fruit fly performs the same kinds of rapid eye movements. The mere 100,000 neurons in its poppy-seed sized brain must therefore handle the same problems of prediction and perception — but at a scale that Maimon and his colleagues, research associate Anmo Kim and postdoctoral fellow Lisa Fenk, can study in intimate detail.

There are differences between humans and flies, of course. For one thing, a fly’s eyes are bolted to its head. To shift its gaze, it must therefore maneuver like a tiny airplane. And like an airplane, it can rotate around multiple axes, including yaw and roll.

Yet its brain still manages to distinguish between expected and unexpected visual motion.

When a gust of wind unexpectedly blows a fly off course, for example, a powerful reflex known as the optomotor response causes the insect’s head to rotate in the opposite direction, snapping its eyes back toward their original target. The fly also stabilizes its flight path by using its wings to execute a counter-turn.

If a fly intentionally turns to shift its gaze, however, something different occurs. The urge to rotate its head and body back toward the original flight direction is somehow suppressed. Otherwise, it would never be able shift its gaze at all.

But how does a brain with such limited horsepower finesse such a complex problem?

In a previous study, Kim and Maimon demonstrated that two groups of motion-sensitive neurons in the fly’s visual system are suppressed during rapid intentional turns, inhibiting the insect’s behavioral responses.

In the Cell study, Kim, Fenk and Maimon showed that one of these sets of neurons stabilizes the head during flight turns. And they determined how it does so by measuring the electrical activity in individual neurons and filming the motions of the flies’ heads and wings as they turned on purpose — or were tricked into believing that they had turned by accident. (In some of the experiments, the flies were glued to a miniscule platform and shown images on an LED screen that deceived them into thinking that their gaze had shifted unintentionally.)

Each of the neurons in question could respond to visual motion around several axes. Some were more sensitive to yaw, however, and others to roll.

And that’s where things got interesting.

During intentional turns, each neuron received a signal that was carefully calibrated to suppress sensitivity to visual motion along the yaw axis alone.

Neurons that were more sensitive to yaw got a stronger countervailing signal. Neurons that were less sensitive got a weaker one. Sensitivity to roll, meanwhile, was left unimpaired.

As Maimon explains, this makes sense because flies must first roll and then counter-roll to properly execute intentional turns. If they were to counter-yaw, however, they would never be able to head off in a new direction.

The neural silencing process described by the researchers therefore left the flies selectively blind to visual information that would otherwise have interfered with their ability to turn — a feat of neural computation that Maimon likens to tuning out the sound of a single instrument in an entire band.

It’s the first illustration of how brains can subtract just one component of a complex sensory signal carried by an entire population of neurons while leaving other signals in the same population untouched. And it provides a blueprint for understanding how the brains of larger creatures might manage the same kinds of problems.

For while the details of how the brain modulates visual perception might differ in animals whose skulls are packed with more neurons, says Maimon, “we would expect to see similar processes in mammalian brains — including our own.”