Health Meaning

a growl of a new nasal spray vaccine may soon keep severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) at bay. The new vaccine, a hybrid of SARS and a human respiratory virus, prevented infection in monkeys and may soon lead to a new nasal spray in people.

Since SARS emerged in China in 02, the virus has infected 8,000 people, causing pneumonia in many of them and killing 774. The outbreak was controlled in 03 and health authorities have contained recent epidemics, including an outbreak in China in April, isolating patients. But the disease still lurks, and new strains could emerge and start another epidemic, says virologist Peter Collins of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

No vaccine against SARS has not been proven in clinical trials, but researchers have developed several prototypes, including a virus of SARS and died a DNA vaccine, both of which have to be injected. Since the laboratory Collins makes genetically nasal spray vaccine against childhood respiratory diseases and SARS is a respiratory virus, "it seemed natural," Collins said, to make a hybrid strain of vaccinia virus to ward off SARS.

The researchers spliced ​​the gene encoding the spike protein of SARS, which is on the surface of the virus and allows it to invade human cells, in an attenuated variant of human parainfluenza virus 3. This strain was designed as a nasal spray vaccine to protect children against pneumonia. After the growth and isolation of the hybrid virus were administered to a group of African green monkeys. A month later, the researchers infected each monkey with SARS. Then they stamped nose and throat each day and tested hardware. A group of vaccinated false green monkeys remained infected by SARS up to 8 days, while the vaccinated animals showed no signs of infection, according to the results to be published Saturday The Lancet . Because parainfluenza vaccine strain has already tested safe in a clinical trial, the hybrid vaccine is ready for clinical trials in children and, with modifications, for adults, Collins said.

"It is a very smart job," said Ruth Foxwell mucosal immunologist at the University of Canberra in Australia. The new vaccine could protect infants and children, although the immune system in adults can neutralize the vaccine, she said. But to develop a vaccine just a year after the virus was discovered "is fantastic compared to what is normal."

related Site
WHO RAD page
CDC SARS FAQ

A new study gives ammunition to researchers who claim that Crohn's disease, an often devastating inflammation of the intestine is caused by a microbe usually infects cattle. But the study, published in this week's issue of The Lancet , it is unlikely to end the long debate on the role of the microbe.

Crohn's disease is a chronic inflammation of the small intestine, which can cause severe pain, diarrhea, ulcers and tissue damage which sometimes requires surgery. For over 15 years, some researchers have blamed Mycobacterium avium subspecies JD , a bacterium that causes severe intestinal infection called Johne or Johne's disease in cattle, goats and sheep worldwide. Infected animals lose bacteria in their milk, and some studies have shown that the pasteurization does not kill all the microbes. Contaminated drinking water may be another route of infection. The same Mycobacterium species was found in the tissue of the intestine of patients of some Crohn; proponents of the hypothesis believe that only people with a certain genetic or immunological predisposition getting the disease.

Four years, Saleh Naser of the University of Central Florida in Orlando and colleagues cultured breast milk of two women with Crohn bug - a finding that they say provides further evidence that the Crohn's disease is really the human equivalent of Johne's disease. In the new document, Naser and his colleagues show that half of the 28 Crohn's patients had bacteria in the blood, while not one of the 15 people who had bowel diseases unrelated or were healthy did.

It is not known why the bacteria have shown in the blood of patients with certain Crohn's disease, but not in others. However, "this is a very important piece of the puzzle," says researcher Robert Greenstein Crohn's Veterans Affairs Medical Center in New York, a proponent of the hypothesis of infection. Finding microbes in the blood, which is normally sterile, "is an indication that the immune system loses the battle" in patients with Crohn's, he said. in an accompanying editorial in the Lancet , Warwick Selby, University of Sydney , Australia, cautions that the study does not clinch the case. Even if he writes, "the sight of all that, [ Mycobacterium ] can not continue to be ignored in Crohn's disease. "

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More Crohn disease
website awareness and paratuberculosis Research Association, with links to the literature scientific

When the early 1880s vulcanized rubber and the 1930 advent of latex mark the latest advances, we quickly understand the sorry state of male contraceptives. Researchers in this field have tried hard pressed to provide men with other options, but has not had much success. Now a team in the United States and India reported promising preliminary results for its new contraceptive vaccine for men.

reproductive biologist Michael O'Rand of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, manufactured the vaccine after reporting his discovery of a new protein only male in 01. The protein, called Eppin, has been found so far on the surface of sperm cells and elsewhere in the testis and epididymis. Its function is not clear. But O'Rand said that if a man harbored antibodies to this protein, his sperm may malfunction.

O'Rand teamed up with colleagues from the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, which hosts a large research center for primates. The researchers injected nine monkeys with human protein Eppin and gave six monkeys a dummy vaccine. Two of the vaccinated monkeys Eppin were discontinued from the study, however, because they do not produce enough antibodies to the protein, a mysterious problem other immunocontraceptives met.

The monkeys booster vaccine every 3 weeks. To test if it worked, men vaccinated spent several days each with three different females during the fertile peak of the menstrual cycle of women. The result: None of the seven vaccinated monkeys managed to impregnate a female. Four of the six control monkeys did. Although aimed the contraceptive effect of the vaccine to be reversible, only five of the seven vaccinated monkeys, some of which received the vaccine for nearly 2 years, recovered their fertility during the study, the group reports in the issue November 12 of science . "It's hard to say" what it means, O'Rand said. "Maybe they recovered two weeks after we leave" test.

"There seems to be a promise," said Ronald Swerdloff, a reproductive endocrinologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Still, "it's just the beginning of the game," with too few monkeys tested, concluding that pan out approach, he adds. O'Rand and his colleagues are now trying to understand how their vaccine disrupts fertility. One possibility is that it leaves the slower sperm.

Related Sites
O'Rand and colleagues Science paper
home [MichaelO'Rand

WASHINGTON, DC - The doctors may have demonstrated why a common drug given to patients with heart failure fails to help nearly half of them: a genetic difference resulting in a change of a single amino acid appears to determine patient response to the drug. The results, announced today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, could help doctors better prescribe medication for patients with heart failure, and perhaps for those with pressure high blood well.

In the late 190s, Stephen Liggett pulmonologist from the University of Cincinnati, and his colleagues have identified a genetic variation in humans has not been seen in a variety of species, including mammals, suggesting that it has recently evolved in humans. The change occurs in a single amino acid - Humans or arginine or glycine. Everyone has two copies, inheriting one from each parent; This means that a person may have two copies of glycine, arginine, two, or one of each. Studies have suggested that mice with two copies of arginine were more susceptible to heart failure and more sensitive to beta blockers -. A class of drugs used to treat

Liggett decided to test how this affected human variation. His team found 1,040 volunteers, all people with severe heart failure. Almost half had either two copies of arginine or an arginine and a glycine; the rest had two copies of glycine. Patients were randomized to receive either a placebo or the drug bucindolol, a beta-blocker.

When observed for about 2 years (and in some cases up to 5), 82% survived to drugs, compared to 65% compared to placebo. Those with one copy of each amino acid or two copies of glycine, however, have not helped at all by drugs, fare nearly as badly as placebo. Liggett hopes to establish a larger study to see if the results are robust. All patients received the drug because he believes that the results show that it is unethical to give patients arginine double copy placebo

"He found a polymorphism." - Genetic variation - "that seems to predict response" to bucindolol says Kathy Giacomini from the University of California, San Francisco. The result, she says, is "very exciting" and "very specific." We do not know, Liggett said, if the results are applicable to other beta-blockers, which are also used to treat high blood pressure.

related site
homepage Liggett

DENVER, COLORADO -. Patients whose HIV infections have developed resistance to most available drugs may soon have a new and powerful new antiretroviral drug to add to their treatment.

The drug, manufactured by Merck and known as MK-0518, inhibits the enzyme critical integrase that the virus uses to drag its genetic material into human chromosomes, and then copy itself. Antiretroviral drugs currently on different target parts of the HIV life cycle market.

At the 13th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections here February 8 Beatriz Grinsztejn of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, revealed results of a multisite, placebo-controlled study in 167 people infected with multidrug-resistant HIV. The results showed how MK-0518 could reduce the level of virus below 400 copies per milliliter - a drop of 99% - 80% of treated participants. "This is a difficult population, and for 80% [of patients] below 400 copies is about as good as it gets," said Michael Saag, director of the AIDS Research Center at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

a smaller shorter study, reported at a meeting last fall, found that the drug was as safe and effective in people with HIV who n has never taken antiretroviral medication. Constance Benson, an organizer of the retrovirus meeting and an AIDS researcher at the University of California, San Diego, said that if the drug works in larger trials and toxicities not serious area, "it will change the treatment paradigm."

the current study only looked at the impact of the drug after 16 weeks and did not assess whether it has improved the health of participants who had been on anti-HIV drugs for an average of 9 years. Merck launches two studies in several countries to evaluate the safety and efficacy of MK-0518 in large groups of same-drug resistant

"We move the drug through the [pipeline] as quickly as possible. "said Robin Isaacs Merck, head of clinical research for infectious diseases. If all goes well, the company plans to seek approval from the US Food and Drug Administration next year. Merck also began organize larger trials with patients who were not drug-resistant HIV.

related site

• The retrovirus conference

Editors of the journal Analytical Chemistry yellow flags raised today on a paper on the toxicology of silicone breast implants . The original study, published on 1 May of the magazine, reported finding high levels of a potentially dangerous form of platinum in blood and tissues of women who had silicone implants in their bodies for years. Since then, however, experts have disputed several of the methods used to reach conclusions. Two of these criticisms appear in the August 1 issue of the journal, with an editorial by two editors of the newspaper that said at least one of the method of the newspaper "falls short of the standard of this newspaper." Consequently, publishers advise their readers to "exercise caution" when evaluating the paper.

The dispute stems from work published by Ernest Lykissa of ExperTox Inc., a company of toxicology tests in Deer Park, Texas, and Susan Maharaj Centre for Research on Environmental Medicine in New Market, Maryland. They reported that women they studied showed not only high levels of platinum in their bodily fluids and tissues, but also chemically reactive forms of the metal, including one known as platinum (VI), which is highly reactive and unstable. A less reactive form of platinum was used as a catalyst for making gels incorporated in many silicone breast implants. Lykissa Maharaj and the report suggested that platinum turned more reactive in the body of women with implants and thus became a potential source of toxic reactions experienced by those with silicone implants.

Among the complaints about the work, but that was Lykissa Maharaj and relied on a device called an ion chromatograph, which is usually used to differentiate reactive platinum. In addition, experts noted that the control subjects had platinum levels were not statistically different experimental subjects, which are not expected.

Lykissa and Maharaj could not be reached for comment, but the pair did not retract their paper.

Royce Murray, a chemist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and chemical analysis 's editor, said the paper Lykissa and Maharaj was sent to a normal contingent of three examiners, but these authors failed to catch many problems. Therefore, he said, "a mistake was made, I think in the publication of this document." Under normal circumstances, Murray said, the newspaper is willing to let scientists dispute play in the correspondence between critical and the authors. However, in this case, he said, "we thought we should not expect the scientific community to set the record straight because of the public interest."

related site

• chemical analysis publishing

A new technique can convert type A and type B red blood cells into type O, the "universal donor" blood type that can be transfused for all patients. The advance may help prevent blood shortages

The four types of primary human blood -. A, B, AB and O - resulting from differences in molecules known as antigens dotting the surface of red blood cells and elicit responses of the immune system of the organism. Individuals with type A antigens make antibodies to the type B antigen, which causes the body to attack and reject transfused type B blood as foreign. The same scenario unfolds dark for people who get type B type A blood. Blood type O individuals lacks both antigens and can be transfused safely in people with all four blood types. Type O individuals can receive only O blood type, however, which means that during blood shortages, they may want for blood that was shed to patients with other blood types.

To alleviate type O blood shortages, Henrik Clausen, a glycobiologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and scientists ZymeQuest team, a biotechnology company based in Beverly, Massachusetts, hunted for enzymes that convert other blood types to type O. a and B antigens consist of similar branched carbohydrate molecules that differ in the sugars that cap their tips. The researchers looked for enzymes that snip the sugars off the two antigens without damaging red blood cells. The company had previously isolated a coffee bean enzyme that stripped the B antigen that worked, but too inefficiently. To identify and mass-produce more efficient enzymes, they tested extracts of 2500 kinds of bacteria and fungi. They focused on two enzymes: one from a bacterium that causes infant meningitis, converted type A blood into type O, while another, a human gut bacterium, converted type B type O. (the two enzymes together convert the type AB to type O.)

Each enzyme denuded much of its target antigen from red blood cells that the antigen can not be detected by a test blood group, the Food and Drug administration approved and by subsequent chemical analysis, the researchers reported online yesterday in Nature Biotechnology . ZymeQuest tests the enzyme type A-conversion efficiency in clinical blood and hope to conduct a clinical trial of the B-type enzyme conversion starting later this year, said Clausen.

"I'm impressed" by the study, said scientific transfusion Geoff Daniels of the Bristol Institute of Science transfusion in Bristol, UK Type O blood runs short of time blood is in short supply, Daniels said. If the technology proves safe and effective in humans and financially viable for blood banks, he concludes, in a few years the new enzyme technology "would be able to reduce the pressure on [type] O".

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• Facts about blood donation of the American Red Cross
• Background on the blood groups of the National blood Service in the UK

Tamoxifen, a drug commonly used to prevent breast cancer recurrence, is also effective against the manic phase of bipolar disorder, new research suggests

bipolar disorder -. formerly known as manic depression - affects about 1% of the population. As its nickname indicates exceeded, patients experience periods of deep depression and mania, extremely hyperactive condition that can lead to wild spending, risk taking, and extreme sexual activity. When mixed with depression, mania also leads to suicide.

Lithium has been the mainstay of bipolar treatment for over 50 years, but about 40% of patients do not respond to it, said Husseini Manji psychiatrist National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Maryland . In recent years, both anticonvulsant and antipsychotic drugs have proven effective for mania, but can take weeks for the shot. Now it seems that an alternative may be to fast action horizon.

Tamoxifen protects against breast cancer by blocking the receptors for the hormone estrogen, which some tumors depend on. But the drug has another function: It inhibits an enzyme called protein kinase C (PKC) that regulates the excitability of brain cells. Studies have shown increased PKC activity in the brains of people with bipolar disease, and a recent study of the whole genome found that the gene with the strongest association with the disease is that governing PKC. It is found that tamoxifen is the only PKC-inhibiting compound approved for direct human use which can pass from the bloodstream into the brain.

So over several years, a NIMH group led by psychiatrist Carlos Zarate conducted a controlled study with 16 patients hospitalized for mania. Over a period of 3 weeks, each person was given either tamoxifen or placebo. In a paper appearing online today in the journal Bipolar Disorders , the team reports that the tamoxifen treated patients began to improve by the 5th day, and five of the eight showed a reduction of 50% or more symptom reduction on a rating scale-mania -. compared to only one of eight in the placebo group

"This is potentially a major development if replicated," says psychiatrist Paul Keck of the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. "It potentially opens a whole new avenue for targeted treatments."

Manji, a co-author of the study, said doctors have provided a lot of anecdotal evidence that patients with bipolar breast cancer on tamoxifen did not have that much trouble with mania. He said that there were no gender differences in response to drugs in the NIMH trial shows the effect is not related to estrogen receptors. Now, he notes, the work is to test potential drugs that do not mess with estrogen and are "pure PKC inhibitors."

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• More about bipolar disorder
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Skin cells reprogrammed to act like embryonic stem cells -. A first breakthrough reported in human cells there 2 weeks - already showing promising as a therapeutic agent. In today's online edition of Science , researchers describe the use of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) to relieve the symptoms of sickle cell anemia in mice. The technique is not safe to try in people, but scientists say it is proof of principle that iPS cells could one day treat human disease.

induced pluripotent stem cells excite scientists because they represent a way to get custom-made stem cells without the ethical barriers to the use of embryos or oocytes ( science Today ay, November 20). Researchers hope they might be able to use the technique to replace defective cells in the body with healthy cells containing the patient's own DNA.

Tim Townes of the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and colleagues wondered whether iPS cells could be useful in a mouse model of sickle cell anemia. (The blood cells are much easier to replace than are the cells that make up the fabric). In afflicted humans, red blood cells become curved and can not flow easily through blood vessels. The mice show many of the symptoms that patients are human, and they were particularly good candidate to test the capabilities of iPS cells, said Rudolf Jaenisch cell researcher strains of the Whitehead Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, once in Cambridge, who worked with Townes on the project.

The first step was the creation of specific iPS mice. Researchers took cells from the skin of the tail of mice to sickle cell and the inserted copies of four genes that render the cells have the characteristics of embryonic stem cells. They also added a corrected hemoglobin gene in cells and caused to become producing blood stem cells. Finally, the researchers injected these partially differentiated cells in sickle cell mice that had been treated with radiation to kill their own blood stem cells. Within weeks, the new cells produce mature blood cells, and the symptoms of sickle cell disease have improved dramatically, reports the team.

Townes and Jaenisch said he initially collaborated on a project that has used nuclear transfer to the corrected stem cells, a process called therapeutic cloning. But experiments have failed, he said, because nuclear transfer was too inefficient to produce the necessary cells. The technique of iPS cells "is amazingly effective," he said.

The document is an important step, said Jose Cibelli of Michigan State University in East Lansing. Laboratory results for iPS cells have been impressive so far, he said, "but if they do not have a therapeutic value, they will be far from getting to the point of replacing the idea of ​​therapeutic cloning."

the next important step for the field, Cibelli said, is to find reliable ways to differentiate the cells into various types of cells useful and be sure that no undifferentiated cells remain to cause potential tumors. Other experiments with iPS cells have suggested that they might tend to cause cancer, but none of the treated mice showed no signs of tumors after 12 weeks. This is a promising sign, Townes said, but would need much longer studies before the technique could be considered safe enough to try in humans.

Related site

• More information about sickle cell anemia

scientists have for the first time pushed the cells human embryonic stem to become functional pancreatic cells. The work, published online today in Nature Biotechnology , an important step towards the use of embryonic stem cells to treat diabetes.

One of the most sought after prize in embryonic stem (ES) cell research is a method of transforming cells in pancreatic beta cells. These cells produce insulin in response to sugar in the blood, and they are damaged or missing in type 1 diabetes If scientists could find a reliable way to make beta cells from human ES cells, they could be able to replenish the supply of patients. But so far nobody has managed to produce functional beta cells in the laboratory.

Now, developmental biologist Emmanuel Baetge and colleagues of the biotechnology company Novocell in San Diego, California, report that they have managed to coax human ES cells behave like beta cells in mice . For several years, the group has attempted to use the molecular signals that prompt pancreatic development in a fetus to direct human ES cells to become beta cells in a dish. In previous work, the researchers describe a technique that seemed to produce insulin-producing cells, but the cells do not respond to glucose, a key characteristic of working beta cells.

Thus, researchers have supported a step. Instead of trying to get mature beta cells in a dish, they treated ES cells with signals that coaxed them to form pancreatic endoderm, a type of cells similar to those in a human fetus aged 6 to 9 weeks. They implanted these immature cells into mice, hoping that the final signal that the formation of rapid beta cells could be provided by the organs of animals. Thirty days after implant, the researchers were able to detect the human version of C-peptide, a byproduct of the production of insulin in the blood of animals. (The researchers studied C-peptide instead of insulin, because it is easier to differentiate between versions of man and mouse.) After 2 months, the C-peptide levels human increased when mice received a dose of glucose, indicating that the implanted cells responding to blood sugar. Finally, the researchers selectively killed own beta cells of animals with a toxin, which usually leads to becoming diabetic mice. But rodents who received implanted human cells do not develop diabetes, showing that the implanted cells may take the place of the beta cells of the animals.

The work is "very important for the area," says diabetes expert Teresa Ku of the Beckman Research Institute in Duarte, California, whose group also worked on ways to turn the ES cells beta cells. Baetge said Novocell already meets the US Food and Drug Administration to discuss additional safety testing will be required before you can consider starting human trials. But Ku notes that it is difficult to determine whether the pancreatic endoderm cells are the self-renewal. If not, she said, they might give in a few years, and patients will undergo multiple transplants. A fully differentiated cell beta in the culture dish is always the safest bet, she said.

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• More information on efforts to understand the beta cell
• Another approach to the treatment of diabetes